SHE WASN’T IN COVENTRY any more. Amos’s house was her home for now, if you wanted to look at it that way. Perhaps it would feel more like home once she’d been to this dance tonight, started living a bit more like she used to. Not that living totally like she used to was an option any more. Connie smoothed down her yellow dress and shook her head to stop the bad memories landing. She pushed open the door into the little back room and concentrated on the biggest difference between here and home: the wiry black-and-white dog splayed out in front of the fire. Connie had never lived with an animal before and was surprised every day by that jolt of happiness when Bess nudged her rough nose under Connie’s hand. She found herself wanting to say things to the dog that she couldn’t say aloud to anyone in case she crumpled, and it made her pleased and terrified all at once.
Amos was shrunken into that wingback chair of his, head cocked to one side to catch the wireless despite it being up so loud that Frank and Joyce must be able to hear it from their side of the wall too. Connie sighed, sympathy for Amos inflating her. He might not say much, but he didn’t miss a bulletin. He spent a lot of time poring over a very crumpled envelope, apparently always in his pocket.
‘Billy. His only son,’ Joyce had said one Saturday afternoon when she’d come over to show Connie how to pluck a chicken (Joyce had killed it herself! She’d shot right up in Connie’s estimation for such daredevilry).
In a flash Connie had got why Amos wasn’t one for gabbing on. Even after all these years of war, it only hit hard when it came for your family.
It wasn’t cold out, but Connie pulled her cardigan closer over her dress as she skirted the shadow-filled garden to get to the road down to Parkend and Hetty. It went on for miles, that garden; you’d fit another row of houses at least into that garden if this were Coventry. At the end, where there should be brick walls backing on to terraces behind, fuzzy green stone walls were locked in ownership battles with trees. All these trees! And Frank was worrying about getting down enough to fill some daft Ministry of Supply numbers. Frank felt about these trees the way Amos felt about his son; he was sending them off to a war when all he wanted to do was keep them safe.
There was the path. Wouldn’t be long now. A gin and the music would perk her up.
This dance might yet be worth the trouble of sprucing herself up. The Yank looked a bit surprised at being asked to dance, but he recovered quickly enough. He was a pretty slick mover, too. Connie wanted to put her head back and howl at the sheer joyous rightness of it, but he’d probably do a runner. She ducked and twisted, smiling, staying at arm’s length, the tiredness shucking off with every swoop, every twirl.
A slow number came on – who knew you could play slowly on seven accordions? – and the Yankee moved in closer, pulling her towards him.
No.
The panic of the bombs was upon Connie again without warning, sending sparks into her speech.
She pushed away and the GI took a step back, hands outstretched. ‘Hey, no offence meant.’
She smelled a trace of his Lucky Strikes and swallowed, her mouth slick and watery.
She needed to get out.
‘Sorry … sorry …’ She hustled her way to the door.
‘Watch it, you!’ Connie didn’t stop to see who was yelling like that, or why.
That tree with the big splayed leaves, opposite the hall, would have to do. Connie braced herself against its trunk and heaved up all the jolted memories along with her dinner. Nobody was queuing outside now, thank heavens, and even George Thomas’s accordions were muted from this distance. She stood gingerly upright and leaned against the tree, backhanding away tears.
She’d been so excited about coming to the dance that she hadn’t bargained for the way the music would slice right through the shell she’d been forming. Connie leaned over the branch and retched again, speckling the shadowy grey-green of the lichen with vomit. And the Yank’s accent, as he had got up close, it had been too much. The tears were back, streaming this time. Nothing to do but to let them out.
If only she could go back and change it all, she’d be dead – and that’d be easier than this. Easier than toughing it out and carrying on alone. If she could only will the bombers back. Connie looked up into the sky, but all she saw were the tops of the tree laced with soundless stars.
There hadn’t been any cloud cover that night either.
The Coventry doormen are old hands at ramming them all through at double speed before their light and laughter betrays them. There’s barely room to hop on the dance floor. It’s heaving, joyous. Connie, spruced up in the bright yellow dress and on her second glass of gin and water, has already lost the girls from the factory in the crush of it all. What does it matter, though? The band, some local outfit with bad teeth and good tunes, is playing the ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ with as much spirit as Captain Glenn Miller himself, and all around couples are whooping and swooping. The music ripples through Connie and she laughs. Mam was expecting her home by teatime. She’s supposed to be minding the littluns whilst Mam goes to the bingo to win the family fortune and Dad slopes off to the workingmen’s club to drink it. But then Cass, working beside her on the munitions belt, started on about the dance.
‘It’s your Friday night too, you know; and God knows we’ve worked for it this week. I feel like we must have built twenty new tanks between us.’ Cass has a point; they’ve worked like the devil was at their backs this week. To stay on top of their production targets the munitions factory has had them doing overtime whether they want it or not, the whole line of them.
‘Aw; I dunno; I’m all done in and I’ve got nowt to wear.’
‘What d’you think those dresses hanging up in the ladies’ are for? For times like these, that’s what.’ Cass grabs her arm and pulls her across towards the lavs, grinning that grin that means mischief is afoot. ‘You don’t really want to go home, be honest. You want to come and have a laugh with us.’
Cass is right; she does want some fun. So Connie borrows a dress from the spares in the lav, pinches her cheeks for the appearance of rouge and paints on her favourite red smile. Anything’s possible.
And here she is, in the heat and the dark of the dance hall, ready.
‘Looks like you’ve got it all figured out, lady.’ Warm hands wrap themselves around Connie’s waist and a lick of flame heats her thighs and her belly. She smiles at the familiar voice, arches and hooks one arm easily around Don’s neck, brushing his cheek. Her forearm tingles at its smoothness. He must spend hours in front of the mirror making sure he hasn’t missed a patch.
‘Wondered if I’d see you here tonight,’ she says, and twirls to face him as if they’re already dancing.
‘Is that right?’ Don bends down, kisses her full on the mouth with beery lips. ‘Well, it’s your lucky day, lady.’ He’s a cocky sod; she fell straight for it the first time they danced. And he doesn’t care that she matches it. Most blokes expect her to mind her P’s and Q’s, but this Yank seems entertained by her outspokenness. She’d ribbed him when he’d told her his name that first time they met in this very dance hall: ‘Don Wayne? Where’s your horse, cowboy?’ but secretly she’s glad of a way to remember it. And she’s glad to see him, too. He reminds her that there’s more to life than Coventry and the factory, that she can make it out of here and she’s right to dream big.
Connie turns into Don, her body still swaying to the music. She can picture Mam sucking air through her teeth, muttering ‘fast’. As if she herself hadn’t been three months gone with Connie when she and Dad had got hitched! And there’s a war on. Life is fast in wartime, especially after those early years when the bombs were pelting down reminders every night. ‘Fancy showing me how it’s done?’
‘Are you talking about the jive?’ Don presses against her in a way that’s got nothing to do with the dance move. Won’t catch her complaining, though. His scrubbed soapiness twists through the smoke and clears her mind of anything but him.
‘Let’s start on the dance floor.’ She flashes him a smile. And then they’ll see. Whenever Connie meets up with Don it’s as if he switches on ninety hidden flashlights all at once. She glows so strongly the ARP wardens’ll be over soon to throw a bucket of water over her. It isn’t only what she can feel under his uniform, though that doesn’t harm. It’s that way of talking he has, like someone out of the pictures. It gives her goosebumps. Like the real John Wayne himself coming out of the screen and showing her she could get out, have a different life. And get out she will. Connie isn’t about to beg Don to take her back to America, but he’s made her see that another life is possible. Ever since she’s been knee-high to a grasshopper, no bigger than their Barbara really, Connie’s had an itch that there must be more to life than their street and the factory. She hasn’t got any idea what form that takes or how to get there, but she knows she needs to do it. And now, with the war moving people around all the time, she’s started to formulate a plan. She’ll get to London and take it from there. The big city will sort her out. Just as soon as she’s saved enough, she’s off.
Connie pushes against Don on the dance floor, his sweat salty on her lips. The waves of the jives throw them apart and her hips and belly scream their disapproval. The music swoons her back towards him and she laughs, Don laughing back. This war won’t last forever; perhaps after London she can get out to America, find a job with a bit of glamour, jive like this all the time. Who knows, they might take her for a film star with her accent: the Yanks never tire of telling her she speaks ‘cute’. Why not? She scrubs up all right and it’s the Land of Possibilities, that’s what they’re always telling her.
The band stops singing about trains and segues into ‘White Cliffs of Dover’. Don grabs Connie’s hand, pulls her away from the dance floor and out through a side door. She curls into him, breathless and laughing, as he steers her further down the alley into a doorway. Frost crisps the empty fag packets littering the alley; she shrugs closer into Don.
‘Here.’ A couple of steps lead down away from the street.
‘Down there? It’ll be full of cats and pee, and cold enough to freeze the brass balls off a monkey.’ She knows this city better than to get all soppy about backstreets, but she’s desperate for him really, needs that body back up close against hers, and here is as good as anywhere. Won’t be the first time she’s stooped down some alley for a quick knee-trembler.
Don laughs again, that bellow of his that’s bigger than any she’d known before. ‘You’re such a romantic. C’mere.’ He pulls again, insistent, not buying the innocent act for a second.
What the hell? You only live once. This week has been all about other people – her messed-up shifts, the buses home all over the shop, even Mam wanting her home for more endless looking after the littluns. But this moment, right here, this is about her, about living a bit, about a yellow dress on a dank grey night and doing something that feels good because she knows it’s wrong. Those Jerries can’t take away all her fun even now they’ve started bombing London again. She’ll show ’em. She follows Don down the steps, giggling. ‘Shh!’ But he’s laughing too. The music is in them still and they sway together, her arms up around his neck. Her fingers push into his hair, finding him as he finds her; her breath becomes harder and more insistent as Don’s hands move down her body, palm away her yellow skirt and trace their way up the top of her stockings. Her own hands trace their way up his thighs, explore. There’s nothing now, only this.
From above, the sky splits with the laments of the siren. The door they’ve escaped through fills with shouts, laughs; the warmth of bodies hitting the night and racing to carry on Friday night. She should pull away; they should head for somewhere warmer, carry on the party. But the voice in her head is coming from far, far away; has nothing to do with this Connie right here, right now, her hips forward, legs curving around Don’s, beyond caring about cold or propriety. Every part of him pulses in her. The air is thickening, with the siren that won’t stop, with the frantic crossing of the searchlights. The urgency of the city mingles with his taste on her tongue. Don’s fingers are separating her; her hands, her cheeks, her legs are slippery with need. Her thoughts are panting, her body racing, her mind far away and here, here, here.
She stayed there with Don, collapsed onto him, concertinaed, until dawn on the back steps of the dance hall that sloped down into the alley, swigging something smoky and bitter from a hip flask he produced and chain-smoking those Yankee ciggies until her throat was sore and her eyes were as gravelly as when the iron filings spangled the factory. She didn’t want that evening to end, which goes to show what she knew. Got your wish in a way, didn’t you, eh?
When a fox shows its snout down the steps, a scraggy vixen nosing for scraps to take back to its mangy cubs, Connie yawns, stretching along the length of Don, and stands up. Her breath billows out, warm against the early morning, and she laughs, a dragon ready to take on any comers. Just as well.
‘Time to get home and see what damage faces me.’ He grabs her fingers, languid, greedy, but the oozing need has turned gritty in the grainy morning light and she shakes her head. ‘It’ll be ugly but I can face it. Better to get it over with now.’ She blows him a kiss full of sunshine despite the proper nip in the air and clambers up the steps, no looking back, beaming as she marches forwards. No ties means no ties. And no shame means no shame.
She struts to the bus stop, despite the pinching of her dancing shoes and the chill in her bones now she’s not all snuggled up beside Don. Should she circle back to the factory and collect her lace-ups? No, best get home and get it over with. Mam will read her the riot act, no doubt, but she’ll stand there and take it. Connie has promised she’ll always try and get word home if she’s staying out, especially with all the raids and sirens. But last night she’d known Mam would be mardy that she wasn’t coming home like she’d promised, so she’d ‘forgotten’. There’ll be hell to pay when she gets in, and she probably won’t get any kip for ages, neither. Worth it, though. Her smile widens.
The conductor looks at her oddly when she steps on, hands over the fare and asks for Hillview Road. Is it that obvious? Is there some pitch to her voice that sings see what I’ve done, see what I’ve done? Can he smell it on her, that mingling of sex and dare? Her joy at his disapproval bubbles up into a beam. But the conductor simply shakes his head. What is that look, anyway? He isn’t having a go, isn’t criticising. She looks at him again as she jams her purse back into her bag. It’s pity.
Pity!
Connie bridles. Judging is one thing, but to feel sorry for her after the night she’s just tasted and smelled and danced in? He’s off his rocker. She strides to the nearest seat and plonks her handbag beside her on the bench, smooths her coat over her borrowed yellow dress as the bus pulls away from the kerb, the vibrations low beneath her thighs. It’s her lucky dress now so she’ll hang on to it, ‘forget’ to take it back to the factory. The girls understand about lucky dresses; nobody’ll mind. Her coat’s dusty where she’d balled it up for a pillow on the steps last night, a bit damp too maybe, but nothing worse than you see after a night in the shelters.
Already she’s scheming which dance Don might next show up to, whether it would be too bold to persuade Cass to come up with her to one of the hops held near the US base at Grafton Underwood. Her body aches with the absence of him. More than that – as if that’s not enough! – she feels better when she’s with Don. The very fact he made it all the way over to England shows her that her path to America isn’t just a pipe dream. All she needs to do is get to London. And from there the world’s her oyster.
Everything in life is improved by time fooling around with Don. Today she’s unbeatable.
She rummages in her bag for her lipstick. Warpaint’s what she needs now. She’d better get ready; there’s going to be a doozy of a battle once she gets home.
The conductor taps her on the shoulder. She peers up at him. He’s still got that strange look on his face.
‘This is your stop, miss.’
She’s been so wrapped up in thoughts of Don that she hasn’t paid the blindest bit of attention. And she still hasn’t found that lipstick. Have to deal with Mam barefaced, then. Connie claps the bag shut and marches down to the end of the bus.
What the hell’s happened here?
Dust is everywhere, dust and freezing damp and the clanking of shovels. But Hillview Road is no more.