The Ballroom on Magnolia Street (30 page)

He would drive to Newcastle, and walk along the beach for a while and think of the many wind-blown picnics he had shared there with his grandparents. (Sand in the sandwiches, and lukewarm tea in plastic cups.) He would skim stones across the bay, and hop across the rock pools. He would call into a hotel for lunch and one small whiskey, and maybe even put some loose change into the slot machines in the amusement arcades.

Johnny wasn’t a gambling man, but tonight, he would take the biggest gamble of his life. It was a plan he had entertained and dismissed dozens of times during the last few days. And he knew that Marion and Eddy would be furious with him. But he was going to keep his promise. He wouldn’t tell Declan who he was. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t give the lad a legacy of some kind. So, he had adapted his plan slightly. He
was
going to give Declan the family business: the ballroom and all the goodwill he had built up through the years. In a raffle.
A fixed raffle
. Declan could sell the site to fund his medical studies or pay for his first home; or he could run the business himself if he wanted to. He was a grown man of twenty. He could make up his own mind. And Johnny would see if he liked America enough to retire there. And if not, he would come home and live in Portstewart with his grandparents, and maybe run a little ice-cream parlour, or a chip shop. Something like that, where he could still meet people every day. It was a good plan.

Only weeks before, Eileen had made him promise that he would never sell the ballroom. Not ever, for any reason. But she had not said he could not
give it away
. So, it would not be a betrayal of Eileen Hogan’s trust. Or his late parents’ memory. And Eddy Greenwood couldn’t accuse him of trying to buy Declan’s love. He would not tell Declan who he really was. No one in the city knew that Johnny and Declan were connected in any way. His romance with Marion was long forgotten. It would seem, to everyone, like a genuine prize draw. Declan’s ticket to the Goodbye Disco was also going to be the winning ticket in the draw. Number 742.

And Marion could do nothing about it, either. No lawyer could find fault with the draw or prove it had been fixed. Johnny was going to put his hand in the ticket drum, and pull out the winning ticket from his shirt cuff. Marion and Eddy couldn’t publicly accuse him of fixing the raffle without revealing their precious secret. Declan would be the new and rightful owner of the business. He was twenty years of age. A legal adult. His overprotective mother could not intervene. She had cheated Johnny out of his son; and twenty years’ worth of love and good times. Because of her obsession with respectability, and all that middle-class nonsense. But she could not cheat Declan out of his rightful inheritance.

There would be a few other prizes, smaller ones, to make it look good and sustain the party atmosphere. A few bottles of wine and whiskey, some money prizes, a huge and showy trophy for the best costume. But the highlight of the night would be the surprise announcement of a Grand Draw. For the ballroom, itself. And no one knew a thing about it. It was going to be a fantastic note on which to end Johnny’s career in the entertainment industry.

‘I hope you’ve all held on to your tickets, tonight, as advised,’ said Johnny, to the hall mirror. ‘Hold on to your hats, ladies and gentlemen, because you won’t believe what the main prize is!’ Johnny filled up his cheeks with air and held his breath for a few seconds before letting it out. Wow! Talk about going out on a high!

Then, he buffed up his blue suede shoes, ran a comb through his hair, and danced down the steps towards his beloved Lincoln Continental, which was waiting for him in the garage behind the house.

27. Accusations, Palpitations

Kate sat down gently on her handbag-festooned bed, and sighed a sigh that came all the way up from her white leather shoes. This little bedroom had been her refuge and her sanctuary for thirty years. Surrounded by her lovely things, and with the homely sounds of her mother rattling pans in the kitchen downstairs, it was the one place where she had always felt safe. When the local news was full of sickening murders and rising unemployment statistics, it was the one thing that did not disappoint. Kate had closed her mind to the Troubles, and to other sad things, all her life. Like so many other people who were bewildered by the violence that raged all around them, she had emotionally left Belfast years ago; and lived her life in a bubble of new handbags and temporary love affairs and glamorous television programmes.

She now realized her mother and father had done the same; her father retreated to his garden when he was frightened by the sectarian killings, and her house-proud mother busied herself with her many china ornaments and tasselled cushions. They went to their work in the hospital each day, and patiently cleaned up after the doctors and nurses. Even when they saw the tattered remains of people who were once young and strong being carried into hospital, they said nothing. They felt nothing. They just got out their mops and cloths and cleaned away the blood. Shirley had often asked them why they didn’t move away to England or the Irish Republic, and start a new life in a peaceful place. But they’d just shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Sure, why would we do that? We don’t belong there. We’d be nothing but immigrants, to the end of our days.’ Kate thought being an immigrant was not nearly as bad as having to walk to school over broken glass and burnt pavements, but as a child she was powerless to leave the city on her own.

An enormous bunch of white roses stood on Kate’s dressing table in a tall, glass vase. Yet another gift from Kevin. Roses were the most beautiful flowers in the world. Kate loved them with a passion. How like Kevin to be so considerate, when he had already spent a king’s ransom on the home improvements! The day he gave her the roses, they’d made love properly for the first time, in Kevin’s double bed. It wasn’t too bad. He did his best to satisfy her. But as she lay smiling in his arms, it was the gorgeous new headboard in their bedroom she was thinking of; not him. Kate wished she fancied him a little bit more. He did have superb legs: fully rounded muscular thighs, neat, hairless kneecaps and slender, shapely ankles. Even his feet were very acceptable; small white toenails and no bulging blue veins visible anywhere, like some men had. Normally, she’d have found a lover like Kevin a real bonus, but there was something missing. Excitement! She wanted to feel a leap in her heart when he began to unbutton his shirt! She wanted to tremble with anticipation, instead of dread.

But she had more or less resigned herself to the marriage. She liked Kevin as a friend; and loved him enough to marry him. They got on well together. But the doubts were still there. She knew they should talk about it and maybe see a counsellor. But it seemed easier to go through with the wedding now, than to start backing out at this late stage. The half of Belfast knew the tale of how Kate Winters and Kevin McGovern had suddenly fallen so completely in love, that after only
days
into their relationship, they’d decided to get married. One of the neighbours knew a woman who cleaned the floors at the TV station, and she got her to put the word around the canteen about the lovebirds from the Lisburn Road. There was talk of star reporter Pamela Ballantine turning up on the doorstep with a camera crew, but so far, there was no sign of Pamela’s elegant silver shell suit. Mrs Winters was forever polishing her many ornaments in the front room, just in case. And she never let her domestic stockpile of Mr Kipling cakes fall below twenty boxes. It was hungry work making documentaries, she said.

Kevin was going to make a good husband. Kate told herself that constantly. She would be mad to call off the wedding, just because she wasn’t all moon-faced and soppy about him, like Shirley was about Declan. She was going to marry him on 21 April, and worry about the lovemaking and the babies later on. Some people said that most men only found their wives attractive for the first couple of years anyway, and that after the ‘honeymoon period’ was over, they’d rather lie in front of the television watching sport for sixteen hours a day and drinking beer and getting fat. It seemed to be a universal fact that once a few babies had been born, the chemistry that had attracted couples to each other in the first place had to be passed on to some other newly-weds.

Kate asked Shirley if she believed in the theory of short-lived attraction. Under a deluge of tough questioning, Shirley finally admitted that she would definitely fancy Declan until the day she died. Yes, even if he put on a bit of weight or if his hairline began to recede. Yes! Even when they were both old, she’d love him just as much. Good grief. Kate still had to come to terms with being old, in general. Never mind old, and in love! Would Shirley still fancy Declan in heaven? Yes. If there
was
a heaven, or an afterlife of any kind, she’d still fancy him. Then Shirley went all starry-eyed and declared that even if they were only wisps of smoke in a faraway universe, she’d find him and they’d drift on, together. (What utter nonsense. Kate wasn’t thinking that far ahead.)

The wedding was only days away. Kate’s dress, that gold-coloured and heavily beaded explosion of a thing, was hanging on the wardrobe door. The neckline was so low it would give the priest a heart attack. Well, tough Cheddar to him! Women had been pushed around for centuries: ravished in private, covered up in public. Made to feel ashamed of their bodies and their sexual needs. Why the big fuss about pure white dresses, anyway, when the whole congregation knew the happy couple were going straight upstairs to the honeymoon suite of the hotel, to throw their finery on the carpet and make love all night? Wasn’t that the sole point of the entire operation? The human race couldn’t continue without lovemaking; and it was time for polite society to admit it. Wedding rings or no wedding rings. Shirley was correct about that, as she had been right about a lot of things, recently. (Which was a little bit sickening.) Well, Kate might have her doubts about her future husband, but she was dead set on the dress. She was very proud of her figure, especially her chest, and she was determined to show it off.

The only problem was, the dress was so lavish it would make poor Shirley look like Kate’s bridesmaid, a fact that Mrs Winters had lost no time in pointing out. Well, Shirley said that was pure rubbish. Both dresses were absolutely gorgeous. And it was good to have different dresses. They weren’t identical twins, after all. So the gold dress was given Martha’s blessing. And Kate had agreed to carry a posy of yellow roses, to match Shirley’s sunflowers. And their two friends from the dole office had been rigged out with yellow dresses as well. They’d bought them from another bridal shop, worried that Marion would get fed up with giving out gowns for free. So, all in all, the wedding group looked very artistic and upmarket. And even Mrs Winters had to agree that pink satin had been done to death. Mr Winters said nothing at all about the style choices of his daughters. He said a dress was a dress at the end of the day; and he was only worried that the two grooms would do a runner and make bloody fools of them all. Kate told him to cheer up and pay up. So he produced his chequebook, blew the dust off it and paid for the flowers, like the dutiful father he truly was.

Next to the wardrobe, on Kate’s cosy bedroom armchair, lay a tall tiara with crystal droplets, a pair of gold satin shoes, a matching draw-string dolly bag, a pearly choker with seven rows of pearls on it, a frilly garter, a set of designer lingerie, and a new bottle of Chanel perfume,
and
the keys to Kevin’s (thoroughly renovated) house. Beside the roses on the dressing table were two large tickets to the last disco in Hogan’s. A very fancy design from the printers, too, with scalloped edges. Kate’s name and Kevin’s name were clearly handwritten on numbers 334 and 335, respectively. A note on the bottom of the tickets read:
Admittance will be refused unless ticket is presented
.

Kevin was coming round an hour early, to take her out for a quiet drink before the disco began. He had thrown himself into the role of fiancé, recently. So much so, that Kate was beginning to feel suffocated. She saw him at work, of course. And he was phoning and calling round every single evening, sometimes
twice
an evening. He had agreed to all of Kate’s plans for the wedding. He had booked a luxury honeymoon, and he had agreed to wear a gold-coloured suit, with a diamanté brooch at his neck, instead of a tie. The brooch was the size of a saucer, with dangly bits swinging from it. Yellow and pink stones. It would put Liberace to shame, but no matter. It was Kate’s special day, and Kevin was willing to do whatever he had to do, to make her happy.

(Kevin didn’t like his outfit. It was way over the top, even by his standards. Lucky old Declan was getting away with a black suit, a white shirt and a blue tie. Anyway, never mind! Kevin was just looking forward to two weeks with Kate, in a private chalet in Barbados. Never mind the glass floor where you could watch the fish swimming under the chalet – he wouldn’t be taking his eyes off Kate’s tiny waist or her raspberry-pink nipples for any length of time.)

Kate was thinking about the honeymoon, too. She was worried sick about it, and she didn’t know why. If only she could feel the thrill that she used to feel.

For heaven’s sake, she thought, Shirley was slaving away at work, through the tiredness and the strawberry cravings, through the evil looks from Miss Bingham, through the fussing and fretting of her future mother-in-law who thought she should resign and let them buy her a house. And not one word of complaint out of her; she was as cool as a freezer full of polar bears.

Yet here was Kate Winters, spoilt madam and complete flake – having doubts about her wedding to a lovely, reasonable, caring man. There must be something seriously wrong with her, Kate decided. A brain tumour, or brain cancer, or a leaking artery that was making it so hard for her to think clearly. Shirley said she should go to the doctor again and ask for some more tests. It was probably a blood-sugar thing. Diabetes, maybe? Kate might ask for a leaflet about women and alcohol, as well, just in case her symptoms were alcohol-related.