The outing that had been talked about came to fruition. The pre-war type of works’ outing to the seaside was out of the question. Charabanc hire was restricted, and many seaside towns in the south were badly bombed, their beaches inaccessible because of mines and barbed-wire or travel restrictions. But once Georgia had suggested that they should all go for a day out in London, there was nowhere else they wanted to go.
Dolly was the only woman in the Dinner Kitchen who had a man to answer to for her movements.
‘You must all be daft to go up there,’ was Sam Partridge’s opinion.
‘It’s what we need just now, to be a bit daft,’ Dolly snapped. ‘There’s still a bit of life going on up there, not dead like this place. We shall have our lunch, go to a matinée and be back home by bedtime, which isn’t any longer than you’re gone when it’s some Labour Party rally.’
‘There hasn’t been a rally since the war. But there, if Dolly Partridge has made up her mind to go traipsing off for a day, then Dolly Partridge will go. It’s no good me saying anything these days. And what about Marie?’
‘And what about Marie? Paula’s going to look after Bonnie same as she always do.’
Paula now lived with Marie, an arrangement that worked very well for both of them. Marie saw to the house chores in the morning and got Bonnie off to school, and Paula, who had an early shift job at an engineering works, did the shopping and fetched Bonnie from school.
‘Charlie’s going to be upset.’
‘And just why, may I ask? And in any case, who’s going to upset Charlie by opening their big mouths about it? There isn’t anything wrong with Marie having a bit of fun. I suppose you think Charlie never goes out to a pub or to pictures.’
‘It’s different for him. And women on their own going round London isn’t nothing like going for a pint. Any case, he’s away from home.’
‘And living in lodgings in the lap of luxury. And being a man I suppose entitles him to gad about, but Marie mustn’t even have a day out with her workmates. To hear you talk, anybody’d think we was going to Brighton for a fortnight.’
‘It’s no use talking to you these days. You got an answer for everything.’
‘No, I haven’t, but I’m trying to find one.’
All of the women who worked in the old Chapel Hall buildings, the Restaurant staff, the WVS and Red Cross storekeepers, went by train to London. Even though they sometimes went shopping in the rubbled cities of Southampton and Portsmouth, they were shocked at the flattened area of London, but astonished to find that some of the boarded-up shops were selling luxuries that never seemed to reach them in Markham. Peering through the slits in some blanked-out shop windows they saw synthetic cream cakes or fancy coloured shoes, and one or two tobacco kiosks had a few real packs of cigarettes on display.
Astonishment. ‘The tobacconist says that anybody can buy those fags – Players or Craven A, ten per customer.’
‘Why don’t we ever see stuff like that?’
Trading furtively on the pavements were men with suitcases full of branded lipsticks, or stockings, or ear-rings, talcum powder, mascara, clockwork toys or tins of salmon or ham with strange foreign labels. Compared to Markham, London was an Aladdin’s cave of goods in short supply.
‘Oh bliss, two packets of hairgrips,’ said Georgia, having secured as well cigarettes, a cream spongecake, a Max Factor lipstick and pair of silk stockings. ‘If we went home without doing anything else, I should say I’d had a day to remember.’
Marie had found a velvet snood with flowers for Paula and some plimsolls, with white soles instead of the ugly wartime black or orange, for Bonnie.
Ursula bought three Chandler books with pre-war bindings and made the girls giggle at her delight. ‘Look at the margins, oh, and the white paper, look, isn’t that lovely? I can hardly bear reading the economy editions.’ Hugging the Chandlers, she felt happy anticipating Niall’s face when he saw the books and happy to see her girls who worked so hard and so well together giggling like schoolgirls. Over cups of Oxo which was all the coffee-shop proprietor could offer that morning, Ursula announced, ‘I’ve got a surprise, ladies. A friend of mine has booked lunch for us. And tickets for the matinée should be waiting there for us to collect.’
‘Where?’ they wanted to know.
‘Wait and see.’
‘Lyons’ Corner House, I bet. You can still get real sausages with meat at Lyons’.’
‘Wait and see.’
Before lunch they went to look at Buckingham Palace, all dull and sandbagged, and at Westminster Abbey, mostly because they felt that that was part of going to London, travelling by underground, momentarily subdued at the sight of the provisions that had been made for Londoners to sleep there during the blitz.
They had expected to eat at a British restaurant such as the one in which they worked, and had only wished for Lyons’ Corner House. But it was to the Café Royal that Ursula led them. There, Niall O’Neill had not only arranged things, but had settled the bill in advance.
‘Oh my God,’ said Pammy for them all. ‘It’s like stepping into heaven.’
There is no saying what any of the usual clientele thought of the troupe of happy women with shopping bags who, having lost their initial awe of finding themselves amidst such splendour, chattered and laughed their way through a three-course meal and four bottles of wine between them.
‘This is chicken,’ hissed Pammy, ‘all of it, real chicken, not even out of a tin.’
‘See what it says on the menu?’ Cynth said. ‘Customers may be served only three courses.’
‘And not on coupons either,’ Dolly said. ‘Sam’s always on about how you don’t need coupons if you can afford to live in posh hotels, but I never believed him. Fancy being able to live like this every day.’
They ate canned fruit salad with ice-cream – a pudding so exotic and rare in wartime that they had forgotten its taste – and cheese and biscuits.
‘Look at all this cheese, it’s a week’s ration. I feel that guilty eating it all. I feel I ought to be taking it home,’ said Marie.
‘Don’t let your guilt spoil your enjoyment. You’ve all earned it,’ said Ursula.
They wondered how it was that places like this could get hold of proper coffee when whole families were lucky to get a bottle of Camp a month, but savoured every last dreg and sugar lump, urging one another to ‘go on, have it whilst you’ve got the chance.’
Ursula, Eve and Georgia were the only ones who had ever been to a London theatre. The girls thought it wonderful and gorgeous; Ursula, keeping her thoughts to herself, saw it grim and gaunt and seedy compared to pre-war. But then the music started up and the curtains swung back on the opening of The Dancing Years and for a couple of hours there was light and respite from the grim times.
With the money left in the kitty, they voted to go to a tea dance. A group of laughing, unescorted women, out for a bit of fun, was exactly what the surplus of uniformed men hanging around the dance-hall needed. Even Dolly danced.
‘I haven’t done that for donkey’s years.’ She looked ten years younger and quite radiant when a sergeant in the REMEs twice asked her to dance. The third time she saw a khaki figure bending over her shoulder, she thought that it must be him.
‘Harry! Oh look, Ursula, it’s my Harry!’ She leapt up and hugged him.
‘Mum. What are you doing here? I was up on the balcony having a drink and I couldn’t believe my eyes. My Ma, with a soldier, and swinging round the floor like a twenty-year-old.’ Dolly hastily explained how they both came to meet in such an unlikely place. Marie came back to the table, kissed him and was quite proud to be seen doing it. But not as proud as Dolly. ‘Everybody, this is Harry, my youngest son. Ursula has heard all about you… too much I expect. You know Pammy, don’t you, and Cynth you went to school with.’
‘And I know Mrs Kennedy.’ He smiled directly into Georgia’s eyes – as he had all the other women’s. To Eve, ‘I know who you are all right, Markham’s own deb.’
Harry was charming to all of them. The arduous training programmes he had undergone had broadened and weathered him. He wore three stripes and had the dark red beret of the Paratroop regiment rolled up and buttoned down on his shoulder. Because of his good bone structure, his looks had not been spoiled by the cropped service style – he was an extremely handsome soldier. ‘There can’t be a town in the kingdom that can boast such a bunch of pretty women.’ His eyes took in all the women, then flicked from Georgia to Eve and back to Georgia again. ‘Save a dance for me, Mrs Kennedy – after my Ma’s had one with me.’
As soon as they were on the dance floor, holding Georgia close, he said, ‘Can I call and see you next time I’m on leave?’
‘Well, you don’t let the grass grow.’
‘With a girl like you? It’s far too chancy to waste time. I was watching you from up there. You’ve changed.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘I’ve seen you about since you were a kid. You’re different from the rest… I’m a great woman watcher.’
Georgia pulled a face. ‘Not only “watcher” from the girls’ gossip.’
‘Markham’s premier industry, gossip. I’d love to take you out. Please, please. Only to go to the pictures if you like.’ Urgently.
Georgia felt arousal and excitement growing. She suspected that he was, like Nick, that rare combination: an intelligent and physically attractive man who did not need to boost his self-esteem by behaving like a pouter pigeon. She could tell that he was weighing her up at the same time as his eyes looked uncompromisingly into hers.
‘We have to grab every moment that’s given to us these days. Please say you will. Come dancing with me. You’re a wonderful dancer.’
And with the thrill of recklessness that was clearly signalled to him, she said, ‘All right, why not?’
Later, after an interval when he danced with Marie, with his sensuality pouring over her, he whispered to Eve as they quickstepped, ‘I wish I could tell you what is racing through my mind.’
Relaxed in the company of the women she worked with, and having enjoyed herself for the first time in months, Eve said archly, ‘Very well, soldier, I grant your wish.’
‘You might be shocked.’
‘Shocked? When I work with them?’ Affectionately she indicated the five kitchen girls grouped round some American soldiers, and added, ‘And you know who my father is; I’m not easily shocked.’
Harry raised his eyebrows, surprised that the icy-looking maiden was so pert. Lord, he would have to play this one carefully. The redheaded princess who looked so hot for a man that he felt sure that he would have no problem there, and the blonde ice-maiden who he had always assumed was toffee-nosed and wouldn’t be much fun and turned out to be a bundle of surprises. And both on his home patch.
‘I’m pondering whether you’re like your clever father as well as your beautiful mother?’
‘You would need to know me better to answer that. I rather think that I’m like myself.’
‘A man in your life?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you going to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘Good.’
He twirled her away and she followed expertly. He gathered her back again and pressed her close in the exotic light flickering from the rotating mirrored ball.
‘You’re a flirt, miss.’
She laughed, showing her teeth. ‘I granted you the wish to say what you were thinking, was that it?’
‘No. I was thinking that I should like to go to bed with you. Are you shocked?’ But he knew that she was not. Neither was she a virgin, she was too sure of herself for that. Perhaps she was a chip off the old block.
‘I would guess that most of the men in this room might say the same,’ she said. ‘Men are always ready for bed, and I’ve been told that I have a bedable look about me.’
‘Must have been a discerning man to describe an ice-maiden as bedable.’
As Georgia had, so did Eve respond with uncharacteristic flirtatiousness. Placing a warm palm on his cheek said, ‘Feel. Warm-blooded.’
Moving his own warm hand round from the small of her back to her left breast. ‘But not cold-hearted. I have a spot of leave coming up.’
‘Have you now?’
‘Can I meet you?’
‘In Markham? Oh, the gossip, the gossip.’
‘I have a short course to do on the station at Nether Wallop. Do you ever go to Salisbury?’
‘I do go to Salisbury sometimes.’
‘And what about the regular man in your life?’
For a moment her face straightened and he thought that he had made a wrong move, but he needed to make it clear that he was offering nothing more serious than a jolly roll in the hay.
‘He has been gone a long time.’ Direct as he, she made her position clear. ‘I’ll be waiting for him when he gets back. But I wasn’t designed for a nunnery.’
Good God, thought Harry Partridge. What is happening to the girls of Markham, is the shortage of men so bad that ice-maidens are melting in their own heat?
There was something in what he said. The kitchen girls were playing enchantresses to Yankee soldiers as blatantly as Eve and Georgia flirted with Harry Partridge. There had been bravado in choosing London for their one day of luxury in the midst of daily meagre life in Markham. That, coupled with the romance of the Dancing Years show and being surrounded by so much rubble and charred timber, created a sense of being on the edge of danger which they found stimulating and which made them feel reckless.
As they were leaving, Georgia remembered her bags with the precious stockings and cake, and hurried back to retrieve them from the balcony table where she had left them.
The band was playing ‘La Compasita’, which was the music Hugh had played over and over when he was teaching her to dance, and momentarily she was drawn back to six years ago. She picked up her bags and for a moment idly gazed down on the scene below as her mind drifted back to the first months of her marriage, when life had been full of everything a girl expected of marriage, before ennui, before disillusionment, before she found herself wanting more from life and from men than Hugh could give her. A life where Georgia Kennedy amounted to something.
In the bedimmed, smoky light, the revolving mirrored ball sprinkled glitter on the couples moving in and out of the stylized love-making poses of the Tango.
Her eye was drawn to a couple skimming across the floor making a path through other dancers by the authority of their skill. Because of his stature and the way he danced, the man reminded Georgia very much of Hugh. The girl, dancing well but without the stiff and dedicated seriousness that Hugh used to demand, had long raven hair that she flicked like a true Latin as she and her partner turned. Arms stretched, they danced close. The ballroom was crammed with dancing couples, yet it was these two who held her attention.
The music reached a climax and the dance was over. The floor began to clear. Georgia’s couple, before they walked off, kissed briefly but quite passionately, each holding the other fast about the neck, then pulling apart but holding one another’s gaze as the lights went up. Georgia had a pang of envy that she had no man to be so totally absorbed in her. Talking close, intimate, smiling and oblivious to what was going on around them, arms about one another, they walked directly to a table below where Georgia stood.
Now she saw them clearly as, cupping his ears in her hands, the girl drew him until he was only a fraction away from her face, then briefly ran her tongue along his lips. It was as intimate a gesture as Georgia had ever seen in public. The woman was about her own age and wore WRNS officer uniform. The man was Hugh.
Downstairs, she found the group waiting for her whilst watching the dancing. Only Dolly, searching to get a last glimpse of Harry before she left, had seen what Georgia had seen; only Dolly had seen Georgia watching the dancers and the act of intimacy. Dolly recognized Hugh Kennedy.
‘Come on, girls,’ she said as Georgia appeared, ‘quick march, or we shall miss our train.’