‘Choc ice, sir? One choc ice and one tub, that’ll be eightpence. I’m afraid we’re out of ice lollies …’ they never sold them, ‘but I can let you have an orange squash and a straw …’
Polly made her way swiftly but cautiously along the ends of the rows, greeting old friends and regular customers, smiling at old jokes and assuring everyone that the film they were about to see was ‘perishin’ brilliant, one of the best’. When the show ended with the audience rising and standing stiffly to attention whilst Reg played the national anthem, Polly went up to the cafeteria. Her friend saw her as soon as she appeared, and gave her a large slice of apple pie. ‘It’s a cold night,
so you’d best have custard and not ice cream,’ she said, accepting the money – staff rates – that Polly pushed into her hand. She glanced round at the tables, mostly empty, and sighed. ‘Another twenty minutes and I can start cleaning down,’ she said. ‘Enid has already done all the middle tables so don’t you dare sit at one of them or she’ll curse you, but if you’re willing to give a hand we could be out of here in under the half hour.’
Enid was head waitress, a skinny capable forty-year-old with a raucous laugh which Dana always said could be heard a mile out to sea. She had a short way with drunks, who sometimes reeled up to the unlicensed cafeteria demanding beer and becoming abusive when told they could not be served. Enid was skinny, but she was strong and ruthless. She had once thrown a drunk down the steep stairs; it was only by the grace of the gods who look after drunken men that he hadn’t broken his neck, Dana had said, but Enid was unrepentant. ‘Teach the buggers not to come worritin’ us,’ she had said, dusting her hands. ‘He won’t bother us again, not he!’
So now Enid and Dana dealt with the customers and cleaned down, whilst Polly gobbled apple pie and custard and admired the way the two women worked as a team. And presently they locked up and left, Dana and Polly saying cheerio to Enid as she boarded a tram but deciding to walk themselves, for the crisp cold air was inviting after the stuffiness of the cinema and Dana said hopefully that they would sleep all the better for some exercise.
Polly sometimes grumbled that in winter she scarcely saw daylight; she came to work in the dark and went home in the dark. Both girls longed for summer and the lighter evenings, though at present they were so involved
with the Freeway that even on a Sunday their talk was mainly of how to attract more customers, which food was most popular in the cafeteria, and whether the films coming up would attract large or small audiences.
‘I wonder what 1939 will really bring?’ Dana said idly as they stepped out, their footsteps ringing on the icy pavement. ‘Will it be more rumours of war, or rumours of peace? Your Ernie keeps saying we’ll be at war by March, but no one else seems to think so. Why does he say that, do you know?’
Polly sniffed. ‘It’s because they’re actually being paid overtime to do one double shift each week,’ she said disdainfully. ‘As if that meant anything! But I tell you what, Dana, I think you ought to go back to Castletara and your mam whilst we’re still at peace. I never think of Ireland as being a foreign country, but of course it is really and there’s been no talk of Ireland going to war with Germany. I’m not saying Mr de Valera would join Germany against us, but …’
‘Polly, how could you? Oh, I know in the past the Irish were wickedly treated by the English, but even so I’m sure we’d never dream of joining the Nazis,’ Dana said reproachfully. ‘And as for going home, I couldn’t think of it. You simply don’t understand what happened after my father died; if you did you wouldn’t dream of suggesting I should go back to Castletara.’
‘Then why don’t you tell me? It’s too bad of you, Dana, not to give any reason for the rift between you and your mother,’ Polly said reproachfully. ‘I told you how my mother treated me, and why I could never go home, so why shouldn’t you pay me the same compliment? Is it such a dark secret that you can’t even tell your best pal?’
Dana sighed deeply. ‘Yes it is; a dark secret, I mean. It makes me sad and miserable whenever I think about it, so let’s change the subject, if you please. What did you think of that apple pie?’
Polly laughed. ‘It were prime,’ she said gaily. ‘Now tell me, Dana; we’ve all worked very hard in all sorts of different ways to repay Jake and Ralph for the trust they’ve placed in us and for the nice way they’ve treated us. So are you really happy? You’re a part-time usherette, same as me, and in the cafeteria you’re a part-time cleaner, cashier, cook, bookkeeper …’
‘Oh, stop! Yes of course I’m happy, but if I’m absolutely honest I’ve discovered an important truth. Being the manageress of someone else’s cafeteria is not quite the same as running your own, though I’m really glad the place is popular and doing so well. Ralph told me a few days ago that even when the main feature isn’t particularly riveting people still climb the last flight of stairs and have a meal. That means that we’re bringing in a steady income to swell the profits from the actual cinema itself. That’s good, of course; Jake and Ralph think by the end of the year we’ll be in a position to buy in better films, which should increase the size of the audience, and that means—’
‘I know, it means that the cafeteria will take more money,’ Polly said impatiently. ‘Tell me, Dee, how are you getting on with Ralph? The two of you have been going around together for a while now.’
‘We’re like you and Ernie; just good friends,’ Dana said, smiling. ‘He’s awfully nice, but we’re both too busy to start getting all lovey-dovey. Which is a good thing, since I’m – oh, I’m not in the market for marrying. And
I suspect I’m not the only girl Ralph takes out now and then.’
‘Oh, he’s two-timing you, is he? He’s full of courage, then, because that red hair of yours probably means you’re jealous as any cat and keep a knife in your garter for unfaithful fellers,’ Polly said, smiling too. As she spoke she heard a tram rumbling up behind them and jerked her friend’s arm. ‘Had enough fresh air? I have, because it’s not only fresh, it’s perishin’ freezin’, and I’m beginning to think lovingly of me bed,’ she added frankly.
Dana agreed and they waved the tram down, but once settled on the leather seat – this one was a green goddess – Polly turned to her friend once more. ‘Dana, you once said Ralph reminded you of someone. Was it Con, the feller you talk about in your dreams?’
Dana turned to stare thoughtfully at her companion. ‘Do you know, I’m not sure,’ she said honestly. ‘Ralph’s extremely good-looking, as I’m sure you’ll agree, and I don’t think Con’s good-looking at all. Just – just familiar, I suppose. They’re both dark, but which is the taller, or the sturdier for that matter, I really couldn’t tell you. I suppose it’s partly because the dreams started with me when I was five or six and have gone on more or less in sequence until I was fourteen or fifteen. Con’s a year older than me, which means the last time I dreamed of him he would’ve been, oh, fifteen or sixteen I suppose. But what does it matter? As I keep telling you, dreams are only that, and Con is a part of my past, a past I’m trying very hard to forget. So if you don’t mind – or even if you do – I should like to regard the subject as closed.’
‘Oh would you?’ Polly said indignantly. ‘Well I think
you’re being a real idiot. You had a marvellous home and loving parents …’
Dana shoved both fingers in her ears, wagged her head and began to shout ‘Can’t hear you, can’t hear you’ just as the conductor arrived beside her. She promptly unplugged her ears, feeling her face grow hot with embarrassment as she handed over her fare. When he had gone, whistling beneath his breath, she turned on Polly. ‘Now we’ve talked about it I bet I dream tonight, and it’s all your wretched fault, Polly Smith,’ she said severely. ‘So I’ll thank you to stuff your ears with cotton wool and not listen to a word I say. It’s awfully sneaky to eavesdrop on someone else’s dream, you should know that.’
Polly was still arguing the point when the tram reached their stop and the two girls climbed down, made their way under the arch into Temperance Court, and presently were back in their rooms and setting about the tasks they did every night before bed. They had gone up in the world since working at the cinema and now had the whole of the ground floor – kitchen and parlour as well as their living room and bedroom – to themselves. The kitchen range was never allowed to go out, though it sometimes seemed a terrible waste to warm the room when no one would be in it. However, it was good to walk in and find it beautifully warm, so that it was the work of a moment to put the kettle on to boil for the mug of cocoa which Polly always swore helped her to sleep, and then refill it to make themselves a hot bottle each. Because the kitchen was so warm, they always changed into their night things there, then shot through the cold hall, into their bedroom and straight beneath the covers.
Once safely in bed Dana tried not to think about
Castletara. She had not dreamed of it lately and she was beginning to hope that her determination to tire herself out might have made such dreams a thing of the past. After all, most of them were about her early years; the incident which she most dreaded becoming a part of her dream life had taken place when she was just seventeen and could be counted as an adult. Besides, it was not a happy incident, it was downright hateful, and all her other dreams had been delightful, of times to be remembered with nostalgic pleasure. Surely now the dreams would end and she would be able to forget Castletara, her mother, Con and Johnny Devlin and everything connected with the family of McBride?
Hopefully, Dana pulled the covers up round her ears, and presently slept.
She was standing in the courtyard, holding Warrior’s bridle near the bit and sipping the glass of mulled wine which Deirdre had just put into her hand. The courtyard was busy with riders and their mounts, the horses’ breath emerging as clouds of steam whilst the riders stamped their booted feet, talked at the tops of their voices, and joked and laughed with Deirdre and the other girls from the village, who had come to help prepare a large and sustaining meal for the riders’ return. Even Enda, who many thought was what Feena called ‘tenpence in the shilling’, was chattering away nineteen to the dozen as she watched the horses and their riders assemble. She was a pretty girl who came up to the house several times a week, always eager to help with any indoor or outdoor work in order to earn herself a shilling or two.
Dana chatted with the rest. This was not her first hunt;
she and Con had ridden out with the pack two or three times this winter already, but today was a special one. The Boxing Day hunt always set off from and returned to Castletara and was always well attended. Even Feena McBride, who often said she had mixed feelings about blood sports, rode with her husband’s pack at the Boxing Day meet. She, her daughter, Deirdre and the other servants spent a great deal of time and effort preparing the meal and Dana’s mouth watered as she remembered the last glance she had taken at the Castletara kitchen. The room was decorated for Christmas with holly and mistletoe, paper lanterns, glittering baubles and a Christmas tree on whose branches a hundred tiny scarlet candles would glitter when the hunt returned. On the long table, which stretched the length of the room, there were great dishes of every sort of meat pie imaginable waiting to be popped into the Aga, as well as tureens which would presently hold vegetables. Deirdre would produce potatoes in their jackets, crisp without and floury within; the great pats of yellow homemade butter were already in place, to be joined later by a baron of beef, two enormous joints of pork and half a dozen chickens, roasted to a turn.
On the dresser were ranged what Deirdre called ‘desserts’: golden-crusted fruit pies, trifles rich with cream, jellies and blancmanges. Everything and more you could desire, Dana thought fondly, for though she was frequently condemned by her parents for being ‘skinny as a rake’ she was a grand little eater so she was, and could pack away nearly as much food as Con could, though he was four inches taller and a good deal sturdier as well.
‘Are we all ready?’ That was the Master’s voice, gathering his pack of slavering bright-eyed hounds, ready to give them the off. One hound – Dana knew it was Bella – was still snuffling up the crumbs from the Cornish pasties which had preceded the mulled wine and she lingered until the Master’s whip cracked too near her tail for comfort. Then she joined her companions, first giving the Master a reproachful look from her liquid dark eyes. She was his favourite and knew it, would be the first to pick up the scent …
‘Come along wit’ you, alanna; what’s keeping you? Don’t say you need a leg up!’ That was Con, already in the saddle. He, his father and Donovan McBride were all riding horses which they hoped to sell as hunters, either to one of the men present today or at the big horse sale when it took place in the nearby market town. Warrior, however, was Dana’s own. A neat little gelding, he was just on fifteen hands high, steel grey with a white mane and tail and the first horse Dana had ever owned, for previously she had ridden ponies.
Dana snorted. Con rode a beautiful chestnut, something over sixteen hands high. The gelding’s mane and tail were creamy white, and he had four white socks and a white star – only Dana thought it more like a diamond – on his broad, intelligent brow. ‘A leg-up? Ha!’ She swung herself neatly into the saddle and pulled a face at Con. ‘Bet you had to use the mounting block!’
‘Bet I didn’t!’
‘Did!’
‘Didn’t!’
‘Wish I’d seen you then; I bet you clambered into the saddle like a monkey up a stick,’ Dana said mockingly.
‘Bet you won’t jump the big hedge into the downs, but will go through the gate, like all beginners do.’
‘How dare you!’ Con said in pretended wrath. ‘I’ve been riding with the hunt for two years, and I’ve never used a gate when my mount could jump the hedge. And when you aren’t riding I’ve always been in at the kill, but of course when you’re out I have to take you home so you don’t see anything horrid.’
Dana considered that this remark was below the belt. It was true that she always turned for home whenever it seemed likely that a kill was imminent, and it was also true that Con always accompanied her, though they both told anyone who questioned them that they had returned to the house to help the servants prepare and serve the meal.