Dancing at the Victory Cafe

by Leah Fleming

  ‘We’re sorry, ma’am, for the trouble. We’ll be movin’ on.’

  ‘No, don’t rush. I mean it. We have no colour bar here.’

  The men sit down again, after they have introduced themselves. The older soldier raises his cap.

  ‘Chad Dixon, Supply Depot. This is my buddy, Abe Luther from Philadelphia, and this dude here, is Charlie Gordon, otherwise known as Lucky.’

  Lucky clicks his heels in a mock German salute. ‘We are sure pleased to meet all you kind ladies.’ Smiling directly at one girl.

  Dorrie can see the M.P. outside – watching. How dare he threaten the café? No fascist dictator could say who or who not they serve. There were enough flaming regulations in this war without scenes like this from a Yank. When the men eventually pay their bill, Belle escorts them to the door.

  ‘I hope your stay in Lichfield is a warm one. It’s an interesting place to look over, boys. Perhaps Dorrie will point you in the direction of the Cathedral just up the street.’ Outside it is dark and wet.

  ‘If you walk along the cobbles, you’ll find the Cathedral Close.’ Dorrie tries to ignore the bulk of the policeman, who has now collected a mate, both eyeing her with intense interest. ‘On the other hand, if I show you down here’ . . . she walks them over to the Market Square. ‘All the best public bars can be found along the alleys,’ she whispers. ‘Go up, turn right down the alley. Then you can disappear!’

  Chad bows again. ‘You’re some ladies. We’ll be back to the Victory Café: warmest place in town.’

  ‘Sure is.’ Lucky Gordon grins and Dorrie feels a strange stirring sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  They dart up the street and dip down the sidewalk, as she suggests, leaving the two M.P.s staring in fury. The waitress scuttles back indoors to report on the safe passage of the three soldiers to Belle in the kitchen. When she returns to the tearoom, the two M.P.s are sitting like ramrods, waiting for service. Connie moves forward but Sergeant McCoy, redfaced, bullnecked, waves her back.

  ‘That one’ll do!’ He beckons Dorrie, who is puce with embarrassment. The W.V.S. meeting falls silent and observes. ‘We’ll have your apple pie and make it quick, little lady! And a large beer.’

  ‘We’ve no licence, sir – tea?’

  ‘Coffee will do, girl.’

  She feels eyes searing into her back, as they light cigars and lean back arrogantly in their chairs.

  ‘Cute little ass,’ smirks the Sergeant, as he puffs rings of blue smoke into the air.

  Dorrie struggles not to shake as she carries two pudding plates full of Belle’s apple pie, crisp golden crusts, decorated with oak leaves, swimming in custard.

  ‘What’s this muck . . . where’s the real cream, missy?’

  ‘Cream’s off.’

  ‘So are we, honey,’ sneers the Sergeant to his pal, the light ash now forming a tube. He takes the cigar carefully and stubs the butt straight into the middle of the untouched pie, smiling coldly, as he rises, his feral eyes narrowing, glinting in triumph at her embarrassment.

  ‘Well, would you believe it!’ gasps Connie. ‘I told you not to let them darkies in. There’ll be trouble.’

  ‘Don’t take it personally, Dorrie. It’s not your fault.’ Bindy Baverstock swoops like an avenging angel. ‘I’ll get onto his Colonel. No one treats us like that! Don’t worry. He needs his backside tanning for that tantrum.’ Under her felt squashed hat and her uniform, Bindy is ready for battle. ‘Now you two are just the types I’m looking for. We’ve been asked to send a few girls round to cheer up the troops at Christmas – good girls of course, from reliable backgrounds – to do a bit of a concert party, entertain the coloured troops, tea and sympathy. These boys are simple souls, don’t want them to get the wrong idea, do we? Nice sensible girls like you will do fine.’

  Wyn is keen but Dorrie holds back. Her father and mother will not approve of singing and dancing, but if she can convince them she is assisting at a Christmas service, an opportunity to spread the gospel to strangers, then perhaps Father may waive his objections.

  ‘You’ll both come and do a turn. I’ve arranged for the dancing class to do some numbers. Cheer up, Dorcas, dear. It might not happen.’ Mrs Baverstock, seeing her worried look, pats her arm.

  Dorrie starts at her touch and smiles to herself. ‘Oh, but it has, something wonderful has just begun!’

  December 1943

  ‘Mother?’

  ‘Don’t talk with your mouth full, Dorcas.’

  The girl spits a stone into the pudding bowl. ‘You know when Pastor Gillibrand goes on about the latter days, when the Lord will descend and meet His believers in mid air.’ She stirs the custard with a swirl.

  ‘Yes, Dorcas, spit it out.’ Her mother pats thin lips with a napkin, repeating the text with eyes raised expectantly to the ceiling. ‘ “The trumpet shall sound and in a twinkling of an eye, we shall all be translated in mid air.” ’

  ‘Well, what happens if I am in the Café serving hot soup and suddenly I’m translated, does the soup come with me?’

  ‘What ever’s brought this on, young lady? These are the Lord’s concerns, not ours. You just get on with being saved and waiting your turn for the final solution. Read the Word, study it prayerfully. The answers are always at hand to the righteous. The Holy Spirit will sanctify our endeavours.’

  ‘Yes, I know all that stuff, but what about the others, Wyn, “The Prin”. They are my friends. Will they be left behind just because they don’t go to our Gospel Hall?’

  The mother sighs, shaking her head. ‘The Bible says there are sheep and there are goats, the saved and the unsaved.’

  ‘But it’s so hard being a sheep when all your friends are goats, when they get all the fun, go to the pictures and the dancing, stay out after dark and wear make-up. It’s not fair! Maggie Preece says you’re only young once!’

  ‘Short term pain for long term gain is what your father says. Your reward is not of this world. You should know that by now. We are a chosen people, put on the earth to pluck sinners from the burning, not indulge ourselves in worldly pleasures.’

  Dorrie leans forward and smiles. ‘So it’s OK, then, if I go with Wyn and the Reverend Baverstock’s wife to sing at the Barracks, in their Christmas Carol Concert, for the coloured soldiers?’

  ‘OK! OK! Where do you pick up such slang? I don’t know what your father will say. We don’t hold much with Christmas – Christmas is for pagans and idolaters!’

  ‘Yes, but it is a time when people think about baby Jesus and try to be good. Surely if we invite the soldiers to our services, that would be doing the Lord’s work? We could hold profitable conversations. Get them all saved for Christmas,’ Dorrie wheedles. ‘It’s lovely in the café, Mrs Morton has done it up, all tinsel and glitter, with a real Christmas tree for the orphan kiddies and Wyn’s mum’s asked me to tea on Boxing Day.’

  ‘Your father does not like you mixing down the street with unbelievers, especially in a house where alcohol is imbibed and Yankee soldiers come and go.’

  ‘Oh, please, Mother, we won’t be doing much here. Christmas is just one long Sunday; nothing much to write to Sol about on his ship.’

  ‘Your brother doesn’t want a catalogue of the Godless goings on at the Preeces’. He’s far too busy on convoy patrol to read gossip.’

  ‘They’re not Godless. Wyn’s mum is very kind. Remember when Mrs Blake at Number 7 got word that her son was on his way home from a P.O.W. camp. Who was it that knocked up the street with a collecting box and got a street party going, got them extra coal and a joint of beef?’

  ‘And look at the thanks she got for it! He was so exhausted, he couldn’t eat a mouthful. All those good rations were wasted on him, poor soul.’

  ‘But you always say it’s the thought that counts. Love thy neighbour and so forth. Surely the Lord will whisk her up with us on Judgement Day?’

  ‘Dorcas, I don’t know where you get your notions from. Don’t you hear anything in Bible class? If Fath
er could hear this prattle at the tea table.’

  ‘I wish you’d call me Dorrie. I hate Dorcas. It feels as stiff as whalebone corset digging in my ribs.’

  ‘Dorrie is for the playground and you should have left that behind years ago, when you put your hair up.’

  ‘That’s another thing. Why can’t I have it cut and styled?’

  ‘Vanity, vanity, child, all you think of is outward appearances. Search your heart not your mirror.’

  ‘So can I go with Wyn then? I’m sure I can get her to come and be saved at the Mission.’

  ‘We’ll pray about it.’

  ‘When? I need to let Mrs Baverstock know soon.’ Dorrie peers across the room, to the few Christmas cards dotted on the mantelpiece. There is no holly or ivy; no paper chains strung across the ceiling beams of their cottage. Photographs of Dorrie and Sol are the only frivolity on display in the parlour next door. Upstairs are three cold bedrooms in the eaves. One each for her parents and one for Dorrie. Having replicated themselves exactly, her mother once whispered, they have no need for further carnal activity, abstinence being a state of Grace. Carnal knowledge, much reported in the Old Testament, is still a mystery to Dorrie. Any reference to reproductive matters is never encouraged at home. Wyn, however, furnishes her with mind boggling details, too lurid to contemplate. No wonder there were only two offspring in the policeman’s cottage!’

  Dorrie crosses her fingers behind her back, closes her eyes and wishes for her Christmas campaign to succeed. Then she focuses them hard on her bowl. ‘One for yes, two for no . . . three for yes,’ she smiles. There are five prune stones. It’s going to be all right!’

  On the Saturday night of the concert at the Base, Dorrie and Wyn race home together from work in the blackout. ‘I love getting changed at your house. It’s all fish and chippy, always something happening. My house could be in a cemetery, for all the life it sees.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Dorrie, who’d want to live in the middle of our madhouse?’ Wyn flings open the kitchen door. A fog of blue smoke hangs like a pall over the room, where Marlene, Wyn’s sister, huddles over the wireless with rag curlers sticking out of her head like unicorn horns. Maggie Preece stands, fag in mouth, ironing a blouse, her feet tapping to the band music, while Mutt, the mongrel, jumps up in delight at their entrance, trampling onto the open suitcase, full of dancing costumes.

  ‘Get that damn dog out of here, our Wyn. What will Dorrie think of us. Hello, love. Your big night tonight. However did you manage to get their consent?’ laughs Maggie Preece, shoving a mug of stewed tea in to her hand.

  ‘Miracles do happen! Father cornered Mrs Baverstock in the street and she promised to be my chaperone. I could have died with shame when he collared her!’ The two waitresses rush upstairs to transform themselves into chorus girls. Dorrie tries on a low-cut blouse from Maggie’s wardrobe to go over her navy school skirt. ‘I’m not appearing on stage in my Sunday Chapel frock. Look at it, fit for a funeral not a party!’ The only indulgence on the corduroy is rickrack braid edging, in a mouldy green colour, above the hem. Tonight they Bisto legs carefully and Wyn draws a pencil seam up the back, trying not to smudge when she giggles . . . The blouse, tied in a knot at the front in the latest daring fashion, reveals a bare midriff. As she dabs on ‘Evening in Paris’ by Bourjois and pouts at her Coty red lips, Dorrie feels like a film starlet.

  ‘Look! Eye shadow!’ Wyn wipes her fingers on the dusty surfaces, on coal dusted rims around the furniture, then wipes her finger over their eyelids. Wyn knows all the tricks. Maggie pops up and dabs them both with panstick make-up, making a Cupid’s Bow second to none on Dorrie’s lips.

  ‘I wish my mother was as glamorous as yours.’ The girl sighs with envy at Maggie’s painted nails.

  ‘Your mother’s home when you open the door. Mine is always behind the bar at the Goat’s Head, fighting off drunken airmen. My dad would go mad if he knew what goes on there after closing time,’ whispers Wyn.

  The waitresses primp and preen in front of the cracked dressing-table mirror. The cream georgette blouse emphasises Dorrie’s ample curves and she even brushes boot polish carefully onto her pale eyelashes, fringing them thickly, powdering them, to prevent smudges on her cheeks. Tonight Dorrie Goodman will perform in public for the first time. The butterflies flutter deep within her stomach. Soon they will dash across to the Market Square and wait for the ‘liberty truck’ from the Base to whisk them to the concert. Maggie gives them the ‘once over’ inspection.

  ‘Why don’t you let your hair down, Dorrie? It’s too lovely to be in a bun. Here let me do it for you.’ She brushes out the coils of red hair and rummages in a drawer for a bright red scarf. ‘There, try this . . . red against red.’ The vibrant scarf circles the luxuriant curls, the bow tugged down off centre.

  ‘Knock ’em dead, kid.’ She sighs. ‘I wish I were seventeen, and all to go for! When I was your age, Wyn was on the way and that put an end to my gallivanting days for a while.’ She winks.

  The truck is late. Mollie Custer’s Dainty Dots dancing troupe with suitcases full of costumes, stamp their feet and tap dance in the cold street. The littlest girls have headscarves over their ringlets. Their mothers, anxious to keep knees clean and clothes tidy, fuss over their offspring like clucking hens, with breath steaming into the darkness. Marlene and Wyn will be as usual minus a mother. The concert is not at the main base where Curtis, her latest friend, would have given her a good welcome. Curtis is an M.P. and suggests she stays away from the coloured troops.

  Bindy Baverstock and a group of W.V.S. volunteers have gone ahead by special car, to organise dressing rooms and finalise the arrangements. The girls let out a cheer when they see the two trucks, with dimmed hooded headlights focusing down, rattling into view. Their cheers are drowned by the roar of aircraft droning, thundering above, climbing upwards from the aerodrome. Dorrie counts the bombers in the dark. It is a habit of hers to count them away and count them back. She whispers her charm.

  ‘Lucky moon, Oh lucky moon,

  Bring the boys back safely, soon.’

  The truck rattles so much that one of Mollie’s pupils is sick over the side. The girls chatter with excitement, as they are saluted through the barrier at the main gate by the guardsmen on duty. The camp, camouflaged in darkness, is a toy fort of a barracks, surrounded by parade grounds and Nissen huts dotted on every space. The campus seems endless. Maggie informs them that there is a hospital and a jailhouse as well as huge hangars built for the Supplies Depot. It is rumoured that the prison there is guarded by a wild Cherokee Indian, who shoots on sight if a man so much as puts a finger outside his cell, and soldiers are executed in the jailhouse courtyard. Dorrie and Wyn prefer not to think about such gruesome information. It dulls the glamour of the occasion. It is enough to know that Uncle Sam’s Army is a law unto itself and they are entering foreign territory!

  The concert party is helped down from the trucks and escorted by armed guards to a huge hangar. The little girls gasp in amazement at the spectacle before them. From the rafters hang festoons of balloons, garlands of glitzy decorations, baubles and streamers, American style; a fairyland of lights hidden behind sealed doors: another world away from their shabby Christmassy efforts at home. At the far end of the hangar stands a platform stage, swathed with gaudy satin drapery. Dorrie gulps at the vastness of the auditorium, her heart racing in anticipation of the coming performance. ‘I can’t breathe . . . I’ll never sing in this, Wyn. Oh Gosh! Help!’

  The dressing room is curtained off behind the stage. The mothers shake out the crumpled costumes, the cowgirl outfits fringed with lamp shade trimmings, the gypsy skirts made from blackouts, the boleros decorated with toffee paper spangles, the frilly ballet dresses made from old curtain netting. It all looks so tawdry in the harsh lights. How Dorrie envies the Dainty Dots as they step into their costumes for the first number. Just a bunch of schoolgirls who tap dance across the district on Saturday nights: rows of little Shirley Temples, with coiled r
inglets, toothpaste smiles and bright rouged cheeks. Known locally as the ‘Custard Tarts’ they tap dance to routines in as regimented a rhythm as any soldier on parade.

  The older girls, wearing pretty floral skirts and ballet shoes, wait nervously in the wings while the pianist checks the order of her music. From a chink in the curtain, Dorrie observes rows of soldiers shuffling in like a school assembly, bagging seats at the front on wooden benches, some sitting silently with arms folded. How different they look. So many dark faces. Dorrie’s heart thuds.

  ‘We’re just another bunch of amateurs they have to endure. They must be sick of being entertained by well meaning do gooders. Whatever will they make of a bunch of schoolgirls?’ The familiar doughty form of Bindy Baverstock strides down the aisle to the front of stage. An Officer introduces the entertainment and opens the proceedings with polite clapping. ‘This is all a ghastly mistake! I shouldn’t have come. It’s going to be awful.’ Tears fill Dorrie’s eyes, and she swallows hard, her hands sweating. ‘I can’t get up there on my own . . . I’m not good enough!’

  Then the dancing troops skip across the stage and sing.

  ‘You are my sunshine, my only sunshine.

  You make me happy, when skies are grey.’

  They twirl and twinkle, tweak their curls, sway their hips as they have been drilled, moving with unison and precision; all except for one little slowcoach on the end who gets it all wrong – deliberately. The men laugh at their antics. She plays up to the audience and does it even more. Next comes the rootin’, tootin’ cowboy routine. The girls cartwheel, arch over in handstands and back flips, coil themselves like snakes and do the splits. After that number come tap dancers singing ‘Ballin’ the Jack’, ballerinas floating across the stage as snow flakes. How the men cheer the ‘big girl’ items, whistling loudly. The show is all going down better than Dorrie expects.