Forty-eight years earlier…
Tess and Nancy quickly settled into the flat on Swift Square. They had a bedroom each and a kitchen to prepare meals and sit in on afternoons when perhaps they should be doing other things. The square itself was a shambling Georgian monstrosity. Many of the houses were boarded up to keep out undesirables. On one side, a brave attempt at introducing commerce. A few fledgling offices treaded uncomfortably alongside the poverty remnants. If they stuck it out, who knew? Tess wasn’t optimistic for their chances. It suited Tess and Nancy perfectly in many ways. College was just a five-minute walk away, the rent was cheap, more a token than the going rate and just around the corner there were vegetable stalls and a fishmonger. They may not eat as well as when their mother cooked, but Tess was too enthralled in this exciting new world to pay much heed to mundane things like meals or food or even maybe Nancy.
Perhaps it was just as well, because Nancy seemed to get on with things, in her own quiet dull way. Her first day of term passed without as much as a comment, until Tess drew her out. The secretarial college sounded grey, a bunch of nuns finishing off the girls of middle-class families. It sounded joyless, but there would be prospects, and at least it meant direction for Nancy.
‘No boys, of course,’ Nancy tempered a shy smile. ‘But everyone seems very nice, they’re all just like me, really.’
‘It sounds like the kind of place Father would approve of at least,’ Tess laughed.
‘Yes, I suppose he would,’ she said vaguely and Tess wondered if she might be homesick, but she didn’t dare to ask. ‘It’ll do me, for now. I don’t have your talent or ambition…’
‘Don’t say that, Nancy. You’re going to make a great success of whatever you set your hat at,’ Tess said warmly. In the few weeks since they’d arrived, it seemed Nancy’s confidence was going down instead of up. Sometimes, Tess wondered if there wasn’t some small resentment or jealousy at the bottom of it, but there had never been an angry word between them. They were just different, that was all. They wanted different things, or at least it seemed that way to Tess. Then again, she wasn’t exactly sure what Nancy wanted these days, she played her cards much too close to her chest. Perhaps, Nancy didn’t know herself?
Tess settled in a daily routine of her own making. The hours at college were much shorter than she expected, maybe than she’d hoped for. With so many others, between lectures, she hung about the library or the playing fields or, if she got away with it, the grand dining room that served coffee all day long if you could afford it.
She spotted Douglas Buckley on the second day. His shirt was white, almost iridescent among the sea of murky grey duffle coats and denims. Tidiness bordered on pristine about him, it marked him out instantly, as though he stood a little apart from the rest. He was not the tallest boy there, maybe he wasn’t even the most handsome, but the minute Tess clapped eyes on him, she felt like she was being drawn towards him. It was first-class madness. It was the kind of ridiculous thing that happened in the movies or maybe even the kind of love story that Aunt Beatrice had been peddling for years. Whatever it was, Tess knew there was no changing it. The attraction she felt for this proud boy with angular features and ginger-blonde floppy hair was as steadfast and strong as the pull of the ocean. Tess knew from a lifetime looking out at the Irish Sea that there was no point fighting the tides.
Douglas Buckley stood over from her, unaware that she was even in the room while she felt his every breath. They stood next to each other in a line for something that seemed so inconsequential when she thought of it later. Then someone pushed her from behind and she found herself toppling up against him. He saved her from a fall and introduced himself as she straightened herself up. He was tall enough to make her stretch her neck when he spoke and something jangled between them so when she worked up the courage to speak she found herself smiling at him. Perhaps it was his eyes? Almost indigo, deep enough to dive into them and lose herself forever, or maybe it was his hands, so familiar that she had to stop herself from reaching out and touching them. As they spoke – she couldn’t remember what they said – she felt her insides churn about, as if the waves in Ballycove had nipped in the tide and then allowed the sand to shift so everything skewed, just a little. Something inside her changed forever when she met Douglas Buckley.
‘You’re studying music?’ he tilted his head a little to the side. ‘What do you play?’ he asked.
‘Oh, no. I sing.’ She let the words flutter uncertainly across the space between them. ‘Soprano, but my range is wide…’ Tess wanted to impress this boy as she’d never wanted to impress a boy before.
‘Really?’ A tall boy, denim-clad with skin reddened from too much sun, spun round. He was the antithesis of Douglas Buckley’s refined sophistication. Everything about him said poor, his callow roughness cobbled about him like a mantle, stuck on at the start and held in place seamlessly. He stuck out a hand. ‘Stephen,’ he said by way of introduction, ‘I’m in second year medicine and, funny, but we’re just looking for a singer.’ He jabbed a thumb towards the noticeboard across from them.
‘Hello, I’m Tess.’ And suddenly they were three. ‘I’ve only sung in choirs, apart from here, I can’t imagine that…’
‘Well, we do church weddings too,’ Stephen said, rummaging through the notepad in his hand. ‘Come along tonight,’ he looked up at Douglas, taking him in, assessing the possibilities between them. ‘Both of you, just for an hour.’
‘Well,’ Douglas looked at her uncertainly, then his mouth broke into a smile. They had only just met, but funny how two seconds can make the world of difference. Stephen thought they’d known each other a lifetime and it felt to Tess as though one day they might. ‘Why not, if you can’t enjoy an odd night out…’ Douglas said and Tess wondered if he felt the very same.
‘I’d love to,’ Tess gushed but then remembered Nancy. ‘Can I bring my sister along too?’ She’d have her work cut out for her to get Nancy out the door, but it would be even harder to leave her behind.
‘Seriously?’ Stephen said as though his ship had just come in. ‘Of course, the more the merrier.’
*
The flat had the still air of a question mark hanging about the place when Tess returned that evening. Suddenly, as she wandered through the rooms, everything seemed to have shrunk a little smaller, paled a little greyer. Her life outside this place had just burst into a delicious new adventure and the old familiar seemed so much duller than before. She should really make something for their dinner. Instead, she went to the little wardrobe that they shared between them in Nancy’s room and rummaged through the meagre contents in search of glamour. There was a black lace dress that might look like something a mourning Italian grandmother would wear, but when Tess fitted it on, it clung perfectly to her so there could be no missing her slender waist or ample derriere. The dress had been in the flat when they arrived and Tess had halted Nancy in her zealous drive to clear each item out. From the moment Tess laid eyes on it, she knew it was a dress to wear on stage. True, she’d have to layer it up with jewellery to throw sparkles on a light she was confident would one day capture only her. For now, she drew out Aunt Beatrice’s silken shawl. This was not just a sentimental piece, but it was more beautiful perhaps because of it. Aunt Beatrice was given it by an officer during the war for some favour she would never mention and maybe Tess knew better than to press. It was a sheeny forest of emeralds, jades, ivy; lush and verdant. A thread of lightest blue danced an azure path to a deep fringe that picked out Tess’s eyes, making them even more striking above the black.
‘Oh, Tess, you look divine,’ Nancy said when she arrived back in the middle of the trying on.
‘Do you think so? It’s just that I…’ Tess felt her cheeks flame pink, it wasn’t something that happened very often and in the dim light of the flat, Nancy didn’t notice. She was too intent on putting away the groceries from her basket.
‘I’ve brought back some eggs and…’ Nancy stopped, looked more closely at her sister. ‘What? Has something happened?’
‘No,’ Tess said defensively and then she softened. ‘Well, yes. And no,’ a nervous giggle overtook her and she realised, this must be love. ‘We’ve been invited to a club.’
‘A club? What kind of club? Is that why you look so…’
‘Fabulous?’ Tess threw back her head and laughed.
‘Well, yes, but different, there’s definitely something different about you apart from all the finery.’ Nancy shook her head and Tess had a feeling she knew exactly what her sister meant, because she was different, she felt like she was two inches taller and somehow changed since meeting Douglas Buckley.
‘I’ve met someone,’ Tess said, flopping into the seat.
‘You’ve what? Tess, you’ve only just started college, how can you have met someone?’ Nancy shook her head good-naturedly. ‘And you’re meeting him tonight?’
‘We’re both meeting him tonight,’ Tess laughed. ‘At the Sunset Club. Say you’ll come?’
‘Wild horses wouldn’t keep me away,’ Nancy laughed, but her expression had an anxious look that Tess recognised from childhood. She was meant to be looking after her little sister, perhaps meeting someone had not been something she’d really figured in.
‘You can wear the grey?’ Tess ran back to the wardrobe again, pulled out a silvery grey two-piece suit that probably dated from a decade earlier. It was fashioned beautifully, obviously expensive, and when Nancy tried it on, she might have stepped directly off the plane from Paris, such was her understated style.
*
‘You see,’ Nancy sighed. ‘This is exactly why Father wanted me to stay with you this year.’ True enough, ‘The Sunset Club’, was a complete dump. From the pavement, Tess felt the thrum of music linger long enough in her pulse to stir a steady commotion within her. She’d never been to a jazz club before. The darkness when she entered embraced her like a comfortable cloak of welcome. In this kind of place, she could imagine extinguishing the values that had been foisted upon her in Ballycove. It was a blackness that loosened ideals so the distinctions between responsibility and innocence; between liability and virtue, could be quietly snuffed.
Douglas found them as soon as they had left their coats; he led them to seats near the front. Tess did the introductions, had already explained to Nancy that they were guests of a boy called Stephen who played in the band. She didn’t mention that they needed a singer, not that it meant anything really. After all, what did Tess know of jazz.
A group of five young men were playing on stage at odds with each other and the noise, frenetic and grinding, seemed to expel a tension that Tess knew would make Nancy feel uncomfortable. This place, it seemed to make her sister even more washed out than usual. Here, Nancy faded to a beiger version of herself, as though her delicacy was lost within the smoky air, transforming her from butterfly to moth in a cruel twist that she did not deserve.
Douglas went to the bar and brought down three drinks. They sat for a while nursing warm Babychams, while Douglas ignored the cloudy glass of mottled beer before him. He sat between them, pulling up conversation when the intervals allowed. Tess could see that Nancy liked him well enough too. She couldn’t think of anything worse than the people she loved the most not getting along together. Not that she loved him yet, Tess caught herself up on that thought. They’d only known each other for hours, she couldn’t possibly love him yet. Could she?
The music was too loud for conversation and although it entranced Tess, she was all too aware that Douglas sat at odds with everything in this place. She decided they wouldn’t wait for long, instead she would suggest that they leave here and perhaps walk through City Green before she and Nancy went back to Swift Square.
It was while these thoughts were swirling about her brain that she suddenly found herself picked out in a shaky overhead spotlight, shining directly on their table. Then, from the stage, Stephen, the boy from earlier, was making his way across the floor.
‘And now, please welcome, our special guest,’ Stephen was standing over her, his warm solid hand on her shoulder, fighting to be heard above the grating of the instruments. ‘Come on, Tess, you must know something the punters here would enjoy,’ he shout-whispered in her ear. Then, a small stampede of feet began to beat out a demanding welcome. ‘Something a little mellow?’ he asked.
‘Summertime?’ she said loud enough for it to carry to the band and, of course, the crowd erupted. Everyone loved that old standard and everyone knew at least some of the words. So, Tess looked about the little club and stood uncertainly.
Stephen led her to the stage and when she stood beneath the single light and waited for the music to begin behind her, she felt as though she was standing just beyond herself. And then she heard a voice, at her side, ‘one, two,’ and they were off. The words fell easily, lazily from her lips, she closed her eyes to start, but then, she felt her hips sway, just enough to pick the rhythm. The crowd, the music, the feeling of liberation that overtook her whole body in those movements was like no other. She caught Douglas’s unreadable eye – there was a flash of something she didn’t understand – could it be desire?
All too soon, the music ended and the crowd demanded more. Tess bowed, enjoyed the admiration, but moved from the stage with resolve. The truth was, she didn’t know any other songs that would work in this place.
‘That was…’ Stephen bounded up to their table in the break. ‘It was…’ he looked across at Douglas and Nancy for the words but he met empty stares. Tess hardly noticed. She was still on a high after the experience. ‘Well, I think we have a singer,’ he said to one of the other lads who’d joined him from the stage. ‘If you’re up for it?’
‘I… well… I…’ Tess wasn’t sure what to say. She knew what she should say. Her father would want her to say, ‘no’. She could imagine his disdain at the mention of them even being here, much less the idea of parading herself on the stage and titillating the crowd with her swinging hips and sultry dipping voice. This was a million miles away from opera in Covent Garden, and yet Tess loved it. She looked across at Douglas, waited just a beat, she spoke before he had a chance to comment, ‘Yes, let’s give it a go.’ It would be good to let him see that she wasn’t some artless country girl, but she was every bit as sophisticated as he was.
It seemed as they walked home that Nancy was even more subdued than normal. Douglas was brooding on the night they’d spent. Tess, for her part, filled with giddy excitement. She was high after the unexpected performance and animated at the possibilities creeping just ahead. They slipped through Stephen’s Green to make a shortcut, the autumn smells of decaying flowers and turf smoke seemed to be a symphony playing out the departing summer. If their moods were at odds with each other, the silence that tumbled between them was comfortable at least. Soon they were at the top of the square.
‘And this bloke, Stephen? Well, he’s a bit ordinary, isn’t he? I mean he’s hardly our type of person,’ Douglas said into the silence as though the conversation was already in full swing, and just for a moment, in the darkness, the sentiment jarred with her.
‘Oh, Douglas, you are funny. He’s just a little rough around the edges, but he’s in college too, I’m sure he’ll be as successful someday as any of us. Anyway, it’s just a band.’ Tess laughed, he sounded a little like her father, it was too ridiculous to be true of course.
‘I’ll be glad to get to my bed,’ Nancy yawned wearily as she let herself into the flat.
‘I don’t know how I’ll ever sleep,’ Tess said. ‘I may just sit here for a while before I go in.’ She dropped down onto the cold flag steps of the house above their little flat.
‘I’ll sit with you, for just a minute,’ Douglas said, brushing his hand uselessly against the steps to take the everyday dust from their surface. ‘You know, Tess, if you need extra money – there are… better ways to make it.’ His voice stitched across the silence of the night between them.
‘Excuse me?’ she looked at him now, pulling herself into the present, his eyes were a mixture of things she wasn’t sure she understood.
‘What I’m saying is, if you want to get a little part-time job, the city is teeming with them. My local post office is looking for a Saturday girl – they’d pay even better and it’s respectable at least.’
‘I’m a singer, Douglas, it’s what I love to do,’ she whispered into the night air, felt the words settle into her bones. All the same, she liked the idea that he wanted more for her, that he felt some need to watch over her, to keep her safe, chaste perhaps?
‘Not that kind of singer though.’ He spat the words out too quickly.
‘What kind of singer is that, exactly?’ she looked up at him playfully, held his eyes for just a minute too long, and then, suddenly, he leant across and kissed her. His lips were moist and, on the air, she caught the tangy scent of the glass of lager he’d nursed in the club. Tess thought she’d explode from the mixture of desire in this moment and rhapsody from earlier. Then, far off, across the city streets, a siren wailed out loud and obscene into the night and the spell was broken.
‘Better if I go, I think.’ His breathing was uneven and Tess thought she’d rip herself in two with longing for him in that moment.
‘I’ll see you in college, tomorrow, yes?’ she called after him.
‘Of course,’ he said, moving quickly away from her.
She watched as he walked out of the square and thought it had been the most perfect night of her life.