Look to Your Wife. Paula Byrne

3

       After the Party

      The invitation asked everyone not to wear stiletto heels. This puzzled Lisa. What a curious detail. What on earth did the headmaster and his wife have against high-heeled shoes? It was only when she arrived and saw the beautifully polished wooden floors that she understood. The pinprick of heels would not be a good look in such an immaculate flat, although, personally, she preferred a shabby chic look. She once shocked her husband when she took out a hammer and violently pummelled a brand-new butcher’s block that had been delivered that morning from Ikea: ‘It needs to look old,’ Lisa explained, ‘as if it’s been around for centuries.’ Later, she rubbed oil into the indentations. She liked to press her fingers into the holes that she had made. She loved the feel of wood.

      The textures of natural materials; beauty. These were things that mattered to Lisa. She was a working-class girl from Bootle. But she had a love of beautiful clothes. It came from her father. He had been a postman, and he had a gambling habit. When he won on the ‘gee-gees’ he would bring her and her sisters posh clothes from George Henry Lee. The next day her mother would return them. Lisa never forgot the quality and cut of the garments. She bought her first beautiful dress with the first instalment of her student grant. It was black silk, cut on the bias, with embroidered dull-gold roses. It was the first time she truly understood how beautiful clothes bestowed confidence.

      Lisa had been educated at an all-girls’ convent school, run by the Sacred Heart Sisters. Sister Agnes, unintentionally, used to crack them up: ‘Girls, please remember, do not eat your sandwiches up St Anthony’s back passage.’

      Lisa loved the school chapel, with its smell of polished wood and incense. The other girls were a nightmare, though. The height of their ambition was to get pregnant, so they could bag a council flat. But she also knew that these girls wanted a baby to love. She was sure about that. Sadly, the men they went for were such losers. She knew, with absolute clarity, that once she left, she would never go back.

      On leaving school, she applied for a foundation course in textiles at the London School of Fashion. The long-term plan was Textiles in Practice, BA (Hons), at the Manchester School of Art, but first she had to complete a foundation course, and London was the natural choice. She adored London. It was her city, and always would be. She still remembered how naïve she had been when she first arrived. She blushed at the memory of seeing posters around the city saying ‘Bill Stickers will be prosecuted’. Who was this man Bill Stickers? Why hadn’t anyone caught him. Her new sophisticated southern friends cried with laughter when she asked them.

      But she made it to Manchester, and after the BA came an MA for which she wrote a dissertation called Lipstick and Lies: Reassessing Feminism and Fashion. It was about third-wave feminism. How it was OK to embrace your femininity and still be a feminist. She traced the connection between fashion and female politics from 1781 to the present day. She began with the mother of feminism, Mary Wollstonecraft, arguing that her ideas about dress and women’s liberation were paradoxically close to those of Marie Antoinette, a fashion icon from the other end of the political spectrum. She ended with Alexander McQueen by way of Coco Chanel. She had always worshipped McQueen. She appreciated the wit and style of his final act of defiance: hanging himself with his best belt in a closet full of beautiful clothes.

      She was passionate about her work. It was her solace, her consolation and her joy. But jobs teaching the history of fashion were as rare as hen’s teeth, and before she stood any chance of getting one she would have to spend three years working on a PhD thesis, earning no money. Things had also gone a bit pear-shaped in the boyfriend department, so she had returned home to Bootle. The next thing she knew, she had a job teaching textiles at St Joseph’s Academy, and a husband from New Brighton – a man who was never going to set the world alight, but who was dependable, and, it had to be said, incredibly handsome: he could have got a job as a Tom Cruise lookalike.

      Lisa was just twenty-three, straight out of her MA, when she got the job. She was taken aside by a wise old teacher, Will Butler, who told her to go in hard. ‘Be firm, don’t give an inch. Show them who’s boss, and you will never have to discipline them again.’

      Lisa took the advice to heart. She strode in, wearing a red jacket, and took no nonsense. Within hours, the gossip around the school was that Miss Blaize was ‘dead strict’. From then on, it was plain sailing. She had a laugh with the pupils, but with just one look she could command complete attention.

      She learned another valuable lesson, early on, about schoolchildren and loyalty. It was towards the end of the school day, and she was tired. A boy called Michael Turner was giving her cheek. He was a redhead, and a clown, and he was trying to show off. ‘Miss, I can’t do it. Miss, I don’t understand. Miss, Tim’s kicking me under the table.’

      Finally she snapped and slapped him across the face. Total silence. Utter horror. What had she done? Everyone looked at her. Then the bell rang.

      ‘Off you go. You’re dismissed.’

      That night she told Pete, her husband, what she had done. He was shocked. ‘Lisa, you’ll lose your job. He’ll go straight home and tell his parents. You will have to resign. What on earth were you thinking?’

      ‘That was the problem. I wasn’t thinking. Well it’s too late now. There’s nothing I can do.’

      All night she agonized over the slap. What had she been thinking? She planned on going to the head first thing in the morning and fessing up. Hold up your hand, mea culpa …

      As it happened, she bumped into Turner in the playground. ‘Aright miss, see you later!’ He gave her a wide grin.

      He never said a word. Nor did the other children. Loyalty. Children always have the ability to surprise teachers. He never gave her cheek again. But she still had nightmares about the slap.

      Then there was Jordan. He was fourteen and the most handsome boy she had ever seen. He had huge hands, like Michelangelo’s statute of the boy/man David. She would catch Jordan’s eye in the classroom and he would respond with an intense stare. God, the boy was so bloody sexy. He disconcerted her. Made her feel that he was undressing her with his eyes. Then she would feel wracked with shame for having such thoughts about a schoolboy. Now I know how Humbert Humbert felt when he confessed that it was Lolita who seduced him, she said to herself. These were thoughts that she could never have voiced to anyone. Especially not to Pete, for whom the phrase ‘jealous guy’ might have been coined.

      One day, Jordan stayed late in the textile room to help her tidy. She was stacking scissors into metal containers. Jordan was picking up tiny dressmaking pins with his oversized fingers. They were working in silence, but he suddenly broke down and told her that his parents were divorcing. She hugged him and kissed his forehead softly. And that was it. Just a chaste, butterfly-wing kiss. But she felt worse about that kiss than she had about slapping Turner. God, if anyone found out. Perhaps she wasn’t cut out for teaching.

      She wanted to keep her options open. She was already thinking that she might not be cut out for marriage either. Pete had the most gorgeous body, but never said anything interesting.

      She was a grafter, and always had been. At fourteen, she’d sold records in Woolworth’s. During her foundation year in London, she had worked nights as a hospital cleaner. While an undergraduate in Manchester, she had been a barmaid. So when she came home in the evenings, tired as she was from the noise of the school and the strain of being a new teacher, she sat at her computer and worked Lipstick and Lies up into a book. A small publisher took it on, and there were a few enthusiastic reviews in some little-known magazines and periodicals. It was even shortlisted for a prize so obscure that there couldn’t have been many competitors. She began thinking about a subject for a second book; one that might get her out of teaching.

      * * *

      She had to admit that she was rather attracted to the new head, and just a little excited about the party. She had pretended not to listen