Storyteller - Colin & Anne Brookfield (ebook and pdf reader .txt) 📗

fate Ben?”

“I like that, that’s rather droll. Well, there is more to Big Horse in the Sky. He attends to our final needs for the last round-up to Heaven, where we will all roam in freedom and have no masters. But please remember Ned, for all those brutal people, some were good and kind, like the people who now care for us.”

“Thank goodness for that,” replied Ned.

Ben looked at him kindly and said, “Well, goodnight now, settle down to some happy dreams; your future here is assured.”

So Ned went to sleep knowing he had a lot to learn from his dear new friend.”

Palais de Danse

There was growing excitement as the weeks shrank towards the holiday flight that Stan and his sister were taking to New Zealand. Mothers of course, miss nothing, and had noticed her son’s impatience.

“Ballroom dancing was very popular in my day and still is,” she said encouragingly. “The ‘Palais de Danse’ at Hammersmith was my favourite haunt; of course we were all young at heart in those times, and happy with small blessings.” He groaned inwardly as he could see where this was going. “Now I can tell by your face, that there’s some resistance, so let me put it another way; the world only comes to those who go out to meet it. So go on, get yourself along to this weekend’s dance. I’ll pay the entry fee if that’s what’s bothering you.”

That was how his strange tale began. He had stopped for a cup of tea and a sausage sandwich at ‘Alf’s Quick-Stop’ near the Palais. It only cost two shillings and a penny and was certainly cheaper than the price his mother could have served it up. He discovered later that Alf’s mobile eating place was always on site at the same spot to catch the hungry or thirsty, before and after their entertainment by the Joe Loss band at the Palais.

“Earns me a small living!” Alf exclaimed with a knowing grin as he jiggled the ostentatious, gold bracelet on his powerful muscular wrist. It gave Stan the impression that it was as secure there from thieves as being in a bank vault. A couple of giggling young ladies broke his concentration as they bounced into Alf’s.

“Two teas and one of those buns please Alf.” The girls paid and reverted back to their chattering huddle – as girls do – with an occasional pause for refreshment.

He was distracted for a second by a passing young lady who had paused for a moment beneath a street light, as though she was undecided whether or not to stop at Alf’s. Then just as quickly, she was gone from the light. Stan looked back at Alf and they both raised their eyebrows.

“Did you ever see such a beauty!” Alf exclaimed. “That well cut pitch black hair and startling deep blue eyes that’s the very best of the Irish. Of course, it’s St Patrick’s day and ‘The Emerald Isle’ dance night at the Palais this evening.”

The other two girls turned away and tripped off towards the dance hall giggling coquettishly at what they had overheard.

As he left Alf’s, it crossed his mind just how his sister Janet loved to plague him, ‘You’re always at the back of the queue because you are always late Stan’, and she was right again. Ten minutes earlier and he might not have found himself behind a queue of twenty people at the Palais entrance. When he got in, most of them seemed to have arrived partnered, judging by the informal way they were talking to each other and quite unlike the quieter lads like him, who had obviously come on their own.

Inside, he was greeted by the beautiful voice of the band’s resident singer; it was a dreamland of dancing swirling figures, beneath the mirror-facetted globes hanging high above, which littered them with tiny sparkles of light. After the darkness of the streets, it seemed like heaven.

“I know I don’t speak with an Irish lilt,” said a female voice just behind his shoulder, “but I’ll bet you that the Irish girls can’t dance like my friend and I.”

“Okay,” he said with a smile, “who’s first?”

“Bloody cheek!” said the other girl. “I’m Phyllis.” In an instant, she whisked him on to the dance floor. “Ouch! That was my foot you’ve just trodden on,” she yelled, “It’s like dancing with a cart-horse, although a very nice one,” she quickly added with a now familiar giggle.

After that dance, Stan swirled around the dance floor with her friend Sissy. Her head was on his shoulder as they moved to the rhythm of a romantic waltz. Then quite unexpectedly, a pair of deep blue eyes from across the dance floor sought his and held them there. It shocked him, and he fleetingly broke the rhythm of his feet. It was the girl he had seen passing under the light outside of Alf’s.

“Oi!” Sissy exclaimed, “Get your act together jumbo legs,” and like her friend, followed it with a giggle.

When the waltz had finished, both the girls were quickly swept back onto the floor by a couple of smiling lads, and Stan was left with some unease about the way those blue eyes had so strangely locked into his. Moreover, how could the most beautiful girl here be plonked on a chair like a ‘wallflower’, alone and unnoticed by everyone but him?

This disturbed his evening and although he danced with other girls, his eyes were scanning everywhere in case she was now amongst the gyrating dancers. She was certainly not where he had seen her seated earlier. Later, as everyone streamed homeward, he rushed over to Alf’s for some refreshment and to confide his experience, before Alf became deluged in customers.

“I could write a book on the stuff that gets confided to me, so you’d better keep me informed,” said Alf with a grin. “This tale seems to have some interesting possibilities I could add to my list.” Then the crowd from behind caught up with them and their conversation, until it was lost within the cacophony of bombarding orders and general chatter.

Stan met Alf again the following weekend and repeated his previous week’s peculiar happening, between mouths full of sausage sandwich and drinks of tea.

“Yeah, I remember the girl. It’s not easy to forget those lovely blue eyes, and as I said last week, it might turn out to be an interesting tale, so keep me informed. What’s your name by the way?”

“Stan,” he replied hurriedly as he gulped the last of his tea, and raced off to the Palais.

got a few refusals before a ‘not so young’ lady, deigned to dance with him. It didn’t quite turn out as he had hoped.

“You’re supposed to look at your partner, not gaze about,” she rebuked, and it was not followed by a giggle.

Worse was to come as his gaze and that of the blue eyed girl, again made contact from the same solitary place she had been seated the week before. His partner didn’t take kindly to the sudden muddling together of their feet and dumped him right in the middle of the floor with the parting shot, “Get some lessons Sonny!” making it loud enough for everyone to hear.

He wasn’t humiliated, as his mind was focussed elsewhere. There were a few grumbles as he made a beeline straight through the dancing couples to the place where he had seen the girl, but when he got there, the chair was empty. He sat there for ages but the blue-eyed girl was not to be seen.

Stan was now on a mission, and the strange phenomenon had even begun to haunt his working days and evenings. However, he was better prepared the following week. Having told his older sister Janet about the strange happenings at the dance, she had agreed to accompany him.

“No funny jokes in front of anyone, like ‘this is my Mum’ or that sort of thing,” she warned.

On the dance night, their first port of call was at Alf’s place or ‘pit stop’, as Janet disparagingly referred to it. Stan explained to her that Alf was now in on the story, and would probably set the ‘boys’ on him if he wasn’t not kept up-to-date with the deepening mystery. He introduced Janet to Alf who commented, “Clever move, bringing a witness this time.”

As a sweetener to his sister for her inconvenience, he ordered two cups of tea and a sausage sandwich (which he was going to share with her) but the furtive warning look, reminded him that she had fussy food habits.

“Greedy pig!” she exclaimed at her brother, then waved goodbye to Alf as they made their way to the Palais entrance. “Don’t you ever stop feeding your face with rubbish? I’m going to finish up with a spotty, acne-faced, embarrassing brother.”

This was Janet’s first visit to the Palais, and Stan watched her mood rise as they entered.

“I could move in permanently,” she gasped as the great dance hall opened up in front of her. “It’s glorious. Where’s the Ladies?”

Scarcely had Janet rushed off when the familiar face of Sissy emerged from out of the crowd.

“Brought our mum along this time for protection have we?” she jibed. “Don’t worry, we won’t eat you.”

“It’s my older sister! And for goodness sake don’t say things like that in front of her, it’ll ruin the evening.”

Luckily, Sissy did behave herself, even though she couldn’t understand why a brother would rather have every dance with his sister when there were plenty of un-partnered girls.

Then Janet observed rather coolly. “No sign of your mystery blue-eyes yet, and half the evening has gone already.” After that, every circuit was followed by the hackneyed, “No sign of your delusion yet then.”

Stan was beginning to think she had a valid point, he could have got a bit over excited at the time and day-dreamed it all. Then suddenly – there she was!

The blue eyed girl was there and he stopped dead on the spot, causing a few collisions and a few rude remarks. Pointing his finger he shouted excitedly to Janet, “THERE she is!”

“You mean that funny old lady sitting on that chair over there,” she said sarcastically.

By now they had caused such a disturbance that they had to leave the floor. They made their way towards (what Stan insisted was) his blue-eyed girl but Janet was adamant, that it was her funny old lady.

On their arrival at the spot, the chair was again empty.

“There’s no way that funny old lady could have hobbled out of sight in the space of two seconds,” remarked Janet.

“Neither could my lithe, Emerald Isle beauty have done,” Stan added.

Ignoring him, Janet just rambled on. “There’s just no way that this could happen, and most certainly she could not have been whisked on to the dance floor by some amorous young lad.”

So that was that. They made their way out of the Palais front entrance. They braved the short queue at Alf’s place and ordered some tea. Unfortunately, Janet’s earlier ‘greedy guts’ remark about his liking for Alf’s sausages, deterred him from ordering another in her company and it didn’t help that somebody else was eating one.

“Penny for your thoughts Stan,” said Alf, as Stan tore his eyes away from the other person’s sausage