After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  Edward smiled. ‘Do you think if we listen very carefully we might hear the roar of angry peasants come to take us to the guillotine?’

  ‘Oh, they wouldn’t take me, not once I’d explained that I was just a simple worker,’ Rose said and maybe she was being a little cheeky but it was worth it to make Edward laugh. Otherwise he looked so serious. ‘Can you tell me where you’ve been and what you’ve been doing or is it absolutely top secret?’

  ‘If I told you, then the angry peasants would be replaced by military policeman who’d take us away and lock us up.’ He signalled to a waiter who was keen to present them with menus. ‘Now, you’re to tell me, if you could have absolutely anything, what would you like to eat?’

  Rose took a moment to think about roast chicken and Cook’s special stuffing with prunes and apricots. She thought about trifle. She thought about a proper breakfast: fried eggs, plump sausages, crisp bacon and field mushrooms. She thought about all of those things and then she thought about the one dish she wanted more than anything. ‘Welsh rarebit,’ she decided. ‘Made with lots and lots of cheese and swimming in Worcester sauce.’

  ‘Then that’s what you shall have,’ Edward said. He called the waiter over. ‘We’ll both have Welsh rarebit liberally doused in Worcester sauce. Two Bellinis for an aperitif, then a bottle of Merlot. The nineteen thirty-seven if you have any left.’

  The waiter seemed to think that cheese on toast was a perfectly acceptable thing to order at The Ritz and it was then that Rose thought that it might be her favourite place in the world, or maybe it was when their Bellinis arrived and she made the happy discovery that champagne was quite delicious when it was mixed with peach juice, even if it was a scandalous waste of a good peach.

  She and Edward talked about the refugees, though they weren’t the refugees any more. They were Hélène, Thérèse and Paul, who loved playing their own raucous version of croquet and would run up to hug Rose when she popped round every Thursday and Sunday afternoon, even as their hands crept into her pockets in the hunt for chocolate. They were Madeleine and Gisèle, who spent most of their time digging and weeding and hoeing in the garden even when it was pouring with rain simply because they loved being outside after so long cooped up below ground. And they were Yves and Jacques, who always insisted on walking Rose to the bus stop and had come round to Montague Terrace once to try to do something about the plumbing because the pipes made a death rattle every time one of the girls turned on a tap.

  Rose asked Edward about his plans for the house next door, which was almost habitable again, even if there was no one to live in it. Though surely, now that the Allies were gaining ground in Europe, it would be easier for people who wanted to leave.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Edward said, as the waiter placed a small silver bowl in front of Rose. For pudding she’d asked for strawberries and ice cream and because she hadn’t cared much for the Merlot, Edward had insisted she have another Bellini. ‘Let’s talk of brighter things.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘There’s still half an hour to go, but Happy Birthday.’

  ‘How did you know?’ Rose asked.

  ‘A little bird told me,’ Edward said. Rose supposed that the little bird was Sylvia, or Mickey Flynn, who probably made a note of that sort of thing. ‘I hope you don’t mind, I got you a little something to say thank you for —’

  ‘You don’t have to thank me,’ Rose said forcefully enough that Edward raised his eyebrows. ‘I was happy to do it.’

  ‘Look, you might as well know I’ve lost the receipt and I’m sure I can’t take it back, so you’re leaving me in quite a bind.’ He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a small grey leather box. It glided over the smooth white linen of the tablecloth towards Rose and it would be churlish not to take it and…

  ‘Oh! I couldn’t possibly accept this,’ Rose gasped as she stared down at the two diamond clips nestled in yellow velvet. ‘I really couldn’t.’

  ‘Did I mention that I’ve mislaid the receipt?’ He was so sweet, which made it all the harder.

  ‘You don’t understand.’ Rose had been dreading this. Sylvia had told her to keep her mouth shut but Phyllis said that it was a pretty lowdown trick to play on a fellow if you let him take you out to dinner when your heart wasn’t really in it. ‘It’s just… well, I’d hate for you to get the wrong idea. There’s another man. There was another man. It didn’t end well.’

  Edward, though he was still sitting there, drinking his Merlot, smoking a cigarette, had suddenly withdrawn from her without so much as leaning back in his chair. ‘Oh. I’m sorry. My condolences.’

  ‘No, you don’t understand. He’s not dead.’ It was hard to stumble across the right words, even though Rose had been thinking of little else but how to phrase this speech ever since she’d received Edward’s note. ‘He’s a bomber pilot. He was meant to go back to the States to sell war bonds but he wanted to stay and fight,’ she added a little defensively.

  Edward had only just crushed out his cigarette but he lit another one. ‘How commendable of him,’ he said in that same toneless voice. Rose didn’t think that she’d led him on, though as Sylvia had said, men always accused one of leading them on and agreeing to have dinner with Edward might have given him the idea that Rose was keen. Even though they hardly knew each other and he was much older than her. It was hard to say how much older, but he was at least thirty. At the very least.

  ‘The thing is, I haven’t heard from him in ages. Not since before the invasion and though I don’t have feelings for him any longer, not kind feelings anyway, I was hoping, I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you might make some enquiries. To see if he’s safe.’

  Edward barely even blinked as Rose reached into her little evening bag and pulled out the scrap of paper on which she’d written Danny’s details. It wasn’t much. Just his name, though she wasn’t sure how to spell his surname, where he was stationed, and that his people lived in New York. But Rose knew so much more about Danny than just these few scant facts written on the back of an envelope. After what he’d done to her, she knew the secret heart of him and though it might not be a good heart, a true heart, she needed to know it was still beating.

  ‘What’s the name of his squadron? What’s his rank? There are three United States Air Force stations in Cambridgeshire, might you be more specific? Where do you send his letters when you write to him?’

  Rose couldn’t answer any of the questions that Edward all but barked at her because she didn’t know the answers. Not because they’d had some fly-by-night encounter but because there was that whole business of Danny using the local pub as a postbox to outwit the army censors. Surely that had to be against regulations and Danny could get into trouble if his CO found out? What silly things people did when they thought they were in love, but Edward wouldn’t understand. He was too buttoned-up, too serious, to let himself fall in love.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Rose said. She held out her hand for the piece of paper. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you.’

  Edward tucked the paper away in his pocket. ‘I’m not promising anything but I’ll see what I can do.’

  The gilt and the chandeliers, even the diamond clips in front of her had lost their sparkle, the bubbles in her champagne no longer fizzing on her tongue. Rose stared down at her melting ice cream. She heard Edward sigh, then she heard nothing but the unholy bang that rocked the room, made the chandeliers shake as the hallowed space of The Ritz was breached.

  There were screams and Rose pushed back her chair. Then there was another bang, as if a hundred doodlebugs had suddenly exploded in one huge blast right outside the windows, and she gasped.

  ‘Get down, you little fool!’ Edward pulled Rose under the table, his body covering hers, shielding her from the horrors outside.

  ‘Oh God, what is it? Why didn’t they sound the siren? I can’t bear it,’ she whispered, the argument already forgotten because this was what had ruined the evening. The bloody war. It ruined everything. ‘I can�
�t stand it.’

  ‘Yes, you can. You have to be brave,’ Edward said and he took Rose’s hand, squeezed her fluttering fingers until she was still and in that moment she felt safe. Nothing could get to her because Edward simply wouldn’t allow it.

  She pressed her cheek against his chest, felt the buttons on his jacket dig into her, and she matched her breaths to his, slow and steady, until she felt her heart stop racing, let calm sink in and when the siren finally began to wail, five minutes after the first explosion, she was angry that it broke the spell.

  They were led to The Ritz’s bomb shelter, a restaurant, La Popote , in the basement with a funny mural on the wall. Edward ordered more champagne and insisted Rose drink it all because she was so pale. There was a band playing, people dancing, laughing, greeting friends – and suddenly waiting it out until the All Clear became a fabulous party. Edward even danced with her – he insisted on a slow, sedate waltz though they were playing a foxtrot and he stepped on her feet a couple of times, but the sheer selflessness of Edward asking her to dance because he knew that she wanted to meant more to Rose than the diamond clips that she’d scooped up from the table on their way out of the much grander restaurant upstairs.

  It was ages before the All Clear sounded. They left The Ritz just after two. Even at the best of times, it was hard to find a taxi. Tonight it proved impossible.

  ‘I’ll walk you home,’ Edward said and Rose didn’t feel the least inclined to argue. Tonight’s bombs had scared the wits right out of her, though when they crossed over Shaftesbury Avenue they met a policeman coming the other way who said that there hadn’t been any bombs. ‘Word from on high is that it was a gas line explosion, sir,’ he’d said.

  That would have explained why there’d been no siren, no warning, just those two almighty bangs as if the heavens had wanted to show just how furious they were at the destruction they were forced to look down upon every day and every night.

  ‘I think the war will be over soon,’ Rose told Edward as they walked along New Oxford Street. ‘The doodlebugs haven’t been doodling much and I can’t believe that the Germans aren’t as sick of all this as we are.’

  ‘You should be careful what you wish for,’ Edward muttered obliquely. ‘You’re shivering. You should have said you were cold. Take my jacket.’

  He draped it over her shoulders so she could smell the faintest hint of his aftershave, something subtle and smoky, and then they didn’t talk at all. Rose’s feet were aching and she was so tired that it seemed pointless to even go to bed, only to have to wake up again almost as soon as she’d fallen asleep.

  Though when she did wake up, it would be her birthday and there’d be all sorts of treats. Even Shirley, who seemed quite over her snit about Rose making off with her dresses, had sent her a large, intriguing parcel. It was enough to make Rose quicken her steps and then, as they reached Theobald’s Road and her bed was only three minutes away, they were forced to come to a stop. The street was littered with broken glass from the shop windows that had blown out. There were huge lumps of masonry and twisted hunks of metal lying in the road, where this morning there’d been buses, trams and taxis, people hurrying to get to work.

  Neither of them said anything, because there wasn’t much to say. Besides, it was heavy going. The nearer they got to Montague Terrace, the thicker the air became, heavy with dust and smoke, so that Rose and Edward had to pull out their handkerchiefs and hold them over their mouths. Edward called to her, but his words were swallowed up by the fug.

  The closer Rose got to home, the greater the devastation. No shops, no houses left. They’d been torn up and replaced by charred, still-smoking mountains of debris and Rose had to weave this way and that to fight her way through the mess, but she knew that when she got to their corner everything would be all right. She’d already come through the eye of the storm, where the damage was at its greatest, and maybe they might have some broken windows… it wouldn’t surprise her if the roof had come clean off, but she’d soon find the others. They must have gone to the shelter. Not even Sylvia could have slept through this. ‘You took your time,’ she would say and they’d laugh when Rose told them she’d been to The Ritz only to dine on cheese on toast.

  Edward called out to her again, but he was far, far behind her and she was almost home. Just round the corner. The dust was clearing. There! She was through the worst of it.

  At the top of Montague Terrace a cordon had been set up, and as she struggled nearer, Rose saw it was manned by an ARP warden. The dust and smoke weren’t so bad now but tiny blackened pieces of debris were floating from the sky like confetti and Rose shivered again. Everything was going to be all right. She was almost home, but when she swallowed, all she could taste was fear and soot.

  ‘You can’t go through,’ the ARP warden shouted at her, though Rose was sure that her legs would refuse to take another step. ‘Gas line explosion.’

  ‘How bad is it?’ Edward had caught up. ‘The young lady lives on this street, you see.’

  ‘You can’t go through,’ the warden repeated. ‘No one’s allowed through.’

  ‘Rose! Come back!’

  She was running, dodging past the warden who shouted at her to stop and she did stop because she’d rounded the corner onto her street. Her dear little street. It was strewn with broken bricks and shattered glass and the terrible dust was so thick, coating her clothes, Rose sucked it in with every ragged breath. It was impossible to see where she was going when her eyes were streaming but still she pressed on.

  ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ she heard herself chant as she stumbled over bricks and rubble,.

  This was the heart of the explosion. Not like the damage she was used to when one could still see the shell of the home you once knew. Her home was no longer there. It was simply gone . No more. Disappeared. Not here. Here was now a crater where their entire terrace had once stood, as if the earth had swallowed all the houses up whole, then spat out the joists and jambs as if they were bones. There was a gaping hole in her world.

  ‘Rose! Come back to the cordon. It’s not safe.’ Edward came up behind her, panting.

  She whirled round. ‘My girls! Where are my girls?’

  He put an arm around her shaking shoulders. ‘Let’s go and find out.’

  ‘Miss, you listen to your bloke.’ The ARP warden, his sooty face creased with concern, wasn’t shouting any more. ‘The WRVS has set up a canteen in the church hall on Bloomsbury Way. You go and have a nice cup of tea and a bun and sort yourself out. We need to keep this area clear to let the Civil Defence boys do their job.’

  ‘My friends…’ She couldn’t say any more than that, but pointed to the hole. ‘My house is in there. My friends were in the house. You see, normally they’d go out dancing, but it’s my birthday tomorrow, well, I suppose it’s today now and they came home early to plan my surprises. They’re all right, aren’t they?’

  The warden took her hand. ‘If you go to the WRVS canteen, they’ll have set up an IIP. They’ll know what to do.’

  Rose might even have let herself be led to the draughty church hall, but then she saw the look the two men shared, the swift shake of the warden’s head.

  ‘No!’ She wrenched free of them, sprang forward. All this time, she’d been staring blindly at the hole that stretched two streets back and it was only now that she looked down at what was left of the pavement.

  On the ground were six stained beige blankets, shrouding what lay beneath. Next to them there was a straw hamper, the kind you might pack full of sandwiches and fruit and bottles of pop for a picnic. Rose couldn’t imagine what it was doing there and then she remembered Sylvia telling her about the time she’d passed a street half an hour after a doodlebug had dropped from the sky. There’d been a young ambulance worker crying as she collected chunks of flesh (‘I’m sure one of them was a tiny foot, it was the most gruesome thing I’d ever seen, I felt like crying too’) wrapping them in newspaper and placing them in a basket.

  ‘Is
that them? Is that my girls? Is it? Is it?’ How could it be them? If it was, that would mean that Sylvia had left her. That she’d never see her or Phyllis or Maggie again. Even miserable Mr Bryce and the two sisters who lived in the ground floor flat and worked at the library on Chancery Lane. They’d all vanished and weren’t coming back. No goodbye, no note. She’d waved her girls off outside Rainbow Corner, too excited about her birthday treats and dinner at The Ritz to make that last ‘Cheerio. Don’t wait up!’ have any real meaning.

  ‘Rose. Darling Rose.’ Edward’s voice caught. ‘Don’t do that. Darling, please don’t.’

  She was on her knees and hammering the ground with fists that were quickly bloodied. Demanding that the earth, which had taken her girls, return them safe and sound.

  ‘I want them back right now! Do you hear me? You bring them back to me!’

  ‘If I could, I would. I’d do anything for you.’ Edward was on his knees too, arms holding her immobile so she couldn’t do any more damage. His big body covered hers and he clung to her tightly as if he could suck all the pain out of her and carry it around with him day after day so she wouldn’t have to bear the burden.