ON THE LAST day of 1971 I made my way to the Crystal Ballroom for the New Year’s Eve dance. It was my first visit to a ballroom since I returned from New Zealand in the middle of December. I was hopeful of meeting someone, and I felt in the mood the moment I entered the ballroom in Anne Street. Playing that night were my favourite showband: Joe Dolan and the Drifters.
The hall was crowded. Girls I danced with were pushed into me, and I could taste their mascara, lipstick and hair spray all in one. I knew I was home. Once I got among the girls I’d feel smashing. It was their beauty, gaiety and charm that created the atmosphere, along with the chat and the crack. The girls would assemble on one side of the hall, eyeing the male talent on the opposite side, and they would send their signals out to the lads they noticed watching them. Often the men in their haste stampeded across the floor to make sure they got to the girl of their choice.
I met Mando, and we stood on the balcony judging the form below. I had only one thing on my mind, and that was to get a date or to see some girl home. I looked at my watch and said, ‘Damn, I’ve got less than an hour to make my mark.’
It was great fun asking girls questions as we danced, like ‘Do you like the band? Where are you from? Do you like the hall?’ and best of all, ‘Do you like the floor?’ I had a problem in trying to find out exactly where some girls came from. More often than not they would say, ‘I’m from the west,’ with a total lack of interest, as though they were filling in time. I always got my own back whenever I was asked where I came from by replying, ‘I’m from the east!’
Pauline was with two other girls that night as I approached her. I noticed her looking my way, then her smile. The Drifters began to play. I stood near her friend, she said hello, I smiled at her and then at Pauline. I introduced myself and said, ‘I hope you’re enjoying the dance.’ Pauline introduced me to her sister, Anne, and then her friend, who seemed to enjoy looking at me. Then Anne said, ‘If you’re going to dance, Pat, you’d better hurry up.’ She pointed to Pauline. ‘That’s Joe Dolan who’s singing. She’s crazy about him.’
Joe Dolan was singing a slow, sexy number. The crowd suddenly stopped dancing for a while to watch their star, as the girls pushed towards the centre of the stage. Many of them were in raptures, screaming for a lock of Joe’s hair or to touch his sweaty shirt. I remember looking up to the ceiling and, lo and behold, I realised I was standing right beneath the crystal ball.
When Joe had stopped singing I looked at Pauline. She smiled.
I said, ‘You know we are beneath the crystal ball.’
She responded swiftly: ‘That’s for luck.’
My hands were down by my side; I moved my right hand and suddenly it found hers, waiting to clutch mine. The MC made an announcement: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this spot is two free tickets to next Thursday night’s dance. The spot goes to the couple standing beneath the crystal ball.’
‘Gosh, we’re up!’ I said, and I thought of her reply to me moments before, ‘That’s for luck.’ And so it was! As I eased my way up with Pauline to collect the two tickets, I whispered to her, ‘It’s a date. Okay?’ I could tell she was easy-going and jolly, and I liked the way she smiled.
It was the start of something that simply kept going, just as one day follows the next. Joe Dolan was her favourite singing star; Cliff Richard was next, and I came in close, somewhere behind her mother, but I hung in there. It wasn’t always easy. Life on the whole is along those lines: a two up and one down sort of way.
I had just moved into new lodgings, but I was beginning to think that I needed a place of my own. Mrs Megan was a widow, a fine Dublin woman. She certainly knew how to put up a good meal to a hungry lodger. She made the best Dublin coddle I ever had. One evening her words simply swept over me. ‘Get your own house, Pat, and find a nice girl to look after it for you. They’re building plenty of houses out in Raheny. It’s like living in the country, close to the city. You’d be mad not to, Pat. They’re going for a song, you know, those houses. That won’t always be the case. If I had a lad like you, I’d push you into one of them.’
Mrs Megan poured out the tea. She was curious. ‘Have you got a date tonight, Pat?’
Without looking up from the coddle I answered, ‘Yes, I have, and before you ask, she’s from Dublin.’
I left the house that night feeling terrific. I could feel that change was coming, and for once in my life it felt good. I also realised that it was up to me to make it happen, and to make the right decision for once!
As I drove into the city to pick up Pauline, so many things crossed my mind. I knew I could have been long since married, but it was I who chickened out. I never considered that the girl mightn’t have minded if I worked all night and slept all day. I was always afraid of the fact that if I married while I had very low wages and was working odd hours, it would never work out, certainly not how I would like it to. I had grandiose ideas of what married life should be like, but I was apprehensive about making the big decision.
As I paced up and down the pavement outside McBirney’s beside O’Connell Bridge, I was hoping Pauline wouldn’t be too late. A baker I worked with came by, known to us as Galway. He shouted, ‘Give her up, Paddy. She’s not comin’!’ I was raging that he knew, and I realised when I’d go into work on the Monday morning I’d be in for a fierce slagging over it, as he’d tell the Wagger and the chain gang.
I waited and waited, and still she didn’t come. One bus followed another until eventually I said, ‘She’d better be on this one. If she’s not then I’m off, and that’s it.’ If she wasn’t on this bus then my decision was made for me, as I detested bad timekeeping. I had been standing for over an hour in the cold. I stopped for a last look, anxiously watching the last person who stepped down from the bus. Never again, I swore, would I go through this waiting for a girl. I put my hands into my pockets and walked away. I heard a voice calling me: it was that baker again. ‘Still here, Paddy, yeh feckin’ eejit. I told yeh an hour ago I wouldn’t wait for my bird like that. Come and have a jar and get the feelin’ back into yeh.’
I felt cold, but I said, ‘Sorry, I don’t drink.’
‘What yeh mean yeh don’t drink. A baker! You’re the only baker I know who doesn’t drink.’
I began to walk away, and then I heard a voice calling. ‘Pat, wait. Pat, Pat, wait for me.’ I could see Pauline hurrying, one hand holding down her brown leather cap. As I walked across O’Connell Bridge I was thinking that only for that young baker meeting me again so suddenly I would have been off, and who knows where I’d have gone!
We used our spot prize won at the Crystal, and as we danced I began teasing her by asking her all the usual questions.
‘Do you like Eileen Reid?’
‘Yes, do you?’
‘Do you like the band? Do you like the Crystal?’
Pauline was quite quick off the mark and responded swiftly, ‘Well, do you like the floor, Pat?’
‘Yes, I love the floor, and better still, I love those standing on it.’
I could tell Pauline was taken aback. ‘Do you mean what you said?’
‘Yes, I do, but if you’d behave yourself and turn up on time I’d like you much better.’
She pushed me away from her. ‘What! Just who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not some girl working in Boland’s with that dirty-minded lot, like that baker friend of yours. You don’t bring me out to lecture me, even if I was a bit late.’
What have I got here, I wondered! A match, perhaps?
Pauline was a fighter, and would fight her corner. The coolness of the way she would get out of turning up late and then coolly dress me down often left me gasping. I soon learnt that I could never rely on her punctuality, so I began to drive out to her house and pick her up, which was, I suppose, what she really wanted all the time. I’m a slow learner.
I began to see Pauline three or four times a week. We toured the ballrooms; she was always keen to go to a dance, more so than to see a picture. Sunday nights were reserved for the cinema, and that was that. Pauline had one thing in common with all the other girls I had gone out with: they all got things their own way.
My first invitation to her home was for Sunday dinner. It was a nice spring day, and we could go for a drive to Bray afterwards, I thought. It helped that I was used to staying in lodging houses and having all kinds of landladies to drool over me, so when I entered Pauline’s home that first Sunday for dinner I really was at ease with everyone. I arrived early. I had met some of her family on different occasions, but only when picking her up or taking her home; I had never sat down with her parents. I had very little experience of the atmosphere that forms a part of family life.
As I sat down at the table with Tony, Jimmy, Anne and Jimmy’s girl-friend, Deirdre, I felt strange. Behaving politely was one thing, but being able to communicate in simple terms was quite another. I got the impression that all was well, though I could feel my every move I made was being scrutinised.
The moment I got home Mrs Megan called out, ‘How did you get on, Pat?’
I said, ‘Really smashing, great, so it was.’
‘You better buy that house, Pat. She’s got you, boy. I bet her mother was all over you.’
I smiled at her.
‘Your goose is cooked, boy.’