Thursday’s Child. Helen Forrester
again. You should buy a “new look” dress.’
‘Good heavens, Mother, they are too ultra-fashionable. I’ve never seen anyone in Wetherport wearing one yet.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Mother, ‘they are in the shops – I’ve seen them – and you have just the figure for one. You’ve plenty of money – you saved all through the war for –’ she stopped.
‘For my marriage,’ I finished off.
‘Yes, dear,’ said Mother sadly.
It was true. I had three hundred pounds in the bank. I sighed; but when on the following day I had finished a round of visits to foster-parents, I slipped into a dress shop and spent an hour buying a dress and coat, followed by another hour in hat and shoe shops. I wondered if I would ever have the courage to wear my purchases, but it did not take much bullying from Mother to make me put them all on, and, when I arrived at the club, Bessie was full of admiration for my appearance. She ushered me into the room in which the dancing class was being held, with the advice that many of the pupils were Muslims, who had not mixed much with women before, and that I should be careful.
Fifteen male pairs of eyes took in every detail of me. Seven female pairs of eyes smiled with relief.
‘Welcome to the battleground,’ said one young lady.
‘How do you do,’ said the teacher. ‘Will you kindly partner Mr Popolopogas. We shall just go over the basic steps of the waltz again.’
We went over them – Mr Popolopogas went over my feet as well. He was a willow of a man, topped with outsize horn-rimmed spectacles, and upon inquiry he informed me in slow, correct English that he was a Greek and was studying medicine.
I graduated from Mr Popolopogas to Mr Ramid Ali, Egyptian cotton merchant’s son, sent to Lancashire to see our methods of spinning. Then I did a quickstep with an officer in the French Air Force, who was about a foot shorter than me. Finally, the dancing teacher picked out one or two advanced pupils to teach them another step of the tango. I was asked to partner a Negro. Although many Negroes lived in the district in which I worked and I knew some of them quite well, I had never been touched by a Negro, and I was nervous – not nervous because he was as black as I was white, but because I knew the shy reserve of black people and I wanted him to feel that I liked dancing with him.
We did the exercise while he held me very stiffly and at a distance, but to dance a good tango the partners must be close and the woman must be held snugly against the man. I, therefore, stopped dancing and explained the proper stance. He immediately held me correctly and it was obvious that he knew the proper hold, but had been too afraid of me to use it. I could feel him trembling slightly against me as we moved off again to the throbbing notes of ‘Jealousy’. We were to dance the whole record through, and after a minute I realised that the man guiding me was far more expert than I was.
I concentrated on the steps and followed carefully. He did not dance with the polite diffidence of an Englishman, but with the full ardour that the South American rhythm demanded. My heart beat faster and I began to enjoy myself. Soon there was nothing in the world except the piercing wail of violins backed by the steady beat of drums, and a compelling body which gently but insistently persuaded me into figures I had never danced before. I did not even notice the slight gap between two records. A wild, sensuous happiness enveloped me. The dark cheek above me rested very close to mine. A separate me appreciated the beauty of the line from chin to ear, finely chiselled out of ebony. Sweat was pouring from him but he smelled clean and sweet, and he danced as nature intended us to dance, to the complete relaxation of mind and body.
Suddenly a burst of applause hit me. My partner let go of me and pulled out a pocket handkerchief to mop the perspiration off his face. He was laughing joyously. I was embarrassed to find that we were the only couple on the floor and had indeed danced alone through the last record, while the rest of the pupils formed an interested audience. I blushed hotly as everyone began to laugh, but it was all so good-natured that I had to laugh too.
The dancing teacher came to us and explained to my partner that he should now lead me back to my seat and say ‘thank you very much’, which he did, still laughing exuberantly.
The class then broke up, and I went with the other girls, who were all younger than me, to powder my nose. They were ordinary, middle-class girls, some of them students, with pleasant, accentless speech. They were full of little jokes about the dancing class and teased me about the tango I had danced. They told me I had danced beautifully and said they hoped to see me the following week. I felt very cheerful and I was glad that Bessie had found such nice young women for our foreign visitors to meet. From my work, I knew very well how difficult it was for strangers to know English families, more especially so if the stranger’s skin was not white.
On the bus going home, I realised guiltily that for a whole day I had not thought of Barney, and I wondered if he would mind. Then I thought of how he would have laughed at my discomfiture after the tango and I giggled behind my gloved hand. Looking out through the rain-lashed window I seemed to see him laughing with me, and I thought that perhaps he would be happy that I was feeling happier.
I soon became acquainted with all the staff and most of the members of the McShane. Bessie introduced me to the Director, Dr Gantry, a short, wiry man of uncertain temper and many accomplishments. He spoke seven languages well and managed to make himself understood in several more. He was almost womanly in his insistence that the club must have a homely atmosphere; it must look like a well-cared-for house, not too fashionable or too shabby; there must be flowers and it must be warm and airy. He went through the premises daily, inspecting every corner like the Chief Steward of a liner; he met diplomats when their ships docked at Wetherport, and found digs for vegetarian students; he kept up a lively correspondence with ex-members of the club, who had returned to their own countries; he encouraged every kind of Anglo-Other Country society to meet at the club, provided they steered clear of political pitfalls; he led panting young men up and down mountains in the Lake District and in and out of the best country pubs – he would say: ‘You haven’t seen England if you haven’t been in a pub’; he took great care of the women who helped him with their voluntary work in the club, and any man about whom they complained was summoned to his office and if he did not mend his ways his pass was taken from him. This last was a delicate problem, but Dr Gantry had a fair idea of when a man had made a genuine mistake or when a woman’s behaviour might be at fault. He used to say, however, that he sometimes thought he was running a marriage bureau, not a club. So many visitors were men, still young and single. They outnumbered their sisters by four to one, and as a result of the Committee’s care in the choice of ladies allowed inside the club, these men met very marriageable young women. Almost every week Dr Gantry gave his blessing to a new couple about to marry, and he always said that Britain’s best export was wives.
At the end of two months of helping with the dancing class and sometimes helping Bessie with a particularly large influx of visitors, Dr Gantry offered me a position on the staff of the club.
‘The Government has made so much use of our services that we have been able to obtain a grant from them to extend our work,’ Dr Gantry said one day, as he chatted to me in the lounge, where I was waiting for the dancing class to begin, ‘and it has long been my opinion that lady visitors to this country have many problems peculiar to women. I put this point to the Committee the other day and it was agreed that we should ask you to join our staff and look after our lady members.’
His offer was very unexpected but I was most interested and murmured that I was flattered by it.
‘Mrs Forbes tells me that much of your present work is in connection with women and children. She said also that you have a degree in Economics – is that so? and that you can speak French and German?’
‘Yes, it is so.’ My face must have shown my interest, because he went on to tell me about the salary and the working hours. The staff worked in shifts, and sometimes I would have to be on duty