After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  ‘You’d be miserable stuck in an office,’ Rose said. Even sitting holding hands with her, he was restless. It wasn’t just his foot tapping on the floor or how he absentmindedly stroked a spot on her wrist that seemed extraordinarily sensitive to his touch; even his skin seemed to hum as if the blood that flowed underneath was fizzing. ‘You know you would.’

  ‘If a crew survive twenty-five missions, then they’re done,’ Danny said quietly. ‘They go back to the States and sell war bonds.’

  Rose looked at the thin silver-coloured ring he’d put on her finger with no suggestion that it might mean anything more than a trick to fool a suspicious hotel landlady. ‘How many missions have you completed?’ She refused to look at him even when he took her chin between thumb and forefinger and tried to turn her to face him.

  ‘Twenty-five,’ he said. ‘Twenty-five last week.’

  Twenty-five successful missions meant he’d cheated death a staggering twenty-five times. He was alive, sitting next to her, solid and real. That was a good thing, and the purple spots under his eyes and his trembling hands told her that maybe not all of his crew had been as lucky.

  ‘Your family must be thrilled that you’ll be going home.’ Rose tried to find a plucky smile. ‘When do you ship back?’

  ‘Wednesday.’

  ‘That’s nice. How long before you dock in New York?’ She stared down at the food she’d barely eaten. The flaccid suet sponge and the grey gristle on her plate made Rose feel bilious.

  ‘No idea, because I told the big cheeses that they could ship me off home, but I’d just jump overboard and swim back to Blighty. That’s what you guys call it, isn’t it?’

  Rose did look at Danny then, her eyes glassy, bottom lip quivering so she had to bite it to keep it still. ‘Don’t make jokes like that.’

  ‘No joke. It takes time to train a pilot and the rookies that are showing up with their wings are useless,’ Danny said hotly as if this wasn’t the first time he’d presented this argument. ‘I’ll do more good in the air than back home selling war bonds.’

  ‘Don’t you care that you might die?’

  ‘Of course I do.’ He brushed her words away with an impatient hand. ‘But I have to believe that every bomb we drop, every plane of theirs we take out, brings us a little bit closer to ending this damn war, pardon my French.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but you’ve done your bit. That should be enough.’ There was no choice – she’d much rather have Danny safe with thousands of miles separating them than at an airbase a train ride away. Especially if he could climb into his stupid plane at that stupid airbase and never be seen again. ‘No one would blame you for going home.’

  ‘Don’t paint me as some kind of hero. I’m not. Sure, I want to stick it to Jerry, but I tell you something, Rosie, I never feel half as alive as I do when I’m flying. It’s a kick, a buzz. Ain’t nothing else like it.’

  Suddenly she was angry with him. That he could turn her heart over and right side up again simply because he thought it was such a wheeze to nuzzle up to death, bop it on the nose and dash away in the nick of time. ‘Well, isn’t that just swell for you.’ Her American accent was Hollywood-ready. ‘Don’t you have any compassion for the people who are desperately waiting for you to come home safely?’

  She meant his family in New York, whom she knew nothing about other than they lived in New York, but mostly she meant…

  ‘Do you worry about me, then, princess?’ They weren’t holding hands any more but were knee-to-knee, nose-to-nose. Danny was looking straight at her as if he knew that there were many nights that she lay in bed next to Sylvia and counted the planes she heard overhead flying home and prayed that he was in one of them.

  ‘No,’ she said mutinously. ‘I hardly think about you at all.’

  ‘That’s not fair when the only other thing that gives me that same kick as flying is when I’m kissing you,’ Danny said and in the busy bar, not caring about the couple at the other table who’d been leaning in close so they didn’t miss a single word, he kissed her.

  It seemed to Rose as if he never stopped kissing her, though she supposed he must have at some point because they were back in the room. She’d been scared of ending up lying on the candlewick bedspread; now she couldn’t think of anywhere on earth she’d rather be.

  Kissing on a bed, pinned underneath him, her tweed skirt rucked up so high that she could feel the scratch of his wool trousers against the soft, untouched skin above her stocking tops, was an entirely new kind of terror.

  His hand, which had been restlessly plucking at her blouse as if he couldn’t bear the feel of cotton underneath his fingers, tugged it free of her skirt. The audacious slide of his palm against her ribs. Rose barely had time to gasp when his hand slid under her flimsy bra.

  ‘No!’ she said. Her hands, which had been helplessly fisted in the candlewick bedspread, clutched his wrist. ‘No!’

  He stopped kissing her and nuzzled a path down to her ear. ‘No?’

  ‘No,’ she croaked. ‘I don’t know. This… I wasn’t… I didn’t…’

  ‘You did, Rose, you did.’ Danny wasn’t kissing her any more. His hands stopped touching her face, her breast so she felt the lack of them, then they were back on her, pinning her wrists above her head. ‘You knew when I asked you to come away with me that we weren’t going to spend the whole weekend holding hands. Didn’t you?’

  Of course she had. Those things that Sylvia had bought her were wrapped in a hankie and stuffed into a corner of her attaché case. She’d even read the instructions that came with the Volpar gels but the whole business had seemed so sordid it had been easier not to think about the mechanics of it all. Instead she’d thought about the heady feeling she got when Danny kissed her, when he was simply standing close to her.

  ‘I’ve never… I’m not… I don’t want you to think that I’m one of those girls,’ she whispered, as if there might be someone with their ear pressed against the door to take down her words and use them against her. ‘I couldn’t bear it if you did.’

  ‘You’re not one of those girls. You’re my girl.’ There were times when he knew exactly what to say. ‘Doesn’t it feel good?’

  If it felt so good then why was she so scared? Because for all the trappings she’d borrowed from Phyllis, Sylvia and Maggie, despite all the hard lessons she’d learnt since she’d been in London, there were an awful lot of times when she still felt like she hadn’t grown up at all.

  Also, it would hurt. Shirley had said so when she came back from her honeymoon in Southport. Not to Rose, but she’d whispered to Mother over tea that she’d ‘barely been able to walk the Promenade and then Ian wanted to do it again. It was like sitting on razorblades.’

  ‘How horrible! Why would Ian want you do anything that felt like sitting on razorblades?’ They’d both looked at Rose sitting there with a piece of scone half raised to her mouth and Mother had sent her off to her room to read a nice, improving book.

  ‘It will hurt,’ Rose said, head turned so she could hide her blushing face in the pillow. ‘It will hurt and I don’t want to get into trouble.’

  ‘It won’t hurt,’ Danny said and he was smiling and Rose didn’t know why because she couldn’t see that this was anything to smile about. ‘And you won’t get into trouble. I’ll take good care of you. Look at me, Rosie.’

  She stared up at Danny. His smile might have been soft and kind but she knew how easily it could turn into a sneer. Rose loved him with everything that she was but she still knew he wouldn’t be careful with her; he’d break her heart if she gave it to him. Besides, it was all too soon. She’d seen him fifteen times, not including today, and most of those times they’d only snatched kisses in doorways.

  You couldn’t go from a few kisses when no one was looking to letting a man make love to you. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’

  He let go of her wrists and rolled off her. His face tightened and a muscle popped in his cheek, but he didn’t say a w
ord. He sat on the side of the bed and pulled out a packet of cigarettes from his breast pocket.

  ‘I’ve spoiled everything,’ Rose said as she sat up and tried to tuck her blouse back in. She was sorry, sick to her stomach with it, but she also felt enormously relieved, as if she’d successfully evaded something ghastly like an exam or an unpleasant medical procedure.

  ‘Don’t be silly, you haven’t spoiled anything,’ Danny said rather mechanically, but he lit a cigarette for her and said that he’d nip out for five minutes if she wanted to freshen up and that she needn’t worry. ‘I’m not the sort of guy who’d force himself on a girl.’

  After he left Rose discovered that someone had swapped Sylvia’s peach Dupont silk negligee for Phyllis’s lawn cotton nightdress that they’d nicknamed The Reverend Mother and she felt relieved all over again. There was absolutely no chance that Danny would be overcome by depraved lust at the sight of Rose swathed in the voluminous folds of Her Blessed Holiness.

  Danny even grinned when he got back and saw Rose in bed, covers pulled all the way up to her chin. ‘Lighten up, Rosie,’ he said, which she couldn’t do because she was still alone in a hotel room with a man.

  He’d gone down to the bar to get his hip flask filled with cherry brandy that the proprietor fermented in his potting shed. It was the nicest grown-up drink that Rose had tried and Danny didn’t mind that she drank most of it and Rose didn’t mind too much when he took off boots and socks and stripped off his shirt. She did avert her eyes when he reached for his belt buckle and gulped down the last of the brandy when he slipped into bed next to her in shorts and vest.

  They lay there for a little while, Rose trying to screw up courage to suggest that they put the lumpy bolster between them, but she couldn’t quite muster the necessary amount of guts and actually the brandy had had quite a soporific effect on her.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ she murmured.

  ‘Me too.’ He grazed her cheek with the softest of kisses, then rolled away, turned off the bedside table lamp and whatever tension she’d still been clinging to slowly melted away.

  Rose could hear Danny’s steady breaths in the dark, feel the warm nearness of him, but now it felt comforting and she wouldn’t even have minded if he’d put his arm around her, let her snuggle against him, but sleep was tugging at her.

  She dreamed that she was swimming in the sea. Waves lapping about her as she floated lazily on her back, shoals of tiny fish nipping at her toes.

  Rose never wanted to open her eyes, to wake up, but then the water turned from warm to cold and her eyes snapped open and fear meant she couldn’t move, couldn’t open her mouth to scream as Danny loomed large over her in the dark, covers pulled back, that ridiculous passion-killer of a nightdress not doing anything to kill his passion because it had been pushed up and he was yanking down her knickers with careless hands.

  Rose tried to kick him away but his legs were on hers. ‘What are you doing?’ She had to squeeze the words out.

  ‘I need you, Rosie. You know you need me too,’ he said. She hardly understood the thick, slurred words. ‘You know you do really.’

  She would have jack-knifed off the bed if Danny hadn’t been holding her down, forcing himself where she didn’t want him. The wind stole right out of her so she couldn’t even scream and had to bite down hard on her lip, but that tiny pain was no match for the terrible thing he was doing to her.

  ‘Stop it,’ she said. ‘Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!’

  His hand closed over her mouth as her hands beat down on his back.

  Get off me! she wanted to say, scream it really, but the side of his hand was wedged into her mouth so Rose bit him. He snatched his hand away with a curse, but he didn’t stop, even though she begged him to.

  ‘Please, Danny. I don’t want this. Not like this. Please.’

  ‘It will only hurt this one time,’ he said. ‘Let’s just get it over and done with.’

  Then his hand was over her mouth again and Rose tried to fight. She really did. Hands clawing, scratching, punching at him but no matter that she used every ounce of strength she possessed, she was no match for the hard, heavy weight of him. He held her down and Rose had never felt so small and weak and useless as he lay on top of her and stabbed that thing of his into her again and again.

  Now Rose knew what it meant to be ruined. She would never be right again after this. Could never imagine that the pain would go away and she’d feel like she used to.

  ‘I love you, Rosie. I love you.’ Danny was panting and just when she thought she’d got used to the pain, could breathe around it, he was moving in her faster, even harder and she didn’t even want him to stop but to keep going until it was done. Over. Finished.

  Then it ended with a choked cry and thank God, he was taking it out of her, splattering her stomach with his seed, then he let her go, got off her, so Rose could scrub at the mess he’d made with Phyllis’s nightgown, which she was going to burn the first chance she got.

  The bed shifted as Danny stood up. Rose heard the chink of china, a splash of water in the unfamiliar room, then his soft footsteps coming back to the bed, to stand over her.

  ‘Go away,’ she said.

  ‘Please don’t be like that, Rosie. Don’t you love me any more?’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Rose said in a hard voice, but she found that she couldn’t move. She was no longer sure that her body was hers – that it would do the things she asked of it.

  ‘Poor baby. What a mess I’ve made of my beautiful girl.’ It wasn’t right that he could sound like that after what he’d done. He had a flannel in his hand, came towards her, eyes intent.

  Rose managed to sit up and hold out an imperious hand. ‘Give it to me,’ she demanded. ‘Turn your back. You’re not to look at me any more.’

  It was brave of her to talk like that now that she knew what he was capable of, but he nodded, and passed her the wet cloth, careful not to touch her. Rose waited until he was meekly staring at a muddy reproduction of The Blue Boy on the opposite wall before she slowly peeled back the nightdress.

  She still hurt, smarted and stung terribly down there, but she hadn’t expected the streaks of blood on her inner thighs. Some already dried to rust, some still fresh and red. She clumsily stood up to mop the blood away, scrub furiously at marks that wouldn’t shift because they were bruises that hadn’t had time to blossom. Then she supposed she was clean but she didn’t feel it and she couldn’t stop the tears that suddenly streamed down her cheeks. She sniffed, pinched her nose, but it was no good.

  ‘Oh, princess, please don’t cry.’ Before she could tell Danny he wasn’t to turn around, that she loathed him beyond all measure, he sat down on the edge of the bed. Pulled her stiff body towards him and kissed her forehead, her cheeks, as if he could stop every tear. ‘Please don’t.’

  Rose didn’t even struggle, but held herself very still. ‘You’ve spoiled it all and I hate you now,’ she hiccupped. ‘I can’t stand to be near you.’

  ‘You don’t really hate me, Rosie,’ he promised. ‘But you can’t lead a guy on, let him kiss you, be as beautiful as you are and not expect him to take a few liberties.’

  ‘That wasn’t a few…’

  ‘I said I wouldn’t get you into trouble and I didn’t. Next time, it will be better, I promise you,’ Danny said, and he tried to stroke her hair, but she flinched away from him. She knew what those hands of his could do now.

  ‘There will never be a next time,’ Rose told him. ‘Because there is no possible way that could ever get better. Even if I did lead you on, what you did, it was still wrong.’

  ‘It’s not wrong. We just started the honeymoon early, that’s all,’ he said and he was grinning now, even dared to nudge her as if Rose found it funny too.

  ‘I don’t know how we could have started the honeymoon early when we’re not married. Not even engaged,’ she reminded him, and she wanted to sound icy and dignified but she was still sniffling. ‘I think I might have remembered if we�
�d got engaged, and even if we had, I’d still hate you. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to have anything more to do with you.’

  She got off the bed, her movements jerky and God, that pain in the heart of her, where he’d defiled her.

  Rose turned her back on Danny, snatched up her clothes from where she’d draped them over the chair and started to get dressed, the nightgown shielding her from his gaze, though it was too late for that now.

  Danny had seen her naked, he’d seen her utterly helpless and Rose thought that maybe that might be the worst thing of all.

  ‘Rosie, you’re being a brat,’ he said cajolingly. ‘Let’s get back into bed. It’s late. You’re not going anywhere.’

  Rose ignored him and as she buttoned up her blouse she felt a new resolve, a sense of certainty that she’d never had before. She would never let Danny, anyone, treat her like that again. As if her thoughts and feelings didn’t matter. As if she didn’t matter.