Dancing at the Victory Cafe Read online

  ‘Dear Gott! Is it all over now? All ze clankings and comings. When will poor refugee get peace from zis madhouse, you open ze ‘Victory Café’ I starving?’

  Belle surveys her kingdom with growing excitement. ‘Tomorrow is the day! So chop, chop, let’s get cracking!’

  Saturday Morning

  Dorrie stared upwards to the buildings in the Market Square. Nothing was changed, yet everything was changed. Only structures remained: salmon red bricks, roof lines, cobbles, the three Cathedral spires; the Ladies of the Vale, guarding the heart of the city.

  Crowds jostled, muffled in bright colours, as once they jostled in khaki and Airforce blue. Cars jammed the streets, where once the convoys queued in ranks. Garish posters, gaudy blinds decorated shop-fronts which once were taped and camouflaged in the dull shades of blackout.

  ‘Did I dream the war?’ She searched out a familiar landmark of windows across the street, counting them carefully, attic, first floor bay, ground level. ‘It’s still there then.’ She peered into the darkness of the empty shop; bare floorboards scattered with paper. ‘How can such an ordinary building have been the crucible of my life?’

  The reflection of a stooped, white-haired woman in a cream trench coat mocked back at this curiosity. Leaves scrunched under her feet as she sniffed the smell of autumn bonfires. Seasons never changed. It was November again; November was always her special month.

  November 1943

  Three dark faces peer through the window of the café on a wet afternoon in late November. It has been a dank dog of a day, rivulets of condensation trickling down the glass. Soon the blackout curtains will be pulled across, to close out the darkness from the ‘Victory Café’.

  The menu board is already tucked away under the stairs, there are a few visitors warming themselves over rabbit stew and bread and butter pudding (all in for 1s 6d), enjoying rib sticking stuff on a cold afternoon. At a corner table, the W.V.S. Committee hold an impromptu meeting over tea and scones, while whiffs of vegetable broth and baking waft across the tearoom. Mrs Morton, the renowned whizz with pastry, having ideas above her station as cook proprietor, tries to give the staff a baking lesson between customers.

  Three curious faces peer in more closely, one face with eyes as black as prunes, the other more treacle coloured, sporting a pencil thin moustache and a cheeky grin. The tallest soldier, another khaki handsome face, has a cap set at a rakish angle defying gravity and rain drops, like sweat, across his brow.

  ‘Dorrie! Close them curtains,’ barks Connie Spear. ‘We don’t want no duskies in here.’

  ‘Oh go on, Connie. It’s pouring out there – they all look soaked through,’ pleads Wyn Preece. ‘Their money’s as good as anyone else’s!’

  Dorrie Goodman pretends not to hear the bickering and beckons the men through the door. She likes coloured troops. At least they are polite to her in the street, not like the other Yanks from the local barracks, who wolf whistle on street corners as they eye her ankles. Always the same old tunes . . .

  ‘Hi, Betty Grable, grab a wing! Howz about a souvenir, baby! You can roll my blanket any time!’

  No, she is not impressed by their aftershave slickness or the razor-edged creases of their fancy pants. They are too big for their boots, too clean cut, a nuisance on two legs. The welcome given to them on their first arrival, a few months back, is now wearing thin. She no longer feels safe in her own city, unless Wyn and friends form a convoy. Even then it’s two steps out of the café and up strikes the chorus:

  ‘I’ll have the redhead. Hi, Ginger Rogers!’

  Wyn never seems to mind a whistle or two. Poor old Wyn has a mum, Maggie Preece, who runs her own Anglo American alliance, leaving Wyn to stay in each night babysitting her sister.

  ‘Dorrie! What you go and do that for? We’ve been warned about them darkies . . . they are wild animals!’ Connie mutters under her breath. ‘All they want is fast women and you-know-what!’

  Connie’s virtue, in that case, is sure to remain intact. Dorrie smiles as she clears away the table for the soldiers. There is nothing fast about Connie. She is the sort upholstered against all contingencies, from her interlock utility drawers, army surplus ‘blackouts’ (special offer on Lichfield market), as sturdy as barrage balloons, to her corsets as blast proof as a Sherman tank. Connie does not believe in rushing anywhere. It is bad for your health, according to the Gospel of her weekly magazine. The upstairs door opens and out from the flat above, descends ‘The Prin’ for one of her frequent warm ups. She always likes to make an entrance.

  ‘Come in, you poor boys . . . in for ze tea time. Meez Morton is a good woman – she no like to see strangers outside in ze cold. Look ’ow kind she is to me . . . by rights the flat upstairs should be ’ers since she take restaurant . . . but she good Christian woman, she take pity on all outcasts, on poor refugee like me . . . she no like you turn ’em away. Beside I tell ’er, Connie, if you do . . .’ The little woman pokes a yellow stained finger into the cushions of Connie’s belly.

  ‘And I’ll tell her we were a pie short again last night,’ snaps Connie.

  Madame Renate Oblonsky puckers her lips in defiance. Her accent comes and goes like the tide. One minute she’ll be high and mighty, a Polish refugee from London, without a penny to her name, reduced to sewing and mending to earn her crusts; the next she can curse and swear at you like a cockney fishwife and wolf down leftovers as if it were the last supper. Leftovers are a thing of the past since the Greville sisters sold the lease to Belle Morton. Leftovers used to be Connie’s perk. She believes the upstairs tenant is a sponger, a thief in the night, but is saying nothing, for it is still early days in the new regime. Connie escorts the soldiers to the window seat with a grimace.

  ‘What a sour puss,’ whispers Wyn to her friend. ‘My mam says she’ll turn milk. Always looking down her nose at us, as if we were horse muck. Neighbours! You’d never think she lived next door. They call her Mrs High and Mighty in our street.’ Dorrie nods in sympathy. She prefers ‘The Prin’; a tiny woman with her dancer’s ankles, her hair swathed in old silk scarves and shrivelled leathery smoker’s face. ‘The Prin’ is very old, at least fifty. Prin adds colour to the place. You never know what she will say next. No one else calls Dorrie ‘darlink’ or ‘sweetie pie’. One minute she is all sugar, the next vinegar, crabby, whinging and tart.

  ‘I’m so cold upstairs – pleez, just a cuppa offa cocoa, to warm ze bones. Av you a cigarette for a cold lady?’ Bold as brass, she corners the three Americans and they doff their caps, duly rummaging in their greatcoats, handing her a new packet of Lucky Strikes.

  ‘You darlinks. Thank you. It was not like this for me in ze old days, when I dance with Le Ballet Russe – when Diaghilev touched my cheek and smiled, “Vous êtes ma petite fleur” – such talent – so cruel to be injured, a destiny cut short . . . such artiste. Now I am ze nobody just delicate bones and such pain.’

  Her voice trails away as she sweeps back up the stairs in a dramatic performance of the finale from ‘Swan Lake’. Dorrie is not keen on all the smoking in the café. It makes her clothes stink. She knows it is sophisticated to inhale, to puff elegantly, as cool as Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but the art of smoking hasn’t reached their clientele yet.

  The factory workers and Land Army girls cough and splutter as they gossip, the Brylcreem boys from the local R.A.F. station chain smoke as time for their training ends and they go off on night ops. You can tell from the state of the ash trays and nails bitten to the quick how many friends are missing or overdue. The local girls are always scrounging from the Yanks, who have the best ciggies, Lucky Strikes and Camels . . . not the awful smelly Turkish Pashas and cheap servicemen’s brands. Sometimes ‘The Prin’ hovers at closing time and pokes about amongst the stubs for loose tobacco, to roll up her own with any dried leaves she can find. Wyn and her mum puff like steam engines. Maggie is never short these days, of tins of Spam, nylons or fancy stuff, thanks to Curtis Jackson, her latest benefactor.
/>   Dorrie never smokes, nor would she dare. Father would never allow a woman to have such an ungodly habit. She obeys him, however, only because she knows it spoils a singing voice. Sometimes after work she arrives at singing practice and her throat feels so itchy and dry, she can barely reach the notes.

  Singing is the one pleasure allowed to her. She sings in the Gospel Hall Choir. She sings in the zinc bath tub, to forget the thimbleful of tepid water and the plimsoll line. She hums on the pavement, croons as she peels potatoes in the café and knows all the hit parade favourites, Bing Crosby, Vera Lynn, Anne Shelton, all the popular musicals and operettas. Dorrie has begged for extra singing lessons but only gets piano theory and scales from Miss Fenwick, her old school music teacher, who is a regular in the Gospel Hall.

  ‘You sing for the Lord!’ Father decrees. ‘Worldly singing is not for you.’

  Belle Morton, the owner of the café, does not smoke either. She says it spoils the taste of her cooking. Belle has fancy ideas about her café. She is still a bit of a mystery to the staff but has certainly turned round the establishment into a modern café, with lots of good home cooking. Wyn says cooking at her home is something quick and easy, something greasy in a pan, with over-boiled vegetables, a push-past way of eating. Fast food is what Maggie dishes up: dinner on the run!

  Maggie hasn’t bothered to bake since Alun, her husband, went to war and is somewhere with Monty in the desert. Maggie has no need of a store cupboard now, having her own regular supplies. Not like Mrs Spear, who hoards like a squirrel, never misses a queue and haggles over lumps of gristle if she thinks there’s a bargain on the counter.

  The Cathedral Café always served plain food, simple and no fuss dishes, when Ruby, Onyx and Pearl Greville were in charge. Dorrie had been a Saturday girl then. Now, in the newly christened Victory Café, it is get them in, serve them quick and get them out. Keep them happy and coming back. The condiments are taken to the table, even the salt and sugar bowls have to be watched. They don’t go so far as to chain up the spoons but the stuff vanishes if left five minutes unattended.

  ‘Who says wartime food can’t be daring? If they want Woolton Pie – let them go to the Civic Café, to British Restaurants, where you can fill up for a shilling, with solid food cooked in vats by the woolly hat brigade. No nonsense fayre for evacuees and busy workers. Here we offer something more exciting. What is it, girls? Let’s hear it?’ trumpets the proprietor proudly.

  ‘Fancy food,’ they chorus on cue.

  ‘No, girls. We want colour, excitement. Food should be an adventure, taste buds tantalised by explosions of flavour . . . like they do, à la France!’

  ‘Not any more they don’t,’ adds Connie. ‘They ’ave to eat frogs, snails, dogs, cats and worse!’

  ‘That was in the siege of Paris, long ago. Now when I was on my honeymoon.’

  And out it would all come again, like a recitation, the famous honeymoon trip to Paris, the journey down the Loire, southwards; a journey changing her eating aspirations for life: all those herbs with names like debutantes, the wine, olives, pâté, truffles, smelly cheeses, simple peasant cooking, soups and casseroles. Dorrie can mimic the speech, word for word. The only information about the honeymoon is about food, not Mr Morton, wherever he is or was.

  Connie says that the woman who rents Mrs Morton three of her rooms in Beacon Street has never once seen uniform or boots in her cupboards. Her window sills are like jungles. Apparently all sorts of queer smells waft from her kitchen. The neighbours complain about the pong regularly and keep an eye on their chickens. Her only friend is the bossy woman, now sitting in the corner, wife of somebody in the Cathedral Close, who is a chaplain overseas. Mrs Baverstock, the Bindy woman, takes up a lot of space on the table, calls the meeting to order and barks for more tea.

  Dorrie smiles to herself as she observes her customers. People do give themselves away when they eat in public, especially their manners or lack of them, all the little revealing and revolting habits. She notes who makes a mess of the table, slurps their tea, takes their faces to the food in a rush to stuff it down quickly; who picks their nose and who never leaves a tip under the saucer. Belle is fair with tips, which are kept in a jar and then shared out equally. She never takes sides in squabbles. There is always time to take Dorrie aside, to show how to make crisp shortcrust, to cool it and roll it out decoratively. The cook is keen on presentation.

  ‘The eye sees it first, Dorrie. Remember!’

  ‘Slap it on, dish it out, what’s the point? It all goes down the hatch,’ sneers Connie.

  Belle likes to fiddle.

  Connie says, ‘Fiddling is a waste of time’. She does not hold with fancifying good food. If the meat is tender then what does it matter if the potatoes are piled on and doused in gravy, or the Bisto pours too thick or too thin? Hungry folk only want their bellies fed and full, not food arranged on a plate, like a still life painting! Connie usually ignores Belle’s instructions when she isn’t around. She encourages the customers away from the more exotic recipes on the menu, with a snap of ‘Off!’ She then tells Belle, on her return, ‘No takers for the jugged hare. I told you it’s too much for our clientele.’

  Bindy Baverstock never misses a trick though, spilling all the beans to her friend. How Wyn snivels in front of customers and could do with some Lifebuoy soap. How Dorrie behaved oddly around table 5 on Tuesday . . . Dorrie danced around table 5, all that afternoon, because she saw under the visitor’s feet a mouse, stiff as a pork pie, victim of their latest poison campaign. She watched the couple kick it between their feet, waiting for closing time, to dart quickly with a dustpan and brush, shutting her eyes while she shovelled up the body. Bindy Baverstock usually compliments on a tidy appearance, on the neat black skirt and crisp white pinafore with pin-tucked bib and lace edging. Her lace cap strains, under precious Kirby grips, to contain a mass of copper curls, swathed reluctantly into the ‘Victory Roll’ hairstyle.

  Dorrie is well aware of servicemen, who linger over their cups to watch her curve and bend across the table. ‘Why not? I’m seventeen – my future is all before me. If I cheer them up on their dismal journey back to a bleak barracks then that’s all part of the service. Some of the aircrews might be dead by next morning.’ Hands on her bottom are not allowed. Once she has to spike a shin, to loosen a grip too familiar, and says loudly. ‘Don’t do that SIR!’ in a voice deep and resonant which, strangely, commands respect.

  School is long since over; as are now the dreams of going to music college. She intends to volunteer early, to do war service outside the city. Her reverie is broken by the throaty yankee drawl from the boys by the window. They have ordered a mixture from the menu and proceed to pile the sweet and savoury dishes together onto their plates in a glorious gunge. This is common practice among some of the Americans. The rest of the customers fall silent as they watch them mix jam onto their ham salad. Dorrie feels oddly protective, aware they are the subject of scrutiny and sniggering.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ She steps forward.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The oldest of the soldiers, whose hair greys at the temples, smiles and rises instinctively. ‘This is sure a quaint place . . . we are mighty obliged for your lettin’ us in.’ The middle man is so tall, he has difficulty fitting his legs under the table and stretches out his limbs in the aisle. It is the third soldier who catches her eye and holds it just a little too long for comfort. She feels her cheeks flushing, as Belle staggers from the kitchen with a crate of pop bottles.

  ‘Can we help you, ma’am?’ The soldiers shoot up.

  ‘No, thank you, I’m fine, but I can see another of your men standing outside by the window.’

  Her words trail away as the café door bursts open and a military policeman, built like a tree trunk, storms into the room; a soldier in the familiar white helmet and gloves of a snowdrop. ‘Get your asses out of here at once! Pardon me, ma’am, for the interruption, but these nigras ain’t allowed in no joint like this.’

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p; Belle steps forward to protest, ‘There’s no problem. They’re just eating, like everyone else. No objections are there, girls?’

  Dorrie stands alongside her. ‘Not at all, Mrs Morton.’

  The policeman looks her up and down and turns to the older woman. ‘Ma’am – they don’t eat with white folks, where I come from . . . regulations . . . not in a neat little outfit like this.’

  ‘Well they do here. They are welcome any time.’

  The policeman moves aside. ‘Can I have a word with you all?’ He ushers them towards the doorway. ‘Sergeant Burgess McCoy at your service.’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant?’

  ‘Look. Hell! If they eats here, then the other guys will put your café out of bounds . . . boycott? Blackball, whatever you folks call it! You’ll not get any regular GIs to sit in the same joint!’

  ‘That’s OK by me,’ Belle smiles. ‘I’m not sure I want the custom of that sort of soldier.’

  Dorrie’s jaw gapes at this boldness. No one contradicts the man in her house.

  ‘I think you should reconsider, ma’am!’ His voice is now steel-edged.

  ‘I thought we were all supposed to be on the same side. I thought it was the Nazi fascists who were against Jews and coloureds. It seems I’m wrong about you lot! I prefer these gentlemen to stay, Sergeant!’ Mrs Morton’s blue eyes flash icily.

  The red-faced sergeant wipes his face and suppresses his rage. ‘You just made the wrong decision, ma’am. You just lost a mighty lot of customers, with real pay in their pockets.’

  ‘So be it! I’ll be the judge of that. Good day!’ Belle replies.

  The man turns, banging his helmet on the low beam of the door, and stands, his arms behind his back, waiting on the pavement. Dorrie can see the menacing tap of his restless boot on the flag-stone and the quick flick of his hand on his holster. The three men juggle together in conversation and rise.