The Gown(37)

“Good—now they’re out of the way. Tell us everything,” Ethel insisted.

“There isn’t much to say. He asked me to dance, and after two songs they started up with the jitterbug, and neither of us knew the steps. So he bought us some lemonade and we sat and talked for a bit. He seemed very nice.”

“Very posh is how he seemed,” Doris said. “Did you see what those girls were wearing? And the jewelry they had on?”

“I know,” Ann admitted. “I’m still not sure . . . I mean, why me?”

“Because you look very pretty tonight,” Miriam said abruptly. The time for doubts was tomorrow, not now. “He saw you and said to himself, ‘I want to dance with that pretty girl.’ It is as simple as that.”

“Are you going to see him again?” asked Doris.

“I don’t know. He asked me to ring him up. He said he wanted to see me again.” She set a business card upon the table, its corners bent from where it had been clutched in her hand. “But I don’t know. I don’t think I should go.”

“Why ever not?” Carmen asked. “There’s no harm in having supper with the man.”

“I suppose not. Except I don’t have anything to wear. This frock is the only really nice thing I have.”

“Then you must wear my suit,” Miriam said. “My good suit that I had made in Paris. We are much the same size.”

“I couldn’t. I—”

“Come on,” Carmen said, her patience fraying. “It’s a chance for you to kick up your heels and see how the other half lives. If he’d asked me I’d be off like a shot.”

“But what if . . .”

“What if he’s the sort that thinks a girl should pay for a night out one way or another?” Ruthie asked, oblivious to her friends’ shared expression of dismay. “Oh, honestly. I know you’re all thinking the same thing. And I’m only being practical.”

“So? What should she do?” Ethel asked.

“If he pushes you to go anywhere with him after, you say you can’t,” Ruthie reasoned. “You have to be at work the next morning, or your mum and dad are waiting up for you—I know, I know, but how’s he to know? And then you ask someone at the restaurant to call you a cab and you take it to the nearest Tube station. He won’t know where you’ve gone, and that’ll be an end of it.”

Ann nodded, taking it all in, and then she turned to Miriam. “What do you think?”

“I think a restaurant is safe enough, but I agree with Ruthie. Do not agree to go anywhere else with this man. Even if he suggests something like a nightclub. Not until you know him better.”

“Did he say what he does for a living?” Doris asked.

“He’s a captain in the army, but he can’t really talk about his work. He says it’s all rather hush-hush.”

“Hmm. I don’t like the sound of that,” Ethel said.

“Probably working in Whitehall. None of them are allowed to talk about it,” Carmen speculated.

“See?” Doris asked, undeterred. “It’s probably something very secret and important.”

It was time for a change of subject. “What is the time?” Miriam asked the group. “Is it not the case that Ann and I must leave by ten o’clock so we do not miss our train?”

“Oh, yes. Yes, of course. I suppose we must be going.” Ignoring the others’ cries of disappointment, they said their farewells and made their way upstairs to street level.

“Do you mind that I suggested we leave?” Miriam asked as they stepped onto the sidewalk. It was so wonderfully cool outside, at least compared to the insufferably hot ballroom.

“Not at all. If we’d stayed they’d have kept badgering me all evening. And I was more than ready to go. The music was starting to give me a headache.”

“Where shall we go now? Is there a Tube station nearby?”

“We passed one on the way—it’s just at the corner. But would you mind walking for a while? If we go south it’s about twenty minutes to Charing Cross. We can get on a District line train there.”

It seemed that nearly every other building they passed was a theater, almost all of them disgorging hundreds of patrons, and before long it became an effort to stay together. Then it began to rain, albeit lightly, and the people around them became even more impatient to carve a path through the crowd, never mind how many others they had to shove or elbow out of the way.

They were crossing Shaftesbury Avenue, heads down against the rain, when a man bumped into Miriam, his shoulder catching hers and all but spinning her around. She stumbled, almost dropping to her knees, but managed to take an unsteady step forward. She was almost at the curb and out of harm’s way, but with her next step she felt her heel sink into a hole of some sort. She looked down to discover that her shoe was stuck fast in a metal grate.

“Ann!” she cried out, and her friend, turning, crouched to help her. They tried to wrestle it loose, all the while enduring the complaints of passersby, but it was no use. The shoe would not come free.

“You’ll have to undo the strap,” Ann said. “Then we can at least stand on the curb. No sense in getting knocked down for the sake of a shoe.”

“But these are my only good—”