The Ballroom on Magnolia Street (16 page)

Kevin McGovern was there, in a white suit and black shirt this time, but he didn’t come over to ask her to dance. Kate smiled at him. He was wearing a metallic silver tie. A dance with Kevin was better than nothing, she reasoned. But Kevin thought that Kate was just being polite. After all, the first time he had tried to chat Kate up, she’d left him dancing with Shirley and then ran out of Hogan’s in tears. He thought he would play it cool for a while. Play hard to get. He walked around the ballroom, nodding his head to the music, trying to look like an easygoing sex symbol. Let Kate Winters get a good look at the merchandise, he thought.

When December eventually arrived, Kate had been jobless for twelve weeks, and the bills were piling up on her bedside table. Shirley lent her fifty pounds but that was just a drop in the bucket. And Kate couldn’t tell her family the truth about her debts because she had lied to them for years about the true cost of her purchases.

‘This top?’ she would say. ‘A fiver in Primark.’ When really it was forty pounds from a designer store. ‘This perfume? Three pounds in the market.’ Not true. Thirty pounds from Chanel. And so on. The chickens had come home to roost – was that the saying?

She was thirty years old, and felt every day of it. She felt ancient, over the hill. Was it legal to wear short skirts when you were thirty, she wondered. Or would people call you ‘mutton dressed as lamb’? Did people still go to discos when they were thirty? To make matters worse, Shirley was wittering on about her precious boyfriend all the time. ‘What should I buy him for Christmas?’ she asked Kate, ten times a day. Kate suggested a white stick and a guide dog, and her mother slapped her on the arm.

‘Make yourself useful,’ she said. ‘Go and get a nice tree for the front room, and get some new decorations while you’re at it. Shirley is bringing her young man home to meet us at seven o’clock.’

‘Why can’t she do it? If it’s for her boyfriend? And it’s only the second of December. It’s too soon for a fresh tree.’

‘You have nothing else to do, you big idle lump! Go on. Get an artificial tree.’ Mrs Winters snapped off the television and jabbed her thumb towards the front door. ‘And get some mince pies and turkey slices. And a pot of cranberry sauce for the sandwiches. And fancy Christmas napkins as well. And check the fairy lights are working. We might need a new set. And –’ But the front door had already banged shut. Kate was furious that she was reduced to running errands for Shirley’s benefit. She would pick the worst tree in Belfast, and the tackiest decorations of all time. She would hang everything on one side of the tree, and pull the wings off the angel. And she would buy ham slices and strawberry jam instead of turkey and cranberry sauce. And plain pink napkins.

When the tree was finally switched on that afternoon, it was a total mess. Kate ran up to her bedroom in fits of hysterical laughter. In fact, she laughed so hard, she fell halfway up and accidentally tore off a small piece of the wallpaper. She threw herself down on her bed, on top of a pile of unpaid bills and laughed until her sides were sore. Now Declan Greenwood would know what kind of family he was getting involved with. A bunch of working-class idiots who couldn’t even hang a few balls on a Christmas tree properly.

But when Kate came back downstairs two hours later, the old tree was in the yard, and a new one was in its place. A six-foot beauty with perfect branches, and sweet white lights shaped like snowflakes. And the decorations were beautiful; tiny angels with real feathers for wings, silver mirror balls and fat silver tinsel. Shirley was laying out neat rows of turkey and cranberry sandwiches on plates covered with jolly Christmas napkins. And the whole house was filled with the smell of mince pies heating gently in the oven.

‘Very funny,’ said Shirley. ‘We all enjoyed your little joke.’

Declan’s first visit was a great success. Shirley was very nervous about bringing him to the house. But she reckoned it was time to let him meet her family. She warned her parents and Kate not to embarrass her in any way. But she needn’t have worried. Declan complimented everything and Mrs Winters was soon simpering like a love-struck schoolgirl. She lapped it up when visitors admired her ornaments and crystal knick-knacks. She told him about each and every one, patiently going through the story of when and why it was purchased or who it was from. Declan was very easy to talk to, not stuffy or stuck-up at all. Mr and Mrs Winters thought he was lovely, and well worth the frantic dash to get the house ready for him.

The next day, Kate and Shirley had a big row. It all began when Kate asked Shirley for a small loan to buy some Christmas presents, and Shirley said that she was sorry but she had spent all her wages on some decent clothes for herself, as Declan had invited her to spend an afternoon with his family. And she wanted to look nice because the Greenwoods lived in a very posh area. And of course, she had to bring them a decent gift. (She’d bought some handmade wine glasses in a craft shop.) Shirley had also bought the long, purple coat she had admired all autumn, and Declan said she looked very sophisticated in it. Especially when she wore purple lipstick to match. She was like a witch. A beautiful witch. He found girls much more attractive when they were wearing elegant clothes and dramatic lipstick than when they were half-naked and plastered with eyeshadow and blusher. Kate was extremely irritated by these revelations, and jealous on so many counts that she lost her temper completely and called Shirley a bore.

‘A bore, did you call me? A bore?’

‘Yes! A bore. A
boring
little relationship-
bore
who can’t do anything without consulting her
boring
boyfriend first. Declan this and Declan that! I’m your sister, Shirley, in case you’ve forgotten. And I’m out of work and broke. And you’re throwing your money away on silly coats to impress your stuck-up boyfriend. You’re way out of your depth.’

Shirley was very angry then and called Kate a miserable sponger who couldn’t even be bothered to get a job and pay her own bills.

‘You needn’t think I’m slaving away at work all week, just to pay for the luxuries piled high in your precious boudoir. You bought them and you can bloody well pay for them. You’re a fine one to lecture me about wasting money. The cheek of you!’

‘You promised me you would help me to pay off the catalogues.’

‘Well, stuff that.’

‘You mean you’re breaking a promise?’

‘Yes, Kate. I am. Get over it. You big baby!’

‘How dare you call me a baby!’

‘You think you can twist me and Ma and Da round your little finger? Well, you can’t, Kate. We’re not afraid of you any more. If you’re really as smart as you’d like to think you are, then why are you still living at home, at your age, jobless, and throwing yourself at gay bouncers?’ Kate’s face flinched as if she had been slapped.

‘He is not
gay
. How dare you even suggest it!’

‘He is surely gay. He practically walks on his tiptoes.’

‘Are you a gay-basher, Shirley Winters? I cannot
believe
you, of all people, would turn out to be a gay-basher.’

‘Not a bit of me. I think he’s cute. But it doesn’t alter the fact that he is a
gay man
and you are a straight woman. Are you blind as well as stupid?’

And then Kate called Shirley a silly tart.

‘Don’t lecture me on love, you silly tart!’

‘What do you mean by that?’ Shirley roared. ‘I’m no tart.’

‘Well, he’s not going out with you for your brains, or your money, is he? Or your fashion-sense. Just what is he getting out of this so-called relationship? Would it be a little bit of
rumpy
, I wonder?’

‘Oh! You’re so
mean
, Kate! It’s none of your bloody business if we sleep together or not. Who the hell do you think you are? We’re in love, you big dope! You know? The L word? You’re just jealous.’

‘Oh, please! I’ve been in love before. A hundred times. Big swing! You’d think you were the only girl in the whole wide world, ever, to snog some fella and think: this is the real thing!’

‘It
is
the real thing.’

‘How do you know? How
would
you know? You’ve no experience of men. You think you’re in love if a fella buys you a glass of lemonade. It’s pathetic.’

‘I just know he loves me. All right? You’ve had more boyfriends than I’ve had hot dinners, and you haven’t managed to hang on to a single one of them. And the only guy who was really nice was Kevin McGovern, and you treated him with contempt. So what the hell do you know about men? You’re the silly one! Not me.’

‘Aw, shut up!’ Kate was tired now.

‘You shut up!’ Shirley was still outraged.

‘Well, go on then, go and grovel to the big snobs on Derryvolgie Avenue. Leave me here, watching the blasted TV with Mum and Dad all night. Be sure you don’t use the wrong knife and fork and I hope you have the time of your life!’

Kate stamped upstairs and slammed her bedroom door. She lay on her bed and had a little cry. Shirley would be up in a minute to apologize, she told herself. Kate waited and waited, dabbing at her face with a tissue. When Shirley didn’t come upstairs to say sorry, Kate began to worry. Maybe her diva ways were beginning to lose their power. Even her parents weren’t that bothered when she lost her job. The time was, they would have barged into the building and demanded to speak to the manager, and threatened to sue the entire department for upsetting their little girl. But they had mellowed a lot in recent years. They must be feeling their age, Kate thought. Age! She was thirty, unemployed and single. It was a chant in her head that would not stop. She sat up suddenly and dried her eyes with the sleeve of her velvet cardigan. She felt very alone. What could she do? The answer was simple: Kevin McGovern.

She got herself dressed up nicely on Monday morning and went for a walk past Kevin’s garage. Kevin knew a lot of business people in the neighbourhood. He might know of a job going someplace, without Kate having to humiliate herself in the job centre again. He was sitting on a deckchair, just inside the garage doors, having a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich. He was almost afraid to speak to Kate, since she had run out on him in the ballroom, but Kate was the one who stopped and smiled this time. She leaned against the wall and waved in at him. Kevin almost dropped his sandwich onto the oily floor.

‘Kate Winters! How are you doing?’

‘Kevin, how’s yourself?’

‘Working away. The usual, you know. How’s the office treating you?’

‘I’ve left there, now. I’m looking for something else.’

‘Is that right?’ He stood up and rubbed his hands clean on the sides of his overalls. He did know of a few local jobs, as it happened. His brain went into overdrive. This was a great opportunity to help Kate. But he didn’t want to waste the chance of getting close to her himself.

‘Do you happen to know of anything going, in the area? I’m very flexible and open-minded.’

Kevin’s mind exploded with this notion. He decided to offer Kate a job, even if he had to work an extra day each week to afford her wages.

‘I’m looking for somebody, myself. That place is in an awful mess.’ He nodded in the direction of his large, but dingy office, and looked at Kate, hopefully. ‘I usually do my own paperwork at the weekends, but it’s fairly piling up on me.’

‘Well, look no further. I’m your woman. How would you fancy me for your new office-girl?’ Kevin’s face blushed as pink as one of his London-bought suits.

‘Aw, that’s great. That’s just great. Come on in, I’ll show you round.’

‘There’s the small matter of references… I should tell you, there was a slight problem at my old place. A clash of personalities, as it were.’

‘Not to worry! I’ll not bother myself with references. When can you start?’

‘Tomorrow morning?’

‘That’s just fantastic. It will save me from having to train up a stranger.’ He led the way into the gloomy garage, and Kate knew, before she’d even seen the office, that she was soon to know what shoddy filing really was. Still, Kevin wasn’t the worst of them. He’d be a nicer boss than old Bingham the Battleaxe. Kevin wouldn’t know a time-sheet from a smack in the mouth.

‘Here is the nerve-centre of the whole operation,’ said Kevin, and he opened the door slowly.

‘It’s very nice,’ said Kate, eyeing a scene of utter devastation. In the semi-darkness of the room, she could make out enormous piles of paper and car manuals, hundreds of car parts and even a few worn tyres. All of it, white with the dust of years.

‘Anything you’d like to ask me?’

‘Yes. I’ll take the job on one condition.’

‘Name it.’

‘I want to revamp this office. Paint, carpet, desks, chairs. Proper storage, some pictures. Lighting. New kettle and mugs. About two thousand pounds should do it.’

‘Sure.’ He had his chequebook out in a second. ‘I’ve been meaning to get the place done up, but I don’t have the time. Or the taste. Tell you what, just do whatever you want.’

‘Righto,’ said Kate.

I usually do, she thought. And she winked at him.

17. Angels’ Wings, Engagement Rings

Kate’s new job was an absolute godsend. She worked day and night on bringing Kevin’s garage into the twentieth century. It was a great outlet for Kate’s many talents, of which spending money was the most outstanding. She even had new windows designed for the old building, which made it much warmer. And she created a cosy little coffee area, with a lime-green sofa and pink scatter-cushions, a low table with a glass top and a pretty standard lamp of a 1950s’ design. It was like a little oasis of style in the otherwise masculine dreariness, Kate liked to think. Anyway, it was gorgeous. She spent days sorting through the paperwork, some of it more than twenty years out of date. The tyres and car parts she consigned to the back of the garage.

The revamp of the office was a resounding success. Kevin was delighted. He surveyed the new filing system carefully, to show Kate how pleased he was. It would save him hours of time, he told her, being so organized. And even though the fancy coffee area wasn’t strictly necessary, it was nice to have somewhere clean and stylish to enjoy his cheese sandwich at lunchtime. Kate placed her new desk beside the window, so that she could look out over the street. And Kevin loved to see her there as he talked to clients on the forecourt. She was like a princess in her tower, he thought, and he was her knight in shining armour. Well, her knight in oily overalls.