Page 77 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #2

“Pink and turquoise beams
of light glanced off bodies as other couples swirled around the
left feet. I’ll just collect the money from those who were here for the first time last week and then we’ll get started.”
darkened ballroom, so close that sometimes a shoulder, the hem of a dress or an elbow brushed against her body.”
Back at Susan’s house, her father, fatigued by disappointment at not winning the football pool, has fallen asleep in front of the television. Her mother sits down with her knitting and a box of Black Magic chocolates, her regular Sat- urday night indulgence. “At least it’s not gin,” she always insists, to nobody in particular. On TV, she can see London’s Picadilly Circus with cars swirling around. A man’s voice announces, “In Town Tonight” in a posh accent. May as well be the moon, she thinks.
Maureen Lovage steps through one of the French doors and down one small step onto the pristine surface of the ballroom. Susan imagines a loud crack and visualizes Maureen as she sinks into frigid water, her aquamarine velvet frock billowing around her. But the floor holds, and the heels of Maureen’s silver shoes clatter as she heads over to one corner where Susan notices an alcove with a turntable, a bank of light switches, a microphone and rows and rows of black vinyl records in brown-paper sleeves. Linda and a couple of the others follow Maureen into the ballroom with the confident air of veterans. Susan and the rest of the first- timers hang back.
The first and only time Susan’s mother went beyond Liverpool’s boundaries was during the war. A telegram had informed her that Bert had been taken prisoner by the Japanese. When a bomb hit the house next door, she and Fergus were evacuated to Cheshire. She was billeted
“Everybody over here, come on, come on,” Mau- reen shouts. Susan and the other newcomers step gingerly onto the dance floor. They make their way over to the alcove, keeping to the relative safety of the room’s edges.
in a tiny wooden bungalow on the grounds of a sanitarium. She worked mornings doling out tea and sympathy to TB patients while a doc- tor’s wife babysat Fergus. Edna felt guilty for being so happy. God only knew what horrors Bert was experiencing. She doted on Fergus, cuddling and kissing him — something she found impossible to do after her husband re- turned.
“Now, if you decide to come back next week, it’ll be half-a-crown a month, which gets you entrance to the Saturday Teen Dance and a les- son before if you want it,” explains Maureen. “And you will want it, ‘cos I’ll bet none of you have ever danced before and you’ve all got two
Bert snorts and begins to snore. Edna looks at him and then at her knitting needles and then back at Bert’s open mouth. She starts knitting, fingers flying. She thinks of her daughter learn-
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