JEAN SAUNDERS
UNFORGETTABLE
Complete and Unabridged
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
A Note on the Author
1
Gracie’s heart leapt with excitement as she looked at the newspaper advertisement again. The minute it appeared she had cut it out carefully and propped it up on the mantelpiece in the room she shared with her friend Dolly at Mrs Warburton’s boarding-house. The words kept going over and over in her head, like the words of a favourite song.
Grand Opening of the new Palais
on Saturday night.
SPECIAL OFFER
HALF-PRICE Entrance Fee for the
first Hundred lucky customers.
The fact that the new Palais had been built on the ruins of an old warehouse only made it sound more impressive. Though, according to Mrs Warburton, who didn’t hold with two young female lodgers frequenting such a place unaccompanied, it was a danger trap, but nothing was going to stop them. Her book-reading lodger agreed, saying it was like the phoenix rising from the ashes, which made as much sense to Gracie and Dolly as flying to the moon.
Dolly came into their room with her usual crash of the door.
‘Haven’t you got your glad rags out yet, Gracie? I’ve been asking old Warby if we could hold the rent over till next week, but she wasn’t having any, so we’ll have to hope some nice gentleman will buy us refreshments.’
‘I told you it was a waste of time trying to get anything out of her! And I’m not sure that nice gentlemen are going to be buying drinks for the likes of us. It’s more likely to be the other kind.’
‘Oh well, you’ll have no trouble attracting ’em. You always get the sort you want, and I get left with the riff-raff.’
‘No you don’t,’ Gracie said with a grin. ‘You only have to make cow-eyes at the chaps and they come running.’
‘That’s because I’m not so fussy as you,’ Dolly said, openly envious of Gracie’s naturally curly cropped hair, while hers was now Marcel-waved into the latest cut, which resulted in rigid corrugated waves marching over her head.
‘Sometimes I wonder about you, Gracie,’ she added, serious for once. ‘You never let on what you want in a bloke. What do you really want out of life?’
‘Well, not to carry on working in that shirt factory for a start.’
‘Nor me. I just want to find a chap to take care of me and get married.’
‘And end up having six kids and getting fat and old before your time.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’ Dolly said.
‘For one thing I know you don’t mean it. You don’t want to get fat any more than I do, and I’m not getting married for years and years yet. I want to better myself first.’
Dolly hooted. ‘You and whose army? You’ve been watching too many Valentino flicks. You’ll be stuck in that factory, same as me, unless you find a nice chap with oodles of dough. Anyway, it’s time we were getting ready for the Palais. It’s half-price for the first hundred customers, remember.’
She yanked open the door of the wardrobe they shared, wincing as it creaked on its hinges, and pursed her lips into a perfect Clara Bow shape.
‘Now what shall I wear, my pink or my pink?’
Gracie laughed. It was never worth staying huffy with her for long. ‘Why not? You look lovely in pink.’
‘No I don’t. I look like a bleedin’ fat blancmange until I strap myself in. It’s all right for you. You’ve got beestings, while I’ve got melons.’
‘Oh, stop being so gloomy. And I don’t have beestings either.’ She stuck out her bosoms to their full extent and they both collapsed laughing again.
From the floor below, the man who worked the night shift at the laundry banged his stick on his ceiling for them to keep the noise down.
‘Stupid old fool, it’s only six o’clock,’ Dolly grumbled. ‘The sooner we’re out of here tonight, the better.’
Secretly, Gracie knew she had the same hopes as Dolly. Maybe she would meet Mr Right tonight as well. Providing he was a gentleman with Valentino’s looks and charm, and was someone who would respect her.
* * *
They just made it among the first hundred, which was a relief, since it would have left them skint for the rest of the week if they’d had to pay the full entry price. The place was already crowded, and how it was supposed to cope with a couple of hundred more, they couldn’t think. Still, more chance for a squeeze up to some good-looking chap, Dolly reminded Gracie, as long as he didn’t paw you to death under cover of being crushed. But Dolly wasn’t too averse to that either.
Gracie knew she was too addicted to the Hollywood glamour-boys for her own good. But watching those movies where some dashing chap fell in love with an ordinary girl and made her into a princess was Gracie’s ideal. Waltzing around the floor in someone’s arms on some fabulous terrace in the moonlight, was her idea of heaven—even if Dolly preferred the latest jazz tunes that were all the rage.
It was a fair bet that the band tonight would play a good selection of dances. A new dance-hall had to cater for all tastes, and with all the publicity there were some big-wigs here tonight for the Grand Opening, gold chains and all. They wouldn’t care to be seen dancing the Black Bottom …
She became aware that someone was looking at her. She had been gazing at the band without really seeing any of them, apart from the fact that they were setting up their instruments and preparing to strike up the first number.
‘I reckon you’ve made a conquest already, gel,’ she heard Dolly shriek in an effort to be heard as they were pushed and shoved on all sides.
Gracie doubted it. Her best blue frock with the bit of glittery embroidery around the neck and hem was already starting to feel tacky, and Lord knew how it would feel by the end of the evening. Even her long strings of shiny beads began to feel heavy, but she’d been unable to resist wearing them. Nor the cream-coloured button-shoes with heels a bit higher than usual, to make her look taller than she actually was.
‘Don’t be daft,’ she yelled back. ‘Nobody’s noticed either of us yet.’
‘Well, for a start the saxophone player ain’t been able to take his eyes off you ever since you came in.’
Gracie’s heart missed a beat. She’d noticed him too. You couldn’t help it, really. He was the best-looking chap in the band, which was why she thought it highly unlikely that he’d give a second glance to a factory girl. Not that she looked like a factory girl tonight, of course …
Nobody could tell how many hours she worked at her machine sewing shirts, and how she’d had to give the ends of her fingers a damn good soaking in olive oil to restore them from their usual pricked appearance.
She risked taking another look at the saxophone player. He wasn’t looking her way now, so she could study him more. He had slicked-back hair, very black and shiny with grease which gave him a really sophisticated air like all the band players. They wore white jackets, a flashy little green dickey bow, and black trousers with a green stripe down the outside of each leg. Their shoes were black patent leather. Her dad used to call them ‘co-respondents’ shoes’, until she’d got him angrier than usual by saying he should go to the flicks more, because everybody knew that co-respondents’ shoes were two-tone black-and-white.
Her heart misse
d another beat, because the saxophone player was looking right at her now, and he was smiling, showing the whitest teeth she had ever seen. She gulped, and felt Dolly nudge her arm.
‘Smile back, you ninny. Told you he fancies you!’
‘Not likely. He’ll only think I’m fast. I’m going to get some lemonade.’
Nerves got the better of her. She wasn’t fast, and she didn’t want to appear to be. She knew what happened to girls who were fast. Boys took advantage of them and the next thing you knew you were up the duff. A couple of girls at the factory had got caught out recently, and it was whispered that they’d been sent away to some sort of detention centre for their own good.
Gracie shivered. She didn’t want that to happen to her, nor to Dolly, either. She was no goody-goody-two-shoes, but one of them had to be sensible, especially on a glamorous night like this when the whole place seemed to be sparkling with colour, and the great ball of lights in the ceiling twinkled like a thousand stars.
‘You are a ruddy spoilsport sometimes, Gracie,’ she heard Dolly grumble beside her as they fought their way to the refreshment area.
‘No, I’m not. If he asked me to dance, I’d say yes, but it’s not very likely if he’s playing in the band all evening.’
‘I s’pose not,’ Dolly said, her mind already elsewhere as she saw the two brawny chaps coming their way. ‘Aye aye gel, it looks as if we might not have to buy our own lemonade after all.’
The young men wore ill-fitting suits as if they were unused to dressing up. They had red faces and a coarse outdoor look about them—and Gracie knew she was being a snob, when she had no earthly right to be. She was annoyed at her own instinctive reactions, and made her smile all the brighter.
‘Hello gels, out for a night on the town, are we?’ the first one said. ‘Fancy a dance later?’
‘Might do,’ Dolly said. ‘That depends.’
He sniggered. ‘Your friend don’t look so sure. Got a bad smell under your nose, have you, ducks?’
‘Of course not,’ Gracie said, wondering how he could have seen through her so quickly. ‘I’m here to enjoy myself, same as you.’
He chuckled, pushing his mate forward. ‘This is yours then.’
‘You’ll have to buy us a drink first,’ Dolly said smartly. ‘I can’t dance until I’ve had a drink, and nor can Gracie.’
‘Gracie, is it? Very Hyde Park. I’m Jim and this is Billy, so what’s your name, little lady?’
‘Dolly. So do we get that lemonade or not?’ she said flatly.
Gracie felt her toes curl with embarrassment. She didn’t want to dance with either of them. Jim was a match for Dolly any day, but Billy looked uncomfortable and very out of place. The collar and tie around his neck seemed to be chafing him and Gracie felt a moment’s sympathy. But no more than that. If he hadn’t wanted to come here, he shouldn’t have come.
Her sympathy fizzled out at the way the other one was looking her up and down. Despite her lowly job in a shirt factory she knew she could sometimes appear stuck up—and she sensed that this was one reason why Mrs Warburton had let them have the room at the boarding-house. One look at Dolly, and she knew she’d thought her common—or no better than she should be, whatever that was supposed to mean.
‘Stop looking down your nose, Gracie,’ Dolly hissed again, when their escorts had gone to buy the lemonade. ‘Jim’s a bit of all right, and you only need to have one dance with Billy, then tell him to get lost.’
‘I’m not looking down my nose at them.’
But she was and she knew it. And she tried not to shudder when Jim thrust the glass of lemonade in her hand and she saw the state of his fingernails, as black as soot. She’d bet a pound to a penny that the saxophone player had very clean fingernails …
‘So what do you do, gels?’ Jim was saying amicably now.
‘We work down Lawson’s Shirt Factory,’ Dolly said at once.
‘Blimey. Sewing shirts for soldiers, eh?’
She screamed with laughter as if he’d said something funny.
‘Not any more, you ninny. It ain’t wartime now, in case you’ve forgotten.’
He shrugged carelessly. ‘Nah, thank God. Some of ’em never let you forget it though, do they? My old man was killed in the war, and my old mum’s still going on about it seven years after it ended.’ Gracie was shocked. ‘You’d never want to forget, would you? If my dad had been killed in the war, I’d still be upset about it.’
Billy spoke up. ‘Jim and his dad hated each other. They had some good old ding-dongs of a Saturday night when his dad came home from the pub.’
‘All the same, you wouldn’t want your dad to be killed, would you?’ Gracie persisted, with visions of the latest Hollywood film she had seen where the poor wounded soldiers came home from the war, clasped in their loved ones’ arms.
‘You would if you had one like mine,’ Jim said grimly, flexing his knuckles.
‘So what do you do?’ Gracie said, turning to Billy in desperation.
‘We’re coalmen,’ said Billy of few words.
That explained the blackened fingernails that no amount of scrubbing in the bathtub by the fire of a Saturday night would erase. Gracie’s dad’s were sometimes nearly as bad, though that was from unloading the ships at the docks, not hauling bags of coal around and breathing in coal dust all day long.
‘Do you want to dance?’ Billy asked. ‘I’m not much good.’
And whatever happened to ‘May I have the pleasure?’
Dolly giggled. ‘That don’t matter. You’ll be all right with our Gracie. She knows all the latest steps from watching them at the flicks.’
‘Shut up, Dolly, and I don’t, anyway.’
‘Is that right?’ Jim said, grinning. ‘I thought you looked a bit of a toff.’
‘Toffs don’t work in shirt factories,’ she snapped.
Dolly was screaming with laughter at his remark, while Gracie felt her chin go even higher. It was a daft remark, of course, and she was no more a toff than the shambling Billy, grinning inanely at her now, but she fancied herself a cut above the pair of them. She didn’t have to dance with anyone if she didn’t want to. Though there wasn’t much point in coming to the Palais if it wasn’t to dance.
Billy might look a bit soft in the brain department, but she didn’t like Jim at all. Jim looked rough and ready, and from what she’d heard about his ding-dongs with his dad, he was handy with his fists as well. He had an air of danger about him, which was just the sort to excite Dolly, she thought uneasily. With any luck they could just manage to have one dance with each of them to repay them for the lemonade and then merge in with everybody else.
‘Come on then, Doll,’ Jim said, as the band struck up a lively tune. ‘Let’s leave these two to think about it.’
‘Are you really that good?’ Billy asked Gracie glumly.
‘Of course not, but we can sit this one out if you like,’ she said.
As they struggled through the crowds to the rows of tables and chairs on the balcony above the main part of the hall, she didn’t know whether to laugh or be annoyed at his look of relief. But it was mostly relief. She didn’t fancy the thought of those sweaty hands clutching her tightly as he tried not to fall over her feet.
Instead, she tried to pick out Dolly and Jim in the crowd of dancers flocking on to the floor now, and to cover Billy’s lack of conversation by tapping her feet to the music. From there, they also had a perfect view of the band above the heads of the dancers. And Gracie had a perfect view of the saxophone player.
He wasn’t looking at her now, of course. He was too busy playing his music. She had always admired anyone who could play an instrument. It always seemed so sophisticated. And watching the movement of his fingers now, producing that wonderfully rich sound, she thought again that she’d bet a pound to a penny that he never had dirty fingernails. The mouthpiece of the long brass tube of the saxophone was between his pursed lips, and those sensitive fingers caressed it.
By the
time the others came back, Dolly was as red-faced as Jim, both from the dancing and, no doubt, by the things Jim was whispering in her ear. Gracie never set herself up to be Dolly’s saviour, but somebody had to save her from herself, she sometimes told her laughingly, and got the usual reply:
Oh stuff. You only live once, but sometimes you sound as old as my old granny instead of nineteen, same as me.
‘Jim don’t live far from us, Gracie,’ Dolly said now. ‘He delivers coal to the mews around the corner, so it’s a wonder we ain’t seen him and Billy before.’
‘We probably have, but we wouldn’t recognize them all covered in coal dust,’ Gracie said before she had time to think.
‘Hah! Told you she fancied herself as a bit of a toff, didn’t I?’ Jim said, the smile not quite hiding the gleam in his eyes that said he wasn’t too keen on this hoity-toity friend of Dolly’s. She might look like the bee’s knees, but thank God he’d got the one who was good for a laugh, and Billy would have to make the best of it. After tonight he’d never need to see her again, but that didn’t go for Dolly.
This one he’d definitely like to see again, and from the way she’d pressed her cupcakes up against him when they were dancing, he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be averse to a bit of slap and tickle.
‘Come on, Billy, I’ll teach you this one,’ Gracie said, deciding that he was probably never going to ask her to dance again, so she might as well take the initiative, even if it wasn’t the done thing. Besides, she preferred to get well away from Jim, who was decidedly whiffy now, and it wasn’t just what some called poncy aftershave, either.
Billy led her out on to the floor, and by some miracle of manoeuvring she kept him well away from her feet for most of the time. The thought of her lovely cream shoes being all scuff-marked from his size ten clodhoppers was too much to bear. He was doing his best though, and she encouraged him with a smile as they moved around the dance-hall.
‘You’re wonderful,’ he said at last, even more red-faced.
‘Why, thank you, Billy,’ Gracie said, sorry for her earlier ungraciousness about him now. ‘I’m not really wonderful though.’
Unforgettable Page 1
