Pauline says she’ll give me a Mia Farrow haircut. A feather-cut.
“You’re lucky with your high cheek bones, you suit short hair.”
I just have to take her word for it. I’m so short-sighted I can’t see what I look like without my glasses, and with them on, all I see is a face drowning behind black frames, my eyes behind the thick lenses like those of a crab’s.
“Why don’t you get contact lenses?” Pauline and Rhonda ask.
Pauline and Rhonda lounge on their beds in a long-legged, nonchalant manner that I could never achieve. I have short legs and a boyish figure and draw my knees up under my chin in an effort to disappear. I’ll never look as beautiful. Will never be able to buy bell bottoms that don’t need taking up almost to the knee, leaving double-thick hems as heavy as sails that flap as I walk.
We are in Pauline and Rhonda’s double room at the YWCA. Rhonda has a poster of James Taylor, Pauline one of the film ‘Easy Rider’. There is a photo on their cork notice board of the two of them tanned from fruit-picking and looking into the camera, their heads leaning together, grinning as if they’ve just got away with something. A poster of the peace-sign is blu-tacked to their door.
“Sit here,” Pauline pats the end of the bed near where there’s a mirror. I take off my glasses. She begins to cut. A long-handled comb sits in a glass of water. Just like a hairdresser, she places her two hands over my ears and firmly tilts my head to one side.
“You coming to the dance on Saturday night?” she asks.
“Yes she is,” Rhonda answers for me as I screw up my nose.
“You’re going,” Pauline agrees.
“I’ve got nothing to wear,” I wail.
“Wear that red, paisley dress.”
Oh yeah, right. The one that makes me look about ten years old. I squint my eyes in an effort to see into the mirror. From some psychedelic, black-and-white material and a Simplicity pattern she has, Pauline’s going to cut-out and sew up a jumpsuit. Rhonda has a daffodil-yellow trouser-suit that needs
a belt. Pauline offers her white, wide one with the round, silver buckle.
“Neat,” says Rhonda.
Part of me wants to go. The other part wants to stay at home, reading in bed with a packet of pineapple chunks and listening to ‘Concierto de Aranjuez’. No guy wants to dance with a flat-chested girl with short hair and glasses. I’ve already been through having to go to a dance where my friend was asked for every dance but I never got asked once. Just for something to do, I kept going into the toilets to comb my hair. Another time was the school ball where I went with a boy from the Tramping Club and who was, quite honestly, a bit of a goof, right down to his name; Godfrey Perimann. He was tall and skinny and the top of my head only reached to his fourth rib. I wore a purple, daisy-patterned dress Mum had sewn for me on her Bernina. Mum paid for me to get my hair done. I hated it, all teased up and stiff with hair spray. Godfrey treated the whole thing as an extension of a hike, loping around the dance floor, swinging me about like I was his rucksack.
“My experiences of dances aren’t the most marvellous,” I say.
“All the guys from Aquinas College are going to be there so there’s bound to be more males than females,” I’m cheerfully assured. I feel even more anxious. What if, even then, I still don’t get asked? I put my glasses back on and look at the haircut. Oh well, at least Pauline and Rhonda say I’ve got great cheek bones.
*
Saturday night in my short, paisley-patterned dress with gored skirt and contrasting white, peter-pan collar, I sit here, my hands constantly tugging at the hem which threatens to ride up over my crotch. I swing my foot in what I figure is a careless, sophisticated manner, showing off my two-toned, peep-toed, sling backs. Ever since the first dance I have been sitting here with Mary Furness, who also wears glasses, and watching Pauline and Rhonda who have both met good-looking guys. So far, they’ve had every dance. Pauline’s long, black hair swings in a way I know she’ll be very pleased with having used sellotape to plaster the sides of her hair to her cheeks, leaving it there all day until it dried straight, and then asking Rhonda to iron it. I’d come across them both just before we left, Pauline kneeling as if tied to the ironing board by her hair, and Rhonda nervously wielding a hot iron and a damp tea towel.
A smiling, Indian guy comes over and asks me for a dance.
With some relief I stand up. He puts his arm around my waist and I put one of my hands
on to his shoulder, feeling warmth under the white, polyester. I’m conscious that my hands are cold and clammy. I concentrate on trying to understand what he’s saying. He smells of perspiration and of something else, something unfamiliar, like foreign food. His name is Patrick, from Fiji. He’s even more nervous than I am.
Part-way through the dancing, the lights are dimmed. Patrick’s face looks like a swimmer’s making its way over to me through water. I feel the rough scrape of his chin and then soft lips pressed up hard against my own tight, startled ones drawn back in fear. When I feel a tongue darting about in my mouth, I resist the urge to pull away in shock. Was this some sort of Fijian custom?
A trestle laden with sausage rolls and lamingtons set out on white newsprint, is brought out. Supper time. I look around for Pauline and Rhonda. Nowhere to be seen. In fact there aren’t that many of us left in the hall. I tell Patrick I’m going back to the YWCA now. I take advantage of the fact that he doesn’t know enough English to adequately protest this early departure. He walks with me to the front door of the Y dub. Already in halting English he’s invited me to Sunday lunch at Aquinas tomorrow, and to the Ball next Saturday night. I was polite and said yes, that’d be very nice thank you.
I head for the lift, fast, leaving a slightly dumbfounded Patrick standing under the outside light, moths waltzing above his head. I jab at the lift button with the nervous relief of someone who’s made a lucky escape. As I walk down the empty passage, I pass Linda Wright’s door, the bar of light under it indicating she’s still awake and reading. I envy her safe and sensible world of skin-tone pantyhose, mid-knee length hemlines, her plain, last year’s lace-up school shoes. I even envy her librarian haircut.
*
Wednesday evening, just before the warning that the canteen will be closing in fifteen minutes, the intercom crackles and blares, “Telephone for Frances Barlow, third floor.”
It’s Patrick to confirm the Saturday night date to go to the
ball. I’ve already decided I’m not going. Sunday lunch had been nothing but
a drag, with awkward, sweaty kissing in his room afterwards. The thought of even more kissing and the threat of it ‘going farther’, has put me right off. I quickly say I’m sorry but my mother needs me to go home this weekend and so I’ll be catching the train to Gore on Friday night. I have to repeat myself several times as he tries to come to terms with being dumped. His voice is shocked, urgent. As I hang up, I try not to dwell on his tone of abandonment.
A short time later I decide, no, it wasn’t abandonment. It was disapproval. Accusation. I start to feel guilty for leading him on, making him think I wanted to go to the ball and pretending that I had enjoyed the kissing. I chew on a thumbnail and look out over the car park towards the houses on the bank opposite, at the flaking paint and a bike leaning against a back-porch. It’s about to rain.The sky is a dark purple, like a grape about to burst.
And what’ s more, I still have Pauline and Rhonda’s gasps of bewilderment to face. I’ve let them down as well. They’ll think I’m a real cow for leaving Patrick only three days to find another partner for the ball. Then, slowly, I feel something else. A kind of exhilaration. That’s the only word for it. In the space of five days not only have I been asked out by a man, twice, but I’ve jilted him. I turn to the mirror. Right there. Those great cheek bones.
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