by Maeve Binchy
Molly Power had laid out little plates of biscuits with cheese on some and mashed-up eggs on others. The eggs ones had been a mistake. She had forgotten how quickly they would go soggy. She had nuts in little bowls and that afternoon she had gone and collected masses of gorse, which looked gorgeous in bowls and jugs all around the room. Their sitting room had yellow curtains and the chintz covers had a lot of yellow in them too. One day Nellie had brought in gorse and Molly had been about to throw it out—but Mrs. Nolan had admired it. So now Molly had adopted it as her own idea.
David was rubbing Nivea Creme into his nose. “I think all the peeling’s gone now,” he said, looking at himself in the mirror over the mantelpiece.
“I told you to stop pulling at it and picking at it, it would have gone much sooner if you’d left it alone,” his mother said.
David sighed. There was never anything that Mother didn’t know or wasn’t right about.
“I know, I know,” he said wearily.
“Well, it stands to reason. You’re fair-skinned. You get burned. You must wait until the dead skin falls off. Don’t pull at it.”
“I won’t,” David said, exasperated.
“I don’t know why you’re getting into a mood.” Molly was annoyed. “Here we are, having a party for all your friends before you go to the dance. You will have a marvelous evening and all you can do is snap at anyone who tries to help you.” She sounded aggrieved.
David said nothing.
“It’s not as if your father and I ever interfere in your life or ask you what you get up to. When the dance is over, do we ever say you must come straight home? No we don’t. We let you live your own life.”
“Ah, come on now,” David, trying to hide his anger without much success, laughed insincerely. “Come on, Mother, I’m a grown-up man, not a little boy with a fishing net. I live my own life in Dublin—naturally I live my own life here too.”
“Naturally,” she said in her pouting voice.
He chose not to hear the sulk.
“Good, then we’re both saying the same thing.” He squared his shoulders in his new jacket and gave himself one last look.
“Well, that will have to do. If I don’t get the lovely Caroline away from Gerry Doyle tonight, I never will.”
“Gerry Doyle? Don’t be ridiculous. He’ll be there taking snaps.”
“Oh, no, he won’t. He’ll have a minion doing that. Gerry will be there on his own terms, making no effort, and they’ll all come crawling to him.”
“That’s disgusting and all in your mind.”
“See for yourself tonight. Caroline’s only one of a queue.”
“I never heard such nonsense. . . . Oh, there you are Paddy. Don’t you look nice and clean?”
“Clean?” Dr. Power roared. “Is that all you have to say to me?”
“I meant dressed up and smart,” Molly laughed.
“Clean,” he snorted. “What were you saying was nonsense, when I came in?”
“This belief that Gerry Doyle is some kind of ladykiller. Even Caroline Nolan. Caroline, with the whole of the university to choose from . . .”
“Caroline’s here,” Dr. Power said. “There was a great tooting of cars and I saw her arriving up at the crossroads. She has a Morris Minor all of her own now. Anyway, she said she took it into her head to come to Castlebay, and I told her she picked a good night and that she was to come up here for a drink first. She got into a great fluster and said she’d have to wash her hair. I don’t know why women go on so much about their hair. They’re always washing it or having it done at the hairdresser’s, and complaining if you don’t know every rib of it that’s been changed.”
“Well, now we’ll see if she’s interested in that Gerry Doyle,” Molly said to David. “And stop eating the cheese ones. If you want to eat anything, eat the ones with egg on them.”
Chrissie had given the dance a lot of thought. At one stage she was fully prepared to abandon it. A snobs’ dance, an old people’s dance. Catch Chrissie O’Brien dead at that? Then she saw that the feeling of the town was not the same as her own. In Dwyers’ they discussed endlessly whether they should give mutton, beef or pork as a spot prize, and Kath and Peggy had even bought new dresses. Chrissie decided that she didn’t want to be humbled watching Gerry Doyle ignore her. He only gave her the coolest of nods these days. She couldn’t bear him to see her standing there as he whirled by with whatever new glamorous piece who had come to town. Even if he danced with her once or twice like he used to, that would be fine, but he had lost all interest. He didn’t need Chrissie.
She sighed a lot when people asked her was she going to the Committee dance. “Only if someone asks me,” she said. “I’m too old to go to a dance without a partner.”
Kath and Peggy couldn’t understand it. The point was to go without a partner and find a partner there. But Chrissie was adamant. Bumper Byrne the builder was buying meat and heard Chrissie O’Brien talking like this. He told his younger brother Maurice, or Mogsy as he had been called ever since anyone could remember. Mogsy came down to the shop.
“Will you be my partner for the Committee dance please?” he said across the counter. Mr. Dwyer the butcher sighed with relief.
“What do you mean by being a partner exactly?”
“I mean I’ll pay for you, I’ll dance with you when you’re not asked up by other people. I won’t stand in your way if some fellow you want a spin around the floor with comes along, and I’ll buy you minerals at the bar,” said Mogsy who wore his hat back to front and wasn’t too bright.
Chrissie considered it. “And what would you get out of it?” she asked ungraciously.
“I don’t know.” Mogsy hadn’t thought of it like that. “I suppose I’d get the right to dance with you and put my arm around you and say you were my date for the night. Aren’t you the best-looking girl in Castlebay?”
Chrissie smiled across the marble counter. “Thank you very much, Mogsy. I’d be glad to come to the dance as your partner,” she said.
Best-looking girl in Castlebay. Well, now. Not that anyone was saying Mogsy Byrne was bright or anything, but he wasn’t too bad, and she would never be left standing, and she’d go in on his arm. That would show Gerry Doyle not everyone had to sit around and wait for him.
“Good, that’s fixed then.” Mogsy was off.
“Have you a suit and everything?” she asked.
“I’ve a gorgeous suit,” he said.
“We’ll show them, Mogsy,” she said.
Josie and Clare were putting on their makeup.
“It must be something to do with the color of your lips to start with,” Josie said. “Sari Peach looks quite a different color on you than on me.”
They had bought one lipstick between them in Murphy’s chemist. Mrs. Murphy had said it was very unhygienic to share a lipstick, it could pass on germs. They had laughed the whole way home remembering how the whole school would share one lipstick at times and nobody had come out in a rash.
Clare wore a red corduroy skirt and a white frilly blouse: she had a red velvet ribbon on her hair. She dressed up in Josie’s room because Chrissie had the bedroom at home commandeered. Josie had a lemon-colored dress with a square neck back and front, trimmed with white broderie anglaise.
“Are you sure I don’t look like a tank?” she asked for the tenth time.
“What am I going to do with you?” Clare wailed. “You don’t look like a tank, you haven’t looked like a tank since you were twelve and you’re nearly eighteen now. That’s a third of your life you haven’t looked like a tank and you still think you do!”
Josie laughed. “I’m thinner than Emily and Rose. They hate it.”
“They hate everything. They’re like posh versions of Chrissie. She says that I’m thin because of all the badness in me—it eats up the food from within. And you’re thin because you’ve got worms.”
They fell about the room laughing. Which was worse, to have worms or inner badness?
“I don’t think he has anyone else this summer, anyone serious that is,” Josie said, pouting at herself in the mirror.
“James?”
“Who else?”
“Not a sign of it. He and David have been playing golf a lot. Miss O’Hara told me. They call into her sometimes on the way there or back. No sign of women at all. His sister’s arrived. Lady Caroline. I saw her rushing into reception downstairs asking for a loan of a hairdryer.”
“Did they give her one?” Josie wanted to befriend the beloved’s sister.
“I think so. There was a great fuss—you know the way Lady Caroline talks, she expects things done.”
“I hope they got her one.”
“I don’t. I’d like her to have rats’ tails for once instead of looking like an advertisement.”
“I think she fancies Gerry Doyle.”
“Tell her to join the queue,” Clare said, applying more Vaseline to her eyelashes to get them to curl.
“I was just thinking,” Josie said. “Suppose I won the spot prize we gave—you know, the one the hotel gave.”
“Well, what would be so funny?”
“It’s a weekend, all expenses paid, staying here. I could have a room with a sea view and have Emily bring me my breakfast in bed.”
Chrissie was just ahead of them at the ticket box. She was arm in arm with Mogsy Byrne who was in charge of the churns when the farmers brought the milk in. Tonight, he wore a suit. He looked a bit drunk already.
“I would have thought that the elegant Miss Clare O’Brien and her friend Miss Josie Dillon wouldn’t be seen paying for their own tickets to the dance,” Chrissie said loudly.
She looked awful Clare thought. After all that work and all that flinging of clothes and makeup around the bedroom. The pink satin dress was much too tight, the white cardigan was grubby and the glittery diamante jewelry looked flashy, like the bright red lipstick and heavy white powder. Still, other fellows were giving her admiring glances. Maybe she was more suitably dressed than Clare, perhaps the blouse and skirt were a bit dowdy, a bit schoolgirlish.
They were playing “The Yellow Rose of Texas”; the ballroom was festive, with balloons and decorations all around, and a big banner saying that the Castlebay Committee welcomed everyone and thanked them for their support. There was a huge table, groaning with gifts, on the stage near the band, and a spotlight going around picking out lucky couples who would then be given a gift. The instructions were that not too many should be given early, and only the inferior ones. As Clare and Josie came in they saw a couple in the spotlight being presented with a small talcum powder and bath cubes in a presentation box. There were much greater things to come. They were heading across to a corner which they thought was a good vantage point when they were both asked to dance at once. This was a good omen, they thought, as they were whirled out onto the floor.
Dick Dillon said he was great at the waltz but he wasn’t going to make a public display of himself over this jiving, and rock and roll.
Angela said the waltz was her forte too, just so long as they didn’t twirl too fast. As luck would have it the band had announced “Tales from the Vienna Woods” just as they came in.
“I suppose you’ll want to go to the ladies’ cloakroom,” Dick grumbled.
“Why would I?” Angela asked and they were off, round and round, bending and swooping, Dick looking over his left shoulder and Angela looking to her left. He held her firmly in the small of the back and didn’t slip, even though the floor had been treated to make it shine. Angela’s beige silk dress, the one she had bought for Emer’s wedding, swirled round. If Emer could see this! It is ridiculous, she thought. I am a ludicrous figure. And she smiled to herself as she saw admiring glances, not laughter. She saw Dr. Power pointing her out to Mr. Nolan. That would have been her party if she hadn’t agreed to come with this madman.
The madman in question spoke out of the side of his mouth. “I think we’re showing them a thing or two,” he hissed.
“I’d say they’ll clear the floor any minute for the two of us to do a demonstration,” Angela said, and at that moment the spotlight landed on them and the band leader announced that they had won a leg of lamb kindly presented by Messrs. Dwyer, the premier butcher in Castlebay.
Everybody was in good humor, and suntanned and cheerful. Simon, the handsome lifeguard, who wore a pullover tied casually round his shoulders, was talking to Frank Conway who was a guard, and very tall with a back like a ramrod. A lot of the girls were eyeing them with interest. Frank Conway kept glancing at the door. “I was watching to see if I could see Fiona Doyle coming in,” he explained.
Simon smiled. “I bet a lot of people are. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the guard dog hasn’t let her out.”
“The what?”
“Her brother. He is like a guard dog. He barks if anyone comes near. It’s fine for him to do what he likes, but she can have no fun.”
Frank was disappointed but he wanted to stand up for Fiona. “In a way, Gerry’s right. You can’t have girls doing what they like—it wouldn’t be right.”
“You’re not like that with your sister Bernie. She’s a free agent.” Simon glanced at Bernie Conway, smooching with one of the visitors.
“Yes, well.” Frank was irritated now on every score. When the dance was over he went up to Bernie and invited her for the next waltz.
“This is a surprise,” she said, not altogether pleased.
“I think you should behave in a more ladylike way in public.”
“I think you should go and stick your fat head in a bucket,” said Bernie, and walked off the floor. Simon saw her free, and asked her back to dance.
“My brother is mad. Stark staring mad,” she said.
“Let’s not talk about your brother,” said Simon, holding her very close to him and running his hand up and down her back.
Gerry Doyle never asked anyone to dance. He always seemed to be beside the girl that he wanted when the music started, and he would smile and hold out his hand. He asked Josie Dillon first, and she was glad to be seen out on the floor by James Nolan, who had just come in. Josie had noticed that Caroline’s dark hair looked nicely set, so the hotel must have been able to find her a hairdryer all right. Gerry was a terrific dancer of course, and she was glad that she and Clare had spent some time learning the Twist at the beginning of the summer. The world was divided between those who could and couldn’t do it. Gerry had probably been born knowing how to do it.
He admired her dress. He said that it was a lovely sunny color, that she and Clare O’Brien looked the classiest girls in the whole ballroom. She asked would Fiona be here, but he said she had a summer flu. They both agreed that Uncle Dick had turned out to be a demon dancer. He hadn’t been off the floor since he came in and insisted on doing formal quicksteps to the rock and roll numbers.
James and Caroline Nolan had arrived, and Gerry had seen them. He escorted Josie back to where he had found her with a big smile. “I wish they all danced like you, Josie Dillon, the Ginger Rogers of Castlebay.” Josie was pink with delight. She was about to tell Clare, but at that moment Clare was whisked off by Uncle Dick. Josie could have died of mortification. Why couldn’t Uncle Dick just sit down like other old people, or venture gently into a foxtrot or something? Why did he have to make a fool of her by asking her friend to dance? The band announced a series of Latin American numbers beginning with the “Blue Tango.”
“I’m not great at it, not a semiprofessional like yourself,” Clare had confessed.
“Listen to me once. You’re meant to be a bright girl. It’s one step rock back, two steps rock back, three steps rock back. Repeat that.”
They hadn’t started to dance yet. Clare repeated it.
“Right, hold on tight and follow me, none of this independent doing fandangos on your own.”
He stood beside her but facing in a different direction, he stretched their arms out as if they were pretending to be scarecrows in a field. He waited for the bea
t and they were off. The man was a wizard. She began to enjoy it and relaxed when it came to the turns. She noticed other people admiring them too, and saw from one part of the room Miss O’Hara, doing a very amateurish version of the same thing with Dr. Power, smiling proudly toward her . . . Gerry Doyle—dancing with Bernie Conway—was looking at her in delight. David Power, dancing with Caroline Nolan, called her attention to the spectacular couple. Clare would have preferred it to have been a younger and more dashing man but she forgot about that after a while. Especially when they went into the cha cha: “. . . rock forward, rock backward, side close side . . .” he said and after a few bars she had all the confidence in the world. They won a spot prize too. A bottle of Jameson Ten Year Old.
“You can have that. My drinking days are over,” Dick Dillon said.
“Your dancing days sure aren’t,” Clare said and went, flushed with success, to leave the bottle in the ladies’ cloakroom and get a ticket for it.
The Committee were very pleased. They had charged a slightly higher price for admission, which was justified by the many gifts which would be given away, but it also kept out some of the riffraff. Not all the riffraff, they noticed, as they saw Mogsy Byrne throwing Chrissie O’Brien around in the way most calculated to show her knickers to the crowd. Still.
There was a brisk trade at the mineral bar. Oranges and lemons and ginger beers were passing with speed across the counter, and there was a percentage on all that for the Committee, too. No real drink could be served in the dance hall, on this night any more than any other. Dancers wanting a break to visit a pub applied for a pass-out card, and a good few had small bottles in hip pockets.
The band, which was there for the season, had dressed itself up to mark the special nature of the night. The men wore rosettes in their buttonholes, and Lovely Helena, the vocalist, wore a big rose at the waist of her tulle and net dress.
Out in the street, youngsters who were considered well below the age tried to peer in and every time the inner door swung open they caught a glimpse of the glitter inside. Through the ventilators the sound of the singing and the clapping of the announcement of yet another prize being delivered were heard, and then blasts from the band again. During the summer people became used to the sound of the dance hall. It was as familiar as the waves crashing on the shore, background music.
