The Grace Girls

by Geraldine O'Neill

  ‘There’s only me and Heather in,’ she said, touching him on the elbow, ‘come on in and have a wee drink at least. My mother would go mad if I let you go without something.’ She moved down the hallway towards the door into the living-room.

  ‘No, honestly,’ he protested, reaching into his coat pocket. ‘I haven’t time, I need to get back to Motherwell . . .’ He held out a small rectangular-shaped box wrapped in very classy unusual paper. ‘I wanted to give you this . . . I thought it would give you that little bit more confidence for New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘What is it?’ she said, not quite sure whether it was something practical to do with her singing or a proper Christmas present. When she took it from him she noticed the House of Fraser logo on the wrapping.

  He smiled. ‘It’s just a little gift . . . and you’re not allowed to open it until after twelve o’clock.’

  ‘Oh, I feel terrible,’ Kirsty said in a low voice, ‘I never thought . . .’

  ‘It was just a last-minute thought when I was in Glasgow this afternoon,’ he told her gently, ‘and as I said, it’ll just help to give you that little boost when you’re all dressed up.’ He paused. ‘You’re happy with the dress you picked?’

  ‘Definitely,’ Kirsty said, her head bobbing enthusiastically. ‘It’s gorgeous.’

  ‘Grand,’ he said, turning towards the door. ‘Are you doing anything on St Steven’s Day night?’ When he saw the confused look on her face he corrected himself. ‘Boxing Day . . . I still think of it in Dublin terms.’

  ‘Och, I should have known that, my daddy often calls it that, too.’ She paused for a moment. There was a dance on in one of the chapel halls in Newarthill, but she still wasn’t sure who was going. Liz had told Heather that Gerry was going so she wasn’t too keen on it. ‘I’ve nothing big planned,’ she told him, shrugging her shoulders.

  ‘There’s a band playing at the Trocadero in Hamilton with a lead female singer, and they’re supposed to be really top stuff. I wondered, if you were free, if you fancied going just to see what their programme is – see if we can pick up any ideas.’

  ‘That’s great,’ Kirsty said. ‘It sounds like a good night out . . . better than anythin’ else I’ve got planned so far.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ he checked, opening the outside door again. ‘I don’t want you to think that I’m taking over your social life – a young girl like you might prefer something that’s a bit more of a laugh with lads and girls your own age . . .’ For a moment Larry Delaney actually sounded a little bit uncertain.

  ‘No,’ Kirsty said, with a definite note in her voice. ‘I think it’s a great idea, and it’s a far nicer place than the other ones I’d be going to.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, smiling warmly now. ‘I’ll pick you up around half past six on Monday night.’

  ‘Oh, Larry,’ Kirsty suddenly remembered, ‘I want to check a few dates with you around the end of January.’

  Chapter 31

  ‘I’m still in a state of shock,’ Heather said in a low voice, as both sisters lay awake in the early hours of Christmas morning, the usual excitement over the big day keeping them awake as well as all the shocking news about their friend. ‘I can’t believe that Liz would go to that length just to keep a boyfriend. I’m sure she wouldn’t be that stupid.’ She paused. ‘You don’t think that we’re jumping to conclusions, do you? She didn’t actually say why she’s in such a rush about everything.’

  ‘Are you kiddin’?’ Kirsty scoffed, not having the same emotional attachment that her sister did. She leaned up on her elbow now, facing Heather’s bed. ‘She’s definitely expectin’,’ she hissed. ‘No doubts about it. It was written all over her face.’

  ‘It’s just that her and me had a conversation about the girl Kelly who got married a few weeks back, and she sounded as though it was the last thing she’d let happen to her.’

  ‘Famous last words,’ Kirsty said, like a woman of the world. ‘Well, she’s certainly changed her tune. I’m not a bit surprised, she’s been all over Jim Murray since day one. All she’s ever wanted is a ring on her finger. It was just a matter of time until it happened.’ She paused. ‘Are you going to mention it to my mammy?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Heather sighed. ‘I mean, we don’t really have any definite proof, do we? And it doesn’t exactly look good on me, when she’s my best friend, does it? She might think I’ve been getting up to things I shouldn’t have, too. And I don’t fancy mentioning things like that in case she tells my daddy. He was a bit on the touchy side about us laughing about chapel tonight, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Och, you know what he can be like at times.’ Kirsty said dismissively.

  ‘Well, I just don’t want to have everybody going on about Liz to me.’

  ‘Don’t be so daft,’ Kirsty said, in her forthright way. ‘You’re not Liz Mullen’s keeper, are you? What she gets up to is her own responsibility and nobody else’s.’ She moved her elbow closer to the edge of the bed and lowered her voice. ‘Did you know she was gettin’ up to no good wi’ Jim?’

  ‘No, indeed I did not!’ Heather said indignantly. Trust Kirsty to come out with something like that. ‘That’s why I couldn’t believe my ears when she was sitting down in the kitchen tonight. I nearly died!’ She gave a weary sigh. ‘As far as I know, they’ve never had any time on their own together for them to get up to anything. They’re always at the pub or the dancing, and usually in a group, so where could they go to get up to anything?’

  ‘How about behind a wall or in the chapel grounds like plenty of other couples?’ Kirsty suggested, then suddenly went into a fit of giggles at the thought. She started to laugh so hard that she had to turn her face into the pillow for fear of waking her parents. ‘If my daddy heard me sayin’ that about the chapel he’d skin me alive!’ she tittered.

  ‘I’m going to sleep,’ Heather said rather huffily. ‘I’m glad you’re finding it all so hilarious, Kirsty Grace, because it happens to be my best friend you’re laughing at, and I’m afraid I don’t find anything at all funny about it. Liz is far too young to be getting married and havin’ a baby.’ Her voice dropped. ‘And I’m absolutely shocked at her getting up to all those things with Jim. It’s disgusting, so it is . . . and it’s against all the Church’s teachings.’

  Kirsty laughed even harder now. ‘You’re soundin’ just like my Auntie Mona!’

  Heather reached down to the floor for the little black and white teddy bear that lay on her pillow during the day. ‘Shut up, you!’ she hissed, throwing it across the room at her sister.

  After a few minutes’ silence, Kirsty started again. ‘Are you still awake, Heather?’

  ‘No,’ Heather whispered back, as they used to do as children in the same beds in the same room. ‘I’m fast asleep.’

  ‘So am I,’ Kirsty giggled. ‘No, seriously, what did you think of Gerry Stewart bein’ at Mass with the new girlfriend? He looked dead proud as he was parading her up the aisle at communion time.’

  ‘I’m absolutely delighted,’ Heather said honestly. ‘I feel a lot better knowing that he has somebody else to take up all his attention, although I must admit that I felt a bit awkward when he marched over to introduce her to us.’ She paused. ‘He obviously wanted to show her off, with her being so good-looking and very fashionably dressed.’

  ‘I think there’s something a bit weird about it all,’ Kirsty mused. ‘I’m not a bit convinced.’

  ‘Convinced about what?’ Heather said, losing track of the conversation. She was actually beginning to feel tired, and in a minute she would stop answering Kirsty, and eventually her irritating sister would give up and they would both go to sleep.

  ‘The way he kept watchin’ you . . . as if he was doing it all to see what your reaction would be.’ Kirsty paused, trying to work it out. ‘As if he’s only doing it to make you jealous.’

  ‘What?’ Heather said, suddenly more alert. ‘Surely you’re not saying that Gerry Stewart would go to all the trouble of taking anoth
er girl out for weeks just to make me jealous?’ She gave a little snort of disbelief. ‘I think you’re havering, Kirsty Grace. Are you sure my mammy didn’t put too much Advocaat in your Snowball?’

  ‘There’s no fear of that,’ Kirsty said, ‘although I sneaked a wee drop more in when she was out of the kitchen.’

  ‘Oh, you’re the absolute limit,’ Heather laughed. She halted, suddenly remembering. ‘Hey, imagine that Larry fellow buying you that expensive perfume from Fraser’s!’

  ‘I know,’ Kirsty whispered. ‘I nearly died when I opened it and saw it was Chanel No. 5. I think I’ve only ever seen it advertised in magazines, I don’t remember ever seeing it in any of the shops in Motherwell or Wishaw or anythin’. And we definitely don’t sell it in the chemist’s.’

  ‘It must have cost him a bomb,’ Heather mused. ‘And he must have plenty of money. I saw his car from the bedroom window and it’s a really fancy one as well.’ She paused. ‘And he’s definitely got high hopes for your singing, Kirsty, to spend all that time on you.’

  ‘He’s a good manager,’ Kirsty said, ‘and although he’s a real businessman, the more you get to know him, the more ordinary and down-to-earth he seems. At first, I used to be a bit nervous when I was with him, but now I feel quite relaxed. It’s funny how people can be totally different when you get to know them.’ She turned over onto her back, staring up at the faint circles of lights on the ceiling that shone in from the street lamppost, musing over her changed opinion of Larry Delaney.

  Ten minutes later, the bedroom was in both darkness and silence as the girls lay awake with their own private thoughts.

  Heather was once again thinking over the situation with Liz, trying to work out how her best and closest friend could have been having a proper sexual romance with Jim Murray without her even knowing. They had shared everything from when they were young girls, and she’d thought there wasn’t one thing about Liz and Jim’s romance that she hadn’t known about up until this evening’s shock.

  She had presumed the romance between Liz and Jim would go the same way hers and Gerry’s had gone. That one of them would outgrow the other and that it would all fizzle out. Maybe even a more dramatic ending, because Heather knew that Liz was mad about Jim and, as she’d said tonight, she always had been.

  This was obviously what the whole thing was all about – Liz had demonstrated to Jim just how much she loved him by letting him do all those unbelievable, personal things to her, because her friend couldn’t possibly have enjoyed it. The things that Heather always shied away from – didn’t want to think about. The things that almost frightened her, like when Gerry kissed her too roughly and pressed his hard body too close to hers. The personal things that she would put off worrying about until she got married.

  The news had made Heather feel all funny, as if she hadn’t really known Liz at all. In a way – which she knew was childish and stupid – she felt rejected. It was as if Jim Murray had suddenly stepped into her shoes as Liz’s closest friend and confidante, and was now the person who knew everything about her life. The thought of that made Heather feel very silly and, worst of all, sort of lonely.

  Who was she to go out with now? Of course she always had Kirsty, and as they got older, she enjoyed her younger sister’s company more and more. She wasn’t quite so irritating these days, and at times could be quite entertaining and sensible. And Heather still had other friends from school and her old office. But it wasn’t the same – she still needed a best friend, somebody she could moan to about Kirsty and the rest of the family. Somebody she could let off steam with who wouldn’t remind her about it in the morning. Somebody who would share the ups and downs of working life and love life with her. Somebody who had been Liz.

  Heather turned her face into the pillow and tried to sleep.

  Kirsty had drifted into a sleep more quickly than her sister and within a short while found herself entangled in the strangest dream. She awoke some time later with a start – hot and sweating – and then sat bolt upright when she remembered what she had been dreaming about: Larry Delaney. Oh, my God . . . she thought, horrified as the recalled pictures ran through her mind. She dreamt she had been in bed with him . . . and not only in bed with him. She dreamt she had been lying naked in his arms!

  She sat in the dark for some time, head in her hands, trying to work out why on earth she had been dreaming about her manager in that way. Not for even one minute before had she thought about him in anything other but a business sense. So why on earth had she had this weird, sexy dream about him? A sexy dream in which she had felt very relaxed and comfortable lying next to Larry Delaney with no clothes on. Even though the bedroom was winter-cold, little beads of perspiration started to form on her hot forehead.

  Kirsty had never come close to anything in real life that resembled the situation she’d just been dreaming about. She’d often thought and wondered about sex, but decided it wouldn’t be an issue until the time came around when she met someone she really, really fancied. And so far that had never happened.

  She’d gone out with boys from school and then later fellows she’d met at the dancing, but it had always been more of a laugh than anything and usually ended up with her being bored by the boys’ immature chat and she found she preferred the company of her girlfriends.

  As she thought about it now, it gradually dawned on her that the nights she and Larry Delaney had spent together rehearsing her songs, with Larry encouraging her and suggesting this and that change, had been some of the most enjoyable nights she’d spent with any man.

  Yes, it had been hard work and at times she felt it was all beyond her – that she didn’t have the ambition and confidence in herself that Larry Delaney had in her. But the more she rehearsed and pushed herself, the better she felt. She discovered that whilst she had been afraid initially, she now looked forward to trying out new things, and stretching her talents to the limit. When she was with him, she felt that anything was possible.

  She lay back in bed, pondering the whole thing, wondering if the dream was some kind of indication that deep down she liked or even fancied the older, more worldly wise Larry Delaney. A man who must be nearly fifteen years older than her. A man who she didn’t know an awful lot about.

  Kirsty felt a little shiver and, suddenly conscious of the chilly winter darkness, she snuggled back down under the warm covers. And when she closed her eyes, she slowly drifted back into the heavy and dreamy world where she once again imagined herself wrapped in the strong warmth of Larry Delaney’s arms.

  Chapter 32

  The morning had started around ten o’clock when the girls got up to collect their childish Christmas stockings – which Sophie still filled with small trinkets she collected over the preceding weeks – and to open their modest piles of presents from each other and their parents. There were no presents from aunties and uncles – apart from Claire’s bracelets – as that had stopped when they left school. Given the number of children in the Grace families, cost was a big factor, and the adults had decided some years back that the younger children were the priority as those now working could look after themselves. As always, on their way downstairs they called Sophie and Fintan to come down and open their presents along with them, and then they switched on the three-bar electric fire to warm the chilly living-room until Fintan had lit the coal fire.

  Sitting side by side on the sofa, the girls rummaged through their stockings first, finding bars of Avon soap and tins of talcum powder, a diary each, sets of pens for work and other small odds and ends. Then they started on the bigger presents.

  ‘Oh, brilliant!’ Kirsty stated as she held up the pink towelling Marks and Spencer dressing-gown with white embroidery on the collar that she had hinted to her mother about several weeks ago. She watched, smiling, as Heather opened the same size and shape of parcel to reveal an identical blue dressing-gown. The girls weren’t surprised at receiving several identical gifts, because as long as they could remember, they had always bee
n treated the same.

  Heather held up a rectangular-shaped present. ‘Guess which annual?’ she said, grinning at her sister.

  Kirsty screwed her eyes up, thinking. ‘Let me see . . . let me see. It must be the . . . Oor Wullie this year!’ she suddenly calculated. The Scottish cartoon book came out every second year, with The Broons book on the alternative year. They had received a copy of either one of the annuals every year since they could read the words that went with the pictures, and it was the one Christmas gift which Fintan always took upon himself to organise.

  Heather ripped the paper off the present to reveal the Giles annual, and they all laughed heartily as Kirsty opened hers which was in fact the Oor Wullie.

  By the time all the wrapping had come off, between them the girls had presents of romantic novels, gloves, scarves, make-up sets, plus numerous bath-cubes and fancy soap sets from friends like Liz.

  Sophie was delighted with the joint gift of a lovely navy and white wool Chanel-style suit from the girls, which Heather had spotted at a bargain price in a shop in Glasgow and they had both paid half for. She went into the kitchen to put on the kettle and the grill for toast for the girls, and was delighted with the lovely smell coming from the oven. She opened it to check on the goose, which had been cooking slowly overnight. After poking and prodding it for a bit with a sharp knife to check how far on the cooking process was, she covered the bird up again and turned the temperature up a bit higher to let it brown while she was at church.

  Then Sophie suddenly decided to quickly take off her winceyette pyjamas and pull on the navy suit while she was there. A few minutes later she came back to show her daughters it was a perfect fit on her slim figure, and after hugging them both, declared that she would wear it to eleven o’clock Mass that morning.

  Fintan was slightly less effusive but still thankful for the shirt and tie the girls had bought him, along with a miniature of Irish whiskey, which they had given him every Christmas since they were little girls. He would – as he always did – have the whiskey in his mug of tea when he came back from Mass, since both he and Sophie were fasting for communion. The women all sat chatting and examining each others’ presents while Fintan raked out the ashes in the grate and started up a fresh fire from the hot cinders, some small pieces of dry wood and screwed-up newspaper.