Ellie (73 page)

‘But I’m going away next week, and you’re going abroad,’ she said, squeezing out a tear. ‘I want to be really close to you, John. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before.’ She wriggled nearer to him as he drove, resting her head on his shoulder and putting one hand on his thigh.

‘Oh Bonny,’ he sighed. ‘You are enough to make any man behave foolishly. You’re so young and impressionable. I can’t take advantage of you, especially just before we’re to be separated for a while. When I get back from the Persian Gulf we’ll see how you feel then. Now there’s a very good restaurant just up ahead. We’ll have dinner, then I’ll take you home.’

It was still raining hard as John kissed Bonny good-night outside her digs in Southampton. He was one of the best kissers Bonny had ever met, but tonight she was too irritated by his pomposity to be really aroused. All through dinner he had talked about ‘doing the right thing’, of not letting emotion ‘carry them away’. She wondered if he’d ever done anything in his life without analysing it under a microscope first.

Bonny had learnt a great deal about herself in the nine months of touring without Ellie. She wasn’t impervious to pain: there were times when she’d thought she’d die without Magnus. In June, when his baby was due, she’d found herself looking at babies in prams, wanting one herself so badly she burst into tears. Nothing seemed to please her any longer, not dancing, new clothes or even men admiring her. But most importantly, perhaps, she’d faced up to the fact that she would never be a big star.

She’s lost whatever it was she had once had. She might be a good dancer, but that was all she was. This tour with Ellie might give her a little limelight again, but it was only a matter of time before Ellie was lured away on a solo career. Bonny couldn’t bear being just one of a dancing troupe; she wasn’t made for it.

A husband, home and baby was what she wanted. Maybe she didn’t feel about John as she did about Magnus, but she’d make him a good wife. She saw herself sitting at a dinner-table with his clients, wearing expensive clothes and jewellery, travelling abroad with him, but most of all she pictured herself in that lovely old house she’d seen pictures of, rocking a baby in a cradle. When she’d got that, she would be entirely happy.

‘Write to me?’ John whispered, cupping her face tenderly in his hands. ‘Try not to forget me?’

Bonny looked deep into his eyes and sighed. ‘How can I forget you, John? Can’t you see I’m head over heels in love with you? I only live for the times when I can see you.’

‘Oh Bonny.’ He crushed her to his chest, moved by this unexpected declaration of love. ‘I love you too, but it scares me. You’re so very young and beautiful.’

Bonny smiled to herself. At last he’d admitted it! Next time she saw him she’d break down his last defences.

John wiped a tear from his eye as he drove away to his hotel, stunned by Bonny’s words.

He was a loner. He had been right through university, his spell in the Guards and was even more so now, when his work took him travelling so much. No other woman had ever made him feel as vulnerable as Bonny did. All the defences he’d built around himself came tumbling down when he first met her, and he didn’t like the way he couldn’t get her out of his head.

Every friend who’d met her had warned him off. They said she was a gold-digger, a self-centred show-off without a heart. He knew Bonny often told him lies, and he suspected that if he hadn’t taken her to nice places and given her presents she’d have lost interest in him by now. But now it was proved to him that she’d been truthful about her childhood, and that explained a great deal about her values.

He shuddered at the thought of the callous parents who’d shoved her away to live with a total stranger. Miss Wynter was very charming, her home so very lovely, yet what damage it must have done to a small girl to know she was only there on sufferance, forced to dance or be banished to another home. Bonny idolised the woman, yet Miss Wynter had managed to find something cutting to say to her while he was out of earshot. He’d watched Bonny’s face as she hugged the woman before leaving. She was almost in tears, her lips quivering, clearly hoping Miss Wynter would tell her she was proud of her, or better still that she was loved.

How he’d resisted the temptation to take her to his hotel he didn’t know. He wanted her so badly it was a physical pain. But he had to be sure of her first. There were too many women out there looking for a free meal ticket and he had no intention of being taken for a ride by Bonny, however much he loved her.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

March 1949

‘Four whole days off! Whoopee!’ Ellie shrieked, kicking off her shoes and leaping on to the old iron bed. The springs clanged in protest and she laughed and bounced again as if she were on a trampoline, knowing it would bring a howl of rage from Mrs Rolf, their landlady.

Sure enough the voice came from the foot of the stairs. ‘Treat that bed with respect,’ she yelled. ‘It’s done me good service and I won’t have you flibbertigibbets destroying it.’

Ellie bounced once more in defiance. She and Bonny were giddy with excitement. They were leaving Birmingham. By midday they’d be in London. Mrs Rolf, her bad food and her lumpy, damp beds would be just an unpleasant memory. True, the next date of the tour was in Coventry, which might very well be as bad as this, but in the meantime she would be staying with Ray and Bonny would be meeting John.

It was March, just one more month before their disastrous tour was over for good. Everything that could go wrong on a tour had: hampers of costumes lost in transit from one town to another; artists disappearing and leaving the rest of the company in the lurch; an influenza epidemic which picked them off one by one between Christmas and the end of January. The whole company were sick of doing the same old routine week after week, the jokes no longer made them laugh, they loathed all the songs and wanted to boo at the magician. It was hardly worth taking their clothes out of the suitcase when at the end of the week they had to pack it all back in.

They were all used to bad digs, but this time they’d discovered new lows. One notable place in Wakefield had an unemptied chamber-pot under the bed and only a candle for light. They put up with snow, ice, rain and hail, dressing-rooms with broken windows, Alfredo the tenor leering constantly at them. Cynthia, an alcoholic assistant to ‘the Mighty Marcel’ who did a knife-throwing act, chased Bonny with one of his daggers because she thought she had stolen her best wig. In Glasgow Ellie had found a rat in the dressing-room, in Preston a drunk in the audience had pelted the stage with monkey nuts and one of the dancers had slipped and broken her leg. There had been moments of hilarity, but so many more of absolute misery.

Ellie got a sty in one eye which didn’t get better for weeks; Bonny caught scabies from a dirty towel. They had fought and cried, been hungry and exhausted, but now it was all put aside, in the joy of going to London.

‘I’ll give her flibbertigibbets. Look what I’ve got.’ Bonny opened a piece of newspaper and a fishy smell wafted out.

‘It’s a kipper!’ Ellie giggled as her friend drew out the thin, brown fish by its tail. ‘What on earth have you got that for?’

‘Just watch.’ Bonny grinned mischievously. She opened their door and stole out into the gloomy landing. She held one finger up to her lips for Ellie to keep quiet, then still holding the kipper by its tail, she crept over to a heavy chest of drawers wedged in an alcove and slid it down into a tiny gap at the back between the chest and the wall.

Ellie had to cover her mouth to prevent herself laughing and backed into their room. Mrs Rolf was hateful. She charged them a shilling for each bath, and when the girls had decided to share one, she banned them from bathing altogether. Meals were almost inedible; brawn, tripe and oxtail were her favourite stand-bys. She poked around in their room, she found fault continually, and she insisted they were lucky to be in her cold, cheerless house.

‘It won’t start smelling really bad until we’re long gone,’ Bonny giggled, washing her hands at the sink. ‘Rolfy will be frantic. She’ll never think of looking behind there.’

Ellie picked up her coat and stood in front of the cracked mirror to put her hat on. She had bought it just yesterday from a second-hand shop and she thought she looked like a Cossack in it. It was black Persian lamb, trimmed round with ocelot, and it was wickedly dramatic with the coat she’d bought in a jumble sale.

‘You’re a fiend, Bonny,’ she giggled as she tilted the hat rakishly to one side. The camel coat was huge, but pre-war good quality. She had stitched in shoulder pads, nipped in the waist with a leather belt and now it looked up to the minute. ‘But Rolfy deserves it. Just don’t leave the newspaper in here, or she’ll know we were responsible.’

Bonny put her fur coat on. It was musquash, and like Ellie’s coat and hat it too was second-hand. But Bonny managed to look like a film star in it, and they’d been very glad of it on their bed on cold nights.

‘That’s it then.’ Bonny picked up her case and looked around the grim room one last time. ‘Can’t say I’ll ever get nostalgic for Birmingham, not after this house and Mrs Rolf, but I wouldn’t mind being a fly on the wall in a week’s time.’

‘We’ll probably be in a worse place by then,’ Ellie groaned. She peered under the bed to make sure they’d left nothing behind, then picking up her case, followed Bonny to the stairs.

‘You look marvellous.’ Ray caught Ellie in his arms when he opened the door to her at his flat in Hampstead. ‘God I’ve missed you!’ he said jubilantly as he swung her round.

‘You have?’ she said in astonishment, pleasantly surprised by such a loving greeting.

He looked different: a few gained pounds had filled out his face and his curly hair was longer than she remembered. But it was more than just that – he looked almost pretty.

‘You’ve had your tooth fixed!’ she exclaimed, suddenly aware that the broken tooth was no longer there. ‘It changes your whole face!’

‘Thank heaven for the new Health Service,’ he laughed, opening his mouth and wiggling a plate with two false teeth fitted. ‘I went in with raging toothache, expecting to come out with gaping holes, but instead the dentist fitted this.’

‘Did you really miss me?’ she asked, all at once feeling odd to be back here.

‘Well, look how I’ve cleared up,’ he grinned, waving his arm at the flat. ‘I don’t do that for many people.’

Ellie smiled. He had stacked up books and papers into neat piles, there wasn’t any dirty china anywhere in sight, or clothes strewn on the chairs, but it was still dusty and there were balls of fluff on the lino. ‘You aren’t much of a cleaner,’ she commented.

‘My Sergeant Major put me off cleaning for life,’ he laughed. ‘Other men can boast of brave deeds in the war, all I did was scrub floors and hand out stores.’

If Ellie hadn’t seen photographs of Ray in uniform she wouldn’t really believe he’d been in the army. He wasn’t a ‘man’s man’ at all and he loathed taking orders. ‘How long have we got before you’ve got to go to work?’ she asked.

Ray looked at his watch. ‘Four hours and twenty-five minutes,’ he said, grinning wickedly. ‘How on earth are we going to fill that?’

‘With four hours and five minutes of pure sensat on,’ she giggled. ‘That leaves you twenty minutes to race up the road.’

‘Well, we’d better make a start then,’ he said, removing her coat and hat. ‘I even put clean sheets on the bed.’

Ellie had missed Ray more than she expected to. She’d had a few dates with other men but she hadn’t found anyone who was such good company. Between shows, rehearsals and travelling to new venues there was never time to get to know anyone other than the rest of the company, and late at night, in cold, damp beds she’d often thought longingly of his love-making. As soon as Ray began to kiss her, all the desire and frustration bottled up for five months burst forth.

Every stroke of his hands felt like the first time, each kiss deeper and longer than the one before. He smelt delicious, of soap and toothpaste, and she’d all but forgotten how silky his skin was and how good he was at arousing her.

There were no games now, just the need to possess, to hold and be held. The first time was frantic and Ellie had barely helped him on with a sheath and guided him inside her before he came.

‘I will do better,’ he sighed, snuggling into her arms. ‘Just give me a breather.’

But the second time it was like all the good moments they’d shared in the past, rolled into one. Even more sensual and inventive than she remembered, bringing her to an explosive climax within moments, only to start all over again.

‘Oh Ellie, I’ve missed you,’ he whispered, showing all the tenderness which had been lacking in the past. ‘I could smell you on the sheets after you left, and it made me feel so lost and empty. I’ve been so excited about you coming here, I’ve hardly eaten or slept for the last couple of days.’

It had never been quite as good as this in the past; he seemed to be hanging on, trying to make it last for ever. Long, hard strokes inside her, then moving away just to caress her breasts or stroke her back, then coming back inside her for more.

Ellie came before he did, clinging to him, clawing at his back in abandonment which pushed him over the edge to join her.

‘That was the very best,’ he whispered as he lay still in her arms. ‘I’ve been such a fool, Ellie, I didn’t realise just how much you meant to me until you’d gone away.’

Ray had written a few times during their separation, jokey letters telling her all the news but never with even a glimpse into his heart. Now in the afterglow of love-making his tender words meant so much, making sense of the past and promising more for the future.

‘I’d better take this thing off,’ he said, moving slightly to withdraw from her. ‘I’m sorry, it’s not very romantic.’

Ellie could remember Ray being far less romantic in the past, and his attempt to upgrade his act was touching.

‘Oh shit.’ His cry startled her out of sleepiness.

‘What is it?’ she said, sitting up.

‘It’s split,’ he said hoarsely, kneeling back on his feet and peering intently at the latex dangling on his now soft penis. ‘I’m so sorry.’