Those are the things that come out now, in the dead of the night, as Gussie smiles down from the wall and she sits in the kitchen with a mug of tea beside her Oxo box on the table. It’s the Oxo box that upsets her. It always did. The Oxo box that smells of nun.

6

EVERYBODY WAS THERE. Everybody saw it. When the Vet slipped into her arms for the first time, at a half-crown dance in the local town hall.

The doctor’s daughter was there. And the daughters of three solicitors. It was a beautiful array. An enormous amount of young girls. All lined up along the wall like flowers on the altar. Perfumed as sweetly as princesses. The Comerford twins, picking their noses. The sergeant’s big girl. And the five daughters of the man who owned half the shops on Main Street. A flock. A convent. A gaggle.

And so beautiful, in contrast to the pack of yahoos and gimps huddled inside the door. The guttersnipes on the balcony. The teddy boys at the mouth of the men’s toilets, combing their greasy manes. What Betty Burke called the dregs of society. Boys who usually went to the one-shilling hops. Boys who would climb in the toilet windows to get a gawk at dressed-up rich girls. At the hundreds of legs in sheer nylon, the princesses in crinoline, the lips sparkling like sweat on a raspberry. Moist hands clinging to tiny black or white handbags that were all the rage at that time.

Some of the girls wore long-sleeved white gloves that went all the way up to their oxters, to hide the sweat. And others had slim cigarette cases of pure silver. Everyone dreaming of the moment they might sit in the Vet’s car on the road home. Dreaming of that American moment. That film thing. Yes. There was more to cigarettes than was on the packet.

There weren’t a lot of vets in Ballinasloe. Nor were there many of those teddy boys who could afford to be driving around in a spotless black Ford, like Mr Delaney. And though every single girl on the floor was desperate for a good man, Birdie knew that only she had a chance. As sure as there were eyes in her head, she could say for certain that not a one of them virgins could dance a foxtrot.

Birdie read the situation the instant she looked down onto the dance floor. She was on the balcony. She could sense the breath leaving her body with fright. She thought she was about to faint. Christ, it was such a shock. She tried to look again, to make sure she could believe her eyes. She surveyed them carefully. The entire line of virgins, alleged virgins and hopeless spinsters in the hall below.

Delaney was on the floor. She saw him glide. Turn. Reverse. Samba. She saw him samba. Christ, he could dance. The style of it! And all they could do was giggle and trample on his toes. The poor man!