They did both have nice smiles. It made me want to smile back. They were older by a couple of years. So confident, so full of life.
Connie suddenly clapped her hands. ‘Listen, have you got anywhere you need to be?’ Before I could answer she carried on. ‘Too bad. Ditch your dull plans and come with us. We’re talking Saturday night with Lindy Hop, jumpin’ jazz and jive alive; hot to trot and heading for Harlem one day, my name in bright lights all over New York – Live Tonight at the Cotton Club – the incredible swing sensation Connie Snow, with Ella Fitzgerald and Josephine Butler!’ As she spoke her hands conjured up a billboard with her name on it, in the air.
‘That is you, Connie Snow?’
‘Swing Sensations is the name of our band. I’m Connie Crackerthorpe really, but you got to get the right name, see? Create a persona. Give people what they want to see.’
‘You are going to New York?’
‘In my dreams, and you don’t get if you don’t try. Ella Fitzgerald is my idol, Josephine Butler too.’
‘My Mama went to see Josephine Butler once, before the war.’
‘You’re kidding? Hey, Val sweetie, that bus goes our way. Wave it down. Come on, you two – run.’
It was like being picked up by a whirlwind and dropped in a dream. Somehow I was carrying Val’s horn case and Connie’s make-up bag and standing at the edge of an abandoned airfield. The sign at the bus stop read: East Summer. Rain still sluiced down. We sprinted between empty barrack blocks and almost onto the runway. It was splotched with weeds and puddles. How many hundreds of planes had taken off and landed here during the war? Now it was empty space.
‘In here,’ said Connie. ‘Before we drown.’
The dance hall was an old aircraft hangar and it was enormous. ‘Over a thousand couples on a summer Saturday night!’ said Connie. ‘Hundreds more in the crush outside. Just you wait …’ She was already snapping fingers and humming. ‘You can dance, can’t you? Everyone can dance.’
Dance? Did silent shuffling across the Trautweins’ hearthrug count? Mama had taught me some steps. Small steps, for fear of knocking over the fire irons. I wouldn’t call it dancing.
‘Hey, Charlie – we made it!’
A tall boy with a halo of frizzy black hair nodded at me. ‘Who’s that?’
‘I’m nobody,’ I replied, but he’d already lost interest. Who could blame him when I stood next to Connie?
The rest of the band was setting up on a makeshift stage at one end of the hangar. At the other end there was a bar made of beer crates. Wooden chairs and stained tables lined the walls. I set Val’s horn on the stage. Time slowed when I saw the piano. Just a well-used upright, stained on the top with round marks from drinks glasses and a few cigarette burns. Unlike the piano in the Trautwein house, there were no doilies or dark green pot plants or portraits of Hitler. Carefully I lifted the lid. There they were. Eighty-eight notes. My fingers tingled as I let just the tips drift along, feeling the smooth ivory of the white keys and the tantalising lines of the black ones.
‘Do you play?’ Connie bounced into view.
I nodded. Then shook my head. Yes. No
‘You’re an odd girl, Brigitta, you know that?’
I knew that.
‘Come backstage and tart yourself up a bit.’
Backstage meant a toilet and a cramped room full of coat hangers and dusty light bulbs. Connie went behind a ratty screen to change.
I squinted at myself in a square of mirror. If I just undid my braids and fluffed them up a bit … How was that? Not me. Why not? Couldn’t I be glamorous too? Blend in, Mama said, well, here blending in meant being bold. And black, like the whole band, but I couldn’t do anything about that.
Quickly I unbuttoned my blouse to put my new bra on. Shoulder straps – that was easy – but how to fasten the hooks without dislocating both my arms? I took the whole bra off. Should I do hooks and eyes at the front and swivel it round? That worked. I jerked the straps up, pushed some wads of toilet paper in – nasty flimsy stuff like tracing paper – and soon had my blouse on again. Buttoned up wrong. More fiddling. I borrowed some of Connie’s blusher. Looked like a tart. Rubbed the blusher off. Looked like a country cousin. Sat down.
It was either this, or go back to Summerland and be sensible.
Connie appeared again, in a brilliant red spangled sheath that went in and out in all sorts of interesting ways.
‘How d’you like the dress? I made it. Sneaked a go on the sewing machines at Gant’s. They’ve no idea I gig on Saturday nights.’ She sighed. ‘Gant’s is a good steady job till you get married – that’s what my ma says it is.’
‘You like to sing instead?’ I stated the obvious.
Connie’s answer surprised me. ‘What I’d like is for someone to look at me, past my bonny black skin, and say, Hey, Miss Crackerthorpe, how’d you like to be a bank manager, or a rocket scientist, or a journalist? As if that’s going to happen. Factory girl or entertainer, that’s all a coloured girl’s expected to be. Luckily I’m fabulous onstage and a great singer, so I’ll just have to be famous for my voice.’
I thought about that, about how you couldn’t hide being black like you could hide being Jewish. But why should you have to?
Charlie stuck his head round the door. ‘Onstage in fifteen!’
Connie tensed. ‘Shoot. Nearly time. I get nervous before I go out there. All those people staring.’
We looked at each other in the mirror, each of us dressed up in our own way.
‘You have to play a part,’ I said carefully. ‘People see … what you show them.’
‘People see what they want to see too. And tonight, they want Connie Snow, queen of jump ’n’ jive!’
She pulled on a pair of long, red satin gloves.
‘Wish me luck!’
Connie didn’t need luck; she had talent. Oh my God was she good! The whole band was so … alive. How did they do it? Piano notes faster than machine-gun fire … Drums setting a beat … Strings plucking vibrations in my bones … Val’s horn outrageously saucy – a call to move move move.
Move? I could hardly breathe I loved it so much. My mouth was open to drink the music in. My feet felt every tremor on the dance floor.
Out came Connie, dazzling in a spotlight. She owned that stage. She seized the silver microphone and sang. Wa-a-ail went Val’s horn.
The hangar had filled while we were backstage. The crowd heaved. Girls came running in. Guys gulped down their drinks and went looking for partners. The first couples had room for all sorts of crazy moves. Feet skimming in a blur, skirts swirling, hands clasping, reaching, flinging. Then it was as if the whole town piled in, a big mass of elbows and armpits and energy.
Connie beamed down over them all, belting out a song about jumping, jiving and wailing …
My feet were tapping. I couldn’t help it. I’d never heard or seen anything even close to this. On to a new song about a sweet little lady up to something shady – same tempo, same magic. Connie was the enchantress and we were all under her red-spangled spell.
‘Hey, sweet little woman!’ That wasn’t Connie’s voice. It was a boy. He was talking to me. ‘What are you doing with the wallflowers?’
German. What was a German doing here? Had I been followed? My heart beat faster than the music. Which way out? There were too many people, I was jammed in.
‘Whoa, calm down, we’re just talking. I saw you there. I thought you might want to dance?’
‘Ich kann nicht …’ The words came out in the wrong language.
‘Bist du ein deutsches Mädchen?’ You’re a German girl? ‘Wow! Where from? Nice to meet you.’ He held out a hand.
I put both mine behind my back.
‘Don’t be like that … Oh, I get it. You’re Jewish, right? Relax. I’m not the SS! I was a navy boy. My ship got torpedoed in the Atlantic and I’ve been a POW ever since.’
‘POW?’
‘Which rock have you been hiding under for the last six years? POW stan
ds for Prisoner of War. I work on a farm with others like me. A few Italians too and a couple of British girls. How about you?’
If only the music wasn’t so good. It made me want to shed my skin and just be me. No more secrets. No more hiding.
Trust no one. No one.
‘I’m …’
Another boy muscled in.
‘Beat it, Fritz. She doesn’t want to talk to you.’
‘Don’t flip your wig!’ said the German boy, except he pronounced it vig.
If I’d had a wig, it’d be well and truly flipped. As if the evening couldn’t get more surreal, here was the boy I’d punched in Summer village. ‘Colin Oakley?’
‘Large as life and twice as natural. You do know they’re all going nuts in the village because you scarpered off the bus? I thought you’d be miles away with the family silver, not cutting up a rug at the airfield dance. Hey, are you leaving …?’
Was I?
‘Don’t go. I like a girl with guts, even if she does have a mean right hook. Plus, you look –’ he gave me a once over and whistled – ‘pretty good. I reckon you owe me a dance for busting my nose. Come on …’
He’d called me pretty, so like any dumb girl I let him pull me through the crowd. Next thing I knew, he had hands on my shoulder, waist, wrist … turning my body … making my feet step to the beat.
‘That’s it! You’ve got it!’ Colin grinned. Val’s horn crowed triumphantly.
Slowly, clumsily, I started to dance. My skirt swirled round like those of the girls around me. My socks fell down. My new bra straps just about stayed up. At the final piano chord everyone cheered, me included.
‘I haf never danced like that before,’ I said, laughing.
Colin slicked his hair back. ‘Not bad for a beginner. Want to practise some more?’ Snapping his fingers, he sang along with Connie’s next song, then we were dancing again, faster and faster, so full of energy.
‘So how come you’re here?’ he shouted over the music.
‘I came with Connie,’ I shouted back.
‘Connie Snow? Seriously? You’re not pulling my leg? Wow!’
‘I must pull your leg?’
‘I mean, you’re not kidding me?’
I jumped up and waved at Connie. She spotted me in the mayhem and blew me a kiss back. Colin sent me spinning out and spinning back. I let him.
‘Had enough?’
Two dances later Colin pushed me towards bar end of the hangar. I was hot and thirsty. I thought I should go to the bathroom and check my bosoms were still straight.
‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said.
The mirror in the ladies’ room was plastered with girls. In one tiny inch I saw my hair was a hay bale and my eyes were bright as twin full moons.
‘Careful, Brigitta,’ I told my reflection. ‘This is wrong and you know it.’
Oh, but it felt so right.
A couple of burly girls came barging in. One with a mountain of red hair shrieked, ‘You’ve lost what, Doris?’
‘Only my ruddy knickers!’ her friend shrieked back. ‘The button popped off right before I shimmied. Next thing I know, one pair of peachy passion-killers are puddled on the floor.’
‘No!’
‘Yes! So what does my Romeo do? Scoops ’em up, and puts ’em in his pocket, cool as a cucumber, then carries on dancing.’
‘With a pocketful of bulge!’
‘Oooh, Peggy, you’re so naughty!’
‘And you’re knickerless! Go ask for them back. We’ve got to scoot. Have you seen the time? They’ll be locking up at the hostel.’
Cackling like lunatics, Doris and Peggy reeled out again.
‘Land Army lasses,’ said a girl next to me, as if that explained everything.
It was another world. Another universe.
‘I have to go home,’ I told Colin who was standing outside like a guard.
‘OK. I borrowed the work van. I’ll give you a lift. Do you want to grab a bite to eat first?’
I dashed backstage for my coat. The music was still throbbing and wailing, but Connie was at an open fire door, having a cigarette break. The rain had finally stopped.
‘Brigitta!’ she exclaimed. ‘You are one dark horse hepcat!’
I laughed. ‘I have no idea what you mean.’
‘Leaving already?’
‘Going home. After a bite to eat.’
‘You’ve clicked!’
‘Clicked?’
‘Got yourself a fella!’
She blew out a stream of smoke. ‘Have fun, sweetheart, but not too much fun. One girl to another, no guy is worth the trouble. And come see us again.’
‘You … You were …’ I spread my arms wide. I couldn’t think of a word big or brilliant enough.
As I left with Colin, Connie’s voice was once again filling the hangar, this time a slower song with the words I just want to be loved … Girls were shivering and giggling on one side of the open hangar door, boys postured and smoked on the other. Some had already coupled up in alleyways. A few ghosts had drifted into view – more airmen. When they were alive, the hangar would have been full of aircraft and engineers, fuel hoses and bombs. Something to take to Germany on their next mission …
‘You coming?’ Colin steered me towards his van. The writing on the side read Gant’s for Gloves. I thought of my one grey glove, back at Summerland. It could wait.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘D’you fancy fish ’n’ chips?’
‘What is it?’
‘You’ve never had fish ’n’ chips? No wonder you lot bloody lost the war: nothing worth fighting for. The chippie it is then …’
He drove me to a shop on the outskirts of town called The Happy Cod. It smelled of fat and fish. ‘Fish and chips twice,’ he told the big man behind the counter. The man shovelled long chunks of potato onto a square of newspaper, then set a piece of something orange and crusty on top. Colin handed over some money.
‘Salt and vinegar?’ Without waiting for an answer, Colin squirted a dark liquid onto the potatoes and then sprinkled on lots of salt. Angela Goose was right – Colin Oakley was a nice-looking boy. If I wanted a date – which I didn’t – he wouldn’t be so bad. As we ate, he kept flicking looks at me. The chips were hot. The fish batter looked disgusting but it actually crunched then melted beautifully. The fish inside was a bit dry. So what? I wolfed it all down, then remembered Nice girls don’t gobble. Nice girls probably didn’t lick salty grease off their fingers either.
Who said I was a nice girl?
We went to sit on the empty stalls of a marketplace. Other kids and couples were loafing there too. I watched some girls do acrobatics over the metal rails. They shrieked and pretended to be shocked that their skirts flopped open to show their underwear, while boys pretended not to be impressed. Stupid skirts. Why did girls have to wear them? If I had trousers on, I’d be flipping round and round and dangling from my knees too. From my ankles even.
‘So. I know you’re called Brigitta, and Mum told me you’re working at Summerland, right? Are you really a German?’
‘Austrian. From Vienna. A seamstress.’
He wasn’t really listening. He had his own stuff to say.
‘I wish I hadn’t missed the war. I mean, I was alive and I did air-raid drills, collecting scrap to make into Spitfires and bomber planes, all that stuff. But it’s not fair I didn’t get to fight, you know? Bloody Joseph Summer at the big house, he was the hero, coming home from training in his swanky uniform, showing us his pilot-officer stripes. I was just a stupid kid to him.’
‘Joseph Summer. He was shot down –’
‘You’re a girl,’ he went on. ‘You’re lucky. You don’t have my father telling you over and over again that the best generation fought in the war and boys nowadays are all pansies. Big girl’s blouses, he calls us.’
‘Blouses?’
‘Timid. Soft. Like a girl.’
‘Girls are soft?’
‘Only in the ri
ght places.’ Colin moved closer. Ah – the look. I inched away. He said, ‘I like you, Brigitta. You’re different.’
You have no idea.
He crumpled up his chip wrapper and reached for mine. ‘I don’t mind that you’re German, or Austrian. As long as you’re not a …’
‘Nazi …’ I read the word on my greasy newspaper. There was no escaping the news. More war trials in Germany. More criminals hanged.
Colin read over my shoulder. ‘Bloody hell, are you Jewish? You weren’t in one o’ them camps, were you?’
‘Auschwitz,’ I said automatically.
‘Wow. That’s … I’m so …’
‘It’s all right.’
‘No, it’s not! But you’re safe now. This is England. We’re decent people. Civilised. All that violence and murder, it couldn’t happen here.’
He dropped me off at the village green, saying, ‘Lady Summer will go bananas if I drive up and wake her. Are you OK to walk the rest?’ He leaned over the gear stick for a kiss … and caught the edge of my ear.
‘Goodnight.’
I waited until the van drove off belching fumes, then I ran.
I ran, ran, ran, danced, and ran, all the way to Summerland. I’d been out! I’d had fun! Who cared about stupid Lady Summer? Who cared about policemen? Who cared about anything?
My feet danced onto the terrace at the side of the house. Eyes closed, I swirled to my own secret, silent music – piano notes rippling up and down my spine, into my toes and fingertips. I wanted to dance forever, just spinning round and round and round and until everything except the stars disappeared.
‘I don’t care!’ I whispered. ‘Don’t care, don’t care, don’t care …’
Ivy rustled. I heard a polite cough in the darkness. I stopped dead, breathing hard.
Rice Pudding
‘Is this a private dance or can anyone join in?’ said a voice, sounding amused.
It was just a ghost, barely visible through the curtains of ivy sweeping down the side of the house. Had I seen him before?
‘Good evening,’ I replied. I gave a deep curtsy, followed by a bow for extra politeness. Then I carried on remembering dance steps. I didn’t mind a dead audience. Ghosts didn’t count. Why should anyone care what a ghost thinks? It’s the living that judge and hate and kill. Ghosts were the only things you could trust. They couldn’t do anything or change anything. If they could, they’d be alive still.
Summerland Page 7