“Oh, Jesus, I’d best be making tracks before all hell breaks loose.”
Pamela was drenched when she returned from the chip shop, but it would have been really grim if she hadn’t borrowed Monica’s belted raincoat and her flimsy umbrella, whose fretwork was admittedly a little buckled out of shape but had still managed to keep most of the downpour off her friend’s head. It turned out that Pamela had ordered extra scraps for the boys, so their one portion was more than enough, but Lucy could eat only half of her fish. Much to Monica’s surprise, Pamela offered to share the other half with her and quickly broke off a piece and passed it over without further comment. When everybody had finished, Monica balled up all the paper and pushed it in the dustbin, and then rinsed out the empty bottle of dandelion and burdock and placed it on the side so that it was ready to go back for the deposit. Then she set about putting the worn-out boys to bed. Once they were safely tucked up, she piled some blankets on the floor between them and made a makeshift bed for Lucy, and kissed the girl on the cheek before closing in the door to the bedroom.
Pamela was sitting at the kitchen table and had already helped herself to a small glass of brandy from the bottle that Monica kept in the cupboard to the side of the stove in case she ever needed some for cooking.
“Like a glass?”
Her friend poured Monica some brandy without waiting for a reply. There were no windows in the cramped kitchen, but they both knew that if they went through to the living room, they would risk waking up the children with their conversation. In any case, the view through the open curtains of the living room was depressing, with the dual carriageway down below and traffic streaking by in both directions, and then beyond the road the belching emissions of factories that struggled to operate around the clock.
Pamela lit a cigarette and slowly blew out the smoke. “Only a few weeks to go now till the kids’ summer holidays. I can’t wait, can you?” But of course, Monica could wait, for the summer holidays meant putting the kids in the day care centre, and paying for them to be looked after until she finished work at the library. Pamela packed Lucy off to her parents, and so she was totally free, but this option wasn’t open to Monica, who, aside from the odd letter from her persistent mother, had pretty much cut off contact with home. Last year Pamela had come around to the flat with some brochures for Majorca that she’d picked up at the travel agents, but Monica knew full well that the closest that Pamela had ever got to Spain was a weekend in Blackpool with an insurance man called Steve whose name, she had made clear, she never wanted to hear again.
“Perhaps this year the two of us can go off to Scarborough?” suggested Monica. “Or maybe somewhere else, just for the day.”
Even as the words came out of her mouth, she was aware of how impractical this was, for getting somebody to watch the kids at the weekend would mean finding extra money she simply didn’t have. Mind you, the more she thought about it, the more she asked herself if there might be somebody at the day care centre who would be willing to do her a favour and take them on for a Saturday or a Sunday?
“Really? You’d come with me to Scarborough?”
She watched a visibly surprised Pamela pour herself another brandy.
“That’s great, Monica. I’ve always said that you need to get out more. It will do you good, and you’ll be in a better mood for the kids. In fact, how about tonight? Why don’t we just pop out for a quick one, the two of us?”
“Tonight?”
“Maybe we could go to the Mecca Ballroom and have a dance? I went once, and lots of women our age go by themselves. It’s not just young lasses, and it’s not a pickup place if that’s what’s making you go all dithery; it’s just somewhere that people have a good time and talk. You’ve never been, have you?”
Of course, she hadn’t been, and she wasn’t even sure if she knew how to dance properly. She tried to redirect the conversation.
“We can’t just leave the children.”
“Yes, we can, they’re asleep. Our Lucy’s out for the count, and there’s no way she’ll get up till eight in the morning. You don’t mind if she spends the night here, do you?”
She wondered if this had been Pamela’s intention all along, to leave Lucy with her and go off gallivanting.
“Look, there’s no harm in the two of us going out. It doesn’t make us tarty if that’s what you’re thinking.”
Which was exactly what Monica was thinking. She stared at her friend, who drained the brandy from her glass in one gulp.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather stop in and talk?”
“Well, it’s up to you. If you’re frightened of what folks might say, then let’s stop in, but you know you can’t live your life like that.”
Pamela tossed her hair back and lit another cigarette. In this half-light she looked beautiful, but Monica knew that the real source of her friend’s attractiveness to men would be her confidence, for she never gave out the impression that anybody could knock her off her tracks.
Monica put on her only dress, the blue one that her mother had bought for her before she went off to university. She had last worn it to the library on her first day at work, but it became clear, simply by the way that Denise was looking her up and down, that she was overdoing it, so unsure if she’d ever have an occasion to take it out again, she’d put the dress away. It was made of blue satin, with a bow on the front by the bust, and it was all she had to dress up properly for a night on the town. She felt funny using her own comb after Pamela had used it, but because she’d recently snipped her hair short, these days it needed only a few rapid strokes. Monica gave her face a hasty towelling and then took a deep breath. It was evident that she wasn’t that pretty, and she had long accepted this reality as a bearable fact of life, but when she was set against Pamela, the full extent of her plainness was all the more noticeable. She carefully hung the towel over the side of the bath and realized that at the moment her main source of worry was not her looks but her raincoat, which, having had fish and chips pocketed inside it, would stink, as, in no time, would her dress.
“Well, how do I look?”
She heard Pamela lie and say “marvellous,” but she knew that at thirty-one she looked ten years older, and most days she felt it. A trip to the hairdresser’s was top of the list of things to be done, for having had a good go at her hair with the kitchen scissors, she desperately needed the ends trimmed and the whole mess straightened out. And of course, her nails were a disaster, but it was too late now.
“I’ll have a quick check on the kids?”
Monica stepped quietly inside of the boys’ bedroom and gently moved Tommy’s hand from his face. Then she looked down at a peaceful Ben and Lucy before closing in the door behind her.
“Well, Mary Poppins?”
“The kids are asleep.”
“Good, we won’t be long.”
Pamela insisted that since it sounded like it was only spitting now, they needn’t bother with coats, which was something of a relief. Monica quickly hung the smelly raincoat back up on the hook by the door.
* * *
Pamela had made the Mecca Ballroom seem like a quiet and civilised little place, but Monica had never seen anything like it. From the outside it could easily be mistaken for a cinema, but once they stepped inside the foyer and out of the sprinkling rain, she could feel the combined energy of noise, music, and lights just beyond the double doors. In front of them a shabbily suited man sat behind a desk, tearing tickets off a roll and dropping the money into an oversize metal cash box. He sat up straight when he saw her friend and greeted her by name (“Hey, Pam!”) in what he clearly hoped might pass for a gangster movie accent, but Pamela ignored him and snatched the tickets and then pushed her way through the double doors without turning back to make sure that Monica was following behind.