Loves Me, Loves Me Not

Save the Last Dance for Me

When Laura and Raymond took to the floor other couples would stop dancing to watch. The girls’ expressions were wistful as they imagined themselves in Raymond’s arms. But the men had eyes only for Laura. They were totally enraptured.

She was lovely. Dark hair, blue eyes and as slim-waisted as Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. I was the perfect foil for her—tall, with mousy hair, and pretty enough without being beautiful.

Laura and I had been friends ever since our first week at school when she had lost the shilling her mother had given her for the Penny Bank and I had given her sixpence of my own. I can’t remember if she ever repaid me but I wouldn’t have cared because I was thrilled to be the chosen friend of the most popular girl in the class.

Raymond and Bill had struck up a friendship when they had been posted to the RAF station to the north of the town near the lighthouse. Bill was from a farming family in Yorkshire but, the youngest of five sons, he wasn’t needed for the war effort. No one knew what Raymond’s job had been but it had got around that if it wasn’t for the war he’d have been in films. He was certainly good-looking enough; in his flying officer’s uniform he looked sensational.

That first night Laura had pretended not to notice them. She went on talking as if she wasn’t perfectly aware that they were coming towards us across the empty floor. Just as the music started Raymond coughed gently to attract Laura’s attention. She turned and looked up at him with those dark-fringed blue eyes. He didn’t speak. He simply held out his hand. When she took it he pulled her gently onto the dance floor.

Bill had been standing behind and he turned to watch them go. After a moment he looked at me and grinned. He asked me to dance and I accepted. I might have realised, even then, that I would not have been his first choice.

From that moment we were a foursome. Bill, tall, rangy and nice-enough looking with hair as mousy as my own, but nowhere near as handsome as Raymond with his dark hair and laughing grey eyes. The four of us went to the pictures together or for walks along the promenade, but most of all we went to the Roxy.

I was hurt that Laura didn’t tell me first. Surely she could have trusted me not to let the cat out of the bag? She and Raymond took to the floor that night with her left hand resting gracefully on his shoulder. But there was something different about it. First one, then another, and soon every one of the girls swirling by noticed the engagement ring. The band kept on playing but the dancing stopped and the girls gathered round to admire the sparkling diamond while the young men slapped Raymond on the back and called him a lucky devil.

There was already an air of exhilaration. The allies were advancing on Berlin and everyone was convinced that the war in Europe would soon be won. Down at the Roxy, the music seemed more upbeat, the dancers more animated, and all the talk was about what we would do when the war was over.

Laura didn’t want to wait. Her parents owned Seacrest, a small hotel on the seafront. Her father, Ted, said he was sure he could manage a respectable reception and her mother, Thelma, made a wedding dress from one of her old evening gowns. She also found something for me because, of course, I was going to be Laura’s bridesmaid.

But a couple of weeks before the wedding Bill came to see Laura. We were in the lounge of the Seacrest, where we often met before going to the Roxy. Bill bought the drinks and we sat with Laura between us on the banquette behind one of the tables.

‘Where’s Raymond?’ she said.

I saw Bill’s knuckles whiten as he clasped his glass. ‘Laura, I’m sorry…’

‘What is it?’ She sounded frightened.

‘Raymond didn’t make it home from the mission last night. I saw him go down somewhere over Holland.’

A shocked silence—and then Laura started to cry. It was Bill who held her until the storm of weeping subsided.

Raymond was posted missing, presumed dead. And over the next few weeks Laura’s grief turned to anger and her anger into a feverish urge to live life to the full.

‘Take my advice, Jeannie, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. And that’s from the Bible,’ she said when I tried to persuade her to live less hectically.

There were any number of young airmen who lived by the same principle, and who could blame them? They were risking their lives almost daily. They were good-natured, high-spirited and brave. And something about their uniforms made them positively glamorous. Many queued to dance with Laura, although none could match Raymond.

But Laura had forgotten what it was like to be without a man of her own. It was inevitable that she would eventually settle for one of them. And the lucky man just happened to be Bill.

I never found out what Laura did with Raymond’s ring, but the next time she got engaged I was the first to be told. She said that she knew I was fond of Bill and she’d thought it best to tell me herself so that I could be prepared before the announcement.

‘Kind of her!’ my mother said that night when I wept at the kitchen table. Dad shook his head and quietly retreated.

‘And she actually asked you to be her bridesmaid!’ my mother exclaimed. And then she surprised me. ‘Well, listen, our Jeannie, I hope you said that you’d be delighted.’

I stopped crying and looked up in astonishment.

‘You think I should?’

‘It might stop the tongues wagging.’

I knew what she meant. Everyone was wondering whether I would be heartbroken, angry, never speak to Laura again. My mother, wise as usual, thought the best way to prevent all speculation, whether spiteful or sympathetic, was for me to act as though I was pleased for Laura and I hadn’t really cared that much for Bill.

Tongues did wag, but about Laura, not me. There were many who thought she was marrying in indecent haste and that maybe she should have mourned a little longer for Raymond. But that sort of thing happened in those days. Blame the war.

Bill did the gentlemanly thing, by the way. I found him waiting for me outside work one day and he walked me home. He said, ‘I hope you understand. After all, we haven’t been more than good friends, have we? I’ll always be fond of you but, with Laura, it’s entirely different.’

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 got an answer.’ I stared at her and she couldn’t meet my gaze.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I mean, some letters did come but it was too late. We didn’t want to upset her.’

I leaned back and studied her, obviously wanting to escape but not knowing how to do it with any semblance of dignity.

The night before, Raymond had told me that as soon as his troubled mind had gained some equilibrium he had written both to his mother and Laura. Very soon he’d had an answer from his family solicitor regretting to inform him that his mother had passed away not long after receiving the news of his plane being shot down.

‘My mother was all alone,’ Raymond said. ‘My father died some years ago.’

‘How dreadful.’ I reached across the table and took his hands.

‘But Laura never replied to my letters. I was frantic. I thought she might have died in an air raid. I tried to persuade the powers that be to release me—compassionate grounds and all that—but they said I was mentally unstable. In the end a wise nursing sister pointed out to them that it was not knowing what had happened to my fiancée that was making me unstable. Grudgingly they agreed. So I came here and they told me that she had gone—had married someone else. She hadn’t waited.’

‘But you were—’

‘Posted missing, presumed dead. Presumed dead. She didn’t wait very long to find out if I’d really kicked the bucket, did she?’

There was a silence as we stared at each other. ‘Did Thelma tell you who Laura married?’

He returned the pressure of my hands and smiled at me sadly. ‘She married Bill. I’m sorry, Jeannie.’

I couldn’t speak; I just held on to his hands. He seemed equally reluctant to let mine go.

‘Thelma told me that my letters had never arrived but I’m not sure whether I believe her.’

And that was why I was sitting in the dining room of the Seacrest the next morning. My silence must have prompted Thelma to try and justify herself.

‘Listen, Jeannie,’ she said, ‘I couldn’t put Laura through all that again. I mean, she’d found a good man in Bill and to call the wedding off at that stage would have been too much for her.’

‘How can you say that?’ I shook with anger. ‘To find out that her fiancé, the man she loved, was still alive, how could that be too much to bear?’

‘Because by then she’d given her heart to Bill.’

‘Given her heart? Do you believe that?’

‘Why else would she marry him?’

There was nothing I could say. I could hardly tell her that some folk thought Laura was so determined to be married that almost anyone would do. I believed that Laura had been genuinely heartbroken and that Bill had been kind and understanding and that it had been entirely understandable for her to clutch at his support.

But as Thelma and I faced each other over the table I remembered what Raymond had said the night before. She didn’t wait very long to find out if I’d really kicked the bucket, did she?

I got up to go. Thelma hurried after me.

‘Jeannie, you’re not going to do anything, are you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you’re not going to write to Laura and tell her that Raymond has turned up, are you?’

‘No, I won’t write.’ She needn’t have worried. After one or two letters, Laura had stopped writing to me. I’d had enough pride not to pursue the matter.

‘Good girl.’

Thelma tried to embrace me but I pulled away and hurried out of the hotel and along the seafront to the cries of the gulls and the waves crashing on the shore.

I expected that Raymond would go home—wherever home was—but he didn’t.

‘What is there to go back for?’ he said. ‘My mother’s dead, I have no brothers or sisters, my father’s business was sold some time ago. There’s still some money owing to me and I’ll tell the solicitor to sell the house. But I’ll have to find a job.’

It was my lunch hour and we were sitting in Vicky’s Tea Rooms having poached eggs on toast.

‘Will you go back to acting?’

Raymond looked astonished. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Acting. I mean you were on the stage, weren’t you, and about to go into films?’

‘I was a photographer. I worked for my father’s small studio but when he died I became a sort of freelance. I wasn’t much good with the sort of posed family portraits my father did. I suppose I wanted more action.’

‘But we all believed that when the war began you had been on the point of becoming a film star.’

Raymond smiled. ‘Blame Laura. I was vexed when I discovered that’s what she was telling people but I didn’t want to embarrass her by putting things straight.’

‘But how could she have got that idea?’

‘I’d been commissioned by an agency to do some head and shoulder portraits of young hopefuls that were to be sent round the casting directors. The agent told me that I looked like film star material myself and offered to sign me up. So the story she put about wasn’t exactly a lie.’

‘Would you like to be a film star?’

‘I’d hate it. I’m much happier behind the camera.’

‘So what will you do?’

‘I might try my luck over there.’ He nodded towards the window.

I turned my head and saw he was looking at the local newspaper office.

I wished him luck and hurried back to work. Clouds were gathering and I could smell rain. But despite the dark clouds my spirits soared. I couldn’t understand why I was so happy until I realised that it was because Raymond, who could have gone anywhere he pleased, had decided to stay here.

My mother said Raymond could lodge with us until he was ‘on his feet’ and we all tried to get back to a normal existence. The first time Raymond came with me to the Roxy I could see that everyone felt awkward. But gradually the mood relaxed and we were treated as part of the crowd.

Raymond made a quick trip back to his old home in Elstree. He cleared the house and then handed the keys over to the solicitor. He didn’t bring much back; only his clothes, a couple of cameras and several boxfuls of photographs.

The local paper didn’t take him on straight away. They gave him some unpaid assignments as a trial. One or two of his photographs appeared in the paper, then he was told to try and write words to go with them. They called it ‘copy’.

Eventually they gave him the verdict. That evening after tea he was very quiet. It was my mother who was brave enough to ask him what had happened. Raymond looked grave.

‘Well, they said my photographs were all right.’

‘Only all right?’ Dad asked.

Raymond nodded, looking down at his plate so we couldn’t see his expression. Then he suddenly looked up and grinned. ‘But they said my writing was first class.’

We all looked at each other, completely baffled.

‘So?’ Mum said. ‘Are they giving you a job or not?’

‘They are, but not the job I applied for. They’ve offered me a job as a reporter. I start next week.’

Well, Mum got her bottle of sweet sherry from the sideboard and we all drank to his success. But the smiles faded when Raymond said that he wouldn’t be taking advantage of our kindness for much longer. He intended to find a flat. Mum told him there was no need for that and Dad said he was welcome to stay, but Raymond said that he might be working awkward hours and he didn’t want to inconvenience us. We could see that he’d made up his mind to go and I was completely unprepared for how desolate that made me feel.

I cleared the table and hurried into the kitchen. I was surprised when Raymond followed me and shut the door.

‘I don’t need your help,’ I said waspishly.

‘I haven’t come to help. Or, rather, I have, but there’s also something I want to say to you.’

‘What?’

Raymond laughed. ‘Jeannie, if only you could see yourself. Please don’t scowl like that. I’m nervous enough.’

‘Why should you be nervous?’

‘Because I have no idea what your answer will be when I ask you to marry me.’

I don’t know how long we stared at each other. Me with my eyes wide with shock and Raymond looking as nervous as he claimed he was. And then, without anything being said, we were in each other’s arms.

When my mother came into the kitchen to see what was keeping us, the dirty dishes were still in the sink. We moved apart, smiling foolishly, and all Mum said was, ‘About time. I couldn’t be more pleased, lad.’

Raymond was to wear one of his pre-war suits for the wedding. I was resigned to wearing my best skirt and jacket. It was a serviceable navy-blue serge, not exactly a bride’s first choice, but Pamela in the haberdashery department found a posy of silk anemones that had been behind the counter since before the war, enough to make a spray for my lapel and also to decorate my extremely unglamorous felt hat.

Then Dad came home with some parachute silk. It was perfectly legal. A pal had told him that they were selling it off at the air base and that, as it was coupon free, women were snapping it up to make underwear and curtains, as well as wedding gowns.

My mother and Pamela made my dress and when I tried it on for the final fitting the three of us cried.

‘You look beautiful, our Jeannie.’ My mother sounded surprised.

‘Of course she’s beautiful,’ Pamela said loyally. ‘That’s what being in love does!’

‘No, it’s more than that,’ Mum said. ‘She’s like the ugly duckling.’

‘Mum!’ I spluttered.

‘No, I mean it. You were just an ordinary lass and, of course, everyone compared you with Laura, but you’ve become a truly beautiful woman.’

So we all cried again and when Dad came home from The Fat Ox he shook his head, lit his pipe and retreated behind the evening paper.

I was a June bride. Pamela was my bridesmaid and Dennis, one of Raymond’s new pals from the paper, was best man. After the service we walked across to The Fat Ox for the reception in the room upstairs. While everybody was eating and drinking Mum quietly packed a hamper of sandwiches, sausage rolls and angel cakes for us to take away with us.

We couldn’t afford a honeymoon so we spent the first night of our married life in our little flat above Ida’s Hat Shop in Park View. Raymond had moved in weeks before and had completely redecorated every room.

Mum had also put a bottle of sherry in the hamper and we picnicked on the hearthrug by the glowing bars of the electric fire, like children who weren’t quite sure if it was all right for them to be alone with no one to tell them what to eat or what time to go to bed.