Unforgettable (4 page)

She wouldn't go to the park though, where she was likely to run into Dolly and Jim. Like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime, she had a bizarre urge to go back to the Palais, to see the damage. Perhaps it wasn't too bad. Perhaps, in their mad panic to get out, they had mistaken a small fire for something much greater. She blotted out the memory of that sheet of flame, boarded a tram and soon realized that people were talking about it in heated conversations, clearly knowing nothing of the true circumstances. Gracie began to feel mildly hysterical, wanting to hit out and say that they shouldn't spread these wicked rumours …

The minute she got off the tram and walked the few streets to where the Palais had stood in all its glittering glory, she knew there had been no exaggeration. The acrid smell of smoke reached her long before she got there, and there were other, more sickening smells that she couldn't identify, and didn't care to try. In the starkness of a spring afternoon, the reality looked even worse. Crowds of onlookers gazed at the blackened remains of the Palais, its roof completely destroyed, its framework leaning crazily towards the sky. The effects of fire and water from the
firemens' hoses still filled the air with that stifling and nauseating stink.

‘Terrible sight, ain't it?' someone said. ‘They say dozens of 'em were killed, overcome by smoke or burned to death, or trampled in the rush to get out of the place.'

‘Who says so?' Gracie stammered.

‘Well, everybody,' someone else said impatiently. ‘Stands to reason, dunnit? Not many could have survived in that little lot.'

‘Well,
I
did,' she said savagely, angered beyond reason by the callous way he was stating false facts.

A woman nearby nudged her friend.

‘You was in there then, was you? What was it like then?' Her voice was eager, ghoulish, wanting to know details Gracie didn't have, and wouldn't have told her if she did.

‘Well, if you wanted a quick sunburn, I suppose that was one way to get it,' she replied, her voice harsh. ‘What the bleedin' hell do you think it was like?'

‘There's no need to be so stuck-up! I was only asking! You young girls think you can say anything these days. You all need a lesson in manners,' the woman said, and turned her back on Gracie in a huff.

She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Stuck-up indeed, with what she had just said! She normally left the swearing to Dolly, even
though she heard plenty of it from the girls and the blokes at Lawson's Shirt Factory, and could cuss with the best of them if she had to. Which went to prove that she was just a factory girl after all, and shouldn't put on airs, just as her mother said.

‘Gracie. It is you, isn't it?'

She turned quickly, her heart in her mouth, hoping and praying that the voice in the crowd belonged to Charlie, miraculously saved from the fire and seeking her out, if not exactly on a white charger, as good as.

‘Billy!' she stammered. ‘I didn't expect to see you here.'

The sheer disappointment that it wasn't Charlie hit her like a body blow. For a moment she had really hoped …

‘Didn't have nowhere else to go. Bit of a mess, ain't it?'

‘You could say that.' You could say a lot of things, but you wouldn't get much response out of Billy, who, she already knew, was one of the world's worst talkers. Then, seeing how he was twisting his cap in his hands, she sensed his awkwardness at speaking to her at all.

‘Let's get away from here, Billy,' she said abruptly.

You didn't normally ask a young man out, but this was no ordinary young man. This was just—Billy. When he looked even dumber with embarrassment, she went on desperately: ‘We could have a cup of tea and a bun in the tea room around the corner. They open for an hour or so on Sunday afternoons. My treat.'

‘All right.'

She had only said it on the spur of the moment, and now she knew she was going to be stuck with him. For one awful moment the thought of ever getting married to a man with no conversation was so dreary that she nearly tripped on the flagstones. As his arm went out to steady her, she averted her eyes to hide her feelings. He wasn't dangerous the way she was certain his mate Jim could be, or exciting and glamorous like Charlie. He was just dull.

* * *

Dolly screamed with laughter when she heard that Gracie had had afternoon tea in a tea shop with Billy.

‘You must want your head read, walking out with that dummy.'

‘I'm certainly not walking out with him. I was sorry for him, that's all.'

‘You want to be careful, Gracie. He'll never leave you alone now.'

‘Yes he will, because I told him I've already got a young man, and I was just thanking him for looking after me at the Palais last night.'

‘Blimey, I never thought you could tell such fibs. So who's this young man you're supposed to have then? Didn't he ask about him?'

Gracie flushed. ‘He's not so dumb. He'd
seen me dancing with Charlie, and he guessed right away that it was him. So I didn't say it wasn't.'

‘Oh well, you needn't bother about
him
turning up to put a spanner in the works. He's played his last tune, so you've lost two of 'em now.'

For a moment, Gracie didn't follow—and then she rounded on her friend.

‘That's a piggy thing to say, Dolly. You don't know what happened to Charlie, any more than I do, so don't say such awful things.'

‘Sorry, I'm sure. Do you want to know what me and Jim got up to?'

‘No, but I'm sure you're going to tell me.'

Dolly giggled. ‘We had a canoodle under the trees until Jim said we'd better move on before we frightened the horses. Not that there were any horses about, but you know what I mean!' she added with a wink.

‘I know you're asking for trouble if you see him again.'

‘Too bad, because I'm seeing him next Sunday as well.'

* * *

They weren't on the best of terms next morning, to the usual whistles and cat-calls
from the men in the packing-room at the factory, and the sniggers from the girls already at work. The owner came towards them almost before they had got the covers off their machines, and thrust a morning paper under their noses.

‘What have you two charmers been up to then? I must be paying you too much if you can go dancing of a Saturday night. You won't be paying the Palais any more visits though. You can take a quick look at this, then bring it back to my office. I don't want you slacking all morning.'

His voice was already fading when they looked at the open pages of the morning paper and saw their own faces looking back up at them like startled rabbits in the camera flash. And beneath it, for all to see, were their names, and the details that they were factory girls who'd felt like going up in the world for a night that had ended in disaster.

‘Blimey, what a sight I look! What did I tell you!' Dolly screeched, not concerned with anything else.

The other girls crowded round eagerly.

‘What happened? Did the place really go up in smoke with you in it?'

‘Pretty much,' Gracie said, shuddering at the memory. ‘But we were near the entrance, so we got out before the worst of it.'

She felt shivery all over, knowing that every time anyone asked her about it, she would realize again just how lucky she was.

‘Was anyone killed?'

‘Shut up a minute and I'll tell you,' Dolly bawled, reading quickly. ‘It says about fifty people were badly burned and up to twenty died, but it was hard to tell exactly since there were no records of who was there. The dead and injured were mostly trapped by other people trying to reach the entrance doors.'

She snapped the newspaper shut, as Ed Lawson bellowed at them to get on with their work.

‘I'd better not read any more, and old Lawson will have our guts for garters if we don't get started,' she said.

Gracie bent over her machine, her face paper-white as the events were relived in her mind. Dolly had no soul, she raged, and then she couldn't think any more. Without warning, she keeled over her machine in a dead faint.

When she came to she was being propped up, and something was being pressed against her lips as Dolly tried to make her drink some water. The only effect was to make Gracie splutter and spill it down her work overall.

‘Jesus, gel, you gave us a fright then,' Dolly said. ‘Old Lawson came stamping down the
room, wanting to know if you was up the duff.'

‘What!' Gracie was overcome with mortification, breathing so fast now that she was probably in danger of fainting all over again.

She held herself together with an effort. She wasn't spineless. But she wasn't the sort of girl Ed Lawson was implying either. She was a good girl, a clean-minded girl, and she intended to stay that way until the man of her dreams asked her to marry him.

‘It's all right, Gracie,' another girl said easily. ‘We all vouched for you, and anyway, we all know you ain't nothing like Dolly here. We just told old Lawson you had a shock from seeing your picture in the newspaper.'

‘That's the truth, ain't it?' Dolly said, glaring. ‘So if you're all right now, we'd better start some work, or we'll all be for the knacker's yard. You're not going to go off again, are you?'

‘Of course not,' Gracie snapped, recovering fast.

‘Good, because Lawson's threatening to stop us half an hour's pay for looking after you if we don't look smart.'

The bit of excitement over Gracie soon passed, but not the excitement over seeing their pictures in the newspaper. Dolly was soon preening herself, despite moaning that
she could have looked a damn sight better for the cameraman if only he'd given her a chance.

While all Gracie could think about was the effect it would have on her parents—
if
they saw it, of course. There was not much hope of it not happening. When he was sober her dad read the newspapers from cover to cover, and he spent his nightly drinking binges ranting about the useless government, the state of the country and everything else. Her mum never had time to read newspapers, but she learned all that was in them from him.

* * *

Gracie's faint hopes that he might not have noticed her picture were dashed the moment she got back to the boarding-house that night. The landlady was waiting for her, hovering behind the net curtains as she and Dolly hurried up the steps to the front door, disapproval on her face.

‘You know I don't approve of people telephoning my lodgers except in the case of an emergency, Miss Brown, but your father made it plain that it
was
an emergency. He'll call again at seven o'clock to speak to you. I don't intend to run all over the house for you, so please be in the passageway when you hear
the instrument ring.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Warburton,' Gracie said, resisting the urge to salute, and being as dignified as possible, considering how her heart was racing.

She and Dolly always laughed at the reverence with which Mrs Warburton answered on the rare occasions when the telephone rang. It was the pride of her life since she had had it installed for her use as a boarding-house landlady.

But Gracie didn't feel like laughing now, and once in their room, she rounded on Dolly, her face distraught.

‘I told you! He's seen the pictures, and he'll make me go home.'

‘Don't be daft. He can't
make
you. You send money to him, don't you? He should be glad you've got a job so you can send a few bob home now and then.'

‘And leaves me skint most of the time! I do it for my mum's sake, not his, to give her a few little comforts.'

‘What's he do with his money then?'

‘What do you think? Boozes it away with his mates.'

Dolly looked at her silently, aware of her bitterness. Dolly had run away from home so long ago she'd forgotten what it was like to care about anybody but herself, but she'd
always known Gracie was different, even if she rarely gave anything away about her family.

‘Well, I don't know what to say, gel, except that there's no point worrying about it until you hear what your dad's got to say,' she said at last.

‘I know. Tell that to the birds, though.'

She flopped down on her bed, aghast at how quickly things had changed. Just two nights ago she had been full of excitement at going to the new Palais. Meeting a dreary coalman called Billy hadn't been the highlight of her evening, but dancing with a handsome saxophone player had seemed so magical she had hardly been able to believe it was happening to her. Prince Charming had nothing on a bloke called Charlie Morrison. Her head and her heart had been full of dreams from that moment on … and then everything had gone wrong, as if the wicked witch had decided that this was enough happiness for Gracie Brown, and all those people had died in a terrible fire, because of her …

She sat up, knowing she was letting these wild and irrational thoughts get the better of her. The fire had nothing to do with her, and if only that photographer hadn't caught the startled look on her face and plastered it all
over his newspaper her dad would never have got to hear about it, and ruined her chance of staying here and ever seeing Charlie again.

But now that the fire had destroyed the Palais, it was highly unlikely, anyway. Even if he hadn't been burned to death, why would he care what had happened to her? If he ever thought of her at all, he wouldn't know where she worked. The paper had just called her and Dolly ‘factory girls' and there were dozens of factories in London.

She was awash with misery, and the prospect of talking to her dad did nothing to ease her jitters. He'd never approved of her going to London in the first place, until her mum persuaded him that it was good for a girl to have her independence. Plenty of girls, younger than Gracie, had left home and done their bit in the Great War.