by Diana Melly
And then, in a blink, here we are in the queue – me suffering from a lack of coffee. As usual ballroom fanatics have a lot to say to each other. “It’s only an opinion,” says Ray who had disagreed with the judge’s choice of the Latin winner. He overhears a young man talking and asks, “Are you looking for a partner?’
“Yes.”
“Ballroom or Latin?”
“Latin.”
“I know a good sixteen-year-old.”
“That’s a bit young.”
“And a good 25-year-old but she’s ballroom. Do you do ballroom?”
“Only since February.”
“That’s a no then.”
We file politely into the Spanish Room where three hours of lectures are about to begin. I’m rather sleepy but wake up as the lecture begins with Mike Daniels, a former champion, spinning round the floor. Three of the lectures are given by couples, dance partners who are also married. Marital strife is rather obvious. Apparently it’s well known that couples who never normally exchange a cross word fight like Taylor and Burton once on the dance floor.
The rest of the day is for exploring Blackpool. Perhaps because the sun is shining and the sky and sea are a clear blue I think Blackpool is a magical city and why would one go anywhere else for a holiday? We climb on a tram to Fleetwood, a town ten miles north of Blackpool on the Fylde peninsula. (Rather annoyingly I’ve forgotten my bus pass; Raymond never forgets his.) Fleetwood was once an important deep-sea fishing port but the industry was destroyed in the 70s by the cod war. We head for the market; I need some knitting wool, not something easily found in London. As usual Raymond needs fish and chips. One café opposite the market has an enticing sign: Pensioner’s special: Fish and chips, cod or hake, cup of tea, bread and butter all inclusive £4.
Tonight, the last night, is the Professional Finals. The competitors are not the only ones who dress up. I have and so have the judges. They are dressed for a red carpet night. Some of the women are in long black or crimson velvet dresses, bare shoulders, hair in French pleats. They all look elegant. The men wear dinner jackets; so do most of the former champions, including Raymond. He explains they’re keen to keep up the standards.
The last cup has been presented, “God Save the Queen” is played and we all stumble to our feet, even me. Gone are the days when it was played at the end of a film or a play and George and I would stay firmly on our bums.
Chapter 4
“I’m a performance poet,” says the receptionist at the Margate hotel. “This is my website.” He scribbles the address down on a bit of scrap paper.
“Perhaps we could have the keys to our rooms and look at it later?” I say. I don’t want to be rude but I’m quite anxious to see my room and find out if it has an en suite. I’ve arrived in Margate with Raymond for an evening dance at the Winter Gardens ballroom arranged by Mr Wonderful. Raymond has found us this hotel which is only £27 a night, so it’s on the cards that the nearest loo will be down a passage. Back in the 60s when I went on tour with George, I don’t think en suite existed in the sort of hotels that jazz musicians stayed in, but that was then and I was in my 20s and didn’t have to get up in the night.
In the reception area is a very large radio dating from the 40s. It’s finished in light walnut veneer with a beige-brown fabric cover over the speaker. The material has a glistening gold-coloured thread running through it and a tuning wheel on one side of the glass indicator panel showing the stations, including Hilversum, Brussels, Prague, Luxembourg and the like. Along the base of the panel are about a dozen chunky cream-coloured, cube-shaped buttons, each about the size of a marshmallow, for selecting the radio’s various functions. David, the performance poet, comes from behind the desk and leads the way up the maze of stairs and corridors. We stop at each point of interest: on one landing there is a pinball machine and on another a display cabinet stuffed with ancient photos and pewter award mugs; but will there be an en suite?
Yes! There is! My room is small but spotless; there are three hangers in the wardrobe, a TV and a bedside light. The latter doesn’t seem to work but after dancing till ten that is hardly going to matter.
For some reason Raymond wants to go for a paddle, but I need lunch. Margate has fish and chips or pizza to offer. We settle for the usual fish and chips which I haven’t had so often since they were wrapped in the Sunday Dispatch. Raymond goes the whole hog and has sliced white bread and butter and a mug of strong tea with his. We stop at the Turner gallery where there is a rather disappointing exhibition and then Raymond goes for his paddle with the bottoms of his trousers rolled. I feel I missed a photo opportunity there.
After a bracing walk along the seafront past Frank’s Night Club (closed and boarded up), ten-pin bowling (open and packed), numerous pawn shops also doing good business, Raymond (“call me old-fashioned”) takes my arm and we cross the road for tea and cakes in a dainty tea shop. I consider broaching the subject of our “issue” with the Argentine tango. It was either an issue or a problem, I’m not quite sure of the difference; I don’t think it was a row but I did call him a pig.
It happened one week at my regular tango lesson. There are six of us learning and six professional partners, of whom Raymond is one. Usually I dance with Raymond but that night, when I completely failed to notice him offering me the back of his knee for a “gancho”, he became impatient with me and so I called him a pig. At that point our instructor said we could change partners, and Raymond seized the opportunity to dump me.
So, hoping the chocolate cake has worked its magic on Raymond’s sweet tooth, I begin. “Raymond, I could write 50 lines saying ‘I must not call my teacher a pig’, or I could just say sorry.”
“If being lippy does anything at all to improve your tango,” he replies, “so be it.”
Back at the hotel I change into my skinny black Jasper Conran jeans and a grey silk top covered in sequins. From the outside, the Winter Gardens ballroom looks a little sad, but inside it’s dazzling. It was built at a cost of £26,000 in 1911 in the neo-Grecian style. In the early 1920s, performers like Carrie Tubb, Harry Dearth, Pavlova and Madame Melba were all engaged to play in the elegant concert hall. Then, during the Second World War it acted as a receiving station for some of the 46,000 troops who landed at Margate from Dunkirk. There were also concerts for the troops on Sundays and “brighten-up dances” every Thursday and Saturday. After the war Webster Booth and Anne Ziegler, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and Vera Lynn all appeared there; so did the Beatles and indeed George in the 60s.
In the ballroom there is a large revolving glitter ball competing with my sequin top for the bling effect; there’s a bar and a bay window giving an 180-degree view of the sea. Lots of familiar faces from other tea dances have come: there’s the couple we call Cuddles because even in the jive they stay wrapped round each other, a young girl I call Druggy because she told Raymond that she flies to and from Mexico once a month, and a man I call Uppy because he gives off an upper-class vibe. I was quite wrong about the latter: we chat at the bar and I realise he’s from Essex, but unlike me hadn’t been given elocution lessons.
It’s last waltz time – the Tennessee waltz – a sad song about a girl whose best friend goes off with her lover. Before I had even kissed a boy I identified with that pathetic creature.
Back at the hotel, the ancient night porter who lets us in has got the old radio on; the light it gives off is like that from a real living-room fire. The familiar medium-wave sound, muffled and complete with buzzes and clicks as it fades in and out, is friendly and reassuring. And it’s playing “After You’ve Gone”, one of my favourites; I rather wish it were George singing. That would have been perfect.
Chapter 5
Why am I standing at the bus stop with a bandaged leg, wearing sunglasses in a queue of women and all of us waiting for a man?
Well, I’m not waiting for the 52 – I’m in Battersea Town Hall with Raymond and the bus stop is the name of the next dance. We ladies all queue up on one side
of the dance floor and as each man approaches he takes the lady at the front of the queue, whizzes her round the floor and then leaves her at the back of the queue.
The ladies all ask about my bandage. I explain that on the way here with Raymond, I stepped off the train and fell down the gap between it and the platform.
The men all ask about the sunglasses; one says, “Are you in disguise?”
“No, I just forgot to take them off.”
One man seems to be doing a waltz, although Mr Wonderful is definitely playing a quickstep – “Zing Went the Strings of My Heart”; another tall, flashy dancer is trying to make me do a running spin turn. I explain I’ve only learnt the spin turn without the running bit. Mr Flashy ignores me and has only himself to blame when I fall over his feet and we crash into another couple.
I’m extremely relieved when the bus stop is over and I’m back at the table.
“Why didn’t you tell me I still had my sunglasses on?” I ask Raymond.
“I thought you might have pink eye,” he replies. He gets up and brings me back a cup of tea with two sugars. “For the shock,” he says.
He’d seen me disappear onto the line at the station and had been more frightened than I was; and, being rather squeamish, had looked away when the station’s first-aid man had tipped Dettol onto my leg wound and mopped up the blood. He also gives me his bit of cake, and seeing he has a very sweet tooth, this is more than generous.
A man called Peter that I recognise from the last tea dance comes very very slowly towards me. Last time we danced, well, not exactly danced, just moved sedately round the floor, he told me that he was 82 last birthday and his mother looks after him. Well, either his mother was sixteen when she gave birth or he has mild dementia.
Because of George I’m quite comfortable with dementia. He also had many fantasies. One was that he had been asked to play Jesus Christ in a new Hollywood blockbuster. Another was that Manny Shinwell, an important member of Attlee’s post-war Labour government and dead for 25 years, was building several workmen’s cottages in our garden.
Peter and I have finished our stately shuffle and Mr Wonderful has announced a slow foxtrot, “I’d Like to Get You on a Slow Boat to China”.
“Face your fears,” says Raymond, leading me on to the floor. “And please try to remember some of what I’ve taught you. Take longer steps; your legs start from under your armpits. Release your weight. And lift your arms from your elbows, we don’t need your shoulders, and imagine you are going to hug a large oak tree, extend your neck away from your partner. You have a long neck, so use it.”
By the time we’ve danced the last waltz, “Beware my Foolish Heart”, I’m beginning to feel the effects of my fall: my knee hurts, my side aches but as I admire the stoics I don’t complain and limp up Lavender Hill to the station. The train is full but a young Asian man gives me his seat.
Chapter 6
In the last few months I’ve been to tea dances in the Tower Ballroom in Blackpool, the Royal Opera House, Shoreditch Town Hall, Battersea Town Hall and the O2 Centre in Finchley road. I’ve been to supper dances in a five-star hotel in Majorca, a small village in Essex (black tie optional) and the Guild Hall, Cambridge (black tie, please). But I had the most fun in a Catholic church hall in Acton. Well, it’s not every day you can jive underneath a huge portrait of the last Pope.
It wasn’t just the Pope – it became quite obvious that although advertised as a tea dance (two till five), we were about to enjoy a ceilidh, (in other words a Celtic shindig). The DJ, Bob, is wearing a black cowboy hat and is dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt. Although a large man, he exudes rhythm. He plays what can best be described as country and western with its roots in Ulster, alternating with popular Irish songs. We change into our dance shoes, but we are the only ones to bother and people stare.
At the long bar the Guinness is flowing and Raymond is soon in a very good mood. Ray learnt to dance when he was twelve at his secondary modern, where an enterprising headmaster told the boys it was a good way to meet girls. He made them bryl-creem their hair and wear a clean shirt. Not only did Ray meet lots of girls, he had a talent, and when he was 24 he won the world championship for Latin and the 10-Dance championship. Ray is now in his sixties but something called muscle memory has meant that he hasn’t forgotten anything. Of course I’m lucky to have him as a partner, but he is very strict. “Did you do a heel turn? I thought not”; “you can’t have forgotten the tango chase, you only learnt it last week!”
I once extracted a compliment from him: “that was nearly good.”
Happily, the Guinness and the atmosphere have had an effect: Raymond is beaming and has stopped complaining.
The tempo of the music in “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” is like a slow Viennese waltz or a fast ordinary one so we do a cha-cha-cha. The DJ plays “Home on the Range” – it’s hard to know what dance we are meant to be doing so we do a sexy rumba. A woman clearly impressed by Ray’s hip movements leads him on to the floor. I’m left sitting under a large sign that says “Do not stand on the tables”, but Raymond is not the only one enjoying the Guinness and I’m soon doing a sort of jig with a man from Belfast. At least that’s what I think he said.
Twenty people form a circle and everyone takes their turn in the centre to dance. Raymond does his John Travolta imitation from Pulp Fiction. You couldn’t say there’s much physical resemblance; there’s the age difference and Ray’s lack of hair for a start, but Ray has all the confidence of a person who knows they are really good at something, and there is much clapping as he twists away. One lady does the Charleston and a portly gentleman attempts a Russian folk dance. Not wishing to be pulled into the centre, I make for the bar and buy a round for our table. Ray has decided that as long as the music is slow enough it will suit the Argentine tango. “Keep it simple,” I beg as we take to the floor. I haven’t been learning long, but it’s not appropriate to come over all shy so I drape myself round Ray and he leads me through barridas, ganchos and ochos.
One or two women have asked Ray if he will teach them the Argentine and on the way home he says he can feel his ego swelling and will I please tell him if he’s getting too big for his boots. Well, in 45 years I never had much success in cutting George down to size, I’m pleased to have a go at such an enjoyable task.
Chapter 7
I had known for some time that I had to find a new dance teacher. Raymond had become so popular as a partner and a teacher that I could no longer rely on him to take me to tea dances. He was happy to give me a weekly lesson but what with his children, his grandchild, his great-grandson, his other students, his ex-wife and his girlfriend now back from Hong Kong, my nose was out of joint. And there were problems with his teaching methods; he taught me steps – or tried to – that nobody but him could dance. He once spent three lessons trying to teach me a double reverse spin. I had written down the instructions in a notebook so that I could practice at home. Once home, these instructions made no sense to me:
R back, com t l heel t r side x left in front of r.
He used to say that he was “trying to take me up a level” and even once suggested that I should enter for some medals. They might call them medals, but I call them exams and if I have got into my seventies without taking an exam since the 11 plus I am not going to start now, even if they are called bronze, silver and gold.
In spite of the friends I had made at tea dances – and Gill was always ready to come with me – it was a dismal experience going without Ray. I knew that I had to become proactive and tackle the problem. I sent him an email explaining that I wanted to find a teacher who would be able to come to social dances with me and I was sure we would still be friends. He replied, “Whilst my head can understand, my heart doesn’t want to listen. I’m a bit stunned, but not to worry, I’ll process it all.”
What with Google and the popularity of Strictly, it is easy to find dance classes. After very little searching, I found one in Holland Park, five minutes from wh
ere I live in Shepherd’s Bush. There was a two-hour class divided into beginners and intermediate followed by an hour and a half of social dancing. I decided to start off in beginners until I found my confidence. It was lacking partly because of Raymond’s inability to deliver any form of praise. I don’t blame him. It’s not easy learning to dance at any age, let alone mine. I have no muscle memory for the ‘six quick twinkle’, the ‘curved feather or the ‘brush tap’. But put me on a bike and I could still ride without my hands on the handlebars. Raymond has got all that muscle memory from his years of training. I think he only put up with me because we became such good friends. Such good friends that on the trip to Blackpool where we’d gone to watch the championships, we were able to share a room without any embarrassment. Raymond always describes himself as a super scrimper and he had found the room on the seafront minutes from the Winter Gardens for £30 a night. I was a little worried before I saw the room. I had been dreading one of those twin rooms where the beds are separated only by a minute plastic bedside table. But this room was perfect, almost L-shaped in design with my single bed tucked discreetly into a corner almost out of sight of Raymond’s large double. That might not sound very gentlemanly of him but he is almost six foot compared to my five foot five.
I have often shared with women on holiday and there are the usual worries about snoring and going to the loo in the middle of the night. I remembered that when I was five and at a Catholic boarding school, I once became very ill and was taken to sleep in Sister Magdalena’s room. When she took off her wimple before going to bed I saw with some horror her neatly shaved head. She then removed her voluminous habit and got into her equally voluminous night clothes without ever exposing an inch of flesh.
With a man, sharing when you are not romantically involved brings other worries. In Blackpool I put my nightdress on over my tights and pants and took them off while decently covered. It all came quite naturally to me. I come from an age when women were quite shy of exposing their bodies. I never saw my mother or any of my friends naked.