The Ballroom on Magnolia Street

by Sharon Owens

  But when Kate came back downstairs two hours later, the old tree was in the yard, and a new one was in its place. A six-foot beauty with perfect branches, and sweet white lights shaped like snowflakes. And the decorations were beautiful; tiny angels with real feathers for wings, silver mirror balls and fat silver tinsel. Shirley was laying out neat rows of turkey and cranberry sandwiches on plates covered with jolly Christmas napkins. And the whole house was filled with the smell of mince pies heating gently in the oven.

  ‘Very funny,’ said Shirley. ‘We all enjoyed your little joke.’

  Declan’s first visit was a great success. Shirley was very nervous about bringing him to the house. But she reckoned it was time to let him meet her family. She warned her parents and Kate not to embarrass her in any way. But she needn’t have worried. Declan complimented everything and Mrs Winters was soon simpering like a love-struck schoolgirl. She lapped it up when visitors admired her ornaments and crystal knick-knacks. She told him about each and every one, patiently going through the story of when and why it was purchased or who it was from. Declan was very easy to talk to, not stuffy or stuck-up at all. Mr and Mrs Winters thought he was lovely, and well worth the frantic dash to get the house ready for him.

  The next day, Kate and Shirley had a big row. It all began when Kate asked Shirley for a small loan to buy some Christmas presents, and Shirley said that she was sorry but she had spent all her wages on some decent clothes for herself, as Declan had invited her to spend an afternoon with his family. And she wanted to look nice because the Greenwoods lived in a very posh area. And of course, she had to bring them a decent gift. (She’d bought some handmade wine glasses in a craft shop.) Shirley had also bought the long, purple coat she had admired all autumn, and Declan said she looked very sophisticated in it. Especially when she wore purple lipstick to match. She was like a witch. A beautiful witch. He found girls much more attractive when they were wearing elegant clothes and dramatic lipstick than when they were half-naked and plastered with eyeshadow and blusher. Kate was extremely irritated by these revelations, and jealous on so many counts that she lost her temper completely and called Shirley a bore.

  ‘A bore, did you call me? A bore?’

  ‘Yes! A bore. A boring little relationship-bore who can’t do anything without consulting her boring boyfriend first. Declan this and Declan that! I’m your sister, Shirley, in case you’ve forgotten. And I’m out of work and broke. And you’re throwing your money away on silly coats to impress your stuck-up boyfriend. You’re way out of your depth.’

  Shirley was very angry then and called Kate a miserable sponger who couldn’t even be bothered to get a job and pay her own bills.

  ‘You needn’t think I’m slaving away at work all week, just to pay for the luxuries piled high in your precious boudoir. You bought them and you can bloody well pay for them. You’re a fine one to lecture me about wasting money. The cheek of you!’

  ‘You promised me you would help me to pay off the catalogues.’

  ‘Well, stuff that.’

  ‘You mean you’re breaking a promise?’

  ‘Yes, Kate. I am. Get over it. You big baby!’

  ‘How dare you call me a baby!’

  ‘You think you can twist me and Ma and Da round your little finger? Well, you can’t, Kate. We’re not afraid of you any more. If you’re really as smart as you’d like to think you are, then why are you still living at home, at your age, jobless, and throwing yourself at gay bouncers?’ Kate’s face flinched as if she had been slapped.

  ‘He is not gay. How dare you even suggest it!’

  ‘He is surely gay. He practically walks on his tiptoes.’

  ‘Are you a gay-basher, Shirley Winters? I cannot believe you, of all people, would turn out to be a gay-basher.’

  ‘Not a bit of me. I think he’s cute. But it doesn’t alter the fact that he is a gay man and you are a straight woman. Are you blind as well as stupid?’

  And then Kate called Shirley a silly tart.

  ‘Don’t lecture me on love, you silly tart!’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Shirley roared. ‘I’m no tart.’

  ‘Well, he’s not going out with you for your brains, or your money, is he? Or your fashion-sense. Just what is he getting out of this so-called relationship? Would it be a little bit of rumpy, I wonder?’

  ‘Oh! You’re so mean, Kate! It’s none of your bloody business if we sleep together or not. Who the hell do you think you are? We’re in love, you big dope! You know? The L word? You’re just jealous.’

  ‘Oh, please! I’ve been in love before. A hundred times. Big swing! You’d think you were the only girl in the whole wide world, ever, to snog some fella and think: this is the real thing!’

  ‘It is the real thing.’

  ‘How do you know? How would you know? You’ve no experience of men. You think you’re in love if a fella buys you a glass of lemonade. It’s pathetic.’

  ‘I just know he loves me. All right? You’ve had more boyfriends than I’ve had hot dinners, and you haven’t managed to hang on to a single one of them. And the only guy who was really nice was Kevin McGovern, and you treated him with contempt. So what the hell do you know about men? You’re the silly one! Not me.’

  ‘Aw, shut up!’ Kate was tired now.

  ‘You shut up!’ Shirley was still outraged.

  ‘Well, go on then, go and grovel to the big snobs on Derryvolgie Avenue. Leave me here, watching the blasted TV with Mum and Dad all night. Be sure you don’t use the wrong knife and fork and I hope you have the time of your life!’

  Kate stamped upstairs and slammed her bedroom door. She lay on her bed and had a little cry. Shirley would be up in a minute to apologize, she told herself. Kate waited and waited, dabbing at her face with a tissue. When Shirley didn’t come upstairs to say sorry, Kate began to worry. Maybe her diva ways were beginning to lose their power. Even her parents weren’t that bothered when she lost her job. The time was, they would have barged into the building and demanded to speak to the manager, and threatened to sue the entire department for upsetting their little girl. But they had mellowed a lot in recent years. They must be feeling their age, Kate thought. Age! She was thirty, unemployed and single. It was a chant in her head that would not stop. She sat up suddenly and dried her eyes with the sleeve of her velvet cardigan. She felt very alone. What could she do? The answer was simple: Kevin McGovern.

  She got herself dressed up nicely on Monday morning and went for a walk past Kevin’s garage. Kevin knew a lot of business people in the neighbourhood. He might know of a job going someplace, without Kate having to humiliate herself in the job centre again. He was sitting on a deckchair, just inside the garage doors, having a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich. He was almost afraid to speak to Kate, since she had run out on him in the ballroom, but Kate was the one who stopped and smiled this time. She leaned against the wall and waved in at him. Kevin almost dropped his sandwich onto the oily floor.

  ‘Kate Winters! How are you doing?’

  ‘Kevin, how’s yourself?’

  ‘Working away. The usual, you know. How’s the office treating you?’

  ‘I’ve left there, now. I’m looking for something else.’

  ‘Is that right?’ He stood up and rubbed his hands clean on the sides of his overalls. He did know of a few local jobs, as it happened. His brain went into overdrive. This was a great opportunity to help Kate. But he didn’t want to waste the chance of getting close to her himself.

  ‘Do you happen to know of anything going, in the area? I’m very flexible and open-minded.’

  Kevin’s mind exploded with this notion. He decided to offer Kate a job, even if he had to work an extra day each week to afford her wages.

  ‘I’m looking for somebody, myself. That place is in an awful mess.’ He nodded in the direction of his large, but dingy office, and looked at Kate, hopefully. ‘I usually do my own paperwork at the weekends, but it’s fairly piling up on me.’

 
‘Well, look no further. I’m your woman. How would you fancy me for your new office-girl?’ Kevin’s face blushed as pink as one of his London-bought suits.

  ‘Aw, that’s great. That’s just great. Come on in, I’ll show you round.’

  ‘There’s the small matter of references… I should tell you, there was a slight problem at my old place. A clash of personalities, as it were.’

  ‘Not to worry! I’ll not bother myself with references. When can you start?’

  ‘Tomorrow morning?’

  ‘That’s just fantastic. It will save me from having to train up a stranger.’ He led the way into the gloomy garage, and Kate knew, before she’d even seen the office, that she was soon to know what shoddy filing really was. Still, Kevin wasn’t the worst of them. He’d be a nicer boss than old Bingham the Battleaxe. Kevin wouldn’t know a time-sheet from a smack in the mouth.

  ‘Here is the nerve-centre of the whole operation,’ said Kevin, and he opened the door slowly.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ said Kate, eyeing a scene of utter devastation. In the semi-darkness of the room, she could make out enormous piles of paper and car manuals, hundreds of car parts and even a few worn tyres. All of it, white with the dust of years.

  ‘Anything you’d like to ask me?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll take the job on one condition.’

  ‘Name it.’

  ‘I want to revamp this office. Paint, carpet, desks, chairs. Proper storage, some pictures. Lighting. New kettle and mugs. About two thousand pounds should do it.’

  ‘Sure.’ He had his chequebook out in a second. ‘I’ve been meaning to get the place done up, but I don’t have the time. Or the taste. Tell you what, just do whatever you want.’

  ‘Righto,’ said Kate.

  I usually do, she thought. And she winked at him.

  17. Angels’ Wings, Engagement Rings

  Kate’s new job was an absolute godsend. She worked day and night on bringing Kevin’s garage into the twentieth century. It was a great outlet for Kate’s many talents, of which spending money was the most outstanding. She even had new windows designed for the old building, which made it much warmer. And she created a cosy little coffee area, with a lime-green sofa and pink scatter-cushions, a low table with a glass top and a pretty standard lamp of a 1950s’ design. It was like a little oasis of style in the otherwise masculine dreariness, Kate liked to think. Anyway, it was gorgeous. She spent days sorting through the paperwork, some of it more than twenty years out of date. The tyres and car parts she consigned to the back of the garage.

  The revamp of the office was a resounding success. Kevin was delighted. He surveyed the new filing system carefully, to show Kate how pleased he was. It would save him hours of time, he told her, being so organized. And even though the fancy coffee area wasn’t strictly necessary, it was nice to have somewhere clean and stylish to enjoy his cheese sandwich at lunchtime. Kate placed her new desk beside the window, so that she could look out over the street. And Kevin loved to see her there as he talked to clients on the forecourt. She was like a princess in her tower, he thought, and he was her knight in shining armour. Well, her knight in oily overalls.

  For the first few days, he waited politely for Kate to summon him for his lunchtime cuppa. Then, with his confidence increasing, he would just appear at the door of the office when the one o’clock news came on the radio. Kate would look up and smile and then get out of her seat to fill the kettle. It was never awkward between them. They could talk about the business for half an hour, with no fears about being alone together. And the phone never stopped ringing some days, so there was always the distraction of that. Sometimes it was quiet, and then they might discuss things like the price of holidays abroad or where they might like to live if the Troubles got much worse. A lot of their friends were emigrating, with or without legal papers. They said they might as well labour under a blue sky, as under a grey one; without the fear of violence hanging over them all the time. Kevin liked big cities like London but he was reluctant to leave his thriving business behind him and start all over again somewhere else. Kate agreed with him. She’d like to live somewhere hot and glamorous, but didn’t want to strike out for foreign shores on her own. The two of them had some very pleasant chats about the world in general, on the green velvet sofa. Kate felt very relaxed with Kevin. Not crazy with lust, unfortunately; but then, no horrible trembling and palpitations either. All that business had stopped completely. Which made her so grateful she sometimes knelt down on the floor beside her bed and actually prayed properly for ten whole minutes before going to sleep.

  When she had banked her first pay-cheque, Kate invited Kevin out for dinner, to thank him for the new job. He was growing on her, gradually; day by day, little by little. He was so easy to work with, she actually enjoyed hearing the alarm clock ringing in the morning. It wasn’t too bad sitting behind a desk all day when you had some degree of freedom and independence. As long as all the paperwork was in order by the end of the day, Kevin didn’t care how many coffee breaks she had or if she listened to the radio or if she had fresh flowers and little ornaments on her desk. He treated Kate like a human being, not as a human resource. Why didn’t these so-called management gurus know that, she wondered. Hadn’t they heard of words like individuality and stress and PMT? Kate felt so much better she decided she would even try to be nicer to her own family. She apologized to all of them for her recent bad humour.

  Kate and Shirley made friends again. (Although they both knew it would take them a long time to forget the hurtful words that had been thrown in the heat of the moment.) Shirley told Kate that Miss Bingham was very upset when she discovered that Kate had a new job. She’d asked Shirley straight out why Kate hadn’t turned up for her most recent ‘signing on’ and Shirley had told her that Kate was now the office manager of a thriving business. She wouldn’t be claiming benefit any more; she was earning more money than in her old job. And Miss Bingham had been so annoyed she’d bent a teaspoon in half. So upset, in fact, she’d slammed a drawer shut in one of the filing cabinets without removing her fingers first. The sisters had a good giggle about that. Poor Miss Bingham wouldn’t get to gloat over Kate’s unemployment after all.

  Shirley also told Kate that she was getting on well with Declan. She didn’t, however, tell Kate about meeting Declan’s family, and that it hadn’t been a nerve-racking experience at all. They were very warm and welcoming towards her despite their wealthy background. Even his mother, Marion, who might have been overprotective of her only son, could not have been nicer. Irish mothers could be cruel, sometimes; they could be even more snobbish than the English. But Mrs Greenwood went out of her way to make sure that Shirley enjoyed her dinner, and did not ask her too many awkward questions – like, where she worked or where she lived or what her father did for a living – knowing already that the answers would be very disappointing, that Shirley lived in a small, terraced house and her parents were both cleaners in the Royal Victoria Hospital.

  Nor did she tell Kate that they had spent some heavenly afternoons in Declan’s double bed when his parents had gone away on a cruise with their three daughters. Declan had a beautiful body and a fantastic record collection. She’d never be able to hear the Cure or the Stranglers again without blushing. Once Shirley had opened that button on Declan’s shirt for the first time, there was no going back. And she was clear on that. She was the one who had started it, not him. ‘Are you sure?’ he’d asked her, that day. They’d been out for a lovely stroll in the park, followed by fish and chips and a cup of tea, in front of the television.

  ‘Yes,’ she’d said. ‘I’m sure.’

  They loved each other. They had both said it, several times. What was the point in waiting until they were in their thirties and could afford a fancy wedding? By the time they had saved up for something lavish enough to please Marion, they would be middle-aged.

  Kate would be shocked that their relationship had progressed so much in just a few short weeks. But she would
never understand how close Shirley felt to Declan, and that even though he was barely twenty years old, he was very mature and sensible. He didn’t giggle when they undressed in the afternoons, with the bedroom curtains closed against the winter winds. And Shirley didn’t tell Kate that all her fears and worries about taking off her own clothes hadn’t been necessary, either. Most of the time, they barely paused to take off all of their clothes, anyway, and afterwards fell about the bed laughing, with shirts and sweaters wrapped around wrists, and socks and shoes half on. Shirley’s time-sheets were in a state of meltdown: currently minus fifteen hours and twenty minutes. She could almost hear Miss Bingham shrieking the next time she carried out a spot check.

  Declan was worth it, though. He was the sexiest man Shirley had ever encountered in real life. He had an easygoing charm that was not threatening or irritating, but warm and seductive. He told her funny stories that made her laugh until her eyes watered. He told her she was beautiful. Best of all, he was discreet. He didn’t boast about his love life to his friends. Shirley knew that for a fact because they didn’t snigger when they met her on the street. Some boys were so immature, they were really still children: laughing through their noses at words like ‘breast’ or ‘orgasm’. Declan was a really special man; she knew he wasn’t just pretending to be sensitive to impress her. Within days of meeting him, she felt that she had known him always. But Shirley couldn’t tell her big sister any of that. Kate used her sexuality to reward expensive meals out, or gifts of gold jewellery. She enjoyed knowing that men desired her, but it wasn’t an intellectual experience for her, or even an emotional one. She wouldn’t understand that sacred feeling of bonding between two separate souls who had suddenly found each other and become one. Kate would say that Shirley had given out the goods too soon and that Declan would have no respect for her.