Ellie (44 page)

‘What’s so funny, girls?’ Brad and Steve had come back into the kitchen to look for them. Steve tenderly cleaned chicken grease from Bonny’s face with a napkin.

‘We’re going to do a turn in a minute,’ Bonny said. ‘Ask the pianist to play “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and lend us your jackets and hats.’

The two men looked at one another and grinned. They were both a little disappointed that the party was waning and this looked like brightening it up again.

‘Sure, babe.’ Brad unbuttoned his jacket. ‘Anything you say.’

Someone had closed the front door now, and the people who had been in the hall and on the stairs had moved elsewhere or gone home. The girls had a two-minute conflab, then pulled off their frocks and slipped on the jackets.

Ellie was too drunk too worry that the lace on her pink camiknickers showed beneath the jacket. She was in the mood for showing off.

Brad’s voice boomed out from the other room. ‘We’ve got a star turn for you tonight,’ he said. ‘Two little honeys direct from the West End stage. Bonny and Helena.’

At the opening bars Bonny jammed a cap on Ellie’s head, put one on her own, picked up a walking stick from an umbrella stand and, holding it over her shoulder like a gun, marched into the room.

Ellie couldn’t match Bonny’s dancing, but she followed her steps gamely, the alcohol numbing any embarrassment. They marched round the room, the crowd shrinking back to the walls to make space.

‘
I’m a Yanky Doodle Dandy, Yanky Doodle Do or Die
,’ they sang. Ellie’s voice filled the room with its power and they went into a similar routine to the one Ellie did in
The Quaker Girl
, improvising when it didn’t quite fit.

They had the satisfaction of seeing the woman in the red dress slink into a corner, her face turning the same colour as her dress, and of knowing that every man in the room was looking at their long, shapely legs.

Bonny broke into one of her fast tap-dances. Even without the proper shoes she was as good as at dress rehearsal. Ellie strutted about singing, stopping here and there to chuck men under the chin and to give the woman in the red dress a smug grin.

The Yanks loved it – they clapped, whistled and cheered. Their women on the whole looked none too pleased, but that didn’t bother either Bonny or Ellie.

‘You two sure can dance,’ Brad said in stunned appreciation when it was over and the girls were back in their own clothes. ‘You know, I thought you were pulling our legs when you said you were dancers.’

It occurred to Ellie after her fourth or fifth glass of punch that there was more to it than fruit juice. She could barely move her feet as she shuffled around the floor with Brad and her eyes wouldn’t open more than a crack. Bonny was sitting on Steve’s lap in a corner and the crowd had thinned out to a mere four or five couples. ‘Little Brown Jug’ was playing softly on the gramophone, Brad was kissing her neck and she forgot about the rehearsal at noon the next day, Charley, even the show opening in the evening.

‘Why don’t you lie down on the couch?’ she vaguely remembered Brad saying to her. ‘I’m just going to the John, I’ll be back in a minute.’

The room began to spin the moment she was horizontal, but she couldn’t move. She wanted to know where Bonny was but the last thing she remembered was Brad asking her to move over so he could lie down too.

The cold woke her. Ellie’s hand groped to find the blankets, but instead it only encountered a hard and prickly settee. Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow, her eyes seemed to be stuck together and there was an awful smell somewhere close.

She lay there for a moment, rubbing her eyes. Once they were accustomed to the gloom, she recognised the room she and Bonny had danced in the night before. The entire floor was strewn with empty glasses, beer bottles and cigarette ends.

A sudden realisation that she was naked made her jump up. As she put her feet down on the floor she felt the slime of vomit come up between her toes.

Revulsion ripped away her drowsiness. Stumbling towards the window, she pulled back the curtain.

She gulped hard as the early morning light revealed the mayhem from the party. This wasn’t some crazy dream. She was alone in what looked like a war zone, her frock crumpled on the floor amongst the debris. She picked it up, holding it over herself, as an awful suspicion crept into her mind.

The frock was torn across the bodice. Her camiknickers were lying at the end of the settee in a pool of punch, staining them red.

It was so silent. Apart from birdsong from outside and the faint dripping of a distant tap, it sounded as if she was alone in the house. Worse still, there was a strange fishy smell coming from her and she was sticky between her legs.

Utter disgust washed over her as she saw a smear of blood on her thigh. She wanted to believe it was just her period, but as she hastily pulled her frock on she felt soreness too.

‘No!’ she cried out. ‘No, I couldn’t have!’

She couldn’t remember anything more than Brad asking her to move over. Was that vomit hers? Had he really torn her clothes off, penetrated her, then left?

She sank down on to an armchair, covered her face with her hands and wept with shame. She was disgusted with herself at becoming so drunk she was insensible, and furious that Brad would take advantage of it. But far worse was the knowledge that she’d come to this party of her own free will, without any thought for Charley.

And where was Bonny?

She got up and tentatively peeped through the hatch above the settee. The kitchen was an even worse shambles, with plates of half-eaten food, glasses, bottles and empty boxes all stacked drunkenly on top of one another.

Charley would be coming home from work now; he might even go straight round to her room in Stacey Passage. How could she face him after this?

Creeping upstairs, she felt sick with fear. She had no money and she didn’t know where she was. This was all so reminiscent of Marleen, coming home in the early morning unable to remember where she’d been or whom she’d seen and the same unpleasant smell clinging to her.

Someone had been sick on the bathroom floor and the sight of it made her retch. The first room she looked in was empty, although the bed was rumpled.

Who did the house belong to? Were they about to come home?

Bonny was in the big front bedroom. Alone, lying naked across the bed, her face turned into the pillow, her hair covering her shoulders, but her narrow back and small rounded buttocks revealing she was still little more than a child.

‘Bonny!’ Ellie shook her shoulder. ‘Wake up, they’ve left us here.’

Bonny opened her eyes and then shut them. She groaned and covered her face.

‘You must get up, Bonny.’ Ellie blurted out what had happened. ‘We must get out before someone catches us here.’

Bonny sat up gingerly. She looked at the empty space next to her, then back to Ellie, eyes suddenly wide with alarm. ‘Where’s Steve?’

‘He’s gone too, they’ve both gone.’ Ellie began to cry again. ‘I don’t know how we’re going to get home, or even where we are. But we must get out.’

Bonny’s pretty face was flushed with sleep, her hair tangled, and she had an angry red bite mark on her right breast.

‘Your dress is torn,’ she said in a small voice. ‘Did Brad do that?’

‘I suppose so. But I don’t remember anything,’ Ellie whispered. ‘I just woke up and I was naked. Did you see or hear anything?’

‘Steve carried me up here.’ Bonny’s face began to crumple. ‘He said he loved me.’

There was no time for any discussion. Bonny smelt as sour as Ellie did herself.

‘We must get cleaned up and out of here,’ she said in a strangled voice.

Bonny surprised Ellie. She got off the bed with some dignity and walked to the bathroom. She stepped over the vomit without even commenting on it and turned on the bath taps. ‘It’s cold,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘But it will have to do.’

‘Do you know whose house this is?’ Ellie asked. Bonny had already stepped into the bath and was splashing water on herself.

‘Steve said it belonged to some officer.’

Ellie guessed from the weak sunshine that it was about seven. She stepped into the other end of the bath and began washing too. The cold water was a shock to the system but it cleared her head a little.

‘There’s only that filthy towel,’ Bonny said plaintively. She stepped out, clearing the vomit by inches, and disappeared.

She returned moments later with a clean towel wrapped round herself and handed another to Ellie. ‘I’d better try and find something for you to wear,’ she added.

Ellie had to admire Bonny. By the time Ellie got back, clean and dry, to the bedroom, Bonny had some underwear layed out on the bed and even managed a weak grin.

‘Whoever lives here has good taste. Those are real silk and they’re our size.’

The situation was too serious for them to question the morality of helping themselves to another woman’s clothes. Ellie slipped into the pretty oyster-coloured French knickers and gratefully accepted the matching brassière. Bonny discarded her own and selected a pale blue set for herself.

The wardrobe revealed a whole host of clothes. Bonny rummaged through it, pulled out a peach-coloured costume with a peplum waist, thrust it at Ellie, and put on a pale green long-sleeved dress.

‘Shame she’s got such big feet,’ Bonny snorted with disgust as she found a pair of green shoes, obviously designed to go with her dress. ‘I’ve got a good mind to leave her a note to show my disapproval.’

Ellie couldn’t laugh at the joke; she felt as if she’d never laugh about anything again.

‘Go and see if there’s any food left,’ Bonny said, once Ellie was dressed. ‘We might as well take it with us. I’ll look around and see if I can find some money.’ She took a beige hat down from the shelf in the wardrobe and put it on, then began to rummage again.

Ellie filled a small shopping bag with oddments of chicken legs, pork pies and a bottle of lemonade. She found a full packet of cigarettes and two half crowns in a kitchen drawer, then wrapping up her own clothes, she put them in on top of the food.

‘I’ve found a ten-shilling note.’ Bonny came down the stairs just as Ellie had finished. ‘I think we’re in Uxbridge, or nearby. That’s more than enough to get us home.’

‘What’s in that?’ Ellie pointed to a small leather suitcase.

‘Just a few things to make us feel a little less used,’ Bonny grinned. ‘I’ll show you when we’ve got away.’

As they slunk down the garden path, keeping their heads below the level of the privet hedge, the fresh suburban air felt like an instant tonic.

Cherry trees in full blossom almost hid the neat semi-detached houses. Bunting still hung between them and further down some trestle tables suggested there had been a street party yesterday. The clean scent of lilac and laburnum in the gardens heightened the sense of having stumbled into a middle-class ghetto where people peeped from behind lace curtains.

Bonny peered out over the gate, but no one was about. She signalled to Ellie, then the pair of them crept out, trying hard not to run and draw attention to themselves.

They waited until they’d got two blocks away before they stopped for a moment, sitting down on a low stone wall. Ellie handed Bonny a pork pie and the lemonade.

‘Suppose the owner of that house calls the police?’ she said.

‘They won’t come after us,’ Bonny said with her mouth full. ‘Brad and Steve are hardly likely to give our names, not after what they did to us.’

Ellie felt so very strange. Dressed in someone else’s beautiful clothes, but feeling bruised and soiled inside. She wanted to know if Bonny felt the same, but she couldn’t ask. ‘What’ve you got in the case?’ she asked instead.

‘A smart outfit each. Another set of undies. A nice silver cigarette box and a diamond ring,’ Bonny said casually, her face as angelic as if she’d just left church. ‘We’ll flog the ring and the box and keep the money for a rainy day.’

‘I’ve never stolen anything before in my life,’ Ellie said, a tear trickling down her cheek. ‘And I’ve never –’ She stopped, unable to say the words.

Bonny’s arm slid round her and drew Ellie’s head down to her shoulder. ‘It’s okay,’ she said soothingly. ‘We can’t put the clock back now and it will serve those two jerks right if they get the blame for the nicked clothes.’

‘I feel so dirty inside,’ Ellie sobbed. ‘Don’t you?’

‘I feel stupid, not dirty,’ Bonny said forcefully. ‘I was daft enough to think it was love last night. Steve said he’d take me back with him to the States.’

‘I haven’t even got that as an excuse,’ Ellie whispered brokenly, seeing Charley’s face before her. ‘I’m a slut.’

‘You aren’t.’ Bonny held Ellie tightly, refusing even to consider what Jack would have thought of her behaviour. ‘It was a moment or two’s madness, nothing more, and we’re going to forget it. The show opens tonight and we’re going to be stars. Nobody else knows about this and we aren’t going to tell them.’

‘But Charley!’ Ellie sobbed. ‘I can’t possibly marry him now.’

Bonny didn’t quite understand that statement, but she was aware Ellie was far more devastated by what had happened than she was. ‘Oh Ellie!’ She mopped her friend’s face ineffectually with her fingers. ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

Ellie gave a shuddering sigh. It was easy to blame Brad and make out she was a little innocent led astray, but she remembered kissing him, and that dance routine last night. She deserved what she got.

Bonny caught Ellie’s distraught face between her two hands and kissed it.

‘What’s that for?’ Ellie asked.

‘Because I care,’ Bonny whispered. Aunt Lydia had done exactly the same to her the day she’d driven Bonny up to London to start rehearsing at the Phoenix. It was after she was through with giving lectures about visiting her parents regularly and warning her about men ‘taking advantage’. Bonny had found it very comforting.

‘We’d better get going.’ Ellie stood up wearily. ‘As my mum always said, “The show must go on.”’

‘My mum always said I had to wear two pairs of knickers,’ Bonny said pointedly, a feeble grin suggesting she wasn’t quite as unconcerned as she pretended. ‘I see what she meant now!’