Second in Line

It was Saturday Dance Club at The Ballroom, two bob to dance all morning to records played back to back by a novice DJ. Serena and I, we danced every dance unless a pair of boys split us up, but we liked dancing together better. We’d worked out moves in her bedroom on homework nights. moves that looked good under the mirrorballs and mirror columns around the dance floor. People watched us. The DJ tapped on his mike, clearing his throat to be sure he hit the lower register of his voice.

“Come back tonight for a Hallowe’en Special – free if you come in costume. 7.30 – 10.30 pm”  Serena and I locked eyes. This was for us, already planning what we would tell our Mums, to be allowed a late return and the rest of the afternoon with the rag-bag.

Her Mum, Jacie, had a hairdressing salon. It was her Dad’s really but he was a businessman most often away in London, so her Mum ran it. Jacie was a pink-tinged platinum blonde, her French roll swirled round her head like meringue, all curves and tottering heels, except when she was working when she looked suddenly a bit dumpy in her flat salon shoes. There were two daughters. Trish was older than Serena. She had left school the minute she could and was now in her second year at the salon. She was already a replica of Jacie; just had her first platinum job. Serena wasn’t allowed one until she left school which couldn’t happen fast enough for her. Serena looked strange in her school uniform, as if she was dressing up.

My Mum was just ordinary. A housewife and mother. Always up to her ears in laundry or cooking or sewing, too busy to bother with us three kids much unless we were in trouble.

If I said Serena was having a party at the flat above the salon, she might purse her lips and ask if Jacie and her man friends would be there, I could say ‘only to make sure we behave,’ she would look doubtful but she would say yes. And I would have to be home by 11.00 pm which meant I could push it to twenty past which would just allow for the bus home from town. Serena had no such need of ploys. Jacie would tuck a pound note into her hand and say ‘Be a good girl then.’

We spent the afternoon in Serena’s room ripping up old salon capes, ones that had chemical streaks down their fronts or missing ties. Jacie’s salon capes were black nylon with silver stars so perfect for Hallowe’en and I knew a bit about sewing from my Mum. There was an otherwise unused sewing machine in the flat much newer than my Mum’s, so I had two dark shifts knocked up very quickly. Serena tried hers on, swaying from side to side in front of the full-length mirror (their flat was full of mirrors) and frowning. ‘Can you open up the side seam a bit more? To about here’ She indicated a point just below her knicker legs. When she saw the doubt on my face she added “I’ll…we’ll be wearing tights so you won’t see anything.” So I did it. Then we made pointy hats from cardboard and covered them with bits of material and ragged tails. She pulled her hair into bunches and posed again.

“Very St. Trinians.” She laughed.

I dashed home for tea, put my hair in bunches, then dashed out again to meet Serena for the 7.00 pm bus into town. She had her school gaberdine buttoned up tight and quite a lot of make-up on, what looked like shoes borrowed from her mother but she wasn’t wearing her black tights. When I asked she just said.

“I’ll put them on in the Ladies at the Ballroom, they pull on my knickers. It’s all right, I’ve got them in my pocket.”

But of course she hadn’t. When we got to the Ladies she pulled her bunches out, back-combed and lacquered her hair until it was a golden halo and finally unbuttoned her coat. She was wearing tights but not heavy woollen ones like mine. She was wearing the sheerest of nylon tights that laid moire patterns on her legs all the way up to the legs of her black knickers. She had no jumper under her shift but the slashed neckline showed her neck and nearly all her white shoulders.  I turned to the mirror and looked at both of us. St Trinian’s indeed.  Me, with jumper and thick black tights, clean, slightly shining face, crooked hat and school shoes, looking like a school terror. She, sleek and sexy, a black-clad sylth like the glamorous sixth formers, well beyond any rule of school. Just before we hit the dance floor she stuffed her hat into the waste-bin.

It was a dreadful evening though Serena wouldn’t have said so. Those who approached her to dance were men, not boys. They bought her unidentified drinks, pink or yellow in triangular glasses with long stems and cherries, plus a grudged Coke for me. They sat themselves between us so I couldn’t talk to her and it was obvious that she didn’t want to talk to me. She was flushed and animated. She laughed a lot, baring her throat. I danced with a couple of boys but my heart wasn’t in it.

At 10.00 pm she whispered to me to tell Jacie she would phone, but not to worry. I didn’t. I didn’t know the man she left with. I’m quite sure my Mum would have worried if I had anything to do with a man who smelt of aftershave so strongly, whose suit fitted him so perfectly. I rode home on the bus alone. I caught the earlier bus feeling fooled, vowing to never speak to Serena again.

………………………………

Some months later I heard she went to live in a flat with her father in London, sometime later she had become a Bunny Girl, and a year or two later that she was a kind of supervisor of other Bunny Girls whose name appeared in The Daily Mirror in some scandal or other.  But I never did speak to her again.