Unforgettable (3 page)

‘Looks like you've got a rival, Gracie,' Dolly said, close beside her.

Gracie tried not to feel disappointed or stupidly betrayed, when she had no business to be, just because he had danced one dance with her. Just because he had picked her out of the couple of hundred people here, and made a point of coming up to the table where she sat, and asked her in that so-polite way if she would care to dance with him. He probably did that on every occasion. He probably played at ever so many dances, every night of the week except Sunday, and she'd be a fool if she thought she was anybody special.

‘Do you want another dance, Gracie?' Billy asked her a while later.

She gave a sigh. He was all right in a dull, undemonstrative kind of way, but he wasn't the sort to make any girl's blood tingle. But he looked at her so hopefully that she didn't have the heart to refuse him.

‘All right, but then I'm going outside for a breath of fresh air.'

She had to admit that the atmosphere was becoming claustrophobic. There were too many people crammed into a hall that had seemed large and spacious at first, and now
seemed pathetically small for them all.

The air was thick with cigarette smoke, wafting upwards to that great glittering ball of light in the ceiling, creating wreaths and patterns of a peculiar opaque beauty. The smoke made her cough, and crushed in the middle of the heaving mass of dancers she realized she was finding it hard to breathe comfortably.

‘Billy, I need some air,' she said, her throat catching.

‘All right,' he said, obliging as ever.

They began to push through the dancers. Other people seemed to be coughing too, Gracie realized, and her eyes started to water. It shouldn't be like this on the Grand Opening …

Even as the uneasy thought swirled into her mind, people began shouting. Excitement at the occasion turned to mild alarm and then panic. The shouts became screams, and nearing the door, Gracie swivelled around to see flickers of fire appear as if from nowhere.

‘Run, Gracie,' she heard Billy shout, pushing her so hard she almost fell.

‘Get out while you can, ducks, before you're fried to a crisp,' someone yelled in her ear.

All the doors were suddenly opened, and Gracie was nearly flattened as the mass of
people fought to get out of the hall through what seemed now to be minuscule openings. A huge roar sounded behind her, as a sheet of flame was ignited by the rush of air from outside.

Without warning, the beautiful, slowly circulating ball of lights in the centre of the hall came crashing down on the people right beneath it. Shards of glass flew everywhere, and the dancers' finery was quickly sprayed with blood, and worse.

‘Gawd Almighty, what's happening?'

Dolly's scratchy voice came to Gracie through the chaos, and she grabbed hold of her friend's hand and almost hurled her through the open door to the welcome air outside. They fell to the ground, in real danger of being trampled by the others following, and the next minute they were hauled to their feet and pulled sideways into a nearby alley. It happened so fast that what had been such a splendid occasion, was now a heaving mass of bodies all trying to escape from the pall of black smoke and flames coming from the building.

Gracie and Dolly were still catching their breath when the sound of fire engines streaking through the night added to the unreality, and they clung to one another in sheer relief that they were alive, even though
it became clear that many were not going to be so lucky.

‘Bloody good thing we were near the entrance,' Jim said hoarsely, flexing his knuckles in his familiar way, as if to fight the whole damn world if he could.

‘The poor buggers who were nearest the band didn't stand a chance,' Dolly sobbed, her face streaked and ugly with tears, her lipstick smeared across her cheeks like a garish clown's face.

Gracie felt her heart stop. Nobody knew what had started the fire, but the Palais had been built on the site of an old warehouse.
Like the phoenix rising from the ashes
, one of their lodgers had said, which seemed like a horrible omen now. But Gracie was remembering that the band had been playing at the far end of the hall, well away from the entrance doors. Charlie Morrison had been playing his saxophone, and it was a sure bet now that he was one of those who had been burnt to a crisp … that handsome young man, whom she had foolishly dreamed was going to be her knight in shining armour …

‘Gawd Almighty, what's got into her now?' Jim asked irritably, as Gracie started keening uncontrollably.

‘It's shock,' Dolly said, startled by this
uncharacteristic wailing.

‘There's only one way to deal with that,' Jim told her, and Gracie felt a stinging slap across the side of her face.

‘What are you doing?' Dolly yelled. ‘Have you gone bleedin' mad?'

She pummelled at his chest to stop him, and the next minute she went reeling as he punched her back.

‘You silly bitch, can't you see I'm doing it for the best?'

‘
No
. I think you're doing it because you like hitting women,' Dolly raged, pulling Gracie into her arms, and wincing at the pain in her bruised chest.

‘It ain't the first time,' she heard Billy snigger.

People were pushing past them to get away from the inferno, not bothering with the four people bunched up against the wall of the alley, and more concerned with saving their own skins as the beautiful new Palais went up in smoke.

‘I'm getting her home,' Dolly said through gritted teeth. ‘You two can go and stuff yourselves for all I care.'

‘Chance would be a fine thing. Tell you what. I'll see you in the park on Sunday, Dolly.' Jim grinned.

‘Not if I see you first. Are you loony or
something?' Dolly said, and then yelped as she banged her head against the wall as Gracie jerked out of her arms.

‘Don't even think of seeing this lout again, Dolly,' Gracie screamed. ‘He's nothing but a bully.'

‘And you're such a little princess, ain't you?' Jim sneered. ‘Anyway, what goes on between Dolly and me ain't no business of yours.'

‘Come on, Gracie,' Dolly said, grabbing her arm and pushing her through the people running out of the alley towards the street beyond. ‘We need to get away before they start asking for witnesses.'

They twisted away from the coalmen, but as they reached the main street they were faced with several men asking questions and taking notes.

‘We don't know anything,' Gracie yelled in a panic. ‘We were dancing like everybody else when the air suddenly got choked and then the fire started.'

‘And you are?'

Dolly pushed forward, seeing what all this was about before Gracie did.

‘What's it worth for our story, mate?'

‘A few bob if it's reliable,' the man said.

‘OK then. I'm Dolly Neath and this is my friend Gracie Brown, and we work at
Lawson's Shirt Factory. We was quite near the entrance so we could get out when the fire started—'

‘Dolly, they're
reporters
,' Gracie ground out. ‘They'll put our names in the papers. Don't tell them any more.'

‘Why not? Don't you want to be famous?'

‘If my mum and dad get to see any of this, they'll make me go back to Southampton, you idiot.'

‘Hold still, girls,' came a voice, and as they stopped arguing, their eyes met a camera flash, and then a few coins were pressed into Dolly's hand before the newspaper men slithered away like the snakes Gracie's dad always said they were.

‘
Now
look what you've done,' she raged, but Dolly was looking with disgust at the paltry sum she'd been paid.

‘Next time I'll invent something really wild, and get paid properly for my trouble!
And
I'll be looking half-decent for a picture in the paper as well and not like a bleedin' scarecrow—'

Gracie felt alarmed. ‘Oh God, my folks will kill me if they see my picture in the paper. You don't really think they'll show them, do you?'

‘Nah. They'll be taking pictures of the fire and any toffs who got fried.'

‘Oh shut up, Dolly. That's a horrible thing to say.'

‘Why is it? You got to face facts, and it stands to reason that some of them were done for. ‘Specially those near the band—'

She stopped talking at the stricken look on Gracie's face.

‘Oh, sorry, gel, I wasn't thinking. But don't worry about your saxophone player. The band came through a door at the other end of the hall to get on the stage, didn't they? Stands to reason they'd have been all right.'

She tried to sound confident for Gracie's sake, when in reality she didn't have any idea of the band's arrangements. It just seemed to make sense on a night when nothing else did. But neither of them wanted to hang around any longer, and they ran down the street until they could catch a tram back to the boarding-house, ignoring the black looks of the other passengers who clearly thought they'd been up to no good.

* * *

As the next day was Sunday, there would be no reports of the fire in the newspapers yet, and no work until Monday morning. Which was just as well, considering the state of
Gracie's bruised cheeks, and the ache in Dolly's chest where Jim had punched her.

They couldn't keep their discomfort away from the prying eyes of the landlady, though, and during breakfast, she snapped at the two factory girls.

‘I don't know what you two have been up to, but let me remind you that this is a respectable establishment, and if you start bringing trouble back here, you'll be out on your ears quicker than blinking.'

‘We're not bringing trouble back, Mrs Warburton,' Gracie said, before Dolly could answer back. ‘We were caught up in the terrible fire at the new Palais last night, though. Hasn't anybody told you about it yet?'

The bleary-eyed laundry worker, back from his night shift, nodded.

‘The girl's right, Mrs W. They say it burned to the ground, and after they spent all that money on it as well. They all said it was courting disaster to build it on top of an old warehouse. Gawd knows what was underneath it.'

Mrs Warburton was clearly displeased at being the last to hear.

‘It would be the Lord's work then. I always said such places were dens of evil.'

‘More likely to be the work of some more
earthly devils handy with a box of matches,' Dolly said in a loud aside.

The landlady looked at her coldly. ‘You should be careful about saying such thing, Miss Neath. Dirt sticks, you know.'

‘Daft old trout,' Dolly said, as the landlady went out of the dining-room. ‘It's not as if we was smoking cigarettes, anyway.'

Another lodger added his piece.

‘You know how particular Mrs Warburton is, and if she thought you girls had taken up smoking, she'd send you packing. It's all right for a man to smoke a pipe,' he added, ‘but cigarette smoking is unbecoming for young girls.'

‘Blimey, we didn't expect a lecture at this time of a morning,' Dolly said indignantly. ‘Sometimes I wonder why I even stay here.'

‘It's cheap and cheerful, that's why,' Gracie reminded her.

‘I'm going out this afternoon,' Dolly told Gracie, ignoring the comment. ‘You can come if you like, but there's a nip in the air, and it'll probably make your cheeks sting.'

‘Since when did you become so considerate?' Gracie retorted, then remembered. ‘If you're going to meet that Jim, Dolly, you're asking for trouble.'

‘What's it to you?' Dolly said defiantly. ‘You never met a chap sitting around indoors
reading your old movie-star magazines. And Jim's all right.'

‘He's a bully and he's the type who's likely to turn into a wife-beater.'

Dolly scoffed. ‘Well, at least he's a man with a bit of beef in him, not like a namby-pamby saxophone player. Jesus, Gracie, I'm sorry, but I'm sure nothing happened to him last night,' she added as her friend's lips trembled.

‘You don't know that it didn't.'

‘You don't know that it did, either, so what's the good of worrying about it? You're probably never going to know, because he's not going to be playing at the Palais again, is he?'

Gracie swallowed. ‘I just don't want you to get hurt,' she muttered, even though her mind was still on Charlie Morrison. ‘And I can't see anything else happening if you see Jim again.'

‘If he gets fresh I'll give you a full report tonight,' Dolly said with a wink.

‘Thanks, but I'd rather not know if it's all the same to you!'

By now Gracie knew it was pointless trying to make Dolly change her mind, and watched in exasperation as she took ages wondering what to wear and trying to flatten out some of the stiff waves in her blonde hair, which she
had now decided made her look like a bonfire guy.

‘At this rate, Jim will think you're never going to meet him, and he'll have given up on you,' she said.

They parted company and Gracie spent her Sunday afternoon poring over her favourite movie-star magazines. Her nerves were still on edge, moping about a man she hardly knew, but who had made such an impression on her. Thinking what might have been … She hadn't got over the shock yet, not by a long way, and she didn't have Dolly's ability to put it all behind her so quickly. If they hadn't been near the doors of the Palais at the time, it could have been fatal for them, and they had yet to discover how many had been killed or injured.

She shuddered, realizing she was finding little pleasure today in reading about the doings of her favourite movie stars. It was all make-believe, anyway, and what had happened on Saturday night had been real, raw life. And death.

By mid-afternoon, she knew she couldn't stay inside the boarding-house any longer. With the same sudden need for fresh air as she had felt last night, Gracie thought that if she didn't get out of there, she would become as stagnant as the rest of the Sunday
afternoon lodgers.