Whistling in the Dark (6 page)

“You can wear Audrey’s blue velvet dress, and I’ll lend you my diamanté clip,” she said.

“I’d look silly in that frock. Everyone’ll know it’s not mine. They’ve seen Audrey wearing it.”

“Of course they won’t. People don’t remember things like that.”

“But I haven’t got any decent shoes. And don’t suggest I borrow Audrey’s, because my feet are much bigger than hers.”

“Don’t worry. You can wear your best black patent leather ones. You’ll look lovely. And there’ll be some really good food. Ronnie’s managing to lay on an excellent three-course meal. I don’t know how he does it in these difficult times.”

Joan said nothing. She knew it was useless to resist.

The big room at the golf club, which was usually the bar area, had been cleared to make room for dancing. A live band – piano, drums, saxophone and clarinet – was setting up in one corner when Joan and Mum arrived. Captain Ronnie Harper Jones had been there most of the day, setting up dining tables in the adjoining room and checking that the blackout shutters were in place. A large vanload of food had arrived from Liverpool and had been unpacked and laid out on the buffet table. It was an excellent spread, as promised: a rare treat in wartime. But Joan was dreading the dancing that followed too much to relish the sight.

She looked anxiously about to see if anyone her own age had arrived yet. Ross and Derek were nowhere to be seen, of course. Their families were probably not invited, even if they could afford to come. This was strictly an officer-class event. She spotted a few girls from school, although mercifully not Angela Travis. Gradually the room filled with guests. They were mostly, as Doreen had predicted, middle-aged people, but some had a few uneasy teenagers in tow. Drinks were served and the older people made bright conversation.

This is going to be even worse than I expected,
thought Joan. But when the Russell family walked in, the atmosphere lightened up considerably. Doreen and her mother led the way, looking lovely. Mr Russell and David strode behind. Joan had never seen David wearing a suit before. Ronnie Harper Jones rushed over and greeted them enthusiastically. He even kissed Mrs Russell’s hand, then fell into a long conversation with Mr Russell. The rest of the family came straight over to where Joan and her mother were sitting.

“Oh, I’m so glad you made it,” Mrs Russell said, giving Mum a kiss. “And you too, Joan. You’re both looking marvellous. We’re going to need all the moral support we can get when the dancing begins.”

Doreen shot Joan a quick glance and rolled her eyes. David said nothing.

Sadly, the two families were not seated anywhere near each other during dinner. Joan was trapped next to Ronnie, with Mum on his other side. She was too oppressed by the sound of his braying voice ringing out across the table to do more than toy with her food. Then the moment she’d dreaded arrived. The band struck up with their first number, a current hit called “You Are My Sunshine”, and people started to move towards the dance floor.

Ronnie and Mum were among the first, and he lost no time in showing off his nifty footwork. Ignoring the plodding “slow, slow, quick, quick, slow”, which most couples of his age were happy to settle for, he went straight into some complex double-reverse turns. He even tried swinging Mum around with one hand while (as Doreen had also so accurately predicted) sticking out his backside.

Joan watched with a sinking heart. She wondered how long this evening was going to last. Doreen was on the dance floor too, partnered by a boy who Joan vaguely recognized as being in the same class as Brian at school.

Joan was staring down at her plate, crumbling the remains of a bread roll, when David ambled across the room and sprawled down on the chair beside her.

“Sorry I can’t ask you to dance,” he said. “I’m no good at it, I’m afraid. Your feet would probably never recover.”

Joan smiled. “That’s OK. It’s rather a relief, as a matter of fact.”

David helped himself to one of the delicious biscuits that had been served with the coffee.

“How’s art going these days?”

“Well, OK, I guess.”

“I envy you. I can’t draw for toffee. And now, at school, there never seems to be time for anything but sport and the main exam subjects. I still play the piano, though, when I can.”

“Classical pieces?”

“Yes, sometimes. But what I really like is playing boogie-woogie. It drives my mum mad. She doesn’t much care for my jazz records either.”

“Jazz? You mean dance music? Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw?”

“Well, not really. I love Louis Armstrong – he’s the best trumpet player in the world! – but I like the small groups, with terrific instrumental players like Buck Clayton and Lester Young, people like that. And blues singers… Billie Holiday beats them all.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of her. Is she on the radio?”

“Sometimes. But they’re all black American musicians, of course.”

“Oh yes, of course!” Joan said. She was trying to remember if she’d seen pictures of any of these people in Audrey’s fan magazines, and vowed to find out more about them. There was a pause, in which they sat watching the dancers. Joan wanted very much to talk to David about what she really cared about, which was drawing, and her plans to try to get into art school as soon as she could, rather than stay on in the sixth form at school. But somehow she didn’t feel this was an appropriate moment.

At last Doreen extricated herself from her partner and came over to join them, flopping down in a chair in mock exhaustion. “I wonder how long this will go on for,” she said. “I don’t know how all these oldies find the energy.”

David looked at his watch. “It’ll be quite a long time yet,” he said grimly.

“Let’s hope there isn’t an air raid tonight or we’ll get stuck here for hours and hours!” Joan said.

But there was no air raid that night. And when finally the band played the last waltz – “Who’s Taking You Home Tonight?” – followed by “Goodnight, Sweetheart”, Joan prayed that David and Doreen didn’t notice Mum and Ronnie dancing cheek to cheek.

In the end, to Joan’s great relief, it was only she and Mum who walked home together, side by side in the blackout, because Ronnie had to stay on to supervise the clearing up.

“I wonder what happened to all that leftover food?” said Joan.

“Oh, I expect Ronnie will see that it’s given away to someone who needs it,” said Mum. Then she took Joan’s arm. “You didn’t enjoy it much, did you, Joanie?”

“Not much. Did you?”

“Oh, yes – well, I suppose I did. Anyway, thanks for coming along.”

“That’s all right,” said Joan. “As long as I don’t ever have to do it again!”

CHAPTER 9

T
he Luftwaffe made up for their one night’s absence with a particularly heavy raid on Liverpool the following evening. It began early, just after dark. All the family were in the back room eating supper and enjoying
Forces Favourites
on the radio when the sirens started.

Mum switched off the programme and they sat there in silence, listening. After a while they heard it, that chillingly ominous sound that was becoming all too familiar to them now – the steadily increasing drone of approaching enemy aircraft: German bombers, headed for Liverpool.

“It’s too late to get down to the pubic shelter now,” said Mum, doing her best to sound calm, like those people in the propaganda films with titles like
Britain Can Take It!
But her voice was a bit shaky and Joan could tell she was scared.

Mum turned off the lights, went over to the window, and peered out through a crack in the blackout blind. The rest of the family crowded behind her. They could see the searchlights springing to life and raking the sky over the city. Then the ack-ack barrage from the anti-aircraft guns began in earnest. There were sudden flashes of hectic white light from the flares that the enemy bombers were dropping to guide them to their main target, the Liverpool and Birkenhead docks.

Brian was keen to go outside and watch, but Mum shouted at him to stay where he was.

“You’d all better get under the stairs,” she said. This was supposed to be the safest place to be if the house got a direct hit. But there wasn’t really room for all four of them in there. Audrey refused point blank, saying she would rather go to bed. Judy, who was getting used to raids and often managed to sleep right through them, clung to Mum and started to cry.

In the end, Mum settled for getting the children into sleeping bags under the dining-room table while she sat up in an armchair, huddled in an overcoat. Joan wasn’t in the least bit sleepy. Sleep was totally impossible under these circumstances. She just lay there, trying to avoid Judy’s knees sticking into her back and listening to her miserable grizzling. They could hear the barrage steadily intensify, the guns on the high ground above Liverpool and Birkenhead keeping up a constant fire.

The crazy thing is, I just can’t believe that any of us are going to be killed,
Joan thought to herself. But she knew very well that, although their suburb was supposed to be a relatively safe area with no military objectives, the German bombers often dropped their unused bombs at random on their way home, to lighten their load.

The raid seemed to go on endlessly. It was well after midnight when at last the all clear sounded. Judy had long since fallen into a deep sleep, and had to be scooped up and carried to bed by Mum. Audrey, yawning and stretching her cramped back and legs, followed. Joan and Brian were still wide awake. They hovered on the landing, and Brian, careful not to show a light, peered out of the window. The searchlights were gone now, leaving the sky over Liverpool a fierce, sullen red, heavy with smoke and reflecting flames from the burning docks.

“They must have dropped a lot of incendiary bombs,” said Brian.

“I’m glad it wasn’t on us,” Joan said, then stopped short, realizing what a heartless remark that was when so many people’s homes must have been destroyed. Heartless too, she thought, that even though she knew that people had died in those fires, the sight of them lighting up the sky seemed unreal somehow, like those paintings she had seen of infernos and shipwrecks at sea and visions of hell. But it would have been only too real if
their
home had taken a direct hit. Joan shivered.

Their little back garden and the golf links lay shrouded in darkness. It was high tide. All they could hear now was the sound of waves washing in peacefully beyond the sand dunes.

“Come on, you two,” Mum called out wearily. “Time you were in bed.”

Brian trudged off to his room, but Joan hesitated for one last look. Just before she turned away, she thought she caught sight of a movement near the fence – something like the figure of a man standing under the pear tree. But, when she looked again, he was gone.

CHAPTER 10

I
t was the morning after the raid and a Saturday. As Joan had a day off from youth service, Mum asked her to queue at Barrett’s the butcher’s. It was always a long queue, especially if word had got round that there was a chance of some sausages, or maybe even lamb chops, so she set out early. It was a chore she hated, but it made a change from collecting scrap metal. The queue was mostly made up of women, looking tired out, with headscarves tied turban-like over curlers. They were all talking about last night’s air raid.

“They say Huyton and Childwall got it last night, as well as the docks,” one woman said. “My auntie lives over there. I’m dead worried about her. I couldn’t get through to her on the phone. They’ve been dropping landmines – those awful things, floating down on parachutes.”

“My hubby was on roof-spotting duty all night with the ARP,” said another. “I was right glad to see him back this morning, I can tell you.”

A third chipped in, “Mine’s an air-raid warden. It drives me mad that they always expect him to turn up for work at the factory first thing next morning, even though he’s been up all night and is dead on his feet.”

They lapsed into a gloomy silence. Joan was dreading her turn to face Mr Barrett. He was a large man with a bristling moustache, waxed at the ends, and great hands, mottled purplish red, the colour of the raw meat he attacked with such vigour on his chopping board. Once, for a dare, Joan and Brian had telephoned him anonymously and enquired if he had pigs’ trotters. When he said yes, they giggled and came back with, “Hard luck! What are you going to do about it, then?” and rang off. Hilarious though it had been at the time, she’d always had an uneasy feeling that he knew they were the culprits.