Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  She had put on a slim red dress and red shoes. Swirling in front of the full-length mirror in the bedroom, she laughed at Harris’s gaze. ‘Do you like me in the looking-glass, darling?’ she said. She suddenly stopped and put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, I forgot my stockings. Will you put them on for me?’

  He had done it before. ‘Get the seams straight,’ she said. ‘They were a bit wobbly last time.’ She pulled the dress over her head and shook off the shoes, then lay in her underwear on her front, crossways on the bed. ‘The pencil’s on the dressing-table,’ she told him.

  Her face and her dangling hands were over the edge of the counterpane. He kissed her hair. ‘Other end, Harris,’ she said.

  Harris surveyed the naked backs of her legs. Then, taking the eyebrow pencil and starting at her left ankle, he began to trace a slim, black seam up the back of her calf. ‘It’s not wobbly, is it?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Straight up the back and no blodges,’ he promised. He took the line carefully to the back of her knee and then up her firm thigh. ‘It looks all right but it won’t keep your legs warm,’ he said. ‘How high do you want it to go?’

  ‘Up to my bum, please. Not that anyone will see. Except you.’

  He straightened up and looked at his work. Then he etched a seam on the other leg. ‘Done,’ he said, patting her pants. ‘Take a look.’

  ‘In a minute,’ she said. ‘Let it set.’

  He went around to her head again, pushed her hair back and kissed her pleased face. She waited a moment, then carefully left the bed and, first putting on her shoes, went to the mirror. ‘Perfect,’ she approved. ‘As good as nylons.’

  She put on her dress again and looked at him in his solid uniform. ‘You look beautiful, too,’ she said.

  ‘When I’m not here, who puts your seams on?’ he asked, smiling.

  ‘I try myself, but it’s difficult,’ Enid answered. ‘Sometimes Maggie and I do each other’s. We do have a laugh.’

  *

  They went to the Sailors’ Blessing and sat in the saloon bar. It was seven in the evening.

  She had conscientiously brought him a pint of beer, returning to him across the pub like a tightrope artiste so she did not spill any.

  He grimaced. ‘I’m not going in any side-car,’ he said again. ‘What do you think I am? A roll of lino?’

  Her concern dissolved in a giggle. ‘All right,’ she said, sipping her port and lemon daintily. ‘We’ll go on the bus. Johnny Fallon will be disappointed, but he’ll have to lump it.’

  Harris said: ‘What am I going to a dance for, anyway?’ He nodded at his foot. ‘I can’t drag this lump around the floor.’

  ‘You can manage a waltz,’ she argued. ‘You only have to pull it after you.’

  A tall, skinny young man, wearing a flashy tie and a blazer, came through the door.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Enid.’ He took in Harris. ‘Who’s this? A wounded soldier?’

  Blushing, Enid said: ‘He’s my husband …’ She searched for it, then said: ‘Adrian.’

  Harris glanced at her. He held out his hard soldier’s hand and shook the equally hard, thin fingers of Johnny. ‘Didn’t she tell you she had a husband called Adrian – or Neville?’

  Johnny looked confused. ‘No … well, she might have done. But I forgot.’

  ‘We can’t accept your kind offer of a lift,’ sniffed Enid. ‘He won’t go in the side-car.’

  ‘Probably wouldn’t fit,’ said Johnny. ‘You’re still going to the dance?’

  ‘We’ll go on the bus,’ said Harris. ‘I’m no good in side-cars.’ Grimly he smiled at the other man. ‘See you there.’

  ‘Please yourselves,’ grunted Johnny, turning towards the bar.

  Enid said: ‘You didn’t have to be so snotty, Harris.’

  ‘Why isn’t he in the army?’

  ‘He’s a docker, that’s why. Work of National Importance, in case you don’t know. Not everybody is dashing around playing soldiers, playing bang-bangs. And he’s good as gold, too. Ask a lot of people in this pub. You, for a start, had one of his kippers today.’

  ‘And you think I go around playing bang-bangs.’

  ‘That’s all that’s happened for three or four years,’ she retorted. ‘Not like Sue Billings’s George. Out in Burma. You’ve even got yourself wounded pretending to fight. Look at the state you’re in.’

  He regarded her sulky expression. ‘Sorry I haven’t been awarded the Victoria Cross,’ he said. ‘I’ll try harder. I’ll probably get the chance soon.’

  Enid seemed ashamed. ‘Let’s get the bus,’ she sighed. ‘It’ll be along in a mo’.’ He drank his beer and she put her port glass down before realising there was still some in the bottom and taking a final swallow. She waved to Johnny at the bar and then helped Harris to his foot. Slotting his crutches in his armpits, he swung clumsily and moodily towards the door.

  It had begun to rain thinly. It was as dark as nights had been for four years. The bus came along the road like a heavy ghost. Enid waved a white handkerchief to stop it.

  There was a small, chirpy conductress on the platform, her shabby uniform hanging in folds. ‘Oh, let’s get you up,’ she said when she saw Harris. She looked at Enid. ‘You get one side and I’ll get the other. But don’t let the poor sod slip.’

  ‘I won’t,’ promised Enid. ‘He’s my husband.’

  Between them they pulled him up on to the platform. The few passengers on the bottom deck turned half-heartedly to look and a drunk at the front began pumping his arm and calling: ‘Left, right, left, right …’

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Harris under his breath.

  ‘That bloke ought to be in the army,’ said Enid.

  ‘Too old,’ said the conductress. ‘And too sozzled.’

  ‘I was on the Somme!’ shouted the drunk. ‘That was a real war, mate, lots getting killed, not like this nancying about.’

  Harris and Enid sat on the bench seats next to the platform. Enid took some coins from her handbag. ‘Two to Eastleigh,’ she said.

  ‘Going to the hop, are you?’ asked the conductress. ‘There’s a few upstairs that’s going. They’re all smoking up there. I feel like I’m going up into the clouds. I’m sure it don’t do you no good.’ She still had the pennies in her hand and she returned them to Enid. ‘I’m not charging a wounded soldier and his missus,’ she said. ‘That’s the least I can do.’

  ‘You took my soddin’ fare quick enough,’ bellowed the man in the front. He began to cough spectacularly, bent with the effort of it. ‘Listen to that phlegm,’ he challenged. ‘Poison gas, that is.’

  The conductress sniffed and smiled at them, revealing broken teeth. ‘Hope you enjoy the dance.’ Her wrinkles deepened. ‘He can’t dance like that, can he?’ she said, nodding down at Harris’s ankle and up at his crutches. ‘Not with that lump.’

  Harris said: ‘I’ll watch. I’m good at watching.’

  It was a US Air Force band in slinky blue uniforms. The leader was peering through rimless spectacles, trying to look like Benny Goodman. The band were popular locally, bringing a touch of transatlantic glamour to provincial people who had never been to America and believed they were unlikely ever to go. Some had never even visited London, a hundred miles distant. Their visions of the USA came from Hollywood films which packed the cinemas every night, and from the incursion of these smooth-talking strangers in their smooth uniforms.

  ‘Yanks,’ sneered Johnny Fallon who, because of his motorcycle and side-car, had reached the dance before Harris and Enid. ‘Useless.’

  Sportingly he bought Harris a beer and Enid a port and lemon. He stood close to Enid. ‘Why do you reckon they’re useless?’ Harris asked. Enid turned to a group of young, anticipatory women.

  Johnny said: ‘They done bugger all, ’ave they? Except talk and shag.’

  ‘They’ve not had much chance yet,’ pointed out Harris. ‘That’ll come soon enough. Like it will for the rest of us.’

  Johnny blew a raspberry
. ‘’Ave you seen the way the Yanks march? They did a parade through Southampton and, even though I’m no soldier, they was a bloody shambles. They slouch, not march. And they had some bloke like a clown at the front jangling bells. Bells, I ask you.’

  The big place was full by now. A mirrored glass ball spun from the ceiling. There were plenty of local girls, done up in their amateur best, buffed and brassièred, thick with make-up, heavy with scent and hope. The men were mostly Americans with blue and khaki tailored uniforms, glistening shoes, shiny hair and roving eyes. Some local men, civilians, eyed the US servicemen with a mixture of envy and scorn. There were British soldiers, sailors and airmen, some loutish, others sheepish, keeping to the region of the bar.

  The band, which had been playing ‘American Patrol’, now switched to ‘Twelfth Street Rag’ and at once the floor was flying with jitterbugging couples, the men whirling and flinging girls whose skirts flew to their waists. The local watchers edged forward. ‘Can you do that?’ Harris asked Johnny.

  ‘What? That bollocks? That ain’t dancing. It’s so the girls can flash their knicks.’

  Enid came from the cloakroom and purred: ‘Oh, what a nice lot of Yanks.’

  ‘Crawling with them,’ sniffed Johnny. Harris grinned and accepted a whisky at the same time as Enid had a ginger-beer shandy. Johnny had a wallet thick with notes.

  After the jitterbug, the rimless-spectacled band leader announced a waltz and, with hardly a glance at Harris, Johnny held out inviting arms to Enid. She was just about to enter them when Harris interpolated himself. ‘My dance with my wife, I think.’

  Enid said: ‘Ooooh.’ She helped Harris to stumble towards the music.

  ‘It’s no good getting upset with Johnny,’ she said when they were dancing on the spot, Harris merely pumping his plastered leg up and down. ‘He don’t mean any harm.’

  ‘I do,’ muttered Harris.

  She giggled. ‘My hero. Go on, kick him with your poorly foot.’

  He eased her to him and they snuggled into each other on the floor. The air was warm, stuffy, redolent with Southampton Woolworth’s perfume, and the music dreamy. Then a raw, arrogant American voice halted them: ‘No niggers. Get those niggers out o’ here.’

  The music faded, the dancers faltered, the band leader blinked, his baton dropped. A thick, uncouth-looking American jumped on to the dais, pushing him aside. The reflected light from the mirrored ball shone on the soldier’s cropped head. The band leader said: ‘Okay, okay,’ and hurriedly got down from the platform.

  A clutch of about twenty black soldiers was coming through the doors at the distant end of the room. They kept walking.

  ‘Let’s get out of the way,’ said Harris, pushing Enid to the side of the floor.

  She looked excited. ‘Is there going to be a fight?’

  ‘They haven’t come to play hopscotch.’

  They reached the bar, where the locals had gathered. Some who had been dancing were prudently making their way back, others were already heading for the exit.

  ‘I want to see!’ Enid was bouncing like a child. She swallowed a gin which wasn’t hers. ‘I’ve never seen a really big fight.’

  She wriggled between the watchers to the end of the bar, with Harris hobbling after her. Johnny, grinning, helped her on to the stool and she climbed, awkward in her tight red dress, on to the bar itself. There were already girls and men up there for a good view.

  The black soldiers had forced their way on to the vacated dance floor. The band were packing their instruments in panic. From the dais the raw-faced American was still bawling: ‘Here come the crows!’ and, as the black men advanced towards him, there was an instinctive rush of other white soldiers from the flanks. In a moment the floor was a mêlée of shouting, cursing men, black versus white, slugging it out. Above them the mirror ball revolved serenely.

  The drum-kit of the band was resoundingly overturned and the small, frightened drummer tipped on to his head as he attempted to save it. From just below the ceiling of the bar the excited English girls screamed even above the din, the local men waved their beer glasses and urged anybody on. Harris was still trying to get Enid back down to the floor. She was not listening. ‘Bugger it,’ he muttered and with a shrug picked up his drink.

  As though at a known signal, the mass fight on the dance floor suddenly ceased. The heavy white American, the one who had first shouted, moved to the centre of the polished boards, and a giant black soldier detached himself from the mob, and moved towards him. ‘Nigger,’ grunted the white man. He spat on the ground in front of the black man’s feet. ‘Nigger.’

  Silence held the room and the black soldier’s answer, although only in little more than conversational tone, was clear: ‘Come and get me, honky.’

  ‘They’re calling each other names!’ Enid squeaked.

  ‘Are you coming down from there?’ demanded Harris.

  ‘Not for five quid! I want to see this.’

  He leaned on the bar, peering through the legs of the people standing on it, and said: ‘A pint, please,’ to the barman who was going imperturbably about his business. He pulled it and handed it across saying: ‘Ninepence, please.’

  Pushing the money to him, Harris took a first sip and then turned the way the crowd were looking. Everything was suspense now, taut, no catcalls, no screams from the girls. The air was hung with smoke, beer, scent and sweat. He could see the heads of the black man and the white man as they moved around each other, the silvery light of the innocently circling ball on their hardened faces.

  Enid could take no more and suddenly shouted: ‘’It ’im, blackie!’ As if it were enough the two American soldiers began hitting out viciously, big men, unafraid, strong and well trained. They traded full punches. With each one the shuddering force seemed to jolt the room. The white man abruptly fell sideways, demolishing the drums again. The black man waited until he had regained his feet and then closed in again but was met by a ferocious head-butt that sent him staggering into the onlookers, breaking the human perimeter and the silence. Everyone was shouting, beer was spilt and fists were raised, but the central fight was not disturbed.

  ‘Not fair! Not fair!’ screeched Enid. ‘’Itting with ’eads. Not fair!’

  The animated spectators were swaying with the fight, moving like a formation dance. The two men were streaming blood – it was easier to see on the white man – but nevertheless they lunged into each other again, slugging it out unrelentingly.

  ‘Where’s the police?’ Harris quietly asked the barman.

  ‘Be a while yet.’ The man gave a sniff of experience.

  ‘Oooh,’ shouted Enid. ‘’E’s got a knife! Whitey’s got a knife.’ The other girls began to screech. The combatants were locked close with each other now. Blood was smeared across the polished floor. As they parted the black soldier fell like a ton on to his back, the knife thrust into his chest, its blade blinking in the light of the mirrored ball.

  There was a swift, shocked silence. It seemed to last for minutes. Eventually one of the civilian men said: ‘He’s stabbed him.’ It was almost a mutter. Then they realised. There came a huge collective shout and, as the appalled crowd fell back so the American soldiers rushed each other, fighting savagely.

  There was a gust of shouting and screaming from the spectators. Enid, still standing on the bar, was shrieking and pointing. Some of the women were trying to get down from the bar but Enid remained above the mayhem. Determinedly, Harris reached up and attempted to pull her from her place over the crowd.

  Then from the struggling pile of soldiers on the dance floor came a gunshot. It stunned the room to silence again. Then came another and two more. An oddly gentle cloud of blue smoke rose. There were more sudden cries and screams and the tumult restarted. Another shot sounded. Enid was screeching. Harris reached for her and caught hold of her leg. She fell off, almost head first, and he managed to catch her, her dress around her waist. Other girls were jumping and sliding off like a crew abandoning ship. Johnny
appeared through the chaos and said: ‘Time to go home.’

  ‘Good idea,’ grunted Harris gratefully. They each took one of the weeping Enid’s arms, and then legs, and hauled her out like a battering-ram. As they reached the door, so the US military police were pouring in, truncheons drawn, white helmets above glistening eyes.

  People were streaming out around them. From within the hall there were two more gunshots. ‘Some dance,’ said Harris.

  It was tipping with rain but nobody noticed. Johnny found his motorcycle and with the sobbing and coatless Enid bundled into the side-car and Harris, his leg stretched out before him, riding pillion and clutching Johnny’s waist, they skidded through the unlit soaking streets until they arrived at the front gate. They unrolled Enid from the side-car. She was whimpering. Harris and Johnny between them got her to the door. Harris said: ‘Thanks,’ and extended a conclusive hand to Johnny.

  The docker shook it. ‘That’s all right, mate. Good night out, don’t you reckon? If them Yanks fight the Jerries like they fight each other, there’ll be bugger all to worry about.’

  Chapter Sixteen

  Every evening now the light stayed a few minutes longer. London, despite its sorrows and its wounds, took on a springtime air. Bars and cinemas and dance-halls of the West End did their best business since the start of the war; the pavements were crowded early with uniformed men of many nationalities heading for what they wanted most – a good time. They were looking for drink and women and there was plenty of both. The official blackout time was not until nine thirty and there was a while for some lights to remain lit, those that had not fallen into utter disuse. Even though the final battle was still to come, there was a lightness of feeling, an uplift, brought about by the balm of the weather and the conviction that soon, perhaps in only a matter of weeks, peace would be back where it belonged.

  Miller walked through Hyde Park, passing the disused air-raid shelters, the clutter of military vehicles and materials, and the daffodils. Ducks quacked on the big circular water tanks built for the fire brigade in strategic places and sometimes young, sometimes pretty girls casually solicited for sex under the newly sprouting trees.