Carn (9 page)

Through the open door of the Golden Chip Bob Dylan shouted that he’d got no secrets to conceal, the girls from The Park draped across the shimmering chrome of the jukebox
as if they were trying to climb inside his very words.

Sadie tensed as she saw them come in. He was with them. “There you are Sadie,” called Una. “Here Dave, you sit down there beside Sadie.”

He smiled and sat beside her. She reddened. They ordered coffees and after that the conversation wandered to where she had hoped it would, to the beaches of Brighton where a phalanx of
motorcycles stood outside a hotel, leather-jacketed rockers fondling chains as they faced the oncoming mods in their knee-length parkas. “I love the Beatles,” he said. “I’ve
got all their albums.”

Albums he calls them, thought Sadie. Not records. Or long players. Or elpees. Albums.

“Those rockers, they would really do for you,” said Carol, tapping ash into the tray.

“What’s this about you being in a group?” Una said cheekily to him. “Are you?”

He nodded. “The Trygons. We play The Stones. And The Who. And our own songs.”

“They’re fab,” said Carol.

Afterwards they set off for the carnival dance, linking each other, smoking cigarettes and singing. Reared in the teeming surburbs of London, they had more to worry them than sour old men and
crotchetty women so for their benefit they wiggled their hips and sang even louder. Dave walked on ahead, trying to make sense of his new surroundings, the tiny shops and littered streets. Down at
the carnival, mock screams carried upward into the navy blue sky, sparks from the dodgems fantailed above the cacophony, Frank Sinatra crooned from a hanging loudspeaker, his intimacy wrapping its
arms around the town. The swingboats seemed to stop just short of the moon. They tossed pennies on to chequerboards, Dave picking out a bullseye on a target with one single shot.

The dancers made their way in scattered knots to a marquee decked with coloured lights. “Dancing in a tent?” Dave cried incredulously.

Inside, oil-slicked countrymen clustered together beside the mineral crates, hiding behind the smoke and stealing mouthfuls from hidden whiskey bottles. Girls fawned adoringly over the band. The
singer kicked his instep and winked, pasting back his accordeon-pleated hair. Dave and the girls stared in wonder as if they had come upon a secret commune of Martians. They stared at the six poles
supporting the canvas. They stared at the band’s blazers. They stared at the posters advertising treasure hunts and parish socials. They had tumbled back in time, lost in space at the Carn
annual grand carnival. The locals eyed them viciously as they danced, narrowed their eyes and stood with their arms folded. When Dave went down on this hunkers to do the Woolly Bully with Carol,
they muttered under their breath, “Woolly bully—Woolly Ricky!”

Carried along on the tidal wave of their confidence, Sadie came into her own. She danced for all she was worth, the canvas became the sky over London.

Dave clicked his fingers and mouthed the words of the songs. They danced until the band stood upright with chins out and announced the national anthem. The jealous countrymen at the back hoped
that Dave would give them an excuse to put an end to his cockiness but he didn’t, he stood like the rest and then they walked home, past the padlocked amusements and Sadie Rooney went rigid
when she felt an arm slowly circle about her waist and heard his soft voice say, “Can I walk home with you?”

Sadie looked at the stars above the town and kissed his lips as he said, “See you tomorrow then Sadie, okay?”

She wanted to say tell me more about the band about the tubes about Trafalgar Square about Soho please tell me but she couldn’t. She just looked at him and played with a shirt button, then
watched him walk down the lane and went inside to face her mother.

But when she started into her tirade, for the first time Sadie heard none of it, it was as if she were floating in the vastness of a black sky, adrift like a spaceman from his craft and away
from all that was grey in the town of Carn. Somehow a gap had opened and as her mother ranted, Sadie clutched at the new warmth she was feeling for all she was worth, the words
“insolent” and “discipline” tiny irrelevant lights that winked somewhere miles below her on the earth.

They spent all their time together after that. Carol and Jane fluttered their eyelashes when they appeared, cooing, “’Ere’s the two lovebirds. Where ’ave
you been then?”

Una Lacey took Sadie aside and whispered, “You know what Sadie? They’re all mad jealous in the factory. They say you’ve turned into a snob, that you won’t talk to them.
What do you care about them Sadie?”

Sadie shrugged her shoulders and smiled for she knew that she wouldn’t have to put up with the small, envious minds of Carn for much longer. As she lay on the fairgreen watching Dave
Robinson from Islington fashion daisy chains, she silently embroidered their phrases into her own speech. “Clever clogs,” she said to herself, and “Innit?”

In her mind she was a long way from the fair-green.

And soon she would be further. The strobelights of the The River Club melting on her face. They lay by the lake and boys Sadie knew sidled up to Carol and Jane insisting, “I can swim out
to the island. I can. Would you like me to show you?” They almost cried with frustration when they saw Dave lock his thumbs into the buckle of his hipsters. Such effortlessness was far beyond
them.

“This is ace,” said Dave, “really ace.”

When the first stories reached her ears in the factory canteen, Sadie knew their jealously had got the better of them. They leaned over clandestinely to each other and threw mysterious
expressions in her direction. They raised their voices slightly when they mentioned his name. At first Sadie paid no attention, well aware that any reaction on her part would only whet their
appetites. They folded their arms on their chests and nodded knowingly. They talked behind cupped hands. When Sadie appeared they broke into excited laughter and then went back to their tasks
suddenly.

Resentment began to grow in Sadie. It gnawed at her all day long much as she tried to submerge it. She knew why they were jealous of her. They were jealous because she would not let herself be
stuck in Carn for the rest of her life. They did not want to be shown up so they were turning on her.

“They’re bitches,” she said to Una when the canteen had closed one Friday afternoon. “Imagine making up all those stories. How could they stoop so low?”

Una said nothing, picked at her nail and looked away emptily.

“Do you know what I heard one of them saying in the freezer when she knew I was coming? Why would he bother with the likes of her when he has Surgeon McDonagh’s daughter from Trinity
College chasing him around the town? They’re jealous bitches so they are. Aren’t they Una?”

Una shrugged her shoulders but did not reply.

“They didn’t have to say that,” Sadie went on. “That’s an awful thing to say. I don’t care how jealous they are.”

Una lit a cigarette. She blew out the match and stared at the dead black head for a moment, then said, “It’s true Sadie.”

Sadie felt as if the canteen had suddenly tilted on its side. “What?” she said, her voice trembling. Una dragged on the cigarette and bit her lip. “He was with her after you
left him on Friday night.”

Sadie’s mouth dried up. The smoke seemed to swirl all about her. She felt the redness coming to her face. She awkwardly gathered up the delf and cutlery and tried to smile but she knew Una
could see right into her mind and it froze.

She went back to the factory floor feeling cold but with her face burning. Every exchange between her workmates, no matter how innocent made her want to be sick. She felt as if she had a vile
skin disease she had brought upon herself.

When she was collecting her pay packet in the office that evening, a group of girls behind her purposely knocked against her and said, “Look who’s in front of us—Lady Muck from
London. I wonder where she’s bringing Mr Stuck-up tonight?”

She pushed past them and when she was safely out of sight, she ran from their taunts and when she got home, she swore to herself that it wasn’t true, that somehow Una had got it wrong but
she still couldn’t stop the tears, and when she waited for him on The Diamond that evening she felt as if the whole town was preparing itself for her meeting with Dave Robinson.

A small rowing boat bobbed as Dave stared across the blue mirror of the lake in silence. Sadie tried to steady her voice. “I’ve made a fool of myself. You’ve
made a show of me in front of everyone.”

He did not reply for a long time, then suddenly he turned and said sharply, “I don’t have to listen to you going on like this Sadie. For Christ’s sake, we’re not married
or anything. I only took a girl out a couple of times. Nothing more.”

A fishing reel spun in the distance. Sadie tried to gather her thoughts. All the pictures she had built up in her mind since meeting him now winged away liked birds.

“You take life too seriously anyway Sadie. It’s just a holiday. It’s just a bit of fun.”

He held her by the arms and kissed her on the forehead but she did not feel it for her flesh was like marble and when they walked back to town, she left him when they came to The Diamond for she
could not bear the thought of the eyes peering from the twitching curtains and the shadows of the shop doorways. He squeezed her hand and said goodbye. “Maybe someday you can come over and
hear the Trygons,” he laughed. Sadie just stared blankly after him then turned and walked down the main street, the shadows of the hot summer day all around her.

The first week after that was the hardest. She was hit on the neck by a flying gizzard and did not turn around when she heard one of them say, “He was with a different one on Saturday
night. Talk about being led up the garden path. She’ll be damn glad of us yet.”

Una Lacey consoled her on the way home. “What do you care about him Sadie? There’s plenty more fish in the sea. A fellow with a car, that’s what we want.”

Sadie nodded but it meant nothing to her. When Una asked her if she would be going to the Golden Chip that night, she just shook her head. She felt that none of it was worth fighting any
more.

She would just drift with it and it could take her wherever it would.

Her mother was the first to remark on the change in Sadie after that. She said to her neighbours, “I think Sadie is getting a bit of sense at last. She’s a great help to me about the
house these days.” In the factory too, the change was evident. She did not now turn away when they spoke about a local boy who would be “a good catch”. Nor when they effusively
described house interiors or baby clothes. She became afraid that any lack of interest on her part might prompt a return to the animosity they had harboured towards her in the past. When she
visited the boutique, she no longer automatically chose the brightest clothes but selected something she felt would attract less attention and closer to their taste. The English inflections in her
speech disappeared. She dated boys from the factories and listened attentively as they spoke at length about motor car engines and farm work. When a glittering new engagement ring was proffered in
the canteen, Sadie beamed with the rest in order that she might be drawn closer to them, eager for the protection and security of mundanity. She dreaded a return to the probing eyes and the
whispers of “Look who’s come down in the world then”, to the sweat on her palms and the redness of her face.

When it was announced that one of them was “tying the knot”, they all cheered and Sadie said nothing at all about the empty feeling inside her.

And when she went home and the blackest of moods took her over, there was nothing she wanted to say, to anyone.