The Lido Girls

by Allie Burns

  But Natalie wasn’t that interested in the beauty contest. She hoped Toots did win, and if she got her modelling contract at the end, it would make the business over Jack fair and square.

  She gestured to Sid to play the music and then the bathing belles linked arms and kicked their legs straight and high, all together, and then a step change, and then the alternate leg, and on and on until no one in the audience, not even Arthur, could complain that they hadn’t seen enough of the girls’ legs.

  The music stopped. She could have heard a powder-puff drop. She gestured up to Sid again. This time jazz music filled the air. Barnie came running on to the makeshift stage at one end of the pool, dressed in a pink tulle skirt, and took a huge leap. Her ankle collapsed as she landed, but she regained her poise and began to waft about the small space, a huge natural grin on her face. Her husband, Robert, was a couple of rows in, holding the baby to his shoulder, two toddlers on his knees, another beside him. Having the time and space to do this for herself had given Barnie more energy. She smiled more often now, didn’t cry all the time for no reason.

  Next on to the stage came Edith with her older sisters, Laura and Delia, holding hands and dancing in a circle like ring-a-ring-a-roses, only, thankfully, no one fell down.

  Hatty and the other cafeteria girls flooded the podium. All of them wearing the same netted skirts and blissful expressions.

  ‘Psst,’ she hissed across to Delphi, ‘why don’t you join them?’

  Her diminutive legs entwined, clapping the girls along, she mimed her head lolling and dropping to the side. ‘I can’t,’ she mouthed back. It was what Natalie had expected, but it had been worth trying.

  The podium was a little small and the ladies were now clashing. Hatty accidentally ran into Laura, and Delia caught one of the cafeteria girls on the back of the head with her wafted hand. The record came to an abrupt end and they all stood to attention. There was some laughter but it was muffled by the applause. She gestured for them to line up and then she stood in front of them and pointed to her head and her toes. Since Delphi had stopped turning up for the classes she had added some drills to the frills and the girls now followed her example, taking a few steps, stretching up to the sky, touching their toes and then a few more dance steps.

  ‘It’s all those eyes on me.’ Edith’s own eyes seemed to be trying to take in every face in the crowd. ‘It’s too much; they’re all staring…’ She had turned a sour shade of pale. Her eyelids fluttered like seagull wings.

  ‘A few jumps to finish. Skip. Skip. Skip. And jump…’ Edith swooned and staggered, two steps one way, one the other. Her sisters frozen to the spot with their hands to their mouths. Natalie stepped up on to the stage as she lost her balance. Barnie stepped in to catch her in her arms and the crowd obediently applauded.

  ‘Take a bow, ladies.’ Jack appeared and they carried Edith off to the cafeteria for some ice and air.

  ‘I am too old, and too shy,’ she muttered as she was carried away.

  ‘And they say that physical exercise does you good.’ Arthur paused at the microphone to enjoy the laughter. ‘Thank you to Natalie Flacker and our own Lido girls for keeping us thoroughly entertained. But now let’s get down to the main event… They’ve kicked them high. Now let’s see them on parade…’

  The ten girls, Toots first, strode around the perimeter of the pool. Heels clicking, hands on hips, they waved to their friends and family in the crowds, tossed back their curls and smiled spontaneously with open mouths.

  Very quietly, the crowd discussed their opinions. The bathing belles came back the other way now. Toots was showboating, kicking her legs out in front of her. Stepping out of the line to wiggle her bottom at the spectators.

  The judging didn’t take long. The judges had scored Toots in first position and no one else came close. Arthur dropped the lilac satin sash, Bathing Belle 1935, stamped across the front and back, over Toots’s head. Her hand resting on her dropped hip, tilting her head to one side while Jack put an arm around her to pose for the photographer. She winked at Jack as the camera flash popped. She was a long-legged step closer to her modelling contract.

  But the real stars had been her girls, Natalie had been so proud of them. She left everyone to fuss over Toots and went to check on Edith.

  *

  ‘I could start out by teaching you to swim on dry land, until you’re ready to go in over your knees.’

  ‘How does that work then?’

  Natalie pulled up two chairs and set them at either end of the office. She lay across the front, resting her abdomen on the chair. First she showed him the six-beat crawl: major, minor, minor, major, minor, minor. He looked perplexed.

  She tried breaststroke. Her floating arms and legs kicked and pulled. She exaggerated her breath so that he would hear its rhythm.

  ‘Woooh, haaah, woooh, haaah.’ George lay across his seat, his scrawny arms pulled too wide, his legs parted. ‘It’s easy-peasy when you do it like this.’

  *

  In the office that evening, Sid left the takings for her to tot up while the men socialised out front. The Lido had been close to capacity and yet they’d made about the same amount as a good Saturday. She’d checked with the ledger from last summer and that bathing belles contest had brought in nearly twice as much.

  Jack watched her as she crooked her leg to refasten her bare feet in her sandals. Once she knew she was staying on in St Darlstone, she’d invested her savings in some new clothes for the rest of the summer: a couple of lighter-weight skirts and dresses that she’d run up on her landlady’s sewing machine, open-toed sandals and a few other extravagances on a trip to Plummers’ department store.

  ‘Do you want to come to my flat tonight?’ he asked.

  ‘How about taking me dancing instead?’ she answered.

  ‘You can’t blame a man for trying.’ He winked. ‘Have you totted up the takings?’

  ‘Nearly.’ She took her time over the second buckle.

  ‘Arthur has been on my back again and I need to give him some good news.’

  Sid opened the door and hooked his arm around to fetch his jacket.

  ‘Have all of the tills cashed up, Sid?’ she asked.

  ‘I left the turnstiles’ cash on the desk. Betsy said that was it. Hatty’s still cashing up for the bar and cafeteria. Why? Is there a problem?’

  Sid slid into his jacket, the hand from his good arm searching inside his left pocket and then the right before locating what he was looking for inside his suit jacket.

  ‘The takings seem low,’ Natalie confessed as if it was her fault. ‘We had the numbers today and yet we’ve taken less than last year.’

  Sid shrugged. ‘Strange. How’s that happened?’

  ‘And there was I just winning Arthur over.’ Jack flung himself into the chair and tilted back his head to stare at the ceiling. ‘We’re going to have to cut some corners to bring our costs down if this continues.’

  Sid sat on the edge of the desk, his back turned to Natalie, cutting her out of the conversation. Jack leant around him and asked her for the ledger. He ran his fingers down the expenses column.

  ‘The staff costs are high. We’ll have to let some of the lifeguards go.’

  ‘The last thing we should do is put people out of a job,’ she said over Sid’s shoulder.

  ‘True, true.’ Jack reached up to the porthole’s windowsill, pulled down his tin and took out a thin-papered cigarette he’d rolled earlier, the curly tobacco peeping through.

  ‘You won’t be able to keep that ledger book a secret from Arthur for long,’ she said, looking into Sid’s brown eyes for a few seconds. He knows something, but what? He avoided her gaze. Then he frowned and jabbed his hand into his inside pocket again and rested it there. Surely he hadn’t stolen some of the money from today, not Sid.

  ‘Sid,’ she asked, with no thought for how she might phrase her accusation, but they were all saved from a nasty confrontation by Delphi. He jumped up to greet her and she opene
d the door as if she were his jailer come to set him free. His facial expression changed completely as the crease lines fell away.

  ‘You’re not joining us for Frills and Drills tonight?’ she asked, holding her breath while she waited for Delphi to reply.

  ‘I’m taking a rest. We prefer the quiet life, don’t we, Sid?’

  ‘Oh, well, never mind.’ She tried to hide her disappointment. ‘The girls will miss you,’ she said. I will miss you too. I do miss you. Before she could ask Delphi what she’d thought of the girls’ display, Sid had hooked her by the arm, and with a fleeting shifty glance at Natalie, he slipped on his hat and they were gone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Pike forwards, Dutchman and full twist

  This three-in-one dive is not for the novice. It begins with the diver reaching for her toes mid-air and ends with a straight forward-facing entry.

  ‘That’s it, George, wonderful.’

  ‘Please, please don’t let go of my hand. It’s so cold, isn’t it? Brrr. It’s freezing.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it, once you’re in over your ankles. Come on then. That’s it. Don’t be afraid. George?’

  ‘I’m stopping here. Case I get splashed in the face.’

  ‘Very well, kick it about with your feet, feel it run through your toes. You can splash me if you like.’

  ‘Actually, I’d like that ice cream now, please.’

  *

  Sun Ray House was a wedding cake of a building, its many white tiers sandwiched between two pebble-dashed town houses, with Natalie’s lodgings on the first floor.

  Mrs Curtis, her landlady, lived on the ground floor. The ground floor also contained the only kitchen in the house, a small communal lounge and a bathroom. A narrow staircase ran up the middle, which meant Natalie had to descend the stairs for every call of nature, and as the electric wiring wasn’t that reliable, she often made the journey in the dark. The windows were adorned with frilly lace curtains, but the rooms that Mrs Curtis rented out could be best described as bare.

  Natalie was a long-established one-room woman. She was used to living in accommodation that wasn’t really her own and was adept at making herself at home with someone else’s furnishings and fittings. What she found hard at Sun Ray House was the lack of privacy. Not that Mrs Curtis pried, but living in such close quarters you got to know things about each other while pretending you didn’t.

  It had been the same at the college, but then her short stay at the hotel had given her a taste of a more independent life and she’d rather liked it.

  She was just back from the beach with Jack for a quick change of bathing costume before her next lesson with George. He was going to hold the bar and kick tonight.

  There was a gentle knock at her bedroom door. She was surprised she hadn’t heard Mrs Curtis’s footsteps on the staircase, although she rarely did. She seemed to move about the house without a sound. Natalie opened the door wide to find her standing on the threadbare hallway carpet.

  ‘Hello, my dear.’ Despite being old enough to be Natalie’s grandmother, she was always on duty. As usual her pinny was fastened around her waist. Natalie thought she probably slept in it too.

  ‘You’ve brightened the place up!’ Mrs Curtis looked over her shoulder.

  Getting into her new role – that was how she’d decided to look at it: preparing for the new domesticated woman she might need to become if her romance with Jack continued. Mrs Curtis had been kind enough to give her a few cookery lessons and had clearly fought hard to hold her tongue at Natalie’s lack of talent. She’d tried to practise home-making by brightening up her room with some bric-a-brac from the market – a pretty amber vase, a framed floral embroidery and a carriage clock, rather like the one that she’d left behind on her mantelpiece at the college.

  ‘I came to tell you that a young man is waiting for you in the lounge.’

  She always announced Jack’s arrival in the same way, keeping a distance, never suggesting any familiarity, although her darting eyes suggested something else altogether.

  ‘Your hair’s all wet, dear.’ Mrs Curtis narrowed her eyes.

  ‘I took a dip in the sea.’

  ‘Did you now? Not on your own, I hope? You young girls, wild you are, wild as pixies.’ She giggled. ‘You’ll both be wanting a cup of tea then.’ And before Natalie could say no, or point out that she was far from being a young girl, the old lady was shuffling her way across the landing towards the stairs, away on her mission to bring Natalie the gift of warmth in a teacup.

  She dumped her wet bathers to soak in the basin and felt Catkin, Mrs Curtis’s cat, winding its way in and out between her shins. He was always darting into her room and then complained about it all day because he hated to be trapped inside.

  Pulling her curtains shut against the house opposite and in the muted light, she lifted her chiffon blouse straight over her head and dumped it on her bed. There wasn’t much to choose from in her wardrobe. Not for a muggy evening like this.

  ‘I’ve hardly worn you,’ she whispered to the powder-blue silk trouser suit. It was a bit much for taking a swimming lesson, but she wanted George to go in without her and soon it would be rolled up and buried at the back of a drawer where she might find it in five years’ time and regret not wearing it when she’d had the chance.

  She lifted the hanger out of the wardrobe. Stepping out of her skirt, she threaded her legs through and pulled up the wide-legged trousers, the slimming waistband sticking over her hips, and then she slipped her arms into the floaty half-sleeves and fastened the buttons of the low V top. It’s not just Betsy who’s lost weight this summer.

  She admired herself in front of the full-length mirror fastened to the inside of the wardrobe door, clasping her hands. And then she turned sideways and looked at herself over her shoulder. The silk, so soft against her skin. Not for the first time, she thought of her physical yearnings as air bubbles that had worked their way loose and risen to the surface. Now they were free, they were impossible to catch and lock away again.

  Shooing Catkin out of the room, she followed him downstairs where the air was damp and scented with boiled cabbage and the heavier meaty smell of Mrs Curtis’s evening meal. When she saw Jack in the lounge, his face visibly brightened into that big silly grin he did around her and she was glad she couldn’t see her own face do the same thing.

  Catkin had beaten her to it. He always took the comfiest armchair and with his contented blink gave her an unequivocal look. He wouldn’t be moving for anyone.

  Jack’s eyes travelled from her broad shoulders, down her long legs and back up again. He sat with his arms along the back of the sofa and twitched the free foot of his crossed leg. He held her gaze and smiled at her. She simply smiled back. Tried to hold his gaze, but she knew just what was on his mind, and it was both unnerving and exciting at the same time.

  The same feeble knock came at the door again. In came Mrs Curtis with a doily-lined tray and a plate of two rich-tea biscuits. The tea would be weak, but she’d drink it anyway to keep her landlady happy.

  ‘Oh you’ve got changed.’ Mrs Curtis edged past Natalie and slid the tray on to the small, leafed table against the wall. ‘You do scrub up well, young lady. Such a trim figure, doesn’t she?’

  Natalie didn’t look to see Jack’s reaction. He agreed with Mrs Curtis but Natalie saw out of the corner of her eye that he was looking at her, and she knew she mustn’t look at him in case he made her laugh. The last thing she wanted was to upset Mrs Curtis; it had been hard to find a housekeeper who would take a single woman. To have found one as sweet as Mrs Curtis was an extra helping of good fortune.

  ‘Mrs Curtis is going to come and swim with us, aren’t you?’

  ‘Well, I might, I might. I wasn’t a half-bad diver in my day. But we’ll see. I’m off to see if they need me at the Ritzy to clear up after those young ’uns.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Enjoy your tea and don’t forget to keep your feet warm. You need to take better care of yourselves.’
She waved goodbye, and a few moments later they heard heels on the chequered-tiled floor and the front door slam shut. The shell of the house was so still the falling dust in front of the window became centre stage. Catkin lowered his chin to his paws and slid his eyes shut.

  They remained where they were, neither of them saying anything. Then he patted the cushion next to him and she obliged. He pulled her closer as she sat down.

  ‘I’ve a lesson with young George this evening,’ she reprimanded. He held her hands and then without warning kissed her.

  ‘You’re spending more time with that toe-rag than you are with me.’

  He held her chin in his hand and he kissed her again. She tasted the tobacco. He kissed her harder this time, with more urgency, and when his hands wandered, the release she felt at being touched and those air bubbles of desire she’d kept locked up began to escape and float away from her.

  ‘I haven’t seen your room yet.’ His hot breath tickled her ear.

  ‘Oh, Jack. We can’t go up there.’

  He set the teacup down on the table and stood in front of her. Her eyes strayed down, admiring his wide shoulders and wondering what his chest would feel like. She shared his frustration, suspected she’d borne it for longer than he, but not only were they not married, Mrs Curtis would turn her out if she found out she’d let him in her room.

  ‘Don’t use George as an excuse again. I ought to give that young boy a swimming lesson with a couple of bricks around his ankles.’

  ‘Jack!’

  ‘Well what about me? Your sweetheart? I’ve got the diving contest coming up. My whole life has been building up to this. I need your support.’

  ‘This has no bearing on your contest,’ she pointed in the direction of the stairs. ‘Dive like you always do and you’ll make the Olympic team.’

  ‘Are you coming?’ he persisted, and then when she refused him again he let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘You’re such an old-fashioned girl.’

  She stayed on the sofa listening to his two-at-a-time footsteps up the stairs and then silence. She watched Catkin snooze while she waited for him to realise that she wouldn’t be following him and to hear him thud back down again. She checked her watch. George would be at the pool by now. It was still silent.