So Laura and I wore the dresses her mother had made after all. When the bride and groom opened the dance everyone applauded, but then fell silent, remembering. Was it fanciful to imagine Raymond’s ghost following the bride and groom round the floor?
The war in Europe ended in May. VE Day was celebrated with street parties, a civic bonfire on the links and a gala night at the Roxy. There were tears of joy for those who had returned and sorrow for those who never would. And of course there were families who had to wait another three months before the war in the Far East ended.
Bill was one of the lucky ones who was demobbed quite soon and he took Laura to Australia where an uncle had a sheep farm. Bill didn’t think that raising sheep in the Antipodes could be very much different from raising sheep in the Yorkshire Dales.
Ever since she had left school Laura had helped her parents in the hotel. Ted and Thelma were upset, not only because their daughter was leaving to live at the other side of the world but because they had imagined that Bill and Laura would stay and take over the running of the hotel one day. But they wished them well.
Nothing much changed for me. I continued working in the shoe department of the Co-op, trying to make my window displays exciting with the never changing supplies of clogs—no coupons needed—and wedge-soled shoes.
The lads stationed at the air base began to leave and the town’s own servicemen started coming home. There were some tearful farewells and some worried reunions but nights at the Roxy went on pretty much as before, except there were fewer people in uniform.
The King, in his Christmas broadcast, spoke of the dark days we had lived through and of the joys of being together at last to share the things we found most precious. But also of those who would never return and how we would remember them with pride; how we must pray that these brave men and women had found everlasting peace. I found myself wondering what kind of peace Raymond had found.
It was spooky, really, how it happened. One night in January the band at the Roxy was playing the Dick Haymes hit Laura, a slow and smoochy number. My partner was Ron, the gangling lad from the bacon counter. The glitter ball was spilling its usual magic that softened faces and hinted at unspoken dreams.
Carried away, I found myself thinking of Laura, my beautiful friend, who had waltzed off with my beau, and yet she still had a place in my heart. For a moment I forgot my partner’s two left feet and his nervous grin. I was back in the days when Laura and Raymond had held us all spellbound with their dancing.
Then I became aware that some of the dancers had stopped and that they were all looking in the same direction, shocked.
Forgetting that I was supposed to let my partner lead, I steered him through the crowd until I could see. And then I gripped the poor lad’s arms so fiercely that he yelped with pain. Raymond was there.
Perfectly still, he stared into the crowd. As his gaze roamed over the couples he grew more and more agitated. The band had become aware that no one was dancing and had stopped playing. I pushed poor Ron rudely aside.
In the silence Raymond noticed me. ‘Where is she?’
I took his hand and I led him away from the dance floor and into the foyer.
When I collected my coat from Hilda, the cloakroom attendant I saw a battered suitcase resting on the counter.
‘It’s his,’ Hilda said, nodding towards Raymond, her eyes round with wonder. ‘Still a smashing-looking lad, isn’t he? Even in that awful-looking demob suit.’
I put on my coat, picked up Raymond’s suitcase and took his arm. I wasn’t sure what I was going to say and he must have sensed my confusion.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I knew she wasn’t here. I suppose I just didn’t want to believe it.’
‘Where are you staying?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I thought maybe Ted and Thelma would put me up at the Seacrest but they couldn’t show me the door quick enough.’ He smiled dejectedly. ‘I expect I’d better find somewhere for the night.’
‘That’s all right,’ I told him. ‘You’re coming home with me.’
My mother was in the kitchen, concentrating on the pan of milk heating for cocoa. She didn’t lift her eyes when she heard the back door open. ‘My, you’re home early.’
The silence must have alerted her for at last she turned. ‘Good God. Raymond.’
In that split second of inattention the milk rose in the pan and would have boiled over if I hadn’t rushed forward and lifted it from the heat.
‘Well, shut the door, then,’ my mother said. ‘You’ll want some supper.’
Raymond looked bemused but he sat at the kitchen table while my mother warmed up what was left of the soup we’d had earlier. Her eye fell on his suitcase.
‘You’d best go and make up the bed in the spare room,’ she told me. ‘Although I’d better warn you, lad,’ she said to Raymond, ‘it’s cold in there.’
This brought the first smile to Raymond’s face. ‘I think I can cope with that.’
I hurried upstairs to get clean sheets from the airing cupboard, all the while thinking of everything other than a cold bedroom that Raymond might have had to endure since I’d last seen him.
Down again, I found my father in the kitchen drinking his cocoa. We sat together, a comfortable gathering, although Raymond was quiet.
‘Well, then,’ my mother said when we had finished. ‘I’ll leave you to wash the dishes, our Jeannie. Don’t stay up too long, will you?’
Despite my mother’s instruction, we talked well into the early hours.
I think it was something to do with my mother’s matter-of-fact way of greeting him, but by now Raymond had thawed a little. ‘No one else survived the crash. By some fantastic fluke I was flung clear with hardly a scratch on me. I felt so guilty.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, I was the pilot, wasn’t I? And they couldn’t even trust me to get them home safely.’ He stared down at the table. ‘A Dutch family found me. By then the plane was burning. They dragged me away. Took me in. I couldn’t speak, not even to thank them.’
‘Shock?’
‘Maybe. They hid me until the war ended, then they handed me over to the British army. I was sent to a military hospital near Cologne. I still couldn’t speak. They thought I’d lost my mind. Maybe I had. I had difficulty in remembering my own name. I think I was trying to escape from who I was.’
He looked up suddenly. ‘Do you think that’s crazy?’
‘No.’
‘Then the nurses arranged a dance. They dragged along anyone who could walk and some who couldn’t. The band began to play. And I remembered Laura.’
Now it seemed as if he couldn’t stop talking. All his memories of that time rushed out. I knew I wasn’t going to get much sleep.
The next day, Sunday, my mother said we should let Raymond have a lie-in. I helped Mum prepare the vegetables and then I went down to the Seacrest.
Thelma was serving breakfasts but the only guests were a middle-aged couple and their airman son who had just been demobbed. So I sat at one of the empty tables with a cup of coffee. Every now and then Laura’s mother gave me a nervous glance. When the guests left the dining room she joined me. ‘I can guess why you’re here.’
‘What did you do with his letters?’
She wasn’t prepared for that. ‘Letters?’ She tried to sound surprised.
‘Raymond wrote to Laura, he never