Voices in the Street

by Maureen Reynolds

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Nancy! Will you watch what you’re doing. You’ve just scooshed it over my new frock,’ would be a typical anguished cry.

  We never used this machine, preferring to carry our own little bottles of Evening in Paris for our evening at the Palais.

  Upstairs, on a stage at the far end of the dance floor, waiting to begin an evening’s dancing, was the Andy Lothian Band. As the band struck up, we made our way over to the line of squashy sofas that edged the floor. As we commandeered one, Zena gave me a pearl of wisdom. ‘Mind now, if you’re asked to dance, just say you’re sorry but you can’t.’

  I had trouble digesting this morsel of contrary advice. Surely the reason we had come here was to dance? Then we saw the young man walking towards us. How he found the courage to walk across an acre of polished floor with five pairs of eyes staring at him I’ll never know. I’m sure he must have thought it would have been easier walking into a German camp during the war. He asked me to dance and I leapt to my feet, completely forgetting the magic phrase. From the corner of my eye I saw Zena mouthing the words.

  As my partner led me to the floor, I apologised for jumping up under false pretences. ‘Eh’m awfy sorry but Eh’m no very good at dancing,’ I told him – a fact that could hardly have escaped his notice when I tramped on his toes.

  However, he was quite cheerful about it. ‘That’s OK, Eh’m no that great myself.’

  With the polite preliminaries over, and the truth told, we began to move awkwardly around the floor. The large mirrored sphere rotated gently above us, sending hundreds of sparkling slivers of silver light cascading over the walls and floor like glittering sequins. With the tuneful strains of the band wafting over us, the effect was magical. It was like dancing in the middle of the universe, surrounded by exploding stars.

  For me, the Palais was love at first sight and I was determined to visit this wonderful place again. I would wait until Betty was better to tell her about it and we would both come together. I just knew she would love it. Until then I half-hoped Violet and co. would ask me to go with them on the following Tuesday.

  When the dance finished, my partner joined a group of young men. Their faces looked familiar and although I could have been wrong, I was sure some of them were bakers from Wallace’s.

  CHAPTER 22

  Aggie was on her normal weekly visit and as usual was full of her own importance. To be quite honest, I could never understand why Mum put up with all the boasting. Tonight was no exception and she was over the moon with her news.

  ‘Guess where meh man and Eh are going for our holiday during the Dundee holiday week?’ she prompted, sitting back with her podgy hands folded together as if in prayer.

  Mum, who knew it was hopeless to even venture a suggestion, looked suitably blank.

  Aggie was ecstatic at this reaction. ‘Well, Mr Robb and me are going to Butlin’s Holiday Camp at Ayr. What do you say to that, Molly?’

  I almost butted in to say I thought Mr Robb and her were spending the Dundee week at the Coup (the city rubbish dump) but I knew Mum would be wild at my bad manners. Still, I often thought Aggie deserved it, flaunting her good fortune in Mum’s face when she knew how hard up we were.

  Mum put on her impressed expression, again to Aggie’s delight. ‘That’s smashing, Aggie. Eh hope you both have a good time.’

  Aggie was both dumbfounded and ashamed-looking. ‘Oh no, we’re no going on our own. We’re going with Babs and Ron and we’ve booked a four-bed chalet.’

  ‘That was really good of Babs to think about taking you away for a holiday,’ said Mum.

  Aggie continued to look abashed. ‘Well, Eh wouldn’t say that, Molly, considering they were planning a week away together at the camp but meh man wasn’t pleased about that arrangement at all.’

  She stopped for a breath while Mum looked shocked. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve gate-crashed the couple’s holiday plans?’

  ‘That’s just what we’re doing,’ said Aggie, self-righteously. ‘Eh mean, we’re no pushing our noses in where they’re no wanted but meh man just said that he wasn’t letting his lassie go off with a man for a week at a holiday camp. Heavens! Just imagine the hanky-panky that would go on. No, he put his foot down and we’re going as well.’

  Mum and I exchanged glances as we both visualised Mr Robb putting his enormous feet down. As Mum said later, it was a wonder he didn’t go through the floor of the prefab, a house that was being ignored for once in the holiday conversation.

  ‘Eh’ll tell you about the holiday when Eh get back and Eh’ll show you my photies,’ Aggie said, while glancing around the living room. ‘Eh see you haven’t got a television set yet, Molly. You should just buy one on the never-never. Put down a deposit and pay five shillings a week.’

  I was annoyed at her for continually harping on about a television. I knew Mum would love one and she regularly visited to watch at Nora and Charlie’s house in Glamis Road if she saw something she liked in the radio and television column in the paper. By this time they had five children and we hated to bother them, especially for something as trivial as a television programme.

  Betty, however, was improving slowly. A course of penicillin had cured her chest infection but her asthma wasn’t any better. Neither were her breathing difficulties. I felt I had to come clean about the Palais. It would have been all right if I had only planned that one night but I was now going with Violet and the girls every week. I thought it only fair to let her know.

  She promised to come with me as soon as she was better. I gave her all the dance news, especially my budding friendship with the young man who had danced with me on my very first night. His name was Ally and he was an apprentice baker with a small bakery in Kirkton.

  I loved the Tuesday crowd at the dancing. It was a young people’s night and during the evening a score of balloons would be released from a net suspended from the ceiling. Some of these balloons contained a ticket which could be used to gain half-price admittance on the following week. This would be a big help to my budget should I be fortunate enough to find one. The drawback was that I had a phobia about balloons bursting and would always keep well away from all the good-natured horseplay that ensued when the net was released.

  Ally, on the other hand, would gallantly leap into the frantic fray and present me with a balloon, and, if I was lucky, a half-price ticket. What joy!

  Another pleasure was sitting with a soft drink in the Soda Fountain. This cool spot lay behind the bandstand, separated off by a glass partition. It was pleasant to sit and listen to Charlie Coates, the resident singer, or perhaps Jimmy Barton singing the latest hit, ‘The Ballad of Davy Crockett’, while wearing a racoon hat. Overlooking the floor at the other end was a balcony for spectators which I thought was a terrible waste of dancing time. A glass display sign was suspended from this balcony which indicated the various dances.

  We loved the quickstep, especially if it was an excuse-me dance or ‘tip-off’ dance as we called it. It was a universal girl’s dream to be in the enviable position of having two men competing for the chance to dance with her. If it happened to any one of us it became the topic of the entire evening.

  ‘Do you see yon guy over there? Well, can you imagine it? He’s tipped me off twice tonight,’ the fortunate one might say.

  If some extremely pretty girl was always changing partners then a few catty whispers would emerge. ‘Would you look at her getting tipped off again! Eh don’t know what the fellas see in her, Eh really don’t.’

  Also, during the evening, Andy Lothian would announce any forthcoming engagements or marriages – ‘The Palais Gazette’, he called it.

  One night, I spotted Maria, my mascara-clad former work-mate from my factory days and I suddenly thought of Sadie. I managed to speak to Maria. ‘How is Sadie keeping these days?’

  Maria, as laconic as ever, gazed at me through her black-rimmed eyes. ‘Oh, she’s fine now but she had a terrible time with her son after he came back from Korea. His fianc�
�e split up with him and he went a bit wild. Got charged with breach of the peace. It’s a wonder you didn’t read about it in the paper.’

  I remembered Sadie’s sudden spat with Maria and it all made sense now. ‘What is he doing now?’

  ‘Och, he’s married now and got a kid. Sadie says he’s a lot happier.’

  Well, that was a blessing, I thought. Out of all the people I worked with, I always liked Sadie the best. Half an hour later I saw Maria again and she obviously hadn’t changed one iota. She was busy dancing with one man while surveying the spare men who stood on the fringe of the dance floor through eyes still clarted with black gunge.

  A most important part of going dancing was the ritual of getting dressed for the occasion. We all thought the fifties’ fashion style was wonderful with our flared skirts worn over frothy, frou-frou petticoats and flat ballerina shoes, the whole ensemble set off with a jaunty scarf and a wide elastic belt called a waspie.

  Mum had given me a lovely crisp nylon petticoat and a black taffeta skirt which was reversible and gave me two skirts for the price of one. I was really chuffed with my outfit. The skirt measured a magical 144 inches around the hem and swung out in delicious swirls with every move, while the petticoat rustled crisply with every step. I was like a cat with a bowl of cream. The petticoat, however, became a disaster when I washed it. It went as limp as a rag. Violet had the remedy.

  ‘Eh aye wash mine in a mixture of sugar and water and when you iron it while it’s wet, it goes all stiff again.’

  I tried this method and it did work, but not only did it stiffen the fabric, the petticoat almost stood up by itself, like a pink and white jelly mould. Then there was my big problem, namely my straight hair. It was all right for Violet and her chums because they could hide their curlers under their white caps at work or put on a headsquare on a Saturday. Girls who walked about the town with their dinkie curlers under a scarf were looked on as a bit common. ‘Would you look at her, looking awfy orra!’ would be the comment. But at least they had curls for the dancing at night.

  I could well imagine Miss Thomson letting me run around the restaurant with curlers in my hair. She was a right stickler for work and always kept her beady eyes on us. Because of this situation, I reckoned that the sugar solution was ideal for me. Combing this sugary gunge through my hair certainly kept the curls in place but then concrete would have done the same job. And I had to pray that it wouldn’t rain.

  Mum owned an ancient pair of curling tongs that were heated on the gas cooker but because they looked like leftovers from the Spanish Inquisition I much preferred the sugar method. Mum, however, didn’t like this practice at all. ‘Your hair will fall out by the time you’re thirty,’ she warned.

  This advice fell on deaf ears. As long as I had my curls, I didn’t worry about the far distant future of being thirty. Anyway, when I reached that elderly age, I reckoned I wouldn’t be going out much but would probably be spending my time knitting something grey and ghastly. So off I set for the Palais, as happy as Larry with sugary hair and sugary petticoat.

  Worried about the prospect of having a bald daughter, Mum treated me to a perm. The DPM Dairy had a perm club and the members put a shilling or so into it very week. When there was enough money, they got their perms done in a hair-dressing shop in Caldrum Street. This was an ordeal even worse than the curling tongs. The perm was called a ‘Eugene Wave’. The hair was curled up over thick squares of rubber which lay flat against your scalp and then a machine was hurled into place. This machine had rows of heavy, heated clamps which were placed on the curls in a horrible, heart-stopping sizzle.

  When they were all in place, it was more than you could do to hold your head upright with the weight of a Sherman tank resting on your neck. Meanwhile, bending to retrieve a dropped magazine needed at least two assistants to help you get up again. I was glad when the film star Audrey Hepburn became a household name because we all rushed out to copy her short, gamin hairstyle.

  One of the surprises of the fifties was the emergence of the male fashion scene. For decades, young men had been miniature carbon copies of their fathers but now they erupted in an orgy of colour and style. It was as if some unknown creatures had emerged from a chrysalis. It was the age of the Teddy Boys with a plethora of drape suits with velvet collars, drain-pipe trousers, bootlace ties and thick crêpe-soled shoes called brothel creepers. Also vastly popular was the slicked-back DA hairstyle. Very Tony Curtis.

  We were also in the decade of Rock and Roll and all the beat music that went with it. We were also the first generation to live under the shadow of the atom bomb and after the destruction of Nagasaki and Hiroshima there was the general consensus that it could happen again. But I don’t think we worried too much about it. We were having too much fun dancing the night away.

  Because George was still at school, I didn’t like to ask for more pocket money and I decided to go after a part-time job which I saw advertised for the Empress Ballroom, a single-storey building which lay in the shadow of the Royal Arch and Earl Grey Wharf.

  This extra job was to help finance my dancing nights and it was a bit ironic that I took money from one dance hall to give back to another. The Empress held large dinner-dance events like the Fire-men’s Ball and the Woodchoppers’ Ball on Tuesdays and Thursdays during the winter months and these were glittering occasions with the guests dressed in their evening finery.

  The women, resplendent in elegant, long evening dresses, were a colourful kaleidoscope of taffeta, satin and silk while the men all wore smart suits. The tables were set out around the perimeter of the dance floor and, unfortunately for the waiting staff, there was no set time for dinner. The dancers could choose to eat when it suited them. If you were unlucky enough to have a table filled with dancing-mad patrons you could still be trailing around with plates of trifle at midnight.

  The dance usually finished at one o’clock but the coat-clad company gathered in the foyer to await a small cup of consommé to warm them on their homeward journeys. By the time we retrieved the cups from behind plant containers and other hidey-holes and washed them, it was nearer two o’clock – time to pile into the owners’ son’s station wagon for the journey home. There was only one snag to this arrangement, the fact that the staff lived in different parts of the city. It was like an early morning mystery tour and I was the second-last passenger to disembark. It was usually almost three o’clock by then.

  During my second night’s stint, I met Avril who lived in Arklay Street and worked during the day at the Astral refrigerator factory. I thought this funny at the time and always silently referred to her as the three As. The following week, while I was lamenting about the long journey home, she said, ‘Don’t mention that jalopy run to me. Eh walk home now.’

  As my house lay in the same direction, we decided to hoof it home together. It was fun to begin with as we marched briskly along the Murraygate. Under a canopy of glittering stars and a frosty moon, our clattering footsteps echoed loudly in the early morning silence of the deserted Wellgate steps.

  When we reached the foot of Arklay Street, we paused to catch our breath, both of us steeling ourselves for the final furlong. Ahead of me lay the twin dark shapes of Dens Park football ground and the wall of the Bowbridge jute mill, both of which cast dark, sinister shadows across my path.

  I had no idea what ghosties and ghoulies lay in Avril’s path but with a quick cheerio we took to our heels, with me running up the middle of the road to keep well away from the black, looming mass on either side of me. In the distance, amongst a sea of darkened windows, one light shone out. It was our light and I knew Mum liked to keep the light on till I got home. I homed in on it and fair belted up the road. By the time I was inside the house, I felt I had run a ten-mile race.

  Mum was annoyed as well. ‘Eh’m fed up of this caper with you running up the road in the middle of the night, peching and panting. What will the neighbours think?’

  As it turned out my days of this late-night working
were coming to an end. Not because of Mum’s disapproval but by the romantic fact that I was going out with my young man, as Jane Austen might say.

  It all centred on the Empress Ballroom. Every month or so, the owners staged what was called the Big Band Sound and famous dance bands were hired to play at this. During this time, Dundee was fortunate to have the chance to see live such great names as Ted Heath, Johnny Dankworth with Cleo Laine, Ken Mackintosh and the zany Doctor Crock and his Crackpots, among many others.

  Ally and I spent many a happy night listening and dancing to these great bands that up till now had just been names on the wireless. For some reason, Violet and the girls didn’t patronise these evenings and they stayed faithful to their night at the Palais.

  During the day, the restaurant was a hive of activity from the moment it opened its doors until closing time. At nine o’clock in the morning, a throng of customers would surge through the door and descend on to the tables.

  ‘The Bridie Brigade’, we called them. Some mornings, especially after a late night’s dancing, I would view this crowd through a half-asleep haze while keeping, at all times, a wary eye out for the manageress. She frowned on such behaviour but I don’t think she had ever been in a dance hall in her entire life.

  I stood at the side of a table, a small notepad in hand, to await the order, which was sometimes given very curtly. ‘Two teas, two pehs and two cakes,’ said two little no-nonsense women who were regulars and normally sat at the same table every week.

  What a din they made if this table was occupied by someone else! ‘Would you look at that!’ the taller woman would bark in a sharp, yappy voice like a Skye terrier. ‘You would think folk knew we always sit there.’

  Her pal would nod glumly as they both deposited themselves at another table, looking as if they had been asked to go to live on another planet instead of a few feet away.

  On the other hand, some customers took all day to make up their minds. ‘An onion bridie, a plain bridie and a pie with beans. No, wait a minute, make that a bridie with beans and make sure it’s the onion bridie and a plain bridie on its own. Forget about the pie but bring three teas and three sair haids efter our bridies.’