After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

It was a relief to be dismissed. To be taken up another flight of stairs and down a corridor to a set of rooms: dressing room, sitting room, bathroom and bedroom where her suitcase had already been set down at the foot of the bed. The bedroom was painted a soft, smudgy indigo: a blue room for a blue boy. There were a few framed pen and ink sketches on the walls, books about art on the shelves, but Jane was more interested in digging her own iPad out of her bag, switching it on and typing ‘Rose Beaumont Kensington’ into Google.

  Rose pointedly ignored Leo after Jane left the room. She still gave excellent cold shoulder.

  He’d expected that. Instead he talked to George about the latest gossip from the V&A and Connie about garden design.

  Every now and again, he’d catch Rose’s eye and she’d shoot him a pained look, then turn to Elaine or Gudrun, who were seated nearest to her.

  It reminded him of being a very small boy and Rose descending on Durham a couple of times a year. She’d roar up in her scarlet MG with pretty parcels tied with ribbons for Linda, his mother, whisky for his father, and big boxes of Lego, which she’d thrust at Leo then ignore him.

  That suited Leo fine because he hated Great-Aunt Rose. His mother spent the week before one of Rose’s visits telling him to ‘mind your Ps and Qs and only speak when you’re spoken to’. He wasn’t allowed to eat with the grown-ups either but was stuck in the kitchen with his younger brother, Alistair, who was just a baby while Leo was a big boy of three, then four, then five. Still Rose greeted him with a look of mild distaste, as if she knew that he hadn’t washed his hands even though he’d promised his mother he had.

  Then, Rose had come to visit, just after Leo’s fifth birthday. He’d stood in the hall, ready to be presented to her like she was the Queen, and with the film that he’d just seen fresh in his mind and Rose sweeping in with that streak of white in her brown hair, he’d blurted out, ‘Great-Aunt Rose, you look just like Cruella de Vil.’

  There’d been a terrible silence. His mother had given him a Look, which promised no TV for at least a week, his father had started apologising profusely, ‘Sorry, Rose. Never thinks before he opens his mouth,’ and Rose had stared down at Leo, who’d stared back at her because she really did look like a cartoon villainess. Then Rose had laughed. Properly laughed, a belly-deep chuckle.

  ‘Do I really?’

  Leo had nodded.

  Then she’d tousled his hair and squatted down. ‘Do you want to know a secret?’

  He’d nodded again.

  ‘I’d much rather you call me Cruella than Great-Aunt Rose. It makes me feel very, very old.’

  ‘You’re not that old.’ His mother had sucked in a breath but Rose had laughed again.

  They became firm friends after that. Her next visit, she bought him a cuddly Dalmatian from Hamleys and he’d drawn her as Cruella. ‘You’d never think he was only five,’ Rose had said to Linda, who’d beamed proudly. Linda’s proud smiles were usually reserved for Alistair when he walked a few steps without falling over or managed to navigate a spoon to his mouth without spilling anything – all things that Leo could already do.

  After that, parcels would arrive regularly from Rose full of felt-tips and pencils in more colours than Leo had names for. Even better than the parcels were the endless, magical summers at Rose’s house in Lullington Bay, Sussex. It was where he learned how to paint as he tried to capture the pink and orange glory of the evening skies and the way the sea would shimmer in the sun.

  There wasn’t any discussion about whether he should train to be a doctor like his father and both his grandfathers before him. Rose had decided that he’d do his Art Foundation at the Chelsea School of Art and Design and his path was set. His future mapped out. Not many eighteen-year-old boys would have wanted to go and live with a great-aunt in her early seventies but Rose had never seemed like an old woman to him. She’d been his mentor, confidante, friend. But before that, she’d ignored him.

  Now, as Leo sat at the other end of the room, frozen out, he wondered what it would take, what he had to do, before he and Rose could become friends again.

  10

  January 1944

  Rose couldn’t believe that she’d been in London for four whole months.

  It seemed much longer, and yet in other ways it seemed like no time at all. Rose felt older, but in the mirror she still looked annoyingly girlish.

  Christmas had come and gone with no treats from Durham. Instead Mother had sent her a pair of Father’s worn-thin pyjamas and suggested she make a summer skirt with them and Shirley some stockinette so Rose could replace the gussets in her knickers. It was pretty shoddy when Rose had sent them a big box of chocolates and several packs of cigarettes.

  But it had still been a magical Christmas. Even though Phyllis had had to work in the morning and Sylvia had spent Christmas Eve night at her parents’ house in Hoxton. Rose had slept in until a scarcely believable nine-thirty, then woken up to see Maggie, who’d been granted the day off from the BBC Overseas Service, perched on the windowsill in the lounge smoking. She’d looked so sad, even though it was Christmas. Then Rose had remembered that Maggie was an émigré and that one had to make allowances.

  ‘Are you missing your family very much?’ she’d asked and Maggie had turned to her and smiled. It wasn’t a very happy smile.

  ‘Maybe. Though missing them doesn’t do much good,’ she’d said, then she’d smiled properly and said that she had a couple of ounces of coffee and Rose had some slightly stale doughnuts that she’d stuffed into her handbag the night before at Rainbow Corner, which they’d feasted on as they huddled round the gas fire. Then Sylvia had arrived home with a tin of hot chocolate and four rashers of bacon ‘courtesy of Henry and Edna Crapper who send their love and best wishes’ followed by Phyllis who’d received a huge parcel from her family estate. There’d been a precious, tart pineapple from the greenhouse, plum cake, elderflower wine, and a chicken that Maggie had managed to cook on the Baby Belling.

  They’d got quite merry on the elderflower wine and Rose had organised a game of charades, though Maggie complained bitterly that English wasn’t her first language and the others had an unfair advantage. Then, bundled up and reeling from the sudden shock of a bitter December evening after being so cosy indoors, they’d hurried to Rainbow Corner to dance the night away, and so Rose’s first Christmas in London had been rather wonderful in the end.

  But then most things in London were wonderful. Rose had her girls and she had her evenings at Rainbow Corner and even if they were experiencing what the papers called the Little Blitz – the Luftwaffe redoubling its efforts and dropping bombs every night – and the weather was cold and foggy, Rose would still much rather be in London than anywhere else.

  The days were an endless drudge of washing-up and reprimands from Mrs Fisher but the nights were full of endless possibilities. Like the night halfway through January when Rose had plans to meet Sylvia and some of the other hostesses at the Paramount after her shift at Rainbow Corner ended. She was in the cloakroom putting on her coat and wondering if the Canadian airman she’d met the other night might be there, when her friend Pippa let her in on a little secret. The chippy round the corner (that was what all the girls called it, even the frightfully grand ones) had got fish in. ‘You’d better hurry,’ Pippa warned. ‘The queue was out of the door when I walked past.’

  Rose fairly skipped across the lobby and barrelled out of the door straight into a gang of GIs.

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ Rose reached down to pick up a cap that one of them had dropped, but the GI was already crouching down too and she banged her elbow into the side of his Brilliantined head. ‘Gosh! Sorry again.’

  ‘Never been knocked off my feet by such a knockout,’ one of them said. ‘Can’t tempt you to come back in and dance with a poor old fella who could be dead this time next week?’

  That plea, which she’d now heard countless times over the last few months, left Rose unmoved. She shook her head, smiled sadly but didn’t feel the te
ensiest bit guilty. ‘I’d love to, but if I don’t get home soon, they’ll call out a search party.’

  No man wanted to know that he was second best to fish and chips wrapped in yesterday’s newspaper. ‘Just one dance!’

  They were all gazing at Rose like she’d just stepped down from the screen at the Empire in Leicester Square. ‘There are lots of lovely girls inside who’d be more than happy to dance with you,’ she said and turned away reluctantly, even as one of them took hold of her arm and tried to kiss her hand. ‘I really do have to go.’

  Rose backed away with a rueful smile, secretly pleased at how disconsolate they looked because they hadn’t been able to beg a dance from her. It would all have been too perfect if she hadn’t forgotten about the step and would have fallen if two hands hadn’t gripped her elbows to steady her.

  ‘Careful there, darling, you don’t want to break that pretty little neck,’ said a pleasantly deep voice in her ear, which sounded familiar. Maybe a little like James Stewart. Some of the other girls said that he came to Rainbow Corner when he was in London.

  Rose turned her head and her eyes widened, mouth open on a silent gasp. ‘Oh. It’s you !’

  ‘Oh! It’s you . How you doing, kid?’ It was absolutely not Jimmy Stewart, but Danny whatever-his-surname-was, the hateful GI she’d met on her first night in London, with his knowing grin and that way of looking at Rose as if she was no better than she ought to be.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Rose said thinly. ‘And you’re well?’

  ‘I’m not dead, so I guess I’m peachy,’ he said. Now Rose remembered he was the type of person who always had to have a smart answer for everything. She was also remembering that he was quite handsome, if one liked dark men, which generally she didn’t. ‘You’re a regular at the Rainbow now? Didn’t I warn you about hanging around in places like this?’

  Rose liked to think there was a look of icy disdain on her face. ‘I’m an American Red Cross volunteer. You can ask at the reception desk if you don’t believe me!’

  ‘I’d forgotten how uppity you were —’

  ‘I am not uppity —’

  ‘But I hadn’t forgotten how beautiful you are.’

  She suspected he was laughing at her again, but he was quite still as he stood there, head cocked to one side as he stared at her quite brazenly as if her beauty was for him and him alone.

  ‘Well, I hadn’t forgotten how rude you are,’ Rose said flatly. She was determined to squash down that little frisson of delight because he’d said she was beautiful. ‘I’m sure you don’t even remember my name. That entire night you just called me “kid” in a superior voice.’

  ‘That’s ’cause you were being a brat,’ he said with a conspiratorial wink. He was impossible. ‘A monumental brat.’

  ‘Time I wasn’t here, anyway. Nice to see you again, I’m sure,’ Rose said and it was in a curious way. Not just because he’d flirted with her, but also because it made her feel like a proper Londoner who bumped into people she knew on the street.

  She started to walk down Denham Street, squeezing her way past the hard-faced girls and the little groups of men who wanted to take them into dark doorways. ‘What kind of guy would I be if I didn’t walk you home?’ Danny said, as he fell into step beside her. ‘Did you ever make it to the YWCA?’

  ‘No, and I don’t need walking home. Besides, I’m not going home yet.’ She darted across the street. Danny darted with her. ‘I’m going to get fish and chips if there are any left.’

  ‘Still haven’t tried fish and chips, I’ll tag along,’ Danny said. ‘What kind of fish is it?’

  Improbably, they talked about fish for the three minutes it took to walk to the chippy and join the end of a queue. There was a rumour of cod, though not much of it and Rose would have been anxiously counting the heads in front of her but Danny distracted her by describing the lobster he’d eaten at the dog-end of long summer days spent at a place called Judith Point in Rhode Island.

  ‘But I thought you were from New York. Wasn’t that what you said when we first met?’

  Danny shook his head impatiently. ‘No one spends summer in New York. It’s filthy hot. A man could lose his mind in weather like that.’

  ‘I’d love to go to New York,’ she said and they’d been so busy talking that she hadn’t realised they were now they were at the head of the queue.

  ‘One piece left. You going to give it to your girl?’ the man behind the counter asked Danny.

  Rose desperately wanted that piece of fish, even if it was huss, but at Rainbow Corner she had it drummed into her head night after night that the US soldiers were guests in their country and were laying down their lives to defend Britain against the Nazis so the least she could do was give up a piece of fish for the cause. ‘He can —’

  ‘Give it to my girl,’ Danny said firmly and she certainly wasn’t his girl, never would be, but she didn’t even attempt to argue her case.

  ‘Thank you.’ Rose watched as a tiny tail piece that she was assured was cod was placed next to a small pile of chips, sprinkled with salt and vinegar and left open at her request.

  They walked along Brewer Street. It was quieter though it was hard to walk and eat chips (which had been fried in what tasted like old engine oil) at the same time. Rose saved the fish for last in the way she’d always saved the cherry on her fairy cake. One bite and it was half gone.

  ‘Here. You can have the rest,’ she told Danny, who’d been silent too. ‘But I feel obliged to tell you that fish and chips have been very poorly represented by what we’ve just had.’

  ‘It was great. Best fish and chips I’ve ever eaten.’ She could see the flash of his teeth as he grinned at her.

  ‘Not that you’ve ever eaten fish and chips before,’ Rose reminded him. They crossed onto Old Compton Street. ‘If you’re set on walking me home, it’s best to stick to the side streets. There’s less chance of a bomb dropping on you if you avoid the main roads.’

  ‘You’d hear the siren before any bombs started dropping.’ They were walking side by side along the narrow pavement, hands occasionally brushing. Danny was big without being bulky and it made Rose feel safe, or safer.

  ‘Not if it was just one bomber who’d got separated from the rest of his bomber friends and it was a cloudy night so no one even knew that he was up there,’ Rose insisted.

  Danny huffed a little. ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

  It was a perfectly plausible scenario, but probably not worth arguing about. ‘So, um… oh! How’s Phil? He was so kind that evening. I hope he hasn’t been too homesick. He talked so much about Des Moines, as if he was missing it rather a lot.’

  ‘He’s dead,’ Danny said so softly that Rose wasn’t sure that she’d heard him properly. ‘Didn’t make it back from his first mission.’

  ‘He can’t be dead.’ Not Phil with his big, gangly limbs that he didn’t know how to contain. His shy but ready smile, the tips of his ears red from the hours spent dancing just to please her. ‘He was going to be a vet after the war. He’s probably been taken prisoner or he’s being smuggled back to England by the Resistance or —’

  ‘Kid, his plane went down in flames. He’s not coming back.’

  ‘My name is Rose, not Kid,’ she managed to say and then inexplicably she was crying. Because Phil had got to her before Sylvia’s well-meaning lectures about not losing your heart and your wits to every man you shared a dance and a doughnut with.

  She turned away, her shoulders shaking in her mother’s funeral fur. Then she was stumbling to the nearest doorway so she could hide her face in cold stone and cry.

  ‘Rose…’ Danny put a hand on her arm. She shook it off. ‘Listen, you gave him the best night of his life. He never stopped talking about you after we got back to base and he —’

  ‘Shut up! I don’t want to hear it. Oh God… don’t touch me!’

  But he was touching her, turning her back round to face him with a firm grip that couldn’t be denied when you were cryi
ng and all you wanted to do was sink against someone else because you couldn’t hold yourself up any longer.

  Rose found herself melting into Danny’s embrace, his arm tight around her waist, and when he cupped her chin she couldn’t even jerk her head away.

  He stole the next sob out of her mouth with a kiss.

  Her first proper kiss.

  Rose wasn’t quite sure what to do. There were so many strange new feelings. Of being pressed so tight against a man that not even a whisper could have come between them. Danny was hard, strong; she could feel his muscles tensing and she felt so soft, so pliable, as if he could mould her into any shape he desired. And then there were her lips. How they tingled and moved of their own accord as if she had no control over them.

  She sighed. Wriggled even closer, then reared back as Danny tried to slip his tongue into her mouth.

  ‘What are you doing?’