‘Merry Christmas!’ she said from somewhere underneath them. ‘Are you going to let me in?’
Lauren ushered her into the sitting room, hoping against hope that Angelica hadn’t decided they were all going to wear matching outfits for the display, like drum majorettes or something.
‘I’ve brought you an early present,’ Angelica said, throwing the bags over the sofa as she started to unzip them. ‘Before you say a word, I’m having a clear-out. I don’t need them and I want you to have them. I want them to be danced in again – they deserve another lease of life.’
Sumptuous flashes of crimson and scarlet sequins began to emerge, like butterflies from the carrier chrysalis. Ballgowns. Beautiful, shimmering skins, far too lovely for me, thought Lauren, touching them reverently. ‘But when am I . . .’ she began.
‘Now, Lauren, I heard about the wedding,’ Angelica said, gently. ‘And I understand why you were so wrapped up in the white dress, and the petticoats, and everything. But you’re every bit as elegant on that dancefloor as you will be one day in a wedding dress. It’s not quite the same, I know, but . . .’ She left the sentence unfinished and instead turned back to the dresses, freeing them from the drab carriers until the sofa gleamed with lavish, netted drapery.
Angelica wanted to say, I never had the big white meringue, but it didn’t stop me being the centre of attention. Eventually, dancing would give Lauren that glow of self-confidence she was missing. When she realised she’d never have to sit down at a dance again.
Lauren didn’t respond and Angelica wondered whether she’d crossed the line.
Her round blue eyes were drinking in the dresses, but her smooth forehead was tense with worry. ‘Angelica, no one’s ever given me anything as amazing as this. I don’t know what to say.’
‘Thanks would be fine. And a promise that you’ll carry on dancing in them.’
Lauren clutched one to her chest – the lucky foxtrot dress, Angelica noted, with the floating crimson feathers. ‘It’s just that . . . They’re gorgeous, like something a princess would wear but . . .’
They were gorgeous, but how would she feel about wearing these to dance in when she knew her mother had her eternity ring for sale on eBay?
‘What?’ asked Angelica, and the whole story of Bridget’s money worries spilled out of Lauren in a torrent of guilt.
‘Well, then you should sell the dresses!’ Angelica said at once. ‘They’re only dresses! They’re worth a fair bit.’
‘But they’re your . . .’
‘They’re
costumes
.’ She put her hand on Lauren’s arm. ‘And that part of my life is over. Keep one, for being glamorous in, and sell the rest. Believe me, nothing’s more important than your mum’s happiness. And you’ve got a wonderful mother.’
‘I suppose you’ve only got the one,’ sighed Lauren.
‘Well, yes,’ said Angelica, ‘usually.’
Bridget was thrilled to end her auction early and get the ring back, but even so, she was determined to keep Christmas – and her new emergency plans – under control. ‘No going overboard with gifts this year,’ she said to Frank, over supper one night. Lauren was out with Chris, ‘practising’ at Kian’s. ‘Not after . . . what happened.’
‘There’s nothing I need anyway, love,’ Frank replied, as if she’d made an eminently sensible suggestion. ‘Apart from a new pair of dancing shoes. We’re tackling the quickstep again next year – I want to get my footwork back up to speed.’ He winked. ‘You don’t know what you started.’
Bridget did know what she’d started all right. It was Frank who’d made the extra lesson with Angelica to brush up their waltz technique. Originally, Angelica had wanted them to demonstrate the foxtrot at the gala night, with Lauren and Chris doing the waltz on their own, but Frank had refused, before Angelica had even got the words out.
‘No,’ he said, firmly. ‘Lauren’ll be a bag of nerves if it’s just her up there, everyone watching, specially with that great flatfoot, Chris, hauling her about. Much better if we do it with her, eh, Bridget? Make it a family affair!’
Angelica had caught the protective glance that flickered between them. Lauren might be giving Chris another chance, but he was obviously only back on probation, as far as Frank was concerned. She made a mental note to give Chris an extra private lesson herself. Or get Bridget to. ‘What a good idea!’ she said.
‘Perfect,’ said Bridget, and glanced up at her husband. He wasn’t just holding himself upright for the waltz these days. His stoop seemed to have vanished altogether.
He looks even better now than he did when we were jiving, not waltzing, she thought, happily.
35
The night of the Gala Evening was cold but clear, and the inky December sky twinkled with pin-sharp stars, as if in tribute to the spangled circle skirts and freshly cleaned suits parading into the Memorial Hall, to the pulse-quickening sound of the big-band numbers blaring through the windows.
Before the doors opened to the public, Angelica stood inside the Hall and savoured the last few quiet moments, on her own while the band were getting changed. She felt as if she had one foot in her past, and the other foot firmly in the present. She didn’t want to look into the future. She was just going to concentrate on enjoying tonight as she’d never allowed herself to before. Finally, after years and years of changing and struggling, she was happy to be herself, dancing with whoever asked, appreciating the efforts of her students, letting the music flow through her.
You can’t really go back in time, thought Angelica, running her eyes over the old friezes and dancing ladies. She stepped in a slow waltz across the spotless floor, under the tickertape of the mirrorball. That’s why it was so important to tie up those loose ends while you can. Tonight, she thought. I’ll tie them up tonight.
Her scarlet lips curved in a smile as she admired what she, Katie and Bridget had put together in record time. Even in its heyday, the Hall hadn’t known a night like this one: instead of orange squash, chilled champagne bubbled in flutes on trays in the vestibule, and tiny silver balls hung from the rafters, like a constellation around the huge mirrorball that revolved slowly over the polished floor.
The tickets – printed on stiff card and gold-edged, to Angelica’s specifications – requested ‘dressing up’ from all attendees, and as the guests began to arrive, she realised she had unlocked an unexpected passion for glamour in the town. There wasn’t a ballgown left in any attic, department store or charity shop in the area, fake tan sold out in Boots, and the hairdressers were booked solid for the whole day with women requesting ‘big dos’. With so much coverage in the paper, every local grandee was there, eager to be seen posing for the cameras, alongside the regulars from the social dance night. Skirts were so huge that there was barely room for more than five women to freshen up their lipstick in the echoing loos at any one time.
The dancing got underway at 7.30 sharp, after a nervous but moving speech from Bridget about how important it was to protect the beautiful things in the town, and none of the dance class was short of partners. It was Baxter who’d hit on the idea of selling dance cards for the ladies to fill up, with Angelica charging a restoration donation per dance, already she’d raised enough to get the boiler fixed properly.
The class display was due to take place at 9.30 p.m., in the interval – ‘to give everyone a chance to get their breath back’, explained Angelica, and from the flushed faces filling the dancefloor at 9.25 p.m., it hadn’t come a moment too soon.
‘Everyone ready?’ asked Angelica, as her tense pupils stood outside in the hallway, ready for their big entrances like chicks behind a mother hen. The band was playing ‘Moonlight Serenade’, and when it came to a close, it would be time for them to start.
She tried to keep her voice light, but she could see the goosebumps on Lauren’s pale arms, and Katie’s shallow breaths making her new green dress rise and fall. They were all nervous. Even Baxter kept fiddling with his hair, smoothing it back with his hand until it gleamed like a penguin’s head.
Angelica knew the metallic nerves they’d be feeling; it didn’t matter whether you were stepping out in the Tower Ballroom or your own front room, when other people were watching, everything was different. Already her subconscious was measuring out the verses, counting down the choruses left.
‘I know it’s not the time for big speeches,’ she said, over the muted trumpets crooning inside the Hall, ‘but I want you all to know that you’ve made me very proud already, even before you go out there. You’re going to be wonderful. I wish I could dance with you all tonight, and I hope you’ll make room for me on your cards.’
‘Don’t!’ said Lauren, wiping at her eye with the back of one hand and waving the other frantically. ‘You’ll make me smudge my mascara!’
‘Yeah, don’t,’ said Trina, whose extensive eyeliner collection had seen her in charge of make-up. ‘It took me ages to do.’
Trina and Chloe were dancing a cha-cha together, ‘seeing as how we’ve done without men so far anyway’. Sensibly, they’d applied the Latin theme more to their hairstyles than to the traditionally skimpy wisps of sequins: Chloe’s hair was frizzed into a blonde afro of curls, stuck with gold flowers, while Trina’s short dark crop was gelled into what her niece optimistically called ‘the elfin look’. They both had more glitter glued to their cheekbones than the cast of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
, but had stuck to simple tiered skirts beneath.
‘Don’t think about anything else other than the music,’ Angelica went on, looking around the group. ‘Just let it flow into your head, and your feet will do the rest! Enjoy having that floor to yourselves for once – and remember to smile!’
Automatically, everyone’s lips curved into the ballroom-dancing rictus, just as the music slowed to a close in the Hall.
‘It’s finishing,’ said Katie, her voice disappearing in a little upward gasp and Lauren turned pale underneath her liberally applied tan.
Angelica began to bustle, to take their minds off it. ‘Now, then, who’s first? It’s Trina and Chloe, isn’t it, for “Lady Marmalade”?’ She began lining them up in pairs. ‘And then Baxter and Peggy, for your wonderful foxtrot, and then all my Armstrongs for the waltz, and then the lovely big finish . . .’
She turned to Katie and Ross and smiled. ‘You two are going to steal the show. Ready?’
Ross squeezed Katie’s hand and answered for both of them. ‘Can’t wait.’
Angelica stepped out onto the stage and took the microphone. It was an old-fashioned flat one, like a carpet beater, and as she looked out from behind it into a sea of black and white suits, mingled with shimmering sugared-almond frocks, time seemed to shiver in front of her. The flushed faces lifted up to her, pink with effort and pleasure, didn’t look modern, and with the vintage curled hair, and red lipstick on every woman’s mouth, it could have been a black and white photo come to life, as if the old ghostly dancers of the Hall had slipped back amongst the living, unable to resist a live band and a party atmosphere.
A ripple of applause greeted her appearance and she had to flap her hands to make it stop.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, her voice ringing confidently through the Hall. ‘It gives me more honour than I can possibly express, to present to you tonight, the Angelica Andrews School of Dance!’
She stepped back as the band swung into the irresistible swagger of ‘Lady Marmalade’, and Trina and Chloe sashayed on to the floor, taking it in scrupulous turn to dance the lead, as they twirled in almost perfect time. Trina and Chloe could have spent their lives on a Vegas stage, not in a Midlands tax office, as they tossed their hair like showgirls, strutting and posing and flicking out their hips, until the whole room was clapping along with them.
No sooner had they run through their routine than the music changed into ‘Night and Day’ and Baxter and Peggy strode out on to the floor, their joined hands held high so Peggy’s floating chiffon sleeves could catch the air and trail elegantly behind her.
Peggy still looked like a pepperpot, thought Katie, peering through the doors, but a beautifully self-assured pepperpot in a midnight-blue dress glittering with thousands of hand-stitched stones that must have come from her old dancing wardrobe.
Bridget was watching too, but she wasn’t seeing Peggy the old lady any more. She’d had a conversation with Peggy, just before they went on, which left her unable to see anything other than Peggy the young dancer of sixty years ago, when she was still a teenager.
They had been putting the final touches to their make-up in the ladies’ loos, or rather, Lauren had been fussing about affectionately, adding ‘a little something’ to Bridget’s basic mascara and blush. Bridget was busy trying to tone the results down so Frank wouldn’t have a heart attack.
‘You’re very lucky to have a daughter,’ Peggy had said, when Lauren had dashed off, and Bridget was surprised by the wobble in her voice.
‘I am,’ she agreed. ‘Especially after two lads. Lauren’s always been my baby girl.’ She dabbed at her lipstick. ‘You and Baxter have sons, don’t you?’
‘We do. Graeme and Ray.’ Peggy pressed her lips together. ‘But I had a little girl too.’
Bridget turned slowly from the mirror. She’d never heard anything about a daughter before, and Baxter was more forthcoming about his sons (and their sporting achievements) than Peggy was. In fact, this was more conversation than she’d ever had with quiet Peggy. She got the feeling that she had to get something off her chest. People often got things off their chest with her, usually at parents’ meetings.