After the Last Dance (13 page)

Rose shook her head. ‘No, she insists it would be an imposition, even though it's not. We have exactly the same argument every time she comes to London.' She sounded exasperated, but then his mother's self-deprecation was exhausting. ‘She's staying in a vacant flat in that serviced block of mine on Kensington Church Street.'

‘So, she's well, then, is she?' Leo asked, guilt washing over him now in cold, oily waves.

‘She is, and she's coming round for lunch today so it's probably best if you make yourself scarce.' Rose sounded angry now. ‘Ten years, Leo, and you didn't so much as call or send her a postcard. I find that unforgivably cruel.'

‘If I'd have called, she'd only have got upset.' Staying out of his mother's life was the kindest thing he could have done. It was practically noble of him. ‘Please, I thought we were making up, Rose. Don't give me a hard time about this.'

Rose seemed to wilt before his eyes. ‘I am very, very fond of your mother. She goes back to Durham in a few days, I doubt we'll see each other again…' She stopped, turned her head, but not before Leo saw the tear trickle down her creased cheek. But it couldn't be, because Rose didn't do things like cry. Even so, her hand reached up to her face to brush away the evidence and Leo turned his own head and found that he was blinking away tears too. All this rousing talk of pills and quality of life had obscured the simple fact that in a couple of months Rose might not be here. Wouldn't be sitting down to breakfast or touching the teapot to see how warm it was, as she was now. She'd be gone. ‘I would like it, more than you know, if at some point you were to make things right with your mother, introduce her to Jane, build bridges, but not now. You'll only be in the way. Is that unreasonable of me?'

‘It's not,' Leo said. ‘You're right. Maybe I shouldn't have come back.'

Rose had both hands curved round the teapot. Her attention was not on him, but on the kitchen window, which looked out onto the mews at the back of the house, where two men were standing by a ladder. ‘Well, yes, maybe you shouldn't have,' she agreed.

 

‘Darling Rose, just because Danny's gone there's no reason to go into mourning,' Sylvia told her as they walked the backstreets towards Rainbow Corner one frigid night in late February. It was so cold that Rose had asked her mother to put her thermal combinations in the post. ‘No point putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.'

‘I thought he'd have written by now. Even a postcard. It takes no time at all to write a postcard,' Rose complained. ‘Unless something dreadful has happened to him. What if —'

‘I refuse to listen to what-ifs. Let's talk about something more cheery.'

Sylvia was still talking about the new hat she planned to buy when they reached Rainbow Corner and prepared to part ways. ‘I'll see you back here at ten-thirty,' Rose said. ‘Do you want to go out dancing after? The Opera House, maybe?'

‘I can't be fagged to go to all the way to Covent Garden,' Sylvia complained, but just as Rose was going to suggest they might try the Astoria, she felt a hand on her arm.

‘Just the little lady I was looking for,' Mickey Flynn said, even though Rose was at least four inches taller than he was. ‘About that favour you owe me…'

‘You're meant to talk to me about any favours,' Sylvia said sharply.

‘I only came to tell our Rosie that we're even.'

‘Are we?' It was impossible to get Mickey Flynn to look one in the eye. His gaze was either fixed on one's chest or on some point in the middle distance, as if he were permanently on the alert for someone else who might owe him a favour. ‘How did that happen?'

‘This is how. Rose, Sylvia, meet Edward. He's top drawer. Prince among men. Salt of the earth. As much as your good pal Mickey Flynn can vouch for any man, I vouch for him.'

Sylvia and Rose shared a look of confusion, then turned back to discover that Mickey had melted away as if the walls were made of blancmange. In his place was a tall, thin man in a major's uniform with a slight stoop, fair hair brushed back to show off lean, patrician features and a slightly nervous smile. Rose was sure she'd seen him before, but couldn't think for the life of her where.

‘I asked Mickey if he'd mind formally introducing us. He drove a very hard bargain so now I owe him a favour and you've discharged your debt,' he said to Rose. ‘It's probably for the best that I owe Mickey, rather than you. Mickey's idea of a favour can be rather unsavoury.' He had a dark, treacly voice and then Rose remembered where she'd met him before. Coming out of the billiard room the night she'd got her papers – she'd been desperate to run away, not just from Mickey's lecherous gaze, but from this man too. ‘And I did rather wonder if the pair of you would do me a favour, but it's a very nice sort of favour.'

‘What is it, then?' asked Sylvia, even though he'd barely taken his eyes off Rose, who'd smiled briefly at him but now didn't know where to look. He did
stare
so.

‘My sources tell me you're the prettiest two girls at Rainbow Corner and I hoped that you might agree to make up a foursome with me and a colleague this evening.' He leaned in close. ‘He's a very big noise in the Service Corps but he's also very dull. I might not be able to stay awake past the hors d'oeuvres.'

It didn't sound a tempting prospect to go out with a dull man in charge of stationery plus Edward, who'd stared unnervingly at her for five minutes. ‘We'd get into terrible trouble if we just upped and left,' Rose told him coolly. ‘We might even be blacklisted.'

‘Don't make jokes like that.' Sylvia put a hand to her forehead as if she might faint.

‘I'm sure I could square it with Mrs Atkins. Isn't she in charge of the volunteers?' He was already backing away as if he was intent on hunting her down.

‘It has to be better than three hours on the information desk,' Sylvia hissed. ‘Three hours!'

‘Yes, but…'

‘Oh, by the way, I thought we'd go to the Criterion, if that meets with your approval.'

 

Fortunately, Rose was wearing Shirley's black crêpe de Chine. It was a little tight with her thermals on underneath, but now she was in the Criterion, being led to a table by a stiff-backed waiter who walked like a penguin, Rose was eternally grateful she wasn't in Shirley's limp pale blue taffeta.

A portly, middle-aged man stood as they approached the table, eyed up both girls, kissed their hands as Edward introduced them, and said something about the other man being a brigadier. Rose wasn't paying attention – she was far too busy rubbernecking the other diners.

It was the London she'd always dreamed of. Women in beautiful gowns, white necks emerging from clouds of silk tulle. The urbane hum of muted conversation. All the men looked so handsome; even the older ones looked distinguished, all except…

‘You must call me Bertie,' the portly man said. His face was very red and he was cultivating a pencil moustache, which didn't suit him. He made a big show of pulling out Sylvia's chair and smiled approvingly as the waiter reverently placed a white napkin on her lap.

‘I suppose this will do, won't it, Rose?' Sylvia said with a sly grin.

It was left to Edward to pull out Rose's chair, then he sat down next to her, Bertie on her other side and Sylvia opposite so Rose could pull an incredulous face at her when she opened her menu and glanced down. She must have slipped down a rabbit hole like Alice to a land where there was lobster and caviar, steak and duck.

‘I suppose it would be more patriotic to ask for the other menu that doesn't have all the non-rationed luxury items on it,' Edward said earnestly to Rose. Then he smiled so she supposed he was making a joke and smiled uncertainly back at him. To her left Bertie
was
cracking an off-colour joke about the oysters, which made Sylvia hoot.

Rose had absolutely no desire to eat oysters anyway. ‘I'll have the caviar,' she told the waiter decisively. She ordered Tournedos Rossini for her main course, which earned her an odd look from Bertie, and enthusiastically agreed that a bottle of champagne as an aperitif ‘would be simply heavenly'.

In the meantime, Bertie regaled them with tales of his hunting, shooting and fishing and how he'd much rather ‘hunt the Hun' instead of pushing paper in an office in Whitehall.

Rose couldn't imagine he'd be much good in open combat; he was far too fat. Not that Sylvia minded. She laughed at every single one of Bertie's jokes, of which there were many – he was particularly fond of puns – and flattered him shamelessly. ‘I've been trying to think who you remind me of for the last half-hour. Bertie has a look of Clark Gable, don't you think, Rosie?'

Rose didn't, but she nodded anyway. She tried hard to think of bright, witty things to say, but it was hard with Edward barely saying anything at all and still looking at her when he thought she wasn't looking at him. Whenever Rose had thought of the glamorous London life she hoped to experience she was always blasé and languid and saying, ‘Oh, darling!' a lot. She was doing none of those things, but sitting there mute. She could positively
feel
the gormless expression on her own face.

It was a relief when another waiter arrived at their table with a bottle in a silver bucket full of ice. Rose watched, riveted, as he expertly pulled out the cork. It came away with a resounding pop that made her think of crackers and fireworks and other things she loved.

She was handed a glass, the pinprick fizz of the bubbles tickling her nose, then they raised their glasses and said ‘Cheers!' and she took her first sip.

Rose thought she might cry because the champagne was just as vile as Coca-Cola. Worse. At least Coca-Cola was sweet. The champagne had a sour taste and it took everything she had not to screw up her face in revulsion.

‘Do you not like it?' Edward whispered to her. All he'd done was gawp at her so he must have caught the faint flicker of disgust that she hadn't been able to disguise.

‘Oh no, it's lovely. My absolute favourite thing in the world.' Rose steeled herself to take another sip.

‘It's all right if you don't like it. I could ask if they'd make you a mimosa, which you might like better,' he said. ‘It's worth a shot.'

Rose would have liked to think that Danny would be so kind, but he never missed an opportunity to curb what he called her brattiness. Certainly, she couldn't picture Danny at the Criterion. He wouldn't have been impressed when Bertie had pointed out Winston Churchill's usual table and he'd call all the waiters ‘pal' and slouch in his chair, legs akimbo. Even with the slight hunch to his shoulders, Edward's back was as straight as it could be as he waited expectantly for her reply.

‘What's a mimosa?' she asked.

‘Champagne mixed with freshly squeezed orange juice. They used to serve it at the Ritz in Paris before the war.'

‘I can't believe that even the Criterion can get oranges and so many of them that they don't mind squeezing them for juice.' Rose shook her head sadly. ‘It's very wasteful.'

‘Maybe they use what's left to make marmalade?' Edward suggested.

‘Or cake. Our cook, before the war, used to make a wonderful orange and almond cake,' Rose said wistfully.

‘With buttercream?' Edward asked a little wistfully himself. He didn't seem so unsettling now they were having a proper conversation and Rose relaxed enough to look him in the eye.

She even smiled at him. ‘I do so miss buttercream!' Before she could ask Edward what food he missed, two waiters arrived with Bertie's oysters on a silver stand, Sylvia's sardines (she said that all the fancy seafood in the world couldn't compare to grilled sardines), and Edward and Rose's caviar.

The tiny, glossy black eggs were heaped in a little silver bowl and came with a silver spoon so Rose could scoop out the caviar and arrange it on tiny points of toast. Like the champagne, it tasted horrible. Fishy and oily and even slimier than Bertie's oysters, which he slurped down with gusto. Then he ate the rest of Rose's caviar when she said she couldn't manage any more.

‘Waste not, want not.' He was clearly happiest when he was eating. ‘Patriotic duty and all.'

All Rose's hopes were resting on the Tournedos Rossini – she was sure that she'd read about them in a book. Probably one of Shirley's romance novels, which always featured impressionable young women being wined and dined by very suave, very rich men.

Her heart sank when what was placed in front of her, with some ceremony, was not at all what she'd been expecting. On her plate was a huge piece of dried bread with three steak medallions perched on top; resting on each one was a slab of pâté and some strange mushroom-like shavings. The whole kit and caboodle was slathered in a dark brown sauce.

Still, Rose had managed to get through half of the caviar by washing it down with gulps of water and she'd ask Edward to order jugs of the stuff if that was what it took to force down steak that was red and bloody in the middle. They'd always had it so well done at home that one had to saw at it.

But the Criterion's bloody steak was actually beautifully tender, the pâté rich and buttery and what Edward said were truffle shavings tasted ‘unbelievably yummy', she explained to Sylvia in the pauses between eating as she took sips of the Châteauneuf-du-Pape that had taken Bertie and Edward five minutes to order because they couldn't make up their minds between the '33 and the '36.

It was as Rose was mopping up the Madeira sauce with the bread that she noticed the three of them staring at her. Sylvia pointed delicately at Rose's plate and she realised that she'd abandoned her cutlery in favour of her hands, as if she were some kind of street urchin that they'd found begging outside. ‘I'm sorry,' she mumbled, mouth full, but even though she was blushing rosy red, a combination of embarrassment, the food and wine, and her thermals, Rose didn't stop until her plate was clean.

‘Nothing better than a girl who likes her grub,' Bertie declared, raising his glass to Rose. ‘Can't abide a woman who lives on leaves and plants. You got room for pudding?'

Rose swallowed the last divine crumb and nodded. ‘I'll say.'

‘I don't know where you put it,' Sylvia said. ‘Our friend Phyllis – Bertie, you must know her people; they own half of Norfolk – says Rose has hollow legs. One night at Rainbow Corner, a GI challenged Rose to a doughnut —'

‘Oh, Sylvia, nobody wants to hear about that,' Rose pleaded, though it was rather late to claim she had no gluttonous tendencies.

‘I would,' Edward said. ‘I'm intrigued to know what you do at Rainbow Corner when you're not dancing.'

‘Break some hearts, eh?' Bertie nudged Sylvia, who threw him an arch look, which Rose knew full well she practised in front of the mirror. ‘Bet there's a fair few fellows pining after the pair of you.'

‘I don't think they're pining after Rose so much as telling their soldier pals about the girl they met who scoffed twenty-one doughnuts in a sitting,' Sylvia said with a wicked smile at Rose, who hid her face in her napkin. ‘Rose set a new Rainbow Corner record.'

‘They were very small doughnuts,' Rose insisted but Bertie was laughing too hard to hear her.

Edward simply smiled gravely and asked Rose what she'd like for pudding.

She finished her meal with a pavlova and a glass of dessert wine and by the time they left, Rose was grateful for the sudden blast of icy air as they walked along Haymarket towards Bertie's flat near St James's Park for a nightcap.

‘We won't have to do anything, will we?' Rose asked Sylvia as they walked arm in arm, the two men slightly ahead of them. ‘Do you think the meal was very, very expensive?'

‘Very, especially as you ate twice as much as anyone else.' Sylvia was at her most capricious. ‘Edward seems quite smitten. I never thought he'd have a thing for ingénues…'