A Winter Bride Read online

  A Winter Bride

  Isla Dewar

  Ebury Publishing (2012)

  Tags: 1950s saga

  * * *

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Also by Isla Dewar

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Teenage Kicks

  Chapter Two: Emotionally Itchy

  Chapter Three: Late

  Chapter Four: They’ve Had Their Fun

  Chapter Five: Family Nights

  Chapter Six: What’s in the Green Cupboard?

  Chapter Seven: The Second Saturday in January at Two O’clock

  Chapter Eight: The Youngest and the Sanest

  Chapter Nine: Florence

  Chapter Ten: The Real Woman

  Chapter Eleven: Carol

  Chapter Twelve: Isn’t Life Fabulous?

  Chapter Thirteen: The Famous One-Legged Kiss

  Chapter Fourteen: A Running-away Fund

  Chapter Fifteen: Come In

  Chapter Sixteen: Make the Place Sparkle

  Chapter Seventeen: A Meeter and Greeter

  Chapter Eighteen: The Singing Chef

  Chapter Nineteen: The Love Speech

  Chapter Twenty: Born With a Disadvantage

  Chapter Twenty-One: I Saw You

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Comfortable’s All You Want

  Chapter Twenty-Three: How Does The Taxman Know About Me?

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Left in the Lurch

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Gone to Visit Aunty Dot

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Time to Move On

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Walk Away

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: Just Who Are You Running Away From?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Crystal Glasses

  Chapter Thirty: Safe

  Chapter Thirty-One: Greek Gods

  Chapter Thirty-Two: This Will Do

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Flash

  Chapter Thirty-Four: You Know

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Go On, Say It

  Copyright

  About the Book

  A girl, Nell was convinced, should have a good time at seventeen, have met her true love at eighteen, be engaged at nineteen, and marry at twenty-one.

  While her mother regards the Locarno Dancehall as a den of iniquity, for seventeen-year-old shop-girl Nell McClusky, it's the centre of the universe. Where else is she going to meet the man of her dreams who'll take her away from the hum-drum realities of life on a council estate in 1950s Edinburgh?

  At first Alistair Rutherford doesn’t look that promising. He dresses more like a student than Nell’s idol, Buddy Holly. But Alistair comes from a wealthy family and is studying to be a lawyer, two things that mean that Nell soon has plans to leave her dancehall days far behind her. But the reality of marriage is far different to Nell's romantic notions....

  Other titles by Isla Dewar:

  Keeping Up with Magda

  Women Talking Dirty

  Giving Up on Ordinary

  It Could Happen to You

  Two Kinds of Wonderful

  The Woman Who Painted Her Dreams

  Walking with Rainbows

  Dancing in a Distant Place

  The Cherry Sundae Company

  Secrets of a Family Album

  Rosie’s Wish

  Getting Out of the House

  The Consequences of Marriage

  Available from Ebury Press:

  Izzy’s War

  A Winter

  Bride

  Isla Dewar

  To Bob and Adam

  Chapter One

  Teenage Kicks

  Saturday night at the Locarno and the heat was on; the place was heaving. The air reeked of booze, cigarettes and cheap perfume. The atmosphere was shrill with drama. Girls were screaming; boys were shouting. How could people be like this? Nell wondered. So frenzied, so wild – all raw emotion. She wouldn’t behave so badly. Well, not in public anyway. Still, it was thrilling to see. She was a watcher from the wings. She never joined in but what she saw made her gasp. Anything could happen here.

  There was a wall of people packed round the bar. At the door, two men were fighting, red-faced, spitting blood and fury. Somewhere near the bandstand a man had punched his girlfriend. She was on the floor wailing that she loved him and she hadn’t done nothing. Her friends were screaming that the puncher was a bastard. Upstairs, a girl was dancing on the parapet of the balcony. Boys below were looking up her skirt. Some people were just running about holding drinks aloft and bawling; letting off steam. A man was standing right in front of Nell looking glazed, as if he’d temporarily lost contact with his brain. Someone had slit open his back pocket with a knife and removed his wallet; blood oozed down his leg. He hadn’t noticed.

  Nell watched it all in awe. This was where she and Carol came to get their weekly kicks; to see people let their hair down. Their mothers would be shocked. This place was strictly out of bounds. ‘Don’t you ever go to the Locarno,’ Nell’s mother, Nancy, said. ‘That place is heathen.’ Nell was grateful, though. If her mother hadn’t so vehemently forbidden her to darken the Locarno’s doors, she would never have come. She’d had to see what all the fuss was about.

  Yeah, heathen, Nell thought, it’s great. People left their inhibitions at the door and went wild. Who could resist? Saturday nights were a reason to be alive – a few glistening, rowdy hours of laughter, booze and endless possibilities. If only life was always like this, but it wasn’t. Real life, she glumly told herself, was what happened in the boring bits between Saturday nights.

  It was April 1959. Nell had turned seventeen earlier in the year and was too young to be at the Locarno, which was for eighteens and over on account of it being licensed. She thought that she was in her prime but that Carol, at eighteen, was past it. Well, for a teenager, anyway. Women had two primes, according to Nell: one at seventeen and another at twenty-five. She didn’t go beyond that. She couldn’t imagine being thirty but was sure it would be dull. Carol was definitely too old to be coming to the Locarno. She should be settling down. A girl, Nell was convinced, should have a good time at seventeen, have met her true love at eighteen, be engaged at nineteen and marry at twenty-one. Somewhere along the line she should also lose her virginity. Nell was planning to do this in the next six months. She hadn’t yet met anyone to do it with, though; that was a bit of a worry.

  Right now the dance floor was packed with people pressed close – groin to groin, cheek to cheek – shuffling on their few square inches of space, hips swaying in time to the song. Above, the glitter ball swirled slowly, flickering splashes of light across the sea of bobbing heads. A cloud of cigarette smoke shifted, curling towards the ceiling. Nell leaned against a pillar, watching the action.

  The band was playing ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, one of her favourites. She hated this version, though. The musicians, all wearing evening suits with bow ties, had stripped it of its raw passion and turned it into a cheery ditty. The singer – who was dressed like all the other men in the band, aside from his white jacket – was pronouncing every word of the lyrics as if he was reading the BBC news. This made finding a new place to dwell down at the end of Lonely Street because his baby had left him sound like a jolly fun thing to do. He was also doing strange things with his eyebrows, raising and lowering them in time to the music. Nell curled her lip. God, these people understood nothing. They’re old, too old for rock and roll, she thought.

  She took a sip of her vodka and lime and made a face. God, she hated vodka and lime but it was the thing to drink so she drank it. Carol was dancing with a man with a quiff of greasy hair, a long jacket with a velvet collar and a black shirt with a white, shoelace tie. Not Nell’s type at all. Carol had her arms round his neck and his
hands, which had started the dance on her waist, and were now slipping towards her bum. Carol wasn’t objecting, though.

  He’d come up to them, given them the once-over, chosen Carol, and had held out his hand. ‘Dancin’?’ he’d said.

  Carol had said, ‘OK,’ as if she didn’t care if she did or didn’t. She’d taken a swift sip of her drink, handed it to Nell, and had followed him into the throng.

  Nell checked her watch. Half-past twelve. Not good. She had thirty minutes left before the last dance; thirty minutes to find someone who’d ask to see her home. If she didn’t, the night would be a failure. That was the point of the evening: meeting someone who might be the someone who would turn her life into an endless round of Saturday nights.

  This place was full of young men on the hunt for sex, or at least a snog and a grope: the perfect end to a wild night. They prowled the edges of the dance floor, sizing up the talent. Right now two of them were giving her the once-over. She was at the wrong end of a critical leer. One boy jerked his thumb towards her and said to his friend, ‘Fancy that?’

  His mate stared at her. ‘Nah.’ They moved on.

  Nell shrugged and curled her lip at them, making a show of not caring. Even though she did.

  Sneering was a big part of Saturday night. Nell was good at it. She’d had a lot of practice. Surviving the Locarno with her self-esteem intact meant perfecting the disinterested look and the superior sneer.

  Sometimes Nell and Carol would spend an evening sneering in Nell’s bedroom. They had lip curling and dirty look routines that made them cry with laughter. They’d sing ‘Bird Dog’, rolling their eyes and raising the corner of their upper lips, perfecting their scathing disdain. They drank Coke, ate chocolate biscuits and discussed men. Nell was an expert. ‘They don’t have as many feelings as women,’ she said. ‘That’s why they can’t be faithful. They don’t feel love the way we do.’ She sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Love.’

  ‘Love’s everything,’ said Carol. ‘You’ll never be truly happy if you don’t ever know love.’

  ‘Nah,’ said Nell. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘So what do you think brings happiness?’ said Carol. ‘Money?’

  Nell said she thought happiness came from knowing what you want. ‘And making sure you get it.’

  ‘And what do you want?’ Carol.

  ‘Money,’ said Nell. They sniggered and drifted into their favourite what-would-I-do-if-I-had-a-million-pounds conversation. Nell wanted a huge house with rolling lawns and peacocks walking about. ‘And inside would look like a magazine.’

  ‘I just want to lie in bed till after ten every morning and never go to the office again.’ Carol worked in a typing pool, battering at the keys of an Olivetti from nine to five, Monday to Friday. She thought it a classier way to make a living than being a shop girl like Nell.

  Nell shrugged. She liked her job. One thing was for sure: you didn’t find many rich men hanging about typing pools, but you never knew who you’d come across standing on the other side of the counter in a stationery shop. Rich men, or at least men who gave Nell the impression of being rich, often came in to buy cards with padded hearts to give to some lucky woman.

  Sometimes they bought posh pens. Nell would take them from the glass display case and lay them on the counter. ‘A pen like this will last a lifetime,’ she’d say. ‘This is the Rolls Royce of pens. Beautiful ink flow.’ She told herself she could tell a lot about a man from the pen he used. Nell knew the exact requirements of the man she planned to marry. He’d be rich, have a car and wear Buddy Holly glasses.

  When the band struck up the last dance, Nell headed for the cloakroom. No doubt about it, she was downhearted. Another Saturday night, another failure. She hadn’t got off with anyone, unlike Carol, who’d been so close to the boy she was dancing with it was almost obscene. They’d been draped over one another, her arms round his neck, his hands on her bum and his face buried deep in her neck. She’d be wearing high-necked tops all next week to hide the love bites. Sometimes Carol went too far.

  Nell teetered to collect her and Carol’s coats, taking tiny steps in her six-inch heels and a tight black skirt, then went to the ladies’ room to join the queue for the loo. It was hell in there. The thick fug of hairspray and cigarette smoke, the shrieks, the yelling and swoons of women newly in love with someone they’d met ten minutes ago, the mingling perfumes – it was difficult to breathe. Women preened, furiously backcombed their hair, smoked and discussed the night’s adventures simultaneously.

  The queue to the loo was long and rowdy but moved along swiftly as girls went into the cubicles two or three at a time. They didn’t see any need of privacy to relieve themselves, and group peeing meant they could continue uninterrupted their fervent and busy conversations.

  Peeing wasn’t easy either – Nell had to sit on the loo with one foot up holding the door shut – as there were no locks. And, she had to balance two coats and a handbag on her lap. It wasn’t safe to put things down here. Well, not only was the floor suspiciously wet, but the rumour was that someone would reach under the huge gap between the door and the floor, grab your bag and run. By the time you pulled up your knickers, the thief would be long gone. The skills a girl had to master, Nell thought. They don’t teach you nothing like this at school. But then, they hadn’t taught anything interesting at school. If there had been an exam in surviving the ladies’ room at the dancehall, she’d have gotten an A.

  Carol was outside, standing by the front door with her new love and a geek.

  ‘This is Johnny,’ said Carol, pointing at the new love. She jerked her thumb at the geek. ‘And Alistair.’

  Nell nodded.

  ‘They’re going to see us home.’

  Nell nodded again. She scanned the geek with a full head-to-toe scathing look. He was wearing grey flappy trousers with big turn-ups, a green shirt with a tweed tie, old man’s shoes – brown with little holes over the toecap – and a duffel coat. Oh God, Nell thought, a student. And not an interesting student who’d wear a corduroy jacket, but a boring one who probably studied something incomprehensible like maths or physics.

  They started the long walk home, Carol and Johnny in the lead, Nell and Alistair trailing behind. She noted that he walked on the outside, nearest the road. A gentleman, Nell thought. A man should always let the woman walk on the inside. She checked her watch. She gave Johnny ten minutes before he took Carol’s hand.

  Alistair asked if she went to the Locarno often.

  ‘Every week,’ she told him. ‘It’s great.’

  ‘It’s a bit rough.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s fun. How often do you go?’

  ‘Never. I just went along tonight to keep my brother company. His usual mates are on holiday.’

  Nell pointed at Johnny. ‘He’s your brother?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He smiled. ‘Chalk and cheese, eh?’

  ‘Too right.’

  ‘He only looks like that on Saturdays. Rest of the time he looks more like me, only smarter – no duffel coat. Actually our mother hates him going out like that. She says he looks common. But he likes it. He thinks it makes him look hard.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Works with our dad at the garage.’

  ‘He’s a mechanic?’

  ‘He did his apprenticeship. Now he’s in sales. He has to wear a normal suit and white shirt for that. When he’s twenty-five, Dad’ll take him into partnership and, eventually he’ll take over the business.’

  ‘The garage?’

  ‘Yes. It’s on the Queensferry Road. Rutherford’s.’

  ‘The big one? That sells Jaguars?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Goodness. What about you? Don’t you want to work there?’

  ‘Nah. Not interested in cars. Couldn’t fix one. Couldn’t sell one.’

  ‘But you could have one.’

  ‘Getting one soon,’ he said. ‘I passed my test yesterday. Johnny’s already got one, but it’s getting fixed at the
moment. He drives like a maniac with two speeds: fast and very fast.’

  Alistair had just risen hugely in Nell’s estimation. In front of them, Johnny slipped Carol’s hand into his. Nell checked her watch. Yes, spot on.

  ‘Am I boring you? You keep looking at your watch.’

  ‘Course not. I’m checking how long it took your brother to take Carol’s hand. I’d bet myself it’d be ten minutes. I was right.’ She punched the air in triumph.

  He smiled, said, ‘Great,’ and asked how long she thought before the couple in front kissed.

  ‘Oh, he’ll put his arm round her first. That’ll be in another five minutes. Then he’ll kiss her when we’re further down the road, maybe about Calton Hill.’

  ‘Bets?’ said Alistair.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Bet you five shilling he kisses her five minutes from now.’

  ‘Nah, it’ll be more like ten.’ She took the bet, and noticed Alistair was now walking a lot closer to her. She decided she’d let him take her hand and kiss her when they got home. After all, he’d soon have a car. She wouldn’t let him grope her, though. He wouldn’t respect her if she did, and with a boy who had rich parents and his own car, respect was important.

  He asked what she did.

  ‘I work in a stationery shop. Little’s. There’s a lot to know about stationery – weights of paper and the like. And all the different sorts of cards. And pens. I love pens. One day, I’m going to have my own pen shop. I’ll sell nothing but pens … and ink, of course.’ She’d just decided this but it sounded like an awfully good idea.

  Ahead, Johnny let go of Carol’s hand and slipped his arm round her shoulders, pulling her close. She put her arm round his waist. Nell checked her watch. Five minutes. She shot Alistair a smug look.

  ‘Where do you live, by the way?’ he asked.

  ‘Restalrig.’

  ‘That’s miles.’

  She shrugged. ‘You don’t have to come. I can make it alone, no problem.’