Bohemia Village Voice

Tripping the Light Fantastic

“Do you want to come dancing?” he slicked back his Bryl-creemed hair into a DA. His velvet collar and blue drapes showed he was a lad of style for his generation.
Susie rustled the sugar-stiff paper nylon petticoats, her feet pinched in her winkle-picker shoes. She smiled shyly as she patted her dark bouffant hair into place.
“I don’t mind.”
“Don’t sound too enthusiastic will you?”
“Well, I don’t really know you very well, do I? And anyway, my mum says I’ve got to be home by half past ten.”
He shrugged his shoulders in a ‘please yourself’ gesture.
“I thought we could go to the pier and dance to that new rock band.”
“I’d like that,” she said.
He cheered up. “I’d like that too. I really dig you, Susie.”
She relaxed in the warmth of his smile.
“That’s a date then. I’ll pick you up tonight at seven.”
She went to Woolworths that morning and bought a new Outdoor Girl lipstick and borrowed her sister’s Goya Love Affair perfume. She so wanted to look good for him.
His motor scooter had been cleaned and polished and the furry tails that hung from the aerials waved in the breeze. She rode pillion on the back of the Lambretta, carrying her crash helmet on her lap so that it didn’t crush the carefully back-combed hair that was glued in place with endless coats of one-touch hair spray.
She had fancied Andy for ages and was so excited at the thought of being his date for the evening. She wrapped her free arm around his waist tightly to keep her balance as they careered along Bohemia Road and on to the sea front.
They danced the night away. Later, strolling along the pier they enjoyed the smell of the salt sea breeze as they cuddled up against the late night chill. Their cheeks touched gently, softly, and they tasted the pleasure of their first kiss.
Of course it was late when they got home and they had to listen to an ear-bashing from her mum but nothing could take away that feeling of sheer happiness they shared that night. Or indeed all the nights that followed. They got engaged, married and went on to raise a family. Andy did his national service and exchanged his Teddy boy suits for Her Majesty’s service uniform.
The little old Lambretta was exchanged for an old Ford car. Their babies grew into children, then teenagers with their own sense of fashion. And they in turn brought the much loved grandchildren. The only thing that didn’t change was their love for each other, and for the Pier, where they spent their first date, and many a Sunday afternoon after that.
Andy died suddenly from that fatal heart attack. Susie thought she would never get over it, but of course she got her life together eventually, and with her family’s help and support, maintained a happy lifestyle, until the day she opened the Hastings Observer and read the news that the Pier, their Pier, had been torched into oblivion my mindless arsonists.
It was soon after that she had her first stroke that left her paralyzed. Followed by another more severe stroke, that left her bedridden. Now she lay still and barely clinging to life as her family came to her bedside to say their final goodbyes. She opened her eyes one last time and said “He’s wearing his Teddy boy suit.”
And in that moment her family knew that Andy was here to take her dancing for the last time.