By the Waters of Liverpool (16 page)

The black taffeta dress with tiny gold spots on it was redeemed from pawn and carefully pressed. I had made it several years before from a length of material bought from the pawnbroker. It had been cut out with a razor blade and hand-stitched. The taffeta smelled old, but the dress had not split anywhere. New black lace frilling was sewn into its neckline. Also redeemed were the white satin slippers I had worn at my Confirmation. I dyed them black. They had satin bows on each toe, and I was entranced by them; they looked so delightfully frivolous. Cinderella was about to go to the ball.

Cinderella, however, was not actively expecting to meet a prince. At the back of her mind lay the memory of the pleasure of moving rhythmically to
music, a faint picture of a small girl in a short black velvet tunic standing in front of a mirror and slowly rising on her first pair of points, a child dreaming of being a cygnet in
Swan Lake.

The cygnet was still rather like a duck, as she climbed the stone front steps to the porticoed entrance of the dancing school. The paint was peeling off the front door, and the steps looked as if they had not been swept for a generation.

Emboldened by a tiny crack of light from under the door and the distant sound of a gramophone, Sylvia rang the bell.

The door was opened by a thin man in a light grey business suit. Hair was plastered back from a middle parting, above a rather sickly face. Grey eyes, as sharp as the Warden’s when looking for illicit cracks of light, surveyed the two of us.

We both smiled politely, while the unfriendly stare continued. Then suddenly the man grinned. ‘Come in, come in,’ he invited, and led us into a big, dimly lit hall from which a wide staircase led upwards into total darkness. He closed the door quickly behind us, and inquired, ‘Are you beginners?’

We assured him that we both had to start from scratch. ‘Well,’ he exclaimed jovially, rubbing his hands, ‘tonight’s the night. We’ll soon have you
on your feet.’ He pointed to a cupboard under the staircase. ‘Put your coats in there. Bring your handbags with you – we mustn’t lose things, must we? Then you can give Doris here your shilling.’

As we took off our coats, I observed a smiling middle-aged woman in a frilly dress covered with a pattern of large orange flowers. She held a record in her hand, and put it down on a small hall table, while we paid her.

‘Ever been dancin’ before?’ she inquired in a friendly voice.

‘No,’ we murmured bashfully.

‘Oh, you’ll enjoy yourselves here. You’ll like the people. We’re fussy who we have in. No trouble – ever.’

Trouble in connection with a dancing school had not occurred to me, and I wondered timorously what she meant, but the man came bustling in from the hall saying, ‘I’m Norm,’ and led us further into the ballroom.

The ballroom had been contrived by the removal of the walls between the dining room, sitting room and breakfast room in the original house, so that the dance floor ran from front to back of the building. Three sets of windows were heavily shrouded with blackout curtains. The walls were a faded, frowsy grey, and battered bentwood chairs lined
two sides. A large glass-fronted cabinet stood in an alcove at one end. On a small table, by the door through which we had entered, stood a big wind-up gramophone, flanked by an untidy stack of records. Two girls in summery dresses sat, legs crossed, on the far side of the room. Cigarettes dangled from their fingers, and they glanced casually over at us, and then continued their animated conversation. A couple of young men in neat suits with wide flowing trouser legs and big, gaudily striped ties were sprinkling chalk on the hardwood floor which, alone, showed evidence of care. The surface had been lovingly refinished and the wood glowed.

Norm seated us near the other girls, and said, ‘I’ll be back,’ as the doorbell rang. Doris put on a record, and the young men rubbed the chalk lightly with their feet along the line of dance.

Men and women in their twenties and three or four much older couples began to fill up the room. Most of them seemed to know each other, and, while they waited, they gossiped in thick nasal Liverpool accents. Doris changed the record to a quickstep, winding up the gramophone like a mangle. She and Norm then swept out on to the floor and danced, while everybody watched. Since this was only the second time I had seen adults dancing, I was no judge, but the couple made a
production of a basically simple dance. An infinite number of graceful variations was introduced, and, oblivious of their audience, they smiled at each other as if sharing some rapturous experience. It was a wonderful exhibition of perfectly coordinated, flowing movement; the shabby room was for a few minutes a theatre. I did not know then that I was looking at two of the best ballroom dancers in the north.

With hands clenched tightly on my lap, knees and ankles primly together, I sat on the edge of my chair, mesmerised by the charm of the dance. Now Doris and Norm gave a little bow, the audience clapped, and they retreated towards the gramophone. After a moment of consultation with his partner, Norm strode into the middle of the room, rubbed his hands together, and said, ‘Now, most of yez learned the basic steps of the waltz last week. Now I want you to try out what you learned, and then we’ll learn how to do a turn. Take your partners, please.’

The two girls smoking near us screwed their cigarette ends into a saucer of nub ends on the floor by their chairs, and rose to partner each other. I flashed a tiny, scared smile at Sylvia, who was sitting leaning back in her chair with a bright smile on her face. A young man, immaculately
neat, acne scars all over his face, crossed the floor to her, and, with work-roughened hands clasped before him, bowed and asked her, ‘Would you like to dance?’

She blushed, pushed her handbag surreptitiously further under her chair with her toe, and with a cheery grin at me, announced, ‘Well – er, I can’t dance.’

The young man went pink, and replied that he could not either. Undaunted, they went out on to the floor, and the young man put his arm round her waist, clasping her as if she might run away at any moment.

I was alone, feeling a little rejected. Would nobody ask me?

Norm was checking his flock, and when he found everybody paired off except me, he bowed and said, ‘Let’s dance, love.’

I remembered how to stand, and put my hand correctly on to his shoulder. He smelled nicely of carbolic soap and brilliantine. ‘Now, everybody,’ he called, ‘remember, one and two, one and two, one and two.’

A very firm hand at my waist and an equally firm grasp of my right hand led me off correctly, without a word being said, except for the chanting count of ‘one and two’. We circled the floor. After the first
few steps the beat of the big-band music relaxed me and I allowed myself to flow with my partner. ‘Good,’ he murmured approvingly, and twirled me into a simple variation. ‘Very good.’

‘You can dance already,’ he said puzzled, ‘and you’re very light.’

I blushed to the roots of my hair, as if I had done something wrong. ‘Well, I learned as a very little girl, but I thought I’d forgotten,’ I confessed. Then I got up enough courage to say shyly, ‘I think that it is your good guidance. I’ve never seen anybody dance like you and Doris. I wish I could be that good.’

He seemed as pleased with the compliment as if I had presented him with yet another gold cup, to add to the collection in the cabinet. Then he said, ‘Oh, aye. You might be if you stuck at it.’ He added earnestly, ‘You’d have to find yourself a good partner, though. We’ve got a few silver medallists as come here – working for their golds, they are – and we’ve got one gold medallist – other than ourselves, that is.’

As the record came to an end, he led me over to Doris. ‘We’ll try the turn now,’ he said to her. Then he added, ‘Been telling this young lady, what’s your name, luv, that she could win a silver if she worked.’

Doris nodded. ‘I was watching you.’

I said shyly, ‘My name is Helen Forrester. I didn’t know one could get medals for dancing.’

‘Of course you can,’ replied Doris. ‘A silver means you’re good – and a gold you can teach.’

I looked at her open-mouthed. She had just bounced right at my feet a most interesting, brand new idea of how I might earn a living. Long ago, a country doctor had broken it to me very gently that I could never be a ballet dancer, because I was going to walk always with one foot turned slightly in. My dancing teacher confirmed it. I was sent to learn ballroom dancing, because every middle-class girl was expected to be able to dance. I had been very unhappy amid hordes of other little girls, and small boys dressed in sailor suits with whistles hung round their necks or in Eton suits with stiff white collars. Nobody had seemed to notice the turned foot – and neither, apparently, had Norm or Doris.

Doris was saying proudly, ‘You should look at our cups in the cabinet there – proper collection of ‘em we’ve got. Going to try for the world championship soon.’

None of us seemed to think it strange to talk about entering dance competitions, when we expected to be bombed out of existence before too long.

‘How exciting!’ I exclaimed, with genuine enthusiasm.

‘Needs a lot of work,’ Norm said, as he sifted through the worn records. He picked out a record and handed it to Doris to put on to the gramophone. While she was doing this, he leaned against the table to rest his feet, and said to me, ‘If you’re serious, you should come for lessons at least twice a week, and then come to the dance on Saturday night for practice with different partners. See how you get on, like.’ He smiled at me, and I agreed, and then said shyly, ‘I think I’d better go back to Sylvia.’

Sylvia was making rueful remarks about broken toes to the girl next to her. I sat down primly on the edge of the chair beside her. I was determined to continue the classes, and I hoped she would come with me, so I said soothingly, ‘Never mind. A few lessons and we’ll all improve.’

My dance with Norm had not gone unnoticed, and the moment we were told to take our partners to learn the turn, a gawky young man with a nervously bobbing Adam’s apple was at my elbow, bowing with old-fashioned politeness to ask me if I cared to dance.

I jumped up eagerly, like an unpopular child suddenly asked to join in a game.

Norm, I discovered, was a stickler for good ballroom manners, and he stormed down the room towards one youth who asked a girl in a pink blouse, ‘Worm, come and wiggle.’

‘If that’s how you’re going to address a nice young lady, you needn’t bother to come again,’ he snapped.

The nice young lady immediately sat up straight, folded her hands in her lap and lowered her eyes.

The boy made a wry face, swept her a low bow, and inquired, ‘Madam, would you care to dance?’

She nodded assent and rose gravely, leaving her cigarette balanced on an ashtray. Satisfied, Norm turned to his class.

Sylvia’s pretty face and cheery manner assured her of partners, and I sat out only one dance. From this predicament I was rescued by Doris, who took the man’s part and guided me very well through the basic steps of the slow foxtrot, which I had not danced before.

As we groped our way carefully through the unlit streets, towards the stop where Sylvia could catch a tram home, I was animated, flushed with excitement and exercise, yet scared that for some reason I might not be able to afford to go to the class again.

Sylvia’s face was scarcely visible, but from the
tone of her remarks she seemed to view the evening with an easy good humour and would tolerate another evening like it. My spirits sank a little, and I wondered if she could possibly understand what a lifeline it seemed to me.

After a couple of weeks, Sylvia gave up attending the dancing classes, because of the long distance she had to travel in the blackout.

I went on my own. All the girls there were very nice to me, though they never gossiped with me or shared their jokes. Norm and Doris were conscientious teachers; and I began to gain a little self-confidence.

The dancing of the silver medallists at the Saturday evening dance showed a finish which owed much to almost daily practice. I was astonished at how much time working-class people were willing to spend on it, unlike the upper classes, who had many other sources of entertainment. Amongst Norm’s pupils were older married couples who had met at a dance club, and had danced together all their adult lives.

To dance had been my first ambition in life and the first to be crushed. Its relaxing rhythm now began to heal the wounds that earlier years in Liverpool had so painfully inflicted upon me.

If I wanted to continue to dance, I had also to learn to be courteous and sociable. Such skills are normally learned within the family and their circle, while playing games, attending parties or church or clubs. By extreme poverty and the need to be a surrogate mother, I had been cut off from all the contacts that a young girl could normally expect to enjoy. Now, at twenty, I was an ignorant novice, trying to pick her way amid people who would have roared with laughter at most of the ideas with which my brain was cluttered. It was not easy.

The young men must have had many quiet laughs at my clumsy efforts to be agreeable. I was painfully shy with them, and soon became aware that they treated me a little differently from the other girls present. It was subtle, but it was there. I was an oddity.

I never lacked partners, because I swam on to the dance floor with the ease of a baby duckling learning to swim. All of them wanted a good partner with whom to practise, regardless of whom they eventually escorted home after the dance.

One brave youngster, curly-haired and with the physique of a boxer, did one Saturday evening ask if he could take me home. I looked at him with short-sighted bewilderment and assured him that I was quite capable of seeing myself home. He looked stunned for a moment – perhaps he had never been refused before – and then he grinned in a friendly way which seemed to indicate approval, and said, ‘That’s OK, luv,’ and went to ask somebody else. Word of this rebuff must have gone round the class, because nobody else ventured to ask.

I went to the classes as frequently as I could afford. At first I was too shy to go to the Saturday night social dances, feeling that my dress was too shabby for a formal dance. The other girls seemed to have innumerable dresses.

I was so accustomed to working as a social worker amid a sea of unemployed, that I had never realised that even if unemployment was 33 per cent, that still left over 66 per cent of people in employment.

Now I was entering a new world of highly skilled artisans, where the division of the sexes was amply demonstrated by the fact that the women, whether married or not, congregated on one side of the room, while the men stood on the other side. Occasionally, bored by the lack of conversation, I would talk with Norm and Doris and learned
much about their dancing careers and their hopes of expanding their business when the war was over – maybe after next Christmas.

I discovered that I was supposed to talk to my partners while dancing, and I spent anxious moments trying to think of something to amuse men whose main interests were football, football pools, girls and learning to dance so that one could meet more girls.

Finally, I hit on the question, ‘Do you work round here?’ This usually got an immediate answer, and then I would ask what their job was. This usually called forth a monologue which lasted until the dance ended. As I was escorted back to my chair, I would assure them that it had been a really interesting conversation and I had no idea before how hard men worked. It was true. Many of them worked very hard in hot, dirty, dangerous places, and I soon admired their tenacity, and the fact that they never seemed to realise how brave they were. One of them had spent most of his working life setting the stones of the Anglican Cathedral, and was very angry at having been brought down to street level by a government call-up, to build airraid shelters.

I met mechanics and carpenters, electricians and apprentice plumbers, machinists, pattern makers,
draughtsmen, shipyard workers, slaughtermen, engineers of every description, bakers and others who worked in Liverpool’s huge food industry, occasionally a man in an ill-fitting uniform home on his first leave; very rarely, a seaman or two. They were all scrubbed from head to heel, hair clipped close to their heads like Roman soldiers, dressed in well-pressed Sunday suits.

The top earners were girls who worked for Vernon’s and Littlewood’s, the companies who ran the football pools. Other girls were shop assistants, waitresses, factory hands in the biscuit factories or stocking works or the Dunlop Rubber Company. They dressed most elaborately, and I gathered from overheard conversations that they spent hours shopping for exactly matching hats, gloves and shoes, and in setting each other’s hair. Like the girls I had worked with in the head office of my employers, they talked only of men, films and clothes.

On Sundays, I often went for a walk with Father. He gave me not only time but long and stimulating discussions of subjects which interested him. There was little that he had not studied of the life and times of Louis XIV of France, le Roi Soleil. We would discuss the King’s policies, his strengths and failings, the details of his palace of Versailles, which
Father had visited a number of times in his youth, and the lives of his advisers.

At night, we turned on our rickety radio, and Mother, Father and I listened to the nine o’clock news, as if it were holy writ. Then we would sweep the seeking needle slowly across the dial, while we tried to pick up news from France and Germany; and more than once I heard Hitler making a speech which sounded all the more terrifying because I could not always understand all of it.

Both Father and Mother benefited from a quieter home. Father never said whether he missed the younger members of his family and he never went to see them, probably because he flinched at the thought of having to meet his sisters if he did.

So, while Poland fought for its very existence, I danced my way back to a modicum of mental health, and we all waited for the holocaust to begin. The thought of it sat at the back of everybody’s mind, a weight only hinted at by some stray remark – but there, all the same. At that time in the war, it was as if a conductor had raised his baton ready to begin a symphony, and the tiny pause before the orchestra played the first chord went on and on and on, the players frozen in their seats.