The Ballroom on Magnolia Street

by Sharon Owens

  ‘Don’t you see?’ she said to Eddy, late one night. ‘This will be the making of him. Now that he has responsibilities.’

  ‘She’s a nice girl, isn’t she? Pretty enough. They’ll be happy, won’t they?’

  ‘Oh, yes. They’ll be very happy. Shirley is a sensible girl.’ And Eddy left it at that. Marion was delighted, and that was all that mattered to him.

  Johnny Hogan had not been in touch again, and he should be jetting out of their lives for ever, any day soon. The ballroom was up for sale at last. There were notices in all the local papers. Eddy was sleeping better than he had for a long time. And Declan was going to be a doctor, after all. A little stint as general manager in the restaurant had put him off the hospitality business.

  Shirley continued to tell everyone she knew at work that she was expecting a child. She thought it was better that way, to be honest from the start. And just in case she might suffer from a touch of morning sickness. Miss Bingham collapsed in the toilets when she heard the news. She dropped the china mug she had been rinsing in the sink, and it shattered into a hundred pieces. She had to be held up by two women from Self-Employed, and have cold water splashed on her face.

  ‘Well, I’m not surprised,’ she managed to whisper, when her blood pressure had returned to normal. ‘She’s got no manners. Like her sister, Kate. I had to sack her, you know. The language of her, when I told her! I blame the parents. My God! No doubt, Shirley’ll be in to the Housing Executive, looking for a free house off the taxpayer.’

  ‘Oh, not at all,’ said the first woman, whose name was Beryl. ‘She’s engaged to, some stunner, I believe. Some big, tall fella. I haven’t seen him, but they say he’s gorgeous. And his parents are very well off, and they’re buying them a house and paying for the wedding.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ said Miss Bingham.

  ‘Shirley’s landed on her feet and no mistake. Oh, yes!’ added Beryl’s friend, Kathy. ‘We’ll not see her in here with her hand out. I’m sure she’ll be handing in her notice, to tell you the truth.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tempt me!’ muttered Beryl. ‘Who, in their right mind, would work here if they didn’t have to?’ The women knew all the details. And Miss Bingham collapsed again. She wasn’t feeling right for days afterwards.

  Neither was Kate. Shirley had destroyed the whole system and proper order of things. If Shirley went up the aisle first, it would make Kate look like an old maid, like a woman who had been passed over. And that was why she had decided to get married as well. She told Kevin they could set the date, after another few passionate afternoons on the lime-green sofa.

  Kevin was so pleased with himself, he couldn’t concentrate on the garage, and didn’t get any cars fixed for two days. Kate told her parents she was getting wed immediately, and they began to plan for the expense. They told Shirley and Declan about it over supper one night. Declan didn’t want them to worry, especially since he felt partly responsible for this new development. He kindly suggested they have a double wedding.

  Kate was initially against the idea, but in the end, she reluctantly agreed. She’d wanted a dream wedding with a fleet of limousines and expensive champagne and six bridesmaids; but her father had informed her that all he could provide was turkey and ham for forty. No frills. All the extras were up to herself and Kevin.

  Marion Greenwood, on the other hand, was already up to her eyes in planning. She was having a lavish hot-and-cold buffet, ice sculptures, and a string quartet. (She was a big fan of the television show Dallas.) When Declan told her that he had offered to share his big day with Kevin and Kate, she was mildly disappointed. But Kevin didn’t have many relations, as it turned out, and they were all very shy; they could be squeezed in at another couple of tables near the back of the room. It was all agreed. Thankfully, the invitations had not yet been printed.

  Kevin said he’d pay for a lovely honeymoon for Kate and himself, the suits for all the gents, and the wedding cars. Eddy shook his hand and said he was a good man. Marion Greenwood wasn’t exactly delighted that her only son’s glorious wedding was being hijacked by Shirley’s bossy sister, Kate. She had met Kate only twice and disliked her intensely. However, that was the only fly in the ointment, so she decided to be gracious.

  Shirley wasn’t exactly pleased that Kate was sharing her big day either, but she didn’t have the energy to fight about it. On the positive side, it took the spotlight off her a little bit; and the pregnancy scandal was submerged in the terrific excitement of the double wedding. No one could remember any such thing happening in the district. And it had made her father very happy, to be relieved of the expense of the reception. Shirley sometimes resented Kate for the way she was turning the whole wedding into a drama-laden pantomime. But she kept quiet, and daydreamed of a little flat where she and Declan could be alone together at last.

  She watched a programme about space, one Saturday morning, when she was alone in the house. The programme was designed for children, but Shirley found it fascinating. It explained how the universe did not have a top or a bottom, and, therefore, neither did the planets. It was quite a huge concept to take in. Shirley found the information more perplexing than enlightening. What exactly was it that kept all the planets and suns spinning along merrily in the black emptiness of the universe? A universe that had no top, and no bottom. And if it was God and he was so powerful, then why couldn’t he have helped her father and mother to find better jobs, and not spend the best years of their lives cleaning toilets and floor tiles? And smelling of very strong pine-scented disinfectant and eye-watering bleach?

  Then she had to rush to the bathroom for another hearty session of morning sickness, and that put an end to her musings for the day. She knelt beside the toilet bowl, her shoulders heaving with the effort, unable to concentrate on anything except her body’s immediate physical needs. She was astonished at the power of her own body. It was like she had no control over it. Afterwards, she lay on the floor sweating, exhausted, purged and calm. Being sick was a little bit like making love, she thought sadly.

  After a few minutes, Shirley began to shiver. She dragged herself to the sink and splashed some warm water onto her face. And even though she could hardly be bothered to, she brushed her teeth as well. It would be horrible later, if she didn’t. Her face in the pretty seashell mirror was grey and terrified. She wondered if she’d look this awful on her wedding day. She wanted to look nice for her family. Weddings were for the bride and groom’s families, really, she thought. She and Declan had made their vows to one another in other places, in other ways. She padded down the hall to her tiny bedroom and lowered herself delicately onto her little bed, drawing the patchwork quilt over her shoulders. She always felt cold when the morning sickness subsided. She wouldn’t think so much in the future, she decided. She’d try to be more like Kate, who was a complete idiot, but very happy most of the time. She tried to concentrate on the background noises of the street. A dog barking, some builders hammering, a police siren. But it was hard to stop thinking when you were all alone in an empty house, and your stomach muscles were aching from nausea. Would Kevin and Kate be happy, she wondered. Would she be happy with Declan, for that matter? Would Declan get bored with her? Would he dump her in September for a clever fellow student with blonde hair and tight jeans? Would their eyes meet over the cadavers in the dissecting hall, and would that be the end of Shirley Winters and her big ideas about love? ‘Stop it,’ she told herself. ‘I’m just run down because of the nausea, and it’s making me morbid,’ she confided to her old teddy bear. ‘Declan loves me. He does.’

  Even though the room was bright, Shirley closed her eyes and drew the quilt tighter around herself. The shivering stopped and she relaxed. She slept for a while and dreamt that all the planets were held up by string, and that her parents won the lottery and threw away their stinky mops for ever.

  Kate told everyone she was getting married on the same day as her sister, in a shared ceremony, because she’d been madly in love with K
evin McGovern all along, and just hadn’t realized it.

  The date was set for 21 April. Shirley’s morning sickness would have settled down by then, and the bump would still be only tiny. Mrs Winters went shopping for hats on a full-time basis, breaking for lasagne in Maguire’s coffee shop at lunchtime. Mr Winters spent a lot of time putting up more shelves in the shed. In time, he came to terms with the shock and was happy that his unpredictable daughters had finally managed to snare themselves some decent men. And secretly very pleased that they were having a joint wedding. It would save him a fortune, although that wouldn’t be a nice thing to say out loud. The Greenwoods were paying for the food, Declan and Shirley’s honeymoon, even the iced fruitcake. And Kevin was forking out his share too, praise the Lord. So all he had to pay for was Kate’s dress. He was in seventh heaven, until Kate decided she would like a designer gown, specially created just for her. And he was plunged into worry once more.

  Kevin bought Kate an engagement ring the size of a grapefruit, and gave her his chequebook, so she could start remodelling his 1930s’ semi on the Lisburn Road.

  Miss Bingham spent hours looking up the rule books for some way she could fire an unwed mother. But, unbelievably, all that sort of thing seemed to be done away with. Not only would she not be fired, but she would be entitled to paid leave when the child was born. Nobody on the senior staff wanted to gossip about the scandal at lunchtimes. They only wanted to talk about their foreign holidays; and whether or not they should downsize their mortgages to put the children through university, or encourage their offspring to find part-time jobs instead. Miss Bingham didn’t have a family of her own to talk about, so those conversations didn’t interest her at all. Nobody in the office batted an eyelid when Shirley nipped out to the toilets every morning for a quick heave. Unplanned pregnancies were bread-and-butter to them. The more, the merrier. And most of the staff were open-minded mothers themselves. They knew that the joy they felt when they held their precious baby in their arms was far more important than whether or not they were married. It was marvellous to have a loving husband at the side of the bed during the delivery, of course. Holding their hand and sharing the experience of the birth. But all mothers were alone, really, in their joy and in their labour pain, and in their worries for their children.

  They held a secret collection, and bought Shirley a lovely buggy from Mothercare, and wheeled it into the office with a big bow tied on the handle. Everybody clapped and cheered, and Shirley stood up and took a bow. It was sickening to watch.

  Declan’s friends teased him to death about the wedding. They said he was well and truly whipped and trapped and tied down, and what a fool he was to be trailed up the aisle so young. They said they would never be dumb enough to be caught like that. But he amazed them all by saying that he really did love Shirley, and that he couldn’t wait to be a married man with his own home and child. And no, they could not come round all the time for beer and videos and parties. The baby would need peace and quiet. And Shirley’s privacy must be respected, too. He would see them in the pub once a month, or so. If Shirley didn’t mind. He also turned down the offer of a stag night in a private room in a club. Drink by the lorryload. Strippers, even. But, no. That would be very hurtful for Shirley, he told them, when she was feeling so tired. Only a waster of the lowest order would abandon a pregnant woman for a night of seedy entertainment like that. The boys were stunned by Declan’s pompous attitude, but he only laughed at them and said they were unbelievably old-fashioned and that was why they were all still single geeks, and living at home with their parents.

  The gifts poured in. A double wedding was a rare and special thing. Hand-painted tea sets and gilt mirrors and steel saucepans were delivered to the house on a regular basis. Crystal glasses and bone-china ornaments, and clocks covered with painted shamrocks, and rugs with long, heavy fringes. Shirley was thrilled with each new gift. Kate thought some of the designs were a little vulgar. Mrs Winters warned Kate that if she tried to swap any of the items for something more stylish, she would bring bad luck on the whole enterprise. Some people wanted to buy gifts for the baby, but worried about offending Shirley, so they gave cash inside a greeting card instead.

  Kate was jealous of her little sister. She had planned to steal the show with her designer gown, but how did that compare with a new life coming into the world? New babies were still a big event, nowadays, no matter what they said about having a career. Running a garage was nothing, when people were buying you strollers and clapping for you at work. Even the dinner ladies in the canteen wanted in on the celebrations. They made a big chocolate cake with yellow icing on it saying CONGRATS, and bought Shirley a cuddly toy rabbit. Kate was devastated to see that Shirley was actually very well liked in the community. Even her parents were being reasonable, for the first time in living memory. Mrs Winters wouldn’t let Shirley do any housework.

  Kate told Kevin that she felt a little left out of things.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘When we’re married, we’ll pop those babies out like peas. We’ll have two children to every one of theirs.’

  Then Kate had nightmares about pushing a shopping trolley full of screaming children around the supermarket, all of them rubbing chocolate biscuits into their hair. Kevin was frantic to begin the baby-making process and Kate wondered how she would endure it. She seemed to lose her passion when the thrill of the chase was over. It was very strange, because that was the sort of thing that usually happened to men. According to the glossy magazines, anyway. She was fed up with those ‘How to Keep Your Man Interested’ articles. She needed something to keep Kevin’s mind off sex.

  She thought of pulling out of the wedding, but then decided to stay on board. She could just about bear the regular sexual relations on the green velvet sofa, but there was no way she wanted children. (If she had to, she could always feign fertility problems.) Kate devoted all her spare time to the house renovation. She chose a beech kitchen with state-of-the-art handles, and double-glazing with Georgian bars for Kevin’s home. She decided not to move in with Kevin just yet, however. That way, she would avoid all the dust and the noise the home improvements would cause, as well as Kevin’s rampant libido; and she could still enjoy her mother’s home cooking for three more precious months. Kate Winters wasn’t your average romantic.

  19. Kidnapped

  It was the first week of February and the citizens of Belfast were feeling the pinch of winter winds and post-Christmas pockets. The city walls and windows were looking very drab now that all the decorations and lights had been put away for another year. Johnny was feeling pretty flat and colourless himself, and had been ever since Marion had told him that she did love Eddy Greenwood. Truly loved him, on a deep and profound level that went beyond looks and superficial things. Johnny had harboured some vague notion that Marion was only punishing him with her long marriage to Eddy, and that when she was ready, she would come back to him. Marion was afraid when she heard Johnny talk like that. She thought he might be unstable in some way. After all, it was twelve hours before they found Johnny Hogan in the rubble and the darkness, lying in the cradle that James had made for him. Did he suffer so much trauma, in that dark cradle, that he had grown up with his thinking pattern distorted, she wondered. Was that why he liked to be in the middle of all the fun and the music and the crowds? Because he had lain in the dark all night, cold and hungry, and afraid that no one would come? She was gentle with him, holding his hand, and saying that she would always care for him as a dear friend, but that friends was all they could ever be.

  Johnny worried that he might back out and not go to America on his big trip after all. What would everyone think of him then? That he was just a big baby, that’s what. With a heavy heart, he decided to leave Ireland at the end of April.

  The very day Johnny booked his flight to Florida, a tourist was attacked by a crocodile there. The man survived, but needed two hundred stitches in his legs. It was the main story on the local news stations all day. Lot
s of Ulster people were going to Florida on their holidays; and even though they lived their lives under the constant threat of sectarian murder, and no-warning bombs going off in the town centres, they were scared stiff of stray crocodiles lurking in suburban swimming pools. Johnny thought it was a bad omen. He slipped the ticket into his wallet and half-hoped he would never use it.

  The disco was packed to the doors every night with people eager to visit the famous nightspot before it closed down for good. Sunny Jim and the recently returned Standing Stone were very depressed. Working in the ballroom was the best job they had ever had. They would miss the sense of importance they felt, standing with their backs to the crowd before the doors were opened each night. DJ Toni was already scouting for another gig, but he doubted he would find one where he got half-price cocktails and all the free fish suppers he could eat. Sometimes, he read out requests with his mind on something else, and Louise Lowry and Kate Winters took full advantage of that. Louise had a song played for her friend Kate, ‘whose hobbies are knitting socks, singing hymns and collecting spoons’. Kate retaliated by having a Smiths song played for Louise: ‘Last Night I Dreamt that Somebody Loved Me’. Louise then had DJ Toni inform the crowd that Kate Winters was receiving counselling for being agoraphobic, and the crowd clapped their support, and Louise had to barricade herself in the ladies’ toilets for her own protection. Johnny Hogan had to give Toni a stiff lecture about being more alert to the pranks of the young people, and Toni sulked for a while in his little booth and played too many sad love songs.

  Timothy Tate was feeling more forlorn than most. He had been on his knees for two hours, praying and praying for an answer to this huge problem that faced him. Eugene Lolly had at last contacted him and would be outside the door of the gym in thirty minutes, ready to take Timothy on his first criminal outing in twenty-odd years. Timothy wondered if it was too late to put on his anorak and hurry down the road, and go to the park, or anywhere. Just hide until Eugene gave up on him, and found somebody else to be his sidekick. Without thinking, he had his coat on, and had switched off the lights in the main hall. As he fumbled with the bunch of keys, there was a footstep behind him, and Eugene was there, eyes bright and shining with excitement.