She looked at Tilly, flushed and excited. She had almost pushed Olive too far with that business of Tilly lying to her, Dulcie knew, which was why tonight she intended any report that Sally made back to Olive to be one that showed her in a good light and not a bad one.
To Tilly, filled with the excitement of the evening, simply being at the Palais was initially enough to fill her with happiness, but then eventually, tapping her foot in time to the music became a longing to be up on the floor and dancing.
Then Ted arrived, coming over to their table, to be welcomed by a shyly delighted Agnes, who introduced them.
Dulcie cast one look over Ted’s plain honest face and shiny clean appearance, and immediately dismissed him as unimportant, whilst Sally duly registered Ted’s discreetly protective manner towards Agnes and politeness to everyone else, and mentally agreed with Olive’s judgement that Ted seemed a decent sort.
Ted, for his part, was glad to draw up a seat next to Agnes, and take charge of ordering the girls second drinks, rather than having to suggest that he and Agnes had a dance. He wasn’t much of a dancer. He preferred to sit and watch, and it seemed to him that Agnes was of much the same mind.
The sensation of someone tapping on her shoulder, just as the band struck up for a new dance, had Dulcie stiffening, fighting against the betraying race of her heart, and trying to deny the name that immediately sprang to her lips.
Only the voice in her ear saying, ‘I thought I’d find you here,’ belonged not to David but to her brother, Rick.
‘Rick, you’re home!’ Genuinely pleased, Dulcie turned round to find, not only her brother, but a whole group of other young men in army uniform clustered behind her.
‘Got back this afternoon,’ Rick told her, adding cheerfully, ‘Is it OK if we join you?’ and then calling for his comrades to collect some chairs, without waiting for Dulcie’s reply.
There were five of them all together; Rick; a tow-headed young man with a northern accent, called Ned, who came from Manchester and who Rick said was their corporal; two boys from London, named Ian and Fred; and, a little to Dulcie’s surprise, John Dunham, whose father was the builder for whom her own father sometimes worked.
‘I thought you were going to join the navy,’ she commented when John sat down next to her.
‘I was, until Rick persuaded me to enlist in the army then as luck would have it we ended up in the same regiment – the Middlesex, 7th Battalion,’ he said proudly, ‘and the same company.’
From the minute she had seen Rick, Tilly’s heart had been thumping with excitement and teenage self-consciousness. If anything he looked even more handsome than he had done before, bigger somehow, broader, and very manly and grown up in his uniform, with his dark hair cut close to his scalp. The other men looked shorn and rather forlorn with their short back and sides army-regulation haircuts, but in Rick’s case the short cut only served to emphasise his well-shaped head.
‘Mum won’t be very pleased when she hears you’ve come down here. Not with Edith singing with ENSA,’ Dulcie said somewhat sarcastically as she mimicked their mother’s voice for the last few words.
Typically, though, Rick merely grinned. ‘Yes, I heard all about that the minute I got through the door. Ta, yes, John, I’ll have a beer, thanks,’ he broke off as John was asking what everyone wanted to drink. ‘Ma says that Edith’s got an agent now.’
John was asking what Dulcie wanted to drink now but before she could show off her sophistication by announcing that she’d have a gin and it, Rick was telling his friend cheerfully, ‘She’ll have a shandy, John.’
‘I was going to have a gin and it, ’ Dulcie told him crossly. ‘And as for Edith’s agent, he’s a real spiv, and I told Mum that she was a fool for letting Edith take up with him, but of course she wouldn’t have it. You know what she’s like. She’s always thought that the sun shines out of Edith’s backside and now she thinks the same about this agent.’
‘Ma said that you’re having your Christmas dinner at your lodgings instead of coming home.’
‘Yes. My landlady asked me in particular to have my dinner with them,’ Dulcie fibbed, turning away so that none of the other girls could hear her.
Sally thanked the young corporal who was handing her her drink. She’d been a bit worried at first when Dulcie’s brother had proposed that he and his friends join them, but the respectful manner in which the young soldiers were behaving towards them had calmed her fears. Dulcie’s brother was a very good-looking young man, and it was no wonder that Tilly was looking at him with such admiration, Sally acknowledged ruefully. Once she had probably looked at Callum like that. The pain that thought brought her was swift and savage.
‘What are we doing sitting here when we could be dancing?’ Rick demanded jovially, giving Tilly an appreciative smile. She really was a looker, even if she was a bit on the young side. ‘John, you dance with Dulcie,’ he instructed, ‘but mind she doesn’t step on your toes; she’s got two left feet,’ he teased his sister, before holding out his hand to Tilly.
‘Do you want to take pity on a poor soldier who hasn’t seen a pretty girl in months and dance with him?’ he asked with a warm smile.
Did she? Tilly was speechless with delight.
The corporal asked Sally up, causing Ted to reach for Agnes’s hand and give it a little squeeze when she confided in him, ‘I’m glad it’s you that’s asked me to dance, Ted, because I’m not very good at it at all. Because I was one of the oldest at the orphanage, I always had to be the boy when we did any dancing.’
Two minutes later they were all on the floor, Dulcie proving that she was as light on her feet as a proverbial feather, her steps confidently in perfect time with the music.
When Agnes whispered to him happily, ‘Oh, Ted, you are ever such a good dancer,’ Ted’s chest swelled. Agnes felt so fragile and delicate, like something precious that he wanted to protect from harm. She looked a treat too in her new dress. He just hoped that one of those army lads didn’t step in and catch her eye.
Tilly was in heaven, dancing on clouds of delirious excitement and delight. Never had there been such a wonderful Christmas gift, she thought giddily as Rick swung her expertly through the dance. But all too soon it came to an end, the light dimming to signal the interval between the orchestra’s sessions. Then, just as the dancers were starting to disengage from their partners and drift off the floor, a young man wearing an RAF uniform jumped onto the stage and said something to the band leader, who nodded and then made an announcement.
‘As a special request we’re going to play the last waltz before the interval so that the flight lieutenant can share it with his new fiancée before he has to catch his train and get back on duty.’
Above the laughter and cheers of the crowd, the first strains of a waltz began. Rick had started to move back to their table, but since Tilly was still standing looking at the orchestra, he too stopped moving. The lights were still dimmed, couples swaying together, locked in their own personal worlds. Silently Tilly went into Rick’s arms, trembling slightly when they closed round her. This was beyond heaven, this was . . . there were no words to name it, no previous experiences in her life with which to compare it. This was special, wonderful, a time out of time that would remain with her for the rest of her life, Tilly promised herself fervently as she instinctively moved closer to Rick.
The girls in Paris, at least the ones Rick had met, had been available – for a price – but dancing with them had not proved as tempting as dancing with Tilly, Rick acknowledged. He had felt her small betraying tremble when he had taken her in his arms, and now he was beginning to wonder if she would tremble as sweetly if he kissed her. And he did want to kiss her. The first time he had met her he had dismissed her as a pretty young girl, little more than a schoolgirl, really, but tonight when he had looked at her sitting with Dulcie he had seen a very desirable young woman. The music was offering him an opportunity to get closer to her that it would be a crime