A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [8]
‘Are you sure you want to see this film?’ Dan asked, looking apprehensively at the poster for A Taste of Honey with Rita Tushingham.
‘My sister said it was brilliant,’ Fifi said. ‘She cried buckets.’
Dan grinned. ‘Is that what makes a film good for girls?’
‘I suppose so,’ Fifi agreed. ‘But we could go to another cinema if you like.’
‘No, it’s too cold to walk about.’ He looked down at her winkle-picker stilettos. ‘And I don’t think you’d get far in those anyway.’
*
The film was unbearably sad, and even though Fifi tried hard not to cry because she was afraid her mascara would run, she couldn’t help herself. As they came back out into the foyer, Dan pulled her over to one side, and using the handkerchief he’d had in the breast pocket of his suit jacket, he wiped her face clean.
‘That’s better,’ he said when he’d finished, kissing her on the nose. ‘You’re a bit of a surprise! I thought you were too sophisticated to cry.’
‘I felt so sorry for Jo; she was so plain and unloved,’ Fifi said. ‘And her mother was such an unfeeling cow.’
‘They all reminded me of people I’ve met,’ Dan said thoughtfully as they left the cinema. ‘It was a bit too much of real life for me.’
‘Is your room as bad as the one she lived in?’ Fifi asked as they walked into a pub in the city centre for a drink before she had to catch the bus home. The pub was crowded, with nowhere to sit, and she wished they had somewhere they could go to be alone.
‘It’s a lot smaller,’ Dan replied, waving a pound note at the barman. ‘But the kitchen could star in a kitchen-sink drama – it doesn’t look as if it’s been cleaned for months.’
‘You didn’t say you’d got a kitchen,’ Fifi said in surprise.
‘I have to share it with everyone else,’ he said. ‘I won’t make anything more than a cup of tea in there, I’d be afraid of catching something.’
Fifi had a Babycham and Dan a pint of bitter, and she began quizzing him anxiously about where he’d eat and do his washing.
‘There’s cafés and launderettes,’ he said airily. ‘I’m used to all that.’
On the bus ride home later, Fifi’s mind kept alternating between reliving Dan’s kisses and thinking of him going home to that horrible room. It wasn’t the first time she’d been in a daze over a man’s kisses, though she’d never met anyone who kissed quite as wonderfully as Dan. But it was the first time she’d ever been troubled by how someone had to live.
It was the combination of wanting to be with Dan all the time and worrying about him that confirmed she really had fallen head over heels in love with him. She could think of nothing but their next meeting. Her heart pounded when she saw him and just the touch of his hand made her feel she was on fire. But the thought of him washing and ironing his own shirts, having to work outside in the pouring rain and going home without anyone to make him a cup of tea moved her to tears.
Every day after work she would rush to meet him in the café near where he lived. She didn’t care that he was often caked with brick dust or cement, soaked through when it had been raining – she needed to see him. Just to sit with him over a cup of tea and talk for half an hour every day was better than having to wait two or three days for a proper date.
Dan felt the same way too. Sometimes he’d ring her from a call-box while she was at work, saying he just had to hear her voice. When she was with him she was floating on a cloud, but during the times they were apart she felt bereft. Keeping him a secret was so hard too, for she wanted to tell everyone about him, especially Patty, but she didn’t dare in case her sister let it slip to their parents.
Almost daily she told herself that she was twenty-two, old enough to go out with whoever she wanted to. She even mentally rehearsed telling the family over the evening meal. But every time she was about to break the news, her mother would say something sarcastic, or she was in a bad mood, and Fifi lost her nerve. The longer it went on, the worse it got