spotting a friend from her training class, and left Natalie alone in the queue.
‘There’s nothing wrong with being sensible,’ Natalie called after her. The woman in front, a good deal older than Natalie, but with curls as luscious as Ginger Rogers’, turned to look her up and down.
Natalie was glad she had a moment alone to let the sting of Delphi’s remark fade. Yes, she had been prudent when she’d invested her father’s inheritance in her teacher training. It had meant she could support herself, but being responsible wasn’t always easy, or much fun.
‘Quick! The hall is nearly full,’ Delphi said as she returned. ‘They’re expecting two and a half thousand. That’s double last year’s rally.’
Delphi hooked her by the arm and swept her past the snaking queue. ‘My friend Francine is saving us a place near the front.’
Adorned with black kohl, stem-thin eyebrows, Francine took Natalie by surprise with a forceful hug more appropriate for a long-lost friend. Just as they passed through the arched doorway, a man edged by with a sign: house full; then his arm formed a barrier just behind Natalie. The whines and tuts of disappointed women faded behind them. Francine’s affections, Natalie realised, were short-lived. She’d already run on ahead, leaving the two of them to descend into the bowels of Olympia together.
The open hall teemed with women changing into their Women’s League of Health and Beauty uniform. Too late, she realised if she’d put the shorts on under her clothes she wouldn’t have needed to reveal her underwear.
‘Did you remember to shave your armpits?’ Delphi asked.
Natalie nodded.
‘Did you apply deodorant?’
‘Could you be a little more discreet?’ she hissed. But there was such a din that only those changing right next to them would hear anyway. She could hardly make out her own voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, regretting the tone she’d taken and seeing the funny side to it now. ‘My armpits are in perfect order.’ The laughter at Delphi’s fastidiousness loosened her muscles. The tension she felt from stripping off in a busy room lifted.
An older woman, with flesh spilling over the top of her worn girdle, shunted away from them. Did she come home from a hard day’s work to soak flower petals with baking soda and soap flakes, too? Had her family dined on bread so she could spend her housekeeping on two and six for her annual League membership?
‘Do you think the deodorant matters?’ Natalie asked, looking about to check no one was looking at her legs in the shorts. ‘The League’s instructions for appearance could put undue pressure on the members, don’t you think?’
‘Not at all,’ the older woman butted in, ‘how often do you think I get to think about myself and how I look? Not very, I can tell you!’
None of her college students gave a hoot about how their hair was fixed, or whether their gymslip showed their legs in the right manner – well except Margaret Wilkins perhaps. The rest were focused on the victory, on building character.
She looked about her while she waited for Delphi. Compared to these ladies her reputation at the college for being concerned with her appearance was nothing. Her waved jaw-length hair, gripped back from her face at the crown, looked really as dour as a schoolmarm’s bun.
Delphi was blotting her nose again. Her hairdo seemed so impractical, with her blond locks fastened in a complicated twist at the nape of her neck. But that wasn’t what concerned Natalie. For some inexplicable reason her friend’s nose always bubbled with tiny beads of sweat just before one of her sleeping fits. Extremes of emotion, including excitement, were just the things that caused her to black out.
At the sight of the sweat on her friend’s nose, apprehension descended on Natalie. What if Delphi does have a sleeping fit in the midst of all these women?
‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ she whispered in her ear.
‘Please don’t,’ Delphi said with her usual soft defiance, powdering her nose to blot away the perspiration. ‘I’m tired of my health holding me back.’ She had slipped off her dress and was smoothing down the white V-necked blouse beneath. ‘What about your hankie?’
‘Blast.’
Natalie had forgotten the handkerchief. The League had been very clear that it must be pressed and placed in the left leg of her elasticated satin shorts. Not that there was much room for anything inside those shorts.
‘You’ll have to borrow mine if you get upset. They’re going to pay tribute to Prunella’s mother.’
Prunella Stack, the founder’s recently bereaved daughter, was now in charge of the League.
They followed the chattering girls through to the Grand Hall. The hairs on her arms stood tall again. The sweeping latticed glass ceiling, way above them in the heavens, was both a hothouse that at once amplified the chatter of two and a half thousand excited women, while also bringing them closer to the serenity of the clouds above on this grey April day.
She threaded an arm through Delphi’s and they smiled at one another, sharing the thrill of the moment, the tingle in the air.
A troop of women brushed past them as they marched up and down behind banners from their home towns or counties; first Portsmouth went by, then Yorkshire was followed by a rowdy group from Yeovil. On either side of the central concourse – the same dimensions as a swimming pool, though broader and longer than anything she’d ever seen – were steep-sided seats for the spectators: the children, sisters, brothers and husbands of the women demonstrating today.
‘I want to be near the front,’ Delphi said, ‘as close to Prunella as possible.’
Natalie held back, noticing the flashbulbs coming from the front. Prunella had been the main topic of many of Delphi’s letters, but they had to be practical and not get too close. They’d both told lies so they could be there today. It would do neither of them any good to find themselves pictured in the press, nor would it help Delphi’s career prospects if she had a sleeping fit right at the foot of the stage.
Delphi gave up on pushing through when an instruction came for them to sit down. They noisily lowered to the cool concrete floor and sat cross-legged. Delphi and Natalie squeezed into a row in the midst of a group of Scots wearing tartan ribbons on their shoulders, about half a dozen lines from the very front. They had an excellent view of the stage and the three-piece jazz band, but were safe from the photographers, and hidden from view should Delphi take a turn.
Natalie lifted her head and looked all the way behind her at the rows and rows of ladies, all in matching white shirts and black shorts. All with their hair set in waves.
For all their uniformity, the women inside the outfits were much more of a mixture than she’d expected. At her college there was a definite sort of girl who thrived there – she’d been one herself – usually wealthy, or as in her case, with a father in a respectable profession.
These ladies weren’t of one sort at all. Some were their age – surplus women as the press liked to label them, women like she and Delphi, in their thirties, still single and not much hope of that ever changing. The loss of so many men in the war had seen to that. Not that she’d ever give up the hope of finding a husband. Others around them wore more lines about the eyes, and had rounder hips. War widows, no doubt.
