‘Really?’ she said, gently. ‘Did you lose her?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’ Peggy stared at her stout reflection, as if she was trying to find the young girl in her own lined face. ‘I fell pregnant for the first time when I was only young myself, younger than your Lauren. Baxter had gone off to do his National Service, you see – we weren’t even engaged. My father didn’t trust him, thought he was too much of a fly-by-night with his dancing and that.’ She smiled sadly, showing her little teeth. ‘Which he was in those days, I won’t deny it. My mum was furious when she found out, called me every name under the sun. She wouldn’t let me tell Baxter. He wasn’t due back from Germany for a year, and she said she didn’t want me tied down so young. I don’t even think she told my dad, she just sent me off to her sister’s in Wales, saying I had rheumatic fever and needed the air.’
She made nervous nibbling gestures with her lips, as if it felt strange to be talking about something she’d kept silently in her head so long.
Bridget felt terribly responsible for the secret Peggy was offering her. Obviously she had no one else to tell, but for some peculiar reason, she felt she had to let it out, now. ‘And you had a little girl?’
She nodded, hard. ‘Beautiful little thing, with his dark hair and eyes like a pussycat. They had her adopted. I wasn’t allowed to write to Baxter but I told him anyway, as soon as he came back, I mean, how could I not? But it was too late. My mother said it would be cruel to try and find our baby, now she had parents who loved her. And sometimes I think Baxter only married me because I was so sad, and it was his responsibility. I wasn’t his only girlfriend, I know that.’
‘Peggy, no!’ Bridget exclaimed. ‘No, I’m sure he didn’t!’
Peggy shrugged, as if she didn’t care now either way. ‘I’ve never stopped thinking about her. I loved the two boys, but we never had a girl. I wanted one very badly. I did meet up with the mother once, you see, after my own mother died, and I could make some enquiries, like, but I could tell she loved my little girl like her own. We could have had her back then, but it would have been a cruelty to take her away. A cruelty.’
She looked up at Bridget, and her small eyes were wet beneath the shimmery shadow. ‘Sorry, dear. It’s been bringing it all back, you know, coming along to dancing here. Especially tonight. It reminds me of what this place was like when Baxter and I first met. Anyway . . .’ She plucked a tissue from up the sleeve of her ballroom-dancing dress, and patted her nose with it. ‘Here we are. Still together.’
‘Still together,’ agreed Bridget, because she couldn’t think what else to say.
Then as they left the bathrooms, she saw Angelica sail across the floor with the Mayor, making him seem like Gene Kelly, and the quick spark of pride that lit up Peggy’s face told Bridget what Peggy hadn’t quite brought herself to confess.
Angelica was their little girl. So that was why Peggy and Baxter, the two experienced dancers, had come along to a beginners’ class. Did Angelica know? Would Peggy tell her? Did she need to?
Bridget thought of Lauren and the wordless bond they had, and shivered inside with an emotion she couldn’t put her finger on.
She watched Peggy now, sailing around the empty space with Baxter, their feet seeming to float above the floor. They put the rest of the class to shame, really, with their lightness of touch. Peggy was good, and had years of practice, but Baxter really had a tremendous natural gift. Someone who danced that well couldn’t help but attract the ladies, she thought, but he must have loved Peggy to have stayed for so long, she thought. Maybe he missed his daughter too. Maybe staying together, with their secret, kept their daughter alive to them. Maybe dancing did.
What difference would it make now, after nearly sixty years?
‘Are you ready, love?’ Frank whispered in her ear.
Bridget jumped. ‘Yes!’ she said, turning round.
Lauren stood behind her, her willowy body encased in the poppy-red sequins and floating tulle of Angelica’s longest gown. It had been almost floor-length on Angelica, but the feathered hem hovered around Lauren’s shins. Lauren didn’t mind that. ‘Something less for Chris to trip over,’ as she pointed out. ‘Plus, you can see my new shoes better.’
‘How are you feeling, Chris?’ asked Bridget in a whisper.
Chris looked extremely handsome, but quite some way beyond nervous in his black tie. He cast an anxious glance towards Frank, looming behind him.
‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Be glad when it’s over.’
‘You just concentrate,’ Frank said, ominously.
‘We know, Dad. Just keep it simple,’ said Lauren, serenely. ‘We’re going to take it slowly. Right, Chris?’
Chris nodded, and, with a final swallow, he took her hand, seeing Angelica’s cue from the stage.
She’s grown up so much in the last few months, thought Bridget with a burst of pride. And she looks lovelier in that ballgown than she ever did in those bridal shops. Besides which, red sequins made Lauren’s blue eyes sparkle far more than those blank white dresses. And she could wear them any Friday she wanted.
Angelica’s voice was cutting through the applause as Baxter and Peggy swept off the floor.
‘And now, dancing the waltz, Frank and Bridget Armstrong, and Christopher Markham and Lauren Armstrong!’
The band struck up the lilting introduction to one of Bridget’s favourite songs – ‘True Love’ from
High Society
– and they set off, not needing to speak.
Bridget gazed up at Frank as they began their basic pattern, moving as one, their close hold never breaking as they floated around the space. She didn’t see the banks of watching faces, because her eyes were fixed on the familiar face in front of her, her husband holding her steady, leading her firmly and standing up ram-rod straight. A simple, easy smile acknowledged the many times they’d played this as one of ‘their songs’.
His attention was divided, though, between her, and Lauren, trying not to tread on Chris’s toes, on the other side of the room.
Lauren was doing all right, Bridget could tell, but Chris wasn’t letting her turn with the same confidence that Frank did. Their circles were small and cramped, instead of the generous arcs that they were making.
It wasn’t Chris’s fault, thought Bridget. It would come. It was all down to practice.
‘Go on,’ she said to Frank, with an understanding nod. ‘I know you’re dying to do a father’s excuse me.’
And so Frank tapped Chris on the shoulder, just in time to catch Chris mutter, ‘. . . more beautiful than anyone else here,’ and he warmed a little towards the lad.
Then, as Lauren’s face lit up, he took his daughter in his arms, as proudly as he would have done on her wedding day and they began to waltz. Frank swung her round in a head-spinning series of open turns that made the feathers of her hem float up in a leisurely cloud.
In the distance, beneath the noise of the band, Lauren could hear the ripple of admiring applause as their tall figures sailed down the centre of the floor, as if they were Astaire and Rogers, dancing on a Hollywood cloud of dreams.
Lauren had never been applauded for anything before, and it felt lovely. I’ll never be Big Bird again now, she realised, her heart lifting up like a balloon inside her stiffly beaded bodice, not now I know my feet can do this. And if Chris and I could still be dancing together when we’re Mum and Dad’s age . . .
She caught sight of Chris on the other side of the room, gamely leading her mother into a promenade step. He looked almost competent, but then Mum was a great backlead.
One step at a time, she told herself. Don’t miss how incredible you feel right now. And it was all down to her own gangly, awkward self. How amazing was that?
Frank caught her smiling, and thought his heart would burst with pride.
‘You’re the star turn,’ he said.
‘You and Mum are, you mean,’ said Lauren. ‘Well, we all are. We’re the von Trapps of Longhampton.’
‘We are,’ said Frank, and hummed the melody as they dipped and swayed. Bridget loved this song. He remembered her singing it to the boys when they were tiny babies, rocking them back to sleep when she thought he couldn’t hear her singing. But he could hear, standing on the stairs, looking at his wife, and his children, and knowing there was nothing else in the world a man could wish for.
What the hell, he thought, I’ll sing if I want to.
‘Love, forever . . .’
‘Da-aa-aad,’ said Lauren, grimacing.
‘. . . true,’ sang Frank, and the song drew to a close.
‘Just us now,’ said Katie, watching the Armstrongs’ light-as-a-feather waltzes sending the crowd into a flurry of romantic sighs.
Ross gripped her hand. ‘Katie, just so you know . . .’
Katie’s heart started racing as the Armstrongs bowed and curtsied to each other. Any moment now the tango beat would start and then they’d be on.
She pulled up the straps of her new dress – her own, this time, bought on a shopping trip with Jo. It had done them both good, booking a wardrobe makeover. New women, the pair of them. Hannah and Molly had some of the clothes they’d thrown out for their dressing-up box, and Lauren the internet expert was helping them eBay the rest. Very lucratively, in Jo’s case.
‘What?’ she asked, distracted.
‘We’re not doing the tango.’ As he spoke the band started playing, Angelica announced them, and Katie turned in panic.
‘But we
practised
the tango!’
Ross grabbed her hands. ‘That’s just for us. It’s like Angelica said, some things are private. We’re going to do a social foxtrot, nothing fancy. Just you and me.’
Katie opened her mouth to object, and Ross put a finger on her lips.
‘I asked Angelica for this song,’ he said. ‘It’s the wedding dance we couldn’t do when we got married. Trust me. Let me lead.’
Before she could protest, Ross led her out onto the dancefloor.
He looks so handsome, she thought, her heart banging even faster in her chest, as she admired him in his dark suit and buttercup-yellow shirt. Ross wasn’t a suit person, but he knew she loved to see him in one. Last year, she would have said nothing and hoped he’d somehow guess, while he’d have taken any hints as a dig about his lack of a job.
Now, though, they’d found a compromise: he’d got himself a casual new suit – not too formal – for the meetings Jo was setting up for their web design business, and she’d promised not to nag him about ties. He looked good enough without one.
‘What’s the song?’ she asked, as he put his arm around her, pulling her tightly to him. Butterflies jostled in her stomach, not just because everyone was staring at them, but because if the song was wrong, somehow, it would be a million times more embarrassing than her falling over his feet.
‘Wait,’ said Ross, and tipped his head forward so his forehead touched hers.
Then the romantic Gershwin melody began and she recognised it straight away. She looked up into Ross’s brown eyes and hoped he could see in hers how full her heart was at that moment. Too full to speak.
‘It’s very clear . . .’ sang Ross, just in case she hadn’t got it.
But Katie had. ‘Our love is here to stay,’ she replied.
And he led off in their simple social foxtrot, nothing fancy or showy, just the basic romantic steps that let you hold someone close enough to whisper in their ear. Steps that had led to so many weddings in Longhampton since the Hall opened. Steps that let a very modern man and wife borrow some old-fashioned stardust, for as long as the song lasted. Their love was there to stay even when the Hall was being swept and the doors were locked for the night.
As Katie and Ross smooched around the floor, the mirrorball spun above their heads, showering them with white diamond confetti.
Then, as at all the best weddings, the tiles of the sprung maple floor vanished from sight as the rest of the dancers took their partners and joined them.
One of those couples was Angelica Andrews, dancing a slow foxtrot with Peggy, their heads tilted in gentle conversation as they stepped and turned in their own private world, letting the years blur and vanish around them.
Epilogue
The national papers picked up on the quirky story of the old building being brought back to life by ballroom dancers. It had ‘film potential’, according to one over-enthusiastic feature writer, which set Trina and Chloe off into a long, heated discussion about whether Gwyneth Paltrow could learn to dance well enough to be Lauren. Baxter had Roger Moore down for himself, although Ross and Katie thought David Suchet would be a better fit. Especially if he still had his Poirot moustache.
One paper ran a whole page on the gala night, finding couples who’d met at the Memorial Hall, and interviewing Angelica at some length, about her starry past and her feelings about coming home, now ballroom dancing was big news again, thanks to the television. They sent a photographer, who did a gorgeous portrait of her in her mother’s sitting room, long legs crossed, in her red jersey practice dress.
‘Oh my God, you’re so photogenic,’ Lauren had gasped at the paper, when she and Bridget came round with Katie to discuss the next move in the ‘Save the Hall’ campaign. ‘Look at you! Not a line on your face!’
‘I have a portrait in the attic,’ Angelica said, with a wink at Bridget. ‘It’s a wreck, believe me.’