Free Eighty Not Out by Elizabeth McCullough

that they now used yards of fabric, which was costly, and required clothing coupons. My mother really enjoyed making ball gowns, and was unstinting with her time and sewing skills: I wish I had expressed appreciation more than I did, but she had to be discouraged from adding ‘little touches’ to otherwise plain styles. Sometimes she won: my first formal dress was pale blue taffeta, after Gainsborough’s Blue Lady – at the final fitting an intricate panel of appliquéd silk flowers appeared at mid-calf level on the lower skirt. Economy still reigned in 1948, when I wore a black silk taffeta skirt inherited from Grandma Eileen who had died the previous year. Evening shoes were almost impossible to buy, and I remember painting, with limited success, a brown suede pair belonging to my mother with silver paint. Finally persistence was rewarded when I tracked down some gold brocade shoes with a high wedge heel and peep toes – they cost a crippling three guineas.
    With various escorts I always enjoyed a visit to the Grand Opera House. A celebration of late Victorian exuberance, complete with gilded elephants, red velvet curtains and seating, during the immediate post-war years it hosted many ballet companies. Ballet Jooss proved too avant-garde, but Mona Inglesby’s International Ballet, although not top grade, introduced a thirsty public to the great classics of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: Swan Lake, Les Sylphides, Sleeping Beauty, Coppélia, The Nutcracker, Don Quixote , even Scheherazade . Dame Marie Rambert brought her own company with the young John Gilpin fresh from Sadler’s Wells, when it was already clear that he would go far. I shall always remember his Albrecht in Giselle . Kenneth MacMillan had a commanding stage presence by the age of nineteen when he came to Northern Ireland with Sadler’s Wells, which staged a brilliant performance of Bizet’s newly discovered Symphony in C , and Kodály’s Dances of Galánta .
    I became friendly with a Royal Navy lieutenant who had seen active service but now had a shore job. He looked like James Mason, played reasonable tennis and, in addition, was a fair skater. He was musical and had his own violin, which he insisted on bringing to our house to give a recital. This did not go down well with Auntie Rosemary, who had ambitions of her own in that field, nor did the fact that he was thirty-eight, the same age as she. We went to cinemas and dances, and he taught me marksmanship at the Customs House rifle range. After dances, in the back seat of the car, he would cradle me in his arms, and maunder on about his working-class childhood in north-east England, how he had worked his way up from doing paper deliveries, through grammar school, ultimately becoming a lieutenant in the navy. He was fond of me to the extent of addressing notes to ‘Dearest Bluebell’, and was generous with gifts. Transferred back to England, he disappeared from my life.
    There were other men to whom I did not get so close. Then there was Douglas, also ex-Royal Navy, who had come to Belfast as an apprentice mill-manager at Ewart’s. He too was twice my age, and lived in digs in Eglantine Avenue, where he would take me after skating, for which he made an acceptable dance partner. His orientation was not in doubt, as, given the opportunity, he would fling himself on me without preliminaries and thrust his tongue down my gagging throat, only detaching himself after a sharp knee jab in the groin. He was a pompous public school product, and parsimonious – using a tray purse when we went to the cinema – so I gave him the push.
    Now, without a skating partner, I began to cast my net again. It was not long before another victim presented: this one had the advantage of playing tennis as well. The Canadian aircraft carrier Magnificent was undergoing trials at Sydenham Docks, and many of its officers lodged in the Malone or Stranmillis