It’s precisely seven o’clock. Good timing. Great timing, in fact. The Scout Hall doors are swinging open as we climb out of the car.
“What time, darling?” Mrs Marsh calls across the passenger seat in her toodle-oo voice.
“Eleven, Mrs Marsh,” I respond, poking my head through the open window. She gives me a thumbs up, shifts into first gear.
“Same as last time! Seriously? ’Bye Mum!” yells Jess and we’re in the throng pushing through the doors into the bright interior of the hall. Its severe, institutionalised layout is as disappointing as it was last month, but at least we now know what’s going to happen. The light is harsh enough to make me blink.
We select a couple of the hard chairs lining the perimeter. There are more adults mooching about tonight, stationed around the hall as if they’re assuming guard duty. Maybe they’ve got wind of some of the hanky-panky, as they insist on calling it. Near us is a small knot of girls from our year.
Without warning, the main lights go out and Henry Thorpe’s father’s voice is emanating from the wall mounted speakers. The tall multi-coloured lighting units take over.
Mr Thorpe talks at us a bit. Welcome, it’s Friday night, if you’ve not been to one of our discos before, let me tell you… and so to stuff about the locations of toilets and refreshment sales and where to assemble if there’s a fire. No-one’s listening, of course, until he gets to the bit about the refunds for plastic cups. And alcohol’s one hundred percent verboten, guys.
Staying Alive. Coloured lights synchronised with the thudding beat, falsetto voices filling the space around me, Jess bellowing in my ear, “Come on!”
We become part of a larger creature, a constantly shifting ring of single girls, threading its way through a few couples, splitting up, reforming, in the pulsating music and the colours, jerking puppet-like under the strobe, clutching our sling bags against our bodies or letting them swing in arcs round us.
We dance for about an hour and then take a break, buy lemonades, yell a bit with the other girls about, well, rubbish really, and then get in on the Collection Racket. We missed out last time. It was half-nine before Hannah Brett told us what was going on and too late to really do much about it. Tonight it’s going to be different.
There are plenty of the white plastic cups lying around, abandoned by those with no business acumen. We collect a stack each – ten for me and nine for Jess – and take them to the kitchenette, one at a time, over the course of another hour. Find enough of them and you can recoup your evening’s expenses or even make a profit. We’re not talking long bucks here, but a profit is a profit. Lucky for us, there are far more mothers serving drinks than truly necessary, so we become that much less memorable. Hey, we might just be very thirsty with all that dancing and who’s going to know we didn’t buy the drinks?
The only trouble with these cup-seeking forays around the grounds is that it’s too easy to literally stumble across amorous couples that’ve left the noise for a little private communication, on varying levels. Heather and Andrew are holding hands, gazing into each other’s eyes and murmuring. Roxy and Kevin are stuck fast together in a noisy kiss. Gary has buried his face in Leanne’s impressive cleavage – her blouse is undone – and, as I reach into the hibiscus hedge for a lone cup I’ve spotted, I find Lauren seated on the ground on the other side, giggling while some boy I don’t know is groaning and shoving his hand up her skirt.
She’s seen my hand and then my face peering at her through the leaves.
“Ag, man, Tessa!” she exclaims, pushing him away from her. I back away from her furious eyes and his vacant, uncomprehending ones, clutching my prize.
“Sorry. Don’t mind me. Carry on.”
Between me and the hall is a small group of guys passing round bottles of lager from a crate under the same hedge. They must also be from another school because I don’t recognise any of them. One of them has noticed the plastic cup in my hand. He produces a large bottle and waves it under my nose.
“Hi there! Want a splash of brandy in your Coke, sweetheart?”
“No, she doesn’t.”
Jess has grabbed my arm and pulled me around them towards the lights of the hall. There’s a whiff of cigarette smoke on the air and also a slightly unusual smell from the white cylinder in the boy’s hand.
All the while, Mr Thorpe is still happily DJ-ing inside the hall.
*
My impulsive pirouette on the ball of my right foot works like a charm, balance is maintained, I’m back into the dance and this guy from Saint George’s College hasn’t noticed my skill. Jess was watching – in the middle of my spin I spotted her perched on her chair with her feet tucked under it. She lifts one hand from where it’s gripping the front of the seat and gives me a thumbs up that I just catch sight of as my rotation takes me away from her again.
Another spin. This one wobbles a bit and Jess is no longer alone. That’s Gordon Baker. Aka ‘Streetwise’ Baker. Known as such for the simple reason that Gordon Avenue and Baker Avenue are adjacent to one another in the grid of Salisbury’s streets. He’s wearing a well studded black leather jacket and although he’s quite short and stocky he’s a bit better looking than this one I seem to have picked up. Or has he picked me up? I can’t make up my mind if I’m liking dancing with him, or just liking dancing. I should be interested in him, shouldn’t I? He seems to like me. But here again is that inexplicable almost-wish that keeps trickling through me and alarming me. I can’t possibly be wishing Timothy was here. Ignore it.
Jess is wriggling through the crush towards us, attached to Gordon’s hand, and I give her a thumbs up this time. This action makes Mark stop studying me from the neck down and look up at my face for the first time in a while. He lights up and I can read wow-she-likes-me written all over him. I do believe I’m beginning to learn first hand about these wrong impressions and mixed up signals to which boys are supposed to be so prone. I sidle away from him a little.
Three records later, Jess and Gordon have vanished and Mark needs to go to the toilet. Abandoned, I sit in a corner shouting with the two girls from Queen Elizabeth School until he reappears and it’s lucky for him I love dancing so much and can’t think of any excuses on the spot. It’s impossible to talk and dance at the same time without getting uncomfortably close so we grin inanely at one another and Mark continues to watch my jeans. Is it because he’s shy or because he really finds that part of me more interesting?
Ten-forty-five and Jess still hasn’t shown up. The disco’s due to finish at eleven and last month Mrs Marsh was pretty prompt with her taxi service. What will I say to her?
“Sorry, Mrs Marsh. Your daughter disappeared with a young Caucasian male over an hour ago and no-one’s seen her since. I think she’s eloped. But never mind, I’m here and you can take me home anyway. Just don’t mention this to my mother or she won’t let me come again.”
Which would be a shame after all our efforts to get the approval with the unwitting co-operation of Mrs Marsh herself. When I said, “You do realise my mother will have serious doubts about me being under fifteen and out until eleven o’clock at night with a whole bunch of people she doesn’t know?”, Jess went, “Not to worry. We’ll enlist my mother to tell her it’s okay. Now, she won’t want to tell any lies and we have to get her to say exactly the right things. Leave it to me.”
Mrs Marsh has this trilly voice. She trilled, “Oh yes, Sheila my dear, it’s quite okay. The Markhams’ children have attended some of these di… di… erm, these events. You know the Markhams don’t you? From a few roads away? John’s the Managing Director of Top Marks Animal Feeds? Yes, them. Well these parties are reputed to be very well supervised and I’ve never heard of any nonsense going on. The girls will be fine, just fine, my dear. I’ll take them and pick them up personally. Yes, that’s right. It’s run by the Methodist church.”
Now my family only ever goes to church for christenings, weddings and funerals but she wasn’t to know that and it did the trick. All the same, I half expected a bolt of lightning to strike me through the open patio doors for my audacity in calling on these good Christians in order to get my way with my mother.
“Let’s go outside,” Mark is insisting, his mouth against my ear. “Away from the noise.”
I snatch up my coat and allow myself to be led by the hand into the starlit winter night. After the stuffy heat in the hall, the silken air is at first refreshing. I stare about hopefully at the few others in the vicinity, but of Jess and Gordon there is no sign. Mark slips his arm around my waist, giving me a start that turns into a shiver.
“Cold?”
“Yes. I mean no.”
I correct myself pretty rapidly, but it’s too late.
“I’ll warm you up.”
I find myself wrapped in his embrace. No choice. Awkward. Do I want this?
Let’s say yes. I put my arms around his shoulders and the wary bit of me gives way to the curious bit, and then the wary one takes over again. This is not kiss-catches. Mark has singled me out from a crowd of girls without knowing me and wants to give me his attentions. It could mean he wants to be my boyfriend, couldn’t it? Or maybe he doesn’t, and he’ll forget me after tonight. What do I say if he asks to see me again?
It’s all this not knowing what to expect and yet wanting to find out, but also not wanting to find out that’s curdling my brain. And I have questions – about himself, his hobbies, his home and family – although so far he’s not shown much inclination towards conversation and the music was too loud in the hall anyway. I was hoping to get to talk to him now, outside, or maybe hold hands and go for a little wander, perhaps not cheek to cheek but shoulder to shoulder. No chance though, and I’m the one who’s blown it by reciprocating the embrace. He’s now snuggling into my neck and I can feel his mouth against my skin and his fingers are probing the seat of my jeans, pulling my hips towards his.
“Isn’t this better than dancing?” he manages to murmur wetly into my ear and all of me swings from the what-will-making-out-be-like end of the scale to the don’t-like-the-way-this-is-going-AT-ALL end in an instant.
No. It’s not. They’re playing ABBA and I want to dance the last dance.
I’ve had enough of Mark. I don’t need this. There’s a movement in the corner of my eye. Gordon – the studs on his jacket gleaming dully as he moves into the pool of light cast by one of the harsh sodium security luminaires – with Jess tripping along next to him. Rescue party. I twist out of Mark’s clutches.
“Oh look! My friend is here. We have to go home now.”
Where the hell has she been? She’s spotted me. They draw level and she points a forefinger at me, winks and raises her eyebrows but I just give her my best stony glare and snap, “Oh, finally!”
“Um,” she says, with a slight frown. “I, well I… I guess Mum’ll be here soon.”
To be fair, she probably doesn’t have a clue what she’s done wrong.
“Can I see you again?” Mark is confused by the interruption and he’s eyeing the other two with suspicion. “Give me your phone number.”
So he has asked. Oh, hell… He has what they call sensuous lips – full and moist – and the skin on my neck is crawling as if there’s a small insect on it.
“I have nothing to write with,” I tell him, shrugging.
“I’ll remember. What is it?”
There’s Jess’s mother’s car. I keep my hand on his chest to make sure he keeps his distance and after a bit of um-ing and ah-ing make up a number. The sensuous lips move silently in a response and my neck prickles again.
“Okay. Got it. I’ll call you. ’Bye Tessa.”
He’s leaning in again. He wants to kiss me, but I’ve removed my hand and gone. I avoid Jess’s eyes as I make a dive for the nearest car door and fall in. It’s a long moment before she eventually lets Gordon go and tumbles into the other end of the back seat. We huddle together in the toasty warmth. Mrs Marsh is blasting hot air at us from the dashboard.
Jess gives me a prod in the ribs.
“I heard you, girl. You gave him some random number! He looked really keen on you and you’ve fobbed him off. Who was he?”
“Mark, from Saints. Mmm, he seemed okay but then he was all over me.”
So now, have I done the right thing? I told him I lived in Borrowdale but he didn’t seem to twig that the number I reeled off didn’t begin with double eight. I started with a six, I think. What suburb has numbers that start with six? I don’t know. I can’t think. Now I’ll never hear from him again unless I manage to contact him through someone who knows someone at St George’s College. He’ll be hurt and embarrassed and he won’t want any more to do with me. I’m not going to come to any more of these discos in case I bump into him. That would be just too awful.
“So what’s this with Gordon? I thought you’d eloped!”
Jess stares at the floor and she’s trying not to smile, trying to be coy and cool at the same time.
“Oh he’s gorgeous, isn’t he?”
She leans forward. “Mum. Gordon Baker, you know, Marilyn Baker’s son? He’s asked me to go and see a movie with Sue Shaw and Alan Trent tomorrow night. Will that be okay?”
Mrs Marsh knows everyone in the city. “Oh yes – Gordon! Marilyn’s such a dear. I would think so, love. And Alan’s a dear. Does Gordon drive? How long has he had his licence?” She’s keeping her eyes on the road and her voice doesn’t have the panicky tone I would expect to hear in Mum’s in similar circumstances.
“Since his sixteenth birthday, of course,” Jess replies, withdrawing sulkily. “He borrows his mother’s car and I’m sure he’s quite safe on the roads.”