Memoirs of a Dance Hall Romeo by Jack Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

instantly, and falling into step at her right hand. I couldn’t think of anything worth the saying, but mumbled something about wanting to see her to the tram stop. At least she didn’t say no and we continued together in silence.
    I have seldom felt more miserable in my life than I did standing in the rain with her at the end of a small queue. She hadn’t said a word, simply started to move out of my life forever when the tram came and the queue started forward. There was a lump in my throat the size of a fist. I could have cried like a child. I plucked at her sleeve instinctively as she reached for the handrail.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
    ‘Good,’ she said calmly. ‘A little suffering now and then is good for the soul.’
    I started to turn away, and as the tram moved off, she was standing at the edge of the platform, hanging on to the handrail. ‘The Trocadero, Thursday,’ she called. ‘Seven-thirty. I’ll see you inside.’
    It was like a miracle. So great was the release of energy that, instead of catching a tram myself in the opposite direction, I walked through the rain for a good mile and a half, feeling incredibly cheerful.
    Some of this joy was soon displaced by a feeling of profound depression. Why on earth had I behaved in such a stupid way? It was past belief.
    I finally caught a tram, and had the top deck to myself all the way to Ladywood Park, staring out into the darkness as we rattled along the track through the playing fields, alone with my thoughts.
    I took them to Jake, naturally. Couldn’t possibly have gone to bed without seeing him. I told him everything as he brewed the tea and he took it all very calmly indeed.
    ‘But I don’t really see what’s worrying you, old sport,’ he said. ‘She’s seeing you again, isn’t she?’
    ‘But why did I behave like that?’ I said. ‘Like some mad rapist on the loose.’
    ‘A slight exaggeration.’ He started to fill his pipe, a new affectation. ‘You’ve got to learn not to let your frustration get the upper hand. No point going at it like a bull at a gate. Females are like rare china. They need delicate handling. They don’t like being mauled.’
    He said a few more things which I can’t recall, and finally gave me a book on how to achieve marital bliss which he assured me I would find most enlightening, and threw me out.
    When I got home, I sat in the kitchen with a pot of tea and read the book through, or rather the relevant sections. It was obvious that I had a great deal to learn, particularly about the female of the species and how to switch her on.
    When I went up to my room, I sat by the open window, watching the rain lancing through the lamplight, smoking, and thinking decidedly erotic thoughts, which did me no good at all. Sleep was impossible so I did what I always did at such moments, got out my foolscap pads and favourite pen and got down to some hard writing.
    I had put away my previous effort, the eighty-thousand-word Hemingway parody, and was now into the second chapter of a novel of life in Occupied Germany as a national serviceman. As always, when the words took control everything faded, even Helen.
    But I couldn’t write all the time, and she filled my thoughts to an obsessional degree during the following two days. The desire for her became a kind of constant itch that simply wouldn’t go away.
    I was one of the first into the Trocadero when it opened at seven, and waited impatiently at a point on the balcony where I could see everything at the right end of the hall. It was even quieter than Tuesday and there was a curiously muted air to everything. From seven-thirty to eight was a period of living hell, a slow realization that she wasn’t coming. By eight-fifteen I was in a state of abject misery and capable, I think, of leaping over the rail to the floor below.
    I went to the counter and got a coffee, and as I turned, she hurried along the balcony towards me, still wearing her coat, her handbag over her shoulder.