Victory Dance

Cheek to Cheek

The music was uptempo and jazzy as we finally reached the floor, my hand in his the entire time. After finding our spot, where the hard wood of the dance floor met with the carpeted area of the rest of the hall, I wrinkled my nose and huffed a small sigh, "I think this might be a Charleston?"

"It's a Foxtrot," Thomas explained, taking my hands to ready our stance, "Less kicks."

"Lucky for you, then..." I nodded, my eyes glaring at the everyone elses' feet to work out what I could do. In school, there were only a few classes that had ballroom dancing it in. They always tended to focus on a waltz, which was easy and sweeping. If you could count to three and as long as you had enough patients to remember where your feet were supposed to go, you could waltz.

It had been a few years since I had a standing agreement with Nancy that we would go to some dance every second Saturday night. Although my mum always fretted over me being out somewhere and away from the safety of our shelter when a raid was called, we always managed to find somewhere to squeeze in until everything tided over. It felt like a small piece of normality in the craziness of the world. We could almost forget about the Blitzes that were above us, and how people were miles away from home. Plus, Nancy was right - it was a good way to see what the boys were up to.

Towards the end of the war, it was a growing rarity to see any boys there. It seemed like they were calling them up younger and younger each year, whisking away good boys, good boys who sometimes never had the opportunity to become good men. It was only those who had a very good excuse that were around: the injured, old or unable. Or, if you were really lucky, those who had a job important enough to warrant you being kept here. It was a scrape to find yourself a male partner to have a dance with some nights. Most days, women typically partnered up to dance with each other. Of course, the men there lapped it up, taking their time to pick their partners, dancing through long lists of girls each time. It was like their own medals and awards for their war efforts, and they wore those medals proudly.

In the days before Nancy and Mike finally decided to make their fling official at one of these dances, she'd often take me to one side and would rattle through the instructions to get me up and running for each dance. A little of the Foxtrot. The basics of the Charleston. I wouldn't dare even attempt anything but the basic step of Swing dancing. It honestly baffled me how people managed to meet for the first time, having never known or spoken to each other, but somehow dance these elaborate, intricate dance moves so cohesively that it looked like a work of art. Nancy told me it was just a matter of rhythm and connection with your partner. She made a joke about how we were bucking the curve, her being white and able to dance and me being black and struggling not to someone wound my dancing partners. There was a bit of a joke around the veteran attendees that they would have to see if any insurers would underwrite them for dancing for me.

It was because of this that I had more of a tendency of sitting at the side, watching folk swing and throw themselves throughout the room. There was always more than a tinge of jealousy, seeing everyone mingle and frolic. On the odd occasion I did have a partner to dance with, they typically let me go after one son, full of stepped upon toes and embarrassed apologies. I would return to my table to lick my wounds, and they would limp off to find someone who could actually make it around the room without breaking their toes.

It was there that I met Jack. In the last few years of the war, our shores slowly filled up with unfamiliar faces. Canadians and Americans replaced the boys who were overseas or underground. Most of them were adored and doted upon, treated like exotic kings from far away lands. Most of them, anyway.

Jack was lucky enough to be counted among them. Despite his smaller height than most of the other men there, Jack Allen had a swagger that bested them all. He said it was something to do with him being from New York. At first, he swore to me it was Manhattan, with it's bright, shiny lights and swanky 'apartments' - until he finally broke down and admitted it to being from a small suburb in Queens. He also later admitted that his swagger was something he practised just before he joined the army. He knew he would have a tough time because of his height and he had to have some kind of self-made armour on. For him, it was his jokes and his swagger.