'Flying Down to Rio,' a short story for adults especially those who enjoy Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire films!

Flying Down to Rio

‘Tap dancing? What’s that then? Don’t think we do that. I’ll have to ask Wayne, he’s busy at the moment in there’, she flicked her head with its bob of dark glossy hair towards a pair of battered varnished doors. From behind them came the wild brazen rhythms of Latin dance music.

‘He won’t be long. You gonna wait?’ She continued to delicately file her long garish nails.

I nodded and sat down on a rickety chair opposite what passed for the reception desk at Geraldine’s Dance Academy.

Was I going to wait? I just wanted to get out of there. What was I doing here in the first place? I must be mad. Perhaps it ran in the family. Not madness maybe. What do they call it? ‘Eccentricity’ That’s right that sums it up ‘eccentricity’. Plenty of that I would say.

I looked at the ‘receptionist’ again. She wore high heels that made me wince even to look at them. In my time I’d never thought of ever wearing them that high, too tarty. But my legs were one of my best features. That’s what Kath always said. I was never quite sure whether it was a compliment or just snidey. You never did know with Kath that was the trouble. Anyway it’s a long time since them builders on Queen Street used to whistle at me and shout rude, delicious comments.

This girl the she has ‘legs right up to her bum,’ as they say. In fact she reminds me a bit of them lovelies in ‘Rio’. But that bare midriff and the ring through the belly-button spoils everything. In this climate! Where do they get ideas like that from? Wonder if anyone’s whistled at her? No, they don’t things like that anymore. Don’t think so anyway. Personally I loved it.

I noticed the music had stopped and ‘receptionist’, was patting at her hair in the cracked mirror behind reception. The doors to what I assumed was the dance floor swung open. She lit up as a tall dark bloke came out of the dance hall.

‘Wayne, she wants to do tap. We don’t do tap do we?’

Wayne looked hard at me and came over. He smelt of sweat, his black shirt open at the front to reveal a hairy chest and a gold medallion.

‘Lo love. Tap? Bit far out. Don’t do it here. Line dance, ballroom you’d love that wouldn’t she Cynth. Latin of course that’s our, my speciality ‘aint it Cynth. You know Tango, Salsa …

‘Carrioca?’ I put in.

‘What ?’

‘Carrioca like in ‘Flying Down to Rio’?’

Wayne looked at ‘Cynth’ and she shrugged.

I felt hot and uncomfortable, wished I’d never come. ‘You know Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire.’

‘Who?’

‘It don’t matter. What about the Tap?’

Wayne shrugged, ‘As I say…’ he must have seen the dejected look on my face.

‘Well its not our thing. Bit, well you know..’

‘Old fashioned,’ I offered.

‘No,’ he smiled. Suddenly I could see what she, Cynthia, saw in him. He was a smasher.

‘I tell you what my dad has a mate. I seem to remember he did lessons but that was a while ago. Leave your number with Cynth and I’ll give you a ring.’ He pushed open the door of the Gents, the smell of stale urine and them disinfectant tablets wafted out. It was a familiar smell. I wondered how many Gents I’d cleaned out in my time. It didn’t matter what you did with them anyway they always smelt the same.

Cynth shoved a smudged, creased A4 diary at me along with a pen that someone had chewed the end of. It didn’t work. I pushed it back at her. She looked daggers at me and put down her lipstick.

With that pout she really did look like Dolores Del Rio I almost said something but decided against it. I wrote down my number with the stub of pencil as Wayne came back and the music started again.

‘Come on Cynth. Let’s hit the floor.’

She sashayed towards the double doors. As he pushed them open the magical rhythms flooded out and sent a little surge of energy into my blood. Almost immediately the music was muted as the doors swung back.

I picked up the Lidl bag and wished I hadn’t bought the potatoes. It was a long walk home from here. The bus was pointless with all the road works. If it ever came that is. I cursed dad, then felt a bit guilty. After all it wasn’t really his fault I was here, it was the council. If that letter had not popped through the door I wouldn’t have come. The thought made me feel better, less guilty. I never answer them letters. Waste of time. You never hear anything if you anyway. But it didn’t work this time. One day a bloke turns up. hardly had finished me breakfast.

Pokes his ID card at me and asks, ‘If he can have a moment.’

I wouldn’t let him in. Never let anyone like that in. Well, you never know these days. Anyway turns out they want me to move. They were tearing my place down for ‘redevelopment’, whatever that means. Gave him a mouthful. I’ve lived here most of my life.

But you can’t win against them and before many months is gone I’m out the back in the shed, well the old shelter really, sorting through things and I found all dad’s stuff.

All his old videos and books, ‘The Complete Book of First and Second World War Aircraft,’ and of course all of Biggles. ‘Biggles Learns to Fly,’ ‘Biggles Flies West’, ‘Biggles Delivers the Goods’. I never saw him read anything else. Not even a newspaper. I cried a bit. It brought it all back. Him and mum.

Really it was his world. It used to drive us all mad. He’d never watch telly programmes except for a few times when that film ‘The Battle of Britain,’ was on with Laurence Olivier. He’d watch then.

There was nothing for us to do out on the marshes. There was just the farm. Well, we called it that but it wasn’t really. Dad’s heart was never in it and financially we lurched from one year to the next. Just. Most of the time him and Dodger his sidekick and jack-of-all trades spent looking after the Tiger Moth.

That was the only time I saw mum lose it. He and Dodger had been away at an auction somewhere, a ‘farm auction,’ they said. My foot. Anyway they turned up with this thing, wings detached, on the back of the old US army truck they used to get around in. I remember I thought it looked like some kind of broken bird.

Mum sent us kids up to Fowler’s for some eggs, she said, though we had loads of our own. We could hear the commotion even up there though it were a good half mile away. Dodger came pedalling hell for leather up the lane on his old army surplus bike as we walked back.

We didn’t get sight of dad for the next couple of days and mum told us to shut our mouths and mind our own business when we asked. Kath got a thick ear for even tryin’.

Anyway it all settled down.

One day I was going past what dad called ‘the barn.’ It was really an old aircraft hangar. Huge. When the wind blew off the North Sea you could hear the moaning and clanking through the red rusty holes of the corrugated iron. It had been green once but hadn’t seen a coat of paint for at least thirty years. Yep, during the war our farm or a big part of it had been R.A.F Milton in the Marsh. Everybody’s ‘eard of Tangmere and Biggin Hill but Milton was up there with them when it mattered in 1941. Or that’s what dad always said. I think that’s what attracted him in the first place, nothing to do with it being a farm.

Anyway as I went past there were Dodger and dad in overalls putting the wings back on this plane. Dodger was one of those odd balls. I was never quite sure of him.

He used to look at me funny like. I always made sure someone else was around. But he and dad were thick as thieves. And Dodger, odd as he might have been, was one of those blokes who could turn his hand to anything practical and make an expert job of it in no time. He’d do repair jobs for the other farms around but never if it got in the way of working for dad. I’ve often thought since that it was really weird how close they were. Almost as if they were married. Mum mentioned once that dad and Dodger ‘ad been together all through the war. I guess they’d been through bad times.

It didn’t matter whether it was haymaking or the sheep needed seeing to they worked all hours on that plane and by the end of summer it was completely rebuilt. We could hear the engine roaring as mum and us fed the animals, milked Molly and Dexter our two cows and repaired the fences when the pigs got out.

At Sunday lunch, the one occasion nobody dared miss, dad announces he is going to take flying lessons. There was a dangerous silence and us kids got on with our Yorkshire Pudding and roast potatoes.

After apple tart and custard despite our protests he put on one of his Fred Astaire and Ginger Roger videos. I suppose it was partly to appease mum.

It was the one thing they really shared together. They both loved those movies ‘Waltz Swing Time’, ‘Shall We Dance?’, ‘Carefree’.

They’d watch them time after time. I forget the number of nights us kids crawled out of bed and sat on the stairs staring at them as they danced with Ginger and Fred through one of the lavish dance routines.

They would have pushed back all the furniture, rolled up the carpets and would be swaying and swinging around, the volume on the telly turned up full blast. They were good. I don’t think I realised that until much later when I watched ‘Come Dancing,’ on the box. Mum and dad could have danced the legs off any of those frothy, posh dancers. Mum was transformed, seemed years younger as dad twirled and whirled her around with the Hollywood big band sound pulsing through our old kitchen and out across the dreary marshes. Then when Fred launched into one of his tap dance routines dad would follow, perhaps grabbing a walking stick from the stand. We were mesmerised. Dad would bow as we applauded and mum would tell us sharply to get back to bed.

It couldn’t go on like that of course, the farm and everything. Then dad started getting headaches, bad ones. He saw doctor after doctor, was even in hospital for a few days. Soon after that, he and mum came back from a visit to some specialist and I could see she had been crying. Dad was pale enough but Dodger seemed to have shrunk, become an old man, his face creased his eyes more than usual bloodshot.

Dad, looking a bit haunted said, ‘Kiddies,’ he rarely called us by our names, it was always ‘kid’, or kiddies. ‘Kiddies, I have good news for you and bad news.’ At that point mum sat down heavily reaching for her hanky and Dodger gulped at his whisky.

‘What do you want first?’

‘Good news, good news of course.’

‘No,’ screamed Kath. ‘Lets have the bad news first.’

We squabbled and argued as we always did.

Dad interrupted, ‘Alright, alright calm down. Kath is right the bad news first. I want you all to watch ‘Flying Down to Rio,’ with us. We groaned. ‘Dad!’ we chorused in despair. That film was Mum’s favourite. She told us it was the only time that Ginger’s name had been starred above Fred’s in all of their films. Mum liked that, said it was fair, as Ginger had done lots of films and was a real star long before Fred came on the scene.

‘It’s the last time I promise, I won’t ever ask you again and the good news is mum’s going to make jelly and blancmange and a Victoria sponge for tea.’

We all cheered. Mum blew her nose and headed for the pantry, Dodger reached for the whisky bottle again.

Course, I can’t think of those few hours apart from what happened the next day. But daft as it might seem, it was a perfect evening. We all settled down full of tea and sponge and watched the exotic South American dances, the sexy Carrioca and of course the endless virtuosity of Ginger and Fred. Then there was that odd aerial circus. All those long legged Hollywood lovelies cavorting around on aircraft wings as the frail old planes flung themselves around the Rio sky.

It was before that though when dad, during one of Fred’s fabulous tap-dance routines said, ‘Come on kid dance with me, you have the legs for it, come on.’

He dragged me up protesting while Kath laughed herself silly.

It’s O.K. kid I’ll teach you. You’ll be good. You have it. The rhythm. The legs.’

He never did of course.

I didn’t even hear the roar of the engine as the Tiger Moth took off.

‘I’m Flying Down to Rio. See you there some day. I love you all Dad’ he had writtten in the note left behind the tea caddy.