‘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.
Steve saw it too. When he draped an arm over her she wanted to protest at the familiarity, but then she remembered Tressa’s account of how she’d behaved with the selfsame man just the previous evening and felt she could say nothing.
‘How about you, Lizzie?’ Mike asked. ‘Are you hungry too?’
Lizzie gave a brief shake of her head, but regretted it immediately for it started the thumping pain again. ‘No,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’m not hungry at all, and even the thought of food makes me feel sick.’
‘You need some of Uncle Steve’s medicine,’ Steve told her.
‘Uncle Steve’s medicine? What’s that?’
‘You’ll soon find out,’ he said with a smile.
‘Brandy,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ve never had brandy in my life.’
She felt the nausea rise in her throat as Mike said, ‘You’ve not lived. Drink it down, it’ll settle your stomach.’
She looked around at them all watching her in this little old pub called The Woodman, chosen because it had a restaurant on the side, and she wondered if Steve was right, for the different smells of alcohol, cigarette smoke and food cooking were making her feel incredibly sick. She’d die of embarrassment if she was sick in front of everyone, and Tressa would kill her altogether.
Lizzie picked up her balloon glass and looked at the amber liquid. ‘There’s an awful lot of it.’
