on, Lucy; they’re opening the doors,’ someone further down the queue warned.
Ruthie looked so apprehensive that Jess couldn’t help but laugh. She was such an oddity, so obviously not the sort to be working on munitions, that Jess’s tender heart had gone out to her the minute she had seen her.
Jess might be an only child but she had grown up surrounded by the busyness of a large extended family. Her mother was one of ten and her dad one of thirteen. The whole family lived close to one another on the same narrow streets off the Edge Hill Road, but nearer to the city centre than Chestnut Close, where Ruthie lived and which was considered to be a ‘better’ working-class area, because of its proximity to Wavertree. But although there may not have been much money around whilst Jess had been growing up, there had been plenty of love. Her father had been a jolly, good-natured man, always ready for a joke and a laugh. He and his brothers were rag-and-bone men, and he’d been proud of the fact that his patter had housewives favouring him rather than anyone else.
‘Got to ’ave the right touch, our Jess,’ he had often told her, giving her a saucy wink. ‘That’s how I managed to steal your mam away from under your Uncle Colin’s nose. Mad for her, he was, but it were me she married.’
‘Give over, do, Samuel Hunt,’ her mother had always chided him. ‘Don’t you go filling her head with all that nonsense. And as for your Colin -all he ever did was ask me out the once.’
There had always been a lot of banter between her parents, both of them able to give as good as they got, but it had been good-natured, and when her father had fallen ill after he had slipped on an icy street and broken his leg, her mother had become as thin and sick-looking as he.
Jess had been taken away to stay with one of her aunties when the doctor had said that her father was going to die.
‘Got poison in that broken leg of his, he has, lass,’ her Uncle Tom had told her. ‘Can’t do nowt about it.’
She had been taken to see him one last time, but he hadn’t looked like the dad she remembered, lying there in bed, his face oddly swollen and his breathing harsh.
She had been ten then, and could well remember walking behind the coffin when they went to bury him, and she could remember the wake afterwards as well, when his brothers, her uncles, had got drunk and started telling tales about when they had been lads together.
Her Uncle Colin had never married, and a year and a day after they had buried her dad, Jess’s mother had told her that she was going to marry him and that they would be going to live in his house. That was the way things were done in their community, and both sides of their extended family had looked approvingly on the marriage because of the security it gave a widow and her child. But, conscious of the child’s feelings both Jess’s mother and her new stepfather to be had been at pains to explain that her dad would never be forgotten and that the love all three of them had for him would never die, but would always keep him alive in their hearts.
Her uncle had provided her with as loving a home as her father had done and, as a child, just as her father and his brothers had brought home the flotsam and jetsam of their trade, sifting through it to rescue and nurture the ‘treasures’ they found, so Jess had learned to rescue her own flotsam and jetsam, normally in the form of some living thing. A singing bird that someone was throwing out because it wouldn’t sing, a stray kitten with a piece of string round its neck tied to a brick, a dog with three legs and cross-eyes -whatever it was, it only had to present itself to Jess as unloved and in need for her to take it to her heart and embrace it. There was nothing Jess liked more than bringing a smile to people’s faces, and happiness to those who didn’t possess it. She had an unerring instinct for those in need of her special touch, and she had recognised Ruthie as one of them the minute she had set eyes on her. Not that Jess analysed things as practically as that. She just knew that something made her feel sorry for Ruthie.
When the other girls took her to task for inviting Ruthie to go out dancing with them, Jess had told them firmly that Ruthie needed bringing out of herself a bit.
‘Have you done yet, Lucy, ’cos if you haven’t we’re going in without you? Otherwise we’ll lose our place in the queue and we won’t get a decent table,’ Elsie Wiggins, one of the older girls, who hadn’t wanted Jess inviting Ruthie along, shouted up.
‘We’re coming now,’ Jess responded, turning to smile at Ruthie. ‘Quick, have a look at yourself.’ She dived into her bag and produced a small mirror. ‘Proper smashing, you look. All you need now is a bit of lipstick. I’ll lend you mine when we get inside, and you’ll be turning all the lads’ heads and no mistake.’
Ruthie wasn’t listening to her. She was staring instead at her reflection in the mirror. She lifted her hand to touch the short fringe curling onto her face, her eyes widening. She looked so different, so grown-up.
‘Come on…Jess.’
Grabbing hold of Ruthie’s hand, Jess put the mirror away and hurried her along the street. Ruthie could feel the prickle of bits of hair sticking to her skin inside her frock. How much had Lucy cut off at the back? She had been snipping away for a very long time. Ruthie had never had her hair cut, always wearing it scraped back off her face in its neat plait. She reached behind her head and froze when her fingers encountered a soft mass of loose hair. Short loose hair.
‘Got a real nice wave to it now,’ Lucy was saying. ‘Though I say it meself, I’ve done it really nice. Mind you, them scissors I was using was that blunt it was like cutting it wi’ a knife and fork.’
‘All right, girls, how many of you are there then?’ one of the men on the door asked jovially
‘Eight,’ Jess answered him. ‘Eight of the best-looking girls in Liverpool. In fact, we’re that good-looking you should be letting us in for free,’ she told him, winking at Ruthie. ‘’Cos once the fellas see us they’ll be paying double just to get a closer look.’
‘Oh aye, well, you can tell that to the boss, if you like.’
‘I don’t know why you bother. It’s the same every week,’ a chubby ginger-haired girl protested.
‘Well, you never know, Andrea, one week he might let us in for nowt. It’s always worth a try. Him wot don’t ask don’t get – that’s what my dad allus used to say,’ Jess responded cheerfully, still holding Ruthie’s hand she led the way up the stairs to the ballroom.
Ruthie’s eyes widened as she followed Jess inside.
‘It’s Ivy Benson’s lot playing tonight,’ Lucy commented, glancing up at the gallery from which people could look down on the dance floor, and where the band played. ‘Ever so good, they are. They’ve got a good dance floor here too. Properly sprung, it is, not like some. Modelled it on some Russian dancing place.’
‘I think I remember reading that the building was designed after the Kirov Ballet Theatre,’ Ruthie supplied timidly, causing them all to stare at her.
‘Coo, proper schoolbook learning you’ve got, Ruthie, and no mistake,’ Lucy exclaimed admiringly.
‘Hmm.’ Carmen, another of the girls, with smouldering dark eyes and equally dark hair, pouted, unimpressed. ‘I like a proper band with a proper male singer.’
‘That’s only ’cos you want to give him the eye whilst you’re dancing,’ Elsie chirped up.
‘Look at them GIs over there,’ Lucy breathed. ‘You
