Folly's Child (11 page)

Sally tipped the dressing table mirror to get a view first of her top half, then her lower.

‘It's lovely – but what about shoes? Mine are clumsy and awful.'

Louise dived into her carrier bag again. ‘ Voila!' she said, producing a pair of strappy white sandals.

Sally squeezed her feet into them and surveyed her image again. Unbelievable! Just wait until Pete saw her! He was certain to ask her to dance when she looked like this!

‘Now – your hair,' Louise said matter-of-factly. ‘We will make it wet and put it in rags. It will be dry by the time we leave for the dance.'

Sure enough, it was. When the rags came out the mass of frizz made Sally screech with horror but when Louise had teased it a hide with her Mason Pearson brush and a long tail comb Sally saw that the usually severe schoolgirlish cut had been transformed into a mop of pretty curls.

Paula and Louise were looking lovely too – Paula in a little white top with a boat shaped neck and a bright turquoise circular skirt, Louise in a figure hugging number which left none of her curves to the imagination – but for the first time in her life Sally felt she could compete with them on equal terms.

‘Be sure to come straight home after the dance. And make sure you stay together,' Grace warned.

Paula pursed her lips and tossed her head, looking annoyed. But Sally scarcely noticed.

By nine-thirty the dance was in full swing. As it was a special fund-raising dance instead of the regularly fortnightly hop, a three-piece band had been brought in to replace the usual stack of gramophone records and there was ‘real food' – fishpaste sandwiches, sausage rolls and cheese and pineapple on sticks – which the ‘committee' had spent the entire afternoon preparing.

Paula and Louise had been nominated to sell the raffle tickets and did a round of the hall, flirting outrageously and telling all the boys the tickets were ‘ sixpence each or two shillings a strip'. Naturally most of the boys opted for ‘the strip' and each time the innuendo was made the girls pretended it was terribly witty and original, if a little naughty, just as they did when they were asked for the twentieth time if perhaps
they
might be the prize.

Selling the tickets gave Paula an opportunity to make her play for Jeff Freeman. She waited for Jean, his girlfriend, to go to the Ladies, and then pounced, flirting madly and manoeuvring him into bartering with her that he would buy two whole strips if she would have a dance with him. Then without the slightest compunction she thrust her basin of money and book of tickets into Sally's lap and let him drag her, protesting theatrically, onto the dance floor. When Jean returned from the Ladies there was no sign of either of them, for at the end of the dance they had slipped unnoticed out of one of the wide-open fire exits and around the back of the hall where only courting couples went.

Half an hour later they were still missing. When she finished selling the remaining tickets Sally looked around for them, realised what had happened and went back to sit on one of the hard upright chairs which lined the hall. She was feeling wretched. For her, the evening had not turned out at all as she had hoped. Several boys had asked her to dance but she had refused them all, afraid she might miss her chance with Pete, but he seemed not to have noticed her at all in spite of Louise's dress. Once she had thought he was corning in her direction and her heart had begun to pump with excitement but he had walked straight past, heading for the bar that was selling soft drinks only (with a crate of beer hidden under the counter for the benefit of the band). Tears pricked her eyes and she stared hard at the floor.

‘Wanna dance?' a voice enquired and Sally, looked up to see a boy in a velvet-collared jacket, drainpipes and crepe-soled shoes standing in front of her, a lick of greasy hair falling across a face shiny with perspiration.

‘No thank you,' she started to say, then caught sight of Pete – dancing with someone else. Her heart dropped like a stone and somehow she got to her feet. The boy grabbed her hand with his sweaty one. She danced in a haze of misery, scarcely noticing when the music changed from vibrant rock-and-roll to ‘the creep' and when the lights were lowered and he pulled her close she couldn't be bothered to protest though she was revolted by the smell of beer on his breath (where had he got it?) mingling with strong body odours. The teddy-boy seemed to take her listlessness for acquiescence. His hands strayed down to a spot just below the first frill on her skirt and he pushed his hips against hers so that she could clearly feel the bulge between his legs.

Suddenly it was all to much for Sally. She grabbed his hands and removed them from her bottom. Then she turned and fled from the dance floor, pushing her way between the smooching couples and heading for the Ladies, a box of a room with pegs lining two walls, a flyblown mirror over a grubby cracked china sink and two cubicles. Ignoring the girls who were primping in front of the mirror she ran to the cubicles and dived inside one, slamming the door after her and leaning against it. What a disaster! If only she could just go home, hide away and never have to see anyone again – but she had promised to stick with Paula and there would be all kinds of awkward questions and recriminations if she arrived home alone.

High heels pattered across the cloakroom floor and someone pushed at the toilet door.

‘Damn,' said a voice outside. ‘They're both occupied.'

‘Never mind, they won't be long.'

‘I haven't got long. If I don't get back and find Jeff soon it'll be time for my last bus and I can't go without seeing him. He is supposed to be my boyfriend, after all.'

‘Supposed to be. Some boyfriend if you ask me!'

Sally stood motionless. She had recognised the voices – Jean, Jeff's girl and her friend, Peggy.

‘I wouldn't stand for it if I were you,' Peggy was saying indignantly. ‘I wouldn't let him treat
me
like that.'

‘It's not his fault. It's that Paula Bristow – Lady Muck herself. Who does she think she is?' Jean's voice was rising; she sounded tearful.

‘Don't upset yourself, Jean. He's not worth it. Nor is she. She's a fast cat. She'll let the boys do what they like. That's why they flock round her. You ask my brother. The things he could tell you about her would make your hair curl. She's got no pride. She just doesn't care.'

Sally began to quiver with anger. Forgetting her own misery and embarrassment she threw open the door. ‘That's my sister you're talking about!'

For a moment the two girls stared at her, shocked, then Peggy recovered herself. ‘ It's true, anyway,' she said defiantly. ‘And you're as bad as she is! You'll let any boy paw you too. I saw you just now with Gary. His hands were all over you!'

‘You're just jealous!' Sally cried, her face scarlet. She pushed past the girls and marched over the the wastepaper bin beneath the sink. It was full of used cloakroom tickets, torn paper towel, bits of face-powdery cotton wool and the shavings of eyebrow pencils. She picked it up, went back to the two girls and dumped it unceremoniously over Peggy's head. Then she ran from the cloakroom, down the narrow dark passage and out into the night.

The sound of merriment emanating from the hall jangled her nerves, the sight of the courting couples pressed against the wall was enough to bring her to the edge of tears again. What an evening! Bad enough that Pete didn't want her. But to overhear Jean and Peggy saying those things about Paula was somehow almost worse, for in her heart Sally knew they were not far removed from the truth.

For the first time in her life she felt as if the veil had been stripped from her idol and she was looking at the real person who hid away inside a beautiful body, seeing her through the eyes of others who had no family love for her to colour what they saw. Paula was a flirt. She did think she was a little bit better than everyone else. And she was prepared to go to any lengths to get what she wanted – and almost always succeeded.

‘Oh sugar!' Sally said. And therein the darkness, with half an hour to wait before she could even start looking for Paula with a view to going home, she began to cry.

After three weeks of misery Sally woke up one morning and realised she was no longer in love with Pete. The fact that her stomach no longer turned over when he looked at her came as a surprise and disappointment – even unrequited love was better than no love at all. A fortnight after she had made this earth-shattering discovery she was amazed when he stuttered out an invitation to the cinema. Hoping to rekindle the fire Sally accepted, but it was no use. Close to, she discovered, Pete smelled of carbolic scop, a dreadful turn-off, and when he kissed her in the dark it was so wet and sloppy she longed only to search for her handkerchief and wipe her mouth dry.

During the next year Sally fell in and out of love a half dozen times and each time it proved to be just as disastrous. A few boys asked her out but never the right ones, never the ones she wanted to ask her, and Sally began to wonder how two people ever came to be in love with one another at the same time. It was a miracle that so many people managed it – and for long enough to get engaged and married. But perhaps they were luckier than she was, or just plain less fussy.

Paula certainly never seemed to encounter such problems. She had a string of boyfriends and no matter how badly she treated them there were always others lined up and waiting. But then of course Paula was so lovely she had only to look at a boy to have him crazy about her, Sally thought wretchedly.

Then, in the spring when she was sixteen, the miracle happened. His name was Edward Blake and he was nineteen years old – really grown up! Besides this he was stunningly handsome.

It was the beginning of the tennis season. As a member of the school team Sally was expected to stay behind after school to practise. One afternoon after an especially long session she was forced to catch a much later bus home than usual. She sprinted across the playground, hampered by her satchel and tennis racket, just as the bus was about to pull away, and leaped aboard. The bus was full and the conductor grumpy. ‘Hold on tight now!' he called, ringing the bell. Sally staggered down the aisle, trying not to bang the other passengers with her tennis racket.

‘Let me take that,' said a male voice and turning she found herself looking into a pair of startlingly blue eyes. ‘There's a seat here,' he went on, moving to let her in.

She sat down, settling her satchel on her lap and stealing another glance at him. Thick fair hair, a wonderful complexion – not a sign of a spot! – and those blue eyes! Sally felt a little flush of excitement creeping up her cheeks and she was acutely conscious of her gingham uniform dress and the beret which school rules said must be worn at all times when outside the school grounds. Failure to do so was punished by being forced to wear the hated beret for a whole day in school – for lessons, lunch,
everything
, a badge of shame Sally had so far managed to avoid. But just now she thought she would willingly endure any punishment if only she dared take her hat off without making it perfectly obvious she was making a pass at him.

‘You aren't usually on this bus,' he said and Sally felt her cheeks grow hotter.

Oh please don't let me blush now! she prayed.

‘No, I'm late. I've been playing tennis.'

‘That explains it.' He shifted the racket between his knees. ‘Do you play a lot?'

‘When I can.'

‘Are you good?'

‘Not bad, considering the shaky start I had. When I was a first year I was put in as ballboy and I didn't know the rules. I kept throwing the ball back to the wrong player. Every time I thought I'd got the hang of it the service changed. And then I was sent to retrieve the balls from the headmaster's garden. I was terrified of knocking on the door of the house to ask permission but I was even more terrified of going back and making a fool of myself because of my ignorance on court so I spent the rest of the afternoon skulking behind the sweet peas.'

He laughed. He had a nice laugh, she thought. They chattered until Sally realised the bus was pulling up at her stop.

She scrambled to her feet. ‘I get off here.'

He handed her her racket. ‘When can I see you again?'

‘Oh!' She knew her cheeks were flaming now. ‘I don't know …'

‘Are you getting off or not?' the conductor yelled, his finger on the bell.

‘Can you get to Bath? I'll see you on Saturday – half past seven at the bus stop,' the boy said.

‘Yes, all right …' She staggered down the gangway, shell-shocked, and walked home feeling as if she was floating on air but as Saturday approached the nervousness began. She could get a bus to Bath, but how would she get home again? Where would he take her? What should she wear? She didn't even know his name but she did know that this time she was IN LOVE!

The question of what to wear was easily settled. Louise had gone back to Nîmes now but she had left Sally the white dress as a parting gift and even without the waspie-waisted basque it was by far the nicest thing Sally owned. She wore it with a pair of new white sandals and a lacy white cardigan her mother had knitted for her.

At a quarter past seven she got off the bus in Bath worrying that he might stand her up. But he was there waiting and looked more handsome than ever in a grey suit with a white shirt.

‘Would you like to go to the dance at the Regency?' he asked.

‘Oh yes – only I've got to catch the last bus home and it leaves at a quarter to eleven …'

‘Don't worry, I'll have you on it,' he promised.

The Regency had once been a Palace of Varieties. There was a bar selling alcoholic drinks and two milk bars, one at floor level, one in what had once been the balcony, and a huge multi-faceted glass ball which hung over the dance floor. A narrow gallery ran around the other three sides of the hall from which it was possible to watch the dancers or enjoy the band – a real band, at least a dozen musicians, all in uniform blazers and bow ties. Sometimes the big name bands came to the Regency – Kenny Ball and Ted Heath, Acker Bilk and The Temperance Seven, but tonight it was the resident band. The whole place seemed to be throbbing with the music they made.