Dancing in the Dark

by Maureen Lee

  She paused outside one. She could see nothing, because the windows had been painted black, and there was a curtain over the door, but inside a girl with a voice like an angel was singing, “Yours Till the Stars Lose Their Glory”, as it had never been sung before.

  Flo stared into the black window, seeing Tommy O’Mara’s reckless, impudent face gazing back at her, his cap perched on the back of his brown curly hair. Their eyes met and her insides glowed hot. She wanted him, oh, how she wanted him! “Nobody understood how-much we loved each other,” she whispered.

  “D’you fancy a drink, luv?”

  She turned, startled. A young soldier was standing beside her, twisting his cap nervously in his hands. Lord, he was no more than eighteen, and there was an expression on his fresh, childish face that reflected exactly how she felt herself: a look of aching, gut-wrenching loneliness.

  She’d like to bet he’d never tried to pick up a girl before, that this was his first time away from home, the first New Year’s Eve he hadn’t spent within the bosom of his family, and that he was desperate for company. She also saw fear in his eyes. Perhaps he was going overseas shortly and was afraid of being killed. Or perhaps he was just afraid she’d turn him down.

  The girl inside the pub stopped singing, everyone thumped the tables, burst into enthusiastic applause, and Flo was hit with an idea that took her breath away. She knew exactly what she could do as her contribution towards the war.

  “What a nice idea, luv!” she cried gaily. “I’d love a drink. Shall we go in here?”

  Millie

  “Are you the Tom who gave her the lamp?” I’d always imagined Flo’s friend being as old as Flo herself.

  “ ‘Sright. I got it her in Austria.’

  I sat in the armchair, resentful that Tom O’Mara was occupying my favourite spot on the settee, his feet back on the table. “What were you doing in Austria?”

  “Skiing,” he said abruptly.

  He looked more the type to prefer a Spanish resort full of bars and fish-and-chip shops, I thought. I said, “I’ve always wanted to ski.”

  “I didn’t know Flo had these.” He ignored my observation and picked up the newspaper cuttings. His fingers were long and slender and I imagined . . . Oh, God! I did my best to hide another shiver. “That’s how me grandad died,” he said, “On the Thetis.”

  “Do you know much about it?” I asked eagerly. “I keep meaning to get a book from the library.”

  The gran used to pin me ear back about the Thetis. She had a book. It’s at home. You can have it, if you like. I’ll send it round sometime.”

  “Thanks,” I said. A pulse in my neck was beating crazily, and I covered it with my hand, worried he’d notice. What on earth was happening to me? Usually, I wouldn’t give a man like Tom O’Mara the time of day. I glanced at him surreptitiously and saw that he was staring at the lamp, oblivious of me. I almost felt a nuisance for having interrupted his quiet sojourn in the flat. There was little sign that a party was going on upstairs, just a muffled thumping as people danced, and music that sounded as if it came from some distance away. “How come you knew, Flo?” I asked.

  “She was a friend of me dad’s. I knew her all me life.”

  “Would it be possible to meet your father? I’d love to talk to him about Flo.”

  “ “Would it be possible to meet your father?” “ he repeated after me, in such a false, exaggerated impersonation of my accent that I felt my face redden with anger and hurt. “Christ, girl, you don’t half talk posh, like you’ve got a plum in your gob or something. And you can’t talk to me dad about anything. He died fourteen years ago.”

  “Is there any need to be so rude?” I spluttered.

  Our eyes met briefly. Despite my anger, I searched for a sign that he didn’t despise me as much as he pretended, but there was none. He turned away contemptuously.

  “People like you make me sick. You were born in Liverpool, yet you talk like the fucking Queen. I think it’s called ‘denying your roots’.”

  “A day never goes by when I don’t remember my roots,” I said shortly. “And there are people around who could have a great deal of fun with the way you speak.” I stared at him coolly, though cool was the opposite of what I felt. “I came down for some peace and quiet, not to be insulted. I’d be obliged if you’d go.”

  Before he could reply, there was a knock on the window and James called, “Are you there, Millie?” He must have been looking for me, and someone, Charmian or Herbie, had suggested where I might be.

  “Coming!” I stood, aware that Tom O’Mara’s eyes had flickered over my body, and felt exultant. My ego demanded that he found me as attractive as I found him, not that it mattered. He was an uncouth lout. Anyway, there was no likelihood of us meeting again. He could keep his book on the Thetis, I’d get one for myself. In my iciest voice, I said, “I’ve got to go. Kindly put the key on the mantelpiece when you leave. Goodnight.”

  For James’s sake, I decided reluctantly to give Flo’s flat a miss the next afternoon. I couldn’t bring myself to ask him to leave after refusing to see him all the previous week. Bel and Charmian would be expecting me, I thought wistfully, though I really should get down to clearing things out—and I still hadn’t found out about the rent. I was anxious to speak to the landlord and pay another month before the flat was let to someone else, if that hadn’t happened already. One of these days I might turn up and find the place stripped bare. The rent book was bound to be among Flo’s papers, but I hadn’t even discovered where her papers were kept.

  “This is nice.’James sighed blissfully as we lay in bed in each other’s arms after making love for the third time.

  “An unexpected treat. I thought I’d be sent on my way ages ago.” It was almost three o’clock.

  “Mmm.” I was too exhausted to reply. I felt guilty and ashamed. James wouldn’t feel quite so happy if he knew that every time I closed my eyes he turned into Tom O’Mara.

  He nuzzled my breasts. “This is heaven,” he breathed.

  “Oh, darling, if only you knew how much I love you.”

  I stroked his head and said dutifully, “I think I do.”

  “But you never tell me you love me back!” he said sulkily. He pulled away and threw himself on to the pillow.

  “James, please,” I groaned, “I’m not in the mood for this.”

  “You’re never in the mood.”

  I leaped out of bed and grabbed my dressing gown. “I wish to God you’d give me some space,” I snapped. “Why do you keep nagging me to say things I don’t want to say, to feel things I don’t feel?”

  “Will you ever say them? Will you ever feel them?” He stared at me forlornly.

  I stormed out of the room, “I can’t stand any more. I’m going to have a shower and I’m locking the door. I expect you to be gone when I come out.”

  When I emerged from the bathroom fifteen minutes later there was no sign of a contrite James begging forgiveness. No doubt he would telephone or come back later, in which case he wouldn’t find me in. I got dressed quickly in jeans and an old sweatshirt and raced down to the car. It was already growing dark and I couldn’t wait to be in Flo’s flat where I knew I would find the tranquillity I craved.

  It wasn’t to be, but I didn’t mind. I was unlocking the front door when Bel Eddison appeared in her leopardskin jacket. “I thought I heard you. I’ve been helping Charmian clear up after the party. We were expecting you hours ago.”

  “I was delayed. Come and have some sherry. Why weren’t you at the party? I looked everywhere for you.”

  “I had another engagement.” She smirked. “I wouldn’t say no to a glass of sherry, but me and Charmian have been finishing off the bottles left over from last night. I’m not exactly steady on me legs.” She staggered into the basement and made herself comfortable on the settee.

  “Charmian can’t come. Jay’s going back to university in the morning and she’s still sorting out his washing.”

  I turned
on the lamp and poured us both a drink. I noticed Tom O’Mara’s key on the mantelpiece. As the lamp began slowly to revolve, I said, “I met the man who gave her that last night.”

  “Did you now.” Bel hiccuped.

  “He told me how his grandad died, and you said Flo was in love with someone who was lost on the Thetis. I wondered if they were one and the same person.”

  “I said no such thing, luv,” Bel remarked huffily. “I said, ‘Draw your own conclusions,’ if I remember right.”

  “Well, I’ve drawn them, and that’s the conclusion I’ve reached.” I felt that I’d got one up on Bel for a change.

  To my consternation, the old woman’s face seemed to shrivel, her jaw sagged, and she whispered hoarsely, “Flo said, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do if Tommy’s dead. Me life’s over. I’ll never love another man the way I loved him.” The thing is, he was a right scally, Tommy O’Mara, not fit to lick Flo’s boots. It sticks in me craw to think she wasted her life on a chap like him.”

  I hoped Bel wouldn’t be angry, but I had to ask, “Last night, Tom talked about his gran. Does that mean this Tommy was married when . . . ?”

  Bel nodded vigorously. “She was the last girl in the world to go out with a married man, but he spun her a tale. He was such a charmer. He told me he was single.”

  “You mean, you went out with him, too?” I gasped.

  “Yeh.” Bel grimaced. “I never let on to Flo, it would have killed her, but I’d been out with him twice just before the Thetis went down. Some men aren’t happy unless they’ve got a string of women hankering after them. Tom O’Mara’s another one like that. He was a nice lad once, but he’s grown up without his grandad’s charm. A woman would be mad to have anything to do with him.”

  “I agree about the lack of charm. I found him very rude.” I would have liked to know more about Tom O’Mara, but Bel might have thought I was interested when I definitely wasn’t. Well, I told myself I wasn’t.

  “Would you like some tea or coffee to sober you up?” I asked instead.

  “A cup of coffee would be nice, but only if it’s the instant stuff. I can’t stand them percolator things. Flo’s got one somewhere.”

  For the next few hours we chatted amiably. I told her about my job and my problems with James, and she told me about her three husbands, describing the second, Ivor, in hilarious detail. Before she left, I asked where Flo had kept her papers.

  “In that pull-down section of the sideboard, the old one. Flo called it her bureau. You’ll have your work cut out sorting through that lot. I think she kept every single letter she ever got.”

  Bel was right. When I opened the bureau I found hundreds, possibly thousands, of pieces of paper and letters still in their envelopes, crammed in every pigeonhole and shelf. I felt tempted to close it again and snuggle on the sofa with sherry and a book, but I’d been irresponsible for far too long. I sighed and pulled out a thick wad of gas bills addressed to Miss Florence Clancy, which, to my astonishment, went back as far as 1941, when the quarterly bill was two and sevenpence.

  I wondered what the flat had looked like then—and wasted ages envisaging a young Flo, living alone and pining after Tommy O’Mara. Perhaps that’s what the row with Gran had been about, Flo going out with a married man. Gran was incredibly straitlaced, though it didn’t seem serious enough to make them lifelong enemies.

  The cardboard boxes I’d brought were in the bathroom so I fetched one and threw in the bills. Then I almost took them out again. Flo had kept them for more than half a century and it seemed a shame to chuck them away. I pulled myself together, and more than fifty years of electricity bills quickly joined them. I decided I deserved a break, made coffee and helped myself to a packet of Nice biscuits. On my way to the settee, I jumped when something clattered through the letterbox.

  It was a book: The Admiralty Regrets. I opened the door, but whoever had delivered it had disappeared.

  Fiona was leaning against the railings, smoking. “Hi,” I said awkwardly.

  She glared at me malevolently through the railings.

  “Sod off,” she snarled.

  Shaken, I closed the door, and put the book aside to read later. I returned to the bureau with my coffee and continued to throw out old papers. One thick wedge of receipts was intriguing. From a hotel in the Isle of Man, they were made out to a Mr and Mrs Hoffmansthal, who had stayed there for the weekend almost every month from 1949 until 1975. I decided to ask Bel about them, then changed my mind. Bel had mentioned that Flo went on retreat to a convent in Wales once a month. Perhaps Flo had kept a few secrets from her old friend and I certainly wasn’t about to reveal them after all this time. I threw away the receipts with a sigh. How I’d love to know what lay behind them, and especially the identity of Mr Hoffmansthal.

  The contents of the bureau were considerably diminished by the time the unimportant papers had been discarded. All that remained were letters, which I had no intention of throwing away until I’d read every one.

  Some looked official, big fat brown envelopes, the address typed, but most were handwritten. I tugged out a wad of letters held together with an elastic band. The top one bore a foreign stamp. It had been posted in 1942.

  It dawned on me that I hadn’t found the rent book that had prompted my search, or a pension book. Flo might have had them in her handbag, which, like Gran, she had kept hidden. After a fruitless search through all the cupboards, I found what I was looking for under the bed, where dust was already beginning to collect.

  I took the black leather bag into the living room and emptied the contents on to the coffee table. A tapestry purse fell out, very worn and bulging with coins, followed by a set of keys on a Legs of Man keyring, a wallet, shop receipts, bus tickets, cheque book, metal compact, lipstick, comb . . . I removed a silver hair from the comb and ran it between my fingers. It was the most intimate thing belonging to Flo I’d ever touched, actually part of her. The room was very still, and I almost felt as if she was in the room with me. Yet I wasn’t scared.

  Even when I opened the compact to compare the hair with mine in the mirror, half expecting to see Flo’s face instead of my own, I didn’t feel frightened, more a comfortable sensation of being watched by someone who cared about me. I knew I was being silly because Flo and I had only set eyes on each other once, and then briefly.

  “One day my hair will turn that colour,” I murmured, and wondered where I would be and who I would be with, should I live to be as old as Flo. For the first time in my life, I thought it would be nice to have children, so that a strange woman I hardly knew wouldn’t sort through my possessions when I died.

  I came back to earth, told myself to be sensible. The cheque book meant that, like Gran since she’d been robbed, Flo’s pension had probably been paid straight into the bank. I flicked through the stubs to see if cheques had been made out for rent, but most appeared to be for cash, which was no help. I would have asked Charmian for the landlord’s address, but glancing at my watch, I saw it was past midnight.

  Good! It was a perfect excuse to sleep in Flo’s comfortable bed again.

  One by one, I returned the things to the bag, glancing briefly in the wallet, which held only a bus pass, a cheque guarantee card, four five-pound notes, and a card listing a series of dental appointments two years ago. I was putting the bag away in the bureau when there was a knock on the door.

  James! He’d been to my flat, waited, and when I didn’t arrive he had guessed where I would be. I wouldn’t let him in. If I did, he’d never keep away and this was the only place where no one could reach me. It was one of the reasons why I always seemed to forget to bring my mobile phone. I fumed at the idea of him invading what I’d come to regard as my sanctuary.

  “Who is it?” I shouted.

  “Tom O’Mara.”

  I stood, transfixed, in the middle of the room, my stomach churning. I knew I should tell him what I’d intended to tell James, to go away, but common sense seemed to have deserted me, al
ong with any willpower I might have had. Before I knew what I was doing, I’d opened the door.

  Oh, Lord! I’d thought this only happened in books—turning weak at the knees at the sight of a man. The jacket of his black suit was hanging open, and the white collarless shirt, buttoned to the neck, gave him a priest-like air. Neither of us spoke as he followed me inside, with that sensually smooth walk I’d noticed the night before, bringing with him an atmosphere charged with electricity. I patted my hair nervously, aware that my hand was shaking. He was carrying a plastic bag that smelt of food. My mouth watered and I realised I was starving.

  He held it out. “Chinese, from the takeaway round the corner. Joe said there was someone in when he came with the book so I thought I’d see if you were still here on me way home.”

  “What’s this in aid of?” I gulped.

  “Peace-offering,” he said abruptly. “Flo would have slagged me off for behaving the way I did last night. No one can help the way they speak, you and me included.”

  “That’s charitable of you, I must say.” I’d worked hard to get rid of my accent, and felt annoyed that Tom O’Mara seemed to regard the lack of one as an affliction.

  “Shall we forget about last night and start again?” He bagged my favourite spot on the settee and began to unpack the cartons of food. “You’re Millie, I’m Tom, and we’re about to have some nice Chinese nosh—I don’t know if you want to use these plastic forks, Flo used to fetch proper ones, and she’d warm plates up in the microwave. She didn’t like eating out of boxes.”

  I hurried to do as I was told, sensing that he was accustomed to giving orders, when he shouted, “Fetch a corkscrew and some glasses while you’re at it. I’ve got wine.”

  “It’s red,” he said, when I obediently brought everything in. “I’m an ignorant bugger and I don’t know if that’s what you have with this sort of food.”

  “Neither do I.’James always knew what sort of wine to order but I’d never taken much notice.