After the Last Dance

by Sarra Manning

  They’d met over the garden fence. Rafe had friends who lived next door and made Charles as angry as Jane had ever seen him with their raucous parties that went on all night and their guests who would never speak but roar in loud confident voices and throw up in the street. But Rafe wasn’t like that. He was quiet, adoring and very persistent. And his parents were very, very rich. They’d even paid Jane off with a flat in Primrose Hill when it looked like she was going to become a permanent fixture, but that was a year further down the line.

  To start with, it had been a whirlwind courtship conducted during daylight hours when Charles was at work and Jane was left to her own devices; Charles probably thought that she was arranging flowers and looking for recipes and all the other little tasks that made up her continued quest for self-improvement. Instead she was taken to Cowdray Park to sip champagne and watch Rafe play polo. Flown to Paris for lunch. Bought her first diamond. And all she had to do in return was thank Rafe with a kiss that meant more to him than the diamond did to her.

  Leaving Charles wasn’t a decision Jane had taken lightly, but she’d taken it all the same. She had form and at least this time she left a note in the unformed, ugly scrawl that was one of the few things she couldn’t improve on. Thanks for all that you did , the note had said. Maybe she should have enlarged on that theme, spun it out over several sheets of Charles’s finest linen bond paper, but it still came down to those six words to encompass how he’d saved her.

  ‘I’m sorry about how I left. I want you to know that.’ And she’d said it now and she couldn’t believe it was that easy. Maybe she’d start saying sorry more often now.

  ‘You left on a Friday,’ Charles said, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond Jane. ‘It was June. It was so sunny, hot, and you’d mentioned getting out of London, that you’d only seen the sea once. I’d left work early, booked two rooms at a place in Brighton and thought that we might drive down there that evening. As soon as I opened the door, before I even saw your note, I knew you’d gone.’

  It turned out that it wasn’t that easy. It wasn’t easy at all. ‘Charles, please…’

  ‘We couldn’t have carried on as we were, but were you not happy? Was it something I did? Something I said? Did I give you a reason not to trust me?’ Charles still wouldn’t look at her and his tone, his endless unbearable questions weren’t relentless, but resigned, rehearsed as if he’d lain awake reliving the moment when he’d come home to find her gone. And still he continued. ‘What was so special about that boy – because I did know about him, you weren’t as good at covering your tracks as you thought you were. Two years we spent together and then you left me six words on a piece of paper, Jane. I thought I was worth more than that.’

  Jane covered her face with her icy cold hands. ‘I can’t help what I am, Charles. I did a bad thing to you, I know, but that doesn’t make me a bad person.’

  ‘That’s an excuse, it’s not a reason,’ Charles said gently and it was that gentleness that threatened to break her, make the sobs rise up.

  Six words weren’t enough. Sorry wasn’t enough. She owed him some kind of explanation. ‘You see, with you, I wasn’t scared any more but I still didn’t feel safe,’ Jane said haltingly. ‘I still felt as if the world could crash down on top of me at any second and I thought that if I had money, if I was with someone who had lots of money, more money than you, then it would cushion the blow. Money gives you security. It makes you bombproof, I’ve always thought that, though lately I wonder how true that is.’

  ‘Nobody is bombproof,’ Charles said. ‘Everyone can be hurt no matter how much money they have.’

  ‘And I hurt you and I am so very sorry, Charles… I don’t what else to say but sorry. Don’t know how to make that word mean everything it should.’ She was starting to sound pleading, tearful. ‘You have to believe me.’

  ‘I do. It’s all right. Apology accepted,’ Charles said hurriedly as if he couldn’t stand to hear another word, but Jane wasn’t done. She’d come this far and now she had no choice but to doggedly trudge on.

  ‘There’s something else. The first night… you must have wondered… I mean I had blood on me… my clothes, my hands and you never even… you didn’t…’ It was an ungainly rush of words vomiting out of her, both of them in disbelief that she was saying this. Going there.

  ‘Jane, please stop now,’ Charles whispered. ‘I can’t do this.’

  ‘But I have to.’ She hardly recognised her own voice, the manic, desperate, lost cadence to it. ‘Because I also wondered about you. When you gave me the knife that first night and you told me to sleep with it so I’d feel safe. I need to know what happened to you.’

  ‘I can’t. You can’t expect me to…’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I’m not brave like you. Please, Jane, if you ever cared anything for me, you will drop this.’

  Jane held out her hands towards him, imploringly, but Charles shook his head and his face, his kind, gentle face, was on the brink of collapse, so she dropped it.

  ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Let’s not do this any more.’

  Charles nodded. He crossed one knee over the other, found a smile.

  ‘So, Rose was telling me that you’ve been helping her go through her attics and that you found a whole collection of taxidermy that she has absolutely no memory of buying.’

  They had another perfectly lovely chat, though that made Jane want to cry too, then Charles walked her out. ‘By the way,’ he said, just before she left, one foot already over the threshold. ‘I liked your Leo. I liked him a lot.’

  It was raining outside. Pouring. Heavy and biblical. Jane didn’t have an umbrella. Didn’t want to take a taxi. She felt… didn’t even know how she felt, but as she walked she wondered if she was crying or if it was just the rain on her face. By the time she reached Kensington, she’d decided that there was no point in feeling guilty any more. It was easy when your feelings didn’t run that deep in the first place. She couldn’t help that there was something missing, something in her internal wiring not properly connected. Not her fault at all.

  As soon as she opened the front door, Jane could tell that something was wrong. The house could speak volumes and it was silently screaming at her.

  Jane took the stairs two at a time. Once she was past the first floor, she could hear a raspy sort of shouting, which got louder as she ran up the last flight of stairs and down the corridor to Rose’s sitting room.

  Lydia, Agnieska, one of the agency nurses who came to give Rose her injection, and Leo, with a stricken look on his face, were standing there as Rose shouted at him.

  ‘It’s you! You’ve done this to me! I was fine until you came back. Why did you come back?’

  ‘Rose, you know why I came back.’ He choked on every word. ‘Because I care about you.’

  ‘You care about my money. Well, you’re not getting a penny!’

  Rose was locked in a grotesque, hunched crouch as she tried to lift herself off the sofa. But worse was the look on her face. Like a terrified, cornered animal, wild and yet caged.

  Jane had to say something to stop Rose looking like that. ‘That’s not true, darling. Leo’s here because he wanted to make things right with you.’

  Rose turned accusing eyes on Jane standing in the doorway. ‘You! Who are you? The two of you are in cahoots with each other. You’re trying to finish me off. You’re poisoning me!’

  And for the finale she struggled to her feet, and then crumpled with a startled cry, ending up on her knees as they all rushed forwards.

  It felt like a long time before Agnieska had finished checking over a now compliant, placid Rose, no bones broken, no harm done, except for Rose’s panting breaths.

  Rose suddenly sank back and for one heart-skipping moment Jane thought that she’d gone. Then her eyes opened. ‘I hate you all,’ she said petulantly. ‘Leave me alone. Get out!’

  ‘Enough, Rose,’ Lydia said calmly. ‘You don’t hate us and no one is here to hurt you.’
>
  ‘I’m all alone.’ Rose’s voice quavered. ‘I don’t have a friend left in the world.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Rose.’ Jane didn’t know how Lydia could sound so steady. ‘I’ll make some cocoa, and sit with you while you drink it. Shall we do that?’

  Rose nodded meekly and Agnieska said she’d stay and get Rose into bed.

  ‘Come with me, you two.’ Lydia bustled Leo and Jane out of the room. They followed her down the stairs and through to the kitchen.

  Leo sniffed and rubbed the back of his hands across his eyes. ‘I came back because you asked me,’ he said as if Lydia needed convincing too. ‘I couldn’t leave things as they were between us. Haven’t I done enough now to prove that to you?’

  ‘I know that and she knows that too,’ Lydia said as she turned to put the kettle on. ‘I expect it’s the drugs and whatnot, but she’s not good. Not good at all. I don’t know how much longer we can go on like this.’

  ‘But she’s been steady these last two weeks,’ Jane ventured. ‘Now that she’s not going to the office and rushing all over London.’

  ‘Yeah, she’s been a bit more like her old self,’ Leo added and he shot Jane a grateful smile and she tried to smile back but her face wouldn’t work.

  Lydia turned round, her expression resolute. ‘I have to call your mother, Leo. Rose is adamant that she doesn’t want her to come down but she has to know.’

  ‘Um, should I? Do you want me to call her?’ he asked uncertainly as if he was volunteering for open-heart surgery without any anaesthetic because he didn’t want to cause a fuss.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Lydia said and she stroked her hand down Leo’s cheek. In that moment, Jane supposed that she really had forgiven him. ‘I want you to go to Lullington Bay and fetch some of Rose’s things. We wrote out a list the other day.’

  ‘Yeah, of course. Tomorrow.’ Leo looked through the open door. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow.’

  ‘No, do it now. Take Jane with you.’ Lydia started rooting in the drawer next to her and eventually pulled out a set of car keys. ‘You can take my little Nissan.’ Then she opened her kitchen diary and took out a piece of paper. ‘I think everything’s in a trunk in her bedroom. Call me if you have any trouble.’

  ‘But we can’t go now. It’s late,’ Leo protested.

  ‘It’s not even six-thirty.’ She thrust a piece of paper at Jane who had no choice but to take it. ‘You should be there and back in four hours.’

  Jane tugged on Leo’s sleeve because he didn’t seem inclined to move. ‘But you will call us if, you know…’

  ‘Of course I will. Well, don’t just stand there. Go!’

  They went.

  31

  London 1944–1945

  Although it was against the rules, when Rose turned up at Rainbow Corner late that Saturday afternoon after she’d left Edward’s flat, shell-shocked and shaking, the other girls made a cosy den for her in the Where Am I? room. Rose stayed there for three days, which passed in a blur of staring at the walls, endless cups of tea and people popping in to tell Rose how sorry they were.

  She was also visited there by one of the grandest of the American Red Cross ladies, whose sister was married to someone very high up at the War Office, almost as high as Winston Churchill himself. The woman sat on the bed next to Rose, took her hand and whispered in Rose’s ear that it hadn’t been a gas line explosion but a bomb like nothing anyone had seen before. A V2, Hitler’s ‘vengeance rocket’, his secret weapon, which had always been something of a national joke as they’d all speculated on what old Adolf would pull out for his final act.

  Soon the room was needed again for GIs who were too inebriated to make it to their billets and Rose moved into the house in Kensington. She slept in a back bedroom on one of the camp beds donated by Phyllis, which smelt of paraffin wax. It was there that the items salvaged from Montague Terrace were delivered. ‘You’re a very lucky girl,’ a man from the Civil Defence Squad said as the wardrobe and drawers were hefted up the stairs. ‘Still got most of your clothes in here. That’s more than a lot of people have, you know.’

  Sylvia’s crocodile skin attaché case had also been saved, and wrapped in a torn, dirty sheet, torn and dirty itself, was Shirley’s limp blue taffeta dress. It had been hanging on the back of the bedroom door and had stayed there even when the door was blown into a back garden three streets away.

  Shirley’s pale blue taffeta might well outlive them all, Rose thought, and it was oddly comforting to walk around in her dead friends’ clothes. Still having part of them, even if it was just things, meant Rose had something to pass on to the people who were left behind.

  After Maggie’s funeral, her émigré friends invited Rose to the wake in a tiny basement bar in Bayswater. Rose sat and drank vodka with them and they told her what little they knew about Maggie. She’d studied art at the Prague School; her father had taught philosophy at the university. When Hitler had invaded the Sudetenland in 1938, Maggie had dyed her hair blonde and got to Paris on false papers. She’d run far and fast from the Nazis but they’d still got her in the end.

  There was a redheaded woman who’d known Maggie in Prague and had worked with her at the BBC who didn’t say a word while everyone else talked about Maggie. But when Rose gave her Maggie’s beaten copper wrist cuff and the handkerchief she’d embroidered, though Rose really wanted to keep them for herself, the woman kissed Rose on the lips, then stood up and walked away.

  Next was Sylvia’s funeral. Sylvia’s people were from Hoxton, where Mickey Flynn said even he wouldn’t go after dark. Rose knew Sylvia wasn’t top drawer. She’d mentioned a kindly uncle ‘who lifted me out of the gutter as kindly uncles are wont to do’ but that was with a wink and a nudge so Rose had decided that, strictly speaking, he hadn’t been an uncle at all.

  What was left of Sylvia was put in a mahogany coffin and carried by a horse-drawn hearse, black feather plumes dancing in the breeze. Propped up against the coffin was a floral tribute, RIP Our Syl , spelt out in white chrysanthemums. It was the flowers that nearly did for Rose but Sylvia wouldn’t have wanted her to cry. ‘Chin up, darling,’ she’d have said. ‘What a waste of mascara.’

  There was nothing special about a funeral procession, not these days, but as they made painfully slow progress along the New North Road towards the church, people stopped, took off their hats and bowed their heads as Sylvia passed.

  ‘She’d have got a kick out of this,’ Rose said to Mickey but he said that Sylvia would have much preferred to have her ashes scattered over the dancefloor of the Embassy Club than buried in the graveyard of St John the Baptist church.

  The wake was at the George and Vulture on Pitfield Street. Rose and Mickey sat in the corner surrounded by a press of people all having a whale of a time, until the crowd suddenly parted to let through a middle-aged man and woman. The man had a big red angry face and had taken off his jacket and rolled up his shirtsleeves to show meaty forearms covered in crude tattoos. By contrast, his wife was so thin that her shoulders looked like coat hangers in her black dress,

  ‘You knew our girl? Our Syl?’ the man demanded and Rose wanted to shrink back but Mickey gave her hand a warning squeeze and she nodded.

  ‘Yes.’ She couldn’t make her voice any louder than a whisper. ‘She was… I…’ It was impossible to sum up what Sylvia, lovely, lithe, larger-than-life Sylvia, had meant to her. ‘She was my friend. My very dear friend.’

  Rose was hauled out of her chair and paraded around the room. Introduced to uncles and aunts and cousins and friends of the family as ‘one of our Syl’s friends from Up West.’ They all shook her hand and a woman even bobbed as if Rose were one of the young princesses. But when Rose gave Sylvia’s parents their daughter’s gold locket and powder compact, her mother made an awful noise, a keening, that made all the hairs on the back of Rose’s neck stand up. Mrs Crapper suddenly clasped her hand over her heart and was then swallowed up by a gaggle of female relatives who spirited her away and Rose was left wi
th her husband, who looked even bigger and redder and angrier.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said in the same hoarse whisper. ‘I just thought you might like to have them. I didn’t mean…’

  His face suddenly crumpled like a paper bag crushed in a careless fist. ‘Syl, she always said you were like a little sister to her.’ Tears streamed down his bulbous cheeks. Rose watched aghast, tears spilling unchecked down her own face too, as the huge brute of a man was brought to his knees. He went down hard and when Rose crouched down to make sure he was all right, he seized her hand in a punishing grip. ‘You’re family now,’ he said as if he dared Rose to defy him. ‘If you ever need anything… anything. You get yourself down to Hoxton and ask for Henry Crapper.’

  There was only Phyllis’s funeral left but Rose wasn’t allowed the time off work. ‘We’re sorry about your friends, of course we are, but it’s not like they were family,’ Mrs Fisher told her. ‘Besides, there’s nothing like a bit of hard work to take your mind off things.’