Hannah

1976

She was seventeen, maybe slightly less: a tall, willow tree of a girl not long out of uniform by the looks of her. School uniform, that is. Her hair was dark and wild, a mollassen mass of untamed curls. But you could guess that mere weeks ago it had been plaited and tied into submission. Her eyes were tawny and lit by a naive, puppy-dog eagerness to please with an underlying spark of mischief – a dangerous combination if ever there was one.

He was a good ten years her senior. He loped along in hush puppies – we’re talking the 70’s here, when they used to be fashionable, believe it or not, among young men who thought themselves mildly anarchic, along with floppy cashmere cardigans and “I can’t get told off by the headmaster any more” lengths of hair (ie that just touching the collar, foppish, overgrown schoolboy, not actually long enough to really upset anyone, look).

They came out of a shop together into gathering motes of dusk. He locked up while she wrapped an oversize and ancient (probably her Dad’s) donkey jacket more tightly around her waifishly thin body in a futile effort to keep out the December cold. Then, keys in pocket, he raked his hair back with long, aristocratic fingers, before enfolding them around her slim brown hand, which she nevertheless kept resolutely tucked inside her jacket pocket for added warmth. Like this they set off up the street.

“Pub?” Him.

“OK” Her.

No need to discuss where: there was a good local right at the end of the higgledy old cobbled street, down a flight of grey stone steps of Medieval vintage. He’d been going there since the first day he’d opened the shop, two years ago. She’d been there almost nightly for the past week, since she’d met him. It seemed that they’d fallen into an instant routine, which was going to be hard to shake when the time came.

When the time came? She half caught the thought and almost started to analyse it, but let it drift away instead. They were down the steps now and he was pushing his shoulder to the door whilst beckoning her in, out of the cold dusk air and into the warm, dingy fug.

A familiar scene. Nicotine walls, threadbare tartan carpet under dark wood tables sticky with spilt beer and badly aimed fag ash, rickety chairs, dim lighting, worn paths from bar to dart board to loos out the back. She unwittingly wrinkled her nose – smoky pubs would be a phase she would fairly quickly grow out of. He raised a hand to various acquaintances seated in groups around the place, then headed for the bar. Smoky pubs would be a phase he would not ever grow out of, but would be forced to do without some thirty years later when smoking in public places was banned.

Three bar tenders loitered behind the bar. A young, pale, skinny bloke who could have been either a compulsive cyclist and seed eater, or a boy toying with the heavier end of the drugs scene – it was hard to tell – was endlessly rubbing a dubiously grey dish cloth around the inside of a pint glass. A teenage beauty gave repeated sideways glances at her blonde beehive hairdo and Cleopatra eye-liner in the tarnished, silvered mirror behind the up-turned spirit bottles. Between times she smoothed a tiny white pinny around her waist and hips, the better to show off her hour glass figure encased in tight black top and denim jeans. Some styles just never go away. A busty older woman, who looked fatigued by life and wore don’t-care sleeveless tee and jeans, nevertheless pulled a pint with gusto and pride and an impressive set of biceps and triceps. 

Hush Puppy (let’s call him that) ordered up two pints of Guinness and two packets of  KP nuts, one salted, the other dry roasted, both for Willow Tree (let’s call her that) and a packet of cheese n’ onion crisps for himself. She stood half in his shadow and looked around while the transaction took place. There were small framed paintings, or prints at any rate, all around the room. On closer inspection she could see that they were all old sepia photos of the city in a bygone era. Horses and carts, women in ridiculously cumbersome dresses and shawls sorting fish on a quay, masted ships in port, the racoon faces of coal miners standing proudly at the top of dodgy looking mineshafts, that sort of thing. She didn’t quite know what to think of such nostalgia – was one supposed to be comforted or humbled by the message that life used to be so much tougher? Maybe she was reading too much into them: they were only there to decorate the walls after all.

They chose a table in the corner and both instinctively sat with their backs to the wall, the better to people watch. WT tucked her skinny lower limbs, resplendent in blue and red striped long-johns and red Doc Martin boots, around either side of the chair as if she were jockeying a horse. She shed the donkey jacket to reveal an oversized – huge in fact – fine old cream cotton Grandpa shirt, which in all honesty could have been her Grandfather’s, such was it’s antiquity. Over this she wore a tiny dark red cashmere cardigan (which had been the outer part of one of her Mother’s twinsets). Fashion was pretty weird in the 70’s.

“You packed some stuff?” He wiped Guinness froth from his upper lip as he spoke.

“Yup, I’ve got it here” she raised a small duffel bag, which he had not previously noticed her carrying, up from the floor as proof.

“Yo, that gonna be enough for the whole weekend? You might need a dress or something for the Boxing Day do.” “Cheers, by the way” he added and they belatedly chinked glasses, for both had already sunk that blissful first half dozen swallows of the magic dark potion that is Guinness.

“I’ve got a dress in there; it’s just very small” she winked “thought it might keep your father’s mind occupied through the trickier bits of the ceremony.”

“Yo! My brother’ll probably put off this damn wedding to Suzie if he sees too much of your body, especially as she’ll be wearing a tent to cover the bump.” 

Yo seemed to be HP’s word of the moment. He had recently been courting favour with a bunch of rich Americans who had ‘discovered’ and made popular his shop, rather blandly named “Alternative Art” (everything was alternative in the 70’s). They all seemed to say Yo a lot, so he joined in.

“I tell you what” WT’s eyes glowed and she bounced in her chair/saddle with excitement, “I’m dead excited to be going on the night sleeper. We used to do that as kids. Wake up in London. I can’t remember what we did after that, but I always remember the sleeper. Getting all tucked up into the bunks and falling asleep to the chug chug chug of the train. Waking in the night to peer out at mist strewn country stations with Fat Controller guards blowing whistles. My wee brother got lost once, when he was only about two. Mum was frantic in the morning, but it turned out he had managed to roll his sheet into a kind of hammock and slipped down the back of the bunk bed. He was sleeping like a top! We must have been making a commotion ‘cos I remember a nice lady appeared at the door with a whole batch of fresh scones and a pot of raspberry jam. Wasn’t that lovely?”

“Well I can’t sleep on trains” HP didn’t seem to have fully listened to WT’s story, “so I’ll be out in the corridor most of the night, smoking and watching the world through a window”. He lit a Benson & Hedges and narrowed his eyes against the first cloud of nicotine and tar. WT felt a slight contraction of her chest – disappointment? At what? The fact that he didn’t sleep on trains? She took a ciggy from the proffered golden packet and leaned in to the flame.

©Julia Welstead