Belfast Girls Read online

  It seemed straightforward enough. The information about the heat arrived in due course. Only one costume was required, although for the finals those who qualified would need to appear in a bathing costume and in evening dress as well.

  Sheila and Gerry decided to stay with the shorts and top outfit which had been successful so far.

  Gerry drove them to another out of town location, this time in the evening.

  Sheila had so far refrained from mentioning to her family or friends what they were doing.

  “I don’t know what my Dad will say when he knows,” she said to Gerry, swearing him to secrecy for the time being. “Time enough to let him come to terms with it if I get to the finals.”

  “If! Strike out that ‘if’!” Gerry ordered. But he agreed that there was no point in meeting trouble halfway. If – sorry, when! – Sheila won the title, the publicity attached would make it impossible to keep her parents in the dark, but meanwhile, why not?

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was a time when Phil needed to avoid hearing things and picking up information.

  By nature bright and observant, she began to train herself not to notice when casual remarks of Davy's revealed that he had been somewhere, or met someone, connected with drugs. She began to take herself out of earshot when he picked up the phone, and to ignore letters or notes left lying about, in case her eye should accidentally pick up a betraying phrase.

  If she was very careful, she could convince herself that the only things Davy was involved in were very minor, on the outskirts of events.

  She had been living with Davy now in his new flat in Thomas Street for two months.

  She had taken over some of the more practical aspects like shopping or calling each month to pay the rent with cash handed over casually by Davy, who was only too glad to be relieved of these responsibilities.

  She was working hard for her finals, which would be at the end of next year, and hoped to do well. Davy’s Ph.D. work continued, giving him, it seemed, a very free rein, for he sometimes took himself off for days at a time without apparent trouble from his supervisor.

  One night, when summer was almost upon them, Phil lay wakeful beside Davy in the attic bedroom.

  The moon gleamed through the drawn curtains.

  Outside, she could see the outline of a huge chestnut tree. It was thick with leaves now, and its delicate spring shape was nearly hidden, its branches smothered.

  As Phil watched, a strong gust of wind detached one of the new leaves and, against all Nature’s rules, it fluttered, still green, and yet over and done with, to the ground.

  A sudden piercing sadness struck her to the heart. It seemed as if her days of youth and innocence were already gone, falling with the leaf while they were still new and green.

  What had happened to her, to Davy? At the street door, several floors below, someone was knocking.

  Phil nudged Davy with one foot and he stretched sleepily beside her.

  “Whaa ... whaa ...?”

  “Someone knocking. Who would it be in the middle of the night?”

  Davy was fully awake now. He sat up and began to pull on jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “Go back to sleep, Phil. It’s probably nothing – a mistake. I’ll go down and check.”

  He was gone.

  Phil lay down again and stared out of the window at the tree. She felt exhausted with emotion, with trying not to know what was going on.

  She felt also a small sting of anger beneath it all.

  Presently she heard soft footsteps on the stairs and the creak of the living room door opening and then quietly closing again.

  There was a murmur of voices.

  She could not make out any of the words even if she had wanted to, but the continuous murmur, just on the verge of hearing, repeated itself in her head for what seemed like a long time.

  She had seldom felt less like sleep.

  At last Davy came back, creeping quietly into the room and into bed.

  “What was it?” asked Phil sharply.

  “Oh. I thought you were asleep.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Just an old mate, looking for a bed for the night,” Davy said.

  “You’ve met him. Sean Joyce. I’ve put him on the sofa in the living room – so don’t go wandering in there in the morning before you’re dressed.”

  He was trying to turn it into a joke. For some reason, this made Phil even more angry.

  “He'll probably be away before you’re up, anyway,” Davy said.

  “Okay.”

  Phil turned over and said nothing.

  Davy went back to sleep.

  In the morning, there were few signs of the stranger's brief presence.

  A smell of cigarette smoke and a few stubs in an ashtray on the coffee table.

  The folded up sleeping bag, which Davy had lent him, placed neatly on the floor at one end of the sofa.

  A glass rinsed out and placed upside down on the draining board, when Phil went into the kitchen.

  There was really very little, when you thought about it.

  So why did it make her feel as if she, or the flat, had been violated?

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  At the heats, there was another panel of judges and again Sheila walked up and down, smiled, and answered some questions about her ambitions.

  It was hard to avoid noticing that one of the judges never looked above her legs and the eyes of a second judge, although they moved further upwards, still did not seem to reach the facial region.

  The third, the token woman, on the contrary, looked only at Sheila’s face. When she caught Sheila’s eye at one point, Sheila was surprised to see that the judge looked extremely embarrassed as if she wished she had never agreed to take on her present role.

  Then the results were announced and, half to her surprise, and yet half with a sense of inevitability, Sheila heard that she was through to the finals.

  Frank Doherty was horrified when Sheila broke the news to him. She had carefully enlisted her mother’s support first. Kathy Doherty, still unused to the idea that her skinny daughter with the ginger hair had become attractive almost, as it seemed to Kathy, overnight, could not help feeling pleased that Sheila had won her heat.

  “Who would have thought it!” she said tactlessly, and Sheila, even with victory under her belt, could not help a momentary return to the childhood misery of knowing that she was considered plain, if not downright ugly.

  Frank shouted at first.

  “No daughter of mine is going to display herself in public like that! I won’t have it, do you hear?”

  Sheila, who had long since begun to take her father’s rages calmly, waited until he had finished.

  “It’s a very respectable contest, Daddy. The finals will be on television. Wouldn’t you like to see me on the screen?”

  Frank paused. Television? There was something very impressive about that idea. Perhaps a contest which was televised should be considered in a different category from the vulgar, back street affairs he had in mind?

  It took Sheila and Kathy much longer than that, of course, to bring him round, but in the end he agreed that Sheila could go ahead.

  “Especially,” Kathy shrewdly remarked to her daughter, “since, when it comes right down to it, he would have no way of stopping you, short of throwing you out of the house. And I’ll say this for Frankie, the thought of such an action would never so much as cross his mind.”

  * * *

  On the night of the Finals of the Miss Northern Ireland Beauty Contest, Sheila found that she was keyed up beyond expectation.

  Everything was on a higher scale than the earlier rounds had prepared her for.

  The hotel, the Marine View at Portrush, was much more luxurious and expensive than the hotels used previously.

  The panel of judges was composed of celebrities of at least local fame.

  There were even the heralded TV cameras. Plans to record the contest were being carried out
, and the place was buzzing with the extra excitement. The show would be recorded tonight, and broadcast sometime next week, Sheila had been told.

  Moreover, the Chairman of the panel of judges was to be Ronnie Patterson, a household name for his chat show, which drew the largest audience of any show broadcast locally. One of the other judges was the factory owner, Montgomery Speers. Sheila knew his name, although she had never met him.

  Sheila found herself trembling with excitement and experiencing that fluttering, sick feeling known as ‘butterflies in the stomach’.

  She fought hard for control and achieved a calm, remote expression which in no way reflected her internal state of mind.

  The finalists assembled according to instructions an hour before the contest was due to start, in a room which had been set aside for changing and for the entrances and exits.

  Gerry, who was not supposed to penetrate behind the scenes, gave Sheila a hug and a quick kiss on the cheek, and left her to go in, making his own way to the front of the audience.

  It was too long a wait.

  The girls were all relieved when a knock on the door heralded a waiter with a red rose for each contestant and an invitation from Ronnie Patterson to join him for a few moments in a nearby reception room for a ‘good luck drink’, as the message put it.

  Everyone was glad to accept.

  The room was packed with journalists, TV people, and musicians, besides waiters with trays of champagne glasses, containing something fizzy.

  Ronnie Patterson hurried forward to greet his ‘guests of honour’ with a big smile.

  Patterson was a man who was good at his job and sensible and reliable when dealing with men, but he had a reputation for being quite the opposite when it came to women.

  Sheila found him repulsive.

  He edged up closer than she wanted and slid his arm round her waist.

  “Hey, beautiful – you’re something else, baby. Now, you wouldn’t try to bribe the judge, would you?”

  He squeezed Sheila’s waist, smiling to show it was all a joke.

  He was big and beginning to run to fat, and the wrinkles round his eyes could have been caused by laughing too much, but Sheila didn’t think so.

  His light blue eyes looked cold in spite of all the smiling.

  “No,” she said, “I wouldn’t.”

  “You wouldn't have to try, darling,” Ronnie Patterson murmured, coming even closer to breathe in her ear. Sheila flinched away. “It just seems to come to you naturally.”

  Sheila was beginning to feel that she couldn’t put up with any more of this and would have to snub him more bluntly, when one of the officials tapped Patterson on the shoulder.

  Keeping a firm hold on Sheila’s waist, he turned his attention for a moment to the newcomer.

  Sheila looked round for help and became aware that someone on the far side of the room was watching her.

  She looked over and caught John Branagh's eye.

  Why had it not occurred to her that he might be here? He was a TV journalist now, and the room was packed with his colleagues.

  Sheila pulled herself sharply away from Ronnie Patterson and started to cross to John.

  He was still staring at her with a fierce, angry gaze.

  “John!” she called but there was so much noise that she was not sure if he could hear her.

  Whether he could or not, he could see her coming towards him. With an abrupt gesture, he set down the glass he was holding on the nearest surface and swung round on his heel.

  A second later, he was pushing his way through the crowded reception room, bumping into people as he went.

  Sheila, her way blocked by a noisy group, tried vainly to reach him.

  By the time she had navigated the people in her way, it was too late. He had gone.

  The reception was over and the contestants were herded back to their dressing room, and a girl with a clipboard told them to keep calm and listen carefully for their names to be called.

  Then out into the bright lights, moving up and down the catwalk in the first stage, in swimwear, trying not to blink, and above all not to look round again for John.

  The contestants paraded first together, then singly. There were ten minutes between rounds to allow them time to change into evening dress.

  Sheila had practised beforehand – step into the dress, pull it up and slip the swimming costume down, without disturbing hair and make- up.

  Then the essential quick check in the mirror to ensure that all was well.

  And then out again to glide up and down the walk to nostalgic Thirties style music – ‘I get no kick from champagne’.

  And finally the moment most of the girls had said they dreaded – standing, trying to look cool and special, while the judges asked their questions.

  Yes, Sheila told them, she would love to travel, she loved children and old people, she owed so much to her parents’ support.

  She would have felt like giggling if it had not been for the dull ache which she had pushed down somewhere, until she had time to take it out and look at it again.

  The ache which had come from seeing John and seeing him turn away from her.

  Back in the dressing room, she stared blankly at herself in the mirror. What was she doing here, putting a final full stop to any hope of persuading John Branagh that she was not an immoral woman?

  The girl who had been next to Sheila came off the stage and burst into tears.

  “I’ve made a mess of it,” she wept. “I wanted the money for my kid, he needs more than I can make to keep him, and now I’ll have to work more overtime instead, if I can get it.”

  Sheila looked at her in amazement.

  She looked about eighteen, if that, as if she should still be a child herself with loving parents, not trying to support her own son.

  “Don’t worry,” Sheila said awkwardly. “I think you have a very good chance. Don’t give up yet.”

  Then it all became too much and Sheila had to get away from the whole thing – the tears, the bright lights, the heightened emotions.

  She slipped quietly out of the door at the back of the room and locked herself into one of the lavatory cubicles.

  Time stood as still as a frozen pink elephant.

  Aeons later, there was the sound of running feet and someone banging on the door.

  “Sheila! Sheila Doherty! If you're in there, come out quick!”

  Sheila opened the door cautiously and was seized by a dozen pairs of hands.

  “Come on, come on, your name’s being called!”

  She found herself propelled down the passage to the stage door.

  Then the other girls drew back.

  Sheila caught her breath and straightened up.

  A voice from the front was repeating, “Are you there, Sheila? Once again – first place, and the winner of the title Miss Northern Ireland – Miss Sheila Doherty from Belfast!”

  The lights, the music and the tension combined to make it seem like one of the most important moments in Sheila’s life.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  As she walked out in front of the applauding crowd, she could see Gerry grinning at her from the front row and noticed with vague pleasure that the crying girl with the little boy had gained third place and at least some sort of money prize.

  Then Ronnie Patterson was kissing her on both cheeks and putting the crown on her head, and last year’s winner was draping her with a sash and cloak.

  The music played louder, the hands thundered applause, and Sheila felt as if something, probably herself, was about to go bang.

  Ronnie Patterson whispered in her ear, “Now, don’t disappear afterwards, sweetheart. All sorts of exciting things happen now.”

  Sheila vaguely thought of photographs and a further reception.

  There were photographs, certainly, and Gerry supported her through the next hour of hype and flurry.

  Everyone in the world seemed to want to speak to Sheila and take her picture and plan future e
ngagements for her.

  Quite suddenly, it seemed, everyone disappeared and, with a head more than a little muzzy with the repeated glasses of champagne thrust upon her, Sheila found herself alone in a room with Ronnie Patterson.

  She was vaguely aware that Patterson had managed this very adroitly, whisking her off on the excuse of important business to discuss, the date for a TV interview to settle.

  He had managed to exclude Gerry as well as the crowds of press and well wishers.

  Sheila, not very clear what was happening, knew only that the ache inside was rapidly making its way to the surface again.

  She had looked in vain for John among the reporters milling around.

  Ronnie Patterson poured her yet another glass of champagne and advanced upon her, holding the glass out.

  “Alone at last!” he said in his jokey manner.

  “Are we?” said Sheila, looking round. “So we are.”

  She felt for the moment unsure what to say.

  Where was everybody else? Why was Patterson locking the door?

  Warning bells began to ring in her head.

  Ronnie Patterson set down the champagne glass which Sheila showed no signs of taking, and put his arms round her.

  A moment later, Sheila found herself being pulled down on what was certainly a bed, while Patterson pressed his unpleasantly thick lips on her mouth.

  For a minute she was helpless, unable to speak or struggle to any effect.

  Then, coming very rapidly to her senses, she dragged her lips away and lowered her head so that her mouth was out of range of further kissing.

  “Let go of me at once!” she ordered furiously.

  Patterson laughed. “I like a girl with spirit,” he said.

  Even at that moment, Sheila could not help an inward grin at the cliché.

  Then, as he showed no sign of releasing her, she began to panic.

  What was she doing alone in this bedroom with a man she didn’t even like? She must have been crazy to let him bring her here.

  Okay, she’d dealt with this sort of thing before, she could deal with it again.