The Palace of Strange Girls

by Sallie Day

  “And what about Ruth?”

  “Ruth’s well looked after. She’s got what she wanted. I wasn’t for selling our old terrace but she got her own way in the finish. I don’t think she’s really wanted me for a long time. There were a rough few weeks in the summer after she heard I’d been spotted with a lass. I did try to tell her about Eleni a month ago but she turned away, wouldn’t listen. Told me whatever it was, this time she didn’t want to know.”

  Jack shrugs and Dougie shakes his head. Together they raise their glasses.

  “Well, I’ll be glad to see the back of the fifties. Here’s to 1960! All the best, Jack.”

  “All the best, Dougie.”

  Moorlands, Boundary Drive, Blackburn,

  December 30, 1959

  It is a Saturday like any other. Helen is off campaigning in Manchester and Ruth is out shopping as usual. The house is silent in a way that the old terrace on St. Cuthbert’s Street never was. Moorlands has been finished with fitted carpets so the rooms no longer echo, but still there’s a sensation of emptiness. Jack sits down and polishes the family’s shoes under the pitiless glare of a state-of-the-art strip light. This kitchen is bigger but not as cozy as the one in their old terrace. Central heating and clean white radiators have replaced the once familiar open fire and rumbling back boiler.

  Jack avoids sitting on the white tubular steel chairs with yellow wipe-clean seats and instead perches on his old wooden shoe-cleaning box. It was cobbled together years ago from old planks liberated from his father’s allotment. Ruth urged him to “lose it” when they moved house, but Jack refused. The shoebox belongs to him, you wouldn’t catch Ruth volunteering to clean the family’s shoes: it’s his job; always has been, since the day they got married. Jack is content to do the shoes, he finds it therapeutic. There’s a comfort in setting time aside once a week to make things right, to polish over the evidence of casual scrapes, brush away mud garnered from footpaths and dust from gutters, to restore the shine on scuffed shoes. Whether the damage is collateral or direct, visible or hidden, Jack has learned that some damage defies repair—however skilled the hand that tries. As Nibs would have it, some things can’t be saved.

  It has been a busy six months since the holiday in Blackpool. Ruth has pinned up a photograph on the new notice board. It was taken on the first day of the holiday by a photographer on Blackpool prom. Jack has his arms round both girls, Beth in her shorts and woolen sweater squints at the camera while Helen fluffs out her skirt. Ruth is clad in her raincoat and scarf despite the sunshine. Looking at it now it seems to Jack like a record of a different life. So much has changed. Beneath him, in the dark recesses of the wooden box, covered by rags and tins of polish, is a brown envelope that holds, with a modest fold of ten-pound notes and Eleni’s latest letter, the start of a future for Jack that makes the present more bearable. The icy relationship with Ruth since her discovery of his infidelity has thawed only slightly. They remain polite at all times, but Ruth has made it clear that any intimacy is over for good. If truth were told, Jack has accepted this more easily than she had expected. It doesn’t appear to have bothered him at all.

  Where once he only had sad memories of Eleni, Jack now has a future with her to think about. He knows he won’t lose his daughters. Ruth is happy with her brand-new semi.

  Jack sighs and turns his attention back to the shoes. Beth’s lace-ups are so small that it’s easier to hold the shoe in the palm of his hand as he rubs in the brown polish. He is not a sentimental man, yet the sight of the short blunt toes makes his throat ache. He runs the rag a second time across the leather and looks up when he hears his younger daughter throwing her weight against the back door. The door gives way unexpectedly and she stumbles across the threshold, her lips and cheeks red from the exercise. It occurs to Jack that his younger daughter, despite her mother’s constant anxious attentions, is developing into a highly voluble and determined tomboy. Beth turns in the doorway and drags her right heel against the back step to lever off her wellington boot. In doing so she manages to spread a generous layer of mud everywhere but on the mat provided. Undeterred, she performs the same maneuver with her left boot, kicking it out on to the path.

  “Shouldn’t those boots go in the garage?” Jack asks.

  “Do it later,” Beth replies as she slides across the newly tiled floor in her stocking feet and cannons into her father’s knee.

  “Where have you been, Sputnik?”

  “Taking next door’s dog out.”

  “Who? Sandy? Does your mum know?”

  “Waited till she went out.”

  Jack’s smile widens. He catches his daughter round the waist and polishes her nose with his rag.

  “Dad!”

  “Your mum said you’ve got homework this weekend.”

  “I always have homework. Ever since they moved me back into class A.”

  “But aren’t you happy to be back?”

  “No. I liked it in class B. It was nice.”

  “But what about your Eleven Plus?”

  “Don’t care. They don’t have to do homework in class B.”

  Beth gets down from his knee by way of protest and slides away across the kitchen, banging into the fitted sink as hard as she can. The stainless steel shudders with the impact. Jack reflects on the uproar Ruth had caused when the school decided that Beth had fallen so far behind that it would be better if she were moved to the lower stream. She was duly moved, but Mr. Hartley’s professional opinion was no match for Ruth’s maternal ambition. She protested to the headmaster, followed by the school governors and finally the Local Education Office, and Beth was moved back to class 4A. Beth might not like it, but family pride was restored. Jack watches as his younger daughter gets herself a glass of milk and a biscuit. She is forced to balance on the bottom drawer of the kitchen unit in order to reach the biscuit barrel which, like the Kenwood Chef, is kept at the back of the wipe-clean counter top. The fridge, with its stiff handle and tight door, requires a good yank to open and a hard slam to shut.

  Jack is about to protest when he catches sight of Beth’s face and changes his mind. “Never mind, Sputnik. Cheer up, I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  “What? What have you got?”

  Jack slips his hand into his pocket. “I’ve got a letter here. It came this morning. It’s addressed to…” Jack pauses and lifts the envelope out of range of Beth’s hands. “It’s addressed to Miss Elizabeth Singleton, Moorlands, Boundary Drive, Blackburn.” Jack turns the letter over. “Well, blow me down! It’s from Big Chief I-Spy. Shall I open it for you?”

  Beth’s face is transformed with excitement. “No! Let me, let me. I can do it.” She grabs the letter and tears it open. A single feather floats down and lands on the kitchen floor, followed by a white card covered in copperplate writing. Beth yelps with delight and, poking the feather in her hair, pounces on the certificate: “I’ve done it! I’m in the club,” she yells. “I’m in the club. Big Chief I-Spy says I’m in his club!” She dances towards him, waving the card. Jack catches her in his arms and, heedless of her screams, whirls her round and round until, it seems, the whole world spins with them.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to the following people for their help:

  Susannah Godman for seeing the possibilities in the manuscript which arrived on her desk, for her ideas, enthusiasm, and complete professionalism.

  Clare Smith for her suggestions and her light editorial touch, both of which served to make the book far better than it would otherwise have been.

  Novelist and tutor Suzannah Dunn, who kindly read and commented on the opening chapters—as did Rosemary Howell, Glenis Stafford, Bill Pickup, Dorothy Hurtley and Maureen Ashworth.

  Julia Johnson for her patient support.

  And my thanks to my American publishers for their faith in the novel and in particular to Caryn Karmatz Rudy for her enthusiasm and patience.

  Reading Group Guide

  Discussion Questions

  1.
What role does the setting of Blackpool play in this novel? Can you draw parallels between this locale and economic and social climate in England with those in U.S. history? How about with present-day American life?

  2. What do you think the function of Beth’s I-Spy book is? Can you relate her game to one that was prominent in your own childhood? How does Day’s use of excerpts as chapter headers affect the movement of each chapter and the flow of the novel as a whole?

  3. What are the similarities between Beth and Helen? The differences? Which do you find a more sympathetic character?

  4. Why does the author set this novel during the annual holiday? What similarities can you draw between the Singleton’s vacation and a summer trip in the U.S.?

  5. Day describes the birth of Beth to us on pages 162–63. What do you make of Ruth’s staunch desire for a son and her subsequent reaction to the birth of her second daughter? How might you relate this scene to Ruth’s actions at the flashback of Beth’s surgery?

  6. How does Beth change after her one-on-one encounter with the Tiger Lady? What do you think the title of this book means to or does for her? What sort of “palaces of strange girls” can you think of in your own life?

  7. How do the roles of friends function in this book? Think about Cora, Doug and Connie. How does this compare to the function of your own friends? What does it say that Beth is the only Singleton without a go-to pal?

  8. Why doesn’t Jack tell Ruth about the jobs he’s been offered? Further, why is he more eager to tell her about his long-lost Greek lover than about these offers?

  9. Spending time with his daughter, Jack describes different sorts of cloths to Beth—seersucker, chintz, brocade (pages 215–19). Thinking about how he describes each of these weaves, could this scene be a metaphor for other happenings in this novel?

  10. When Day writes that “Jack is a fervent believer in cotton” (page 169), what else do you think she may mean by that statement? Holding this description of Jack up to the scene of Ruth buying the rose-printed foreign fabric, what deeper ideas do you discover about their characters?

  11. Why do you think Jack ultimately sleeps with Connie? Is he alone responsible for this infidelity? How is he able to retain our sympathy thereafter, if at all?

  12. If the book were to continue slightly further in time, what do you think would become of Ruth and Jack’s relationship based on the emotional state of each of them at the end of the book? What about Jack and Eleni?

  13. We learn in the epilogue that Helen plans to attend University. What effect does her experience with Alan Clegg have on this decision?

  14. How have the individual members of the Singleton family changed during the holiday? Can you think of a short experience in your own life that had a great impact on you?

  Hello, Reader. I’m so pleased that this book has caught your eye. My American editor suggested that I write a few lines, but I discovered that I couldn’t write about the origins of this novel without telling a little of my own story.

  I had always thought I would like to write, but the opportunity arose only in my fifties after both my children left home and I had the leisure to attempt a novel. Several things came together to persuade me to write THE PALACE OF STRANGE GIRLS. I was born in Lancashire, England, and decided to revisit my hometown after an absence of thirty years. I found an overwhelming change in the character of the town. As a child I could climb the sides of the valley and look down across a landscape packed with countless smoking cotton mill chimneys. When I returned there were just two or three mills left, all the rest had been shut down and abandoned in the sixties when the Lancashire cotton industry collapsed. When I walked along beside the canal where many of the older mills had stood, I found that only one of the mills now remained. It happened to be one of the mills that my father ran—his most successful mill, the “jewel in the crown.” I knew the inside of this mill from the time I was a child of seven. I had walked through the weaving shed when it was in full production and there were lines of looms for as far as I could see. I can remember the mixture of terror and excitement when I caught sight of so many looms, the heat so intense that I was covered in sweat within moments. Apart from the terrific noise of clashing beams rolling belts and the air full of lint I remember a smell of oil so pungent that I could almost taste it. I have a memory too of comparing raw samples of Egyptian and American cotton and being told that Sea Island was the finest cotton in the world because it had the longest staple and was easy to spin and weave. Top quality Egyptian cotton ran a close second. All these memories came flooding back when I looked at the deserted mill. I was struck by the fact that a whole way of life ended when the mills closed—the community of mill workers and their families was changed forever.

  My family lived in what was called a “two-up two-down” terraced house in the town—that is, a back kitchen and a front room downstairs, and two bedrooms upstairs. No central heating, no television and no fitted carpets. It might be hard nowadays for readers to appreciate how the whole family, the clothes we wore, the house we lived in, even our annual holidays— every part of our lives was dominated by the mill, its products and the state of business. My father, like Jack Singleton, lived and breathed cotton. He brought home material samples, broken loom drives, design sheets, work sheets, piece work calculations. I was used to the sight of my father’s work boots in the scullery and the smell of raw cotton on his blue serge overalls. He was very much a “self-made man.” He left school at fourteen with no qualifications and went straight into the mill as an apprentice setting up and mending looms. By the age of forty-five he was appointed Managing Director of the company with responsibility for half a dozen mills. As he became more successful we moved on from the cozy terraced house and annual holidays in Blackpool. The relative innocence and simplicity of life in the fifties was left far behind.

  All these memories and the sight of the derelict mill added to an interest in the fifties convinced me to start writing. Once the idea had taken root the characters very much decided the direction of the story. Jack Singleton quickly ceased to bear any resemblance to my father and became a character in his own right. I’m sometimes asked who is my favorite character in the book; people are surprised when I say how fond I am of Connie. I spent some time working in hotels in my teens and Connie is an amalgam of several waitresses I met and who became friends. But my favorite has to be Tiger Woman, who appeared so late in the story. I admire her rejection of respectability and her compassion for Beth. Despite having loving parents, it is Tiger Woman who gives Beth the comfort and inspiration that she so desperately needs. As a result of this meeting Beth begins to appreciate that the world doesn’t end if you break a few rules—it just starts getting more exciting. This is a regular theme in my writing.

  Writing the novel was a delight and involved several trips back to Blackpool and lots of time spent looking through books that dealt with fifties fashions, attitudes, food and so forth. I still have a great affection for the resort. When there was discussion as to where the English edition of the novel should be launched I asked for it to be in Blackpool. I’m told that Atlantic City is a traditional blue-collar resort in the U.S. and filled a similar role to Blackpool in the fifties.

  I hope that readers get a sense of the North of England in general and Blackpool in particular. The novel deals with some of the problems facing families in the fifties—problems that are still apparent today with the closure of industries, the difficulties marriage presents, and the stresses that surround illness in the family.

  And if my readers are inspired like Beth to break a few rules and start fighting back, then so much the better!

 

 

 
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