Snow Garden (10 page)

‘What is that?’ her mother had asked.

‘You should put your hair up,’ said one of the girls. It took Maureen a moment to realize the girl was talking to her. Her name was Charleen Williams. That was it. There were so many to remember. Her father had been a GI in the war.

‘I am not very good at doing my hair,’ said Maureen. She could feel herself blush. Her hair was dark and very fine and it never seemed to do anything except hang on either side of her head.

‘You’d look like that film star. Whass her name?’

‘Audrey Hepburm,’ piped up Patty Driscoll.

‘Thass the one. You shoulda let me do your hair. Wanna ciggie, Maureen?’

‘No, thank you.’ Maureen did not smoke. She hadn’t even tried.

‘Give us a ciggie!’ squawked Esther Hughes, and so did Patty Driscoll.

‘I only got one packet,’ complained Charleen, but she offered them around and struck matches between the girls’ cupped hands and their faces were briefly illuminated like ghosts in the dark. ‘So why do you still go to school, Maureen?’

She said, ‘I am going to secretarial college.’ That sounded better than university.

‘Maureen’s clever, see,’ laughed one of the twins, either Pauline or Paulette Gordon, it was impossible to tell which because they wore matching coats and boots and hair ribbons. ‘She’s got more brains than the rest of us put together.’

‘Better get a move on,’ said Esther, checking her hair rollers and stepping forward. Someone began to yell ‘Ding dong merrily on high’ and they all sang along. When they got to the high notes of ‘Gloria’ they cackled and screeched like witches.

The Boxing Day Ball took place every winter. Maureen knew that much. People came from miles around. All sorts of people, not just the factory workers and the farm hands, but also the university boys home for Christmas, and even the young professionals if they weren’t yet attached. Charleen said she was going to land herself a nice office lad this year. She was fed up with them good-for-nothing tinkers and farm boys.

The only parties that Maureen had attended were those of her mother’s friends. She had met their sons, all stiff partings and knitted pullovers, and she had tried on more than one occasion to fall in love, as required, over Viennese fingers and pots of tea. The women spoke about their husbands, what they did for a living, and Maureen’s mother would go quiet, studying her hands, because her husband had retired early on account of his heart. He hadn’t even gone to war like the rest of the men, he had worked in the munitions factory, although Maureen’s mother referred to it as undercover work. The war had been twenty years ago, but people still talked about it. ‘Do try to look interested,’ her mother would whisper. ‘I
am
trying to look interested,’ Maureen would answer. Her mother would draw up her chest as if she intended to self-inflate and say, ‘You are yawning.’ And when Maureen replied that she only wanted to laugh, was that too much? her mother would lift her eyebrows and say, ‘I think not. I think not.’

Maureen would never be like her mother. When the chance came, she would say ‘I think so’ to everything.

Out of the darkness, lights began to emerge. The girls passed close-together cottages with lit-up windows and Christmas trees. Esther Hughes said she wanted to stop and look; she’d never had a tree in her house ’cos her brothers would only knock it over and shred her mother’s nerves. The pinched hardness melted from Esther’s face as she took in the shining baubles, the silver tinsel, the Christmas angel perched at the top, until she looked like a child. Then the other girls crowded next to her, smiling and cooing ‘Ahhh!’ and Maureen could see the child in them too.

She thought of those people inside their houses, watching television if they had a set, or making sandwiches with leftover turkey. She imagined her father dozing at home in the armchair, her mother stabbing a cross-stitch tapestry with her needle, and she was glad she was out here, in the cold night. The wind had dropped again and the air smelt flinty. Roof tiles shone like blue fish scales.

‘Thass it, look!’ shouted Patty Driscoll.

Far ahead Maureen could make out the faint yellowy glow of the hall, and a dotting of smaller lights twining through the dark. She took a deep breath to steady herself. She fancied she could hear the faraway thump of music and it was like a part of her, like the beat of her heart.

She followed the girls.

‘You are not going to the Boxing Day Ball,’ her mother had said, ‘and that’s final.’ But Maureen had stood her ground. ‘I’m eighteen now,’ she’d said. ‘You can’t stop me.’ She could not look her mother in the eye. Had she asked her father’s permission? Of course not. He was a gentle man, softly spoken, always apologizing for not being well, always saying he was a burden until it got tiring to keep saying, ‘No, no, you’re not.’ ‘How do you think it is for me?’ her mother had asked. And Maureen had shrugged uncomfortably because the question seemed to come from a part of her mother she had not met before. ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ said her mother, turning on her heels and leaving the room.

The dance was already underway. A queue spilled from the door and several boys loitered in stiff jackets that were either too big or too small, smoking cigarettes between pinched fingers. Patty Driscoll and Esther Hughes shifted impatiently, trying to get a better view of the young men who would later partner them, trying to get a first picture of the hall. A shadowy couple was already up against the wall. ‘That Judith Hoggs, Christ, she ain’t got no shame,’ said one of the girls. Another boy was on his stomach, half under the bushes.

Esther said, ‘Thass Peter Green. He ain’t having a good time unless he’s spewing up his insides.’

The girls stopped and cheered. ‘Go on, Peter. Spill it out, boy!’

It was no wonder Maureen’s mother had never been to a Boxing Day Ball.

The doorman was dressed as Father Christmas. He wore a red velour hat and a fake white beard along with a red jacket that didn’t quite button over the swell of his stomach. Holding each ticket up to the light, he examined it as if he suspected forgery, so that even though Maureen had paid for her ticket, she felt nervous. Once he was satisfied that the ticket was a real one, he took an ink stamp and made a blue mark on the back of Maureen’s hand. ‘Ho, ho, ho,’ he said to the girls, catching their fingers.

‘Have we been a good girl?’ he asked Patty Driscoll’s breasts.

‘Oh fuck off, Santa,’ she said, pushing past.

Inside the hall Patty shucked off her mackintosh and handed it to the woman in charge of the cloakroom. Maureen unbuttoned her red coat and did the same. The other girls wore mini skirts and short frocks and they tugged at their hems and shoulder straps. ‘You are not going dressed like that,’ her mother had said, entering the bedroom while Maureen got ready. Maureen had been confused; she always wore her white blouse and plaid skirt. Her mother left the room as quietly as she had entered and returned with a black satin dress. ‘Try this.’ The dress had a sweetheart neckline with a nipped waist and fitted skirt. Maureen had never seen it before, though she could tell from the neatness of the stitching that her mother had made it. She could tell, too, that it had never been worn. And all the time that Maureen’s mother had helped her into the dress and fastened the zip and led her to the mirror, she had said nothing. She had only worn that tightened look that made Maureen feel both a burden and desperate to be free. ‘Does this mean you are letting me go?’ Maureen had asked. In reply her mother had said, ‘I’ll wave from upstairs. No need to call out. No need to wake your father.’

The parish hall was a big building with a polished wooden floor. The bare light bulbs had been replaced with more festive red ones and they hung the length of the dance floor like giant red berries. There were homemade evergreen banners and coloured paper chains strung between the metal rafters. A ball of mistletoe had been hung at the centre and the young people avoided passing beneath it as if it were dangerous. Tables were arranged along the walls, covered with paper cloths and sprigs of ivy. At the far end there was a makeshift stage, also decorated with evergreens and a small decorated Christmas tree, where a DJ was playing records. Behind him the band were already unpacking their instruments. They did it slowly, tuning their guitars, setting up the drums, trying to look nonchalant. They wore suits and two-tone shirts and the singer had a necklace like a giant gold ball of sun.

The hall was already full, though only a few people stood up near the stage. Instead they hovered as if they hadn’t quite decided whether they were going to dance or just stand there, having a look. Most people were gathered in groups close to the walls – the farm boys in what looked like borrowed jackets, the young men in full dinner suits and bow ties. Groups of girls clustered around the tables. When they greeted one another or picked up their drinks, when they offered their laps as seats, and even when they laughed, they did it with exaggeration and a sideways glance to check who might be watching. Maureen recognized a boy with oiled hair from one of her mother’s friends’ parties. She thought the young man was called Howard. If he wasn’t, he ought to be. She looked away before he could spot her. The floor beneath the mistletoe ball lay empty and polished, like still water.

The caller took his place at the front of the stage. And now here came the girls, stepping into line on one side of the hall, giggling with their friends, offering embarrassed half-glances across the dance floor, making a fuss about swapping places. Here came the boys, slowly, checking their ties, some of them still holding their drinks, with a look of studied casualness as if it were quite by chance that they, too, were falling into line. Charleen stood opposite the boy Maureen recognized and she gave a wonky grimace. Patty didn’t seem to have a partner. Esther’s curled hair was already flat. Pauline and Paulette Gordon were hand in hand. The band started up. The couples stepped forward.

And away they went, hands crossed, galloping the length of the floor, up one way and back the other, down the middle and along the sides, joining hands as they met again, some of them slapping into the walls, the top couple gripping damp hands to form an arch, the others hurtling beneath. One dance after another with only brief intervals to buy drinks from the bar. Left arms linked to move in a circle, then back to back, then casting off to dance outside the set. Cross hands, counter clockwise, figure of eight, up a double and back. Maureen could feel the pounding of their feet through the floor and it was as though the hall itself was dancing.

‘Ain’t you got no partner, Maureen?’ shouted Patty Driscoll. After over an hour of dancing, her face was red as a cherry. She was so breathless she could barely get her words out.

Maureen shook her head. She had stood on the side for a while and she had joined in for a while, but now she was watching someone so hard she could not really see anyone else.

She had noticed him from the start. She couldn’t miss him. Whilst the other couples danced in groups and pairs, he jived by himself in the middle of the dance floor. Sometimes they bumped straight into him, sometimes they caught him in a circle, but he didn’t seem to notice or care. Arms out, head shaking, legs kicking; the flaps of his coat flew like dog-tooth-check sails. It was as if he was dancing out something that was inside him. He looked wild. Half insane. But he looked free. She’d never seen anything like it.

‘Who’s that?’ Maureen asked.

‘We call him No-Mum,’ said Patty Driscoll.

‘Why do you call him No-Mum?’ During the conversation, she’d lost him again, the wild-dancing young man. She was afraid he’d already gone.

‘’Cos he’s got no mum.’

‘Where is his mum?’

‘She left. And his dad’s a right bastard.’ Patty closed her eyes and staggered a little, losing her balance. ‘I love the ball. I don’t ever want to go home.’ She galloped back to the dance floor and Maureen shifted to one side for a better view.

There he was, the boy, still dancing alone. He was like a stranger in the room, a person from a foreign place who did not understand how things were supposed to be done. She kept watching and she was aware of time passing and she smiled. So long as she could keep him in her eye line, that was enough.

Maybe he sensed her watching because he stopped suddenly and looked back at her. Then he danced some more, for another half-hour or so, and she continued watching, but it was different now because he surely knew she was watching. He did not stop and neither did she look away. It was the raw energy of him that moved her. The completeness of what he was. He stopped again. Caught her eye again. Then he threaded his way through the crowd and stopped so close she could feel the heat of his skin. He smelt sweet, like oranges.

He stooped with his mouth pointed towards her ear and lifted a small lock of her hair so that he could speak to her and be heard. The boldness of the gesture sent prickles of electricity shooting down the length of her neck. Maureen held her breath as if to stop time.

His voice touched her ear, surprisingly soft and close. It was as though he had actually slipped inside her head and was speaking to her from her bones. ‘You could always be my wife,’ he said.

Did he? Did he say that? He moved aside and gazed down at her, waiting for her reply, his face serious to show that whatever it was he had just said, he meant it. Or was it, ‘You could always give me a light’? Was that what he had said?

She studied his face, searching for clues, and all she could see was the deep blue of his eyes. He did not stop gazing down at her. Clearly he needed his answer. In her embarrassment she felt her skin stain with heat, and before she could do anything about it a cry of laughter shot from her mouth. It wasn’t funny, it wasn’t at all funny, but now that she had started, she really couldn’t stop. And all the time she laughed, he watched, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth, as though he were both intrigued and delighted that he had done this, that he had made her laugh so suddenly and uncontrollably. She had no idea if he had asked her to marry him or had asked for a light, and so she said the first thing that came into her head.