‘Thanks, Mum.’ Jennifer gave her mother a quick peck on the cheek, and dashed out of the door.
Johnny was leaning against the car, smoking. As he looked up, Jennifer made sure she slowed her hurried steps to a nonchalant saunter.
‘Hello, gorgeous,’ he greeted her. Jennifer felt a thrill run through her as his gaze travelled lazily up and down her body from head to toe, but she refused to show it.
Johnny had kept her waiting for two months before he finally sent a note to the hospital asking her out. Not even asking, come to think of it. More like telling her he would be in Flint Terrace on Friday at seven o’clock, and she should be ready.
No one had ever treated her like that, and she’d had a good mind to throw the note straight in the bin. That would teach him a lesson. And she might have done, if she hadn’t been so desperate to see him again.
But that didn’t mean she had to give him an easy time.
‘You’re late,’ she snapped.
‘I had a bit of business to attend to. But I’m worth waiting for, ain’t I?’
She lifted her chin. She’d waited long enough. ‘I’ll be the judge of that. Where are we going?’
‘It’s a surprise.’ He opened the passenger door for her, and she climbed in.
‘I’ve got to be home by eleven.’
‘You’re joking?’ He grimaced. ‘Blimey, it’s hardly worth going out. Most places don’t get going till well after midnight.’
‘I know, but my dad will go mad if I’m not back.’
‘Can’t have that, can we?’
She glanced across at Johnny’s smiling face as he started up the car. Was he making fun of her? she wondered. She suddenly felt stupidly young and gauche.
She felt even more gauche when it turned out he was taking her to the Café de Paris, just off Piccadilly Circus.
‘I wish you’d told me, I would have dressed up!’ Jennifer grumbled, as they made their way down the darkened staircase towards the basement ballroom.
‘You look fine to me.’
‘Do I?’ She didn’t feel fine. She was wearing her best dress, red with a black flower print, and her high heels, and her dark hair was caught up with a clip on top of her head. But she looked like a child next to all the elegant ladies in their cocktail dresses and diamonds.
‘You’re young and you’re beautiful. That’s something no amount of couture frocks and posh jewellery can match.’
‘Do you really think so?’ Jennifer said, pleased.
‘Trust me. You could be wearing an old sack and you’d still be the loveliest girl in this place.’ He held out his arm to her. ‘Let’s go and have some fun, shall we?’
Jennifer had never been anywhere like it. It gave her a thrill when the maître d’ recognised Johnny and greeted him like an old friend. He showed them to the best table in the room, overlooking the dance floor. A band was playing, and some couples had already taken to the floor. The whole place reeked of expensive perfume and money.
Jennifer tried not to stare but she couldn’t help it. Johnny, by contrast, seemed perfectly at home as he summoned the waiter and ordered champagne.
‘That’s all right with you, isn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Of course.’ Jennifer affected a nonchalant shrug. She’d never tasted champagne before, she wasn’t even allowed to drink. But after Johnny’s comments about her being young she didn’t want to admit it.
She watched as the waiter popped the cork from the bottle and poured the champagne into fancy flat glasses. The bubbles rose like tiny strings of beads to pop delicately at the surface. It looked as if it would be sweet, like lemonade.
She took her first mouthful, and nearly choked at the dry taste fizzing in her mouth. She swallowed it quickly but it went down the wrong way. Tears streamed down her face as she coughed and spluttered.
Johnny laughed. ‘Serves you right. You ain’t supposed to guzzle it like dandelion and burdock, girl. Sip it slowly or you’ll be under the table in no time.’
‘I know that!’ Jennifer snapped back, to hide her embarrassment. ‘It just went down the wrong way, that’s all.’ She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and hoped her mascara hadn’t run down her face.
After her initial embarrassment, Jennifer started to relax and enjoy herself. Johnny seemed to know everyone. Every minute or two, someone glided up to the table to talk to him. Once, he excused himself and followed a man to the door. Jennifer watched them standing in the doorway, their heads together in hushed conversation. How rude to walk away and leave her, she thought. If the champagne hadn’t worked its way through her limbs, making her feel light-headed, she would have been quite cross about it.
Johnny returned after five minutes. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said.
‘Who was he?’
‘Just an acquaintance with a business proposition.’
‘What kind of business are you in?’
He smiled and poured her another glass of champagne. ‘You ask a lot of questions, don’t you? If you must know, I’m in the supply and demand business.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘It means people want things, and I get them.’
‘What kind of things?’
He leaned forward and took the glass out of her hand. ‘Let’s dance,’ he said, leading her on to the floor.
Johnny was a good dancer, not at all clumsy like the young men Jennifer usually danced with. She felt safe in his arms as he glided her around the floor with style and self-assurance. She noticed several of the other women sending him interested looks, and she smirked back at them, feeling like the cat who had got the cream.
They sat down again, and Johnny signalled for more champagne, and the menu. Jennifer wasn’t sure she would be able to eat, until she read what was on offer. Foie gras, lamb chops, steak – food she hadn’t ever seen in her life, even before rationing started.
‘Can I really have anything I like?’ she asked, wide-eyed, forgetting to be sophisticated.
‘Anything you like.’
‘But where do they manage to find all this food? Don’t they have rationing here?’
‘Perhaps they know the right people.’
Jennifer stared at him, mystified. She felt sure he was being clever, but the champagne had addled her brain and her thinking was fuzzier than it might have been.
She ordered oysters, and Johnny ordered Steak Diane cooked rare, whatever that meant.
‘Do you like oysters?’ he asked.
‘I’ve never tried them,’ Jennifer admitted. ‘But I’ve always wanted to. Film stars eat them, you know.’
‘Is that right?’
She still wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her. But she was having such a nice time, she really didn’t care.
She gazed at Johnny across the table, the candlelight flickering on his rugged features. No one could call him handsome, but there was definitely something compelling about him.
Emboldened by another glass of champagne, she decided to ask more questions.
‘Why aren’t you fighting, Johnny?’
‘I’m an invalid.’
She squinted at him across the table. ‘You look all right to me.’
His mouth curved. ‘Thank you very much. But if you must know, I have an ulcer.’
‘I’m surprised you can manage champagne and steak, in that case.’
He winked at her. ‘I won’t tell if you don’t.’
She frowned at him. Once again, she had the feeling he was teasing her. ‘How old are you?’ she asked.
‘Twenty-eight.’
Ten years older than she was. Her dad would have a fit.
He seemed to guess her thoughts. ‘Too old for you?’ he asked, his eyes meeting hers over the rim of his glass.
She pulled herself together, rearranging her face into what she hoped was a suitably casual expression. ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve always preferred older men,’ she said.
‘Is that right?’
She nodded. ‘They’r
e so much more sophis— sophisticated,’ she struggled over the word. Why wouldn’t it come out properly? ‘They know how to treat a lady.’ She hiccuped delicately.
‘You sound as if you speak from experience?’ he said, his dark brows lifting.
‘You’d be surprised,’ she said, hoping she sounded suitably mysterious.
Their dinner arrived, brought to their table under great big silver domes which the waiters removed with a flourish. As it turned out, oysters weren’t nearly as delicious as she’d imagined. She couldn’t think why film stars made so much fuss about them. She’d rather have pie and mash any day, although she didn’t dare admit that to Johnny as she swallowed them down.
They talked as they ate. Johnny made her laugh with his outrageous stories. He was as big a gossip as she was, Jennifer was pleased to discover. It made a change to find someone who knew how to make interesting conversation. Most of the boys she usually went out with were only interested in making saucy remarks and finding out what they could get away with before she batted them off.
Afterwards she wanted to dance again, but he said they had to go home.
‘You’ve got to be tucked up in bed by eleven, remember?’ Johnny reminded her.
As they drove home, Jennifer slumped in the passenger seat, feeling decidedly odd. There was a tight pain in her temples, as if she was wearing a hat two sizes too small. She could barely focus on her own hands, knotted in her lap. She’d also lost her hairclip along the way, but she couldn’t remember where. And it was her favourite, too.
Johnny parked the car around the corner, as she’d asked him to. ‘All right?’ he said. ‘Are you sure you can find your way home? You don’t want me to drop you at your door?’
She shook her head, and her eyeballs swivelled painfully in their sockets. ‘My dad would go mad.’
‘I don’t think he’s going to be very impressed in any case, seeing you in that state.’
‘I don’t feel very well,’ Jennifer confessed. ‘I think it must have been those oysters.’
‘It must have been,’ Johnny agreed. But there it was again, that mocking smile. He’d been making fun of her all evening, she realised.
Usually she would have come back at him with some sharp retort, or even got in first and given him the brush-off. But something, whether it was the oysters or the champagne, or just the realisation that she liked him more than any man she’d ever met, took away all her pride.
‘You’re not going to take me out again, are you?’ she said sadly.
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘I don’t know.’ She lifted her shoulders in a gloomy shrug. ‘But I know you think I’m not old or sophisticated enough for you.’
‘Is that right?’
He was smiling again. Before she knew what she was doing, Jennifer lunged forward and kissed him full on the lips. She sensed his hesitation for a moment before he kissed her back. His tongue slipped between her lips, hungry and exploring.
When he pulled away, his eyes were glittering. ‘What was that for?’
‘To prove I’m not a little girl.’
He grew serious. ‘You don’t want to make promises you can’t keep,’ he said in a low voice.
‘Who says I can’t keep them?’
Johnny smiled, but this time there was nothing mocking about his smile. It was that wolfish grin that had made her heart stop the first time she’d seen it.
‘In that case,’ he said, ‘I reckon we’ll definitely be seeing each other again.’
Chapter Eighteen
‘AND DID I tell you about the band? Snakehips Johnson, the bandleader’s called. He’s famous, so Johnny said. Been on the BBC and everything. Honestly, Cis, I’ve never heard music like it. And the way he moved—’
‘So you’ve said,’ Cissy sighed.
It was Monday morning, and they were walking to the hospital together, up Old Ford Road. It wasn’t yet seven o’clock, but the sun was already high in the sky, promising another bright, hot July day.
‘And the champagne . . . did I tell you about that? I had three glasses, and they went straight to my head! You would have laughed if you’d been there,’ Jennifer giggled. ‘And the oysters! They were so expensive, but Johnny insisted on ordering them, just because I said I wanted to try them . . .’
She didn’t add that they’d tasted horrible, or that she had been up most of the night being ill.
She didn’t mention she’d made a fool of herself by lunging at Johnny for a messy kiss either. There were some things even her best friend didn’t need to know.
Besides, she wanted Cissy to be impressed. Although she wasn’t showing much sign of it at the moment. She was listening to Jennifer’s stories with an indifferent expression, as if going up west and drinking champagne was something that happened to them every day.
‘Talk about how the other half lives!’ she tried again. ‘There were so many rich and famous people there. And Johnny seemed to know them all. They kept stopping at our table to talk to him, and of course he introduced me . . . I felt like royalty, I really did!’
‘I know, you told me.’
Jennifer glanced sideways at Cissy’s face, and wondered if perhaps she’d gone on about it too much. After all, this was the third time she’d told her friend about it since Saturday morning. But then, she’d listened to Cissy going on about her Paul for the past year, and that was a lot less interesting than the tale Jennifer had to tell.
Perhaps Cissy was jealous. After all, she had never been to the Café de Paris, or drunk champagne. And Paul Maynard could barely afford the bus fare up west, let alone a swanky car!
‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked. ‘I thought you’d be pleased for me?’
Cissy was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘So how has he come by all this money?’
‘I told you, Johnny’s a businessman. Supply and demand.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand,’ Jennifer replied airily. She wasn’t about to admit that Johnny hadn’t told her.
‘I don’t reckon your dad would understand, either.’
Jennifer sighed. ‘You sound like my mum!’
‘I’m just saying, I don’t think your dad would approve of you courting an older man.’
‘He’s not that much older,’ Jennifer defended. ‘Besides, the King of England could come courting me and my dad wouldn’t approve! Honestly, Cis, I thought you’d be pleased for me. You’re always on at me to find myself a boyfriend.’
‘That depends on the boyfriend, doesn’t it?’ Cissy muttered.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Couldn’t you find yourself a nice young man, Jen?’
Like yours, you mean? Jennifer thought sourly. ‘Johnny is nice.’
‘If you say so.’
‘You don’t know him.’
‘Neither do you.’
They walked the rest of Old Ford Road in silence, Jennifer seething with resentment. Why did Cissy have to act as if she was better than her, just because her boyfriend was in the Royal Navy?
Jennifer had been so looking forward to telling her friend all about her big night – it had always been part of the fun for her, sharing all the details. But then Cissy had taken the wind right out of her sails on Saturday afternoon by rushing round with a letter she’d had from Paul. Jennifer’s mum and dad and brother had been there, and Elsie Caldwell had poured Cissy a cup of tea and sat her down at the table and soon the whole family was listening agog as she read how Paul’s convoy had narrowly escaped being sunk by a German U-boat in the Atlantic.
They’d all lapped it up, sitting around the table, listening to her eagerly.
‘Your young man’s a hero,’ Alec Caldwell declared. ‘He deserves a medal, I reckon.’
Jennifer had listened and tried to smile and looked interested, but inside she was cross because she knew she would never be able to boast about Johnny to them. Cissy was right, he
r father would never be impressed by him, no matter how wealthy and successful he was.
It wasn’t fair, she thought. She was sure Johnny would have willingly gone off and done his bit if he’d had the chance. It wasn’t his fault he was an invalid.
The two girls didn’t speak again until they said a curt goodbye to each other at the hospital gates and went off to their respective wards.
‘I’ll see you at lunchtime,’ Cissy called out, but Jennifer was too cross to reply. She was still smarting after her friend’s comments. Cissy might not approve of Johnny, but at least she could be pleased for Jennifer. She was supposed to be her best mate, after all, and best mates stuck together.
Walking on to the ward, she was greeted by a chorus of catcalls from the soldiers. A few weeks of rest, good food and nursing care had been enough to restore their spirits. Even though their injuries were still severe, they had started to behave like young men again, teasing and flirting with the nurses.
‘Look out, lads, it’s Vivien Leigh!’
‘How’s my favourite nurse this morning?’
‘Looking lovely this morning, Nurse!’
Jennifer pretended to take no notice, but she couldn’t help smiling to herself as she headed down the ward.
But the smile was knocked off her face a moment later when Nurse Riley stepped out of the kitchen and confronted her.
‘You’re late,’ she snapped. ‘Get changed immediately and go and help the night staff clear away the breakfast. Then you can make a start on cleaning the ward. The floor will need polishing this morning.’
‘Good morning to you, too,’ Jennifer muttered, when Nurse Riley was safely out of earshot.
‘Best to stay out of her way,’ Daisy Bushell advised, coming up behind Jennifer. ‘Miss Hanley’s inspecting the ward first thing, and it’s put everyone in an awful mood.’
‘I wish she’d leave it to Matron,’ Jennifer said. Miss Fox’s daily visits to the ward were quite jolly in comparison to the Assistant Matron’s weekly swoops.
Next to rinsing out the bedpans and scrubbing the blood off mackintosh sheets, polishing the floor had become one of Jennifer’s least favourite jobs.
She and Daisy started by pushing all the beds from one side of the ward into the centre. Then came the strenuous use of the buffer, a block of wood on the end of a six-foot pole, with a piece of felt attached. Jennifer’s job was to spatter polish over the floor, then swing the buffer from side to side, reversing down the ward. It was terribly cumbersome, and when her arms began to ache, the pole slipped and the buffer collided with the soldiers’ beds, rattling the frames and making them groan and swear in pain.
Nightingales at War Page 13
