Nameless Read Online Free PDF Page B

distinctive ,Vi’s style was. She was dressed in a well-cut dark-green coat, which she now pulled off and tossed casually aside to reveal a chic, cleverly cut grey dress that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a twenties flapper.
    Vi just oozed charisma.
    ‘I live here,’ said Betsy chirpily. ‘And Ruby’s visiting. You not working today?’
    ‘Not today. Tomorrow. Unlike you, I do work. I do my bit for the war effort.’
    ‘Prancing around on a stage ain’t work,’ scoffed Betsy.
    ‘Try it,’ advised Vi, sitting down at her dressing table, taking up a hairbrush and applying it to her shiny dark-red bob. ‘It’s work, all right, I promise you. Van Damm’s a slave driver.’
    ‘I thought that place might close down, with the war,’ said Betsy, watching her sister with a sour little smile as Vi pouted and preened in the mirror.
    ‘We never close,’ said Vi.
    ‘It can’t help the war effort, doing what you do.’
    Vi turned her head and sent Betsy a pitying smile. ‘Don’t be daft, ’course it does. Keeps the boys cheerful, don’t it?’
    ‘Cheerful? That ain’t what I’d call it.’
    ‘As if you’d know,’ sighed Vi, turning her head this way and that, picking up a lipstick, touching it briefly to her lips.
    ‘Oh, I know plenty ,’ said Betsy.
    Ruby was watching Vi, too fascinated to look away. Vi was so beautiful, she even smelled beautiful, of sweet Devon Violets. There was a little round bottle on her dressing table, containing liquid of a brilliant acid-green and with a tiny violet silk bow tied around its stubby neck. According to Betsy, she never wore any other perfume.
    Vi’s brilliant up-slanted eyes met Ruby’s in the mirror. Then they moved down, over her body. Vi put the lipstick down and turned to eye Ruby assessingly.
    ‘Can you dance?’ she asked.
    ‘Well, I . . .’ Ruby was caught off guard. ‘A bit.’
    Vi’s eyes were still on her. ‘You look . . .’
    Ruby froze. She knew what was coming.
    ‘Well . . . dark, maybe. Just a bit. You’ve got that big arse, and your lips . . . you got a touch of the tar brush, baby?’
    ‘Vi! You can’t ask her that,’ Betsy intervened, her eyes moving between her sister and her friend. ‘Look, she had lessons before the war, before the old dance hall got bombed out. We both did,’ said Betsy. ‘You remember.’
    Vi might not have remembered her sister and her little mate going for ballroom dancing lessons, but Ruby certainly did. She’d pleaded to be allowed to go, and Dad had finally let her. Ruby remembered the embarrassment of realizing the neat little sailor-suit ensemble she had stored up especially for the lessons made her look like a gink, and oh, the crucifying humiliation of discovering that she was taller than every single boy in the class. Some of them had called her Darkie – such a witty play on her name – and she had cried and thrown up in a hedge on the way home.
    ‘Well, the dancing don’t matter much. They’re always looking for new girls, girls with that certain something . . .’ Vi hesitated, then turned away, back to the mirror . . . ‘You’re a looker, all right. But maybe you haven’t got it. Think about it, though. We could all be dead tomorrow. Bombed to fuck.’
    ‘’Course she’s got it. Look at her, she’s gorgeous ,’ piped up Betsy.
    Shut up, Ruby mouthed at her.
    ‘Well, you can come along with me tomorrow,’ said Vi. Her eyes met Ruby’s again. ‘That’s if you’re interested . . . ?’
    Betsy was silent.
    ‘But the shop . . . What’ll I tell Dad . . . ?’
    ‘Tell him you’re volunteering or something.’ Vi shrugged.
    ‘I can do a turn in your dad’s shop, stand in for you,’ piped up Betsy. Anything that brought her closer to Charlie’s orbit was absolutely fine with her.
    Ruby hardly dared even consider it. She had seen the WVS ladies about in the bombed-out streets, proudly wearing their green uniforms and their silver-and-red lapel badges bearing the legend WVS