The Color of Secrets (23 page)

That night, when Louisa was getting into bed, Eddie appeared at the door.

“Where’s Mam?” she asked.

“In bed, love. She’s too tired to do your hair tonight.” He opened the chest of drawers and pulled out a bundle of rags. “I’ll have a go if you like, but you’ll have to tell me what to do.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, Dad,” Louisa said as she took a strip of white muslin and knotted it close to her head. “I only asked her his name.” She set her mouth in a hard line. “Anyway, I hate him,” she muttered to herself, twisting a lock of hair tightly around the rag. “He must have done something horrible to make her cry like that. I don’t want to know anything about him—ever!”

Eddie reached across and stroked her hair. “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we go into town on Saturday? I’ll buy you a new dress, like I promised.”

Louisa looked at him. “I’d rather go to the pictures,” she said in a small voice.

Eddie laughed. “Are you sure?”

Louisa nodded. “It’s my favorite thing in the whole world.”

“Okay. How about if we take one of your new classmates?”

Louisa frowned. She thought of Beverley, her shoulders shaking as she sobbed her way out of the classroom; the twins, whose names she struggled to remember; and Sylvia, whose spiteful words had been echoing around in her head all day. “There’s no one in my class I really like,” she said, “but there is someone at school who’s nice. Her name’s Gina. She taught me how to skip backward.”

“Good.” Eddie smiled. “Let’s ask her, then, shall we?”

Louisa had been warned that the film was going to be nothing like
Snow White
, and it wasn’t. This time the people were real. Men in smart suits and long-legged dancing girls in sequined costumes. Eddie had told her that
Scared Stiff
was an American film. She wanted to ask him how it all worked. How moving pictures of people and boats and cars could appear on a flat screen. But she was worried she might miss something.

“Look,” Gina said, passing her a toffee. “It’s Dean Martin. My mum loves him nearly as much as Frank Sinatra.”

“Oh.” Louisa squinted at the singer in the tuxedo. Her eyes flitted from the screen to Eddie. He had settled back in his seat, and his eyes were closed. “He looks just like my real dad,” she murmured.

“Wow,” Gina hissed back. “He’s really handsome! You’re so lucky!”

“Yes.” Louisa’s lips curved in a smile that never reached her eyes. “I am, aren’t I?”

Chapter 24

D
ECEMBER 1961

Louisa loved Saturday nights. In the seven years since the move to Wolverhampton, the only thing that had surpassed the thrill of visiting a cinema was working in one. She loved the fusty, sweet smell of popcorn that hit you when you walked through the doors; the warm, velvety feel of the seats as the darkness descended; and the figure-hugging red uniform—a vast improvement on the navy tunic and shapeless pullover she wore on weekdays.

Her parents hadn’t been keen on her applying for the job, but they had been so desperate for her to stay on at school that they’d agreed to the trade-off. She had planned to leave at fifteen, like Gina, and take a secretarial course, but instead she was studying for A-levels in English, history, and geography. She was the only colored girl in the sixth form at Wolverhampton Girls High School, but it didn’t matter because nobody knew.

It was a lot of work, fooling them. She took hot irons to her hair every morning and wound it into a tight bun caught up in an invisible net. This and a liberal dose of extrastrong hairspray guarded against any frizz brought on by the weather. And although makeup was strictly forbidden, she had discovered a cream in the chemist’s that was meant for teenagers with acne. With a consistency like clotted cream, it gave her skin the desired pallor. As far as her classmates were concerned, she was as white as everyone else. But she kept them at arm’s length, all the same. She never felt quite at ease with these girls, who mostly came from comfortable homes in the leafy suburbs. Perhaps it was because she knew she was deceiving them. But she had deceived Gina too, so that couldn’t be it. Whatever the reason, she simply didn’t belong. She couldn’t wait to escape at the end of the week.

On this particular Saturday night the cinema was packed, with only a handful of seats left. She was standing at the back, by the door, when she felt it push open. A couple of latecomers muttered an apology. She flashed her torch over a tangle of arms and legs on the back row. She hated it when people came in halfway through a film. As the couple scrambled to their seats, to moans and curses from the lovers, she turned her attention back to the screen. Rita Moreno was running up the steps to the roof of a tenement building in Manhattan. This was Louisa’s favorite part of the film. She had seen it eleven times, but it never failed to thrill.

She slipped into the little alcove where boxes of sweets were stacked from floor to ceiling. There was a hard fold-up chair for the usherettes to sit on, but she pushed it against the wall. A strip of red velvet curtain screened off the alcove, with a mesh square halfway up that allowed whoever was inside to keep an eye on the audience. And the screen.

They were all on the roof now, the Sharks and their girlfriends. Rita Moreno was strutting and swishing the full skirt of her pink taffeta dress. Her pointed satin shoes tapped out “A-mer-i-cah.” Louisa had each movement down pat. Her uniform swirling against the sweet boxes, she sang along in the certain knowledge that no one in the audience could hear or see her. Rita Moreno sashayed across the roof, magnificent in her contempt. Stamping her feet. Spitting the words at the light-skinned boys who danced in her wake.

The music faded and Louisa peered through the mesh at the couples on the other side. She recognized several regulars. Boys with the same girls; boys and girls who swapped partners from one week to the next; and one particular boy who seemed to have a different girl every time.

As she watched them necking and fondling each other in the semidarkness, she wondered what it would be like to kiss a boy. In her head it was always the way it was in the films. Sometimes she would lie in bed at night, close her eyes, and try to picture kissing Elvis Presley or Dirk Bogarde. But she couldn’t imagine ever being in the back row of the Odeon with a real boy.

When the film ended and the lights went up, she could hear the groans of disappointment from the gropers.

“Lou!” She heard a loud whisper from the other side of the curtain. The voice belonged to Ray, the junior projectionist. She drew back the curtain, blinking in the brightness. Ray was eighteen, taller than her but only just, with large blue eyes smiling eagerly from a face marred by a volcanic spot on the left-hand side of his nose.

“What time are you finishing tonight?” His tone was casual, matter-of-fact. She wondered if his father, who managed the cinema, had sent him down to check up on her.

“Ten o’clock.” She frowned. “Why?”

“Oh.” He looked at the carpet. “It’s only that I’m going over your way later to pick up some stuff for Dad. Thought you might like a lift home.”

“Oh
. . .
er, thanks.” Louisa felt herself blushing. “It’s okay, though—my dad’s coming to meet me.” She looked at him and saw that he was blushing too.

“Oh, right.” He thrust his hands in his trouser pockets and shrugged. “Another time, maybe?”

“Er, yes,” she gulped. “Another time.” She watched him as he wove in and out of the crush of people making for the exits. He reminded her of a big puppy, all legs and eyes. She swallowed again and felt her mouth go dry. What was she going to say if he asked her again?

Gina coughed as the lid came off the box of Coty’s loose powder, sending a small white cloud shooting up her nose. “Oh no! It’s gone over the bedspread!”

“It’s okay—it’ll come off.” Louisa leaned across the bed and smacked the cover, sending the powder flying out onto the lino beneath. “Are you sure your sister’s not going to mind us using her stuff?” She lay back on the pillow, her face plastered with a layer of foundation.

“She won’t find out as long as I put it all back before she gets home.” Gina dipped the huge powder puff into the box and dabbed it onto Louisa’s forehead, cheeks, and chin. “Right: no looking!” She rummaged in the makeup bag. “Eye shadow next, and then some mascara.”

“Gina.” Louisa tried not to move her face too much as she spoke. “What do you think of Ray Brandon?”

Through half-closed eyes Louisa saw Gina’s mouth split into a grin. “He fancies you! I knew it!”

“He does not!” Louisa raised herself on her elbows, sending the mascara sliding off the bed.

“Oh yes he does!” Gina smirked, bending down to retrieve the mirrored box, which had parted company with the little brush when it hit the floor. “My sister told me!”

Louisa frowned. “Told you what?”

“That Ray Brandon wants to ask you out: he plays football with Donna’s boyfriend.”

“Well, I don’t fancy
him
!” She wasn’t sure if she meant it or not. Ray was not like the screen idols she kissed in her fantasies. But since the night he’d asked to take her home, she’d found herself stealing glances at him when she was at work. Once she’d even made an excuse to go up to the projection room, just to check how she felt when he looked at her.

“He’s going to the Christmas Ball at the Civic Hall.” Gina wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “What will you do if he asks you for a dance?”

Louisa shrugged, studying her new face in the mirror.

“Could be a bit awkward, couldn’t it,” Gina said, “with you both working at the same place, I mean.”

Louisa’s head dropped. “I might not be working there much longer. My parents want me to give it up so I can spend more time studying.” She sighed. “They never wanted me to take the job in the first place.”

“Really! I’ve always been dead jealous of you, getting to see all the films.” Gina spat on the black cake of mascara and rubbed the brush in it. “What will you do when you finish school?”

“Dad wants me to go to teacher training college.”

Gina pulled a face.

“I know. Every time he says it, I get this mental image of myself in thirty years’ time looking all gray and woolly like Miss Pudney—remember her?”

“Oh, please! Promise me you won’t turn out like her!” Gina applied the mascara brush to Louisa’s eyelashes, turning them into spider legs. “What about doing something really glamorous? Acting, maybe. Wish I could do that.”

“Hmm,” Louisa murmured, trying to keep still. “Don’t think I’d be much good at that. I wouldn’t mind being a dancer, though. In a film like
West Side Story
.”

“Yes, I can just picture you.” Gina laughed. “You’ve got the legs for it—not short and fat like mine!”

Louisa smiled, suddenly transported back to her childhood days at the farm. Dancer’s legs. That was what the shearers used to say.

“You’d have to move to London, though,” Gina went on. “No chance of doing that round here!”

“Well, that’s out, then.” Louisa shrugged and smiled, blinking as her eyelashes stuck together. “I couldn’t possibly leave my parents.”

Gina frowned. “You mean you’re going to carry on living with them till you’re an old lady? Not get married or anything?”

“No, I don’t mean that—not that anyone’s ever likely to want to marry me—I mean I couldn’t ever live far away from them.”

“Why not?”

She closed her mouth momentarily as Gina homed in to apply a coat of sugar-pink to her lips. “I had a brother, but he died.” She felt a twinge of guilt at her poker-faced reflection.

“Oh—you never said!” Gina looked embarrassed.

“I don’t remember him: I was only two when he died. But my mum’s never been the same since, according to my dad. From when I was tiny, he’s always said to me: ‘You won’t ever leave us, will you, Lou, because you’re all we’ve got.’”

“Hmm.” Gina dabbed spots of rouge onto Louisa’s cheeks. “Well,
my
dad always says you’ve got to follow your dream.” She zipped up the makeup bag. “There! You look fantastic!”

“Do I?” Louisa stared uncertainly into the mirror. “I’ll have to wear something with long sleeves: look at my hairy arms!” She stuck out her elbows.

“They’re not hairy!” Gina laughed. “Not compared to Donna’s anyway—did you know she waxes them as well as her legs?”

Louisa winced. “That sounds painful.”

“I don’t know why you’re always putting yourself down.” Gina sat down next to her, the mirror capturing both their faces. “I wish I had your skin,” she said. “Look at me—all spotty!”

Louisa frowned. If only Gina knew how much she hated her own skin.
To be spotty was far better
, she thought.
At least the spots would go.

It was snowing outside, and Louisa was alone in the house. Both of her parents were at work. Her mother had recently started a new part-time job at the town library. It had been her father’s idea. Her mother would never have had the confidence to apply for it. One of his friends at the office had told him about the vacancy, and he had gone to the library himself and come home with the application form.

The effect on her mother had been amazing. For the first time in years she was animated, talkative. And she was being so much—Louisa struggled to find the right word for what she sensed was happening between her parents—kinder. That was it. Her mum was doing thoughtful things that made Dad happy. Like taking him breakfast in bed on a Sunday morning before she went to church, or rubbing his shoulders when he’d been out with a shovel clearing snow.

Louisa pushed another shilling in the meter and pulled the table as close to the electric fire as she could without incinerating what she was sewing. She glanced at the clock as her foot worked the treadle of the machine. Her mother should be back from town soon.

She eased the pink taffeta under the foot of the machine. It was tricky stuff to sew, but it would be worth it when it was finished. She was copying Rita Moreno’s dress for the Christmas Ball. And with her new makeup she was going to have Audrey Hepburn’s eyes.

The sound of the doorbell made her slip, the needle almost jabbing her finger. She snapped down the foot and dragged the table away from the fire, worried that the slightest breath of air might blow the precious fabric onto the glowing bars. The bell rang again, followed by a thumping on the door. “I’m coming!” She ran down the hall and turned the handle. Standing in front of her was a tall man in a heavy overcoat, his face half-hidden by a gray woolen scarf. Snowflakes were melting on his black hair.

“Louisa?” His mouth twisted up on one side as his eyes searched her face. She felt a shiver of foreboding, though he looked vaguely familiar.