Page 95 of Fire Must Burn

‘No, afteryou, Miss Sparks!’ replied Gwen, pushing her through the doorway.

Inside, several of the tables had been cleared out to make space for the dancing, which was already in progress. Iris and Gwen, who had been expecting something along the lines of a rustic local band with a fiddler and a guitar, were pleasantly surprised to see a four-piece swing combo in from Bath where they must have played afternoon tea dances. Here, however, freed from the more genteel restraints of those tourist resorts, they were cutting loose, and the local crowd, already fuelled by the hardworking barman in the back, was trying with varying degrees of success to replicate the jitterbug moves that they had seen in newsreels and American films.

Fortunately, slower dances were brought into the mix, and the local men were by no means shy about asking the visitors to join them. Iris danced, reluctantly at first, but soon eased into the spirit of things. No violence occurred to any of her partners, with the exception of the occasional foot getting trod upon as the room became more and more crowded. She changed partners after every dance with an eye towards not encouraginganyone more than they should have been. Still, a few tried.

‘You wouldn’t want to go out back and look at the stars with me, would you?’ asked one red-cheeked hopeful several years her junior as the sax player crooned ‘The Stars Will Remember’ in a passable impression of Steve Conway.

‘Sorry, no, but that’s a good line,’ she replied. ‘It’s bound to work on some lucky lass sooner or later.’

Around eleven, Alice collected them.

‘We need to get back while we still have some energy left,’ she said.

They piled back into the car and drove back to the inn. Once inside, they went to the game room. As they passed the dining room, Gwen noticed that the dessert dishes from dinner had only been partly cleared, still stacked on the trolley near the door to the kitchen. Sloppy, she thought.

When they reached the game room, only the mismatched husbands of Alice and Renee were still there, playing gin rummy.

‘Goodness, we shouldn’t have left you stranded like that,’ laughed Alice, coming over to kiss each of them in turn. ‘Did you clean out the others?’

‘Um, they’ve stepped outside for a smoke,’ said one of them, smirking slightly.

Gwen looked at him, then turned to Iris so the men couldn’t see her speak.

‘Something’s wrong,’ she muttered to Iris.

‘What?’

‘They were all smoking away in here when we left, so no reason to go outside to do it. The dishes at the dining table haven’t been cleared. And I don’t see Pam in attendance.’

Iris immediately turned and grabbed a poker from by the fireplace.

‘Excuse me for a moment,’ she said.

She walked quickly through the dining room and opened the far door, Gwen following her as she went through a connecting pantry to the kitchen.

The kitchen was a huge one, with a large central table where meals for twenty could be prepared and copper pots that had escaped requisitioning during the war hanging from the walls.It was on the tabletop that she saw Pam, struggling against the grip of one of the men staying at the inn while Norris attempted to climb on top of her.

‘Stop squirming, you stupid girl,’ he snarled. ‘There’s money in it for you when we’re done. Hold her down, Elster!’

Her cries were muffled by the other man clamping his hand over her mouth.

‘Hello,’ said Iris from the doorway. ‘I hope I’m interrupting something.’

The two men turned in surprise.

‘You can walk away right now,’ said Norris. ‘This is none of your concern.’

‘Oh, but it is,’ she said, stepping into the room.

‘I warn you, I am not without influence in these parts,’ he said. ‘I can make things very difficult for you.’

‘Once you’ve recovered from your injuries, you are welcome to try,’ she said, holding up the poker.

‘Here now,’ he said, sliding off the table on to his feet. ‘There’s no need for that.’

‘There isn’t, in fact,’ she agreed. ‘I’m perfectly capable of crippling you both without it. But this isn’t my house, and this is a lovely kitchen, so I’d prefer to restrict the damage to just the two of you. We could take things outside if you’d prefer an old-fashioned bare-knuckle brawl. I like those as well.’

The man called Elster released Pam and stood in front of the table, his fists clenched. He had at least a foot and three stone on Iris. She looked up at him and smiled.