Julianne

Julianne is one of the characters in the novel I'm writing. This is the start of a character/background sketch for her: I'm trying to fill her out and give her more than two dimensions.

Dennis had asked her to dance one summer evening in 1951, in the crowded heat of the Paradise Ballroom. It was June, and she was wearing a cream-coloured linen dress that was cinched in at the waist, sleeveless, and -- with its deeply scooped back -- comfortably cool. She'd made the adjustments to it herself.

He held his half-empty bottle of beer behind his back, tried to forget that his mates were watching from the bar, and said, "Please will you dance with me, dance, please?"

She could tell, even in her state of bashful confusion -- she was eighteen, and had never been courting before -- that he'd been practicing variations of this line in his head as he crossed the shiny dance floor, and it was touching that his nervousness had made it come out wrong. That was sweet.

Thinking back, it was strange that she couldn't tell he'd been in the war: even though he was four years older than her, he didn't seem to have the confidence and steel that she thought a former soldier would have. She expected ex-soldiers to have certainty and solidity, and she expected them to be strong and dynamic. She expected them to be able to cope with adversity, and to have a finely-judged sense of responsibility, and of right and wrong.

Dennis was a good dancer -- considerate, graceful, and smooth. He was slim in those days, with thick hair that he brushed back off his forehead and swept into arabesques with an oily preparation. He looked dark and sleek. In his open-necked white (and slightly sweat-begrimed) summer shirt and grey turn-ups, he was quite a dish. "Do you like him?" Barbara had asked her in the ladies' while they were re-powdering their faces. "I do like him", Julianne said, her usual reticence eased away by her gin and tonic, and she realised that she did.

The touch of his smooth fingertips on her bare back as they danced together had made her shiver with uncomfortable excitement: it felt dangerous, as though she were standing at the edge of a cliff; there was a space, a void of empty air. She wanted to fall into it, even though she didn't know what was at the bottom.

Barbara was saying something (Julianne could see her red lips moving in the dim bathroom light), but Julianne couldn't hear her. There was a rushing sensation in her ears, and she wanted to get back out into the dance hall and feel the touch of Dennis's hands again: on her linen dress where it curved out at her hipbone; on the small of her back; on her elbow; and flat against her own hand, their fingers tentatively entwining.