by Morag Joss
Che vuoi sfidar l’amor!
We are already digging the grave for you
Who want to challenge love!
The sound rose and punctured through Fleur’s whooping and swooping voice from upstairs.
‘Forget him! Come with me. You’re not scared of him, are you, little Liù? He’s not Bernstein, you know. We’ve got to stand up to him.’ He made for the door and opened it noiselessly. ‘Come on,’ he whispered, reaching out a hand.
Without having to discuss the need to avoid the front door, they left the house by the back, crossed the garden and slipped through the gate in the wall into the scrubland that stretched down to the shore. The wind almost toppled Lila’s hair and she raised a hand to steady it while with the other she grabbed her skirt that was suddenly full of treacherous, billowing life. The weather infuriated her. She had to get used to the new way she looked; she did not want to have to concentrate on keeping herself in one piece and stopping her stocking tops from showing. Now the wind was making her eyes water and soon her mascara would run and she would be weeping indelible, soot tears in front of Joe.
‘There’s nothing to see,’ she said, watching his eyes scan the shoreline and the windy sky. ‘It’s a rotten place.’
He was taking deep breaths in the manner of inland people about to say something about sea air. ‘No, it’s not the Riviera, is it?’ he called over the wind. ‘George exaggerates so.’
‘I hate it. I’m not staying, I’m moving to London.’
‘Still, I wasn’t expecting much,’ he said, taking a few purposeless steps. He turned back to her. ‘So! Now Joey is in your gentle hands. Show me round! I’m interested in everything. I want to see it all.’
Lila pushed her skirt down, trapping its folds between her thighs. What did he mean? He had, strictly speaking, asked her out, so why was it up to her what they did? Could this be a date, on a blustery Thursday morning? Was this the material on which she was to build memories for saying, for the rest of their lives: Do you remember the first time we went out together?
‘Suppose you take me down to the beach?’ he said.
She couldn’t possibly take him to the beach. To get to the beach you had to cross the dunes with sand stinging your legs, and the dunes, as everybody knew, were where couples went at night to make little shelters in the marram grass and writhe privately in the dark to the sucking of the tide. Joe was in short sleeves again. She could see the hairs on his arms, ruffled by the wind. When she looked at his open top shirt button and saw the hair sprouting there at his throat, a ragged flutter of warmth ran through her. She blushed, thinking of One Thing Only, the thing that all boys wanted and that certain girls were apparently prepared to go to the dunes for. Joe might think that was what she wanted. She turned away. It had never occurred to her before, but what if some couples went to the dunes in daylight and they were to stumble across one? Until now she would have thought it impossible because what took place was so embarrassing surely it could only be done in the dark, but she was getting an inkling of powerful reasons why people could throw off that kind of shyness. And hardly less awful than stumbling upon that was the thought of Joe and her together catching sight of the things she and Enid occasionally came across on the beach and that Lila was ashamed of knowing the purpose of: the limp, discarded evidence of One Thing Only lying like pink emptied maggots, sometimes delicately knotted at the end.
‘Well, what about showing me the glorious sights of fair Burnhead?’
His gaze was now drifting over Lila’s head. Was he regretting coming out with her?
‘All right,’ she said, ‘come on, we’ll go this way!’ The carefree laugh she tagged onto the end of the words was lost on the wind.
When they emerged onto the road next to the bridge over the Pow Burn, Lila stopped. It was nearly a mile’s walk in one direction to Burnhead, a mile in the other to Monkton, where there was even less to see, and she was in her pointed court shoes. Joe wasn’t equipped for a walk either; he didn’t seem the type who ever would be. He was wearing pointed shoes too, come to that, black leather ones that curled up slightly at the toes, and the belt round his jeans pulled him in so stiffly it was hard to imagine him striding carelessly along the sea road. They loitered moodily for a minute or two.
She was about to suggest that maybe they should go up to Pow Farm after all, when Joe called out, ‘Hey, look, a bus!’
Lila looked up and saw it in the distance, rocking along the road from Burnhead towards Monkton, going the wrong way.
‘Quick! There’s the stop, come on!’ Joe yelled.
He grabbed her hand and suddenly Lila didn’t care where the bus was going. Even running with splayed feet, terrified she would lose a shoe, she was storing the moment away: Do you remember the first time you took my hand?
The bus pulled to a halt. Joe clattered upstairs and Lila lurched behind, thrilled at how willingly she could abandon decency and follow him, for upstairs on a bus was a place where only a girl who wanted to mix with chain-smoking men playing with themselves would go. Joe marched up to the very front seat and slumped in it. A minute later they rumbled past Seaview Villas, almost level with the drawn curtains of Fleur’s bedroom window. Lila, laughing, sent the house a little wave.
‘Byesie-bye, Fleur, byesie-bye, George,’ Joe said, turning and wiggling his fingers. ‘Byesie-bye, Turandot.’
The conductress clumped upstairs and took their fares. Joe paid, as was only right on a date and besides, Lila had no money. Then he leaned across and gave the ends of her yellow chiffon bow a little tug.
‘You’re coming undone,’ he said. ‘You’ve come undone running for the bus. You’re falling to bits. Turn round.’
He took the ends of the scarf. ‘ “A sweet disorder in the dress…”’ he said over her shoulder, laughing. ‘D’you know the rest?’
‘The rest of what?’
Joe took his time adjusting the scarf, lifting it and fluffing the bow, primping the ends.
‘That’s better now, la bella, oops, just a minute…’ With one finger he lifted a loose tendril from her neck and pushed it upwards into the mass of dark hair under the scarf.
‘ “…kindles in clothes a wantonness.” Or so they say. Done—there you are!’
He patted the top of her head and turned back. Lila, breathless with the sensation of his finger on her neck, hardly heard what he had said. She sat letting memories form—already memories, already she was starving for more—of his hands touching her hair, grazing her skin. She had to fix them in her mind. She had to edit and interpret them too; that pat on the head, for instance, he must have meant to be tender rather than casual. There couldn’t have been anything brotherly in it. She turned to look at him. He was staring straight ahead now and lifting and lowering his eyebrows as if practising facial expressions or conducting a silent conversation. She must be patient. For the time being the rules confined them to gestures and looks. Words would come later. She saw a series of arches through which she and Joe would pass, gradually shedding the layers of rule-keeping—the pretence of indifference, the perfected indirectness—until their true feelings could be admitted. Soon after that they would be engaged and she would be able to say: Do you remember the first time you touched my hair?
Of course I do, but what I really wanted to do was kiss it. Lila looked at him again, surprised. Now she was inside his head and seeing herself: she felt the chiffon under his hands and her warm hair tangled in his fingers, knew precisely his impulse to lean forward and breathe the scent of her shampoo and taste strands of her hair drawn through his lips. She knew the sparkle that went through him when he touched her, all the magazine talk of destiny, romance and encountering True Love melting in a single, tyrannical leaping of the blood.
The bus rolled along, slowed and stopped. A man came upstairs with a cigarette in his mouth, pulling a greyhound on a lead. Its claws tapped like falling stones along the deck between the seats. If he had not come, Joe might have kissed her. ‘So, where
is it you’re taking me, then?’ Joe said, after a few more minutes. ‘Where exactly are we?’
She tried to explain. ‘The bus only goes one way. It goes the wrong way, it comes along our road away from Burnhead and goes up to Monkton and back round all the little roads to Burnhead by the long way. The road’s not wide enough for buses to pass, that’s why.’
‘Oh.’
‘So you have to go nine miles in the wrong direction to get where you want that’s only one mile away.’
She failed to make this sound amusing. They sat in silence for the rest of the journey and by the time they got off the bus Joe seemed to have forgotten that the outing had been his idea. He dawdled a little behind Lila as if he were indulging her by consenting to follow. They joined Burnhead Main Street and walked along past the mix of gift shops and tearooms—Ice Cream Made on the Premises, Sugar Novelties—that sat side by side with the butchers, chemists, ironmongers and churches. Lila longed for him to assert how things were meant to go; the responsibility for making the day special was beginning to crush her. With a pang of sorrow she led him past Sew Right. She wished he were more curious about her because then she might be able to explain, at the very least, about Enid’s mum. But a single glance at him told her they couldn’t possibly pop in and see her together. She wasn’t sure why.
They followed the path through the public gardens between the beds of wallflowers and the children’s putting green and still they said little. Lila wondered what she was supposed to do with him now. If they could just stop marching along, if they could only come to a halt and look at each other and talk with nobody else around, all would become clear between them. But there were no places designed for them. There was nowhere they could linger and be out of the wind and away from other people, except perhaps certain notorious park benches where Senga McMillan’s initials were etched with several others and at which no right-thinking girl could suggest pausing.
Families defeated by the weather and giving up on the beach for the day limped past them, laden parents with faces cured pink by brine and wind, hauling behind them urchin offspring in sopping plimsolls, shivering and clutching their crotches and whining for a place to stop. A number of them lodged on the benches next to the swings and rubbish bins to eat their jam pieces and swig from Thermos flasks—dinnertime brought forward to half past ten for want of anything else to do—not far from the sinister, red-brick conveniences that were set back at the end of a path lined with thorn bushes studded with discarded papers.
At the point where the path joined Station Road and led down to the sea, Lila and Joe turned and wandered back up to Main Street.
‘Well,’ Lila said, slowing by the bus stop. ‘Well, that’s Burnhead. See, there’s nothing to do. We might as well go back.’
‘We’ve only just come!’ Joe stood with his hands on his hips, looking round, his eyes suddenly, newly bright. ‘I suppose it’s too early for a drink. How’s about a coffee? Where’s your usual haunt? Where do all the lovely young things go?’
There was nothing for it but the Locarno. These days the Chit Chat was soaking up the clientele the Locarno no longer wanted: the more prosperous sand-covered families from the beach who had the money for choice of sausage roll or fish and chips, orangeade or tea, and solitary old people dropping jammy scones in their laps. Nobody of Lila’s generation went there anymore. The Locarno was the place, the set high tea off the menu and newly done up, the dark panelling and bentwood furniture stripped out. Lozenge-shaped Formica tables with lethal metal trims were now screwed to the floor and brash lighting buzzed from the ceiling where the plaster cornicing and ceiling roses had been chiselled away like icing off an old cake. There, Burnhead’s teenage sophisticates sat numbed by the jukebox while condensation from the new, hissing coffee machine poured down the plate-glass window. Joe’s kind of place. They went in. He ordered coffee for them at the counter and sauntered towards a table. He knew without being told that the waitress would bring it.
Enid was sitting in a bay with Senga McMillan, Linda McCall and Deirdre Munro, one of several bovine quartets of girls slumped and chewing on their empty mouths or on straws poking out of Coke bottles, while their eyes travelled round for the subject of their next sneer. The boys, commandeering the jukebox in knots of four and five, shoved and showed off, breaking into laughter and catcalls that carried sometimes a sudden unfettered high note that was giddy and female. Lila raised a smile to Enid as she went by and sank into a seat opposite Joe.
The four girls leaned in and whispered and broke into laughter. Senga called over, ‘Look whit the cat’s brung in! Who’s yer friend, got yoursel’ a fancy man?’
‘And who do we have here?’ Joe asked Lila, turning round and sending them a lazy smile.
‘Don’t look round! They’re my friends. Supposed to be. I hate them.’
‘Look at the state of her. Haw, Lizzie! I seen your mum’s picture in the paper. Goin’ to gie us a wee song?’ Linda said.
‘Tra la! What’s your favourite opera? How’d you cry it again? Touring-whit?’
‘Aw, ’scuse me, my Italian’s a wee bit rusty, what’s Italian for fancy man?’
‘What’s Italian for fancy hair-do?’
‘What’s Italian for whaur’s yer knickers?’
Three of the quartet collapsed into more laughter; only Enid looked uncomfortable. Lila stared at the table, her face hot and red under the Max Factor, and folded her hands over her head to try to hide the scarf. Then, before she could stop him, Joe got up and walked over slowly, thumbs hooked into the front pockets of his jeans. The girls shifted, composed their faces and shook out their hair.
‘How do you do, ladies? Allow me to introduce myself. Joe Foscari,’ he said, planting himself in front of them. ‘And how are yourselves, ladies?’
He proffered a hand but none of them dared take it.
‘I hope I shall have the pleasure of seeing you all on Saturday,’ he said, looking round at the other tables, assessing the attention. ‘Full details, as you say, in the paper. I trust you are all coming on Saturday to join BAST?’
‘Well, hawdy hawdy haw. Opera, you kidding?’ Senga said. ‘BAST? Is that that shite you was telling us, Enid?’
‘What?’ Enid said. ‘Oh. Uh-huh. It’s some thing of Lizzie’s.’
Joe said, ‘It’s a great chance. We’ll be needing young ladies like yourselves.’
Senga turned lazy eyes back to Joe. ‘You—have—got—to—be—kidding. Opera’s shite. You wouldn’t catch me dead.’
A squabble broke out over by the jukebox. There was some pushing and complaining, and then ‘A Big Hunk O’ Love’ began blaring out of it.
Hey Baby, I ain’t askin’ much of you
No no no no no no no no baby
The boys fell silent and grouped round, some of them pumping from the hips with their eyes closed, lips pushed out; alerted, in with a chance, jerking with adult stealth to the universal beat of lust, the thump, thump, hump of an easy pick-up. Senga dropped her mouth open, pulling taut a sheet of gum between her top and bottom teeth, snapped it, flipped her tongue round it and joined in with the song, smirking at Joe:
Well you can spare a kiss or two and
Still have plenty left, no no no
The boys looked over. The girls giggled.
Well I ain’t greedy baby
All I want is all you got, no no no
Baby I ain’t asking much of you
Just a big-a big-a hunk o’ love will do
The song finished and another one started up. Senga sucked up a mouthful of Coke and stared at Joe without blinking.
He said, ‘Dear me. That’s a most grave error you’re making. Opera’s not what you think. You’ll be missing the time of your lives.’
Senga tried to engage the other three in an exchange of sniggers but now they were all watching him, trying to work out how, while being so polite and friendly, he was managing to make fools of them.
‘You surprise me, up-to-date ladies
like yourselves,’ he said. ‘Opera’s the in thing. Everybody’ll be there. You’d better come or you’ll miss your big chance.’
Enid said, ‘Big chance of what? Singing in a stupid opera?’
Joe glanced down the aisle at Lila. ‘No, I mean your chance—your glorious chance—of appearing on stage with the tenor Giuseppe Foscari. That’s me.’
‘Haw! Fancy yoursel’, don’t you? Whit’s so great about you?’ Senga said. ‘That’s a stupid name, anyway.’ The others gasped. She would always go further than any of them.
Joe smiled and turned to Lila again. ‘Hear that, Liù?’ he called over. ‘What’s great about me?’
Just then the waitress came along with their coffee. To give her room to get past, Joe turned back to the girls’ bay and pressed himself hard against the end of their table. The edge pushed into his thighs. Even Senga had to look away.
‘Ah! What’s so great about me?’ he said softly, easing himself back on his heels. ‘That, ladies, I shall demonstrate.’
The last verse of ‘Please Don’t Tease’ was bouncing from the jukebox. Joe took a few steps down the aisle and waited while the song died away. Then he turned and fixed his eyes somewhere above the girls’ heads. He was on stage; he placed his fingertips on his ribs, took a deep breath and from his mouth came a caramelly slick of sound that coated the steamy air of the Locarno:
Ma il mio mistero è chiuso in me,
Il nome mio nessun saprà!
No, no!
It was ‘Nessun dorma’, though to Lila’s ears, pitched a couple of tones lower. The hairs rose on the back of her neck at Joe’s effortful, insistent sound. It was over in a matter of seconds. People turned to see if they’d heard right. There were murmurs, snorts of laughter, raised eyebrows. A few people peered round, whistled and stamped, then they turned back. Talking resumed.
Lila’s face burned. She could have told him Burnhead people were the most heart-sinking on earth. Joe deserved cheering and clapping and most of them hadn’t even taken their straws from their mouths. Then the Locarno’s proprietor, Mr Locatelli, appeared from the back. He wiped his hands, raised an arm and laughed. ‘Bravo, bravo! Bravo, signor!’ he called. Conversation stopped again.