Ribbons in Her Hair

by Colette McCormick

  I was over the moon when Julie asked me if I’d like to go with her and Mum to look at wedding dresses. I’ll always remember that day as a happy one. Julie asked me for my opinion and she seemed interested in what I had to say.

  We’d already looked at a few dresses when Julie asked me what I thought of the one in her hand. It was an ivory-coloured, fifties style dress with a tight, off the shoulder bodice, a pinched in waist and a skirt that would finish around Julie’s calves. Delicate lace of a slightly darker shade than the dress would cover her neck and shoulders. It was the most gorgeous thing that I had ever seen in my life.

  ‘You should wear a pill box hat with it,’ I told her. I don’t know where that idea came from because me and fashion were not happy bedfellows but Julie seemed to like it.

  I remember a smile spreading over Julie’s face. ‘I should,’ she said.

  She gave me a hug. I don’t ever remember being hugged before and it felt good.

  Mum came towards us with a meringue-shaped dress in her hand. ‘Here’s one,’ she said.

  ‘It’s all right Mum,’ Julie told her, ‘I’ve found the one I want.’ Julie held the hanger up to her chin so that the dress rested on her body. ‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ she said, ‘And Susan suggested that I wear a pill box hat. It’ll be great.’

  Mum looked horrified. ‘No.’

  ‘But I want this one.’

  ‘No you don’t.’

  ‘I do, Mum.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But with the pill box hat it’ll be perfect.’

  ‘I’ve already asked your Aunty Anne if you can borrow Josephine’s veil so you don’t need one that’ll go with a pill box hat. This dress will go nicely with the veil.’

  Mum took the dress from Julie and hung it on the nearest rail. It was as though the dress had offended her in some way. Both Julie and I knew that it wasn’t the dress that Mum objected to, it was the colour.

  ‘But Mum, loads of people get married in ivory,’ Julie pleaded.

  ‘Not my daughter,’ Mum said without looking at her.

  Julie reluctantly conceded defeat and that she would be married in the white meringue dress that our mother had chosen, wearing Cousin Josephine’s veil on her head.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said to me as Mum paid for the dress. ‘I’m getting married and that’s the main thing.’

  I tried to be cheerful for her but I could tell that she was disappointed. She was right about it not mattering though because she would have looked good in whatever she wore.

  The night before Julie’s wedding I was sitting on my bed leaning against the wall with my knees pulled up towards my chin when I was surprised by a gentle tapping on the bedroom door.

  ‘Yes?’ I said nervously. Nobody ever knocked at my bedroom door.

  The door opened and Julie’s head appeared. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Yes.’ No one had ever asked if they could come into my room before either.

  Julie came and sat on the bed with me and we chatted for a while. We talked about the wedding and she told me how happy she was and I told her that I was happy for her. Eventually Julie said that we had a big day ahead of us and that we should get an early night. She started to push herself off the bed then stopped and sat on the edge.

  ‘Be strong, Susan,’ she told me. ‘You’re going to need to be strong.’

  I didn’t have to ask her what she meant.

  Things certainly didn’t get better after Julie left but at least they didn’t get any worse. A few months after the wedding Helen had a baby boy and Mum loved being a grandma. She knitted baby James more matinee coats than he’d ever be able to wear, and was determined to out do Robert’s parents when it came to Christmas presents. I often wished that Helen would ask me to baby-sit but she never did.

  I went to my first party when I was sixteen. One of the few girls that I called friends was going and wanted someone to go with her. I had to ask Mum for permission of course and was surprised when it was given.

  The day before the party I went into town on my way home from school and bought some make-up. I applied eyeshadow for the first time in my life, a bit too heavily as I recall, and lip gloss that tasted of strawberries. Mum even let me spray on a little of her eau de toilette behind my ears. I can still remember that I wore a denim skirt and a cheesecloth blouse and hoped that I’d look all right compared to everyone else.

  I thought that Mum almost smiled when she saw me ready to go out and she even told me to enjoy myself. Maybe she did want me to be happy after all.

  Dad took me to the party and said he would pick me up afterwards which was a bit embarrassing as everyone else seemed to arrive either on their own or in a group, but it was a small price to pay.

  I loved the dancing and talking and was amazed at what some of the girls allowed boys to do to them. I’d never even kissed a boy before so the thought of one of them putting their hand inside my blouse was unimaginable.

  I was probably the first person to leave the party but I didn’t want to keep Dad waiting. I know that some people laughed at me getting picked up by my dad but, as I said before, it was a small price to pay for being allowed to go. I’d had a wonderful time.

  Mum was waiting for us. She asked me who had been at the party, what I had done and who I had talked to. I don’t know why she didn’t just ask me if I’d let a lad do anything to me – it was what she really wanted to know.

  There were more parties after that first one and at last I started to feel as though I had a life. Mum even bought me some new clothes. She said that if I was going to be going to parties I would need them. They might not have been the clothes that I’d have chosen, well they definitely weren’t, but they were okay. I’d rather she had given me some money so that I could buy my own, but beggars can’t be choosers.

  There was a party one Saturday, just before the Christmas before my seventeenth birthday, when a boy asked me to dance. It was the first time that had happened and even though it was such a long time ago I still remember exactly how it felt. My heart started to beat really fast and my breath got caught in my throat so that I could hardly speak. He led me into a space amongst the others that were dancing and I was bursting with happiness. As I hopped from foot to foot in time with the music I didn’t know where to look. I was too shy to look at him because I knew that he was looking at me.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, leaning forward and shouting above the music.

  ‘Susan,’ I shouted back. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Tony.’

  When the music stopped and was replaced by something much slower I thought that the moment was over but I remember how Tony took my hand and pulled me towards him. I’d stood on the edge of dance floors watching the slow dances enough to know what I should do next and I’m giggling to myself as I recall that dance. We were just inches apart, moving from side to side, my hands on his shoulders and his on my waist. It was hardly ballroom.

  Oh but he smelled so good. Pine I think. Pine like a forest, mind you, not disinfectant. Just kidding; it was really nice.

  And as we danced I was aware that we were getting closer to each other and before I knew it our bodies were brushing against each other. Suddenly I felt his soft lips on my forehead, then on my nose and finally on my lips. My stomach did somersaults and I felt something that I had never felt before.

  At the end of the night, after he’d kissed me one last time he asked if he could see me again the following week. I said that I would have to check that I wasn’t doing anything and ring him. Maybe he thought that I was playing hard to get which, ironically, is a game that I’ve never got the hang of, but the truth is that I had to ask.

  Mum said that I could go out but Tony would have to collect me from the house so that she could meet him. Thankfully he didn’t mind.

  I was officially going out with someone. For the first time in my life, and a couple of years after most of the girls I knew, I had a boyfriend.

  Four month
s later Tony packed me in for another girl. I was absolutely heartbroken and cried myself to sleep. A couple of days later he turned up at the house when he knew that I’d be alone and told me how sorry he was that he had hurt me. He told me that part of him still loved me and probably always would. Stupidly I believed him and said yes when he asked if he could have sex with me. I thought that I loved Tony and just wanted him to love me back. I never saw Tony again after that day.

  There was a series of boyfriends after that. None of them were serious or lasted more than a few weeks. None of them got any further than a fondle under my top. None of them asked for it to go any further but, if they had, I probably would have said yes because in my naïve little head I equated the physical contact with love. Plus I didn’t want to be rejected again, and if I’d refused to do anything that they’d asked me to do they might have rejected me. The truth is that they all rejected me anyway and most of the time I didn’t care. I did enjoy being someone’s girlfriend though. It made me feel normal. It meant someone liked me and wanted to be with me.

  Then I met Tim through a mutual friend.

  Okay, so I admit that his family were a bit rough, but at the end of the day we did live on the same estate as them so either they weren’t as bad as Mum made out, or we were a lot worse than she liked to pretend. Anyway, he was just a boyfriend, a lad that I went out with. He took me to the pub and bought me a few drinks. Once he took me out for a meal which I thought was very grown up.

  ‘You could do better,’ Mum said one day while she was ironing and I was doing my homework at the kitchen table. I asked her what she meant. She put the iron down, looked at me and said. ‘I mean that you could do better for yourself than Tim Preston.’

  I nodded my head as if I was listening. Maybe she even thought that I was agreeing with her. The reality was that Tim Preston had suddenly become much more attractive. If I’m honest though, I never believed that we would spend the rest of our lives together and – as I’m trying to be completely honest here – I should probably admit that I wasn’t really that keen on him at all. I just didn’t want to be alone and he had asked me out. He even told me that he loved me, but only after he’d had a couple of pints. It’s only looking back now that I can see that they were just words but at the time I thought that he meant it. To feel loved was all that I’d ever wanted.

  One night when we were alone in his parent’s house, a kiss and a cuddle on the sofa in the living room turned into something it shouldn’t have, and before I knew it we were in his bedroom.

  I’m not saying that he raped me because he didn’t, he just didn’t ask and I didn’t tell him that I wanted him to stop. I let him do it. Six weeks later, I’d been dumped and I hadn’t had a period. What’s more, Mum knew that I hadn’t had a period. Don’t ask me how, she just did.

  ‘How long is it since you were last on?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. I really didn’t know how long it had been. I just knew that it had been too long.

  ‘Have you got something that you want to tell me?’

  ‘No,’ I said. Why would she think that I would want to tell her that I might be pregnant?

  ‘Here, use this,’ she said, throwing a box at me. It was a home pregnancy test.

  I told her that I would do it the next morning.

  It should have been a relief when the test was negative, and it was for a day or two, until Mum said that I should put another test in at the doctor’s.

  ‘Just to make sure,’ she said.

  The receptionist gave me a funny look when I passed over the little pot of pee but she didn’t say anything. She’d seen it all before.

  A few days later our family doctor apologised when he told me that I was pregnant.

  JEAN

  I didn’t let it happen just to trap Mick, why would I? I’d only known him for a couple of months for God’s sake. No, I didn’t set the trap, though I knew some that had. It wasn’t my intention to get pregnant; it just happened.

  My mam knew almost before I did. She didn’t tell me that she knew, or how, but I could tell that she did. There was something about the way that she looked at me when she gave me a mug of tea one morning.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked her.

  She just looked at me.

  ‘What?’

  She grabbed her coat and pushed her arms into it. It was a cold morning and she fastened it right up to the top. ‘Don’t go in to work today,’ she said as she took her purse from the dresser drawer.

  ‘Why?’

  She slammed the door behind her.

  I didn’t go to work. I knew that there’d be bother when I went in the next day but there’d be even more trouble if I disobeyed Mam and I didn’t need any more trouble.

  When she came back she was carrying a brown paper bag. It had some stuff in it that she’d got from the chemist and she sat with me while I drank it. Foul tasting stuff it was and when I gagged Mam just held the bottle to my mouth and made me drink it all.

  ‘If we’re lucky, that’ll put you right,’ she said as she smashed the bottle and wrapped it in yesterday’s newspaper before burying the evidence deep in the bin.

  But it didn’t work, so a few days later Mam put me in a bath of boiling water and gave me a bottle of gin to drink.

  That didn’t work either.

  I sat at the kitchen table crying my eyes out while Mam stood opposite me with her arms folded across her chest.

  ‘Don’t be wasting time with them,’ she said, ‘tears are no good to you now.’ Oh God, my mother was a hard woman; I sometimes wondered if she had a heart at all. She couldn’t bring herself to look at me and stared out of the window instead. ‘Your dad’ll kill you and your brothers’ll kill him.’

  The thought of that just made me cry even harder.

  ‘Shut your bloody crying, Jean,’ she yelled at me. She pulled a chair from under the table and sat down. ‘How could you be so stupid?’

  All I wanted was for her to put her arms around me and tell me that everything was going to be all right. But she didn’t, she just sat there and glared at me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘Too late for bloody sorry now.’ She looked at me through her hard eyes. ‘Well, I’ve tried everything I know,’ she said eventually, ‘but Mrs Walsh at the bottom of Hagg Lane might be able to do something.’

  ‘No,’ I screamed, ‘Please Mam, no.’ My friend Dorothy had nearly died when Mrs Walsh had got rid of her baby.

  She carried on staring at me across the table as she chewed on her toothless gums.

  ‘Well you know what you’ve got to do then, my girl,’ she said as she got up from the table.

  Mick was on the early shift and he’d be finished at four. If I hurried, I could be there when he came out of the factory.

  ***

  He came out of the gates with a couple of other blokes. One of them was Tom Bridges and I saw him say something to Mick and nod his head towards me. Mick gave him a playful punch on the arm. He was laughing as he came over to me.

  ‘Hello, love,’ he said.

  I couldn’t have spoken even if I’d wanted to but Mick didn’t give me the chance.

  ‘You should have heard what that cheeky get Tom said,’ he laughed. ‘He said that the only day that his lass ever met him out of work was the day that she told him she’d fallen wrong.’

  He was still laughing as I burst into tears.

  ‘What’re you crying for?’

  I just looked at him with tears pouring down my cheeks. And then the penny dropped.

  ‘Fucking hell, you’re not are you?’

  All I could do was nod.

  ‘Bollocks.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I stammered.

  The colour drained from his face.

  ‘Who’ve you told?’ he asked.

  ‘My mam.’

  ‘What about your dad?’

  I shook my head.

  He looked at his feet and shoved his hands de
ep into his pockets. I watched him and waited. He shuffled his feet and started to nod his head slowly.

  ‘What time’s he get home?’ he asked.

  I didn’t have to ask why he wanted to know.

  ‘His shift finishes at six,’ I told him, ‘then he’ll have a couple of pints. He usually gets home about half seven.’

  ‘I’ll come over,’ he said before he walked away.

  As I watched Mick go I realised that I was now tied to him forever. I also realised that I didn’t like him half as much as I thought I had and I wondered why I had let him do those things to me in the back of that mucky van and twice behind the dance hall. But I knew really why I had: he’d paid me attention and that made me feel good. All I’d wanted was to feel loved.

  I went home with a heavy heart.

  ‘Well?’ Mam turned from the stove as I walked into the kitchen.

  ‘He’s coming to see Dad tonight,’ I told her as I looked at the chair Dad always sat in.

  Mam turned back to whatever it was that she was cooking. ‘You’d better hope he does,’ she said, lifting a spoonful of God knows what to her mouth to taste. ‘Because if he doesn’t you know that the lads’ll go looking for him.’ She reached for the salt. ‘And God help him if that happens.’

  But my brothers didn’t have to go looking for Mick. He turned up like he said he would to face my dad, to face up to his responsibilities.

  Dad was sitting in his chair with a mug of tea in his hand and the newspaper on his knee. Mam was washing up and Thomas my eldest brother was sitting at the table finishing his food. When Mick arrived Mam whipped Thomas’s plate away from him and nodded her head towards the door. He was about to moan that he hadn’t finished his tea but thought better of it when he saw the look on Mam’s face. She left the room as well leaving me to let Mick in.

  Dad didn’t look up as he asked, ‘What’s all this about then?’

  Mick stood in front of Dad and I stood beside him.

  ‘Well?’ Dad asked as he folded the newspaper and put it behind his back.

  ‘Jean’s having a baby.’ Mick said.

  ‘Is she now?’ Dad pushed himself out of the chair and stood up.