A seed sown
The beginning of a writerly project. If that's where this takes me.
This is the story, very loosely told, of two women in my family. This is a reimagining of the lives of two young mothers flung together in surprising circumstances. Forced to keep a secret whether they wished to or not. And it takes 9 months to tell, which is the huge and clumsy clue I’ll leave you with…
February 1964
The Mecca smelled of Brylcreem, fresh sweat and department-store perfume. Kitty loved it. She loved the crush of bodies in the semi-dark, the way she felt the music in her bones – how it sharply tuned her muscles and nerves. So loud it stopped any talk. There was no past or future when you were in the Mecca. Being here was all-consuming and that’s just what she wanted. To be taken over.
When she was here, something — anything — might happen. Because mostly nothing did, the rest of the time. Mostly she felt like life was about to start. Wondering when the waiting might end. Waiting for the waiting to stop.
Flushed and breathless, she felt exhilarated. She knew all the basic moves and was feeling bold. After the awkward first dances when she first started coming, her feet no longer had to remember what to do for her body. The jive was meant to look careless, she realised. So she played the wild child. All around her, a jazz of limbs. These kids in the dancehall, they were like some great big physical puzzle, the angles and contortions almost comic. The strange mating of a flock of exotic birds. This was a roomful of unspoken pleasure. Simple, felt and moreish.
Outside, Widnes was all stink. A stink she’d known for life, so it meant nothing to her. But it did stink. The terraced houses, with their communal courtyards, were pressed tight together with brickwork the colour of rotten teeth. Some nights you saw drifts of smoke from the chemical works. But in the Mecca, with Rollover Beethoven on the turntable and the lights spinning red and gold, she could be anyone. She could be free.
Dermot had been watching her all evening. She’d clocked him straight away — the teddy boy quiff shiny slick, those bright blue eyes that caught the lights, the way he moved. Snake hips. Swagger, Mam would call it. Mam would say he was trouble, which meant Kitty wanted him with a fierceness that made her ears hot.
When he asked her to dance, his hand was already on her waist.
By midnight they were out back in the nearby alley, with the bins stinking of piss and old chip papers, and the cold February air catching your breath. Other couples lined the brick walls like beasts with two heads. Warm breath and fag smoke hung in clouds above the shadows. Someone laughed, low and throaty. Kitty’s back was against the wall, rough brick prickling into her shoulder blades, and Dermot’s mouth tasted of cigarettes and something sharp.