As Time Goes By

by Annie Groves

  ‘See, I told you they were good, didn’t I?’ May demanded triumphantly, above the enthusiastic clapping of the audience at the end of the singers’ first number.

  Sam could only agree. How wonderful it must be to have such a beautiful voice, and to be so pretty as well, she thought as she watched the slender brunette singer the band leader had introduced as Sally. As she looked across at her, the brunette singer turned her head and smiled. What a nice genuine person she seemed, Sam decided, returning her smile.

  ‘Huh, just look at them Canadian lads,’ Lynsey hissed in a cross whisper. ‘Can’t take their eyes off the singers, they can’t.’

  ‘No wonder, the saucy way they were singing,’ another girl sighed. ‘My chap wouldn’t half give me what for if he caught me carrying on like that.’

  ‘They’ve got every chap in the place making sheep’s eyes at them.’ Lynsey was obviously aggrieved.

  ‘I’m sure it isn’t meant to be taken seriously and that it’s just part of their job.’ Sam surprised herself by sticking up for the singers.

  Lynsey gave her an irritated look but before she could say anything Hazel pointed out, ‘There’s a chap over there who doesn’t look like he’s very impressed by them.’

  ‘Where?’ Lynsey demanded.

  ‘On that table in front of the stage. The good- looking dark-haired chap,’ Hazel answered. ‘He’s been watching that pretty brunette singer like he doesn’t approve of what she’s doing one little bit. Don’t go staring at him, he’ll see you,’ Hazel warned her, but it was too late.

  Lynsey was craning her neck and half getting up out of her chair to look across at the table Hazel had mentioned. Sam could see the man Hazel was referring to quite easily, and realised what Hazel meant. He was handsome but he was also looking at the singer with a very grim expression indeed. Was he the brunette singer’s husband, perhaps, Sam wondered, angry about the fact that other men were admiring his wife? If so, Sam felt very sorry for her.

  Normally once she had started to sing Sally was oblivious to everything but the music, including the audience, but tonight the music wasn’t having its normal magical effect on her. She could see a girl on one of the tables, where the tall blonde girl who had given her such a nice smile earlier was seated, half stand up and look at another table and automatically her own gaze focused on that table as well. The people seated at it were smartly dressed, the women in silk frocks and those men who weren’t in uniform wearing well-cut suits. One of the men was staring at her very grimly. Suddenly Sally stiffened in shock and almost missed a note, as she realised it was the new doctor.

  It was no use asking herself what he was doing here. Sooner or later everyone who came to Liverpool visited the Grafton. It was famous as the city’s best dance hall. Somehow, though, she hadn’t had the doctor down as a dancing man. He had struck her as far too grim and cold. She was obviously wrong, though, because the woman seated next to him was placing her hand on his arm, obviously suggesting that they should get up and dance.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Patti hissed in Sally’s ear, as the audience clapped their song. ‘You missed your cue twice.’

  ‘I … I’m sorry,’ was all Sally could mouth back, as the band leader turned to announce their second song.

  ‘You bloody well will be if it happens again,’ Patti warned her sourly.

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder if this was such a good idea after all,’ Hazel said to Sam ruefully. ‘I thought coming here would help take my mind off my chap, but all it’s done is make me wonder what he’s getting up to down in Dartmouth.’

  ‘He’s probably missing you as much as you’re missing him,’ Sam tried to comfort her, as she watched Lynsey jitterbugging energetically and expertly with her partner, envying her both her skill and her self-confidence. She could still remember the excruciating misery she had experienced as a little girl, attending the dance classes her mother had sent her to. She had always seemed to be out of step, much to the teacher’s despair, and had never mastered the routines. Since then she had avoided dancing as much as she could. It didn’t help that every time there was a family event of any kind with dancing, Russell would always make jokes about her two left feet and tease her that he had to bribe his friends to dance with her. Sam knew that he didn’t mean to be unkind – after all it was the truth: she couldn’t dance. She was relieved that Mouse’s refusal to dance, on the grounds that her aunt would not approve, had given her a good excuse to stay where she was.

  ‘You’re a good kid, Sam,’ Hazel told her, ‘but something tells me that you don’t know very much about men. Being in the ATS will change all that. It’s been a real eye-opener for me, I can tell you. I’ve lost count of the number of men I’ve heard of who have sworn undying love to a girl one night and then been seen flirting with someone else the next. If you ask me, it’s out of sight out of mind with most of them, especially the navy lot.’

  ‘What you want to do is give him a taste of his own medicine,’ Lynsey advised her, coming back to the table just in time to catch the tail end of their conversation. She sank into her chair and fanned herself, exclaiming that she was ‘puffed’, before continuing, ‘You know what I mean, Hazel; what you want to do is make up to some other chap and flirt with him a bit. Do you no end of good, it would, and you never know, you might find out that your sailor isn’t the bee’s knees you think he is. You’ll never know what else is on offer unless you try a few out. Take that table over there, for instance—’ She suddenly stopping talking and sat bolt upright, her eyes narrowing ‘like a dog seeing a rabbit,’ as May said later. ‘Oh boy, just take a look at him,’ she breathed.

  ‘Who exactly are we supposed to be looking at?’ May demanded. ‘There’s hundreds of men here.’

  ‘Maybe, but this is one of a kind. Over there … that chap with the dark hair, all six foot of him, and will you take a look at those shoulders. Now there’s a man who’s got the goods and knows exactly how to use them, or my name’s not Lynsey Wilkins.’

  All the girls turned to look at the man she was pointing out, including Sam, who nearly betrayed herself by protesting out loud when she recognised that the man Lynsey was drooling over was none other that her own bête noire, Sergeant Johnny Everton. And what was more, he had seen her too, Sam realised as she tried to flatten herself into her chair.

  ‘Gawd, Lynsey, stop showing us all up, will you? Any chap seeing you look at him like that is more likely to make a run for it than make a grab for you,’ Hazel warned irritably, as Lynsey continued to look pointedly and invitingly in the direction of the uniformed Bomb Disposal sergeant.

  ‘That’s all you know. Look, he’s coming over,’ Lynsey crowed triumphantly.

  If her chair hadn’t been hemmed in so tightly between those on either side of her she would have been on her feet and bolting for the sanctuary of the powder room, Sam admitted, and yet there was no reason for her to feel like that. She wasn’t on duty and answerable to him, and he certainly wasn’t coming over here because he wanted to socialise with her, so why was she in such a silly panic?

  ‘Oh boy …’ Lynsey murmured ecstatically. ‘Now that is what I call a man. I bet he dances divinely. Hands off, the rest of you, he’s mine.’

  ‘As if any of us had a chance anyway, with you making big eyes at him the way you are doing, Lynsey,’ May whispered.

  ‘I’m not at all happy with this,’ Hazel muttered to Sam. ‘Lynsey thinks she can get away with anything, but it’s the rest of us that will end up getting a bad name along with her, if we don’t watch out.’

  ‘Would you like to dance?’

  Sam could see the shock on the girls’ faces, especially Lynsey’s, as the sergeant stood in front of her and asked her to dance. She could feel that same shock zigzagging through her body like a hail of tracer bullets, illuminating the sharp rawness of her most private feelings. What was he doing this for? Was he deliberately trying to make fun of her, to humiliate her? A mixture of anger and misery gripped her.
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br />   ‘No, I wouldn’t,’ she told him shortly.

  She could see the way his chest compressed as he breathed in sharply.

  ‘Why don’t you ask me instead?’ Lynsey offered flirtatiously. ‘I’d love to dance with you …’ She was already on her feet, and reaching out to put her hand on his arm whilst she looked up at him, batting her eyelashes.

  As though his appearance had opened the floodgates, within seconds the other girls, apart from Sam, Hazel and Mouse, had taken to the floor, dancing with one another, laughing and giggling as they watched Lynsey act the vamp with her partner.

  ‘You were fearfully rude, turning that sergeant down like that, you know,’ Hazel told Sam quietly.

  ‘He didn’t really want to dance with me,’ Sam answered her. ‘I could tell that from the way he was looking at me. He’s already told me—’

  ‘You know him?’ Hazel stopped her, if anything looking even more disapproving.

  ‘Not really … that is, I have met him before … he was introduced to me … by … by someone …’

  ‘Oh, Sam, that makes turning him down like that so much worse.’

  Sam could feel her face starting to burn. ‘I didn’t want to leave Mouse on her own,’ she tried to defend herself.

  ‘Mouse isn’t on her own; I’m here,’ Hazel pointed out, adding sternly, ‘I really think you owe him an apology, you know.’

  ‘An apology!’

  ‘Yes,’ Hazel insisted. ‘It’s awfully bad form to turn down a chap in uniform when he asks you to dance, don’t you know? Not the done thing at all. Not …’

  ‘… when there’s a war on,’ Sam chanted, causing Hazel to give her another stern look.

  Outwardly she might be stubbornly defending her actions but inwardly she felt horribly guilty. She knew that had she been asked to dance by anyone other than Johnny Everton she would have accepted, and somehow or other forced herself to overcome her own self-consciousness at her lack of dancing skill. If it had been Frank who had asked her, for instance … Don’t think about that, she warned herself. Sergeant Frank Brookes was married, and besides, all he had ever shown her was just a bit of good-mannered kindness, nothing else, and even if he hadn’t been married she would have been a fool to have gone making something out of that that just didn’t exist.

  Sally could feel her hands trembling slightly as she folded them together behind her back and joined the other girls in their set line-up for ‘You Are my Sunshine’, the number that was proving to be one of the year’s most popular songs. She wasn’t going to look over to the doctor’s table and risk getting caught in the glower of disapproval he had given her during their earlier number. Patti had given her a real old telling-off backstage, justifiably perhaps, Sally admitted. She hated being anything less than professional but what she hated and feared even more was that for the first time ever, something and someone had broken through the protective screen that singing had always previously allowed her to hide behind, away from whatever was troubling her. It was true that the ‘something’ and the ‘someone’ weren’t related. After all, the summons to appear at ‘the Boss’s’ party had nothing whatsoever to do with Dr Alexander Ross. Heavens, Sally could just imagine how a man like him would react to someone being in debt! He would treat them like they were a bad smell under his nose, she decided. And yet despite the resentment she felt towards him for showing her his obvious contempt, underneath Sally acknowledged there was pain. She had longed so much for her and Ronnie and their children to be a family who could hold up their heads; a decent respectable well-thought-of family who kept themselves to themselves and whom others admired, not like the families she had grown up amongst in Manchester. Good-hearted people she knew, but living on the breadline, never knowing if they would have enough money to pay the rent and often seeming not to care, taking their best clothes down to the pawn shop when they were short of cash, and then having to borrow from whoever they could to get them back again when they needed to wear them. Sally had spent her childhood anxiously aware that the very fine line that divided her mother’s smiles from her tears and anger was because of her struggle to manage the family budget. Her parents may not have got themselves into debt but the threat that they might be had hung over her childhood like a dark cloud. Now that fear was hers, and she could feel the shame of having succumbed burning deep into her soul. Somehow the doctor, with his smart clothes, his posh furniture, his well-dressed wife and children, underlined for her all that hurt the most in her own marriage and life.

  No, she wouldn’t look at him, she wouldn’t look at anyone, she told herself firmly as the band struck up the first notes of ‘You Are my Sunshine’.

  ‘Oooh, I love this number,’ May said enthusiastically as the ATS girls joined in the approving clapping that greeted the opening bars of the Waltonettes’ song. ‘Lovely voices, they have, and I’m not the only one that thinks so.’ May nudged Lynsey in the ribs as she pointed out, ‘There’s that sergeant you was fancying, Lynsey, clapping like mad. He can’t take his eyes off them girls neither, especially that brunette.’

  Sam could see Lynsey scowling in the direction of the singers. Sergeant Everton certainly was responding enthusiastically to them. As Sam watched, the pretty brunette singer looked towards him, her lips curving into an open smile whilst he in turn smiled back at her, giving her a cheeky wink.

  ‘She can smile at him all she likes, but it will be me that has the last dance with him,’ Lynsey told them all determinedly.

  ‘The last dance, mebbe,’ May agreed, ‘but I wouldn’t bet odds on you getting to be the one he walks home, Lynsey.’

  Sally had seen Johnny Everton smiling at her several bars into ‘You Are my Sunshine’, and now, with their spot finished, she did something she would never normally have done. Instead of heading backstage she went towards Johnny, who immediately left the table where he had been sitting with a group of other men in uniform and hurried over to her, taking hold of her in an enthusiastic hug. Her decision to go over to Johnny certainly didn’t have anything to do with the new doctor sitting there watching her like she was the lowest of the low, Sally reassured herself, as Johnny kissed her firmly on the cheek.

  ‘I’d heard you were back,’ she told him warmly.

  ‘Yup, turning up like a bad penny, that’s me.’

  Sally laughed. ‘Go on wi’ you. I dare say there’s girls queuing up to welcome you home!’

  To her surprise Johnny’s smile vanished, to be replaced by an unexpected bleakness that was out of character for the Johnny she remembered.

  ‘I heard about your Ronnie being taken prisoner when Singapore fell,’ he told her, changing the subject.

  ‘Yes,’ Sally acknowledged. ‘That’s what the War Office have said, only there haven’t been any letters or anything from him yet.’ She tried to keep her voice light but she knew she hadn’t succeeded when Johnny gripped her hand comfortingly.

  ‘It’s early days yet. And like they say, no news is good news. Them two little nippers of yours must be growing.’

  ‘They are that,’ Sally agreed. ‘A real handful, they are at times, and I don’t know what I’d do without Molly and Doris lending a helping hand. Been a true friend to me, Molly has, even though it was me and her June that palled up first. Expecting a kiddie of their own now, she and Frank, as well as having June’s little ’un.’

  ‘Yes, I’d heard.’

  ‘A natural mother, Molly is. Her and Frank are really happy.’

  ‘Frank’s a good chap. I saw him earlier today at the barracks.’ His voice was suddenly terse.

  Sally’s smile faltered slightly as she wondered what she had said to cause him to withdraw into himself so determinedly. ‘So you’re with the bomb disposal lot then now?’ she ploughed on.

  ‘’S right,’ Johnny agreed.

  ‘You’re very brave, Johnny, to take on such dangerous work.’

  He gave a dismissive shrug.

  ‘Look, I’ve got to go now,’ Sally told him. ‘We’ll be
on again in a few minutes. I’m having a bit of a party for my two boys, next Saturday afternoon. Tommy was three at the beginning of the month and Harry will be two the week after next,’ she told him impulsively. ‘It’ll only be a few sandwiches and a cup of tea, but there’ll be a lot there that you know and you’d be welcome to come along and have a beer with the men, if you feel like it.’ She couldn’t stay to say any more; she was in enough trouble with Patti as it was without risking appearing unprofessional, fraternising with the paying public.

  Johnny had changed, she thought as she hurried backstage. The cheeky, almost too self-confident boy she remembered had been replaced by a man who, like all of them, had experience of the reality of a war behind him. The Johnny she remembered would certainly never have wanted to risk his life working in bomb disposal.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t get too hung up on him if I were you, Lynsey,’ said Hazel. ‘You can see from his uniform that he’s with that UXB lot, and I’ve heard that they reckon their life expectancy can be measured in weeks and months, not years. There was that case in the paper only a little while back of a whole crew being lost when the bomb they were working on went off.’

  Sam got to her feet.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lynsey asked her. ‘It’ll be the last dance in a minute.’

  ‘Ladies’ room,’ Sam told her briefly. It must be that last port and lemon that was making her stomach cramp so uncomfortably. It certainly wasn’t anything to do with Hazel’s comments about the danger of unexploded bombs.

  As she came out of the powder room Sam heard the band leader announcing the last dance. Lynsey no doubt would already have secured her chosen partner, and he, Sam expected, would be only too delighted to share with her the intimacy afforded by the now dimmed lights and the slow sensual beat of the music.

  ‘Oh!’ Engrossed in her thoughts, she gave a small gasp as she cannoned into someone in the dimness. Immediately strong male fingers curled round her wrist, and equally immediately her heart beat out its own Morse code message of recognition to her brain. ‘You …’ she stammered weakly as she found herself confronting the very man who had just been in her thoughts. ‘I thought you’d be dancing with Lynsey.’