coats on and were going out of the front door, leaving the house feeling very empty and quiet without them.
An hour later Tilly was gazing round the interior of the Palais, still half unable to believe that she was actually here. The packed ballroom had been decorated for Christmas and everyone was in high spirits.
There was a large Christmas tree illuminated with multicoloured fairy lights in the entrance foyer, but well back from the doors so as not to break the blackout laws. Red and green paper garlands decorated the ceiling, coming from the walls to the huge glittering mirror ball suspended over the dance floor, whilst the male bar staff were wearing red waistcoats, and a cheery-looking Father Christmas, escorted by a bevy of pretty girls wearing short red dresses trimmed with white swansdown, went from table to table selling raffle tickets. The whole atmosphere was so exciting and filled with Christmas goodwill and fun that at first Tilly and Agnes could only stand and stare as they tried to take it all in.
‘I never thought it would be like this,’ Tilly gasped in delight. ‘I mean, I knew it would be wonderful . . .’
When she stopped, lost for words, Dulcie informed her knowledgably, ‘Well, it is the best dancehall in London,’ before leading them all speedily to ‘her’ table, a move that Sally recognised was a good one, half an hour later as she looked to where some people were standing watching the dancing and reflected that she herself wouldn’t have fancied standing up all evening. But then, aching feet were something she was familiar with, being a nurse.
Sally was used to the atmosphere of Liverpool’s Grafton Ballroom, but she still had to admit that the Palais was impressive. No one could be here on a night like this and not be infected by the atmosphere of fizzing excitement and energy.
For Tilly, the atmosphere in the ballroom was almost magical, and she gazed round at her surroundings in thrilled delight, half unable to believe that she was actually here. The church hall could never compare with something like this. Her eyes widened as she watched prettily dressed young women and their partners take to the floor. She felt so . . . so grown up and special just being here.
‘Oh, isn’t this wonderful?’ she mouthed to Agnes above the sound of the Joe Loss Orchestra.
‘I hadn’t realised it would be so big or that there’d be so many people here,’ Agnes mouthed back, her own feelings tending more towards apprehension than excitement. She didn’t much like crowds.
A waiter stopped at their table, asking if they wanted drinks.
‘Lemonade for us,’ Sally said firmly, indicating Tilly, Agnes and herself.
‘Yes, and for me as well,’ Dulcie surprised her by agreeing.
The reality was that whilst Dulcie would have a shandy if one was pressed on her, she had seen enough of what too much alcohol could do in her own neighbourhood to want to end up the worse for drink herself. There was Ma Bowker, who lived round the corner from her own parents, the whole family crammed into three rooms they rented in a tenanted house. Ma Bowker liked nothing more than rolling up her sleeves and laying into both her kids and her husband, giving them a real battering when she was in drink. Then there were the husbands who regularly knocked their wives about, and then ‘up’ after too much to drink; men who drank so much of their wages that there wasn’t enough left to feed their families. Dulcie wanted no part of that. Her own father thankfully wasn’t a big drinker. He liked his pint on a Friday and a Saturday, just as he liked his bet at the dogs, but that was all.
There were plenty of women dancing together, Tilly noticed, but when she suggested to Dulcie that they did the same, Dulcie shook her head firmly.
‘It looks like you can’t get a proper partner if you do that, and besides, we won’t be sitting here long. The best-looking girls always get asked to dance.’
As though to prove her point, just as she finished saying this four young men approached their table. However, before they could so much as open their mouths, Dulcie was saying firmly, ‘No, thanks, we aren’t dancing right now. We’re just waiting for our drinks.’
Dulcie’s manner was rather different from what she had expected, Sally had to admit, ruefully.
‘We can do better than that,’ Dulcie explained. ‘Much better. You’ve got to make sure that lads know how lucky they are when you agree to have a dance with them,’ she informed Tilly and Agnes firmly.
Their drinks arrived, delivered by a smiling redwaistcoated waiter, and Sally paid for them using the money Olive had given her for that purpose when she’d asked Sally to keep an eye on what Tilly and Agnes had to drink.
Dulcie had told herself not to expect to see David. She’d achieved her goal and that was that. David might have said that they were two of a kind but Dulcie disagreed. He was posh – a toff – and he’d marry Lydia. To him she was just a bit of fun, a way of breaking the rules before he knuckled down to the right kind of marriage. Dulcie knew that, but she also knew where her own boundaries lay and she wasn’t going to let David cross them. Besides, it made her feel good to realise that he’d rather be with her than Lydia. Lydia might look down her nose at her, but Dulcie could feel she had one up on her because Lydia’s fiancé secretly fancied her. There was no way, though, that she was going to end up as David’s bit on the side. That wasn’t how Dulcie envisaged her future at all. Ultimately she would marry, and the kind of respectable man she wanted as her husband – a man with a good job, perhaps even in an office, who could afford to buy them a house like those in Article Row, or perhaps even in one of those new suburbs she’d seen advertised – would not want a wife who’d been carrying on with other men. Dulcie viewed her planned future without sentiment. All women had to marry – how else could they manage financially? But she was determined that her marriage would give her a better life than her mother and their neighbours had. Dulcie had no illusions about herself. Men would always be attracted to her because of her looks, more the wrong kind of men than the right kind. It was up to her to make sure that when she let the wrong kind, like David, treat her to the good things in life, they did so on the understanding that she was merely trading with them the right to enjoy having a pretty girl on their arm, but not the right to expect sexual favours.
Living in Article Row, like working in Selfridges, was for Dulcie a step in the direction she wanted her life to go. Both conferred on her a certain status that, for all her mother’s boasting about Edith’s singing, allowed Dulcie to feel that she had moved ‘up’ socially from her background. She might milk these benefits for all that she could but there was no way she was going to risk losing them by going too far.
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
