“I said I’ll see. Didn’t I say that?” Nellie didn’t like being pushed. Mrs. Delany backed off.
“Jesus, keep your hair on, I was only making a comment.” She began to tidy up the tea things. Time to get back to work.
“My mother didn’t let me sell for a year,” Nellie stated.
“Maybe you weren’t as good as Agnes.” Mrs. Delany smirked.
Nellie laughed. “You are a wagon, Delany.” They both laughed now. They gathered up the tea things and rinsed out the mugs for the two young wans to use. It would be Marion and Agnes’ tea break next.
Nellie threw her cigarette butt on the ground and stood on it. “I wasn’t,” Nellie said.
“What?” Mrs. Delany asked.
“I wasn’t as good as that young wan.” Nellie nodded toward Agnes.
Mrs. Delany smiled. “I’ll see you later, Nellie.” And she went back to her stall.
“Selling” is not a simple as it sounds, and is completely different to
serving,
which is what Agnes was doing during Nellie’s tea breaks now. The art of selling, especially in an open-air market, encompassed many individual talents. If you are selling Brussels sprouts, for instance, you are surrounded by women who are also selling them. So you are trying to tell customers to buy from you and not from them. At the same time, you must not offend the other women. So you must cry out your description of the sprouts in a way that gives them a uniqueness, and you must do it in a tone that makes the customer believe that
you
believe they are the best sprouts in the world. So there is a wealth of difference between calling “Brussels sprouts, twopence a pound” and “last of the Brussels sprouts, straight from the royal farms of Luxembourg, just a couple of pounds left.” You must not allow facts like there is no royal family in Luxembourg or that you actually have ten stone of them left to cloud the issue. It must be cried with conviction, with style, and whenever possible with comedy. This could be done by holding up a head of cabbage as an example of one of the “royal” sprouts. So it was important that, when a new seller was introduced to the street, she was ready, and that her distinct cry would be an addition to the melody of the street, which attracted tourists just to hear the women sell. Nellie was being careful. That’s all.
Agnes loved the street, with a passion. Each morning, she came to work with a smile on her face. She was very organized, and this rubbed off on Marion, whose delighted mother had now increased her wages to three pounds a week. Agnes had also little by little changed the design of the stall. Gone was the traditional pyramid, replaced by the stepped design usually favored by the flower sellers. When racked out, the stall was now one of the most colorful and attractive on the fruit-and-vegetable end of the street. Agnes made the changes gradually over the first year of her working with Nellie. Nellie pretended not to notice the changes and made no comment, except for the apron. The dealers wore smocks over their day clothes. These were little more than glorified dresses, without pockets and shapeless. When it was cold on the street, which was most of the time, they would wear coats or jackets over the smocks. Because there were no pockets in the smocks, money was kept hidden on the stall, in a biscuit or oxo tin. This meant that if a dealer moved away from the stall at all her tin came with her. Into the bathroom they would march, tin under the arm. So Agnes had an idea. Based on what she saw a butcher wearing, she made an apron that went over her head and tied about the waist. She sewed two pockets into the front of the apron, where she could keep her precious key and some odds and ends, lipstick and cigarettes, for Agnes now smoked, and now approaching sixteen, she found makeup becoming very important. The apron was a great success, and Marion gave Agnes the money to buy the fabric and make one for her too. Nellie left it some weeks before commenting on it.
“Where did you get the apron?” she asked one day out of the blue.
“I made it meself,” Agnes said with pride.
“Quite the little seamstress, aren’t we?” was Nellie’s reply, but said with a smile. Even her noticing the apron was a big thing for Nellie. Agnes smiled to herself. That night, she began sewing an apron for Nellie. It took her three nights to finish it, and when Nellie arrived from the wholesalers’ the fourth day she discovered the new apron lying folded on the stall.
“Here, young wan,” she called. “Your apron is here.” She held it up.
“That’s not mine, it’s yours, Mrs. Nugent. I made it for you,” Agnes said matter-of-factly, and carried on unloading the pram.
Nellie was speechless. She looked about her to see if anybody was noticing her embarrassment. Nellie was unused to acts of kindness.
“How much did this cost?” she asked.
“It doesn’t matter, Mrs. Nugent. It’s a present.” Agnes kept working through this exchange.
“I don’t want no fuckin’ presents. I’ll pay me way. How much is it?” Nellie insisted.
But Agnes wasn’t backing down. She stopped working and let fly at the woman. “It’s a fuckin’ present! You can’t buy it. If you want to wear it, then wear it; if you don’t want to, then throw it in the bin, I don’t care.” But she did. Agnes went back to work.
Nellie threw the apron back on the stall and went to work herself. Mumbling, but loud enough for Agnes to hear. “You watch your tongue, miss, don’t you cheek me. Little bitch. And the fuckin’ language out of you.” She mumbled on. Agnes ignored her.
Later that day, Marion and Agnes had gone around to the Pillar Café in O’Connell Street for their break, and a very important subject came up. Boys.
“It’s all right for you, Agnes. Every boy that walks down Moore Street has his tongue hanging out when he sees you,” Marion was moaning. “I could stand up on the stall in me nude with a carrot sticking out of me arse and they’d walk straight past, or ask how much the carrots are.” Agnes nearly choked on her cream bun, laughing at the thought of Marion naked on top of the stall. Marion wasn’t joking.
“Really, Aggie, you have to come with me to the dance. You get the boys over to us and I’ll finish them off; please come, just one night,” Marion begged. Marion had taken to going to the dance halls on Friday nights. It was the in thing. She would ask Agnes to go with her every week, but week after week Agnes declined, saying that she had no interest, and could not afford it anyway. With Dolly in her last year at school, Agnes was saving her money to have enough to buy her some clothes to wear for when she went looking for a job.
“Marion, I don’t like dances, I’m not going,” Agnes insisted.
“How do you know you don’t like them? You’ve never been!” Marion wasn’t giving up.
“I’m not going. That’s that.” Agnes held her hand up to signify the end to the matter. They finished their tea without further mention of the dances. When they returned to work, there was lots to do, and Agnes got stuck into it. As she worked that afternoon, her smile was even broader than usual, for on her return she saw that Nellie Nugent was selling away with great gusto, wearing her new apron.
The following Friday evening, as Agnes was putting away the last of the stall with Marion, Nellie came down to the sheds to pay her. She handed Agnes three pound notes folded, and as Agnes took them she could feel coins in the middle of the fold. Agnes opened the bills to find two half-crowns. Five shillings extra!
“What’s this?” Agnes asked. Then she frowned. “Wait a second, if this is for the apron you can stick it!” Agnes was insulted.
Nellie held her hands up. “Will you stop jumping on everything I do, young wan? It’s not for that piece of shite that you call an apron. You might have forgot, but you are a year working with me this week. It’s a raise, that’s all. You’re due it. See you on Monday, and don’t be late.” Nellie left. Agnes was never late, but Nellie said this every Friday. Agnes stood looking after her with the money in her hand.
“A raise?” Marion said as she emerged from the shed. “Now you have no excuse. You’re coming dancing, Agnes Reddin!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
There are many ways for girls to meet boys in Dublin: in school, at the local fish-and-chip shop, around some of the Sunday spots like the Botanic Gardens if you live on the Northside or St. Stephen’s Green if you lived on the Southside. But nowhere were you more certain of a “cuirt” than at a dance.
The dance scene in Dublin was divided into two. There were the “hops,” impromptu dance nights held by various local clubs or the parish-hall committees. These were in general innocent affairs, well supervised by adults or even priests, and the boys and girls were kept well apart from each other. Hops were generally attended by the younger teenagers, though from time to time the odd hairy teenager popped up. These were usually farm boys from the country areas that skirted Dublin, and rather than a quick squeeze these men were actually looking for a wife.
In the City Centre was the other half of the dance scene. The ballrooms. Now, although the word “ballroom” conjures up thoughts of women in swirling taffeta dresses, elegant men in dinner suits, Dublin’s ballrooms were nowhere near these thoughts, and dancing was not their primary function. These were ballrooms of romance. Somewhere to “score.” Somewhere to “shift,” or get a “wearo,” or, even better, a “feel.” The rooms themselves were dirty, stuffy places with a pall of blue cigarette smoke hanging permanently in the air, and although only tea and lemonade were usually served, the rooms reeked of the alcohol odor spewing from every male breath. For rarely will a Dublin boy or man venture into the dance before midnight and after a feed of gargle. The dress code was strict, skirts or dresses for women, shirt and tie and jacket or suits for men. No matter that the carpet was sticky and the walls damp with condensation: for Agnes, as she was pulled into the Macushla Ballroom for the first time, it was magic. The place heaved with bodies, the music blared from the stage, the huge crystal ball in the center of the ceiling sent tiny sparkles of light around the room and across the faces of the young men and girls who stood in groups smiling and chatting. Agnes stood there wide-eyed and speechless, expecting at any moment to see Humphrey Bogart or even James Dean cross the gigantic empty dance floor. Empty dance floor?
“Nobody’s dancing,” Agnes shouted to Marion.
“Whah?”
“I said nobody is dancing,” Agnes repeated.
“Of course not, its too early. Come on, let’s get a spot at the radiator.” Marion began to tug at Agnes.
They moved further into the room and Agnes spotted a small empty table beside a radiator. She halted.
“There’s a spot,” she screamed, but Marion shook her head.
“No, that’s their side,” she said, and moved on.
Puzzled, Agnes went after Marion. Marion was now moving through the crowd like a ferret, but Agnes caught up with her.
“Whose side?” Agnes asked.
“Theirs—the fellas—that’s their side. Our side’s over there.” Marion pointed to the wall on the other side of the ballroom. On that other wall there were over three hundred girls standing all alone. No men. Agnes looked back at the opposite wall and was now aware that the crowd that was there, again about another three hundred, were all men. The room was rectangular, so it had two long walls and two short walls. The two end short walls belonged to the couples, boys and girls with steady girlfriends and boyfriends. The goal of every person on the long walls was to eventually move to one of the short walls. At a screaming level, Marion explained all of this to Agnes. Agnes realized that she had much to learn about going to a dance.
“How do we meet the boys, if they’re over there and we’re over here?” she asked Marion.
“I’ll tell you in a minute,” Marion answered. “Let’s get a spot first.”
Agnes was puzzled and was about to be stunned, for whereas Agnes was trying to help by looking out for a place on the wall that was unoccupied, Marion was just looking for a “good” spot. When she found the spot she was looking for, Marion pointed it out to Agnes. “There, over there,” she called, and went for it. There were already four girls around this radiator, but no matter, Marion barged over, and Agnes watched the exchange open-mouthed.
“Who are you?” Marion asked the biggest of the four girls.
“Joan McCarthy,” the girl answered.
“From where?” Marion was like a detective.
The girl glanced to her friends and got no support. “Mountjoy Square,” the girl answered.
Marion pointed at the wall behind the girls. They all turned to see, just above the radiator, the words etched in the plaster, “The Jarro.” The girls turned back to Marion, the big girl now taking up the cause. “So what?” the big girl asked.
Marion leaned closer to the big girl. “So move,” Marion said threateningly.
“Look, we just came here to dance,” the big girl stated a bit dismissively.
Marion did not blink. “You won’t get many dances with a fuckin’ broken leg, love,” she answered, and the four girls promptly moved.
The evening was great fun. Agnes hadn’t a clue how to dance, so refused the forty or so requests she had from boys and men of all shapes and sizes. She was content just to soak up the magic and the atmosphere. Marion, on the other hand, was a super little dancer, and received no requests. So Marion danced with other girls. This was not unusual; in fact, the first hour of dancing was done by the girls only.
“Come on and dance with me, Agnes,” Marion roared over the music to Agnes.