The Grace Girls (7 page)

Kirsty swallowed the bite of bacon she was eating. ‘Of course I was tired,’ she said in a high voice, ‘and so would you be tired if you were dancing and singing on the stage for half the night, not to mention havin’ to wrestle a toastin’ fork off of a wee nyaff that was ready to stab everybody in sight.’

‘What?’ Sophie said, dropping the spatula back into the frying pan. ‘Was he jokin’ or was he seriously trying to attack people?’

‘Very serious,’ Kirsty said. ‘He was a right bad little bugger.’

‘Language! Language!’ Lily laughed, her eyes dancing with delight.

Sophie shot her blonde-headed daughter a warning glance.

‘It’s the only way to describe him,’ Kirsty protested. ‘He was a bad little –’

‘What happened?’ Heather asked, her knife and fork coming to rest on her plate.

‘Och, he was after Martin Kerr over some nonsense to do with the minibus. God knows what would have happened if I hadn’t grabbed the toasting fork out of his hand.’ Her eyes suddenly grew large. ‘I noticed that the fork was really sharp, and later on when I showed it to the lads in the band they said he had the ends of the prongs filed to a sharp point.’

‘Oh, I’m not happy about that carry-on at all,’ Sophie said, shaking her head. She came over to the table, frying pan in hand, to put a fried egg on top of the bacon and sausages on each girl’s plate. ‘It sounds far too dangerous a place for you to be singing in. Does your father know what kind of place it is?’

Kirsty shrugged, thinking now that it wasn’t such a good idea to have mentioned the trouble at the club. ‘Och, it’s not always like that,’ she back-pedalled. ‘Most of the time it’s absolutely fine.’

‘Anyway,’ Lily said, reaching a small hand across the table to Heather, ‘what time d’you think you’ll get back from Wishaw?’

Heather gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘What time is the practice?’

‘Three,’ Lily said, and then held her breath.

Chapter 8

Heather got off the bus at the Household department store in Wishaw, walked briskly down to the lights and then made her way across the busy road and down to Stead and Simpson’s shoe shop. She checked her watch – it was only half past one, and she wasn’t meeting Liz until quarter past two. She had plenty of time to get everything done by then, so they could sit and have a good gab before getting the bus home for the dancing practice.

Kirsty had said she was coming in with her right up until the last minute, when one of the band called at the door to say they were having a final rehearsal for the competition that night. ‘It’ll only be an hour or two,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back as quick as I can and then we can both run into Wishaw together. I need to get new pink shoes to match my stage outfit for tonight.’

‘I can’t wait until after you’ve finished to go shopping,’ Heather had told her, rolling her eyes to the kitchen ceiling. ‘Wee Lily will have a fit if I don’t get back in time for the country dancing practice.’

Kirsty’s face had fallen. ‘Will you get me the shoes? I w
ouldn’t ask normally . . . but I really need them for tonight.’

‘You wouldn’t ask normally?’ Heather had repeated in an incredulous voice. ‘Last week it was an underskirt and the
week before it was a handbag.’ She had paused, tossing h
er wavy dark hair over one shoulder and then giving a loud sigh. ‘What kind of shoes?’

‘I’ll write it down,’ Kirsty had said, swiftly moving over to the kitchen window ledge to rummage in a green, marble-effect vase full of pens, pencils, screwdrivers, knitting needles and odds and ends. She had found a sharp pencil, and then went into the cutlery drawer to find the small notebook that Sophie kept there for taking down people’s instructions for her sewing.

‘First choice is the pink patent stilettos that they had in Stead and Simpson’s window last week, or pink sling-backs with a high heel from the Household. If they’ve sold out in pink I’ll just take black to match the top.’

‘Size four?’ Heather had said, her brows raised in question.

‘Aye,’ Kirsty had said, grinning. ‘And I’ll give you a loan of them at Christmas if you have anything special on.’

The shoe shop was packed and Heather stifled a sigh as she had to join the end of a queue of about a dozen chairs. Eventually, a sour-faced assistant came to her. Heather gave her the description of the patent shoes, and an eternity later the woman came from the back of the shop holding up the pink stilettos in one hand and the white cardboard box in the other. ‘That them?’ the woman said, with a deadpan expression, taking one of the shoes out of the box and holding it up.

‘Size four?’ Heather checked.

‘That’s whit ye said, wasn’t it?’ the assistant snapped. ‘I’m hardly goin’ to get ye a size eight, am I?’

Heather forced herself to smile ingratiatingly at the rude assistant, whilst seething inside. She handed over Kirsty’s money and then waited for the change and for the woman to wrap the shoe-box in brown paper and laboriously tie the package with string. After that, she made her way further down Main Street to the relatively cheap, but fashionable, ladies’ shop where she and Kirsty had an account. This enabled them to buy new things as they came into the shop, and pay them off on a weekly basis. This was another job that fell to Heather, as she was in the town every day for work. And she knew that if she left it to Kirsty, there would be weeks when she wouldn’t make it in to keep the account up to date.

Sometimes skirts and blouses had to be ordered in if they were very popular sizes, and Heather wanted to give herself plenty of time to make sure she had two new skirts for starting work in Glasgow. A navy and a black she had decided, as they would go with everything.

‘The new pleated ones are very popular,’ the young shop assistant told her. ‘They’re flying out of the shop as quick as we get them in.’

Heather held up a black skirt. ‘Is it wash or dry-clean?’ she checked.

The girl looked at the label. ‘Dry-clean only . . . proba
bly the pleats might fall out if you tried to wash it.’ She smiled encouragingly. ‘You’d get a good few wears out of them if you buy them in a dark colour.’

‘What about the pencil skirts?’ Heather said, going over to another rail. ‘Are they dry-clean, too?’

‘No, a gentle hand-wash,’ the girl read out from the label.

‘I’ll try one of each then,’ Heather said.

‘Size fourteen?’ the girl said, holding a navy skirt up.

Heather’s cheeks flamed at the shop assistant’s assumption. ‘Usually a size twelve fits . . .’

‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ the girl said
doubtfully, standing back to appraise her customer’s figure. ‘I’d try both sizes on, for the pleats look terrible when they’re stretched too tight over your stomach or hips.’

Ten minutes later Heather came out of the shop with two size-fourteen skirts wrapped up, vowing to herself
that she would definitely start eating less. She hurried back up the busy street towards Bairds’ department store, where she was meeting her friend. The tearoom on the top floor had lovely cakes and pastries and was just around the corner from the bus-stop for Rowanhill.

‘You definitely don’t look as if you’ve put any weight on to me,’ Liz said, taking a bite out of a large chocolate éclair. She swallowed it, and then scooped up a lump of cream that had fallen on the plate with her finger and popped it in her mouth. ‘Look at me, I’m like a bloomin’ rake no matter how much I eat. At least you’ve got a bust and hips, and that’s what the fellas go for.’

Heather stared down at her half-eaten lemon meringue pie. It was terrible trying to cut down, when she felt she only ate the same as Liz and Kirsty who never seemed to put an ounce on. ‘The skirt waistbands told the truth,’ she said ruefully. ‘I could hardly get the button done on the size twelve and it was all stretched across my stomach.’ Her spoon moved towards the lemon meringue pie, hovering dangerously close. Surely one more spoonful wouldn’t make a big difference?

As she popped it in her mouth, Heather decided that she’d definitely start being a lot stricter from Monday.

Chapter 9

‘
You made it back in time!’ Lily said with great relief, clapping her hands. ‘Your daddy’s gone over to the schoo
l to put the heating on, so’s it’s nice and warm for us.’ She’d been sitting on the edge of the couch in her aunt’s living-room for the last half an hour, swinging her bright red yo-yo while she watched anxiously out of the window for her cousin’s return. Sophie had given her a drink of lemonade and a Wagon Wheel biscuit and then had gone back upstairs to work. She was now in the tiny spare bedroom where her old treadle sewing machine stood resplendent amidst mountains of curtain material, trousers that needed zips putting in, and numerous items that needed taking in or letting out – and her sister-in-law’s skirt.

Lily followed Heather into the kitchen now, almost afraid to let her out of her sight. ‘Did ye buy anythin’ nice for yerself in Wishaw?’ she asked, in the manner that she imagined her nineteen-year-old cousin’s friends might ask. It was Lily’s greatest wish to be the same age as Heather and Kirsty and she couldn’t wait to catch up.

‘Just a couple of skirts for my new job,’ Heather said distractedly. She put all her packages down on the Formica table, and started to unbutton her coat.

‘Did you get my shoes?’ Kirsty called from upstairs, over the whirring of Sophie’s sewing machine.

‘Aye!’ Heather called back. ‘You better come down and check that they’re the right ones.’

‘New shoes?’ Lily said, all interested. ‘Are they for work or for her singin’?’ When there was no information forthcoming, she pulled a chair out for herself and waited. She had to tread a fine line with her older cousins. Most of the time they were easy-going and tolerant of her inquisitive chatter, but at certain times they could take the nose off her and hunt her home if she overstepped the mark with her questions.

Kirsty came in wearing her dressing-gown after her bath, her blonde hair piled on top of her head in an elaborate style, with little imitation pink rosebuds dotted here and there amongst the pinned curls. She put her bare feet into the stilettos. ‘Oh, they’re absolutely fine!’ she said, holding up the dressing-gown to look down at her pink shoes. She practised walking up and down the linoleum floor in them, wobbling slightly with the height of the heels as she went. ‘Begod, I’ll have to watch my step in these shoes tonight or they’ll all think I’ve been at the sherry bottle!’

‘Ha, ha, ha!’ Lily laughed gleefully, rocking back and forward in her chair, her hands covering her mouth. This was exactly the kind of entertainment she loved with her cousins, because all she ever heard from her brothers at home was talk about football and boring old cars now that her father and Michael and Sean – her two eldest brothers – had bought one between them. The two boys were training to be mechanics, so cars were the main subject over dinner every night. Her mother was little better as she was always talking about cleaning and ironing, although it was slightly more interesting when it was to do with polishing candlesticks or dusting the altar rails in the church.

‘D’you think I’ll manage in these shoes all right?’ Kirsty asked Heather now, her brow wrinkled in concern.

Lily looked down at the new shoes. ‘If ye want my opinion, you’d better watch the way you’re walkin’ in them or they’ll all think you’re drunk! You might even fall off the stage and gie them all a great laugh.’ She went into peals of laughter now again.

‘Hoy, Elephant-ears!’ Kirsty said, suddenly realising the little girl was taking in the whole conversation. ‘There was nobody speaking to you – this is an adult conversation. Com
e back to us in another ten years and we’ll let you join in.’

Lily turned away towards the window, looking all injured. It was hard to get it right, because sometimes the adults all laughed hysterically at things like that, and other times they gave her a right earful.

‘Who did your hair?’ Heather asked her sister. She came over now to examine the elaborate creation. ‘It looks really lovely.’

‘May Ingles,’ Kirsty said. May was a neighbour who earned a bit of pin-money from doing hair in people’s houses. ‘She did it in the kitchen. It only took about twenty minutes.’

‘Did you warn her not to put too much lacquer on?’ Heather said, her tone suddenly serious.

Kirsty’s eyes widened. ‘Well . . . she said she had to put a good bit on otherwise it could fall down in the middle of the performance. She said all that stuff about the lacquer-bug is a load of nonsense. She said all the hairdressers got letters about it.’

All sorts of stories about the so-called ‘lacquer-bug’ had been flying about recently, although there wasn’t a scrap of evidence that the bug actually existed.

Heather shook her head. ‘They might just be saying that, because it could affect their business. Liz was telling me that two girls down in England have died from it.’

‘That’s probably because they hadn’t
washed the lacquer out of their hair for weeks,’ Kirsty said, patting her coiffered hair thoughtfully. ‘I only put mine up at the weekend and I give it a good wash on a Monday night to make sure I’ve got every bit of the lacquer out.’ She glanced across at Lily, who was now over at the sink looking out of the window. Kirsty’s voice dropped to a low, ominous tone, not wanting the young
girl to be alarmed by the conversation. ‘Did Liz say that the bug ate through their scalp and right into their brains?’