Memoirs of a Dance Hall Romeo Read Free Page B

working her way through a book on astral projection for, as I have indicated elsewhere, anything to do with the occult was meat and drink to her.
    The housecoat she was wearing had been in her possession for many years, and she invariably wore it indoors, especially when she was in what she termed her mystical moods. It was embroidered with the signs of the zodiac and, combined with her jet black hair hanging straight to her shoulders, she resembled the high priestess of some strange cult.
    A plump, bosomy woman, at that time in her middle-fifties, her father had left her eight or nine houses in various parts of the town, most of them split into flats, and the rent from these had enabled her to live in tolerable comfort for many years. She had looked after me with considerable kindness since I was eight and I was extremely fond of her.
    I explained my present predicament, then spent a good ten minutes searching for her handbag, which finally turned out to be under the cushion of the chair she was sitting in. She offered me a ten-shilling note, which I accepted in spite of the fact that I’d been hoping for a pound, and went in search of Uncle Herbert to spread the load.
    As I’d expected, I found him in the conservatory, in his baize apron and old straw boater, contentedly potting plants at the bench. He had never worked for a living in the usual sense in all the years I had known him, indeed had never once ventured beyond the garden gate. But there were reasons.
    On the 1st July 1916, Uncle Herbert had gone over the top on the Somme with seven hundred and seventy-three officers and men of one of the Yorkshire Pals Regiments. Twenty minutes later, the heavy machine guns having done their work, he found himself one of thirty-four survivors, albeit with two bullets in one leg and another in the throat.
    And so he had lived on all these years, his voice a bare whisper when he used it at all, his left leg permanently supported in a steel brace.
    This time the situation was reversed. I requested ten shillings and had a pound note thrust upon me. As any kind of conversation tired him excessively, I kept my thanks to a minimum and left him to it. A nice little man who never strayed far from the safety of the orchids in his greenhouse. A pale ghost in the evening sunlight.
    I had been to a dance or two during my Army service, but not many, and those mainly mess brawls with too few girls to go round and too much drink.
    In spite of that, I was capable of getting round the floor without disgracing myself, thanks to a series of Saturday night hops at the local church hall when I was sixteen. As I remember, it was all as clean as a whistle, mainly boy scouts and girl guides in their Sunday best, with the Vicar behind a trestle table dispensing lemonade at the interval.
    And then Wilma turned up.
    She was an entirely different proposition from the rest of the females. For one thing, she was twenty and looked older. A real woman, with long blonde hair and a figure to thank God for, or at least that’s how I remember her.
    She was too good. Hardly anyone danced with her, they didn’t have the nerve. I only did myself as a dare. They were playing a slow foxtrot number from Casablanca with Humphrey Bogart, As Time Goes By . To this day, whenever I hear that tune, I feel her arm slide round my neck, her body pressing against me on the turns.
    It seemed impossible that such a queen among women could be interested in me, and yet I found myself walking her home through the perfumed darkness, shaking with excitement at the very thought of being with her.
    A short cut to her home lay across the school playing fields. We paused in a small wood at the edge, I kissed her clumsily. After a while, we sat on a pile of dead leaves and I attempted further liberties.
    She pushed my eager hands away at once and told me not to spoil things. She seemed angry and I thought I’d gone too far. She offered me a cigarette, which I accepted eagerly for they were