Free Swansea Girls by Catrin Collier

shirt and red tie, his blond hair shining in the muted light of the ballroom, she felt instinctively that he was the right one for her. All she had to do was convince him of that fact. As he saw her, he smiled. Regaining her confidence, she managed a brief nod of acknowledgement.
    ‘They’re coming this way,’ Judy muttered, applauding the band’s final bars. The few couples on the floor moved towards the perimeter of the room as Adam and Martin joined them, leaving the stranger at the bar.
    ‘Any chance of a welcome home for a war-weary ex-soldier?’ Adam asked, mesmerised by the sight of Helen’s bosom.
    ‘That depends on the soldier.’ Helen flirted outrageously.
    ‘And how war-weary he really is,’ Judy added. ‘I heard you spent your National Service chasing sheep in Yorkshire.’
    ‘There goes any hope I had of impressing you with stories of my heroics ...’ The MC’s announcement that the band was about to play ‘Rock Around the Clock’ drowned out the rest of his sentence.
    ‘Do you jive?’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘I’m asking for a dance.’
    Helen stared in dismay at Adam Jordan offering Judy his hand. As she took it, he led her into the centre of the room. ‘Did you see that?’ she whispered indignantly into Lily’s ear as a tall, thin spotty boy who worked in the café with Katie persuaded her to join him on the dance floor.
    ‘What was Judy supposed to say?’
    ‘“I don’t dance but why don’t you try my friend,” would have been better than a lot of cringe-worthy flirting and nonsense about sheep and Yorkshire. She knows I’m crazy about him.’
    ‘Would you like to dance, Lily?’
    Lily liked Martin but at that moment she would have been happy to dance with Frankenstein’s monster if he’d been prepared to take her out of earshot of Helen. She gave Martin a smile that sent his pulse racing. ‘Thank you for asking, I’d love to.’
    ‘Thanks.’ Adam took the pint of beer Brian handed him as he returned to the bar after the jive. Moving away from the queue jostling to get the barman’s attention, he looked back at the dance floor. ‘What did I tell you? Martin and Lily. He can’t leave the girl alone.’
    ‘I’m not surprised.’
    ‘You like her too.’
    ‘Who wouldn’t, but I’ve been warned off her once today; I’m not looking to annoy my landlady by trying my luck there again.’ Joining Adam, Brian studied the ballroom. It was no better and no worse than a hundred others where he had bought beer and hunted girls since he had turned sixteen and been able to convince barmen he was old enough to drink.
    The same badly constructed, multifaceted, glue-spattered, mirrored ball in the centre of the ceiling to reflect dim lighting that almost, but never quite, succeeded in concealing the dinginess of surroundings overdue for a coat of paint. A dance floor scuffed, marked and pitted by stiletto heels. Rows of rickety Formica-topped tables and vinyl-covered chairs, spattered with cigarette burns, packed too closely around the fringes. A creaking band with a saxophonist who thought he could play better than he did and a singer who squeaked out every high note.
    Even the girls looked much of a muchness. The younger ones in wide skirts and ponytailed hair posing awkwardly as they waited for boys to pluck up enough courage to ask them to dance reminded him of the Louis Tussaud waxwork figures in Porthcawl Fair. And when they weren’t posing or eyeing boys coyly from beneath their lashes, they were fiddling with their dresses or hair. The older ones, in short curls and tight skirts appeared only slightly more relaxed. He couldn’t see anyone worth facing the strain of a first and unnaturally polite conversation – apart from Lily, who had been claimed by Martin, and the redhead Adam had danced with, who was nowhere to be seen.
    He found himself wishing for a familiar face and just as quickly pushed the thought from his mind. In two years abroad he’d never been homesick; now less