Daughter of Mine

The name, whispered so huskily, awakened her a little more and, greatly daring, she put her hands either side of Steve’s face and kissed him hungrily. She’d never had a real kiss, but for all that she was excited by feelings she didn’t understand, and when Steve ran his hands over her she didn’t object.

Steve was surprised, and supposed it was the alcohol she’d consumed that was making her so compliant. When she continued to kiss him and pressed her body close against his, he could not resist trying to go further. With his arm around her, he cupped one of her breasts, and when Lizzie didn’t push him away he felt the heat of desire flow through his body and his fumbling fingers began unbuttoning the bodice of her gown.

Lizzie, even in her hazy state, reacted strongly. ‘Stop it, Steve! What are you doing?’

‘Showing you how much I care for you,’ Steve said huskily, tightening his arms around her. ‘Ah, come on, Lizzie? Don’t stop now.’

‘No,’ Lizzie said, pulling away from him. ‘I’m not that sort of girl.’ She began to do up the buttons, unaware in her tipsy state that she’d clumsily buttoned herself up wrongly and left two buttons undone entirely. ‘I want to go back in now,’ she said, and Steve didn’t protest. He knew he had gone too far and too fast, and he also knew if he wanted to have a chance to see this beautiful girl again he would have to proceed slowly.

Tressa, coming into the hall, intending to look for Lizzie, saw them come in. When she saw the state of Lizzie, her flushed cheeks, messed-up hair falling about her face and unbuttoned bodice, she thought Lizzie and Steve had been up to far more than they had. She was mightily glad Mike hadn’t come with her and there were no other witness either, and also glad the Ladies led off the hall. With a glare at Steve that should have rendered him senseless on the floor, she shoved Lizzie into the Ladies to try and repair the damage.

‘You bloody little fool,’ she admonished as she wiped Lizzie’s face with her handkerchief, which she had dampened under the tap. ‘You haven’t the sense you were born with. Why did you agree to go outside with him in the first place?’

Lizzie looked at Tressa with an inane grin on her face. For the life of her she couldn’t understand why Tressa was cross. ‘For air,’ she said. ‘I was hot.’

‘Hot, my foot,’ Tressa cried. ‘The state you’re in, Steve Gillespie could have taken advantage of you.’ Might have taken advantage of you, she thought, but didn’t put in to words.

But what she said got through to Lizzie’s befuddled brain. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m a good girl, Tressa.’

‘Aye, course you are,’ Tressa said sarcastically, buttoning Lizzie’s bodice up correctly. ‘Turn round and I’ll see if I can do something with this hair, and then I’m getting you a big glass of water and you are going to drink it. That punch is alcoholic, you know; Mike told me. I took to orange afterwards.’ Lizzie heard the words but they didn’t seem to matter. Nothing did, and she just grinned again. Tressa sighed and said wearily, ‘What’s the use of talking to you? Turn around and let me see if I can work some sort of miracle.’

There were not enough grips to put Lizzie’s hair up the way it had been and Tressa was forced to leave some of it loose, but it looked good even so. When Lizzie had obediently drunk the water, Tressa, surveying her, thought she’d done the best she could in the circumstances and led her back onto the dance floor.

Steve was sitting with Mike, and when he saw Lizzie framed for a moment in the doorway he thought he’d never seen anyone lovelier. Her face was no longer flushed and she had regained her creamy complexion, and her hair, though tidy, was now allowing waves to fall down her back and tendrils of it framed her face. He stepped forward quickly to claim Lizzie before someone else did, a large glass of punch in his hand. She lifted it to her lips, her eyes met Tressa’s, who raised hers to the ceiling as Lizzie took a large gulp.

The next morning, when Lizzie opened her eyes because Tressa was shaking her, she felt as if she’d fallen into the pit of Hell. A thousand hammers were beating in her head, her eyes throbbed and she felt sick. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘No way will I,’ Tressa said. She was glad the other two girls that shared the room were not there, for they were on breakfasts this morning while she and Lizzie weren’t on duty until six, and looking at her cousin’s comatose frame she was glad of it.

Tressa expected Lizzie to feel bad. Mike had said she’d have a bad head when she woke in the morning. They’d had to nearly carry her home and she’d almost tumbled down the stairs as Tressa forced her up them, her arm around Lizzie’s waist; and now she lay like one dead, while Tressa’s insides were filled with delicious excitement at seeing Mike again, and she was letting no drunken cousin spoil it. ‘Get up!’ she commanded, giving Lizzie a shove.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can and you bloody will. We’ve got Mass at eleven o’clock and the fellows are going to meet us outside.’

‘The fellows! What fellows?’

‘God, Lizzie! What fellows do you think? Mike and Steve, of course. We arranged it yesterday. Don’t you remember?’

Lizzie shook her head, but gently. She remembered very little, but she recalled her earlier feelings about Steve. ‘I don’t think I like Steve much,’ she said.

Tressa looked at her scornfully. ‘Oh aye,’ she retorted sarcastically. ‘Is that why you danced with him all night and went out with him into the night, arm in arm, and came back with your hair looking like you’d been pulled through a hedge backwards and your bodice nearly unbuttoned?’

Lizzie sat bolt upright in the bed, putting her hands to her aching head as she did so and fighting nausea. ‘I didn’t,’ she breathed, horrified. ‘Say I didn’t?’

‘You did. You were all over him and his hands were everywhere when you danced and you never said a word. You couldn’t get close enough. Even when we sat down, you sat on Steve’s knee and nuzzled into his neck. It was embarrassing. Do you remember none of it?’

‘No. Oh God!’ Lizzie said. ‘I can’t even remember how I got home.’

‘They walked back with us,’ Tressa said. ‘I could never have managed you on my own. I told you that punch was alcoholic, for all the good it did. You just kept knocking it back.’

Lizzie couldn’t remember Tressa telling her that, couldn’t remember anything much. But, whether she could remember it or not hardly mattered. According to Tressa, those glasses of punch had caused her to do God knows what with a person she had just met and in her sober moments hadn’t cared for. The evils of drink—Jesus Christ! Her mother had been right all along.And she felt so ill. ‘Tressa, I feel like death. I don’t think I’ll make Mass this morning,’ she said.

Tressa laughed. ‘You’re hammered, and for the first time in your life, I bet,’ she said. ‘Your mother would be scandalised.’

‘It’s not funny.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Tressa said. ‘And you’re not spoiling my Sunday off because you got drunk last night. We wouldn’t have got home at all if Steve hadn’t nearly carried you to the door, and I nearly broke my neck getting you in the room. When we got here, you lay on the bed and began to laugh. The other girls were none too pleased being woken up, I can tell you.’

‘I woke them up!’

‘Not just them I shouldn’t think,’ Tressa said with gusto, laying it on. ‘God, you were in a state. I undressed you because you were incapable of doing it yourself. I put on your nightdress and tucked you up, and you owe me. So get on your feet.’

‘I can’t, Tressa, I’ll throw up.’

‘Well then, throw up,’ Tressa said unsympathetically. ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was better out than in? And when you’ve been sick, take a couple of aspirin, clean your teeth, wash your face and put on your clothes for Mass.’

‘Did anyone ever tell you how aggravating you are, and a bloody prig into the bargain?’ Lizzie said, getting to her feet with difficulty and a degree of caution. She was unable to wait for Tressa’s response to this, though, for she had to run to the bathroom, her hand to her mouth, while Tressa’s tinkling laugh followed her down the corridor.

Steve noticed Lizzie’s pallor as soon as she emerged from the church and guessed the reason for it. He felt sorry for her, certain that the previous night had been her first brush with alcohol.

She was so embarrassed in front of him. She could scarcely meet his eyes, and though he thought she’d remember little of the previous night, he knew her cousin would have filled in any gaps and probably with embellishment.

‘Where shall we go?’ Mike asked. ‘The day is too raw for walking much. I fancy a pub somewhere.’

‘Somewhere where we can get food would be nice,’ Tressa said. ‘My stomach thinks my throat is cut.’

‘Of course, Communion,’ Mike said. ‘What about the Old Joint Stock?’

Tressa made a face. ‘No, they don’t do food. Anyway, it’s too close.’ It was just down the road from the hotel, near to Snow Hill Station. ‘Half the hotel go in there from time to time.’

‘What about The Old Royal in Edmund Street?’

‘I don’t know if they do food either. I’ve never been in.’

‘What about you, Lizzie? Have you a preference?’

Oh God yes, she had a preference. It was to go back to the hotel, crawl into bed and let the world go on without her, that’s what her preference was. Catching sight of Tressa’s face, she knew that if she voiced those thoughts her life wouldn’t be worth living. ‘No, not really.’

‘Tell you what,’ Steve said suddenly, ‘let’s go down Digbeth Way. We can cut down by the Bull Ring and there’s hundreds of pubs there and we’re bound to find one doing lunches.’

‘Aye, and the walk will give us an appetite.’

‘God, I don’t need to walk to give me an appetite,’ Tressa said. ‘If I don’t eat soon I might go mad altogether.’

‘What d’you mean, go mad?’ Mike said with a laugh, and when Tressa went to hit him with her handbag he caught her around the waist instead and kissed her on the lips.

Lizzie was shocked at Tressa behaving that way in daylight and in front of a church too. She saw Mike now had his arm around Tressa and both were laughing and looking at each other in such a way that Lizzie felt suddenly shut out.