Saturday 28th January 1961
Pearl was getting ready to go out. She wore a black pencil skirt and red blouse with a broad black leather belt that she had borrowed from Ronnie around her waist. She sat in front of her dressing-table mirror using a white foundation and dark eyeliner to bring out the natural paleness of her face and using a deep-red Rimmel lipstick which she could only afford with her employee discount. She knew that other girls sometimes slipped things into their pockets but Pearl liked to pay. She wanted to feel that she had earned things, and liked the expensive feel of the lipstick. She had her hair tied back from her face. Seen in the mirror her face is impassive, the geisha look back again. You can see her in elaborate dress, moving with tiny steps, with that hobbled gait. The face expressionless, knowing, suggesting carnal knowledge refined through the ages.
There is something of death in the oriental ideal. A waxen, lifeless look. There is a whiff of gravebreath about it, the sexual stakes raised as high as they can go. It’s tempting to see Pearl as she prepared to go out that night, gliding from room to room, as though she were in some ricepaper-partitioned oriental residence. There is a feeling that shadowy assignations are awaiting her, the erotics of last things.
She was to meet Ronnie at the bottom of the Belfast Road. The night was cold. It had snowed several days beforehand and there were still icy residues in shadowed areas and on the high ground. Pearl’s mother called out to her to take a coat and hat but she put a wrap around her shoulders instead.
The following morning when Pearl had not arrived home her mother said, ‘I was not unduly worried as I thought that Pearl might have decided to stay the night with one of her friends.’
There are other dances going on that night. The papers show that there are dances in Maxim’s. In Thompson’s Alfresco Rooms. The Clippertones are playing in the Flamingo Ballroom.
The dance was a fundraiser in the Henry Thompson Memorial Orange Hall. There was a military tone to the evening, the town’s militias and corps represented. There were members of the Territorial Army and the Special Constabulary present.
Ronnie was waiting for Pearl at the bottom of the road. Ronnie was quieter than usual. She had always struggled with her complexion and Pearl had advised her not to wear so much heavy pan make-up which Pearl said ‘blocked the pores’.
‘Where would I be without my slap?’ Ronnie said. The skin on Ronnie’s face was blotchy and there were spots on her chin. People noticed the contrast between them. Pearl’s still mask and Ronnie’s pasty, badly made-up face. Ronnie had not mentioned McKnight for several weeks and Pearl had not asked. Ronnie had a temper sometimes. She could lash out and say cruel things and Pearl did not want to provoke her. Earlier that week they had gone to Falloni’s for ice cream. Pearl went into the toilets with Ronnie. Ronnie had gone into one of the stalls and been sick.
‘Are you pregnant or something?’ Pearl said.
‘None of your business if I am,’ Ronnie said, ‘least I don’t have a block of ice between my legs, little Miss Frigid.’
Afterwards Ronnie followed Pearl out into the street apologising. She looked as if she was about to cry.
‘I don’t know what came over me,’ she said, ‘my big mouth.’
‘I hate that word,’ Pearl said. When it had been used about her in school she had gone to the library and looked it up. Frozen or stiffened with cold; chillingly stiff; (of a woman) sexually unresponsive.
‘Course you’re not,’ Ronnie said, ‘you’re just not a slapper like me. The slut of the town. You got self-respect, Pearl. Give me ten years I’ll be hanging out at the lock gates waiting for some big Russian freighter to come in. Hello Ivan, give us a few of them roubles and I’ll keep you warm.’
Ronnie knew how to make Pearl laugh. Pearl knew there was no harm in her and allowed Ronnie to link her arm down the street, but the word hung in the air between them.
Ronnie had whistled when she saw Pearl dressed for the dance.
‘You look like something from the pictures, Pearl,’ Ronnie said, ‘they’ll not be looking next nor near me tonight. You look like you’re headed for that Orchid Blue. Mind you, there’ll be trouble if you try dancing in that skirt. If the seam goes on you then watch out Mother, they’ll be looking all the way up.’
Ronnie hadn’t seen this Pearl before. There was a level of sophistication. There was a cool, artful look. People made way for her as she walked towards the entrance of the Orange hall, the young men of the town gathered there. When they arrived at the Orange hall the music had already started, Ronnie dancing to herself in the queue.
William Eglington. Joseph Clydesdale. Special Constable William Quinn. Their listed names already taking on the formal configuration of a witness list. It was 10.30 p.m.
Robert and Will Copeland arrived at the hall at 11.30 p.m. According to his own account Robert was wearing a shortie fawn coat. It is impossible to tell what he was wearing underneath, the air in the hall thick with cigarette smoke. On the way in Robert picked up Joan Donergan and swung her around. The night’s chronologies coming into play.
Robert’s first dance was a ladies’ choice. One of the tennis girls got up with Robert, a Hannah Taylor whose father was a shipping agent. She looked back at her friends before she walked up to Robert. They acknowledged her with small, heartless waves. She had big hands and feet and Robert knew she would look good dancing. People watching would see a certain amount of ungainliness overcome, strivings for grace undertaken. The band were mixing waltz and jive music. They understood the times they were living in, the easing through things that was required, and they bent to their instruments.
Robert danced six times with Joan Donergan but he must have noticed Pearl. She stood out that night, people looking at her, surprised when she jived with the young men when she looked as if she should be performing something Eastern, a temple-dance, eyes lowered, shadows on screens.
Pearl danced a jive with him first.
‘So you’re the big-shot dancer,’ she said. There was a wan bravado in her eyes.
‘You need to put your fingers higher on my shoulder,’ Robert said, ‘bend your elbow.’
She could feel his hand on her back, above the waistband of her skirt. Robert moving her on the sprung dance floor, three beats to the bar, bringing her into the old films, the Fred Astaires and Busby Berkeley numbers, Robert moving with a kind of shuffle, loose-hipped and expert, everyone else on the dance floor looking stiff and formal.
Later Robert went up to the band and made his request and when he came down to Pearl they were already playing. This is the dance where Ranger Gladys Jones says that ‘McGladdery was trying to hold Pearl tightly towards him’, where he had ‘his head bent down towards her face’, where she ‘kept turning her head away from him’. They are talking but it is impossible to know what they are saying. They move across the floor until they are lost in the dancing couples. It’s Now or Never. Lost in Presley’s backwoods tremolo. It’s Now or Never, their faces fading away with the bass notes, the drawn-out vowel sounds.