Time Goes By (23 page)

A
merica had entered the war two years previously. It had been on 7th December, 1941, that the war had entered upon a new and significant phase. The Americans, led by President Roosevelt, had delayed entering the conflict, believing it to be a solely European war and, therefore, of no real concern to them. However, the Japanese attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, forced them to change their outlook. The neutrality and isolationist policy of the American people was at an end, and when the USA eventually did enter the war they did so with determination.

The arrival of the American servicemen – known as GIs – had, so far, had little impact on Barbara or on her family and that of Albert’s family next door. At the time of their marriage both the
Whites’ and the Leighs’ boarding houses were still being used as billets for the RAF personnel, one group of men following upon another as their initial training came to an end.

Barbara had seen the GIs, of course, strolling around the streets of Blackpool. Their smart uniforms – a sort of brownish green and made of a fine cloth – contrasted greatly with the coarse material of the RAF and army uniforms of the British troops. Those had been designed for practicality and hard wear, not to enhance the figure! ‘And not to attract the birds, either,’ Barbara had overheard one of the RAF lads saying to his mate. The higher ranks in the British services wore uniforms of a finer material, but all ranks of American servicemen, both privates and officers, were dressed in the same impeccable manner.

Barbara had also heard the phrase ‘overpaid, oversexed and over here’ on the lips of some of the RAF lads who were billeted at the boarding house; it was a phrase that was being bandied about both by servicemen and civilians. In some instances it could be seen as a question of ‘sour grapes’. It could not be denied that the American troops were overpaid, at least by British standards. They were paid five times as much as their British counterparts. The wages of an ordinary soldier in the US army was, in some cases, as high as those of a British officer.

As well as that, the GIs had access to what was known as the PX (Post Exchange), a sort of NAAFI, where all kinds of luxury goods were available, goods such as had not been seen in Britain for years. Chewing gum, sweets (which they called candies), oranges, butter, spirits, cigarettes, razor blades, and sweet-smelling soap – a contrast to the hard carbolic soap being used in the British households, and even that was rationed. Ice cream had been banned for the duration in the September of 1942, but it was available on the American bases.

Barbara’s friend, Dorothy, had even managed to acquire a pair of the newly invented nylon stockings, which no British girl had ever seen before. She had been given them by her friend, Mavis, a girl who worked with her at the munitions factory. Mavis was keeping company – for the time being, at least – with a GI from Maryland whose name was Hank. It seemed that a goodly number of them were called Hank.

‘Honestly, they’re so fine you can’t tell you’re wearing them,’ Dorothy had told Barbara. ‘Except for the seam up the back, of course. They’re just like gossamer, not that I’m really sure what gossamer is,’ she laughed. ‘I’ll have to be real careful not to ladder them; they’re so sheer, though, that a ladder might not even show. She’s had chocolates from this Hank as well, my friend
Mavis, and tinned peaches. And he got her dad a carton of Camel cigarettes. I didn’t ask her what she had to do to get them, mind you, if you know what I mean.’ Dorothy winked and sniggered.

‘Dorothy, really!’ exclaimed Barbara. ‘You don’t think, surely …?’

‘Well, she’s footloose and fancy free, is Mavis. She’s not got a husband or fiancé, like you and me. And I must admit she’s done the rounds; she’s had a go with most of ’em. Our own RAF lads, Poles, Aussies, Free French, and now the Yanks. You’ve heard the expression about the Yanks?’

‘You mean, overpaid … and all that?’

‘Yes, that’s it. Of course, I don’t really know about the “oversexed” bit. Mavis plays her cards very close to her chest. It may well be that she just likes to have a good time with no strings attached. She’s a stunning-looking girl, I must admit; it’s no wonder that the blokes all go for her. She might be there on Saturday night, at the Tower. If she is I’ll introduce you to her. She told me that Hank is teaching her to jitterbug …’

It was not without a certain amount of trepidation that Barbara made her way to the Tower Ballroom on that Saturday night. The last time she had been dancing had been with Albert, and that had been long before baby Katherine was born. It had been the Palace Ballroom, rather than the Tower or the
Winter Gardens, that Albert had favoured, and so Barbara had come to prefer that smaller and, she believed, much friendlier venue.

She had been to the Tower a few times, before Albert had come on the scene. She had danced there with her fiancé, Mike, who had been killed at Dunkirk. She had always felt that the Tower was somewhat brash and noisy, the place where the good-time girls hung out to ‘click with a feller’. And there were plenty of those around at the moment, to be sure. But she told herself not to be stupid. She was a married woman now, mature and self-confident and well able to look after herself. She was going along solely to enjoy the music and gaiety, to have a change from the day-to-day routine and to forget the gloom and the deprivations that were a result of the ongoing war.

It was hard to believe that Britain had now been at war for more than four years. Admittedly there was no longer the despondency and fear for the future that there had been in the early years. Some believed that victory was assured and that it could even be brought about before the end of the year. All Barbara knew was that one had to go on hoping and praying …

The Tower Ballroom had been the dream, brought to life, of John Bickerstaffe – later Sir John – the
first chairman of the Blackpool Tower Company. It had been his ambition to create a ballroom to equal, or preferably better, the Empress Ballroom in the Winter Gardens. To achieve this aim Mr Bickerstaffe had engaged the noted architect, Frank Matcham, to transform the room that was at first known as the Grand Pavilion. Frank Matcham was already well known and revered in the town, having designed Blackpool’s Grand Theatre in 1894.

The ballroom was decorated in the French renaissance style and when it was completed in 1899 it was believed to be one of the three finest in the country; it had even been described as the finest in the whole of Europe. It was said that up to seven thousand people could be seated comfortably in the two tiers of balconies, supported by massive gilded pillars. At one end of the room was a large ornate stage with a quotation inscribed above it in gold lettering. ‘Bid me discourse, I will enchant thine ear’ it read, a quotation from Shakespeare’s
Venus and Adonis.
Large classical paintings adorned the ceilings and the surrounding walls, depicting idyllic scenes of nymphs, shepherds and shepherdesses, Grecian gods, and heroes taken from ancient legends; gilded motifs, too, bearing the names of famous composers, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin …

Two large and elaborate chandeliers were
flanked by a series of smaller ones, casting a radiance of electric light down onto the ballroom floor; this form of lighting was in its infancy at the end of the nineteenth century. The floor was a marvel in itself, comprising thousands of blocks of mahogany, oak, walnut and maple woods arranged in an intricate geometric design.

The Tower and the buildings underneath were now playing their part in the war effort, and not only by providing entertainment for the troops billeted in Blackpool and the holidaymakers – the many folk who were still visiting the town for a brief respite from the gloom and, in later years, the boredom of the war. The Tower top had been taken over by the RAF as an emergency radar station. A forty-foot section of the spire was replaced by a wooden structure bearing the receiving aerials, and a number of steel cantilevers were inserted into the iron girders of the Tower to carry the transmitting aerials.

The Tower top was also used as a lookout by the men of the National Fire Service and the Home Guard, and the buildings below were used by the RAF and the Royal Artillery for training purposes. The ballroom and the circus became the venues for training sessions and lectures; and in the evenings they both reverted to their normal roles.

Barbara and Dorothy joined the queue of young women to deposit their coats in the cloakroom. When they had been handed the little pink cloakroom tickets they joined dozens of other girls at the mirrors in the washroom, titivating their hair, and applying a dusting of powder or a smear of lipstick before moving on to the ballroom.

Barbara renewed her lipstick. It was a brighter red than the paler shades she usually favoured, but it had been the only colour that was available at the local chemist’s shop; all types of make-up had been in short supply since the outbreak of war. Anyway, it matched her dress much better than a paler pink or coral shade would have done. She pressed her lips together, then, on second thoughts, wiped some of it off again; she hated to think that she might look tarty.

Her dress was a couple of years old, but it was one that she liked and thought suited her; new dresses were a luxury anyway, and considered an extravagance. She had toyed with the idea of wearing her wedding dress. She had chosen it believing, at the time, that it was one that she might wear again, but she had decided it was too pale and ‘weddingy-looking’ for a winter evening. The one she was wearing that night was of a silky rayon. It had a red background patterned with a bold design of black and white daisies; it was knee-length and had the fashionable padded shoulders.

‘You look stunning in that dress,’ Dorothy told her. ‘It really suits you, with your dark hair and eyes and everything. You’ll have the fellers queuing up asking you to dance.’

‘Thank you … but that’s not really the idea,’ replied Barbara; she was feeling, again, for a brief moment, that she shouldn’t be there. ‘You look very nice as well.’

Barbara and Dorothy were complete opposites as far as looks were concerned. Dorothy was blonde and petite. She had let her hair grow and it fell in a pageboy style almost to her shoulders; she had trained it to fall over one eye, in the style made popular by the film star, Veronica Lake. Her blue and white candy-striped dress with the puffed sleeves and sweetheart neckline enhanced her fair prettiness. She looked angelic, but she was a high-spirited lass, and Barbara looked to Dorothy to give her the confidence she needed to face the crowds in the ballroom.

It was, indeed, crowded, the girls two or three deep in some places at the edge of the ballroom floor. The dance floor itself was a rainbow of bright colours: red, blue, orange, green, pink, yellow, on the flowered, striped, and spotted dresses worn by the girls and some older women. They were a vivid contrast to the darker uniforms of the men: air force blue, khaki, the navy blue of the Royal Navy, and the brownish green of
the Yanks’ uniforms; there was scarcely a civilian man to be seen amongst the hundreds of couples circling round the dance floor. Many girls were dancing together, as Dorothy had said they would.

‘Come on, let’s give it a whirl,’ Dorothy said to her friend, taking her hand and pulling her towards the ballroom floor. ‘Can you lead, though? You’re a few inches taller than me.’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Barbara. ‘It’s a quickstep rhythm, so I should be able to manage that.’ They stepped out to the music of ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’, the song that had been made famous by the Andrews Sisters.

The organist on the mighty Wurlitzer organ was the talented lady, Ena Baga. She had replaced Reginald Dixon, whose name had become synonymous with Blackpool, when he joined the RAF in 1940. His signature tune, ‘Oh, I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside’, had come to typify the jollity and the carefree mood of a holiday in Blackpool. Now, however, Ena Baga’s signature tune, ‘Smoke Gets in Your Eyes’, was becoming almost as familiar to the dancers as that of her predecessor.

When the dance came to an end they moved off the ballroom floor. ‘I don’t know about you,’ said Dorothy, ‘but I don’t fancy standing around with all these wallflowers.’

‘No, neither do I,’ agreed Barbara.

‘Let’s have a saunter around, then, and see if there’s anybody we know, shall we? And in a little while we could go and have a coffee, or something stronger if you like.’

‘No, coffee’s OK for me, or tea,’ said Barbara. ‘Not just yet, though. We’ve not been here very long.’

She had been brought up with the belief that nice girls didn’t go into bars on their own, or even in the company of another girl. She had learnt, though, that Dorothy had no such inhibitions. She, Barbara, and her fiancé, Mike, had not frequented pubs and bars very much either. They had both been very young, only nineteen years old, when the war had started. Albert had enjoyed a drink, though, and probably still did, in the company of his fellow soldiers. Barbara had begun to feel more at ease in a bar when she was with Albert, but it was rather different now. She hoped that Dorothy would not consider her too much of a killjoy.

They made their way round the edge of the ballroom floor, pushing their way, as politely as they could, between the crowds of girls and servicemen. After a few moments Ena Baga struck up with the music of the ‘American Patrol’, a tune made popular by the Glenn Miller Orchestra and one which was being played more and more often in dance halls up and down the country.

As Dorothy had already told her friend, there was some jitterbugging going on in a space away from the ballroom floor where the music could still be heard, loud and clear. The couples on the dance floor were dancing a normal quickstep or, in some cases, a milder form of jitterbugging. Here, however, there were two couples who were really letting it rip.

‘Hey, that’s my friend, Mavis!’ exclaimed Dorothy. ‘You know, the one I was telling you about.’

‘You mean the one who gave you the nylon stockings?’