The Last Dance

by Carolyn McCrae

  “And what are we supposed to do without the money you bring in? That’ll cost us.” was all her father could say. Her mother simply took her hand and squeezed it, with tears in her eyes. “You’ll make your father very proud won’t you?”

  The time she spent at RADA was the most rewarding time for her; absolutely, she said years later, the best time of her life. “I was really really happy then. I got rid of that frightful name and became me, Alicia. I could have done anything, gone anywhere, been me! I’ve never been me. First I was the dutiful daughter of dreadful parents and then it all went wrong and I ended up married and that went wrong, but in between were just a few months when I was me!”

  A photograph of her taken around that time shows a slim young woman, with long shapely legs striding across an empty street. She is wearing a pale coat, tied at the waist, which is obviously trim. In her left hand she is swinging an empty wicker shopping basket as her right hand holds onto a large brimmed hat which is just staying on a mass of dark hair not primly held in tightly permed waves but irregular, free, loose curls. She is laughing, not just with her mouth – her eyes are alight. There is movement; even in that black and white photograph her vivacity, her love of life and anticipation of the future can be seen.

  On the Sunday the war was declared she was at home with all the family gathered, as so many other millions were, around a wireless set with Chamberlain telling them each, personally, that nothing would ever be the same again.

  ‘You can imagine…. may God bless you all…. the right will prevail…’

  “Well, we couldn’t, I’m bloody sure he didn’t and I can’t for the life of me see how it did for me.” was Alicia’s bitter response whenever she heard any part of that speech later in her life. She never did see that she was only one of millions whose dreams, hopes and plans were shattered. She only saw her ambitions and expectations unfulfilled, not those of an entire generation.

  Years later she would talk for hours about those first two years of the war – about what she could have done and who she could have been. Her eyes would be bright with rare enthusiasm.

  She was studying, working long shifts in the local armaments factory and fitting in training as a regular nursing assistant in an ambulance. But she was happy.

  It was Bert who hated everything.

  He spent most of his time pottering in his greenhouse at the bottom of the garden growing cactuses, eventually joining the Home Guard with the first volunteers in August 1940. But even that didn’t make him happy, he was just reminded of his lack of a commission. Not yet 60 he was already an old man, his eyesight was not good, he was hard of hearing and his concentration frequently lapsed.

  Alicia was surprised when one morning in early October 1940 he asked her if she wanted a lift into town, she was so surprised that she accepted.

  London was not the safest place to be with roads often impassable after the raids.

  Perhaps it was that his usual route was blocked and he was concentrating too much on finding his way, perhaps he shouldn’t have been driving at all.

  He didn’t see the car that hit them until the very last seconds when it was far too late to take any avoiding action. Where he had time to brace himself for the impact, Alicia, sitting in the passenger seat, had no warning at all.

  She spent the first weeks in hospital with little possibility of ever walking again. She was 19 years old and was likely to be completely dependent on others for the rest of her life.

  Her friends soon gave up visiting her even when she was still in the London hospital – they had their lives to get on with. Her friends from school were doing all sorts of things – working on farms with the Land Army, learning to drive lorries with the WRAF, losing their virginity to airmen who had no time at all to live, and so they soon forgot about Ali.

  Her parents did not come to visit her either. Her father, perhaps through guilt and embarrassment, her mother because Bert wouldn’t like her to and she had no way of getting there without his knowledge.

  It was probably a relief to them when, just before her 20th birthday, she was transferred to a nursing home in Buckinghamshire to begin the long fight to health and some sort of mobility. The distance was all the excuse they needed.

  Joyce Price was the only person who visited. She had travelled into London two or three times every week in those early days and was able to visit Alicia more often when she was in Buckinghamshire as that was where she was working.

  Joyce used her visits to try to pull Alicia out of the slough of self pity she was falling into.

  “I’ll grow old, a crippled spinster looking after my brothers’ ugly children.”

  “There’s no hope now. The theatre was my only escape route. Now what can I do?” she asked Joyce pathetically I’ll never be able to go on the stage with sticks.”

  The doctors and other patients tried to encourage her as she slowly regained some movement in her feet and legs but for long hours she wouldn’t even try to do the exercises they had given her.

  “I won’t even be able to sing.” she would complain to Joyce. “I won’t ever be able to breathe properly with this chest.”

  Joyce was very patient with her but must have found her visits a trial.

  On one visit the week before Christmas 1940 Joyce didn’t visit Alicia alone.

  “I’ve brought someone to meet you”

  “Good afternoon, Alberta.” The voice was pleasant, with what would be described as rather a ‘far back’ accent.

  “Ali, Alicia, never Alberta.” She had meant to sound discouraging, she didn’t know why Joyce had brought along this man. She had been looking forward to talking to Joyce and now she would have to be polite.

  “Arnold Donaldson at your service” he had said rather theatrically, continuing in a far more normal, but still definitely upper class voice “do call me Arnold, never Arnie.” Perhaps he had a sense of humour.

  She soon found herself flirting with him in a way she hadn’t been able to do for what seemed like months. The ‘tall, dark, prematurely balding, rather distinguished looking man in the uniform of army captain with the most wonderful eyes’ as Alicia later described him, accompanied Joyce on several of her visits in the following weeks and then began to visit on his own. Joyce still came to see her, but no longer with Arnold. On one of these days Alicia finally asked what the story was.

  “Not much of a story really, I met Arnold at a musical recital, he knows Kathleen, you know, that girl I’ve told you about, and we just got on very well and I told him all about you, and he asked to meet you. That simple.”

  “Have I spoilt things for you?”

  “Oh no. It was never anything serious. I’m a bit old for him really.” Alicia believed there had to be more to it than that.

  “He seems quite taken with you, you know. He was talking about you the other evening. I don’t think Kathleen was very pleased.”

  “He’s not really my type. I like them younger, more athletic, muscular with blond hair and blue eyes. Arnold is so formal and stuffy.”

  Although she said these things, and knew that she was not attracted to him, she was sure he was interested in her. And he had money. And, perhaps – just perhaps – he might be the way out for her.

  Just as Alicia wasn’t being entirely honest with Arnold about what she wanted from him he wasn’t being frank with her. Their relationship began as it continued and ended, based on self-indulgence and self-interest.

  Arnold’s background was very different from Alicia’s. Notwithstanding the modesty of their home the Donaldson family was rich. Arnold’s father, George, was a pillar of local society with power and considerable standing in the town, some time Chairman of the Council, a benevolent local businessman, provider of charity and employment for many men and women through his various enterprises. But it was his mother, Ellen, who made the decisions in their austere household.

  When they had first had money – for George was a self-made man – she had insisted they buy the bunga
low on the last road to be built before the sand dunes began on the eastern edge of the seaside town of Hoylake. “Perfectly adequate” was her pronounced judgement “No need for a big house. People can take us as they find us.” She would not employ staff, undertaking all household tasks herself “I’m perfectly capable of doing my own cleaning.” Her wardrobe was limited, “No need for anything stylish as long as it’s all neat and tidy” though she did have a fox fur coat which she wore whenever she attended a function with George, which was not very often.

  She had had a very difficult time with Arnold, she had been in labour for nearly two days, and so, after the long recovery period after her confinement, she firmly told George that Arnold would be an only child. This was not a problem for George, as there were a number of discreet ladies in the town who were happy to oblige him on a regular basis, in exchange for a house and a regular income arranged through his legal people.

  George enjoyed visiting his ladies, as their houses were larger and better furnished than his own home, and certainly the welcome was always warmer. He should not be judged harshly as this was not an uncommon arrangement for well-off men at that time, when their wives had reached “a certain age”. It was an arrangement of which Ellen decided to know nothing.

  She was adamant from the beginning that her Arnold was not going to ‘end up’ at the factory. He was going to be important, a lawyer, a politician. That needed a good education – no need for him to be ‘down’t factory’ learning the business from t’ground up’ as George had wanted. He was going to Cambridge and the Bar and Government. All that would require investment, so, no matter how much money they had, she would not willingly spend it on anything but her son.

  Arnold had gone to the best local school – she could not bring herself to send him away to board even though she knew it might give him a better chance in the future if he wore the right tie.

  At school he had been an isolated, rather scholarly boy whose only pretensions to popularity occurred during the summer term when he established himself as the reliable, if unremarkable, all-rounder in first his house, and then the school, cricket team. It was the nearest thing to enjoyment he found. Cricket was so civilised, being the only sport where one did not have to have physical contact with other boys and where, despite being a team game, a degree of selfishness could be considered a virtue.

  Even when he went up to Cambridge, getting his first taste of independent life, his mother maintained her control over him. Arnold’s cousin, Henry, had gone up to Cambridge too and he wrote long letters to his Aunt Ellen, detailing everything that they did, whosoever they met and wheresoever they went. Ellen ensured that Henry, whose father had not been so fortunate as George, never forgot how lucky he was to have her patronage and he felt that writing letters was a small price to pay for not having to worry about his college bills.

  Henry did everything his cleverer and better-looking cousin did, but he never did anything as well – even though he always worked harder and took everything more seriously. They both achieved their degrees, and then moved to London to read for the Bar.

  It was perfectly natural that Kathleen McNamara, a clever young lady, perfectly presentable and with a well-developed social conscience, would try to make a match of it with Arnold Donaldson.

  Kathleen, with her sister Maureen and mother Irene, had first met Arnold and his mother at a church outing in 1930 and had immediately taken to one another. They regularly met Ellen Donaldson at the coffee mornings held for the League of Nations and any one of the myriad of fund raising events held throughout the period leading up to the Second War, and they got on as well as Ellen got on with anyone.

  For all the possessive love she had for her son Ellen was a realist. She knew that one day Arnold would have to marry, so she kept an eye out for any contact he might have with the opposite sex. Kathleen and Maureen McNamara weren’t the same class as the Donaldsons but Ellen thought there was ‘something about them’ that meant they were not entirely unacceptable, and she thought that when the time would come, some years in the future, for her Arnold to marry and settle down perhaps the younger girl, Kathleen, would be a suitable daughter-in-law.

  So Ellen decided that, although she would never encourage it, if any relationship in that direction developed she would show no opposition. She was a clever woman in some ways. She knew that the best way to hold onto her son was to appear to be happy to let him go. At least Kathleen would be a local girl and wouldn’t take Arnold away.

  Others of the ladies in the town, those who knew a little more about the McNamaras and guessed even more than they could prove, thought that such a relationship would be ‘very interesting’.

  Although Ellen had indicated she would have no objections Arnold knew his father would have no truck with the relationship. George’s abhorrence of Catholicism was very simple and straightforward. He would not, under any circumstances, have a member of that faith in the family. He did not mind having Catholic women as his mistresses. They knew their place and they understood that there could be never be a formal relationship.

  Kathleen understood the reasons when, as they made love for the first time, Arnold told her that he could never marry her. George would never give his consent, and that consent would be required, whatever age he was, if Arnold were to inherit.

  Through all his life Arnold had avoided any direct contact with the engineering business that was the source of his family’s wealth and influence in the area. But he did like the money.

  And since he knew where that came from he was not going to cause a problem with his father.

  His future, funded by his father’s business, was to be politics and for that he needed a less controversial, more acceptable, vote-winning wife than Kathleen.

  But she always knew she would have an informal position, and that suited her very well for she was an independent lady and was going to make her way in the world without having to depend on a man. She was not going to be a kept woman as her mother had been for as long as she could remember.

  Kathleen’s mother Irene had been intrigued when she realised Arnold’ mother was encouraging the relationship. She had rather assumed Ellen was aware of George’s mistresses but soon realised that Ellen had no idea she was one of them. Ellen couldn’t possibly know that not only had she been George’s mistress for many years she had borne him two daughters. She had told Maureen who her father was but Kathleen, several years younger, was not told. Perhaps because the advantages far outweighed any qualms they might have.

  When Arnold visited Kathleen, as he did regularly, Maureen and her mother would spend the evening in local pub and sit in the snug with gins and ports discussing whether their lack of concern was immoral.

  They felt it was amusing. As long as Kathleen did not fall pregnant.

  That would not be fair on the child.

  Chapter Two

  My first glimpse of Alicia was as she waited in the office reception while her husband dealt with some paperwork. The first thing I noticed was the hat, it was exceptional, but underneath its wide brim she seemed very young and vulnerable. Her clothes were, to my provincial eye, stylish and fashionable though she was sitting awkwardly and obviously pregnant. She was sitting completely still, her long shapely legs tucked under the chair, her hands resting lightly on an ivory handled walking stick.

  Arnold was re-writing his will following his unanticipated marriage. Under normal circumstances everything would be left to the wife and any issue of the marriage, but Arnold made his will specifically to exclude Alicia. In the event of his death she was to have only a small allowance, any capital he may have was to be used in a trust fund for the benefit of any of his children, legitimate or illegitimate. “Isn’t it a bit of an unusual arrangement?” I dared to ask but probably deserved his uncompromising reply. “None of your damned business.”

  He was frequently rude to me. He had, after all, been my superior, an Associate Partner, before the war.

  As they were leaving I he
ard Major Fischer asking Alicia if she was looking forward to setting up her new home and asking her if she had found a house yet. She had had no chance to answer before her husband interrupted, saying that she would live with his parents, at least while the war was on. She would need the company and his mother would be a support during the pregnancy.

  In the following weeks I visited the Donaldson household several times, accompanying Major Fischer, who was attending to George Donaldson’s personal affairs, and there I saw more of Alicia. It was obvious, even on just a few minutes’ acquaintance, that she was not happy. She would come into the room that served as the study with the tea tray and pour three small cups, just as if she were the maid, and leave without catching anyone’s eye and without saying a word.

  She and Arnold had evidently anticipated the wedding ceremony – a circumstance that Ellen Donaldson seemed to take great delight in pointing out on a number of occasions.

  “So large it must be twins. Them only five months wed.” she would confide in a stage whisper – ensuring that Alicia would hear.

  “I kept my figure for much longer when I was carrying my dear Arnold. Why, at five months you hardly could tell I was carrying!”

  But even to my bachelor eyes it was obvious she was further gone than that.

  She must have been very unhappy and very lonely as well as being in pain and, no doubt, frightened by all her mother-in-law’s tales of the birth process. How much pain she felt as a result of the accident I can only guess. The increasing weight of the child must have caused great problems for a damaged back and she still had to use a stick for anything but the shortest of journeys. Unsurprisingly there was not much love lost between the women in that house as they, for differing reasons, awaited the birth of the child.

  I asked Major Fischer to raise the subject of the “young Captain” having his own household. This he did, reluctantly, on one of our visits, “George you may wish to invest in another property, that could, perhaps, suit Arnold and his beautiful young bride and the growing family. What do you think eh?”