‘All that sort of carry on.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Lizzie.’
‘Look, whatever impression you had of me at the dance, I’m not that sort of girl.’
‘You could have fooled me.’
‘Yes, well, now you know.’
‘You agreed quick enough to come into the back row.’
‘Ssh,’ said someone in front of them. ‘Go and have your row someplace else. We’ve bought tickets for this film and want to see and hear it.’
‘Sorry,’ Lizzie responded, flaming with embarrassment.
Steve was smiling, but in the darkness she couldn’t see that. ‘Look around you,’ he whispered in her ear.
She did, and though she could see little she knew some of the people were in very odd positions altogether and her eyes widened in shock when she thought she saw Mike’s hand inside Tressa’s clothes. Maybe, she thought, you said you were up for things like that when you agreed to go into the back row. She didn’t know the rules for this place. They’d never had any type of cinema in Ballintra, but she had no intention of forgetting herself.
‘We’ll hold hands,’ she said.
‘Hold hands!’ Steve cried in dismay. He’d forgotten to lower his voice and the people in front glared around at them. ‘I’ll have a word with the usherette if you don’t pack it in.’
Mortified, Lizzie grasped Steve’s hand firmly. After all, she told herself, she hardly knew the man and he wasn’t her type at all. Holding hands was really all he could expect.
Steve held hands, knowing he’d get no further and would only worsen things if he was to insist or try and force Lizzie; but never had he sat and just held hands before, especially if he’d bought drinks and chocolates. This time he’d even splashed out on a meal as well. Most girls would be more than grateful and not averse to a bit of slap and tickle themselves. Look at Tressa with Mike. Christ, he envied him, but his Lizzie sat rigid and he knew if he wanted to win her he’d have to play by her rules, for now at least.
Because of the girls’ shifts, it was the 23rd of December before Tressa and Lizzie saw Mike and Steve again, when they were taken to a theatre called The Alex to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
‘A fairy story!’ Lizzie cried in disbelief.
‘It’s a pantomime,’ Steve said.
‘What’s a pantomime?’
‘You’ll see.’
And Lizzie saw. She saw a sort of play with music, where the principal boy was a girl dressed up and the crowd were encouraged to boo and hiss and cheer and clap and some of the jokes were so suggestive they made her face flame. She wasn’t at all sure if she enjoyed it or not, but the others seemed to and so she said nothing. Then, they were taken to the Old Joint Stock for a few drinks before being delivered back to the hotel.
Tressa was happily tipsy and confided to Lizzie when they reached their room that she was in love with Mike.
‘How can you be?’ Lizzie demanded, shocked. ‘You’ve only just met.’
‘Sometimes a person just knows these things.’
Lizzie was still doubtful, but whether Tressa was in love with Mike or not, Lizzie knew that with their shift rota there would be little chance of her seeing Mike before the New Year. Christmas was almost upon them, one of the busiest periods of all at the hotel, where time off was minimal or altogether non-existent, and any free time they did have was usually spent sleeping the deep sleep of the totally exhausted.
All Tressa could talk about, though, was Mike. ‘I love him,’ she declared. ‘Wait till you love someone, you’ll sing a different tune then. It’ll hit you like a ton of bricks, I bet.’
‘Maybe,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. It hasn’t yet anyway, and remember, when you marry it’s for life, Tressa.’
‘I know that,’ Tressa replied, ‘but if I wait a lifetime I’ll want no one else. How d’you feel about Steve?’
‘He’s all right.’
‘Come on, why don’t you give the man a chance?’
‘I have. I am. I just don’t feel that way about him.’
‘He’s smitten with you.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘You just do, the way he looks at you. His eyes never leave you. You must have noticed.’
Had she, and refused to acknowledge it? She didn’t know, but it was obvious Tressa was right because when they next went out with Mike and Steve in January, Steve asked her to tea the following Sunday to meet his parents, as she was free until seven o’clock that evening.
‘Why don’t you want to go?’ Tressa asked later. ‘I’m going to see Mike’s.’
‘I know, but you and Mike…well, it’s different.’
‘Lizzie, all you have to do is smile and be polite. What’s so hard?’
‘It’s not that. It’s the complexion Steve will put on it. It means something, surely, when you meet the parents?’ Lizzie bit on her thumbnail in consternation. ‘I mean, maybe it would be better to end it now, stop him getting ideas.’
No way did Tressa want Lizzie doing that, but she didn’t say this. Instead, she said, ‘How will you tell him? Do you know where he lives?’
‘No, well, only vaguely.’
‘So, you’re going to wait until he comes, when everyone’s gone to the trouble, made tea and all sorts, and you’ll let him go back alone to face their ridicule and scorn?’
Lizzie hadn’t thought of that. ‘You think it’s better to go through with it then?’
‘I think it’s the only thing to do now. You should have told him straight at the time.’
‘I meant to. He sort of took me aback a bit.’
‘Well, I think you’ve got to see it through now,’ Tressa told her, and Lizzie knew in her heart of hearts that Tressa was right.
Edgbaston was Lizzie’s first experience of back-to-back housing. Steve and Mike had come to meet the girls and as they alighted from the tram on Bristol Street, which was another first for them both, they all went up Bristol Passage, and at the top both girls stood and stared. Lizzie was in shock, and so, she saw, was Tressa. Nothing in their lives so far had prepared them for anything like these cramped and crowded houses, squashed together in front of grey pavements and grey cobbled roads. And so many of them: they went on and on, street after street of them. Even when Lizzie had seen the beggars and poor in the market, she’d not thought of them living in places like this. She’d not think of anyone living in places like this. Her father’s calves were better housed.
The two men didn’t seem to notice the girls’ disquiet. ‘We’ve come to the parting of the ways now,’ Mike said. ‘You go straight up Grant Street, so we’ll see you later.’
When they moved off, Steve put his arm around Lizzie. ‘All right?’
Whatever she felt privately, Lizzie told herself this place was Steve’s home, and she hadn’t any right to criticise it. How would she feel if she took him to Ireland and he tore her family’s farm apart? And so she said, ‘Aye, I’m grand.’
‘It’s bound to be a bit strange at first.’
‘Aye.’