by Annie Groves
Fran leaned out as far as she could from the side of the boat taking them along the Nile, through the Valley of the Kings. It had been Marcus who had suggested the three-day trip, and Fran had accepted with a delight that wasn’t entirely due to her desire to see the archaeological artefacts left behind by the Ancient Egyptians.
‘Oh, I can’t think of anything I’ve ever seen to match this, can you?’ she asked Marcus excitedly.
As he moved closer to her, slipping his arm round her waist, his affirmative and softly emphatic ‘Never’ had her turning her head, laughter in her eyes at odds with the mock disapproving look she gave him as she shook her head and told him, ‘I meant this,’ and waved her hand in the direction of the shore.
‘It is magnificent,’ he agreed, ‘but I would rather look at you.’
‘Be careful,’ Fran warned him softly, her own focus on the shore fading as she looked into his eyes. ‘If you keep on saying such delicious things to me I could start to take you seriously.’
‘I want you to take me seriously, Fran, because I am serious about the way I feel about you.’
He had moved closer to her now, fitting her body alongside his own, his action and its intimacy reminding her of how well they had fitted together last night in her bed.
Even now Fran couldn’t quite believe how quickly and easily she had broken all the promises to herself she had vowed to keep, promises like never ever falling in love again, like never ever again risking the betrayal and then the disgrace she had suffered as a young girl.
But this was wartime and she was living in a different world from the one she had grown up in. Everyone said so, all those men and pretty girls who flocked to Shepheard’s Hotel each night to escape from the tensions of war and the fear of death. She was a woman now, not a girl, and this time with Marcus there would be no risk of the conception of an unwanted child; both of them were determined to make sure of that.
It had felt so strange at first, discussing the raw brutal facts of sexual intimacy before they had so much as touched one another, but Fran had known from the moment Marcus had suggested this trip and spoken of the elegance of the river cruiser’s staterooms that he wasn’t planning on them sleeping in separate rooms and separate beds, and by that time she had been as fiercely hungry for him as he had been for her.
Both of them had admitted that the intensity of their mutual desire had caught them off guard. It had whirled up out of nowhere like a desert storm, obliterating everything that stood in its path. In fact it had been as though fate had decreed that they should have this time together since it had been a real live desert storm that had put on hold the troupe’s planned trip out to one of the most outlying desert camps, thus giving them an unexpected gift of over a week together. A week in which they had socialised separately and discreetly, but always acutely aware of one another, always managing somehow to be together for a few short precious minutes. And now they had this: three days away from the rest of the troupe.
Last night their ‘boy’ had served them dinner in their stateroom, and Marcus had fed her soft balls of spiced rice and lamb with his fingers, and they had drunk the worst champagne in the world whilst bubbles of giddy delight had fizzed through Fran’s body.
They had made love not once but several times, and Marcus’s skill and tenderness had opened Fran’s eyes to the reality of what true sexual desire and intimacy could be. She had never been happier, and at the same time never more sharply aware of how rare and fragile true happiness actually was.
Con looked up apprehensively as the door to his ‘office’ banged open, only relaxing enough to say grimly, ‘Shut that ruddy door, will you?’ when he saw that his visitor was only his nephew, Kieran.
‘Strewth, finding you is like getting hold of the invisible man,’ Kieran complained as he dropped down into a chair, putting his feet on Con’s desk and reaching into his pockets for his cigarettes. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I’ll tell you what’s going on,’ Con answered dramatically. ‘What’s going is that I’ve had the ruddy heavies from the debt collector round, that’s what.’
‘Well, pay him off then. Your old woman’s swimming in money – everyone knows that.’
Con glowered at his nephew. Kieran was wearing what looked like a new suit, grey with a white stripe – not exactly a spiv’s suit, but pretty close to it, like the black trilby that he had perched on the back on his head instead of having removed it respectfully.
Getting a sight too big for his boots, his nephew was, Con decided, acting as though he was cock of the walk all of a sudden. Con had seen the girls eyeing up Kieran and that hadn’t pleased him one little bit.
It was all right for Kieran. He hadn’t got all the worries hanging round his neck that Con had – nor the debts.
‘Aye, well, everyone might know it but what I know at the moment is that she’s being as tight as the proverbial duck’s arse with it,’ Con told Kieran angrily. ‘It’s ever since she took in that stupid kid. Treats him like a little prince, she does, wi’ nothing too good for him, whilst me, her husband, she treats like muck on her shoe.’
Kieran grinned and shook his head. ‘I allus thought that you’d got her under your thumb?’
‘So I had until this so-and-so kid came along. Wimmin. If you’ll take my advice you’ll do yourself a favour and keep well away from them. They’re nothing but trouble.’
‘Aye, well, you’d certainly know about trouble and wimmin,’ Kieran agreed. ‘It’s bin all over the theatre about you and that nifty little high-kicker that’s just given you the heave-ho.’
Con glowered at his nephew. He had enough to worry about without being reminded of the additional blow to his ego caused by the fact that his latest girl had gone and found herself someone else.
‘Never mind about that. I’ve managed to get the old man to call off his heavies by promising that we’ll cut him in to this dance contest thing, so instead of wasting your time hanging around here I want you out and about using them good looks of yours to get the right kind of girls clamouring to enter the competition. We’ve got them twins lined up, of course. They’ve bin round here a few times doing that dance of theirs. It’s good too – not that I’m telling them that – and I reckon what’s more that it would be a good thing if they was to win.’
‘They won’t like it in Blackpool if you go ahead with a competition. Like I told you, they gave me a right old mouthful and as good as said that there’d be trouble if we tried butting into their market. Seemingly they don’t bother charging any dancers to enter; they just use the competitions to get them into the dance halls.’
‘Well, in that case they haven’t got a leg to stand on, have they, and the pitch is all ours. Hey, get that?’ Con joked, his good humour returning. ‘Haven’t got a leg to stand on and we’re talking about dancing? Proper lame duck partners they’d have been.’ He laughed even more heartily.
‘Get yourself over to Lewis’s, Kieran, and get sweet-talking them girls. Tell ’em that we’ll be running the first heats the first Saturday in May – no point in doing it over Easter since we’ll be busy here then. We won’t hold them here neither. We’ll ask around and find a bit of an empty warehouse we can borrow for next to nowt, we’ll charge them two and sixpence on the door to get in, and another bob to dance. Anyone wot brings in a party of ten or more gets themselves in free. We’ll use a gramophone, not a band – cheaper. I’ll sort out getting some bills done; you can get your kid to take them round all the schools. We’ll make them look glamorous; put a photograph of that Vivien Leigh or someone on it. I reckon we can easily count on having two thousand there.’
‘Two thousand?’ Kieran queried.
‘Why not? The Grafton holds that many. It’s full every night and they don’t offer any prizes. Oh, and pass the word to as many of your mates as you like that there’s going to be any number of girls there and that they can come and watch them for two and sixpence – tell ’em that they’ll have to bring their own drink, mind
. Here, give us a fag, will you, Kieran?’
Once his nephew had obliged Con slumped down into his own chair and reached for a grubby bit of paper and the stub of a pencil, laboriously working out the profit he could expect to make if he filled an empty warehouse with two thousand eager dance competitors, and a couple of thousand young men, just as eager to watch them.
The figures spoke for themselves.
‘Get yourself off to Lewis’s, and remember, Kieran, they’ll be a big attraction, them being spitting images of one another. The more the pair of them fall out over which of them is going to win, the more folk we’re going to get coming to watch them.’
‘That’s all very well but what if they don’t make it through the first heat?’
‘I thought you reckoned to be a bit of a knowing ’un?’ Con stopped his nephew scornfully. ‘Of course they’ll ruddy well make it through the first heat, and every ruddy heat after that an’ all, until they get to the last one. I’ll see to that. What you’ve got to see to is that by the time the pair of them get there they’re ready to scratch one another’s eyes out.’
Sasha saw Kieran first, her whole face lighting up with excitement and delight. From the moment they had first seen him the twins had talked together about him, giggling self-consciously as they took an increasing interest in the kissing scenes on screen at the cinema, egging one another on as they whispered about what it would have been like if Kieran had been playing the leading male role. What was not said was that both of them were imagining themselves in the leading lady’s role and thus in Kieran’s arms.
Add to the mix of emerging sexual awareness the excitement and allure of the promised dance contest and the chance to appear on stage in a real production, and it was no wonder that for the twins Kieran and the dance contest had become the perfect antidote for the boredom they were beginning to feel both with the war and the restrictions it placed on them.
At fifteen they might be legally old enough to have left school and gone out to work, but in the eyes of their protective parents they were still too young to indulge in such grown-up pastimes as going out to public dances and socialising with young men.
In vain they both protested that girls they had been at school with were now going out to dances and wearing lipstick and court shoes whilst the twins were only allowed to do boring childish things and then only in a gang, and when their parents knew exactly where they were and who they were with. Jean, normally soft-hearted with her children, was if anything even firmer than Sam when it came to reminding the twins that they were only fifteen.
When Grace had tried to plead the twins’ case, suggesting that perhaps they could be allowed the odd grown-up dance, chaperoned by herself or their brother, Jean had sighed and shaken her head, pointing out to her eldest daughter that the twins attracted trouble like jam attracted wasps and that as yet they had not learned the wisdom of trying not to attract it.
Kieran was not his uncle’s nephew for nothing, and within minutes of his arrival the twins were ignoring the department manager’s grimly warning looks to bask in his attention, their giggles accompanied by delighted squirms of pleasure as he complimented them and promised them that he would soon have some good news for them with regard to the dancing competition.
‘When’s it going to be?’ Lou asked him, mindful of the necessity of making sure that they could compete without arousing any suspicion at home. After much discussion on the subject she and Sasha had reluctantly agreed that there was too much risk of being refused attached to asking permission, and that therefore they would have to keep their intentions a secret.
‘First Saturday in May,’ Kieran answered her promptly. ‘And I’ve got a bit of a job for you as well. My uncle wants posters putting up to make sure that we get plenty of folk going in for it.’
Kieran looked over his shoulder. Normally it would have been beneath his nearly eighteen-year-old dignity to be seen hanging about with what in effect was a pair of schoolgirls, but in this instance he had no option if he didn’t want to get himself in his uncle’s bad books.
‘I’d better scarper,’ he told the twins, ‘otherwise I’ll be getting the pair of you into trouble and we don’t want that, do we?’ He gave them a wink and a look that made them burst out into fresh giggles. Everyone knew that it was very saucy for a boy to talk to a girl about getting her into trouble.
‘And mind you wear something stylish for the competition,’ he told them. ‘Something that shows off them pins a bit. I’ll help you choose your outfits, if you like.’
Another wink and he was gone, leaving the twins to look at one another and then down at their long slim legs.
FIFTEEN
Easter Saturday, April 1941
‘I don’t know how we’re supposed to put a decent meal on the table, what with meat rationing and everything, I really don’t.’
Jean shook her head sympathetically as she listened to the complaints of the woman in front of her in the queue at the butcher’s where Jean was registered for her own family’s rations.
‘Of course, it’s all right if you can afford to buy stuff on the black market,’ the other woman continued.
‘My husband doesn’t approve of buying black market,’ Jean told her firmly. ‘He says there’d be more to go round for all of us if there wasn’t one.’
The weather had started to warm up and, like everyone else, Jean had exchanged her heavy winter coat and her jumpers and woollen skirts for something a bit lighter. She looked down at her own button-through red dress with its white spots, with a small smile. It was one of Sam’s favourites, even though it was all of five years old. She was lucky, Jean admitted, in that she had kept her figure. She might not need a jacket today, but Jean was still properly dressed with a smart little red hat and white gloves. Just because there was a war on and rationing, that was no excuse for the women of the country to let their standards slip, was the message that the Government were giving.
And they had a point, Jean admitted, even if she had had to spend an hour last night darning the thumbs of the twins’ second-best going-to-church white gloves. It fair lifted the spirits to see people dressed in bright summery clothes again.
‘Well, I dare say he’s right, but that won’t stop some folk – them wot’s got the money and wot don’t care about the rest of us.’
Jean would much rather have had someone cheerful to chat with whilst they waited in the long queue, but then, she acknowledged fair-mindedly, she herself was luckier than some. Sam worked hard on his allotment to provide them with salad stuff, veggies and fruit, then there were the hens the allotment holders had clubbed together to buy, and the occasional rabbit that appeared now and again, no questions asked. They’d been lucky where they were, with only a few bombs falling, and none in their street, or on their allotment.
There was nothing like a good roast on a Sunday, though, to get the week off to a sound start, and the meat they were getting now was nothing whatsoever like a good roast.
Normally they’d have been having a nice chicken tomorrow, seeing as it was Easter Sunday, but with both Luke and Grace now living away from home, and neither they nor Katie going to be eating their dinner at home tomorrow, Jean had decided that she wasn’t going to waste a chicken just on herself and Sam and the twins.
Thinking about Katie and Luke being together and starting courting made Jean feel especially happy, and not just because it proved that her son was finally over the heartache he had suffered with Lillian.
Grace might tease her about having a soft spot for Katie, and Sam might caution her against matchmaking, but that didn’t stop Jean getting a real warm glow inside at the thought that Katie could become her daughter-in-law. Jean couldn’t think of a girl she’d be happier to see her Luke married to. But she was also ready to admit that when a man married it was his own happiness he should put first, not that of his mother. Not that it did any harm when a family liked the new person that was joining it. Jean could still remember how much her own mo
ther had liked Sam. Vi, of course, always liked to say that their mother had been as proud as punch when Vi had announced that she was marrying Edwin and thus marrying ‘up’, but Jean knew that their mother had never really taken to Vi’s husband. Not that she would ever say so to her twin, although there had been times when she had been tempted, when Vi had been getting uppity. It was hard now to remember sometimes that they were actually twins, especially when Jean looked at her own pair and saw how close Lou and Sasha were.
They’d been a bit quieter than usual just lately. Jean hoped that it was a sign that they were finally beginning to grow up and get a bit of sense. She and Sam had certainly made it plain enough to them that they wouldn’t entertain any daft ideas about them going on the stage. Dancing at home for their own entertainment was one thing; doing it on some stage was another. Jean didn’t have to remind herself of what had happened to her younger sister to recognise the dangers that lay in wait for naïve young girls with dreams of fame in their hearts.
Not that the twins could ever be described as ‘dreamers’. No, they were far too active and noisy for that. The lads who married that pair were going to have to have the patience of saints and not mind their closeness either. Children; you didn’t realise until they came along how much they would turn your life upside down and how powerful their tug on your heart would be. There still wasn’t a day went by when she didn’t think of that little lost lad of hers and Sam’s, nor little Jack either, even though he hadn’t been her own.
That had been a terrible thing to happen: for him to have been evacuated against Fran’s wishes by their Vi, and then to have been killed. No wonder Fran had turned her back on her home.
‘Oh, Luke, it’s so pretty.’
There in front of them was the lake in the pretty Cheshire village of Ellesmere that Luke had told her about, and on the grass in front of it couples and families were already enjoying the Easter holiday.