Ena told them about lunch at Foxden Hall, the army lorry breaking down, and the soldiers coming up to the Hall for tea.
‘Christmas Day at our house was a washout,’ Beryl said. ‘What about you, Freda? What did you do over Christmas?’
‘Sorry?’
‘That good, was it?’ Beryl joked.
‘What?’
‘Christmas. What did you do at Christmas?’
‘I spent it with my uncle in Northampton. We had a traditional English Christmas. We went for walks, sat by a roaring fire, pulled crackers, and ate turkey.’
Madge, leaned forward. She’s waiting for the exciting bit, Ena thought, but by the abrupt way Freda stopped speaking, she had nothing more to say. Ena looked across the table at Beryl. She could tell by the glazed look in her young friend’s eyes that she was bored. ‘It’s seven o’clock. Time to make a move if we want to sit at a table. You know what the Town Hall’s like; it gets busy really early.’ Everyone agreed and, gathering their belongings, followed Ena out of the Hind and across the road to the Town Hall.
The entrance hall was packed with girls queuing for the cloakroom and toilet. Ena, Freda, Madge and Beryl waited in line, shuffling forward every few seconds.
When Ena eventually got to the front of the queue, she took off her coat and handed it to the cloakroom girl who gave her a ticket with number 75 on it. Ena put the ticket in her handbag for safekeeping. She would need it at the end of the dance to reclaim her coat.
The four friends each paid the two shillings entrance fee and went upstairs to the dance room. Beryl, eager to find a table, pushed past half a dozen girls who were huddled together deciding which table would give them the best view of the band. By the time they had made up their minds – and chosen the table half way between the stage and the door, Beryl was sitting at it. With her handbag on one chair and her gasmask on another, she stood up and waved her friends over. The only other vacant table was on the far side of the room, which, looking daggers at Beryl, the indecisive group of friends sauntered over to.
Ena and Beryl went off to find something to drink. The bar, in an alcove on the opposite side of the room, offered a choice of dandelion and burdock or lemonade. They decided on lemonade.
They had no sooner arrived back to the table than Ray Walker’s band began to play, “Why Did She Fall For The Leader Of The Band?” Cheering, everyone took to the dance floor.
The room was packed. There was an equal mix of service men and women and civilians but as always, there were twice as many women as there were men. Ena and Freda, and Madge and Beryl were the first couples on the dance floor. Lots of women followed suit, leaving the men standing around the edge of the room like wallflowers.
Ena and Freda were soon parted by a couple of sailors. Ena’s sailor, Arthur, was tall and good-looking, with sparkling dark brown eyes and a full head of black wavy hair. Freda’s chap was as short as Ena’s was tall, with mousy brown hair brought forward in a wave to cover a receding hairline.
Ena couldn’t help but smile at the look of disgust on Freda’s face as she and her handsome Able Seaman danced past. Freda, like Ena, was taller than average for a woman, stood on tiptoe, and looked over the head of her Very Ordinary Seaman. Ena giggled, and at the end of the third dance, excused herself, saying she needed to find her friend.
Madge and Beryl were sitting talking when Ena got back to the table, Freda joining them a minute later from the direction of the stairs. ‘I swear that swathe of hair he wore across his head was to cover a bald patch,’ Freda said, and shuddered.
Ena laughed. ‘He might have been wearing a wig.’
Freda grimaced. ‘Here,’ she said, taking a quarter bottle of gin from her handbag, ‘This will cheer us up.’ Ena said she didn’t need gin to cheer her up, getting back on the dance floor would do that, but it didn’t stop Freda from pouring what must have been the equivalent of two measures of gin into her lemonade. ‘Cheers!’
At the interval, Madge and Beryl knocked back their lemonades saying, as there was only beer at the dance, they were going over the road to the Hind. ‘No need,’ Freda said. And taking the gin from her bag, poured what was left of it between the four glasses.
‘I can’t drink neat gin,’ Ena said. ‘I’m going to the bar. Who wants lemonade?’ Three hands went up.
‘I’ll help you carry them!’ Beryl called after her, and leaping out of her seat, made her way through a crowd of people heading for the stairs, and the pub.
‘Your sailor was a bit of all right,’ Beryl said, catching Ena up.
Ena laughed. ‘Don’t say that in front of Freda. Her nose is out of joint, because she had to dance with the small, not so good-looking one.’
‘She’s a bit of an odd one, don’t you think?’ Beryl said, while they waited in the soft drinks queue.
‘Odd? In what way?’
‘She’s friendly enough, but she never talks about her family, her mum and dad, or her friends. She must have friends outside the factory. Is it true she’s sweet on old Silcott?’
‘No it isn’t!’
