Dancing at the Victory Cafe

by Leah Fleming

  On the afternoon when the former owners of the café drop in to sample the new tea cup loaf, Dorrie hovers by the window anxiously hoping to catch a glimpse of Lucky in the street. The three Greville sisters have for once collected their young evacuee, Sid Sperrin, from school all polished and scrubbed for the occasion; but he sits restless, banging his legs, eager to be off among the buses, in the wintry sunlight. For once they take pity on his obvious boredom and allow him down from the table, to tear off his energy in the Market Square.

  ‘He grows so fast,’ they sigh. ‘His legs are sprouting like rhubarb! We don’t know how he finds the energy!’

  ‘He’s still Leader of the Salvage Club then?’ Dorrie passes the time, her eye on the window.

  ‘Not only his Salvage Club, but now he’s into rabbit meat production and selling horse manure . . . I don’t know where he gets these schemes from! When I think what he was like when he first landed on our doorstep. He was Sad Ivy’s son. You won’t remember her, she was one of our girls, married late to a man Birmingham way, who was wounded in the First World War. Poor Bart, he died before Sidney was born. Then Ivy catches this bug and the poor child has no one. We couldn’t turn him away. He’s been a bit of a challenge!’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly, Onyx Greville. At your time of life to take on such a scally . . . lively child,’ Connie interrupts, shaking her head.

  Dorrie looks forward to their weekly visit. Onyx, Pearl and Ruby, the ‘Jewel sisters’, as they are known locally, have kind hearts and old-fashioned manners; three Victorian ladies with bosoms like bolsters in the style of Queen Mary. She can still feel the prickle of the horsehair sofa behind her knees as she sat in their villa in Gaia Lane, while they interviewed her carefully for the post of Saturday girl waitress. Constable Goodman’s reputation alone was all the reference they needed from her. However does Sid manage to keep his clumsy fingers from breaking all their delicate porcelain plates and ornaments? He is such a bundle of noise and speed. Dorrie guesses Sid runs rings around the old dears but they never seem to bother.

  Connie whispers, ‘Silly old biddies should have had a lodger from the Air Base. He’s too big for his boots is Sidney. One of these days he’ll cut himself, he’s that sharp.’

  As if sensing the comment, Pearl smiles. ‘He’s the best thing that ever happened to us, isn’t he, girls? Such a mangy pup when he first came, so out of control, with sunken eyes like saucers and a head full of lice but he’s brought a sparkle to our retirement. Given us a new interest in life.’

  Dorrie nods in agreement; trust Sid to land himself such a loving billet.

  Not all the evacuees were so lucky. Some families were trudging the streets searching for rooms, for cover, on wet days when landladies turfed them out into the cold. They were the ones who slumped in the café eking out a pot of tea and a bun. Sad-faced mothers with babies plugged into rubber dummies, while the snot runs down their noses, marking time, bedraggled, displaced and utterly ground down by the war. Even Connie hints that there are billets where the kids are expected to do all the chores, feed the pigs and chickens, muck out stables, clean grates like skivvies and to be fed on little other than bread and scrape. School dinners were often the only hot meal on the horizon.

  Everyone is fed up with the drabness of life. Five years of rationing shortages, making do ‘for the duration’. How Dorrie hates that phrase. Like a wet half closing day, her life stuck forever on amber traffic lights, ‘for the duration’. Perhaps Mrs Morton is right to fix her hopes on something cheerful to raise the spirits. She peers out again into the street; no sign of Lucky and his gang.

  Their romance blossoms in secret places, by stealth in the streets, carefully engineered soirées, band concerts, over cups of Camp coffee when notes are exchanged under the saucer. Chad, Abe and Lucky are regulars now and bring friends to spend their lavish pay on the best of the menu. The Prin occasionally invites them upstairs to play cards and smoke their cigarettes. Lucky and Dorrie swop passionate kisses in her kitchen.

  ‘Dorcas, wake up, dear, be a love and fetch in Sidney, will you? He’s going to get his only pair of decent trousers filthy. We’d never catch him.’

  Once out into the Square, she glimpses the boy on a street corner, his mouth bulging with chewing gum, while a soldier fiddles in his pocket for candy bars. Trust Sid to be on the scrounge!

  ‘Hey, missy.’ A voice behind stops her stock still: the sleazy deep drawl of Sergeant Burgess McCoy. ‘Hey, little madam. Howz about that date, babe? I’m still waitin’ and ma patience don’t last forever.’

  The girl walks on, head in the air, tossing her curls, trying to ignore his banter, blushing fiercely at being caught off guard. ‘Beat it, Sergeant, I’m not interested!’

  His tone changes, the menace undisguised, ‘I don’t take no sass from Goody Two Shoes. You watch your step. I’s a watchin’ you, every step of the way.’

  She feels his hand brush her skirt, smells the stink of his whisky breath, and leaps across the street towards the boy. Sid darts off at her approach. Dorrie, all guns blazing, roars at the lad like a cannon. ‘Just you come back here, Sidney, or I’ll tell them old dears how you skim down the trees at night. I’ll tell on you. God help me, if I don’t, Sid Sperrin.’

  He turns his face sheepishly and smiles. ‘You wouldn’t?’ In the thickest of city accents.

  ‘Just try me!’ She pretends to cuff his ear and leads him meekly back to the café, not daring to pause, in case McCoy is observing the scene.

  Maggie Preece is soaking her swollen feet in a bowl of Rinso, listening to the Big Bands on the Home Service, when Dorrie calls in to collect ‘the Mutt’ for a long walk. The dog barks eagerly at her entrance.

  ‘Time for a cuppa? Curt brought me ten pounds of sugar and real butter. Look, a tin of cookies! The girls are out at their dancing class, I’m all on my ownsome.’

  ‘Go on then.’ Dorrie looks at her watch as she shifts a mound of papers and unwashed plates to clear herself a place at the table.

  ‘You keen on this Lucky fella then?’

  ‘How do you know about . . .?’

  ‘Well, Curtis says they don’t hold with mixing with coloureds in the army. It starts bad feeling with the guys and big fights, you know, in some camps.’

  ‘It’s none of their business, is it? I think all this Jim Crow is terrible. I do really.’

  ‘Don’t you go mouthin’ off about Jim Crow, especially when McCoy is on duty. He’s a nasty piece of work, if ever I saw one. Just you mind it’s none of our business. I’d hate you to get hurt. I’m hurting bad enough as it is!’

  ‘Curt not a good bloke then?’

  ‘Oh no . . . he’s generous, kindly, what more could a woman want? But they’ll be going soon enough. He says they’re stockpiling stores, trucks. One of these mornings, we’ll all wake up and they’ll be gone, just like Alun, out of my life, as quick as he came.’

  ‘Heard from Mr Preece?’

  ‘Not for a month but mail’s like that and then I’ll get six letters at once.’

  ‘Do you love Curt then?’

  ‘Love? What’s that about when it’s at home? He’s right enough but when you’re stuck with a family, on a soldier’s pay, with growing mouths to stuff, you just take your chance. He’s lonely, I’m lonely. We’ve had a real good time. He’s married, I’m married. Anyway, it’s impossible to get yourself a Yankee marriage certificate. I’m not daft. It’s just one of those flings, as the song says. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Dorrie. Don’t go getting your hopes up.’

  Dorrie gulps her tea. ‘Who said anything about marriage? I’m going in the Land Army soon as I can. Anyway this is England 1944 not the Dark Ages.’

  ‘Of course it is, love, but think on, some things never change. Love doesn’t pay the rentman.’

  ‘Maggie?’

  ‘Yes, love?’

  ‘What is it like . . . you know, loving a fella, properly. Does it show? Wyn says you can tell if a girl’s gone all th
e way. It sort of shows.’

  ‘Oh, Dorrie, you haven’t gone and done it . . . that’s how I got caught with Wyn. For God’s sake, not with a darkie.’

  ‘Maggie, don’t say that! We love each other, honest. He is a gentleman and so kind. I love him, he’s got right up my nostrils.’

  ‘If he gets in your drawers, that’s the time to worry. Do be careful. Has your mother . . . er, said anything?’

  ‘Now can you imagine my mother telling me the facts of life? Wyn’s told me what’s what . . . don’t worry. All they ever talk about is keeping clean and pure, like love in a cold bath. This feeling’s not dirty. I want to get so close to him. I can’t help how I feel, I never thought it would feel like this, melting together, sticky and warm.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be telling me this. I don’t know what to advise. Just make sure he wears something, love, and don’t let him spill anything on you. Believe me, you can get caught standing up or lying down. Please be careful. Loving fellas is a dangerous game. I should know.’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ Dorrie snaps, putting the lead on the dog, bursting out into the dusk with furious energy. How dare the Army say her love for Lucky is wrong. The Yanks had strange laws, wrong laws. All this fuss about mixing socially. Glad enough to show off the jazz bands when they parade through the streets, wowing the crowds with their toe-tapping music. Put them up front when it suits them. No colour bar then! she mutters, crossing the Greenhill onto Darnford Lane, out into the dark fields with a flickering torch, watching the arch of a searchlight, feathering out in the distant sky. Why are we skulking in the shadows like criminals?

  ‘Hey, babe . . . over here.’ Lucky waits as usual under their tree.

  Next morning she day-dreams, plonking the peelings into the pig-swill container, tripping over the fire bucket and sending sand across the kitchen floor.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ Connie grumbles. ‘Head in the clouds, feet in the shit.’

  The morning is damp and depressing. Dorrie feels the fire of last night still smouldering in her belly; a restlessness to be alone pulling her out into the back garden.

  ‘Hurry on spring and warm days. Hurry up world and sort yourself out. I’m seventeen and I want to get on with my life. I’m fed up with being kept on the back boiler . . . for the duration.’

  The café, once a Georgian town house, still retains a sandstone brick wall, enclosing a pretty garden, cluttered with bunkers for storage and a small sunken Anderson shelter for a quick exit from the kitchen in an emergency. The corrugated roof arches over with soil, on which they grow fresh parsley, thyme and radishes in the summer. She sits on the wooden bench, hands cupped under her chin.

  Nothing feels safe anymore. Her world is topsy turvy since Lucky Gordon danced into her life. Deceit is so complicated. Wyn is kindly but has no idea of the turmoil she experiences; lying to her parents, sneaking out of piano lessons, borrowing the Preece’s dog. Any excuse to get away from home onto the streets. What she contemplates now, they say, is sinful and lustful, a punishable offence. This is no Christian love sanctified by marriage vows, this primitive urge, rising straight from her groin. How can she begin to think of letting a man touch her privately, part her legs and connect in such a physical way. The power of loving between them is getting too strong to resist and now she is curious.

  What will it be like, that first time? Once can do no harm . . . just to prove how much she loves him. It must be love; this thunderous cloud crashing over my head. Is it visible, this passion? Does it swirl out of me like a halo? Why else do I feel so different, so special, so alive? Now is our time. It might never happen again. Whatever the war might bring, sudden partings, perhaps death. Once will be safe. Dorrie feels her limbs trembling at the thought of the disobedient act of love. Restraints weaken, loosening like worn elastic. Who knows when Lucky will be posted overseas? I must send him away loved, remembered, satisfied. Lucky is my love, the door to life.

  ‘Dorrie Goodman, get back inside and stop all this daydreaming. There’s a war on and thirty hungry customers to be served.’ Belle Morton’s shrill call to arms douses her stirrings like a splash of cold water. ‘See if the chickens have done their duty yet!’

  She dawdles to the coop in the corner of the wall and the chickens scatter in protest as she ferrets gingerly in the nesting boxes. There are three eggs again. The creatures are responding to the stronger daylight. Soon a dozen speckled eggs will boost the dried egg powder to make the fluffiest scrambled eggs or sponge batter. Spring is on its way!

  ‘Now, girls,’ says Belle after the lunchtime rush, when they collapse for a quick sandwich and a breather, before the afternoon tea brigade arrive, ‘I want you to know, I’m giving this Victory Pie competition serious thought. In fact I’ve made one or two experiments.’

  Three waitresses nod, as they glance over Belle’s burgeoning skirt. Belle, with her broad hips and curvaceous figure, is the epitome of a cook who tastes her fayre. Her arms are as plump but firm as her thighs. Her fair hair, gathered on the top of her head, is in the latest pompadour style, piled high in neat sausage rolls, a style which heightens the curve of her arching brow, high cheekbones and sapphire eyes. Not for Belle the usual tight curls anchored by a battery of hair pins, the pencilled brow or pillar box lips. In the kitchen Belle is a firm believer in all the principles of hygiene, however unglamorous, and joins the others wearing their tight skivvy mob caps. ‘I don’t want any of my customers to have to pick hairs out of their soup or snot from their sandwiches, as I did once in a certain rival establishment nearby.’

  Belle loves her food and the evidence spreads around her belly, from too many teacakes dripping with butter, to jam omelettes and batter puddings. Today she is in an abstemious mood. ‘What we need is a philosophy!’

  The women wait, curious as to the explanation. Connie folds her arms in defiance. ‘Here we go again, more work!’ she mutters.

  ‘When is the darkest hour?’ Belle begins.

  ‘Before the dawn,’ pipes Dorrie.

  Connie gives one of her best withering glances. ‘Little show off.’

  ‘That’s right. Our victory can’t be far away . . . six months, a year at most. What we need is to cheer the darkest hour with something filling, but different. The memory of a good meal lingers on long after the goodness has been absorbed by the body. It lingers like a sweet melody, seducing the taste buds, mouth salivating . . . tangy, spicy, succulent juices. When victory finally comes, it won’t only be ours alone, will it? We owe it in some part to all our allies, the free French, Poles, Americans, Colonies, Empire. So why not create a menu to reflect all this combined effort. All our allies in a glorious mixture of ingredients. What do you think?’

  ‘How the devil can you get stuff from India or Australia or Poland?’ Connie sniggers.

  ‘We’ve had enough of drab food, of stodgy utility recipes. Let’s go for something exotic . . . spices from the Caribbean, pineapple chunks, melons, peppers, bananas, tamarind, fenugreek, cardamon. Oh, for the taste of something different!’

  ‘All we’ve got is ham, Spam and pickles,’ reminds Wyn.

  ‘I think it’s time to unlock our secret stores, the hidden treasure trove of spices, the brandied fruits, bottled pears, the preserves kept back for just this occasion. Their time has come. Let’s throw caution to the wind. Stir up, oh Lord, thy servants with thy spirit.’

  ‘She’s been at the damson gin,’ whispers Connie, leaning forward for a whiff of breath.

  ‘No, no. This Victory Pie must be a hymn to the future triumph, a paean of praise for all the effort put into our survival. Girls! We are going to win or burst in the attempt!’

  No one has seen Belle so animated, so out of her usual workaday self, so crazy, so intense.

  ‘If it isn’t gin, then it must be love,’ Connie sniffs. ‘It’s that daft Digger from down under. The dreamy Aussie with his head in a book and the silly grin. He’s turned her head and addled her brains!’

  The parce
l sits like an unexploded bomb on the table, while the staff circle around, examining the foreign stamps, the battered brown paper and the label, with reverence: Madame Renee Oblonsky-White, C/o ‘Victory Café’.

  ‘It’s a food parcel from America,’ says Wyn in hushed voice as she fingers the wax seals. ‘One of them bundles for Britain, from our allies and for Prin!’

  ‘Who’s this Renee White then? I told you she was a confidence trickster,’ adds Connie.

  ‘She told us she married, remember?’ replies Dorrie.

  ‘She’s no refugee then, is she?’

  ‘Yes I am.’ Prin rushes down the stairs. ‘From bombings and blitzings, shut your face.’ The tiny woman prods the parcel in disbelief, trying to unknot the string with nicotined fingers. Excitement mounts as she tears at the wrappings, like a terrier down a rabbit hole. Inside are small tins of Canadian salmon, American ham roll, wrapped around stockings and socks, stuffed with small packets of spices, labelled for the cook. There are scented soaps and a card of elastic. Buried in the heart of the parcel is a squashed box of pink marshmallows! ‘I never havze birthday like theez!! Who give me such kind present?’

  Dorrie examines the labels. ‘It’s Dixon, Philadelphia, from Chad’s mother. She’s sending us a thank you, from Chad.’ She picks out a small note and a crumpled photograph of his family on the porch of their house, tucked in the packaging.

  ‘Open the sweets then,’ urges Connie, licking her lips.

  ‘No, I take these up ze stairs.’ Prin hugs the parcel tightly into her bodice.

  ‘You mean old crone, not giving your friends a taste.’

  ‘Leave her. It’s her parcel not yours. She’s the one who gives them her tea. You were for not letting them come in the café at all, Mrs Spear,’ shouts Dorrie and Wyn nods her support.