Eyes Down, by Pauline Crowther

An original short story extract set in the twentieth century.

The sign went up on a Wednesday, while Dorothy was at the fishmonger’s. By the time she came out with her two pieces of haddock, a man on a ladder was screwing the last letter into place above the doors of the Palais de Danse: STARLIGHT BINGO, in red plastic, each letter a little crooked, as if it had been put up in a hurry by someone who did not expect to stay.

She stood on the promenade with the wind snatching at her headscarf and read it twice. Then she read the old name underneath, which nobody had bothered to take down, its gilt gone the colour of weak tea. Palais. She had been eighteen the first time she went through those doors, in a borrowed dress of green taffeta that rustled when she breathed, and Ronnie Cottingham had trodden on her foot in the second waltz and apologised so beautifully that she married him.

The town had been changing for years, of course. The pier had lost its theatre in the storm of 1962, and the boarding houses on Marine Parade were flats now, with doorbells in long rows like teeth. The families went to Spain. Dorothy did not blame them. She had seen the brochures: the sea in those pictures was the blue of a bathroom tile, while here it was the colour it had always been, a kind of patient grey.

Still. The Palais. She found she was holding the haddock against her chest.

Through the open doors she could see workmen rolling up the sprung floor in long pale strips. Under it, the boards were rough and ordinary. She had imagined, if she had imagined anything, that a dance floor went down and down, that there would be layer upon layer of polished wood, all the way to the centre of the earth.

‘You coming in, love?’ called the man on the ladder. ‘Opening night Saturday. Free first card.’

Dorothy said she might. She said it brightly, the way you speak to a child who has broken something. Then she walked home along the front with her face to the sea, humming, under her breath and badly, the second waltz.

How does the writer show Dorothy’s thoughts and feelings about the changes to her town?

You should consider:

• what the writer says about Dorothy
• the writer’s use of language to show her thoughts and feelings

You must refer to the text to support your answer, using relevant subject terminology where appropriate.