Dance and Skylark Read Online Free PDF Page B

rations,” agreed Joe, “instead of these faldadiddles and goings on.”
    â€œMind you,” said Jim, “I ain’t against fun, don’t anybody think that, us all needs a bit o’ fun these days. But who’s going to pay for it, that’s what I wants to know?”
    â€œUs,” said Mrs. Greening, the blowsy woman next to Edna. Her name was pronounced Grinnin.
    â€œUs? How?” said another woman.
    â€œBit on the fags, bit on the booze, bit on the pools, bit on the PAYE. We allus does pay for everything.”
    â€œâ€™Course,” added Jim, with a glance at Edna, “I’m not saying aught against Beauty Competitions. Apart from putting ideas into folk’s heads, I dare say they don’t do no ’arm.”
    â€œYou’ll be too snooty to know us, ducks,” said Mrs. Greening, prodding Edna in the ribs, “when you’re on the fillums and we pays sixpence to go and see you.”
    â€œNot me”—Edna laughed— “I only went in for a lark. I haven’t won it yet, anyhow.”
    â€œBut you will, ducks. You got more personality than her. The stuck-up bitch,” said Mrs. Greening.
    â€œOh, I dunno. She’s all right. We shan’t quarrel, whoever wins.”
    â€œYou’re too easy-going, ducks.”
    â€œWell, it’s only a lark.”
    The whole of life was a lark to Edna: the cheerful companionship of the long bench, the chi-acking over cups of tea, the naughty stories Mrs. Greening whispered in her ear, the Saturday-night dances at the Town Hall, walking out on Sunday afternoons, holding sticky hands with boys in the pictures. It was “just for a lark” that she had accepted Robin’s invitation to tea in his studio, after he had explained with engaging frankness why he couldn’t possibly design the same dress for both the finalists and must therefore have a design in readiness for whichever of them turned out to be the chosen Queen. “Your personalities, your colouring, and if I may say so your figures, my dear, are absolute opposites.” Edna had giggled; and she had a charming giggle, which came from very deep down and was like the gurgle of a mountain stream bubbling up between the ferny rocks. It wasn’t long before she and Robin were holding hands, and being of a yielding and generous nature she didn’t leave his studio until long after nightfall. But that, too, was “only for a lark.” She wasn’t going to fall in love with Robin, oh dear no, not after seeing all those sketches of women without any clothes on decorating the studio walls. She had found it difficult tobelieve his protestations that he had painted them out of his head.
    Joe said: “Here’s the last: batch of mucking old beach-balls, and then we’ve finished.”
    â€œFinished?” said Edna. “What’s the next job?”
    â€œKaput. Finished,” croaked Jim. “No more orders for nothing, that’s what the Boss said.”
    â€œNo more export?”
    â€œThe Yanks,” said Joe, “’ave got tired of poppin’ balloons at Christmas parties. Likewise the Aussies and the Argentinos. But we’re going to make a few fancy lines on spec, like, teddy-bears and jumbos, and then it’s curtains unless something turns up.”
    â€œOne thing,” said Mrs. Greening, “he won’t put us off, not until he got to.”
    â€œNot him,” said Joe. “When he was wounded at Walcheren, wounded and very near drownded he was, the first thing he wanted to know was about us chaps. Was Jim and Joe all right, he said.
And
shot through the stummick!”
    Just then the big creaking double-doors opened—the tumbledown place had been a warehouse, and long ago a tannery, before John Handiman the ironmonger’s son converted it into a balloon factory in 1946—and there entered a very small messenger-boy carrying a very large bunch of