“We all do our bit,” Grace said, not wishing to delve into such matters on so happy an occasion as finally seeing her friend safely returned. “What of you? Everything you try to say gets blotted out by censors, so I’m left to supply my own details.”
Viv’s smile returned. “Oh? Then pray tell what it is I do in the war.”
“You’re a spy,” Grace said. “You went to France and rescued several boats full of men during Dunkirk, then flew over to Germany in a mink stole to personally pry the secrets from Hitler himself. You did such a fine job of it, we have all the intelligence we need and the war will soon be over.”
Viv laughed. “Oh, if only that were the case. I’ve actually been working as a radar operator, if you’d believe it.” She folded a pink cardigan and tucked it into a drawer. “As it turns out, I’m better at maths than I realized.”
“I’m not surprised,” Grace said earnestly. Her friend had always underestimated her own intelligence. “How is it working with radars?”
Viv sat back on her heels in front of the chest of drawers. “It’s exciting, but it’s also sad. We see the men off as they go to Germany to bomb. Some of the women are married to the men who fly out.” Her mouth twisted as she appeared to bite the inside of her lip.
A lot went unspoken in this war. Far too much was easily assumed in the silence.
Grace had seen enough German planes shot down to know that whatever Britain gave to the Nazi bombers, they received right back. Not all of those men came home.
“The dance halls have been divine though.” Viv got to her feet and pulled a bottle of red nail lacquer from her bedside table drawer where she’d left it before departing for the ATS. “The men there practically line up to dance the night away and dawn arrives before you know it.”
She unscrewed the top, and a familiar sharp odor filled the room. It smelled like late nights at the farmhouse in Drayton, summer afternoons in a field, picking flecks of floating seed from the glossy polish surface and talks of someday going to London.
Grace smiled softly at the memories. Never would they have thought they’d be here, her working as an ARP warden as well as at a bookshop and Viv performing the task of radar operation with the ATS.
“Men have always lined up to dance with you,” Grace teased.
“Not like this.” Viv ran the brush over her thumbnail, leaving a cherry red streak down its center. “Do you ever go to the West End?”
The West End of London, where hotels opened their basements as dance halls through the duration of the long nights. It was easy to get there, but not to return home since the tube stations closed at night for shelters and so many taxis refused to run amid the bombs. As a result, most people going to the dance halls would bring a fresh change of clothes and paid a fee that covered their entrance to the hall, a night in a room and a quick breakfast the following morning.
“I think you know me better than that.” Grace settled onto her bed with her legs tucked underneath her.
Viv inspected a freshly painted nail then slid her gaze to Grace and laughed. “We must go. Everyone talks about what a lark the West End in London is at night. Trust me, you’ll love it.”
On her own, Grace would have hated it, she knew without a doubt. Not that she’d had the nights to spare anyway. But with Viv, she could see the possibility for a jolly good time.
Grace nodded. “Let’s do it then.”
Viv beamed. “You’ll have the best time. I promise.”
She wasn’t wrong. The next night, Grace found herself at The Grosvenor House Hotel for one of their two-shilling cocktail dances. They’d donned their best swing dresses, Viv in a bright red confection with a crimped skirt that matched her nails and lips while Grace borrowed one of Viv’s in ice blue with folded sleeves. They bundled up in warm coats against the bitter December freeze and took a hack to Park Street. The Grosvenor greeted them with a mound of sandbags piled high around its perimeter and its windows blacked out against the darkening sky.
They left their overnight bags at the front desk and were shown to the Great Room where the pulse of jazz reverberated off the glossy floors and high ceilings. People toward the front of the room whirled about on the dance floor, stockinged legs kicking out with the jitterbug and ladies swishing their hips with such enthusiasm their knickers peeked from beneath their swirling skirts.
Excitement pulsed through Grace, penetrating that ever-present fog of exhaustion that had encased itself around her in the past months.