Ellie (64 page)

‘What am I going to wear?’ Ellie turned round to look at Bonny, who was lying on the bed reading a magazine. ‘The only evening dress I’ve got is the red one, and it’s so shabby.’

It seemed to Ellie that fate had nudged her towards a crossroads and she was scared of taking the wrong turn. The invitation she had found was real; Magnus really had suggested to the organisers of the Gala that she and Bonny take part in the cabaret. Now, just days before the Brighton show ended, everything, costumes, props and, music, was arranged. They were going to do the ‘Keep Young and Beautiful’ number from the Oxford show and ‘We’re a Couple of Swells’ and they’d rehearsed them diligently with Edward accompanying them on the piano each afternoon.

While Bonny could see no further ahead than this one glittering night and was thrilled that Magnus had arranged accommodation in London for them, Ellie was afraid.

The accommodation was only temporary, to tide them over between the Brighton show, the Gala and finding another job. Bonny seemed to think their turn at the Gala would shoot them into a West End production overnight, but Ellie was less optimistic. None of the girls she’d been working with had been offered further work; there wasn’t even a whisper of auditions for shows coming up. She had only a few pounds saved and she had no suitable dress to wear at the Savoy for before and after their act.

Bonny had a beauty – turquoise chiffon which she looked sensational in, bought by Magnus. Ellie couldn’t bear the thought of putting on the red dress and looking like a poor relation beside her.

‘Wear my black one!’ Bonny suggested. ‘Or go and buy something new. What about that midnight-blue one we saw in The Lanes?’

‘I can’t afford seven guineas,’ Ellie sighed. She needed the little money she had saved to live on until she got another job.

‘Well, it will have to be my black one then,’ Bonny said with hurtful indifference.

Ellie turned to Bonny, anger flashing up out of nowhere. Bonny was lounging on the bed in a new pink dress her mother had made her. She’d had her hair cut and set that morning and had even bought a new pink lipstick and matching nail varnish, while Ellie could barely afford to buy a bar of soap.

Clothes rationing and post-war shortages didn’t affect Bonny. While Ellie altered drab second-hand clothes, mended her underwear and sometimes even put cardboard over the holes in her shoes, Bonny somehow managed to get everything she wanted.

‘If you were to pay me back all you owe me I could afford a new one,’ Ellie snarled at her. ‘After all, you can go and stay with your parents in London if nothing turns up. I haven’t got anyone.’

When there was no sharp retort, Ellie felt a little deflated.

‘Well? Cat got your tongue?’

‘Don’t mention my parents while we’re in London,’ Bonny said in a small voice, her eyes downcast. ‘I told Magnus I hadn’t got any.’

Ellie was so shocked, her anger faded. She flopped down on the bed, stunned speechless. ‘But why tell such a lie?’ she managed eventually.

‘I don’t know.’ Bonny shrugged her shoulders.

‘But it’s such a
wicked
lie.’ Ellie was aghast. ‘I know your mother gets on your nerves, but she doesn’t deserve that! Was it to gain sympathy?’

Bonny’s face crumpled at her friend’s sharp tone. ‘You don’t understand,’ she bleated. ‘I want Magnus to marry me, I did as soon as I met him. I really do love him, Ellie, and it’s tearing me apart. I don’t want to be a dancer any longer. I want to be in a little house with him and have babies. I want to cut everything from my past. I want a new start, all bright and shiny.’

‘Wanting to marry a man you love is understandable. But I can’t see for the life of me why pretending you’re an orphan would help it along,’ Ellie said tartly.

‘I don’t know why I said that really, I didn’t have a reason. It just came out when your auntie died.’

‘It just came out!’ Ellie sniffed. ‘I can live with you telling people your Aunt Lydia is a countess, making out you’re twenty-two instead of seventeen. I didn’t even mind when you told me your dad was a Japanese prisoner of war. But I draw the line at killing off two people who love you.’

‘I don’t lie to you.’ Bonny lifted her head. She was beginning to cry and it made her look like a schoolgirl. ‘Maybe that’s because I know you love me for myself.’

There was a great deal more Ellie wanted to say, but that last line of Bonny’s pulled her up sharply. It was true. Bonny didn’t lie to her – she had stopped it after her abortion – but Ellie had never considered why that was, until now.

‘Then you mustn’t tell Magnus lies,’ she said. ‘Everything is stacked against you two, your ages, his marriage and position. The only thing you’ve got in common is love. But if you intend to fight to keep him, fight fair, for goodness’ sake. Don’t tarnish what you feel for him with cheap tricks to try and hold him.’

Once Ellie had gone off to the theatre for the afternoon matinée, Bonny began to think more about her friend’s words. She lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling, and wishing she could cut out the piece of her that made her tell lies.

She knew why she did it. She wanted attention, anyhow, any way. The real Bonny wasn’t very bright, she came from a dull home and had dull parents. What she did was add colour to an otherwise beige background. Edward could talk about his grandmother, his public school and his parents being killed in a motoring accident. Ellie might have been dreadfully poor but she spent her childhood in a theatre surrounded by talented, amusing people. Everyone Bonny knew had colour in their early lives, except her.

But she’d found colour now. The weekend with Magnus was golden, tinged with scarlet passion. When she looked back it was like looking into a vivid painting, startling in its intensity; the deep green of the overhanging trees as Magnus had rowed her up the river, the water silver in the sunshine, with a canopy of turquoise sky above them.

At dinner in the hotel he’d worn a dark suit and white shirt, his wiry hair suppressed with Brylcreem. To everyone else in that dining-room, he was a sedate businessman. Only she knew the body beneath that suit was deep brown from the sun, rippling with taut muscle. Their fellow diners might look at her and admire her pretty face and hair, but in Bonny’s eyes Magnus was the more beautiful. Thick springy hair the colour of butter and tender blue eyes flecked with greeny brown. A broad brown nose and wide forehead, fleshy lips that could soothe with gentle kisses, or in turn be as thrilling and as hard as a savage wild dog. His face and his nature were of a country boy, pure at heart, yet often as tempestuous as the weather. He was strong, yet so very sensitive. No other lover had ever taken her to the gates of heaven as he had, or so completely fulfilled her.

Bonny doubted that Ellie had ever been to that particular paradise, otherwise she wouldn’t be pouring cold water on it now. But it wasn’t just the making love – that she could probably get with other men. It was the way Magnus made her feel inside, more exciting than being up on the stage in a spotlight; sweet and fresh like seeing the first primrose in spring, yet scary too because it could all be snatched away so easily.

Bonny wanted Magnus for ever. For the first time in her life she wasn’t concerned with material things, only the man. Ellie might not fully understand how desperate she felt, but she was right in saying she mustn’t tell Magnus lies.

She got up from the bed and began to tidy up, suddenly aware how much she took Ellie for granted. She had been thoughtful and quiet for some weeks now. Was it because she was fed up with her? Or was she just worried about the future?

‘It’s time you did something for her,’ she murmured as she washed the cups and cleaned the wash-basin. Bonny didn’t like to think about what would happen to her if Ellie did go off and leave her.

It was as she closed the wardrobe door that Bonny thought of that blue dress Ellie liked. ‘Seven guineas!’ she muttered. ‘I haven’t even got seven shillings.’

‘Close your eyes!’ Bonny giggled as she opened the door to Ellie when she arrived home from the matinée, much later in the day. ‘Don’t open them till I say!’

‘What are you up to?’ Bonny’s surprises had a habit of being trouble, but Ellie shut her eyes anyway.

‘Close the door and turn round.’ Bonny’s voice trembled with excitement. ‘Now you can open them!’

For a moment Ellie thought it was a cruel joke. Bonny was holding up the midnight-blue evening dress to her shoulders. ‘You bought it!’ she exclaimed. ‘What for? You’ve got the lovely turquoise one.’

‘I didn’t buy it for me,’ Bonny said indignantly. ‘It’s for you.’

A wide smile spread across Ellie’s face, but it faded again as a thought crossed her mind. ‘Where did you get the money? Did you take it out of my drawer?’

Bonny looked hurt and the corners of her mouth drooped. ‘Of course I didn’t take your money. It’s a present. Though I did nick your clothing coupons. I got the money by selling a couple of bits of jewellery.’

‘Not the bracelet Stan Unsworth gave you?’ Ellie saw Bonny’s wrist was bare.

Bonny grinned. ‘It was a lot more valuable than I expected. I got fifteen pounds for it. Now stop nitpicking and try it on.’

Ellie was shaken. Bonny loved that bracelet; she never tired of showing it to people. For her to sell it, to buy a present for someone else, was the equivalent of shaving off her lovely hair or taking a cleaning job. Ellie was so touched at the unexpected generosity she was speechless.

‘I d-d-don’t know what to say,’ she stuttered, a lump coming up in her throat.

‘That’s not like you!’ Bonny grinned impishly. ‘Now get it on before I lose patience.’

Ellie pulled off her cotton dress in a second and stepped into the long dress. ‘Do me up.’ She lifted her hair out of the way and as Bonny finished fastening the tiny buttons, she turned. ‘So how do I look?’

‘Like my aunt, the countess,’ Bonny laughed. ‘Oh Ellie, it’s so perfect. You look gorgeous.’

Ellie looked at herself in the mirror on the wardrobe and gasped. The deep blue crêpe enhanced her black hair and olive skin in a way no other colour had before. It was strapless, the bodice boned to stay up alone and the skirt cut on the bias so it clung to her hips, then flared out just below her bottom in a fishtail style.

‘It’s so heavenly,’ Ellie whispered reverently. She couldn’t really believe what the dress did for her: her bare shoulders looked so sexy and the boned bodice pushed up her breasts so she looked like a film star. ‘I’ve never had anything so beautiful, or so expensive. Oh Bonny!’ She took a couple of steps towards her friend and hugged her, a tear rolling down her cheek.

‘Now we’ll both be a couple of swells at that do,’ Bonny said in a curiously croaky voice. ‘It’s not much good me saying I’m sorry for things I say and do. I’m just made that way. This is all I could think of instead.’

Ellie held Bonny, no more words being necessary. She could understand why men fell under Bonny’s spell; there was something so magical about her sometimes. Ellie could feel all her anxiety draining away, and excitement and optimism taking its place.

Now at the Gala she could be confident. Sir Miles might not be there, and she might not get an opportunity to speak to him, even if he was. But none of that mattered now. She was going to make the Gala night work for her. This was the big chance.

Chapter Twenty-Four

September 1946

‘Whoever would’ve believed a kid from Alder Street would end up here!’ Ellie whispered to Bonny. They were standing by the window of the Savoy Ballroom watching the guests arrive, trying very hard to look as if they usually came to such posh places. ‘Just look at all those jewels! And did you see the furs they’ve left in the cloakroom? If I had a coat like that I’d be sitting on it, afraid someone would nick it!’

The summer had ended abruptly as they packed their cases to come to London three days earlier, even though it was only mid-September. Tonight it had mercifully stopped raining, but the view of the River Thames from the window was obscured by fog and they could see nothing beyond the lights on the Embankment.

The Savoy was even more grand and intimidating than they had expected. One of the doormen had said it was looking shabby compared with before the war, but Ellie thought it was all too wonderful.

All the guest wore their dinner-jackets and evening dresses with a nonchalance that suggested a gala evening such as this was an ordinary event in their lives. Ellie was aware now that the glass beads at her neck would never fool anyone here into thinking they were diamonds. She could see the real thing everywhere, flashing and sparkling from throats, ears and fingers with a brilliance no fake could match. All the women had dainty beaded evening bags and long gloves. Ellie wished she had too, if only to give her something to hold on to.

‘Don’t speak like that!’ Bonny said sharply. ‘Someone will hear you and think we’re a couple of –’ she stopped short, unable to think of an appropriate word.

‘Imposters?’ Ellie grinned. ‘That’s what I feel like, or as my mum used to say, “Like a ham sandwich in a synagogue.”’

Bonny looked like a film star in her turquoise chiffon, the colour matching her eyes and enhancing her golden suntan. Ellie thought perhaps it was easier for blondes to look expensive. She herself had felt she looked fabulous before they arrived here tonight, but now she wasn’t so sure. Black hair, bare shoulders and so much cleavage above the midnight-blue dress was dramatic, but was it too revealing? What if she just looked cheap?

‘I feel perfectly at home,’ Bonny said, smiling at a short fat man who glanced her way. ‘And if you’re going to embarrass me I’ll find someone else to chat to.’

‘Okay, won’t mention it again,’ Ellie agreed good-naturedly. ‘So what do we chat about? Am I allowed to mention that woman is too fat for that dress?’

Bonny giggled, despite her efforts to be dignified.

The woman in question was perhaps fifty and maybe sixteen stone. Her rose-pink taffeta dress had a tight fitted bodice and a full gathered skirt. Not only did the bodice look as if the seams were straining, but she had bulges of puckered flesh breaking out over the top of the low neck and another huge roll at her waist.