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his guitar beside him. She spent her Saturdays locked in her room with stacks of his singles which she played repeatedly. Since she
had begun to earn money of her own in Carn Poultry Products, her bedroom had become awash with colour. Cross-channel pop stars and Irish showbands covered every available inch of wallpaper. The St
Martin De Porres picture which Father John had sent over from Kenya was barely visible. This didn’t please Sadie’s mother at all. She had been brooding over it for a long time. She felt
that to have a holy man like St Martin in such dubious company was not right. She confronted her daughter and said, “It’s time you quit all this, the filth and dirt of the day put into
your head by the likes of that Una Lacey one above in the factory.” But this made no impression on Sadie who had been quietly coming to the conclusion that if she was paying for her keep she
had her rights too. So between herself and her mother there developed a tension which manifested itself in the flick of teacloths and sudden coughs. Finally one day her mother, tormented by a large
fuel bill and the muddy boots of her husband, stormed into her room and cried, “You’ll not ignore me. I didn’t wash floors on my hands and knees, scrubbing out that kip of a
school for fifteen years just to have the likes of you turn around and laugh at me. I’m fed up being walked on by you and him!” Then she set about tearing every picture in the room and
didn’t stop until the wall was bare.
    “Maybe that will put a bit of manners on you now,” she said, whitefaced. “Maybe now you’ll listen to me.” Then she stormed out, stunned by the depth of her own
fury.
    Sadie threw herself on the bedspread as she had seen them do in the magazines and films and pummelled the pillows bitterly. When the light had faded and a calm had at last descended, she managed
to stir herself to gather up the remnants of a sorry-looking beach boys and dickybowed songsters. She had a restive sleep that night but in the days that followed, when her mother had pulled in her
horns and reverted to her more traditional sullenness, Sadie set about rebuilding the wreckage and applied herself with diligence to the task. And no less than a week later, all were back in
business, pouting and crooning and strutting for all they were worth.
    St Martin de Porres looked down as she flicked through
True Romance Tales
and dickeyed her hair up like the girls in the magazine. Her bedroom became a sort of theatre where all manner of
fantasy popped out of her head and came alive. Sadie really wanted to be one of the girls in the magazine. The more she became familiar with their lifestyles, the more she became disgusted with the
smell of chickens’ innards and the bloodstained overall she had to wash every night. She practised the way the girls walked, stepping back and forward in front of the bedroom mirror. She
invented men in silk suits who came out of the same mirror and said to her, “Would you like to dawns?” There was no question of any of these men speaking in local dialect. They drove MG
cars and took her for drinks in bars with brass pump handles and pictures of race horses. The magazine girls lay around all day doing each others’ hair and talking about “someone
special”. Hearts came out of their mouths when they spoke about him. They said he was a “dream”. They said he was “fab”. When he came into the story in person he was
usually a complete stranger in town. He had dark hair and a plaid jacket. He rarely spoke, but anything that came out of his lantern jaw was noted by the girls. There was always one of them lurking
nearby. They trailed him and found out what kind of books he liked. Then they went and read those kind of books hoping they would get the chance to say something to him about them. They found out
where he had his dinner too. Then they turned up there as well. Sometimes he gave them a distant smile across his