by Alice Taylor
The next garment under the dress was a slip. An interlock one served the purpose and a silk one was the last word in elegance, but without a slip one was considered not quite respectable. It was the style of the times that every dress should billow forth, and so over the slip went an underskirt of stiff, white net to provide the necessary support. Then came the dress, about which so much agonising had gone on for days, and the sandals, which were usually white. All that remained to be attended to was the face, and the secret here was to put on enough make-up to erase the scrubbed and shiny look but little enough to escape my mother’s inspection. One stick of pancake makeup, one box of face-powder and one tube of lipstick covered all shapes and shades of faces. An imaginative friend discovered that the red cover of her father’s creamery book, in which butter and milk sales were recorded, could be dampened and used as rouge, but my mother promptly made her wash it off. My dreams were of the full scarlet mouth of Ava Gardner and the smouldering, black-lined eyes of Joan Crawford, but my mother made sure that they remained just dreams. Cussons talcum powder, in a little orange-and-white box, was as near as we came to perfume, so we shook it in all corners.
Finally, leaving the bedroom in chaos, we trooped downstairs into the kitchen where my parents and a few of the neighbours, including Tom, waited to put us through a passing-out parade. Many good-humoured comments were passed and we girls gave as good as we got. But old Tom remained silent, puffing his pipe in a cloud of smoke until we were going out the door. Then he delivered a parting shot: “Come home dacent,” was all he said.
We walked the three miles into town, joining up with other young people along the way, singing and practising our steps as we went. At that stage I had an attack of first-night nerves. What if my legs refused to keep time to the music? What if nobody asked me to dance? What if my panties fell down? The possibilities of disaster seemed endless and I almost envied the children buying chocolate for the road home, but not quite, because just then we came within range of the sound of music and my heart started to beat with a fierce new excitement.
Sarah had appointed herself cashier, so she went to buy the tickets and the rest of us queued up behind her like ducks going to a pond. As I waited in line I thought of all the instructions that had been hammered into me by my sisters and their friends: Don’t get stuck with one fellow for the night; avoid drunks by keeping a weather eye out for them and getting lost in the crowd when you saw one coming; dance with everyone but if somebody turned up who was beyond endurance say you had the dance promised to someone else. I was beginning to feel that the Inter Cert had been a walkover compared with this test of diplomatic skills.
Sarah, having procured the tickets, propelled us forward and, once inside the door, we were soon enfolded in a warm world full of swirling couples, coloured lights, pulsating music and the smell of paraffin oil and sawdust. We made our way to the cloakroom, where we hung up our coats. Here older girls preened themselves in front of cracked mirrors and straightened the seams in their stockings. Comments like “God, he nearly crippled me” and “Hope he’ll ask me to dance again” floated through the powdered air and a feeling of gaiety and sisterhood prevailed. We first-timers were welcomed and cautioned about “the octopus”, “the prancing jennet” and the handsome “scalp collector”; the research team was voluntary, caring and anxious that we young ones should enjoy ourselves and avoid the tried and tested male hazards.
Outside the cloakroom was a sea of girls and I wondered where the men were hiding, until I made my way out to the front, and there across the hall were rows of men, a bewildering array of them. Before I could decide who I hoped would ask me to dance a school-friend came over as the band started up, saying, “Come on and I’ll see if your dancing is better than your algebra.” The dance-hall floor was a great improvement on the stone floor of the kitchen, and with the live music and a partner who obviously knew what to do with his legs my dancing problem faded fast as the music went in through my ears and out through my toes. I was sorry when that first dance was over because this lad who but a few weeks previously had been just a classroom companion was now a smiling, entertaining young man. The atmosphere of soft lights and soothing music put our friendship on a new and altogether more interesting footing, and I decided that after the holidays school would never be as boring again.
After a few dances I realised that most of our school was there and also many of the neighbours, so I relaxed and felt that if this was what dancing was all about it was great fun. Then a blond, very handsome man in his twenties asked me to dance. This guy was a different model from the others and when the dance was over he did not move away but waited for the next dance, which he seemed to assume was what I wanted, and indeed it was because he was good-looking, charming and flattering. The next number was slow and dreamy, but as I felt his arms tenderly wrap themselves around me I had the unholy thought that perhaps this was the octopus. I was soon distracted, however, by another problem as the strong elastic with which I had reinforced my panties began to cut into me like a strand of wire. When the music stopped I excused myself hurriedly and headed for the cloakroom. My friend Ann followed me to know what was happening. I explained about my panties.
“Take them off,” she said, “and put them into the pocket of your coat.”
‘I can’t go back out there with no panties on!” I gasped in horror.
“You’ve three choices,” she declared, “go home, suffer on, or take them off.”
“Put like that there seems to be no choice,” I said, “but old Tom would say that it wasn’t dacent.”
The two of us were still laughing when one of my sisters came in to check up on how things were going for us and to issue half-time instructions. She soon solved the problem of the tight elastic with a nail-scissors and a safety-pin.
“Now,” she instructed, “keep away from that blond guy.”
“Why?” I asked, disappointed.
“He’s a real Duffy’s Circus operator: different venue every night.”
“There had to be a catch,” I said regretfully.
“Just make sure that you are not his catch for tonight,” she warned, adding, “Keep away from the back of the hall now as all the old reserves are in from the pub and you’ll be like a red rag to a bull to them.”
My friend and I thought this very funny; nevertheless, when we went back into the hall we headed up to the area near the stage from which the band, who were also local, had a bird’s eye view of the whole scene. One of them bent down to us to enquire, “Are ye steering clear of the old reserves?”
My handsome blond was back for the next dance and I wondered to myself how I was to shake off someone I really did not want to shake off. Ann had advised ignoring older sisters but I knew that home would be a very uncomfortable place if I did that and a curfew might even be imposed. So I lost myself in the crowd and the problem solved itself as school-pals gathered around and the rest of the night sped by. My handsome admirer soon replaced me with a blonde nearer his own age who was the proud possessor of a plunging neckline, which further convinced me of the desirability of a cleavage.
When the dance was over I we spilled out on to the street, glad of the cool night air. At the end of the town we waited for the crowd from our road to gather together. Some were later than others coming back as they had gone walking with fellows or girls they had met at the dance, but all the first-nighters were present.
We all walked home singing and laughing and never noticed the length of our journey. When we arrived we found that my mother had left the fire stacked up to boil the kettle; we made tea quietly and went back over the events of the night in loud whispers. Then someone got the notion to fry rashers and sausages and while we waited for the fry to be ready we threshed out the night, sometimes going into fits of suppressed laughter when we recalled some incident. Finally we dragged ourselves upstairs and, after clearing paths to our beds, fell in, exhausted.
It was midday when the warm sun pouring in the window
woke me the next day. My head was slightly muzzy from the throbbing sound of the band and the smoky atmosphere in the hall. Other heads were in worse condition to judge by the groaning and complaining that accompanied their getting up, while toes and shin-bones were examined for signs of wear and tear. A subdued crew, we all traipsed downstairs where my father had just arrived home from the creamery; he viewed us with an unsympathetic eye and announced in verse:
There is no time for joy or laughter
In the cold grey dawn of the morning after.
This unwelcome shower of wisdom he followed with even more unwelcome instructions to get moving because the hay in the meadows by the river was ready for saving.
Making hay on a hot summer’s day after a night spent dancing is not the easiest job in the world and we were a reluctant meitheal, but as the day wore on our youthful exuberance came to the surface and while we worked we discussed and relived yet again the momentous events of the previous night.
Little Bits Of Darning
PETER WAS BORN with a romantic heart, filled with the love of music, song and women, and as his life went on it was the women who came to occupy the greatest share. He loved all women; his life and thoughts revolved around them: women he should have married, women he could have married, women he might have married, and even women he considered himself lucky not to have married. They were a constant source of entertainment to Peter and he was a constant source of entertainment to them.
Although he was of our parents’ generation, that placed no barrier between Peter and young people. He could go to the pub with my father for a pint after Mass and yet come dancing with us that night, and he would be equally at home in both situations. He was a beautiful dancer and would glide the most awkward beginner around the dance-floor, making her feel as if all the dancing skill were hers. If a night was not going according to plan we would ask Peter to dance and he could be relied upon to help out at awkward moments. He even came dancing armed with a book to fill in the duller intervals.
Peter’s origins were shrouded in romantic mystery: the way he put it himself was that he was the result of a little bit of darning”. He explained further that most families had a skeleton in the cupboard as a con sequence of some member having deviated from the straight and narrow, and most families coped with these upsets and drew both erring one and consequence back into the fold. Peter termed the process of recovery from these upheavals as “little bits of darning”. His own parents had had no children when his father had come home one night from a horse fair with a bouncing baby under his arm which he had presented to his wife. My mother expressed her doubts about this story but Peter swore that it was true and, true or otherwise, we found it intriguing.
He would describe his first experience of falling in love in great detail. Just sixteen, he had fallen head over heels for the daughter of a family down the road. So besotted was he that he sat all day on a stone wall opposite her house waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Finally her mother came out.
“Tell me, Peter,” she enquired, “is it your first time?”
“Yes, mam,” he answered respectfully and added, “It’s killing me.”
“Well now, Peter,” she told him, “I’ll give you a cure.”
“Will you?” he asked eagerly.
“Yes indeed, Peter,” she said consolingly. “Go home now like a good boy and take a fine dose of salts.”
Peter would laugh heartily when telling this story and add, “Wasn’t she a sound woman?”
He lived on a small farm, but didn’t put much work into it, and when he got a legacy from America the first thing he did was to buy a piano. He had no idea how to play it so, to give himself time to learn, he rented out the farm. It being the first piano to come to our district, we all called to see Peter’s unusual investment: it was a beauty with two brass candle-holders and every night he lit his candles and practised his playing. Sometimes, to take a rest from his piano practice, he picked up his fiddle, which he had played all his life as his father had taught him when he had been only a child, and while he played he danced around the house in total enjoyment of the music.
When he had mastered the piano he invited us all to a performance and we proved an appreciative if not very discerning audience. He also sang songs he had written himself and put music to and he recited verses he had composed about various local happenings. Any evening in Peter’s house was great fun. It was also a house for card games and players came there from miles around. However, on some nights that were meant for card playing, Peter would not be in the right mood and so would turn them into musical nights instead, much to the annoyance of the cards enthusiasts. But Peter’s violin poured forth music so sweet that the card players soon forgot their annoyance and danced off the floor with gusto.
Young and not-so-young lined up for half-sets and old men crippled with “the pains” found new pep in their step and bounced on the floor like garsoons. On other nights a concert would evolve and then we were all expected to do our party pieces. Ability had little to do with performance and if you could not dance you had to sing or recite; if you foundered in mid-verse everybody else came to the rescue and joined in. Card playing, on the other hand, was a serious business which often led to frayed tempers and arguments, but when these occurred Peter was always quick to clear the house.
Sometimes he would get a notion and write to all his old girlfriends with extravagant declarations of love that he did not mean and they, from previous experience of him, were smart enough not to take seriously. Letters he received in answer to his bold assertions he would read out for the entertainment of Bill, who was a great friend of his. After reading out a sentence that pleased him particularly he would say to Bill, “I will read that last sentence again for you so that you can feel the love expounding there.” In his own letters, one of his more dramatic conclusions was, “If my pen were a pistol I’d blow out my brains for love of you,” and on one occasion this protestation blew up in his face.
Former girlfriends who were safely married posed no threat to his romantic meanderings, but when one wrote from America that she was now a widow and was coming home to claim him for her own, Peter was thrown into a complete panic. He calmed down after a while and trotted off to Bill to ask for help in solving his desperate problem, but Bill had read too many “pen and pistol” letters to this same lady to have much sympathy with him, so he told Peter that the time had come to turn his pen into a pistol and blow his brains out, or else marry her.
Peter declared that he was caught on the horns of a dilemma and did not know which way to jump. In one way he was apprehensive at the prospect of her arrival, but in another way he was fascinated by the thought of meeting her again, and he mused about how things might develop. And when he had recovered from the initial shock he appeared to become quite philosophical about the whole affair.
It did seem to set him back a bit when he discovered that the gentle, soft-spoken slip of a girl with long blonde hair who had lived in his memory for twenty years had turned into a busty matron with brassy hair and a strident voice. But he recovered his composure and soon seemed to be enjoying escorting around his colourful Yank, as he called her. She was flamboyant and good humoured, which was very important to Peter who had said that there was only one eventuality which he could not overcome and that was if she had grown dull and boring. So Peter sang for us all:
And when you think you’re past love
It’s then you find your last love
And you’ll love her
As you never loved before.
Now that Peter was happy with his lot we relaxed a little, but at the same time we felt that there was no guarantee that he would see the whole thing through.
When the shock came it came not from Peter but from the Yank. One day she packed her bags and told Peter that although he had not changed, she had, and somehow she just could not visualise herself living in the depths of rural Ireland.
We thought that Peter would be devastated, b
ut not a bit of it. So immediate was his recovery that Bill concluded he must have pulled a stroke: the Yank had gone away thinking that she had changed her mind, but Bill was sure that Peter had changed it for her. Whatever the truth of the matter, Peter was smiling, and when we questioned him about it he would only say that fate had destined him to keep many women happy rather than make one woman miserable.
Faigh Do Cóta
THE DANCES HELD on St Stephen’s night, on Easter Sunday and at the summer carnival were gala occasions for me, not least because it was only during the holidays that I was allowed to go out dancing. Music was always provided by a local band whose members we all knew and whose repertoire was well tried and truly tested. So established were their routines that anyone who had been going to dances for a while could almost tell the time of night by the tune being played, and always before they played the national anthem they gave advance warning by playing “When the Saints Go Marching In”. Anyone wanting to acquire a companion to walk her home needed to have sorted herself out by the time “The Saints” started up.
A couple who were seen dancing together for more than two dances was considered to be entering into serious negotiations, and if they went together for a drink at the mineral bar it was then considered that negotiations had been completed. There was plenty of flirting and fun between us and we girls joked amongst ourselves about different male approaches, which varied from “Can I see you home?” to “Would you like an orange?” or “Would you get your coat?”, which last we termed a “Faigh do cóta” operation.