After the Last Dance (16 page)

‘Shut up.' It was an agonised whisper. ‘Rose will hear you.'

‘That's got you worried, hasn't it? That your precious Rose will find out that you're even more of a fuck-up than she ever suspected.'

He'd asked for this. Wanted to know what really lay beneath Jane's sweetness and light and now he knew: it was something dark and scabrous.

‘Stop it,' he said urgently. ‘We both need to calm the fuck down.'

‘I am bloody calm!'

Leo launched himself away from the basin, started walking towards Jane. His own anger dissipated further with each step that he took. His come-down was fast approaching and already he was sick and ashamed of what he'd said to her. The truth always hurt worse than anything else.

‘This is stupid,' he said and he was close enough to take hold of Jane's arm, connect with her, bring her back down to earth, but he didn't. Never touch an angry woman; it was like baiting a bear, but he forced himself to stand in front of her, just on the edge of her personal space in the hope that Jane would look at him, really look at him, and see that he was sorry. That he could be better than this. ‘Come on, you were right. We shouldn't be fighting.'

‘This… this is never going to work,' she muttered, so quietly that Leo had to lean in even closer to hear her. ‘What a mess.'

‘It doesn't have to be a mess,' he said softly.

‘Bit late for that,' she hissed, and tossed her head back. ‘God, will you stop crowding me?'

‘Please, Jane.' There had to be a way to get through to her. If Jane gave up on him, then Rose would too. He could just imagine her reaction to the news that he'd managed to alienate his wife of less than three days after pledging to love and protect her. ‘Let me make it up to you.'

‘How the hell do you think you're going to do that?' She flared her nostrils and tossed her head back again like she was challenging him to give it a go.

Well, it couldn't hurt.

Leo had some vague idea that he might kiss her – she'd liked it when he'd kissed her in Vegas – but his fingertips had barely brushed against her when Jane wrenched herself free from his clumsy overture.

‘Don't fucking touch me!' She snatched up the art deco brass figurine sitting on the vanity unit that Leo used to hide his stash in, and threw it. It glanced across the side of his head, making Leo rear back and give a surprised grunt of pain as the statuette fell to the floor with a dull but deafening clunk.

Jane stood there panting, palms flat against the wall, eyes wild, mouth open. Leo took his hand away from his throbbing head, his fingers wet with blood. He was ready to bellow, rage welling up in him all over again but then he saw Jane.
Really
saw her
.
Bed-sheet-white face, chest rising and falling in time with her ragged breaths, hands knotted and knuckled.

He'd never seen anyone quite so terrified before and he'd never felt so sober in all his life.

‘What the hell just happened?' he asked her. ‘What did I do? I was going to —'

‘You don't ever fucking touch me, do you hear me?' she shouted in a voice that was nothing, not a thing, like her voice. ‘You don't fucking put your hands on me unless I give you permission. And don't even fucking think that you're sleeping anywhere near me tonight.'

 

March came in like the proverbial lion but by the end of the month, crocuses and pansies were colonising every idle patch of grass. On Rose's Thursday afternoon off, the weather was positively balmy and she set out to walk to Bayswater as Sylvia had it on good authority that a greengrocer had had a delivery of bananas.

Then she planned to visit Whiteleys, because Pippa, one of the girls at Rainbow Corner, was adamant that the haberdashery department had some cheap remnants left over from last summer. Maybe a cheery lawn cotton or poplin and Maggie had said she'd help Rose sew a dress as Rose's skills tended towards mending rather than making.

Shirley had written that very morning to gleefully inform Rose that she'd requisitioned two of Rose's summer frocks and turned them into overalls for the baby
because even you agreed that they were far too short for you and wearing thin under the arms.
Fair's fair when you ran off with my black crêpe de Chine and lovely blue taffeta
. Rose was quite tempted to parcel up Shirley's blue taffeta and send it back to Durham, but then Shirley would be angry all over again when she saw the lipstick stain on the bodice that even scrubbing with carbolic soap hadn't shifted. Indeed, it had only made it worse.

Rose walked the back roads that ran parallel to Oxford Street to avoid the crowds, mentally sketching a perfectly lovely crisp white dress with shiny red buttons on the yoke and the cuffs, so it took a while to notice that a man had fallen into step beside her.

For one glorious second, Rose thought it might be Danny. But Danny had written to her two weeks before. Scribbled four lines on a postcard.
Princess, hope to have 48-hour pass mid-April. Let's go away. Somewhere romantic.
Just the two of us.
D

Anyway, mid-April was a fortnight away so the man shortening his long strides to her slower pace couldn't be Danny.

‘Hello,' said Edward. ‘Just the girl I was thinking about.'

‘You were?' Rose asked doubtfully, because when she wasn't thinking that every dark-haired American serviceman might be Danny, she was still crippled with shame when she thought about that night at the Criterion and its bilious aftermath. Sylvia was forbidden to mention it under pain of death.

Now Edward was suddenly at her side. Despite the mild weather, he was wearing a dark grey wool overcoat and grey hat as if he could merge into the shadows at any moment. As if he wasn't just a spymaster but a spy himself. ‘You might be just the person who could help me with a little project I'm working on,' he said. ‘Except you seem to be going somewhere with a very determined look on your face.'

‘Bayswater.' Rose resolved to be sparing with her words like Maggie, who had an air of mystery and sophistication. Besides, she didn't want to encourage Edward in any way. ‘I heard a rumour about a delivery of bananas, then I want to get some fabric for a summer frock.'

Alas, Rose had no mystery. She even told Edward about Shirley's letter and how she'd finished it with a smug,
Typical of you to be so contrary, Rosie, and hit your growth spurt after clothes rationing was introduced
.

Edward shot her a startled glance. ‘Just how old are you?'

Oh,
damn
. ‘I was a very late bloomer,' she improvised. ‘What little project? Is it to do with the war? Is it top secret?'

‘I won't bore you with the details now.' Edward was vague where Danny was evasive. ‘Could I tag along to Bayswater, then show you what I had in mind after that?'

There was no earthly reason why Rose would want to spend the afternoon with Edward. He was old, at least thirty, and she knew nothing about him, other than that he was involved in possibly clandestine
things
, and though he'd been kind that other night, he was still quite unsettling to be around. ‘Surely you've better things to do than come to Bayswater on a fool's errand for some rumoured bananas?'

‘We'll never win the war with that kind of attitude,' Edward said. Rose had forgotten about that serious smile of his. ‘Shall we take the bus? My treat.'

There were no bananas. The greengrocer rumoured to have had a delivery said even if he did have some, they were for his regular customers and Rose needn't think she could swan in without a by-your-leave to buy bananas and deprive the good people of Bayswater of them.

Then Edward pointed out that it was illegal to refuse to sell Rose fruit, including bananas, because they weren't rationed, which simply exacerbated matters. The grocer picked up his broom and all but chased them out of the shop.

Rose would never have imagined that she and Edward, grave, serious, earnest Edward, would run down Queensway, hand in hand, winded with laughter.

She was still giggling when they reached Whiteleys. Parts of the store were still scarred by the damage from the Blitz and one would have thought they'd have been grateful for the custom, but the haughty young woman in the haberdashery department refused to even look for any remnants of summer-weight fabric. When she pointedly turned her back on Rose to serve another customer, Edward whispered in her ear, ‘Maybe she's the greengrocer's daughter? There's something of a family resemblance, perhaps? A certain pugnacious set to the chin?'

Rose snorted with laughter but once they were on the 27 bus to Kensington with her afternoon off wasted, she sighed. ‘I'm never going to Bayswater ever again. Not even if they're giving away silk dresses. Horrid people.'

Edward said that she was possibly being a little unfair but then he asked after Sylvia and it might have been because it was daylight and they were on a bus, and then walking along the streets of Kensington, but it seemed to Rose that Edward wasn't staring at her at in that discomfiting way of his and it was easy to talk to him without falling over her words.

She found herself telling Edward about the two pork chops and runner beans that Phyllis's mother had sent and how Maggie had produced one of her magical feasts on the Baby Belling. They'd stopped walking by now. Or Edward had stopped and Rose's story came to an uncertain halt too. ‘And the flat positively reeked of garlic for days afterwards but it was worth it. Are we near the project you're working on?'

‘Right outside it, actually,' Edward said.

Rose didn't know this part of London – Kensington – at all. The big white houses were different from the red-brick terraces all crammed together in Holborn. But white stucco or red brick; everywhere in London was soot-stained and dust-streaked. Streets were incomplete, buildings ripped in half with their insides on display. House, house, then nothing but debris and dust to mark the place where people had eaten their breakfast and tea, read the papers, had a bath. Their absence made Rose think of teeth snapped out of an old comb.

In the small square where they were standing, there were no gaps, but the buildings were empty and shabby. On the far side of the square, a small patch of grass and rubble separating them, the once tall and elegant houses listed to one side.

Rose wondered what she was doing with a man she barely knew in a semi-derelict, deserted square far from the bustle of more inhabited streets where someone might hear her if she screamed.

‘Outside what?' she asked, holding her handbag out in front of her.

‘Well, all of it,' Edward said. He gestured at the building in front of them. Most of its windows were missing and instead of a roof it had a green canvas flapping forlornly in the breeze. ‘I've bought it.'

‘This house? I hope it didn't cost you very much.' Rose turned away. ‘Goodness, it must be getting late.'

‘I've bought the whole square. Well, apart from three houses on the other side that weren't for sale.'

‘You've
what?'
She looked again at the broken, haphazard houses lurching crookedly against the deepening sky. ‘Why on earth would you want to buy
this
?'

‘I know it's on the wrong side of the Park, but I had my reasons. Good reasons,' Edward said and he opened his arms, held out his hands in supplication. ‘However, I now find myself at something of a loss and in desperate need of help.'

‘But I know absolutely nothing about buying houses.' Despite that, her curiosity was piqued so Rose followed Edward up the crumbling path, black and white tiles once arranged in a pretty geometric pattern now smashed beyond repair.

Inside it was quite a hive of industry. Men were hammering and sawing and sloshing distemper on walls.

There wasn't any bomb damage, just neglect and the determined attentions of the neighbourhood tomcats, Rose thought as Edward pointed out various features. ‘I thought the stove could go there,' he said when they reached the last room on the ground floor that backed out onto a wilderness that must have once been a garden. ‘This would do as a bathroom if there was a bedroom on either side, don't you think?' he asked after they'd climbed a rickety ladder to get to the first floor because the staircase was rotten.

‘Are you going to live here? It's awfully big just for one person.' Now they were on the second floor where Edward was planning more bedrooms and even another bathroom, which seemed excessive.

‘Some people are coming to stay. Hopefully,' he said and he crossed his fingers and smiled his grave smile. ‘Refugees from Europe.'

‘Refugees?' Rose frowned. ‘How would they get out of Europe?'

‘It can be done. It's difficult, dangerous, expensive, but there are ways.'

Rose gingerly walked across the floor – it seemed likely the boards were rotting too – to peer out of the window at the square. ‘But you bought all these houses… it would need a lot of refugees to fill them all.'

She heard him sigh, then his careful tread as he came to stand behind her. Not touching, but close enough that it was almost as if he was touching her. He was taller than Danny but Rose didn't feel that frantic panic that she had when Danny was close. Of wanting his hands on her, his mouth, but then being terrified when she got her wish. Edward was a solid, steady presence. ‘The war won't last for ever,' he said. ‘When it ends, there'll be more refugees. People coming home. Families reunited. They'll all need places to live.'

Rose remembered Sylvia telling her that a lot of Edward's business was conducted off-book. ‘You're not a profiteer, are you?'

He shrugged. ‘Aren't we all?'

Rose drew herself up. ‘No! Not all of us.'

‘Are you sure about that? What about all those cigarettes and bars of chocolate bestowed on you each night by grateful servicemen?' He glanced fleetingly at her legs and suddenly Edward didn't seem quite so solid and steady and Rose's heart started that familiar flutter. ‘What about those stockings?'

‘They were a Christmas present from a girlfriend,' Rose said indignantly, because she had never done anything with any of the men from Rainbow Corner to warrant getting a pair of nylons in return. What she did with Danny, what she still might do, was different because they were in love. ‘Anyway, that's hardly the same thing.'

Edward held up his hands in protest. He was quite clearly one of those annoying people who never got angry. It was always so much easier to know where one stood if people got angry with you. ‘I refuse to argue,' he said mildly. ‘If I hadn't bought these houses someone else would, and after the war I may make some money from them but presently I want them to be a safe place for people who have lost everything, and for that I need your help.'

Rose was somewhat mollified and let Edward guide her down the ladder. They decamped to the tea pavilion in Kensington Gardens. Edward produced a notebook and pencil and asked Rose what furniture he might need.

‘You can't get furniture. You can get utility furniture if you've been bombed out and have a special form but I'm not sure being a refugee counts.' Rose shook her head at the sheer enormity of Edward's undertaking. ‘You can't even get sheets. One of the girls at Rainbow Corner – even Phyllis said her people are richer than God – paid six guineas for two sheets and the first time she put them on her bed, her foot went clean through one of them.'

Edward wasn't the least bit bothered. He asked her to write a list. ‘There'll be children too. What sort of things do they like? Toys and such?'

Rose had seen on a newsreel that London's firemen were collecting scrap wood to make toys, then distributing them to needy children, but again she wasn't sure that refugee children would qualify. Still, she wrote down everything she could think of in her still alarmingly schoolgirlish script, then handed it back to Edward, who said it was late now and he'd best put her on a bus to Piccadilly because she'd have to go straight to Rainbow Corner.

It was kind and thoughtful of him and although as they reached the stop she could see the number 9 inching towards them, Rose caught hold of Edward's sleeve. ‘I'll nag everyone I know to see if they have any old toys and things they don't need any more. If it would help.'

She got on the bus full of good intentions to ask everyone she knew to spare something, even if it were just a dishcloth, for the refugees. But like so many of Rose's good intentions, they were forgotten in the time it took to step onto the dancefloor at Rainbow Corner to foxtrot and jive and duck and dip. Then on to another club, then home to bed for too few hours, before she got up for work at six.

It was the rhythm of her days and nights and what with that and pining for Danny, she quite forgot about the refugees and the promises she'd made.

Besides it was hard to concentrate on anything when there a hum and crackle to the air that made Rose's skin tingle. Whispers on the dancefloor; talk of the Allies landing in France. Even odds that the war would be over by Christmas.

Rose wasn't sure on either count. If even she knew that there might be an Allied invasion, it seemed certain that Hitler must too and people had been saying that the war would be over by Christmas every year. But, every year, Christmas came and went and the war still trundled on.