Romantic Association - Loves Me, Loves Me Not

When Laura and Raymond took to the floor other couples would stop dancing to watch. The girls’ expressions were wistful as they imagined themselves in Raymond’s arms. But the men had eyes only for Laura. They were totally enraptured.

She was lovely. Dark hair, blue eyes and as slim-waisted as Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. I was the perfect foil for her—tall, with mousy hair, and pretty enough without being beautiful.

Laura and I had been friends ever since our first week at school when she had lost the shilling her mother had given her for the Penny Bank and I had given her sixpence of my own. I can’t remember if she ever repaid me but I wouldn’t have cared because I was thrilled to be the chosen friend of the most popular girl in the class.

Raymond and Bill had struck up a friendship when they had been posted to the RAF station to the north of the town near the lighthouse. Bill was from a farming family in Yorkshire but, the youngest of five sons, he wasn’t needed for the war effort. No one knew what Raymond’s job had been but it had got around that if it wasn’t for the war he’d have been in films. He was certainly good-looking enough; in his flying officer’s uniform he looked sensational.

That first night Laura had pretended not to notice them. She went on talking as if she wasn’t perfectly aware that they were coming towards us across the empty floor. Just as the music started Raymond coughed gently to attract Laura’s attention. She turned and looked up at him with those dark-fringed blue eyes. He didn’t speak. He simply held out his hand. When she took it he pulled her gently onto the dance floor.

Bill had been standing behind and he turned to watch them go. After a moment he looked at me and grinned. He asked me to dance and I accepted. I might have realised, even then, that I would not have been his first choice.

From that moment we were a foursome. Bill, tall, rangy and nice-enough looking with hair as mousy as my own, but nowhere near as handsome as Raymond with his dark hair and laughing grey eyes. The four of us went to the pictures together or for walks along the promenade, but most of all we went to the Roxy.

I was hurt that Laura didn’t tell me first. Surely she could have trusted me not to let the cat out of the bag? She and Raymond took to the floor that night with her left hand resting gracefully on his shoulder. But there was something different about it. First one, then another, and soon every one of the girls swirling by noticed the engagement ring. The band kept on playing but the dancing stopped and the girls gathered round to admire the sparkling diamond while the young men slapped Raymond on the back and called him a lucky devil.

There was already an air of exhilaration. The allies were advancing on Berlin and everyone was convinced that the war in Europe would soon be won. Down at the Roxy, the music seemed more upbeat, the dancers more animated, and all the talk was about what we would do when the war was over.

Laura didn’t want to wait. Her parents owned Seacrest, a small hotel on the seafront. Her father, Ted, said he was sure he could manage a respectable reception and her mother, Thelma, made a wedding dress from one of her old evening gowns. She also found something for me because, of course, I was going to be Laura’s bridesmaid.

But a couple of weeks before the wedding Bill came to see Laura. We were in the lounge of the Seacrest, where we often met before going to the Roxy. Bill bought the drinks and we sat with Laura between us on the banquette behind one of the tables.

‘Where’s Raymond?’ she said.

I saw Bill’s knuckles whiten as he clasped his glass. ‘Laura, I’m sorry…’

‘What is it?’ She sounded frightened.

‘Raymond didn’t make it home from the mission last night. I saw him go down somewhere over Holland.’

A shocked silence—and then Laura started to cry. It was Bill who held her until the storm of weeping subsided.

Raymond was posted missing, presumed dead. And over the next few weeks Laura’s grief turned to anger and her anger into a feverish urge to live life to the full.

‘Take my advice, Jeannie, eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. And that’s from the Bible,’ she said when I tried to persuade her to live less hectically.

There were any number of young airmen who lived by the same principle, and who could blame them? They were risking their lives almost daily. They were good-natured, high-spirited and brave. And something about their uniforms made them positively glamorous. Many queued to dance with Laura, although none could match Raymond.

But Laura had forgotten what it was like to be without a man of her own. It was inevitable that she would eventually settle for one of them. And the lucky man just happened to be Bill.

I never found out what Laura did with Raymond’s ring, but the next time she got engaged I was the first to be told. She said that she knew I was fond of Bill and she’d thought it best to tell me herself so that I could be prepared before the announcement.

‘Kind of her!’ my mother said that night when I wept at the kitchen table. Dad shook his head and quietly retreated.

‘And she actually asked you to be her bridesmaid!’ my mother exclaimed. And then she surprised me. ‘Well, listen, our Jeannie, I hope you said that you’d be delighted.’

I stopped crying and looked up in astonishment.

‘You think I should?’

‘It might stop the tongues wagging.’

I knew what she meant. Everyone was wondering whether I would be heartbroken, angry, never speak to Laura again. My mother, wise as usual, thought the best way to prevent all speculation, whether spiteful or sympathetic, was for me to act as though I was pleased for Laura and I hadn’t really cared that much for Bill.

Tongues did wag, but about Laura, not me. There were many who thought she was marrying in indecent haste and that maybe she should have mourned a little longer for Raymond. But that sort of thing happened in those days. Blame the war.

Bill did the gentlemanly thing, by the way. I found him waiting for me outside work one day and he walked me home. He said, ‘I hope you understand. After all, we haven’t been more than good friends, have we? I’ll always be fond of you but, with Laura, it’s entirely different.’

So Laura and I wore the dresses her mother had made after all. When the bride and groom opened the dance everyone applauded, but then fell silent, remembering. Was it fanciful to imagine Raymond’s ghost following the bride and groom round the floor?

The war in Europe ended in May. VE Day was celebrated with street parties, a civic bonfire on the links and a gala night at the Roxy. There were tears of joy for those who had returned and sorrow for those who never would. And of course there were families who had to wait another three months before the war in the Far East ended.

Bill was one of the lucky ones who was demobbed quite soon and he took Laura to Australia where an uncle had a sheep farm. Bill didn’t think that raising sheep in the Antipodes could be very much different from raising sheep in the Yorkshire Dales.

Ever since she had left school Laura had helped her parents in the hotel. Ted and Thelma were upset, not only because their daughter was leaving to live at the other side of the world but because they had imagined that Bill and Laura would stay and take over the running of the hotel one day. But they wished them well.

Nothing much changed for me. I continued working in the shoe department of the Co-op, trying to make my window displays exciting with the never changing supplies of clogs—no coupons needed—and wedge-soled shoes.

The lads stationed at the air base began to leave and the town’s own servicemen started coming home. There were some tearful farewells and some worried reunions but nights at the Roxy went on pretty much as before, except there were fewer people in uniform.