bit was cruel) that she, Dolly, was frightened; that she couldn’t bear to think the same thing might happen one day to her. But then—
‘Watch out!’
A shriek came from the Bournemouth shoreline, drawing Dolly’s attention to the water’s edge and saving Janice Smitham from a conversation she didn’t want to have.
There, in a bathing costume straight from Vogue, stood The Girl, previously of The Silver Dress. Her mouth was tightened to a pretty moue and she was rubbing at her arm. The other beautiful people had clustered in a tableau of tut-tutting and sympathetic posturing, and Dolly strained to understand what had happened. She watched as a boy, around her age, stooped to scoop at the sand, as he righted himself and held aloft—Dolly’s hand went gravely to her mouth—a cricket ball.
‘So sorry, chaps,’ Father said.
Dolly’s eyes widened—what on earth was he doing now? Dear God, not making an approach, surely. But yes, she drew breath, that’s exactly what he was doing. Dolly wanted to disappear, to hide, but she couldn’t look away. Father stopped when he reached the group and made a rudimentary mime of swinging the bat. The others nodded and listened, the boy with the ball said something and the girl touched her arm, and then shrugged lightly and smiled those dimples at Father. Dolly exhaled, it seemed disaster had been averted.
But then, dazzled perhaps by the aura of glamour into which he’d stumbled, Father forgot to leave, turning instead and pointing up the beach, directing the collective attention of the others to the patch where Dolly and her mother sat. Janice Smitham, with a deficit of grace that made her daughter cringe, started to stand before thinking better of it, failing to sit, and choosing instead to hover at a crouch. From such position she lifted a hand to wave.
Something inside Dolly curled up and died. Things could not have been worse.
Except that suddenly they were.
‘Look here! Look at me!’
They looked. Cuthbert, with all the patience of a gnat, had grown tired of waiting. Cricket game forgotten, he’d wandered up the beach and made contact with one of the seaside don-keys. One foot already in the stirrup, he was struggling to hoist himself atop. It was awful to watch, but watch Dolly did; watch—a sneaking glance confirmed—did everybody.
The spectacle of Cuthbert weighing that poor donkey down was the last straw. She knew she probably should have helped him, but Dolly couldn’t, not this time. She muttered something about her headache and too much sun, swept up her magazine, and hurried back towards the grim solace of her tiny room with its stingy view of drainpipes.
Back behind the bandstand, a young man with longish hair and a shabby suit had seen it all. He’d been dozing beneath his hat when the cry of ‘Watch out!’ cut through his dream and woke him. He’d rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and glanced about to pinpoint the source of the cry and that’s when he’d seen them by the foreshore, the father and son who’d been playing cricket all morning.
There’d been some sort of a kerfuffle, the father was waving at a group in the shallows—the rich young people, he realised, who’d been making so much of themselves at the nearby bathing hut. The hut was empty now, but for a swathe of silver fabric fluttering from the balcony rail. The dress. He’d noticed it earlier—it had been hard not to, which was no doubt the point. It wasn’t a beach dress, that one; it belonged on a dance floor.
‘Look here!’ someone called, ‘Look at me!’ And the young man duly looked. The lad who’d been playing cricket was busy now making a donkey of himself, with, it would appear, a don-key. The rest of the crowd was watching the entertainment un-fold.
Not him, though. He had other things to do. The pretty girl with heart-shaped lips and the sort of curves that made him ache with longing, was by herself now, leaving her family and heading away from the beach. He stood up, swinging his haversack over his shoulder and pulling his hat down low. He’d been waiting for an opportunity like this one and he didn’t intend to waste it.
Eight
Bournemouth, 1938
DOLLY DIDN’T SEE HIM at first. She didn’t see much of anything. She was far too busy blinking back tears of frustration as she trudged along the beach towards the promenade. Everything was a hot angry blur of sand and seagulls and lousy smiling faces.