The Bannister Girls (2 page)

Only to find that her friend had begun suffering badly with a sudden chill, and was feeling decidedly unsociable. They had both decided to curtail the visit, which was why Angel was making the journey home after all. She clutched her small overnight bag as though it were a lifeline.

‘I think the young lady has other plans,' Jacques said lazily. She looked at him. He surprised her again. She would have expected him to jump at the soldier's suggestion and try to persuade her … she looked away quickly, her cheeks heated.

‘Who or what is Beezer's?' She asked the other two.

‘It ain't your cup o' tea, I bet.' Dolly spoke up. ‘Sorry I mentioned it now. It's a club, see, and they have a show there. Dancing girls, and a singer or two, and a comic. I daresay the jokes 'ould be too vulgar for your delicate ears!'

‘Do I look as though I was born yesterday?' Angel whipped at her, and guessed that compared with Dolly's sort of worldliness, she probably was.

She felt a hand cover hers. Felt the warm flesh of it, and the small caress of the fingers. The saliva seemed to dry in her throat. Was she going to be accosted? Or worse? What was wrong with her to be so unnerved, for heaven's sake!

But the old conventions were too firmly steeped in her mind, and the foolishness of getting into this situation began to alarm her…

‘Why not come with us?' Jacques said now. ‘If my manners have offended you, I apologise. But your company would do me honour, and these two would stop searching for a “friend” for me. I would see that you were put into a cab
at the end of the evening, and guarantee that you come to no harm.'

His personality seemed to change with the ease of a chameleon. He could be the charming continental, or unpredictable, or just plain objectionable. Angel wavered. She shouldn't entertain the idea for a moment. She should tell them to get out of this cab the minute they reached Beezer's Club, whatever it was, and tell the cabbie to take her straight home. A voice from the driving seat floated back to them.

‘Go on, ducks. Give yerself a birthday. Tain't every night a birdman invites yer out on the town!'

The others laughed at the cabbie's turn of phrase. Angel saw how the laughter lightened the officer's face. The hard line of his mouth softened, little lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes … and her heart was suddenly racing.

Why not? The little devil inside her asked. Why not take a chance for once, instead of having her life so irritatingly ordered? Didn't she always wish that something exciting could happen to her? And what harm could come of it? Despite her earlier misgivings, she was undeniably intrigued by Jacques whoever-he-was…

‘Got to get back to Mummy, have yer?' Dolly said, when she didn't answer immediately. ‘Never mind, Jax. We'll find somebody once we get to Beezer's –'

Angel felt the squeeze on her fingers again, as though the man was willing her to go with them. She snatched her hand away. She was capable of making up her own mind.

She thought swiftly. No one was expecting her home tonight. It wouldn't matter how late she arrived. It wouldn't be the first time she had sneaked indoors while everyone slept. She spoke sweetly to Dolly.

‘I'll think about it. It might be fun to go slumming.'

Dolly's eyes flashed furiously, as Angel knew they would. She wasn't normally such a snob, but Dolly had the knack of putting her back up. Angel spoke directly to Jacques, and
knew that her voice sounded somewhat breathless.

‘You meant what you said? You'll find me a cab the minute I ask you to?'

‘You have my word on it.'

Angel leaned back in the cab, with a strange feeling of launching herself into the unknown. Perhaps a little like the birdmen of the Flying Corps must feel when they soared into the sky in their flimsy wooden machines…

‘All right. Why not? It'll be a lark,' she said recklessly, and far more coolly than she felt.

It was quite dark by the time the taxi-cab stopped, after what seemed an interminably long ride. They had presumably arrived at Beezer's Club. To Angel's dismay, she realised it was in Soho, to which would go yet another black mark against this evening's excursion.

The streets, dimmed by government decree, gave no indication of what was behind the stark sign swinging sadly in the rain above a steep flight of steps leading towards a cellar. Angel couldn't help thinking she was being extremely foolhardy as the Flying Corps officer held on tightly to her arm, while Reg paid the cabbie. As the vehicle trundled off into the night, Angel felt sudden panic.

‘Having second thoughts?' Jacques said in her ear. ‘I promise you this is not an abduction, though I can think of no more delightful companion if it was.'

Before she could answer, she was being hustled down the flight of steps and out of the rain. Once at the bottom, the four of them squashed tightly together until an outer door was closed before an inner one could be opened. As soon as it was, Angel realised why.

The contrast was stunning. Outside, all was gloom and depression. Here at Beezer's, the gaslights popped and flickered and made dazzling reflections of the glitteringly smart dresses worn by the women. They were mostly young, their hair rigidly waved, arms clattering with bracelets,
mouths scarlet or orange. Their feet tapped gaily in a whirl of dancing on the tiny dance floor as their male companions swung them around to the music of a heavily-perspiring band. Without exception, all the men were in uniform, and several Union flags waved like banners across the top of the stage at the rear of the room.

‘A uniform is your entry ticket,' Jacques spoke loudly against the noise. ‘Though they do expect you to pay up as well!'

‘You must let me pay my share –' Angel began at once, reaching into her bag. Jacques pushed her hand away.

‘Don't be so modern,' he grinned. ‘No Frenchman would let his lady pay for herself.'

Angel allowed the girl at the paying desk to take her coat and hat and the overnight bag, and give her a ticket in return, for her to reclaim them later. She saw Jacques' eyes take in the shiny white silk blouse that rippled against her figure, the perfect little cameo brooch at the high neckline that had been her parents' eighteenth birthday present to her, and the elegant grey wool skirt that matched her coat.

The rest of the women in the room might be dressed up like peacocks, but Angel Bannister outshone them all with her style and class. Jacques de Ville felt more drawn to her than to any other woman he had known in his life, and it had little to do with the fact that from the moment he had seen her, he had ached to paint her.

A man held up one finger to them to indicate that there was a table available for the officer and his party. As Angel followed Jacques, with Dolly and Reg right behind her, weaving their way in and out of the crush of people, she felt a little shimmer at his words. His lady? It was another of his preposterous comments, but one which had undoubtedly made her heart beat faster.

‘We got here just in time,' Dolly hissed, as they took their seats, and the flickering gaslights were lowered one by one. ‘Any later, and we'd have missed the start of the show.'

The couples on the dance floor dispersed like ghostly figures silhouetted against the brightness of the stage. A troupe of dancing girls came on, kicking their legs high to the wild applause of the uniformed men and their companions.

The dancers wore bright pink satin shorts and blouses that didn't quite reach the waist, so that every time they moved an intriguing little expanse of flesh was revealed. On their heads they wore a froth of matching pink feathers, and their mouths were identical glossy pink bows of colour. Their bosoms bounded joyfully with every kick, to the rousing cheers of the onlookers. At the end of the dance, the band played a burst of a patriotic song of the moment, and the girls pirouetted slowly, each one saluting and dropping down on one knee, before they all scrambled up and kicked their way sideways offstage.

‘How d'you like it, me lady?' Dolly leaned across the table to leer at Angel.

‘It's marvellous! I've never seen anything like it!'

Dolly looked taken aback at Angel's obvious enthusiasm. At first, her eyes had watered in the heavy smoky atmosphere, worse than any London pea-souper, but she had quickly got used to it, and revelled in the unusual evening.

‘You really mean it, don't you?' Jacques said with pleasure. ‘You look a different girl from the one who was so cross at not finding a cab!'

Angel laughed, perfectly relaxed. She felt different too. She felt – uninhibited, for the first time in her life. Even on her most defiant jaunts away from home, she had never felt quite this buoyant, and she couldn't explain why. She didn't want to explain, or to question it. In that instant, she identified totally with these people here, desperately enjoying themselves today, because none of them knew what tomorrow might bring.

‘You don't even know my name,' she said suddenly, remembering her manners. ‘It's Angel – Angel Bannister –'

‘
Angel
! What a bleedin' name to go to bed with!' Dolly
shrieked. Reg leaned across the table.

‘I had a mate who worked for a bigwig called Sir Fred Bannister in Yorkshire once. Bastard of a bloke, he was too. Only came visiting his factory once or twice a year to see they wasn't shirking, and spent the rest of his time in his posh house in London or his country estate in Somerset.'

Dolly was watching Angel's face.

‘You'd better stop going on about 'im, Reg. Looks like our Angel's heard of 'im too.'

‘He's my father,' she said calmly. ‘And he's not such a bastard when you get to know him, Reg. It all depends on who he's dealing with.'

‘
Touché
!' Jacques murmured with a smile. ‘So we have someone important amongst us, do we?'

‘No. Just another human being.'

She spoke smartly. It always made her squirm when she sensed inverted snobbery. Besides, somehow it didn't sit well on Jacques whoever-he-was. She asked him outright.

‘Just another Flying Corps officer,' he replied in the same vein. ‘Though my full name is Captain Jacques de Ville.'

‘An' I'm Dolly Dilkes, an' this 'ere's Reg Porter, so now we all know each other, let's watch the show!' Dolly said, bored with all this formality. She and Reg had only taken Jax under their wing for the evening, so to speak, when he'd looked lost and lonely, and she was already half regretting it.

One of the dancing girls walked slowly across the stage carrying a large cardboard placard, announcing that the next act would be Miss Eliza Kent, the Songbird of the South.

‘Ooh, she's lovely,' Dolly sighed. ‘She always makes me want to cry.'

‘Well, don't cry too much, or that black stuff will be running all over your face,' Reg grinned, as she flapped her heavy eyelashes at him for effect.

Miss Eliza Kent was small and waiflike, dressed in a long gown and a wide flowered hat that almost dwarfed her. But her voice was pure and powerful, tugging at the heartstrings
from the moment she opened her mouth to sing of heartache and suffering, and ending with more inspiring songs spawned by the war, urging everyone to join in with her. They did so lustily, with tears in their eyes, or huskily through working throats.

‘…and we'll never see our Johnny,

no, no, never again…

now he's gone to join his brothers

and the glo-o-ry…'

Amid roars of applause and whistling, Miss Eliza Kent bowed low, promising to sing for them all again for the finale of the show.

‘I'm not sure I can stand another bout of slush and sentiment,' Jacques muttered to Angel.

‘Where's your patriotism?' She grinned back. ‘Can't you see how much they all love this vicarious suffering? The war's only been going for seven months. Think of all the work it's giving to songwriters and musicians!'

‘That's very upper class cynicism, Miss Bannister!' Jacques mocked her.

‘Yes. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said it –'

‘Why not? Why shouldn't we say what we think as long as we're not giving away state secrets? We might all be dead tomorrow, and we spend half our lives saying what we don't mean to people we don't care about.'

They looked at one another. It was a strangely charged moment. Just as quickly, they looked away. It was as if they had each glimpsed a secret truth that neither was prepared to acknowledge yet.

The sleazy comic was next on stage. His jokes were daring and risqué. Dolly squealed with laughter and clung to Reg, who laughed just as heartily. When the anecdotes poked lavatorial fun at Kaiser Bill and his balloons, the laughter grew noisier, but Angel had to admit that the man's coarseness slightly diminished the horror of the threatened Zeppelin air raids.

All the same, she was glad when the comic finished his act and the jugglers came on, to be followed by a fire-eater, who drew gasps of disbelief from the audience.

‘Enjoying your slumming, are yer, lady?' Dolly asked archly, as Angel laughingly wiped a film of beer froth from her upper lip at Jacques' instruction.

‘It's not bad!' Angel said airily. ‘It's a change from the way I usually spend my evenings, but you know what they say about a change being as good as a rest.'

‘And how do you usually spend your evenings?' Jacques asked. ‘You're a bit of a mystery lady, Angel.'

‘Am I? You mean, because I was plucked out of the darkness and pushed into a London taxi-cab without proper introduction?' She taunted lightly. ‘I know nothing about you, either, except your name and present occupation!'

‘Isn't that all we know of most people? We only know what little we choose to give of ourselves.'

Angel felt herself warm to him. She liked a man who thought beyond the obvious. ‘How perceptive you are. Not
many people bother to analyse it so accurately. But you're quite right. And we put on a different face to everyone we meet, too. Like donning a mask at a masquerade ball.'