After the Last Dance (34 page)

‘It's your girls, Rose,' Jane said, as if she wanted to jump into the picture with them.

In all the time he'd known her, Rose had never been one for sentimentality, but with Jane's help she took the photo out of the album and rested it on her chest, over her heart. ‘I had no photos of them. They were all lost, but one of my old friends from Rainbow Corner found this, years after the war, and sent it to me.'

‘I'm so glad we fetched it for you,' Jane breathed. Rose smiled at her and Leo felt as if he was intruding. Then Jane stroked his hand where it rested on the bed and he belonged.

‘Have you got pictures of the four of you after the war?' Leo asked.

‘I'd love to see what you all looked like in the fifties when you could get
really
glammed up,' Jane added but Rose turned her head away.

‘There was no “after the war”,' she said quietly. ‘There was a bomb. Direct hit. They lay in pieces in the street.'

Jane gripped Leo's hand tight enough that he wanted to whimper. ‘When you talked about them… I never thought they'd died,' Jane said so bitterly that even Rose looked startled.

‘Of course they died. It was obvious.'

‘Not to me.'

‘Jane! It's not like Rose did it on purpose,' Leo said with a glance at Rose who was lying with her eyes closed, picture still pinned to her heart. He frowned, inched closer, then straightened up and took a shaky breath. His eyes met Jane's, as if to say,
It
's all right, she's still here.

Jane was instantly contrite. ‘Darling, I'm sorry that you had so little time with them.'

‘I think she's asleep,' Leo said. ‘We should go.'

They left the album on Rose's pillow so it was within reach and were just unpacking the trunk, placing each little box stuffed with memories on the wheeled table that fitted snugly over the bed, when Rose opened her eyes again.

‘I'm not sleeping.' Rose raised her head and trembled with the effort it took. ‘You couldn't possibly understand how fleeting it all was. That suddenly the people you loved, were just gone. You'd say, “Night, night,” then the next morning they'd disappeared. Their time card had been stamped. And the tragedy of it all is that they never finished being who they were meant to be.'

 

When Jane popped in to see Rose a day later, the picture of her Rainbow Corner girls was in a silver frame on her bedside table.

Leo had gone out somewhere with George. Rose had refused to see George for three days running and they'd found him on the back step with Lydia, crying as he tried to light a cigarette. ‘George, I've got to go and see a man about a dog. I could do with some company,' Leo had said and Jane had watched them walk down the mews, Leo's arm round George's shoulders. She was sure that they were only going to go as far as the nearest pub, but if Leo came back drunk, Jane would forgive him this once.

As it was, she could hardly refuse to sit with Rose. She wanted to, though, because it was painful to sit and watch someone you'd grown quite fond of deteriorate in front of you.

Jane sat in an armchair she'd placed as far away from the bed as she dared and leafed through fashion magazines, but more often than not she'd gaze around the room, out of the window, anywhere but at Rose who mostly slept now. Sleep was meant to be peaceful, a reprieve from the part you played during the day, but Rose was anything but peaceful.

Her panting breaths sounded painful, the whimpers far worse, her face contorted into a rictus grimace though Neta said that soon, Rose would stop fighting. ‘Rose will know when she's ready,' she'd told Lydia and Jane. Neta was very zen.

Jane knew that she should have come up with a different plan. All the weeks in this house with these people had got to her. She wasn't the glittering creature that she'd striven so hard to become but she wasn't the girl hiding under the bed either. She was stuck somewhere between the two of them and the only time that she was really happy lately was when she was with Leo. Then she didn't have to think at all. Just feel. His fingers, his mouth, his cock all doing such wonderful things to her that she actually began to imagine what the future might hold for both of them if they decided to make a go of it. Though you could plead the fifth on any thoughts you had when you were coasting a post-orgasm high.

Instead of holding something back, Jane had given Leo and Rose everything that she was capable of giving, which might not be that much but when it was time to walk away she'd leave that best part of her behind. Then that little voice, more insistent by the day, reminded Jane that she didn't have to walk away. But how could she stay? The person that Leo was becoming deserved so much better.

Then Rose jolted back to consciousness with a pained, surprised cry. She lay there, not moving, eyes darting wildly around the room.

Jane stood up and walked over to the bed. She poured Rose some water from the jug, then gestured at the beaker. ‘Will you drink something, darling?'

Rose had hardly had anything to drink for two days now, but there was a box of foam lollipops sitting on the over-table. Jane dipped one in the water and stroked it over Rose's chapped lips. Rose latched onto the lollipop, feebly sucked on it and she was back in her own body, back in the room.

‘Are you sure you won't have a drink? I could go downstairs and get some ice.'

‘Hurts to swallow.' Rose's voice had shrunk down to a rasp. ‘Hurts to talk.' She bit her battered lip. ‘I don't know what to do with myself.'

Jane sat down on the bed, careful not to jar the other woman, and took Rose's now-mottled hand. ‘Darling, Leo will be back soon and if you're ready, then you should go.'

‘Not yet,' Rose said, and when Jane found a packet of straws nestling among the packets of sterile gauze and syringes in the bathroom, she took some water. Not much, and Jane didn't know why she was the one doing this. She was the five-minute wife passing through. But then again, right now, with Leo gone and Lydia frantically cooking things that Rose wasn't going to eat, she was the only one available to do it.

Jane racked her brains for any films she'd seen with similar scenes. Maybe something with Bette Davis? ‘Is there anything you wanted to do? Someone you wanted to say goodbye to that you haven't?'

‘No. Everyone's already trooped through.'

‘What about, say, Danny?' Jane asked, because she was sure that Danny had been Rose's one true love. Not that she suddenly believed in true love, but younger Rose had believed in it. ‘When did you last hear from him?'

‘Danny?' It looked as if Rose was having trouble placing the name though she was a little less groggy, maybe a tiny bit more comfortable since she'd managed to sip some water and Jane had rearranged her pillows. ‘Not since the war.'

Jane picked up the iPad. ‘I could try and track him down. See if he's still alive. There's this thing called Facebook that…'

‘I do know what Facebook is. I'm not dead yet.' Rose sounded peevish but then she smiled. ‘Danny. He was just a boy. A silly, selfish boy, but all the boys back then were going off to fight and it made them seem like men. Not like Leo. I don't think he'll ever really grow up.'

‘He's trying to, darling. That has to count for something.' Jane wondered where Leo was. He'd been gone ages and she was really missing him –not just because it was so very hard dealing with Rose all by herself. ‘That boyish thing is all part of his charm.'

‘Will you stay with him after…?'

Jane smoothed her thumb against the back of Rose's hand. ‘I haven't really thought about after,' she said carefully.

‘I'd like you to. Not for ever. I know you're not a forever sort, but I worry about what will happen to him. He has a tendency to go off the rails.' Even in her weakened state, Rose was still able to look a little shifty, though it could have been a trick of the watery light of the afternoon. ‘Will you promise to stay until he's out of the woods?'

‘Of course I will.' Jane didn't have to think twice about it, which was odd. Normally a promise she made was a promise that had been strategised, negotiated, sometimes even notarised.

‘Good.' Rose sank carefully back on the pillows. ‘At least, I'm not angry with him any more. I am glad he came home.'

‘Rose, darling, do you think you could tell him that?' Jane gave Rose's hand a little squeeze. ‘I know he talks a good game, but really, he's so soft-hearted and he's so sorry about letting you down. About all those stupid, thoughtless things he did years ago.'

‘Deathbed absolution?' Rose asked with a weak smile. ‘How Catholic.'

‘Just forgiveness because you love him,' Jane said, because Rose did. How could she not?

‘It wasn't meant to be like this.' Jane could see the fatigue creeping over Rose again. ‘Champagne, pills, a suite at the Savoy with a riverside view. That was how I was going to go. I didn't plan to linger.'

‘Still not too late, if you fancy toddling down the stairs, darling.'

She was only half-joking, but suddenly Rose was gripping her hand with a puny strength. ‘When I'm ready, you'll be here, won't you?'

‘Darling, I'm not going anywhere. We'll make sure that you won't be on your own.'

‘It has to be you. You're strong. I'll need you to be strong enough for the both of us,' Rose said.

‘I don't know that I'm
that
strong,' Jane demurred as Rose's eyes, suddenly all too focused, bored into her.

‘You are. Like I was. I think that we're both quite similar. Neither of us afraid to face our futures head-on.'

‘Oh Rose, darling, no. You…' Jane swallowed. ‘When you came to London, you were running towards something. All I've ever done is run away.'

‘But you won't run away now, will you?' Rose asked. ‘You'll be here when I need you.'

‘I'll be here,' Jane said and she would be. Leo would need her too.

She was doing that thing again: being selfless. Nothing good ever came of that.

 

The bombs no longer dropped. There were no more beautiful boys dying in foreign fields, but the end of the war still felt like a gigantic let-down. There was still rubble and rationing. The loss of what had been still ate away at Rose if she stayed still for long enough, so she made sure to always stay in motion.

It helped that she was kept busy with the refugees that Edward kept sending her. Often, she went to Dover to meet them off the boat. Then, once they were back in London, it was an endless trudge of endless queues. Everyone needed ration books and work permits and identity cards.

Thankfully, Mickey Flynn could perform miracles: anything from obtaining milk tokens to having a telephone installed in the house in Kensington at a day's notice. Lady Carfax also knew all sorts of muckety mucks, even a couple of lords, which was terribly useful when it came to cutting through red tape.

Then there were Maggie's old friends, who were happy to offer their services whenever Rose needed a translator. Even Henry Crapper, Sylvia's father, though he said he had no truck with a bunch of foreigners turning up and thinking they were entitled to housing and food ahead of folk who were born here, found Rose her sponsors.

‘It strikes me as singularly odd that so many residents of Hoxton have long-lost Jewish relatives but have immense trouble recalling their names,' Mr Costello from the Aliens Department of the Home Office had told Rose crossly.

He'd also said, a little less crossly, that his staff quaked in fear when Rose turned up promptly at nine on the first Monday of every month and refused to budge until she'd got her forms stamped and signed off. She was prepared to stay there all day, on a hard-backed chair that one of the secretaries would grudgingly find for her, with her knitting.

He said that the clacking of my needles drove them all to distraction
, Rose wrote to Edward.
In future, I'm to ask for him personally and he'll see me within the half-hour. I think that's what one would call a palpable success!

Edward was constantly in her thoughts. Not least because he was always sending her people who were relying on Rose to give them some semblance of the normal life that they'd hardly dared to dream about when they were in the camps.

And Edward wrote her letters. Not just lists of names and dates of birth and countries of origin of the people she was to meet off boats and trains, but surprisingly funny, sweet letters. She couldn't imagine that he found much to amuse him when he'd been to those places with the awful names that she still stumbled over when she tried to say them out loud. When he'd spoken to the people who'd lived there, though it was hardly living. People who'd seen their loved ones shot, starved, sent off to the gas chambers. Then sat in the same room as the men and women who'd perpetrated these crimes.

With so much going on, Rose only turned up at Rainbow Corner at seven-thirty, six nights a week, because it was a deeply ingrained habit and she could get chocolate and cigarettes from the GIs to trade for more useful things. Rose often wondered how long Rainbow Corner would stay open – there had been rumours of its demise swirling around ever since VJ Day. Then, one wet, squally day in January when Rose arrived for her shift, she found a small huddle of girls in front of the noticeboard in the cloakroom.

She stood on tiptoe so she could see the edict over the heads in front of her. Rainbow Corner was closing.

‘Oh, well. We all knew it was on the cards.'

‘It's so soon. Only two weeks,' one of the other girls said. Rose didn't know her name. There were so many new girls these days.

Most of the women who'd been here when she'd started, who'd looked after her, lent her hairpins, taught her how to fight off the advances of over-amorous soldiers, were long gone. Not just dead but dispersed too; back to villages and towns to rebuild their lives. Some had sailed to America to be reunited with the men who had wooed them at Rainbow Corner. The American Red Cross had even organised War Bride Orientation Classes.

With Rainbow Corner closed, it would leave Rose more time for her work, her lost souls. But on the last night of Rainbow Corner, as Rose dressed in her trusty black crêpe de Chine, which she'd sworn she'd never wear again but necessity had made a liar of her, she was surprised to feel a little frisson of excitement.

So be it. She'd say goodbye to Rainbow Corner on the dancefloor in the arms of the handsomest GI she could find. She'd eat those misshapen sugar-sprinkled doughnuts for the last time and wash them down with Coca-Cola.

All those things about Rainbow Corner that Rose had taken for granted, she'd celebrate tonight. And she'd try not to see her ghosts, but she knew that Phyllis, Maggie and Sylvia would be there with her, in her heart, angels at her shoulder. She'd dance for them. Raise a glass and toast their memory.

First she had to get into the bloody place. The crowds were twenty deep on Shaftesbury Avenue and there was only one policeman on the door valiantly trying to beat them back.

Rose slipped round the back, down the steps that led to the basement and hammered with her fists on the kitchen door until one of the bus boys let her in.

It was pandemonium as soon as she left the steamy bustle of the kitchen for Dunker's Den. Rose had to swim through a heaving sea of khaki to reach the stairs and employ her elbows to climb up them. At one point she even had to aim a sharp kick at the ankles of a cocky airman who took advantage of the scrum to goose her.

‘Rosie! Over here!' There was a gaggle of girls behind the reception desk. Dora, Jean and Peggy, back from Lowestoft. On the way to the ballroom, they picked up more stragglers.

For this one night, when there wasn't room to do anything more than shuffle to the music, they were happy to find a corner and share their stories. The drunken midshipman who'd thrown up all over Peggy's suede dancing shoes. The time Nancy had sneaked her little sister in for a stack of pancakes and she'd ended up getting engaged to a GI instead. The awful month when even Mickey Flynn couldn't get any stockings and they'd all painted tea on their legs, which had run in dirty rivulets in the sultry heat of the ballroom.

Rose laughed until her ribs ached. Posed for pictures. Swapped addresses even as she made a note to buttonhole one of the American Red Cross higher-ups to find out what they planned to do with the chairs and tables. All those plates and mugs. Curtains. The list was endless.

‘We should at least
try
and dance,' someone said. ‘We'll never have the chance again.'

It was a simple matter to find a man who wanted to spin a girl in his arms, not that there was any room for spinning

When the band stopped playing, the crowd howled their disapproval. ‘What's happening?' Rose asked, craning her neck to see some of the grander American Red Cross ladies walk on stage, followed by… ‘It's some great-and-goods!' she called out to the girls. ‘Anthony Eden. Gosh! It's Eleanor Roosevelt. She's awfully ducky!'

She was that girl tonight. Little wide-eyed Rosemary Winthrop in love with London, and Rainbow Corner was the city's frantically beating heart.

There were speeches. ‘This club, I think, proved that we can work together,' Eleanor Roosevelt said, as Dora wiped her eyes and Peggy sniffed. ‘More than eighty per cent of the volunteers here were British and they worked with our American staff and made this club what it was and what it will always be in the hearts of our servicemen: a wonderful success!'

Rose clapped until her hands were sore, cheered until her throat was hoarse and still she refused to believe that it was coming to an end. That this would be the last time she'd stand here on this spot where she'd truly come of age. That she would never smell the mingled scent of Lucky Strikes, Brylcreem, wet wool and sweat again. Perhaps if she refused to leave, sat down on the dancefloor if she really had to, Rainbow Corner would stay open.

She wasn't the only one who felt the same. ‘I'm not going,' Jean said. ‘Not until they drag me out.'

The others agreed and though the American Red Cross ladies bobbed through the crowd in their dark grey uniforms and tried to cajole people towards the doors, they stood firm.

‘One of the girls in the office said that they'd lost the original key and had a frantic scramble this afternoon to get a new one cut,' Jean said.

‘They're not going to actually lock the door,' Rose scoffed. ‘Rainbow Corner's always open. It's just a closing ceremony. Not a proper closing and none of us are to budge from this spot. They can't
force
us to leave.'

So, they stayed put. Not just Rose and her friends, but every man and woman who had managed to gain entrance.

Some of the Americans began to sing and they all quickly took up the chant of

‘
We shall
not
,
we shall not be moved
.

We shall
not
,
we shall not be moved
.

Just like a tree that's standing by the water, we shall not be moved.
'

Suddenly they heard the mournful notes of the trumpet getting nearer and nearer, the haunting tune of ‘Auld Lang Syne' echoing in their ears. The trumpet player had stepped off the stage and was moving across the floor, people following in his wake. That was how Rose left Rainbow Corner for the last time, as part of a huge, hungry surge that poured out of the club and onto the street where thousands of people were still congregated.

Those multitudes raised their voices in song.

‘Should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
 

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne.'
 

Rose didn't know how she could be one of those thousands but feel so alone.

‘Rosie! Rosie, my darling! Up here!'

Rose brushed an impatient hand across her cheek and looked up to see Mickey Flynn hanging from a lamppost.

‘Rosie! Come up! Hey, Yank, give a girl a hand, will you?'

Before Rose had even decided if she wanted to climb a lamppost so all and sundry could see up her dress, she was hoisted into to the air. Some foggy memory of how to climb a tree, a lost art from her childhood, surfaced and she slowly inched up the pole until Mickey hauled her the last foot or so and she stood with him on the junction box.

They were high, high,
high
above the masses. So high that another girl and her fellow had found a spot to hang just below them. Mickey had made a special effort tonight – his silk tie bore the stars and stripes but his usual snaky grin was drooping at the corners.

‘What's the matter, Mickey? Heartbroken that your supply of American cigarettes will dry up?' she asked him with a laugh.

‘Oh, I wouldn't say that, Rosie. Where there's still a GI, there's a way.' He looked down at the crowds. Even though it was a cold, goosepimply February night, there were so many people collected below them, their heat all rising, that Rose could feel her black dress sticking to her. ‘Look at them all. This is our piece of history, this is. They'll write books and make movies about this place. No one will forget Rainbow Corner.'

‘Of course they won't,' Rose agreed. ‘Anyway, I keep telling everyone: they're not
really
closing the place down. I'm sure Eleanor Roosevelt decided she wanted to visit and they felt as if they had to put on a show for her. We'll all feel pretty silly tomorrow.'

‘Maybe you're right.' Mickey didn't sound convinced and Rose was just about to tell him all the reasons why Rainbow Corner couldn't close when a shout rang out from below them.

She had a bird's eye view of the front of Rainbow Corner and though she couldn't hear the door being shut or the key being turned in the lock, she saw it and she felt it in her heart.

Oh, how she felt it!

Rose started to cry, because it was really and truly over. Whatever else she'd lost, and she'd lost so much, she'd always had Rainbow Corner. Known that she could walk through those doors and never be turned away. Now they'd shut those double doors, locked them up tight and she had nothing left to lose.

‘Don't cry, Rosie, my darling,' Mickey said but she couldn't stop.

She'd spent so long trying to be brave and strong and it had been easy because there was always a place she could go to forget all her troubles.

‘What will I do now? Where will I go? Who'll have me?' She wasn't even talking to Mickey but had lifted up her streaming eyes to the heavens.

Rose started to shimmy down the lamppost, sweaty hands making her slide down too far and too fast so the couple below her had to wriggle down too before she sent them flying.

Mickey called out to her just before her feet hit the pavement, but she turned, tripped away, down this street and that street, until she found a quiet courtyard and could sink down, head in her hands, and weep for all that was gone.

She didn't know how long she cried but when she stopped, sniffling rather than sobbing now, Rose realised that she wasn't aching from the pain of it all, but rather because she was sitting in the kerb on a cold February night and her coat was still hanging up in the cloakroom at Rainbow Corner. Fat lot of good it was going to do her in there. She shivered and looked up to see Edward standing at the mouth of the alley.

It was such a shock to see him that for a moment she mistook him for one of her ghosts. In the same way that every platinum blonde might be Sylvia, every slender, dark girl could be Maggie and the sound of a plummy, breathy voice always made Rose look round to see if it were Phyllis back from the dead. But her ghosts were just ghosts and Edward was walking towards her now, a tentative smile on his face.

‘I saw you nearly break your neck climbing down that lamppost,' he said, as if the memory wasn't a happy one. ‘Then I saw how upset you were and I didn't want to intrude. If I am…'