After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  ‘What’s a mimosa?’ she asked.

  ‘Champagne mixed with freshly squeezed orange juice. They used to serve it at the Ritz in Paris before the war.’

  ‘I can’t believe that even the Criterion can get oranges and so many of them that they don’t mind squeezing them for juice.’ Rose shook her head sadly. ‘It’s very wasteful.’

  ‘Maybe they use what’s left to make marmalade?’ Edward suggested.

  ‘Or cake. Our cook, before the war, used to make a wonderful orange and almond cake,’ Rose said wistfully.

  ‘With buttercream?’ Edward asked a little wistfully himself. He didn’t seem so unsettling now they were having a proper conversation and Rose relaxed enough to look him in the eye.

  She even smiled at him. ‘I do so miss buttercream!’ Before she could ask Edward what food he missed, two waiters arrived with Bertie’s oysters on a silver stand, Sylvia’s sardines (she said that all the fancy seafood in the world couldn’t compare to grilled sardines), and Edward and Rose’s caviar.

  The tiny, glossy black eggs were heaped in a little silver bowl and came with a silver spoon so Rose could scoop out the caviar and arrange it on tiny points of toast. Like the champagne, it tasted horrible. Fishy and oily and even slimier than Bertie’s oysters, which he slurped down with gusto. Then he ate the rest of Rose’s caviar when she said she couldn’t manage any more.

  ‘Waste not, want not.’ He was clearly happiest when he was eating. ‘Patriotic duty and all.’

  All Rose’s hopes were resting on the Tournedos Rossini – she was sure that she’d read about them in a book. Probably one of Shirley’s romance novels, which always featured impressionable young women being wined and dined by very suave, very rich men.

  Her heart sank when what was placed in front of her, with some ceremony, was not at all what she’d been expecting. On her plate was a huge piece of dried bread with three steak medallions perched on top; resting on each one was a slab of pâté and some strange mushroom-like shavings. The whole kit and caboodle was slathered in a dark brown sauce.

  Still, Rose had managed to get through half of the caviar by washing it down with gulps of water and she’d ask Edward to order jugs of the stuff if that was what it took to force down steak that was red and bloody in the middle. They’d always had it so well done at home that one had to saw at it.

  But the Criterion’s bloody steak was actually beautifully tender, the pâté rich and buttery and what Edward said were truffle shavings tasted ‘unbelievably yummy’, she explained to Sylvia in the pauses between eating as she took sips of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape that had taken Bertie and Edward five minutes to order because they couldn’t make up their minds between the ’33 and the ’36.

  It was as Rose was mopping up the Madeira sauce with the bread that she noticed the three of them staring at her. Sylvia pointed delicately at Rose’s plate and she realised that she’d abandoned her cutlery in favour of her hands, as if she were some kind of street urchin that they’d found begging outside. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, mouth full, but even though she was blushing rosy red, a combination of embarrassment, the food and wine, and her thermals, Rose didn’t stop until her plate was clean.

  ‘Nothing better than a girl who likes her grub,’ Bertie declared, raising his glass to Rose. ‘Can’t abide a woman who lives on leaves and plants. You got room for pudding?’

  Rose swallowed the last divine crumb and nodded. ‘I’ll say.’

  ‘I don’t know where you put it,’ Sylvia said. ‘Our friend Phyllis – Bertie, you must know her people; they own half of Norfolk – says Rose has hollow legs. One night at Rainbow Corner, a GI challenged Rose to a doughnut —’

  ‘Oh, Sylvia, nobody wants to hear about that,’ Rose pleaded, though it was rather late to claim she had no gluttonous tendencies.

  ‘I would,’ Edward said. ‘I’m intrigued to know what you do at Rainbow Corner when you’re not dancing.’

  ‘Break some hearts, eh?’ Bertie nudged Sylvia, who threw him an arch look, which Rose knew full well she practised in front of the mirror. ‘Bet there’s a fair few fellows pining after the pair of you.’

  ‘I don’t think they’re pining after Rose so much as telling their soldier pals about the girl they met who scoffed twenty-one doughnuts in a sitting,’ Sylvia said with a wicked smile at Rose, who hid her face in her napkin. ‘Rose set a new Rainbow Corner record.’

  ‘They were very small doughnuts,’ Rose insisted but Bertie was laughing too hard to hear her.

  Edward simply smiled gravely and asked Rose what she’d like for pudding.

  She finished her meal with a pavlova and a glass of dessert wine and by the time they left, Rose was grateful for the sudden blast of icy air as they walked along Haymarket towards Bertie’s flat near St James’s Park for a nightcap.

  ‘We won’t have to do anything, will we?’ Rose asked Sylvia as they walked arm in arm, the two men slightly ahead of them. ‘Do you think the meal was very, very expensive?’

  ‘Very, especially as you ate twice as much as anyone else.’ Sylvia was at her most capricious. ‘Edward seems quite smitten. I never thought he’d have a thing for ingénues…’

  ‘Oh, so you know him, then?’ Rose asked in surprise, though Sylvia was one of those people who knew everyone.

  ‘I know of him,’ Sylvia lowered her voice. ‘He’s half-American, frightfully rich and does something frightfully hush-hush.’

  ‘But what exactly?’ Rose persisted; she was curious to know what strange, silent Edward did.

  Sylvia sighed. ‘You’re not meant to ask. Do remember that there’s a war on.’

  ‘I’m hardly likely to forget.’ Rose nudged Sylvia. ‘Does he push paper like Bertie?’

  ‘Special Operations, probably,’ Sylvia said shortly. ‘We shouldn’t even be talking about this.’

  Further ahead, Bertie was jabbering away at Edward, who was silent. Giving nothing away. ‘You mean, he’s a spy? ’ she hissed.

  ‘Spymaster, more like,’ Sylvia muttered and then she took pity on Rose. ‘Strictly off-book and you didn’t hear it from me. I know he seems perfectly nice, but you know what they say about still waters. I imagine he could be quite ruthless if he had to interrogate enemy agents and that sort of thing.’

  ‘Don’t tease,’ Rose said crossly. ‘Of course he doesn’t interrogate enemy agents. He’s absolutely not the type.’

  ‘Will you keep your voice down? Goodness, Rose, are you all right? Even in this light, you’re looking a little peaky.’

  ‘I feel quite peculiar.’ Rose plucked at her mother’s funeral fur. She could feel sweat beading on her forehead and top lip. One moment she felt as if she was being boiled alive, the next she was freezing despite thermals and fur coat. ‘I might be going down with the flu.’ Both Phyllis and Maggie had been laid low with a flu bug that had decimated the volunteers at Rainbow Corner.

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to wait until we get home to go down with it,’ Sylvia told her unsympathetically, as they caught up with Bertie and Edward who had come to a halt outside a mansion block that loomed up out of the darkness. ‘You can’t skip out on a man after he’s paid for three courses and wine. It’s unspeakably rude.’

  They all crammed into a tiny lift and when Bertie pulled the door shut with a crash, Rose felt it reverberate in her belly. The smell of Sylvia’s perfume, heavy with the scent of lilies, and the cigar smoke that clung to Bertie’s topcoat, had her lurching back against Edward.

  He put a hand on Rose’s shoulder to steady her. ‘Are you all right?’ he whispered so he wouldn’t be heard over the clanging of the lift as it travelled between floors and Bertie’s guffaws as Sylvia said something. ‘You’re rather pale.’

  ‘I’m absolutely fine.’ Maybe she would be if she could sit down in a dark corner of Bertie’s flat and stay very, very still.

  But as soon as they entered, the floor and the walls crowded in on Rose and she could smell stale cigars and the kippers Bertie ha
d had for breakfast and her belly lurched again and…

  ‘Oh dear!’ Sylvia exclaimed when Rose clapped her hands over her mouth. ‘Bertie, where’s the bathroom?’

  ‘Good God! Down the corridor, last door on the left.’

  Rose took off at a gallop, flung the door open and threw herself onto her knees.

  Ten minutes later, flushed and cringing, she crept into the lounge where Bertie and Sylvia were flicking through records and Edward was perched on the arm of a sofa holding a glass of fizzing white liquid. ‘Come and sit down,’ he said gently, gesturing at the couch. ‘I liberated Bertie’s last bottle of Bromo-Seltzer for you.’

  She sat down on the sofa and took the glass, then cringed again. ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry. I don’t know what you must think.’ Her cheeks blazed with yet more shameful heat. ‘I couldn’t even open the window because of the blackout.’

  Bertie waved a hand. ‘No worse than me after a regimental mess dinner. The char can sort it out in the morning.’

  That made Rose feel ashamed all over again because she’d imagined Bertie to be a bumptious oaf when really he was an absolute darling: so full of relentless good cheer.

  Sylvia shot her a sympathetic look. ‘No doughnuts for you for a while.’

  ‘I may never eat again.’ Rose sipped at the Bromo-Seltzer. Like every other drink she’d had in London, it tasted awful. ‘I really am sorry,’ she said again but Bertie and Sylvia had put on a record and only Edward heard her.

  ‘Please stop apologising. You haven’t done anything so terrible in the grand scheme of things. Though I did think ordering the pavlova was rather foolhardy.’ He smiled that grave smile, which meant it was a joke.

  ‘Well you might have told me,’ Rose grumbled. She finished the rest of the Bromo, pulling a face as the last powdery, bitter dregs coated her tongue, but she did feel a little better. Wrung out and fragile but she didn’t think she was going to die any more.

  ‘I would have if I’d thought you’d take my advice,’ Edward said. ‘Sometimes we have to learn from our mistakes. I’m sure you’ll never order caviar and steak tournedos again.’

  ‘Don’t talk about food,’ Rose begged and he smiled again. She was tired and her thoughts had become all jumbled up. She leant her head back against Edward’s side and he stroked her hot forehead with cool fingers. It felt lovely. Soothing. Safe in that cosy room, curtains closed tight against the night, Sylvia singing, ‘Oh, please have some pity I’m all alone in this big city I tell you I’m just a lonesome babe in the wood … ’

  14

  Jane didn’t know what time she finally fell asleep but she woke the next morning as Leo came into the room with a breakfast tray. ‘To make up for putting you in front of the firing squad last night,’ he said with a rueful smile, which Jane was more than happy to return, then agree to Leo’s suggestion that they spend the day like tourists.

  What else could she do? Besides, spending the day, lots of days, with Leo didn’t have to be an ordeal. He was funny, easy-going, charming when he could be bothered to make the effort and once they left the house and began to make their way through Kensington, he had a story about every street they walked down. Stories about a misspent youth of illegal raves in derelict warehouses, pining after Chelsea heiresses who wouldn’t give him the time of day and soaking up his hangovers with a fry-up.

  This morning, the late October sun was high and bright but with an autumn crispness to the air that made Jane think of bonfires and fireworks. They meandered down the back streets, stopping for coffee at a tiny Italian hole in the wall – Leo was crestfallen that they didn’t remember him – and then to the V&A.

  ‘We’ll start at the bottom,’ Leo said although the bottom was very boring: fiddly stone carvings and pots and ancient religious relics. Even the word ‘artefact’ made Jane want to yawn. Then, there were the galleries. Jane suffered in silence for Leo’s sake, because he obviously cared more about art than she did, but he shuffled along without much enthusiasm, hands shoved into the pockets of an ancient black coat.

  ‘God, this is dull,’ he announced. ‘Let’s go and look at the pretty dresses.’

  The pretty dresses were the part that Jane had liked best when she’d come here on Sunday afternoons with Charles. He’d start at the bottom too but they’d always save the best for last and end up at the fashion galleries. ‘I’ll have that one and that one, not that one, but definitely that one,’ she’d say as she pointed at Schiaparelli ballgowns or a Balenciaga cocktail dress, as if she were walking through Selfridges with a personal shopper.

  Then and now, they finished in the café. Leo ate cake. It was too early for a drink, though if he were on his own Jane was sure he’d have had one. Jane drank decaffeinated coffee.

  ‘What shall we do now?’ he asked. ‘What’s the time?’

  It was only half past twelve, the café filling up with the early lunch crowd: vacant-looking teenagers wielding massive backpacks, mothers with babies wedged into Bugaboos and Björn slings and a frightening number of ladies up from the provinces in comfortable walking shoes and anoraks.

  ‘We can’t go back for at least another two hours,’ Jane said. ‘Didn’t you say Rose was having people over for lunch?’

  ‘Not people. My mother.’ Leo scraped the side of his fork across his plate to gather up the last smears of cream cheese frosting. They were seated next to a window and it was the first time that Jane had seen him in such clear, unflinching daylight. Greying at the temples, grey in the face, the skin slack around his eyes and jawline. ‘She’s in town for the next few days so I have to keep a low profile.’ He wouldn’t look her in the eye. ‘I’m not even fucked up in an interesting, romantic way. All my problems are white middle class problems.’

  Jane had figured that out within five minutes of meeting him. ‘You could choose not to be fucked up,’ she suggested.

  ‘Nah, everyone’s fucked up. Even you. Like if your dad did die when you were a kid and then your mum dumped you in some boarding school full of religious nutters in the Australian Bush, then you’re fucked up too.’

  ‘You can rise above being fucked up. It’s a matter of applying yourself.’

  Leo waved his fork at her, swollen eyes narrowed. ‘Unless none of that stuff is true, which means you’re fucked up in a completely different way.’

  ‘Darling, do we really have to spend the next two hours debating the finer points of being fucked up?’ Jane asked. ‘If so, I’d much rather go and look at some really boring religious artefacts.’

  ‘I’m just saying that —’

  ‘Well, hello! Fancy running into the two of you here!’ They both turned in the direction of the enthusiastic, slightly camp voice.

  It was George. Rose’s George, arrived to save them from themselves. As he was a curator at the V&A, he whisked them off to the bowels of the building to show them all sorts of treasures. A collection of early-twentieth-century Scandinavian glassware, a pair of Vivienne Westwood bondage trousers, origami sculptures no bigger than Jane’s finger that were so beautiful but so fragile, they made her feel sad just to look at them.

  George insisted that they join him for lunch in the staff canteen so he could regale them with stories of Rose. How they’d met at the cheese counter in Harvey Nichols nearly forty years ago: nineteen-year-old George with his blue Mohican and leather shorts stopping to ask Rose if her polka dot dress was a vintage Claire McCardell ‘though she didn’t call it vintage. Still doesn’t. Says there’s no point in throwing away perfectly good clothes. Anyway, it was love at first sight. No, that’s sheer hyperbole. It was best friends at first sight.’ George suddenly crumbled. His bright, bird-like face looked as if someone had started to rub out the edges, owlish eyes tearing up behind his horn-rim glasses. ‘I don’t think a day’s gone by since then that we haven’t spoken. I can’t imagine my life without Rose in it.’

  He was crying. Right there at the table. Jane sat there in an agony of embarrassment because everyone, all of George’
s colleagues, were looking at them.

  ‘Rose would hate it if I cried, but when I’m not with her, I can’t seem to stop,’ George said. His tears were staining the slim-cut lapels of his suit; one landed with a buoyant plop onto his bread plate, right in the middle of his pat of butter.

  Jane turned her face away, made her body stiff and hard. She hated seeing anyone cry. She always wanted to tell them to man up. Grow a pair. Crying didn’t solve anything – it just made people think you were weak.

  ‘Hey, George, come on, buddy,’ she heard Leo say softly, then he clumsily got to his feet, grabbed a handful of napkins and crouched down in front of the older man. ‘You know Rose would kill you if she heard you were crying in the V and A staff canteen. She’d expect The Ritz at the very least.’