Thurnscoe, 1976
At ten o’clock on a warm Wednesday night in the summer of 1976, eighteen-year-old David Hollingworth and his friend Ian Alder are sitting on the metal-framed chairs around the edge of the Coronation Club function room, drinking lager and watching the dancers. The Coronation Club – or Cora, as everyone calls it – is a modern building the size of a small village primary school. It has an immense main bar, a snooker and billiards room with full-size tables, and dartboards, and a barn-size function room with a stage at one end and a bar at the other. Wednesday night is disco night, a concept introduced by the club’s committee for the young people of Thurnscoe who find the more traditional working men’s clubs dull and stiff. It has been a much-envied success, and is one of the most popular nights out in the area.
Tonight the dance floor is full as the evening peaks in anticipation of the slow dances that will soon bring the disco to a close. There are a few men dancing, but the floor, lit by flashing red, blue and yellow lights, clearly belongs to the women, in their long skirts, flicked hair and strappy platform sandals. The clothes exaggerate the sways and dips of the women’s dancing, and in their presence, the Valley men can only shuffle and look. David is watching so that he can, if necessary, hide from his girlfriend Denise. They have been going out for six weeks, but while their relationship began well, when he asked her if she might like to go fishing with him, she had laughed out loud at him. It was typical: girls always liked him, but he got bored staying in Thurnscoe, and the girls never wanted to go anywhere else. Tonight he had told Denise he was staying in, then come to the Cora disco to listen out for the heavy rock, which is another thing she dislikes.
‘Doesn’t look like he’s going to play any Deep Purple,’ says Ian, leaning in and shouting over the music. Earlier, Ian had requested ‘Smoke on the Water’.
‘No,’ says David. ‘It’s not been worth coming. Shall we have another drink or go somewhere else?’
‘Finish these and try somewhere else I reckon.’
The two boys are about to leave when Ian notices a girl walking over to them. ‘Ayup,’ he says. ‘Who’s this?’
The girl had been dancing with a group of friends, and after conferring with one of them while looking over at David and Ian, she is now approaching purposefully, cheesecloth blouse knotted at the waist, maxi-skirt kicking and flouncing around her ankles.
‘Ayup, David.’ He recognises her as Sue Waine, a girl who was in the year below him at school. She leans near enough for him to smell her perfume, cigarettes and sugary mint chewing gum. ‘Will you go wi’ our Marie?’
Marie? It takes a couple of seconds to work it out: Sue Waine is a cousin of Marie Poole, the girl from school with the beautiful hair. David can see her in the group that Sue was dancing with. He suspects that Sue is setting up a joke at his expense.
‘Umm,’ he says, ‘maybe not tonight.’
‘Why?’
David blushes.
‘I’m serious you know! She wants to know if you’ll walk her home.’
Marie is sitting down, watching them and smoking a cigarette. When her eyes catch David’s, she looks away. He is not, he thinks, going to volunteer himself to be the subject of her banter again.
But Sue is persistent. ‘Look,’ she says. ‘I’ll tell her to meet you near t’ doors, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Ace! She likes you, you know. Are you coming for a dance?’
‘No,’ says David, and Sue spins away in a whirl of cotton skirt and cheesecloth to dance to the last of the disco music before the slow songs start.
‘You’re in there, mate!’ says Ian.
‘Aye,’ says David, ‘but for what?’
*
Marie is waiting for him in the foyer near the wooden cabin where the doorman sits checking memberships. To David, who has drunk two pints in quick succession, she seems more self-conscious than he remembers her being at school. They do not speak as they push outside together, but their knuckles brush, and then, somehow, they are holding hands.
The Cora sits at the head of the pit estate, at the pit end of the village. If you live up this end the problem with being walked home from the disco is that the walk is very short, but suggesting that you go the long way round can seem a bit forward. The Pooles live at the other end of the estate, less than five minutes away. David, wishing she lived further away, sets off, but Marie, having got this far, is not going to let social nicety ruin her evening.
‘Dave,’ she says.
‘Aye?’ he replies, nervously.
‘Let’s walk round t’ other way, shall we?’
‘T’ other way?’
‘Yes, Dave. The other way.’
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘Right.’
‘Just to talk, I don’t mean owt like . . . you know.’
The night air is still warm and there is an almost full, white moon above the roofs of the houses. Apart from a few people making their way home, the roads are quiet. The only noise the sound of David and Marie’s shoes on the pavement.
‘You’re quiet, aren’t you?’ says Marie.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Would you say you were deep, Dave?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I’m not either. But I like you being quiet. I think that’s what attracts me to you.’
‘Right.’
‘But I also think you’re lovely looking. I think you look like David Essex wi’ your hair like that. I said to Sue when we were sitting outside work watching you all, “David Hollingworth looks like David Essex.” She said, “He never does,” but I said, “He does, and I think I fancy him!” and so here we are!’
‘Here we are,’ he says.
She looks at him. ‘And then Sue told me to come to t’ Cora, she said you’d be in. What do you reckon to that?’
Oh no, thinks David, a question. ‘Well, I usually am in,’ he says, avoiding it. ‘You don’t come in much, do you?’
‘I never did, because my mam and dad go there and I was underage. How did you come on at school, anyroad?’ she asks. ‘I got kicked out of Maths and English, I couldn’t be doing with them. Do you remember t’ canoes?’
They have come to a stop on one of the streets and are just talking. Canoes, the sewing factory where she works, and even David’s fishing. ‘I’d like to try that,’ she says.
She asks if he has a girlfriend.
‘No,’ he lies. ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’
‘No. Not apart from you anyroad. Come on, you’re supposed to be walking me home not waylaying me.’ She pauses, and looks at him. ‘Haven’t you got lovely ears?’
‘Have I?’
‘Oh aye,’ she says. ‘Lovely and little. I hate my ears.’
‘I can’t see them for your hair.’
‘I keep them covered up. Don’t ever ask me to show you them.’
They carry on like this for the rest of the walk. David drops her off at the gate and says he’ll see her in the Fairway or the Cora at the weekend. He walks back through the estate, then past the old church with the gravestones leaning at drunk, sunk angles. When he gets in, Colin and Margaret have gone to bed but have left him a ham sandwich for his supper. He thinks it is the best-tasting ham sandwich he has ever eaten.