After the Last Dance (27 page)

‘The thing is, I haven't heard from him in ages. Not since before the invasion and though I don't have feelings for him any longer, not kind feelings anyway, I was hoping, I know it's a lot to ask, but if you might make some enquiries. To see if he's safe.'

Edward barely even blinked as Rose reached into her little evening bag and pulled out the scrap of paper on which she'd written Danny's details. It wasn't much. Just his name, though she wasn't sure how to spell his surname, where he was stationed, and that his people lived in New York. But Rose knew so much more about Danny than just these few scant facts written on the back of an envelope. After what he'd done to her, she knew the secret heart of him and though it might not be a good heart, a true heart, she needed to know it was still beating.

‘What's the name of his squadron? What's his rank? There are three United States Air Force stations in Cambridgeshire, might you be more specific? Where do you send his letters when you write to him?'

Rose couldn't answer any of the questions that Edward all but barked at her because she didn't know the answers. Not because they'd had some fly-by-night encounter but because there was that whole business of Danny using the local pub as a postbox to outwit the army censors. Surely that had to be against regulations and Danny could get into trouble if his CO found out? What silly things people did when they thought they were in love, but Edward wouldn't understand. He was too buttoned-up, too serious, to let himself fall in love.

‘It doesn't matter,' Rose said. She held out her hand for the piece of paper. ‘I'm sorry to have bothered you.'

Edward tucked the paper away in his pocket. ‘I'm not promising anything but I'll see what I can do.'

The gilt and the chandeliers, even the diamond clips in front of her had lost their sparkle, the bubbles in her champagne no longer fizzing on her tongue. Rose stared down at her melting ice cream. She heard Edward sigh, then she heard nothing but the unholy bang that rocked the room, made the chandeliers shake as the hallowed space of The Ritz was breached.

There were screams and Rose pushed back her chair. Then there was another bang, as if a hundred doodlebugs had suddenly exploded in one huge blast right outside the windows, and she gasped.

‘Get down, you little fool!' Edward pulled Rose under the table, his body covering hers, shielding her from the horrors outside.

‘Oh God, what is it? Why didn't they sound the siren? I can't bear it,' she whispered, the argument already forgotten because
this
was what had ruined the evening. The bloody war. It ruined everything. ‘I can't stand it.'

‘Yes, you can. You have to be brave,' Edward said and he took Rose's hand, squeezed her fluttering fingers until she was still and in that moment she felt safe. Nothing could get to her because Edward simply wouldn't allow it.

She pressed her cheek against his chest, felt the buttons on his jacket dig into her, and she matched her breaths to his, slow and steady, until she felt her heart stop racing, let calm sink in and when the siren finally began to wail, five minutes after the first explosion, she was angry that it broke the spell.

They were led to The Ritz's bomb shelter, a restaurant,
La Popote
, in the basement with a funny mural on the wall. Edward ordered more champagne and insisted Rose drink it all because she was so pale. There was a band playing, people dancing, laughing, greeting friends – and suddenly waiting it out until the All Clear became a fabulous party. Edward even danced with her – he insisted on a slow, sedate waltz though they were playing a foxtrot and he stepped on her feet a couple of times, but the sheer selflessness of Edward asking her to dance because he knew that she wanted to meant more to Rose than the diamond clips that she'd scooped up from the table on their way out of the much grander restaurant upstairs.

It was ages before the All Clear sounded. They left The Ritz just after two. Even at the best of times, it was hard to find a taxi. Tonight it proved impossible.

‘I'll walk you home,' Edward said and Rose didn't feel the least inclined to argue. Tonight's bombs had scared the wits right out of her, though when they crossed over Shaftesbury Avenue they met a policeman coming the other way who said that there hadn't been any bombs. ‘Word from on high is that it was a gas line explosion, sir,' he'd said.

That would have explained why there'd been no siren, no warning, just those two almighty bangs as if the heavens had wanted to show just how furious they were at the destruction they were forced to look down upon every day and every night.

‘I think the war will be over soon,' Rose told Edward as they walked along New Oxford Street. ‘The doodlebugs haven't been doodling much and I can't believe that the Germans aren't as sick of all this as we are.'

‘You should be careful what you wish for,' Edward muttered obliquely. ‘You're shivering. You should have said you were cold. Take my jacket.'

He draped it over her shoulders so she could smell the faintest hint of his aftershave, something subtle and smoky, and then they didn't talk at all. Rose's feet were aching and she was so tired that it seemed pointless to even go to bed, only to have to wake up again almost as soon as she'd fallen asleep.

Though when she did wake up, it would be her birthday and there'd be all sorts of treats. Even Shirley, who seemed quite over her snit about Rose making off with her dresses, had sent her a large, intriguing parcel. It was enough to make Rose quicken her steps and then, as they reached Theobald's Road and her bed was only three minutes away, they were forced to come to a stop. The street was littered with broken glass from the shop windows that had blown out. There were huge lumps of masonry and twisted hunks of metal lying in the road, where this morning there'd been buses, trams and taxis, people hurrying to get to work.

Neither of them said anything, because there wasn't much to say. Besides, it was heavy going. The nearer they got to Montague Terrace, the thicker the air became, heavy with dust and smoke, so that Rose and Edward had to pull out their handkerchiefs and hold them over their mouths. Edward called to her, but his words were swallowed up by the fug.

The closer Rose got to home, the greater the devastation. No shops, no houses left. They'd been torn up and replaced by charred, still-smoking mountains of debris and Rose had to weave this way and that to fight her way through the mess, but she knew that when she got to their corner everything would be all right. She'd already come through the eye of the storm, where the damage was at its greatest, and maybe they might have some broken windows… it wouldn't surprise her if the roof had come clean off, but she'd soon find the others. They must have gone to the shelter. Not even Sylvia could have slept through this. ‘You took your time,' she would say and they'd laugh when Rose told them she'd been to The Ritz only to dine on cheese on toast.

Edward called out to her again, but he was far, far behind her and she was almost home. Just round the corner. The dust was clearing. There! She was through the worst of it.

At the top of Montague Terrace a cordon had been set up, and as she struggled nearer, Rose saw it was manned by an ARP warden. The dust and smoke weren't so bad now but tiny blackened pieces of debris were floating from the sky like confetti and Rose shivered again. Everything was going to be all right. She was almost home, but when she swallowed, all she could taste was fear and soot.

‘You can't go through,' the ARP warden shouted at her, though Rose was sure that her legs would refuse to take another step. ‘Gas line explosion.'

‘How bad is it?' Edward had caught up. ‘The young lady lives on this street, you see.'

‘You can't go through,' the warden repeated. ‘No one's allowed through.'

‘Rose! Come back!'

She was running, dodging past the warden who shouted at her to stop and she did stop because she'd rounded the corner onto her street. Her dear little street. It was strewn with broken bricks and shattered glass and the terrible dust was so thick, coating her clothes, Rose sucked it in with every ragged breath. It was impossible to see where she was going when her eyes were streaming but still she pressed on.

‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,' she heard herself chant as she stumbled over bricks and rubble,.

This was the heart of the explosion. Not like the damage she was used to when one could still see the shell of the home you once knew. Her home was no longer there. It was simply
gone
. No more. Disappeared. Not here. Here was now a crater where their entire terrace had once stood, as if the earth had swallowed all the houses up whole, then spat out the joists and jambs as if they were bones. There was a gaping hole in her world.

‘Rose! Come back to the cordon. It's not safe.' Edward came up behind her, panting.

She whirled round. ‘My girls! Where are my girls?'

He put an arm around her shaking shoulders. ‘Let's go and find out.'

‘Miss, you listen to your bloke.' The ARP warden, his sooty face creased with concern, wasn't shouting any more. ‘The WRVS has set up a canteen in the church hall on Bloomsbury Way. You go and have a nice cup of tea and a bun and sort yourself out. We need to keep this area clear to let the Civil Defence boys do their job.'

‘My friends…' She couldn't say any more than that, but pointed to the hole. ‘My house is in there. My friends were in the house. You see, normally they'd go out dancing, but it's my birthday tomorrow, well, I suppose it's today now and they came home early to plan my surprises. They're all right, aren't they?'

The warden took her hand. ‘If you go to the WRVS canteen, they'll have set up an IIP. They'll know what to do.'

Rose might even have let herself be led to the draughty church hall, but then she saw the look the two men shared, the swift shake of the warden's head.

‘No!' She wrenched free of them, sprang forward. All this time, she'd been staring blindly at the hole that stretched two streets back and it was only now that she looked down at what was left of the pavement.

On the ground were six stained beige blankets, shrouding what lay beneath. Next to them there was a straw hamper, the kind you might pack full of sandwiches and fruit and bottles of pop for a picnic. Rose couldn't imagine what it was doing there and then she remembered Sylvia telling her about the time she'd passed a street half an hour after a doodlebug had dropped from the sky. There'd been a young ambulance worker crying as she collected chunks of flesh (‘I'm sure one of them was a tiny foot, it was the most gruesome thing I'd ever seen, I felt like crying too') wrapping them in newspaper and placing them in a basket.

‘Is that them? Is that my girls? Is it? Is it?' How could it be them? If it was, that would mean that Sylvia had left her. That she'd never see her or Phyllis or Maggie again. Even miserable Mr Bryce and the two sisters who lived in the ground floor flat and worked at the library on Chancery Lane. They'd all vanished and weren't coming back. No goodbye, no note. She'd waved her girls off outside Rainbow Corner, too excited about her birthday treats and dinner at The Ritz to make that last ‘Cheerio. Don't wait up!' have any real meaning.

‘Rose. Darling Rose.' Edward's voice caught. ‘Don't do that. Darling, please don't.'

She was on her knees and hammering the ground with fists that were quickly bloodied. Demanding that the earth, which had taken her girls, return them safe and sound.

‘I want them back right now! Do you hear me? You bring them back to me!'

‘If I could, I would. I'd do anything for you.' Edward was on his knees too, arms holding her immobile so she couldn't do any more damage. His big body covered hers and he clung to her tightly as if he could suck all the pain out of her and carry it around with him day after day so she wouldn't have to bear the burden.

But he couldn't. No one could. The pain was hers and hers alone.

When Rose was able to breathe again, when her lips were no longer blue, she'd forbidden Leo from calling her doctor and refused to even countenance sending for an ambulance.

She had, eventually after much persuasion, permitted Leo to carry her upstairs. Jane and Lydia followed at a respectable distance to allow her some semblance of dignity and so they could pretend not to hear Rose make an awful gasp every time Leo had to shift her in his arms.

After Rose was settled, they'd sent Lydia to bed and Jane had stayed. They'd barely spoken. Jane's face was white, her carefully applied make-up suddenly garish. In the end, Leo had sent her to bed too. She'd obeyed without even a token protest and Leo had spent the rest of the night sitting with Rose, who slept in painful fits and starts.

Leo supposed that he must have dozed off in the armchair because the arrival of Lydia with a breakfast tray closely followed by a man who he assumed was Rose's doctor made his eyes snap open. He stretched out his legs, felt his right calf begin to cramp up.

‘Really, what a fuss about nothing,' said a crisp voice from the bed. Rose was sitting up. She looked better than she had last night but as there'd been five long minutes when Leo thought that Rose might suffocate from lack of oxygen, better was a relative concept.

I should never have come back
, Leo thought as he staggered to the kitchen. He didn't have the bottle or the balls to handle this situation, which was only going to get worse.

Then again, maybe he should never have left in the first place.

Jane was in the kitchen, between him and the coffee pot. She was wearing jeans and an old black jumper that she must have found in his chest of drawers. Her hair was tangled, her face still sleep-creased.

‘You must be desperate for some coffee, darling,' she said. ‘Black, right?'

‘As black as it will go.' He hauled himself up on one of the wooden stools and leaned his elbows on the breakfast bar as she poured coffee into two mugs. Jane handed one to him, kept one for herself and took a sip. He waited for her to say something, but she was silent. As if she was the one waiting for him.

‘We've all been kidding ourselves, Rose included, that this was under control,' Leo finally admitted. He looked up at the halogen spotlights set into the kitchen ceiling as if he'd find salvation in their soft glow. ‘That she could carry on the way she was for months and months.'

‘Last night might have been just a one-off.' Jane frowned. ‘Though I've noticed that she hasn't had much of an appetite lately.'

‘This isn't a game any more, Jane. You know that, don't you?' Leo asked baldly, because ever since last night he'd had this sick feeling of dread like the end of the world was well and truly nigh. Whatever Jane was up to, he didn't want to play. ‘You can't be here, in Rose's home, if you're only…'

‘What? Only what?' She was no longer pale but red-faced and surely even Jane couldn't flush on demand. ‘I said that I'd help you, darling, and that still stands.'

‘Why? I've told you already that there isn't going to be some big payday.'

Even though her face seemed to be regaining its ability to show emotion, it was still hard to get a read on what Jane was thinking, especially when she turned away to gaze out of the window. ‘Whatever else we may or may not be to each other, I thought we were friends, and as a friend I want to be here for you.'

Jane seemed different this morning. Her head was bowed, the graceful line of her shoulders slumped, her posture forlorn. Leo stood up and walked over to her. He thought about smoothing down a stray lock of her hair but didn't. ‘So that Charles – is he gay, then?' It wasn't what he was going to say. Not the right time or place, but there it was. He'd said it.

Jane's shoulders twitched. ‘Oh… Charles… he's not anything, I don't think. Not gay, not straight, he's just not interested.' She turned round and Leo hadn't realised how close he'd got. One step closer and they'd be nose to nose but before he could move back because he didn't want Jane to think he was crowding her, she put a hand on his arm, her fingers cool on his tired skin. ‘Look, I'm not everything that you think I am. And I'm not always on the make. I'd like to stay, but only if you want me to.'

And when she put it like that, Leo didn't have to think twice about it. ‘I do.'

She smiled faintly. ‘But I don't want to get stuck playing bad cop any more.'

‘You won't,' Leo said firmly. It was all getting painfully serious again. There'd be time enough for that later. He dreaded the thought of
later
, so he banished it with a sly smile. ‘Though I can't promise not to use you as a human shield to deflect the blast from one of Rose's glares.'

‘That I'll allow,' Jane decided then she stepped past him to pull herself up on a stool.

They hadn't even finished their coffee when Lydia rang down on the house phone and asked them to come up to Rose's suite.

Rose was ensconced on the sofa in her sitting room, as if she were just resting between social engagements. ‘I thought it best if you had an update while Dr Howard was here. I do so hate having to repeat myself.'

Dr Howard was incongruously perched on a footstool, but he stood up so he could shake hands. He was barely taller than Jane and as sleek and dark and dapper as an otter.

‘So important to have family around at times like this,' he murmured. Leo wondered if he ever had occasion to raise his voice. ‘Ms Beaumont has agreed to have a nurse administer an injection three times a day for more effective pain relief, though we did talk about a cannula…'

‘No, Gerard,
you
talked about a cannula,' Rose reminded him. From the repressed, rigid look on Lydia's face, Rose had been reminding Dr Howard of quite a few things this morning. ‘And I told you in no uncertain times that it would only get in my way.'

The doctor sank back down onto the footstool. He didn't look quite so calm and capable as he had when Leo had met him earlier. Rose had obviously been testing his bedside manner to breaking point. ‘Now, Ms Beaumont, we've talked about this. This is the time to start thinking about what all our options are. Whether we can make some modifications here to make you more comfortable or —'

‘Don't use the royal we with me, young man,' Rose said grandly and Leo knew that they had to allow her this: to put up a good fight, shake a fist at death and all that. He'd start panicking when she stopped fighting. ‘I admit that maybe I've been overdoing things a little, but I'll take the weekend to regroup. I'll be fine by Monday and tomorrow we'll go down to Lullington Bay. I'll be sitting in the car, that's not going to be tiring.' Rose sighed. ‘Such a shame that the roses won't be out. You promise that we'll go tomorrow, Leo, no excuses?'

He promised, hand on his heart, then they left Rose to get some rest. Leo and Jane saw Dr Howard out. He held a hand apiece for an uncomfortably long count and made a murmured speech about how strong Rose was and that her generation was full of Blitz spirit and that they didn't make them like that any more.

‘It's always darkest before the dawn,' he concluded, just before Leo shut the front door behind him.

‘Do you think he's practised that in front of a mirror?' Leo asked Jane. ‘Worked really hard to get the sincerity
just
right?'

‘I think he probably used an acting coach,' Jane said with a sniff and even though they might only be pretending to be a united front, it was still much better than having to do this on his own.

 

After lunch, Lydia asked Jane to take a cup of tea up to Rose. The older woman hadn't left her rooms all morning and when Jane went in she found her sitting in a chair by the picture window in her bedroom that led out onto a pretty wrought iron balcony.

‘I can't stand being cooped up all day. I want to go outside,' Rose said, her eyes still fixed on the bleak winter landscape outside.

‘You do? Are you feeling better, then?'

‘I'm not suggesting dinner and a show.' This was why Jane was never particularly keen on being left alone with Rose. Rose was so sharp, so bright, and Jane had always been a creature of shadows. ‘I simply want to go and sit in the square.'

‘But, darling, it's freezing and —'

‘I wasn't asking your permission but my silly old legs won't do what I want today so I need your help.' Rose threw her hands up in frustration. ‘Don't ever get old. There's not much to recommend it.'

‘Of course I'll help. You should be able to go out if you want to,' Jane said, because she remembered what it was like not to be able to do what you wanted to do, when you wanted to do it. Even now, there were times when her freedom still felt like a novelty. Like some delicate bauble that could get smashed underfoot if she didn't look after it carefully.

So, if Rose wanted to go and sit in the square even though the cold would penetrate bones that Dr Howard had implied this morning were starting to get eaten away by the cancer, then Jane wasn't going to refuse her request.

‘I'll get Leo,' she said.

Leo carried Rose down the stairs again, even though she said she could walk. Frank brought the car round as near to the back door as he could, then drove the few yards around the corner to the locked gate that led into the tiny square. Then, leaning heavily on Jane, Rose made her way to a wooden bench tucked into a tiny arbour created by the trees, which, over the years, had curved around the seat.

Rose was wearing a ragged fur coat they'd unearthed in the attics a week or so ago. ‘My mother's funeral fur,' she'd said. Lydia had insisted on gloves and a scarf, Leo was despatched back to the car to fetch the travel rug, then Rose asked him to go to her office and fetch some files.

‘I had planned to pop in this morning, there were a few things I wanted to look at over the weekend,' she said to Jane, as if she needed to suddenly justify her actions. ‘But I'm definitely going to the office on Monday morning. There's no question about it.'

‘Of course there isn't,' Jane agreed as she tried hard not to shiver, even though Lydia had forced her to wear a hat too. Leo had grinned delightedly as he pulled a grey woollen beanie, unearthed from one of his bottomless drawers, onto her head. ‘Well, it's no tiara,' he'd said.

There was something different about Leo these last few days. It wasn't just the new haircut and the way he suddenly looked different, all devastating angles and cheekbones. Despite everything, he seemed happier, stronger, more his own person.

She'd been so worried about breaking him that she hadn't thought to worry about herself, which was a first. But now, after last night, after Charles…

‘Did I tell you about the refugees?'

She turned to look at Rose, who'd also been lost in her own thoughts. ‘No, I don't think so.'

‘I used to visit them on my Thursday afternoons, which I had off from the café. It felt like the least I could do. All of them were so weak at first, but the children recovered very quickly and we'd come out here, though it was covered in piles of rubble, and play croquet. Just over there.' Jane still wasn't sure who Rose was talking about as the other woman pointed at a flowerbed where viburnum shrubs bloomed improbably pink in the fading afternoon light. ‘Madeleine and Gisèle had turned the back garden into a vegetable patch and Yves and Jacques were helping to renovate the house next door. It was very important for them to feel that they were repaying Edward in some small way, though I don't think he felt the same way.'

‘You've never mentioned Edward before…'

‘Haven't I? How odd! Most of the time I played with the little ones. Paul, Hélène and Thérèse, who some twenty years later would give birth to our Lydia.'

‘Really? You've known her long enough that you used to change her nappies?'

‘I have never changed a nappy in my life,' Rose said with a little of that imperiousness which Jane aspired to. ‘One has to have some standards.'

‘I have to say, no disrespect to Lydia, but she's terribly bossy to someone who's known her since she was a snot-nosed little brat.'

‘You noticed that too.' Rose allowed herself a small, dry smile. ‘So, this square, the house, it's been my home for practically my entire life.'

‘I never had a home, just places that I lived in for a while,' Jane said. She was raw enough today that she was sick of having to watch everything she said. ‘Home is where you feel safe, right? The only thing that makes me feel even a little bit safe is money. Once you have enough of it, you can do anything, go anywhere, be anyone you like. No one can stop you.'

‘You're not there yet, then?'

Jane shook her head. ‘I have no idea how much it will take. Five million? Ten million? A
billion
?' She turned back to Rose, who was lucid again and looking at Jane as if she were some curiosity behind glass in a museum. ‘Does your money make you feel safe?'

‘I never really cared about the money. Oh, it's nice to have and yes, it does cushion you a little, but there are some things even money can't protect you from,' Rose said and Jane didn't know if she meant the way her body was breaking down or if she was talking about something in the past because Rose was getting that faraway look again. ‘I've always felt safest when I'm with the people I love. I've loved very well, not always wisely, and this house and the house at Lullington Bay are associated with some of the people that I loved so very much. That's why they're my safe places.'

After everything that had happened to her, there was no possibility that Jane was capable of love, but she was capable of kindness, even when there was nothing in it for her. Everyone deserved to feel safe – especially at their end. ‘I'll make sure you stay here. No hospice. I promise. Whatever happens.'