by Maggie Ford
The band had struck up with a quickstep. The man by the entrance stubbed out his cigarette and began walking towards her, making her heart start to pound against her ribs with excited anticipation. But as she composed herself to rise casually at his invitation to dance, ignoring her Marine, the soldier had paused just a few steps away, bending towards a common blonde in a red dress sitting nearby. Seconds later he had whisked her away.
Pique had replaced embarrassment. How dare he? Susan watched him move with supple grace across the filling dance floor with the girl, looking quickly away every time he glanced briefly in her direction. But she didn’t miss his expression. What was it? Appraisal? Amusement? Taunting, perhaps. When the quickstep ended with a final flourishing crash of cymbals and a flamboyant twirl of female partners, she pretended not to look as he conducted the blonde back to her friends. But at least, instead of lingering, the soldier turned and sauntered away to the bar.
In that instant, Susan Hopkins made her decision. ‘Oh, look!’ she burst out to the practically lifeless Jack, ‘I’ve just seen a friend of mine. Must pop over and have a word. Won’t be a tick.’
Giving him no time to reply, she was off, skirting the vacated dance floor, timing it perfectly so as to collide with her quarry as if by accident. It worked, even if in the process she trod on his foot, something she had not planned, almost taking herself off balance. Instinctively he caught her, held her steady with firm hands on her shoulders. ‘Careful there!’
Deep brown eyes fringed by thick lashes gazed down at her in open amusement. Her embarrassment was more real than she had intended.
‘Oh, golly! I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … Did I hurt you, like?’
‘You?’ He laughed, taking stock of her diminutive figure. ‘I don’t think you’ve broken any toes.’
‘Oh I’m ever so glad.’
She was instantly conscious of her Birmingham accent against the refined tones of this man. Yes, he was a corporal, but his speech sounded so incongruous with the mere two stripes on his arm. His smile gently mocked her.
‘What, that you didn’t hurt me, or that you stepped on my foot?’
Susan fell silent. He must have seen through her ruse. Her face felt hot. Whatever possessed her to embark on this silly idea in the first place?
‘You came at me like an express train,’ he was chuckling. ‘A fraction more weight on you and you could really have done me an injury. There have to be subtler ways to start up a conversation.’
Indignation finally rescued her from embarrassment. ‘Fancy yourself, don’t you?’
The grin diminished a little. A momentary look of sadness, loneliness perhaps, crossed his face, and she had a strong feeling he was about to play it down as if she almost heard his words form in her head: I’d be the only one that does. But instantly he brightened, his tone teasing. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve not been watching me right from the moment I came in. Actually, I’m flattered.’
Now she was embarrassed again – that look that had passed so briefly across his eyes had gone. ‘Well, I might’ve looked at you. You’re a good dancer. Everybody looks at good dancers, don’t they?’ She wriggled a little in the grasp he still had on her. ‘I’ve got to go back to my friend.’
He released his grip. ‘The chap you were sitting with? Is that all he is – a friend? And there was I thinking, the prettiest girl in the hall and she’s already spoken for.’
That was why he hadn’t asked her to dance. She felt a surge of anger towards her innocent escort for spoiling her chances.
‘I’m not spoken for, if that’s what you call it. I just came in with him. Just a date, like, for this evening, that’s all.’
‘So you’re free to dance with whoever you please?’
Why did she feel he was mocking her? If it hadn’t been for that look that had flicked past his eyes, she’d have walked away by now. She had to put up some resistance so as not to look cheap. He mustn’t think she had engineered this meeting. ‘Not with you,’ she said, trying to appear in control.
‘Remember it was you who got in touch with me first, to coin a phrase,’ he laughed. He did think she’d engineered it all. ‘Well, you win. Would you care to dance?’ He gave an explosive laugh as she tossed her head in sulky refusal. ‘Ye gods! How kaleidoscopic can you get?’
She wasn’t sure what that meant but it didn’t sound very flattering, and in a huff she swung away. He caught her arm lightly.
‘I’m sorry. Don’t go.’ There was genuine contrition in his dark eyes as she turned to look at him, immediately replaced by a look of enthusiasm as the band struck up. ‘Listen. It’s a foxtrot, the best dance there is, even better than a tango. You foxtrot?’
She loved nothing more. Moreover he seemed to her so like a young boy in his own delight at it that she nodded despite herself; instantly he caught her up and whisked her away on to the dance floor to the delightful slow and regular beat of a rendering of Glenn Miller’s ‘Moonlight Serenade’.
It was like gliding on clouds. Guided with swaying grace through each intricate movement, she floated. Small though her limbs were, she followed his long steps without faltering, each change of direction, each smooth turn, each measured pause. He was so easy to dance with it was as though they were one person. He didn’t speak, seemed conscious only of the variety of moves, practically turning them into an exhibition with not too many on the floor for this rather specialised number, unlike the popular easy-to-do waltz that always filled the floor to crush proportions.
At first she felt uncomfortably conscious of being seen so on display, especially by her former companion. But there was no need to worry. A glance towards where she had left him revealed him looking as though he’d fallen asleep. She was sure that had her handbag not been in his keeping he’d have left. Well, as soon as the number finished she’d retrieve her bag and leave him to it. If the man she was now with chose not to see her home after the dance, she’d see herself home, though she hoped it would not be that way. But either way, at least she would escape those horrid pimples.
The music ending, a ragged clap came from those who’d attempted the dance. Susan smiled up at her partner, awaiting his next move.
It came as she had hoped. ‘Do you fancy a drink?’
Susan thought quickly. ‘Have to get me handbag first. I left it on the table. I could see you at the bar if that’s okay. Won’t be a tick.’ Somehow her accent no longer mattered. He smiled.
‘I’ll see you there, then.’
She was off. ‘My friend’s asked me to see her home afterwards,’ she told her Marine with a play at urgency as he looked up with an apathetic grin. ‘She’s frightened of going home on her own. Hope you don’t mind. I am sorry about that.’
There was little he could do as she whisked up her handbag. After all, he was only a casual date. A one-evening date. No doubt he’d slide off and find himself someone else and no harm done. It happened all the time, had once happened to her, annoyingly. But not tonight, she prayed as she made her way back to the bar.
She found her corporal, slim, tanned fingers curled around a pint of bitter, the other hand holding a small glass which he offered her with a grin. ‘Thought you’d be a gin and orange person. Am I right?’
‘Ooh, loverly. Thanks.’ She smiled up at him, taking the glass and sipping at it carefully. ‘I hadn’t better get myself sozzled, had I?’
‘You’ve probably never been sozzled in your life,’ he said solemnly.
‘I’ve bin a bit woozy, like. A couple of times.’
He produced his cigarette case and flipped it open towards her.
She regarded it with admiration as she shook her head. ‘I don’t smoke. Real silver, in’it?’
He shrugged as though her comment had touched a raw spot, but she didn’t interest herself beyond that. The orchestra had reached an interval after a jive that had jammed the floor to suffocation; it was the bar that was now crowded, the babble deafening. But between her and her new partner an awkw
ard silence had fallen, threatening to drag on if she didn’t find something to say soon. She gazed about, racking her brain and sipping her drink far too quickly. It was he who broke the hiatus. She saw his lips move but couldn’t make out what he said above the noise.
‘What?’
He raised his voice. ‘I said I still don’t know your name.’
‘Sue Hopkins,’ she yelled back.
‘Sorry?’
‘Sue … Susan Hopkins.’ No one ever called her Susan, but announcing her name in full above the din helped make it clearer.
Quite audibly, in one of those odd pauses that can occur in the midst of a dozen conversations, she heard him repeat her name, savouring it as though he thought it the finest in the world. Had it been Cleopatra it could not have sounded more romantic to her ears, the way he pronounced it.
She looked up at him, shouting over a new wave of babble. ‘What’s yours?’ For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard; his head tilted slightly as though considering her, then with a glance around the crush of people he grimaced.
‘I’ve had enough of this. Shall we get out of here – go for a walk?’
Just catching the words, not knowing what to say, she nodded. He shouldered his way through the crowd to place her glass together with his own on the bar. Then he was back, tilting his head at her, and she could only follow him, an odd excitement taking hold somewhere deep inside her. The dance didn’t matter any more.
Outside, enveloped in the pitch dark of blackout regulations, it was like entering another world. People moving cautiously, heralded by the merest pinprick of torchlight, came at them out of total darkness, to disappear just as totally. Vehicles, few and far between, lights all but obscured by black paint, faintly showed the kerb for a moment to leave it even more dark and dangerous to the pedestrian after they had driven by. Susan huddled close to her companion.
‘You’ve not yet told me your name,’ she reminded him as they took their first few steps, slow and measured in the fitful light of the tiny hand torch she’d produced from her handbag. The reminder was whispered, for their surroundings seemed to demand muted voices, muted sounds.
‘Do you want all my name?’ she heard him chuckle.
‘Why not?’ she challenged.
There was a pause, then he said, ‘Matthew Leonard Ward.’
‘Sounds posh,’ she breathed, awed, and tucked her arm more firmly through his.
‘Not really. Leonard’s my father’s name. My mates in my unit call me Matt. My mother would have a fit if she heard. She’s always insisted on me being called Matthew. She’s a stickler for respectability and …’
The tale, bordering upon tongue in cheek, was interrupted by a body colliding softly with them and a mumbled apology as it continued on its way through the blackout. But Susan was wondering about this mother – she sounded a right dragon.
‘Damned stupid blackout,’ Matthew was saying. ‘Nothing happening and they black everything out. When there’s a raid, they light everything up, switch on all the searchlights. That’s what I’m on at present – searchlights. I’m in the Signals and they stick us on searchlights. Now that’s what I call great thinking.’
‘Got any brothers or sisters?’ she asked, changing the subject from what he did in the Army. He was a corporal and that was all that mattered. She wished he’d been an officer but officers didn’t look at girls like her. They went to better places than the Troc.
‘One sister, Louise. Reminds me of our mother.’
It seemed he said it a little too tersely for comfort and she hurried to put some lightness back in their conversation. Nasty moments, like nasty cuts, even small ones, unnerved her, made her shudder. There were plenty of arguments in her house but she was used to them. Quickly healed, easily got over. It was with strangers that she cringed at moments like this.
‘I’ve got lots,’ she said in an effort to sound bright. ‘Two sisters and three brothers. It must be funny having a whole bedroom to yourself. Sort of lonely, like.’ This she said with a small pang of sadness for him. Perhaps it was the way he had said ‘one sister’, as though he regretted not having a brother or something. She’d always been told that only children were lonely children, and two wasn’t much more than one. He and his sister were probably spoiled, where she’d never been, and it was still probably lonely and quiet. She hated quiet in a house, never having known it.
He didn’t reply. They walked on in silence, uncomfortable silence it now seemed to her.
‘It’s getting late, I think I’m going to have to be going ’ome soon,’ she burst out in a fast gabble, far too loudly, her voice sounding high and thin, lacking sophistication. He, the soft-spoken, refined man-of-the-world from down south would be jolted to his senses, seeing her as just a local girl from Birmingham, without education, the product of a crowded family. The spell had been broken.
‘It must be nearly eleven,’ she ploughed on, hating herself, the way she spoke, the way she acted. She had ruined the evening for herself. ‘It’s the air raids we’ve bin havin-g …’ The accent fell on the ‘g’. He didn’t sound his at all, the ‘ing’ soft and alluring. She should have tried to copy it. Too late now. ‘Me mum and dad like me home before anything starts. They worry about me, y’see. And I do have to think of them, don’t I? It’s only right.’
‘Yes, it is only right,’ he agreed with a deep sigh which dispirited her even more though she didn’t know why. ‘Do you live far from here?’
‘Not far.’ She could in fact walk home from here, which appeared now to be what she was going to do. ‘Only walking distance.’
That damned ‘g’ again. Walking, she said in her head, walking. ‘I sometimes catch a bus if it’s raining,’ she finished aloud, forgetting again.
‘Well, it’s not raining, so may I walk you home?’
Susan held back the gasp of joy. He wasn’t disapproving of her after all. But she mustn’t sound too eager. ‘I suppose you could, if y’like. To the top of my road? I can go on from there. But you don’t have to.’ She had suddenly remembered what her turning would present to him. No doubt he came from a posh part of the south. ‘Don’t you have to be getting back to where you’re stationed?’
‘I’ve enough time to see you home, I’m sure.’ How beautifully he spoke, his tone soft, seductive. He took her arm. ‘I’ll let you show me the way.’
And, she hoped, the picture of the road where she lived fading into obscurity, he’d kiss her goodnight, and ask to see her again. Oh, please, God, let him.
Chapter 6
It took ages to get to sleep for thinking about her evening’s success. Lying in bed in the cramped little bedroom she shared with her two younger sisters at the top of the house, she tried to imagine the world Matthew had described to her as he walked her home. How different it was. The bedroom he had all to himself sounded as though it could swallow this one twice over and still have space to spare.
Hers, measuring four long paces each way, held her single bed and one, three and a half foot wide, for Beryl and June. Hers stood tight against the window wall, theirs against the opposite one, with just space enough between the two to shuffle into bed, going sideways. The wall where the door was had a single wardrobe and a three-drawer chest. Not one drawer or the door to the wardrobe could be opened fully because the beds got in the way. What couldn’t be got into drawers or wardrobe went under the bed; every morning in this room resembled a public jumble sale, all three girls squeezing past each other to dress.
The only wash basin was downstairs by the back door in a tiny recess. It meant moving aside to let pass anyone wanting the toilet which stood in a block of six in the communal back yard. It all made for hot tempers when three boys, three girls and two adults were trying to manoeuvre around each other to go their separate ways for the day. Their father moreover did not look kindly on a girl trying to put on her make-up when he wanted to get to the mirror to shave.
Across from her bedroom was the room, even smaller, of her t
hree young brothers, still just boys. Below theirs was her parents’ bedroom, below that the living room with an area at one end for cooking. This, their only family room, had five doors: one for the recess where they washed, one to the cellar, one to the yard; a fourth to the street was never used because of a settee in the way – the back door served as the only exit in this place – the last leading to the stairs winding up to the upper rooms.
This was her home, each room atop the other. But for the block of exactly similarly designed houses on either side, each propping the other up like something built from a pack of playing cards, Susan was sure it would have fallen over. Built at the turn of the century for factory workers, the houses were dark, dingy, featureless, all looking as if they had been accidentally leaned on at some time by a careless giant who had concertinaed them, squeezing them upwards like toothpaste from a tube.
She had never considered her home this way before. She’d been born here. All her friends lived in similar places. Some day when she married she had expected to move in to something much like them. But tonight she had peeped into an environment Matthew Ward had described as they walked home, and now she saw these surroundings through a veil of angry discontent, for the first time in her life feeling ashamed of where she lived.
His home might be in London but it sat in a tree-lined road. There were no trees in her street. His overlooked a park. Birmingham had its share of parks and open spaces but not where she lived. His house had hot water, and a bathroom. Her bath hung on the back door, her lav was one of a block of six in the communal yard, with doors so warped anyone emptying rubbish in the dustbins alongside could peep through if they felt that nosy.
Filled with resentment, Susan found herself listening for sounds she had never really noticed before: Beryl, sixteen, eighteen months younger than her, sighing in slumber, probably dreaming; June, fourteen and just left school, a restless girl even in her sleep; her father coughing – too many cigarettes made him bronchial. The back door opening then closing gave a little shake to the house – her mother was coming in from the Red Lion at the end of the street where she was barmaid five evenings a week. Soon came the whistling of the kettle, rising rapidly to a thin scream, fading away, like a soul dying, as it was lifted from the gas stove to make her mother’s cocoa.
