The Chandelier Ballroom by Elizabeth Lord

Author:Elizabeth Lord [Elizabeth Lord]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severn House Publishers
Published: 2014-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Sixteen

For a moment they stood together just staring at each other. Her friends had gone silent, all three now keen to see what developments might arise. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked at last.

‘Norman,’ he said, wondering why on earth he had responded so easily. ‘Norman Bowers.’

‘I’m Valerie Prentice, usually known as Val.’

There came a giggle from the three still-seated girls. ‘Well, kiss him then,’ one of them hissed.

She turned on them without disengaging herself from him. ‘Shut up! All of you!’ But then she did step back from him. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.’

Oddly enough, for once in his life he didn’t feel embarrassed by what could have been an awkward situation for him. All he felt was a strange wish to have her not go and sit down, leaving him standing there like a fool.

‘It’s a very nice name,’ he said quickly. It was all he could find to say, but she smiled.

‘Do you think so?’

‘Yes, I do.’ He thought desperately of something else to say, but his mind was now totally blank and it was she who spoke again.

‘D’you come in here often?’ It was so trite, the sort of words used by new partners on every dance floor in the country.

He didn’t enjoy dancing, usually going only when a couple of blokes, feeling sorry for him and assuming they were doing him a favour, practically compelled him to go along with them. Even then the only dance he could do was the waltz and that badly, preferring to sit out and watch others rather than asking a girl to dance and possibly being refused. But he had heard the words spoken, the reply usually being some flippant come-back. Hearing her say it, he wanted to laugh, but managed to control himself from giving tongue to a reply he knew would sound utterly stupid.

Instead he said simply, ‘Sometimes, when we are given a pass for the evening.’ It needed to be enlarged upon. ‘But I enjoy coming to this pub as often as I—’

‘I don’t come in here much myself,’ she interrupted. ‘We usually go off into Brentwood or somewhere like that, but we missed the bus tonight so we decided we’d come in here instead.’

‘I thought I hadn’t seen you before.’ Words were suddenly coming to him easily, his head filling with things he wanted to say to her about himself, everything about himself. But again she interrupted.

‘How long have you been stationed here?’

‘Just a couple of months.’

A voice broke in from one of the three girls sitting watching. ‘Be careful, soldier, she might eat you!’

Val glanced back at them a little irritably then back at him. ‘Let’s go outside, out of the way of this lot.’

He nodded, not knowing quite what to say, but found himself meekly following her as she pulled aside the blackout curtain of the first door to the tiny lobby, swishing it back into place as he stepped out with her, she going through the same procedure with the

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