Carmen Cullen has published three books of poetry, Sky of Kites: Kestral Books 1997, Under the Eye of the Moon: Maverick 2001 and Stray Child & other poems. Carmen has three novels published, Two Sisters Singing, Hello Love and Daisy Daisy. Carmen was Head of English in Coláiste Dhúlaigh Secondary School in Dublin and Director of The Oscar Wilde Autumn School Bray. She is now a full-time writer: her book Class Acts, is on the Applied Leaving Cert course. Carmen used her Lockdown time wisely, writing and producing 41 YouTube videos. The videos combine spoken word, text, music and images.

The New Girl

By Carmen Cullen

Caroline didn’t like the Arch Hotel, her new place of employment. It was the first time she’d ever worked from morning to night. In fact, her day began at sunrise. At midnight the first bedraggled looking customers would arrive from the mail boat – the hotel was situated opposite the harbour in Dun Laoghaire, a town that had a regular boat going to and from Holyhead in Wales – and she would sometimes have to stay awake to open the massive hotel door and let them in.

Apart from this being her first job, Caroline had never before stayed in a strange place away from home. She was only sixteen, she often told herself and she wasn’t going to be here for the rest of her life. Sometimes though, when each day passed the same as the next and she learnt the ropes of what needed to be done, it seemed as if it might become her destiny. She might never be rescued and helped move on.

Caroline had a father called Harry and three brothers and a sister. Harry had let the family know in February of that year, it was now June, that he was leaving the countryside for good and moving up to Dublin to work. She knew there were other circumstances to his leaving, something about a will that was forcing his hand. The push to get him to go became relentless, and she found herself helpless in the grip of such a large change. She was in a void, not wanting to leave, about to be taken from a fairytale land where she could stray endlessly through fields, feel the thrill of searching for treasures on every journey, those hidden clusters of wildflowers in the summer, or in autumn nuts and crab apples. The leaving was tempered by one thing only, that she had a lot of growing up to do yet and that it might be good that a new world was opening up at her feet. There was the possibility that she might go to university. She had studied enough to enable it to happen, yet it hadn’t been brought up by her father since she’d arrived.

Miss Pugh the owner of the Arch Hotel was shaped like a bear. Her heavy body sat atop small legs and straw-like hair was a mass of frizz. It was so thick Caroline was sure it harboured insects. It was dry as an old wig too and might even be one because it never grew, from the first day she saw it. ‘I’m giving you this job only because your father recommended you. I have no time for girls who are not ready to stay. You will have to promise me your will make a real effort to learn your duties, be as quick as possible and not scowl at the guests, as if you wished you were elsewhere. Otherwise I have no interest in you,’ Miss Pugh had said to her on her first day.

‘I will miss Pugh. I always wanted to work in a hotel,’ Caroline had found herself lying. Perhaps her father was happy to have one less child to think about. She might never get plucked from the clutches of Miss Pugh.

Miss Pugh had two other employees, Bernie and Doris, and these girls became Caroline‘s enemies. They talked to each other but not to her. They invented ways of not having to change beds by leaving the same sheets on from guest to guest. And when Caroline was afraid to do that, they called her a Holy-Joe. They held their noses to suggest Miss Pugh smelled badly when she’d pass one of them and they stole coins from her purse. Soon Caroline became promoted to being the only one trusted to serve breakfast in the morning, an important role since the vast majority of people staying would be leaving shortly after that meal.

‘We’re going to a club in Dublin next Friday, if you want to come along. Doris said to her. It was a wet Friday afternoon. It’s what everybody does. You can’t stay a baby all your life’ Doris continued and she dabbed rouge onto her cheeks. ‘I suppose you were never out dancing. If you did, wherever you went down in the country is nothing compared to Dublin. From the way they dance you’d know a country person a mile off. We can show you a bit of real life.’

‘You won’t have anybody telling you what you can or can’t do in Dublin. There’s nobody looking over your shoulder and telling you you’re being a bad girl. All you have to do is look after yourself and you’ll be alright’. Bernie had chimed in.

Both girls were sitting at a dressing room table in the servants’ basement room when they spoke. Doris had long lanky hair, a fringe and a pale high forehead, usually sporting pimples but now plastered with mascara. Bernie wore heavy eyeshadow so that her eyes had a girlish appearance, or the sad look of somebody in mourning.

‘I often went dancing at home. It can’t be that much different here. I’d like a night out,‘ Caroline said bravely.

The girls choose to sit in the top deck of a bus to get into Dublin city centre. It had a cheerful look when they boarded. A yellow light brightened up the interior when Caroline‘s gaze was drawn upwards. Her companions chatted and laughed. Bernie pushed Doris on when the bus stopped and she stumbled and lifted one leg and said, ‘fuck. Mind me heels,’ pointing to a stiletto. I don’t want to be goin’ round with one shoe on and one shoe off,’ and the driver called out, ‘nobody will be going anywhere if you don’t mind that language’ and they both laughed. Caroline saw they had forgotten about her and the bus was about to pull away until she grabbed a bar and swung herself on.

‘Sorry love. Come on upstairs,’ Doris called back and she swayed with the movement of the bus as it lurched off. Shortly after that, Bernie took a bottle wrapped in brown paper from her handbag. She slid down her seat and took a long drink from it and wiped the top with the sleeve of her coat and passed it on to Doris. Doris swished a hand round the top and took a deep draught, likewise. When it was handed to Caroline there was very little left, but she drank it obediently.

The front of the night club loomed more like a shop with tall shutters across, Caroline decided, as if it was closed up for the night. The shutters however, were recessed into an old building and were flanked by tall stone pillars. Doris and Bernie linked arms as they approached but when Doris put an obliging elbow out to allow Caroline to join on, she found herself resisting. It was probably a wrong thing to do, she told herself afterwards. It was why much later she found herself alone in a strange city at night and discovered for the first time what it meant to be friendless.

The doors swung open and closed noiselessly again, as people entered the building. Beyond the front shutters total darkness reigned, for a few minutes. Caroline saw her friends ahead of her and then they disappeared, like people in a fog. Instinctively, she put her hands in front of her to move forward. She called their names and the sound travelled into the gloom and was swallowed also. When her eyes got accustomed to the dark she saw she’d entered a cavern and that it was at the beginning of a long passageway, she presumed opened up to a bigger space. Figures, strangers, sat on benches set into alcoves created by indentures in the walls. Music began to travel out towards her as the walkway widened. She had to find the girls otherwise she’d never get back home and she let herself be drawn on. She was in the centre of a space that seemed deep under the ground she had moved so far in from the entrance, and it felt like a trap. Any minute now a man who was nobody to her, whose name she didn’t know, who could be from Mars for all she could tell by the way he dressed or talked, could try and own her, break her away from the crowd and move her into the dark recesses. It would be a hard struggle to get away.

A bright light splashed on Caroline. She was in the centre of the cave. Music poured down from high up funnels of sound. It had a hypnotic effect because she found herself on the dance floor. She saw Bernie and Doris dancing together and called out their names. They didn’t hear and a figure swelled over her. Somebody was dancing beside her matching her steps. She pulled back and he followed with his own movement. Suddenly it seemed as if he was everywhere and that the other dancers had melted away. They had retreated from her presence so much, she and this man might as well be alone.

‘I’m not dancing. I’m going home. It’s getting late,’ she said in a normal voice then shouted. ‘Goodbye. I’m sitting down.’ The man bent his head towards her.

‘I haven’t seen you here before. Is this your first time?’ he said.

‘ I’m leaving. Thanks very much,’ she called back but he must have misunderstood because he had pulled her close. Breath from his mouth laced with cigarette smoke poured over her. Lips pressed on hers in a hard kiss. She pulled away and ran.

The doors of the dance hall painted red on the inside, loomed unexpectedly soon in front of Caroline. In a moment she was outside. A baby moon, because it was paler than anything she’d seen in her country home; a place so much in her past now, hailed her from a remote height in the sky. A man’s voice shouting, ‘come here don’t run. I’m not going to harm you,’ froze her to the spot. Her dark and brooding dancer was back. she retreated to a pillar. He pinned her against it. A dry tongue was pushed into her mouth. She gagged. He began to claw at the top buttons of her dress. She resisted. She heard material tearing. A momentary space appeared under one of his arms. Her eyes had caught sight of it and she ducked into it, releasing herself and ran. A loud voice called,’ fuck you bitch.’ She ran harder. Footsteps followed. Streets became hills to mount and cars screeched when she ran across roads. She saw a churning, black Liffey underneath when she dashed across a narrow metal bridge and still her pursuer could be heard. She ran through an alleyway and smelled piss and breathed through her mouth to lessen the impact. Like a gazelle looking for the comfort of the herd she longed for people, a group she could join in and mingle with, but it was so late. The city was deserted. At last, as if in answer to her prayer, the shutters of the club appeared. This time one of the painted red doors had revealed it’s inside to the street and she dashed through. A body fell against her. It was Bernie.

‘There you are Caroline love, where were you all this time. Doris and meself thought you’d gone back home. We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’ Kind arms enfolded. A warm face brushed hers.

‘I was going to go home, but I couldn’t find the bus stop and got lost, Caroline lied. The soft body released her. ‘A man tried to kiss me but I got away from him,’ she said then and remembered her jumping heart when she’d been pinned up against a pillar. Only good luck had allowed her to escape, but she’d survived. Of course, she should never have agreed to go on the bus to the dance in the first place, because she was too young. Caroline pushed that thought away. After all, she was a city girl now. The only way to learn was to jump in at the deep end.