Unforgettable (2 page)

‘Stop looking down your nose, Gracie,' Dolly hissed again, when their escorts had gone to buy the lemonade. ‘Jim's a bit of all right, and you only need to have one dance with Billy, then tell him to get lost.'

‘I'm not looking down my nose at them.'

But she was and she knew it. And she tried not to shudder when Jim thrust the glass of lemonade in her hand and she saw the state of his fingernails, as black as soot. She'd bet a pound to a penny that the saxophone player had very clean fingernails …

‘So what do you do, gels?' Jim was saying amicably now.

‘We work down Lawson's Shirt Factory,' Dolly said at once.

‘Blimey. Sewing shirts for soldiers, eh?'

She screamed with laughter as if he'd said something funny.

‘Not any more, you ninny. It ain't wartime now, in case you've forgotten.'

He shrugged carelessly. ‘Nah, thank God. Some of 'em never let you forget it though, do they? My old man was killed in the war, and my old mum's still going on about it seven years after it ended.'
Gracie was shocked. ‘You'd never want to forget, would you? If my dad had been killed in the war, I'd still be upset about it.'

Billy spoke up. ‘Jim and his dad hated each other. They had some good old ding-dongs of a Saturday night when his dad came home from the pub.'

‘All the same, you wouldn't want your dad to be killed, would you?' Gracie persisted, with visions of the latest Hollywood film she had seen where the poor wounded soldiers came home from the war, clasped in their loved ones' arms.

‘You would if you had one like mine,' Jim said grimly, flexing his knuckles.

‘So what do you do?' Gracie said, turning to Billy in desperation.

‘We're coalmen,' said Billy of few words.

That explained the blackened fingernails that no amount of scrubbing in the bathtub by the fire of a Saturday night would erase. Gracie's dad's were sometimes nearly as bad, though that was from unloading the ships at the docks, not hauling bags of coal around and breathing in coal dust all day long.

‘Do you want to dance?' Billy asked. ‘I'm not much good.'

And whatever happened to ‘May I have the pleasure
?'

Dolly giggled. ‘That don't matter. You'll be
all right with our Gracie. She knows all the latest steps from watching them at the flicks.'

‘Shut up, Dolly, and I don't, anyway.'

‘Is that right?' Jim said, grinning. ‘I thought you looked a bit of a toff.'

‘Toffs don't work in shirt factories,' she snapped.

Dolly was screaming with laughter at his remark, while Gracie felt her chin go even higher. It was a daft remark, of course, and she was no more a toff than the shambling Billy, grinning inanely at her now, but she fancied herself a cut above the pair of them. She didn't have to dance with anyone if she didn't want to. Though there wasn't much point in coming to the Palais if it wasn't to dance.

Billy might look a bit soft in the brain department, but she didn't like Jim at all. Jim looked rough and ready, and from what she'd heard about his ding-dongs with his dad, he was handy with his fists as well. He had an air of danger about him, which was just the sort to excite Dolly, she thought uneasily. With any luck they could just manage to have one dance with each of them to repay them for the lemonade and then merge in with everybody else.

‘Come on then, Doll,' Jim said, as the band
struck up a lively tune. ‘Let's leave these two to think about it.'

‘Are you really that good?' Billy asked Gracie glumly.

‘Of course not, but we can sit this one out if you like,' she said.

As they struggled through the crowds to the rows of tables and chairs on the balcony above the main part of the hall, she didn't know whether to laugh or be annoyed at his look of relief. But it was mostly relief. She didn't fancy the thought of those sweaty hands clutching her tightly as he tried not to fall over her feet.

Instead, she tried to pick out Dolly and Jim in the crowd of dancers flocking on to the floor now, and to cover Billy's lack of conversation by tapping her feet to the music. From there, they also had a perfect view of the band above the heads of the dancers. And Gracie had a perfect view of the saxophone player.

He wasn't looking at her now, of course. He was too busy playing his music. She had always admired anyone who could play an instrument. It always seemed so sophisticated. And watching the movement of his fingers now, producing that wonderfully rich sound, she thought again that she'd bet a pound to a penny that he never had dirty
fingernails. The mouthpiece of the long brass tube of the saxophone was between his pursed lips, and those sensitive fingers caressed it.

By the time the others came back, Dolly was as red-faced as Jim, both from the dancing and, no doubt, by the things Jim was whispering in her ear. Gracie never set herself up to be Dolly's saviour, but somebody had to save her from herself, she sometimes told her laughingly, and got the usual reply:

Oh stuff. You only live once, but sometimes you sound as old as my old granny instead of nineteen, same as me
.

‘Jim don't live far from us, Gracie,' Dolly said now. ‘He delivers coal to the mews around the corner, so it's a wonder we ain't seen him and Billy before.'

‘We probably have, but we wouldn't recognize them all covered in coal dust,' Gracie said before she had time to think.

‘Hah! Told you she fancied herself as a bit of a toff, didn't I?' Jim said, the smile not quite hiding the gleam in his eyes that said he wasn't too keen on this hoity-toity friend of Dolly's. She might look like the bee's knees, but thank God he'd got the one who was good for a laugh, and Billy would have to make the best of it. After tonight he'd never
need to see her again, but that didn't go for Dolly.

This one he'd definitely like to see again, and from the way she'd pressed her cupcakes up against him when they were dancing, he was pretty sure she wouldn't be averse to a bit of slap and tickle.

‘Come on, Billy, I'll teach you this one,' Gracie said, deciding that he was probably never going to ask her to dance again, so she might as well take the initiative, even if it wasn't the done thing. Besides, she preferred to get well away from Jim, who was decidedly whiffy now, and it wasn't just what some called poncy aftershave, either.

Billy led her out on to the floor, and by some miracle of manoeuvring she kept him well away from her feet for most of the time. The thought of her lovely cream shoes being all scuff-marked from his size ten clodhoppers was too much to bear. He was doing his best though, and she encouraged him with a smile as they moved around the dance-hall.

‘You're wonderful,' he said at last, even more red-faced.

‘Why, thank you, Billy,' Gracie said, sorry for her earlier ungraciousness about him now. ‘I'm not really wonderful though.'

‘You are. Nobody showed me how to dance before.'

She smothered a small sigh. ‘We'll have another one later then, if you like,' she said, thinking that this wasn't exactly fulfilling her hopes for this evening. Especially as she glimpsed Dolly and Jim laughing at them as Billy held her carefully away from him so that he could watch her feet and match their movements.

She might have known they were going to be stuck with them. From the moment Dolly's eyes had lit up at the sight of Jim making his way towards her, Gracie knew they were done for. Nobody else was going to break into the foursome and ask her to dance now. And if Dolly thought she had found her love-match in the oafish Jim, she certainly hadn't done so with his mate. But he didn't want to dance very often, so they sat it out while the others got on with it.

It hardly put her in a very good frame of mind, and halfway through the evening the band left the stage, off for a breather, and Dolly and Jim were dancing to gramophone records. Gracie closed her eyes briefly, preferring to listen to the music rather than to Billy's awkward attempts to chat. His offering to buy her another glass of lemonade in this interval had been the highlight of the evening so far, and she sent him off gladly.

‘May I have the pleasure of this dance, miss?' a voice said, close by.

She felt a rush of guilty relief, knowing it wasn't Billy's voice, and that at least she might have one decent dance this evening, with someone who didn't hold her as if she was another sack of coal. She opened her eyes quickly, a ready smile on her lips, and then gaped.

The saxophone player, looking just as handsome close to as he had on his exalted position on the stage, was smiling down at her.

‘Oh—I—yes, thank you!' She was momentarily as tongue-tied as Billy had ever been. And then he held out his hand to take hers, and she forgot Billy existed as she walked down to the dance floor with the saxophone player, aware of people watching and whispering, recognizing him from the band, and obviously envying the girl he'd chosen to be his partner.

‘I've been wanting to dance with you from the moment I saw you come in,' he said, as he took her in his arms.

‘Have you?' Gracie asked faintly, knowing this was absolutely the wrong way to react. She should be as cool as a cucumber, like the debs who were pictured in the newspapers, all with their noses in the air and wearing their
lovely gowns, and reeking with their daddy's money.

‘Don't say you didn't notice me looking at you,' the saxophone player said with an easy smile. ‘I couldn't take my eyes off you until I had to. That's the penalty of playing in a band. It's only in the interval when they play gramophone records that I get the chance to dance with a beautiful girl.'

Without warning, Gracie felt madly, ridiculously jealous of all the beautiful girls he'd danced with before.

‘I bet you say that to all your dancing partners,' she said.

‘Not all of it,' he said, whisking her expertly around the room. ‘And I'm being guilty of appalling bad manners, because I haven't introduced myself. My name's Charles Morrison, but everyone calls me Charlie.'

‘And I'm plain Gracie Brown.'

Charlie laughed softly, his arm tightening around her waist to steer her out of the way of the other dancers.

‘Oh, there's nothing in the least plain about you, Gracie Brown.'

She looked up into his eyes, as blue as her own, and she felt a tingling deep inside her such as she had never experienced before. So this was how it felt when you met the knight on the white charger who was going to sweep
you off your feet, Gracie thought weakly. Only in her case, it was the saxophone player at the local Palais who was whirling her around the dance-floor and making her dizzy.

‘Blimey, you didn't waste much time,' Dolly said. ‘You were looking at that bloke as if you could eat him.'

‘At least I wasn't fastened so tightly to him that you couldn't put a penny between us,' Gracie said crossly.

‘So what? Jim's a real man, not a poncy dance-band player.'

‘There's nothing poncy about Charles. Charlie, I mean.'

‘Oh my gawd.
Charles
, is it? Going up in the world, ain't you? I bet you didn't tell him you worked for Lawson's Shirt Factory.'

‘We were only dancing, not telling each other our life histories.'

But she felt a touch of dismay as she said the words. Charlie—Charles Morrison—was obviously out of her class. He was clever for a start, nimble with his fingers in an artistic and different way from the way she kept her machine going at the sweat shop. She might look the part tonight, and he might think she was a society girl and not a humble shirt-maker. But the thought of her being mistaken for a society girl made her laugh.

‘What's got into you now?' Dolly said, pressing more of her favourite Tangee lipstick on to her scarlet lips.

‘I was just wondering what Charlie would think if he knew how my old man sweated for a living down Southampton docks, that's all.'

‘What difference does that make to a pound of fish?'

‘None,' Gracie said, pulling her wayward auburn curls more neatly around her cheeks with a lick of spit. ‘Only that he probably meets all the nobs in his job, and I was just a face in the crowd.'

She felt a swift surge of misery at the thought. She really liked him. He could talk nicely, and she knew she had tightened up her sloppy talk when they were dancing. She ignored the memory of her mum saying with a sniff that putting on airs never got anybody anywhere, our Gracie, and it'll only end in tears …

‘You should think a bit more of yourself,' Dolly went on lecturing. ‘I told you he had his eye on you. He never needs to know what your dad does, does he? Tell him you're a duchess, out slumming for the evening,' she invented wildly.

Gracie laughed again. ‘I'm sure he'd believe that! Especially if he'd seen me hauling poor Billy around on the dance-door.'

‘I suppose a coalman's not good enough for you now,' Dolly said.

‘Well, not Billy! Nor Jim, if you want to know what I think.'

‘I don't. Anyway, he's good enough for me, and you're a snob!'

She flounced out of the ladies' cloakroom, and Gracie felt her cheeks flame. How could she be called a snob when she worked like stink from morning till night in that miserable sweat shop for a pittance? The only thing that kept her there, apart from the excitement of living and working in London and being independent, was that the girls were allowed to take scraps of material home, and she was skilled at making smart blouses from the offcuts. She didn't need to look poor, just because she was a docker's daughter.

She lifted her chin high and marched out of the ladies' cloakroom to make her peace with Dolly. If she fancied Jim and didn't mind being pawed by those unsavoury fingernails, it was none of her business.

The band was playing again now, and her searching eyes went straight to Charlie. He really was lovely-looking, and any girl would be proud to have him as her young man. For a moment, Gracie let herself dream. And then a classy-looking girl with blonde hair, wearing a black evening dress and long, satin black
gloves went on to the stage and began to sing, and Gracie's heart jolted.