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smiles
and barely disguised nudges the young men seated themselves, the
arrangement as before, as if they had agreed on partners; the
conversation resumed on much the same level, as regards volume and
content, and the bloke at my side shuffled close to me, almost
falling into my lap in a fit of laughter at one of Tina’s crude
wisecracks. I turned away, despairingly, looked across the bar and
saw Paula enter with a couple of friends.
    I tried to
hide my face but Paula saw me and waved, called over, ‘Hi there
Ginny!’
    The others
looked at her, Tina and Diane and the three young men.
    ‘ Who’s
that?’ asked Tina.
    I heard one of
the young men pass some covetous comment, another gave a low
admiring whistle.
    I whispered to
Tina. ‘Remember what you said before, about a girl having to be a
tart to take her clothes off in front of people?’
    ‘ Yes?’
    ‘ And I
said that if you saw her walking along the street you wouldn’t
think that?’
    ‘ Yes?’
    ‘ Doesn’t
look anything like a tart, does she?’ I smiled.
    Tina looked
again at Paula, trying to picture her without any clothes. ‘You
mean that’s her?’
    ‘ Fucking
gorgeous,’ one of the blokes decided.
     
     

Chapter Six
     
    I was staring
at the canvas of crucified beef, trying to decide if there was any
room to fit in a screaming pontiff, when Paula sneaked up on me and
mentioned something about the twelve days of Christmas.
    I
automatically responded with, ‘My true love sent to me?’
    ‘ Can you
work the twelve days up to Christmas? That’s what I’ve managed to
arrange for you.’
    ‘ That’ll
be great,’ I said, thinking of all the money to be earned, but then
asked, ‘Can I, though? Term doesn’t finish until the
eighteenth.’
    ‘ It’ll
be alright, Ben will give you a bit of leeway,’ Paula assured me.
‘There’s not all that much happening during the last week of term,
in any case, apart from trips to the pub. You’ll have to miss out
on those, I’m afraid.’
    I shrugged.
‘We all have to make sacrifices.’
    ‘ For the
ones we love?’ Paula smiled, and I grimaced. She asked, ‘So which
was one was Stephen?’
    ‘ Which
one?’ I said, then realise she was thinking of the three young
blokes she’d seen me with. ‘Oh, he wasn’t one of those,’ I told
her, embarrassed that she should imagine me getting involved with
callow youths like that.
    ‘ No?’
she said, and her smile took on the character that was often
described as ‘knowing’, almost a smirk.
    ‘ No! And
before you suggest it, no, I wasn’t being a two-timer or whatever
you want to call it.’
    ‘ It’s
not for me to pass comment if you were,’ Paula said, but her barely
contained grin demanded that I make further excuses.
    ‘ I just
went for a drink with a couple of old pals,’ I said. ‘It was them
who wanted to chat up the lads.’
    ‘ Yes?
And you didn’t enjoy the evening, then?’
    Actually, I
hadn’t, the one I had been paired with had grown less and less
attractive as the night wore on and had had the nerve to complain
because I couldn’t afford to share the fare for a taxi home. The
cheek of the boy, expecting that a kiss and a cuddle in a shop
doorway would buy him a chauffeur driven ride home.
    ‘ You’d
rather have been with your boyfriend, then?’ Paula supposed, and
answered for me. ‘Yes, of course you would. Why else would you be
working so hard to earn the money for her Christmas
present?’
    I frowned. It
was difficult to explain exactly why, and suddenly it seemed that
Paula was as silent as a priest in a confessional, waiting for my
confidences. I had to admit that there was the need for money to
buy Stephen a present, since he could no longer have the portrait,
but over and above this consideration there was the simple desire
to have a little more cash. Paula nodded when I complained of how
depressing it was at times, trying to manage on little, nodded as
if she understood from experience. I wondered again how old