“You’re right,” said Nina, almost smugly. “It’s so much worse than miles and miles of identical row houses and discount outlets.”
They heard the dance before they saw it. Down a steep little mud track, tractors were parked in rows, along with dirt-spattered Land Rovers, in front of a huge barn decorated with flowers. People were spilling out from it, sitting around on hay bales; young men, all in kilts of course, were drinking pints and letting off steam.
“Once a quarter,” said Hamish, his green eyes twinkling, “it’s where you’re meant to meet your wife.”
“Seriously?” said Surinder, leaning forward.
“Of course, it’s not like that anymore, not a cattle market at all.”
“So nobody meets their partners there these days?”
There was some nervous shuffling around the Land Rover.
“Aye, yeah, well. Most folk, like.”
“I think I’m going to like 1932,” said Surinder cheerfully.
Inside the barn, it was incredibly hot, simply from the crush of bodies, and didn’t smell of cow at all; instead it smelled of deodorant, aftershave, and heavily applied perfume; beer; and pipe tobacco.
It was also incredibly noisy. In the corner was a four-piece band—a violin, a bodhrán, a whistle, and an accordion—playing music at a thousand miles an hour. On one side was a roughly set-up bar made of wooden barrels and trestle tables, where teenage bar staff dispensed pints of the local 80 Shilling Ale at lightning speed and hurled huge gin and tonics and glasses of wine across the counter with abandon. All the cash was simply dumped in a large pot. The line at the bar was crowded. In the other half of the room, people were . . . well, at first Nina wasn’t exactly sure what they were doing. It didn’t seem to make sense until she started concentrating. The men were hurling the women around at breakneck speed, and it took her a moment to realize that they were dancing. It looked absolutely brutal.
“Wow,” she said. It was a lot to take in. There were obviously far more men than women, but when she looked at the women who were there, she immediately realized she was notably underdressed. They had high hairstyles and proper evening gowns, some stiff and long; lots of black lace pulled tightly over muscular upper bodies; and makeup applied with a heavy hand. They were all in high heels.
In comparison, Nina wasn’t dressed for a party at all. But in fact, knowing that she wasn’t trying to make an impression (which could sometimes make her feel very anxious at events), she felt light and easy in the hot, perfumed room, and didn’t mind even when Surinder glanced at her and said, “Wow, you look like a proper country girl,” which Nina realized was obviously a compliment of some kind.
They sipped their drinks and chatted to the boys, even though their eyes were on stalks and their heads swiveling as the girls in their scented finery pranced past. Nina was perfectly happy just to listen and take in their discussion of fertilizer brands, tractor parts, meat to market, and a clutch of other concepts she didn’t understand.
After a couple of drinks, the boys were ready to dance. Nina and Surinder declined several times, partly because they weren’t out on the prowl like the boys were (well, Nina wasn’t; Surinder was feeling torn), and partly because they didn’t have the first clue what to do.
From a distance, the dancing still looked fearsome. The girls were being flung about by the boys, and every so often somebody would crash into a trestle table or topple to the floor. It was all good-natured fun, though, and nobody did anything but laugh, as the noise levels continued to rise and the amount of floor space taken up by the wildly reeling dancers got larger and larger. High heels were starting to be thrown off here and there.
Lennox, Nina noticed, stayed resolutely on the side of the dance floor. She tried smiling at him and was about to ask him how the lambs were getting along when he hailed a man he knew across the floor, an older gentleman wearing unflattering tartan trousers. They immediately plunged deep into conversation.
The boys had begun talking about feed compounds, and slightly emboldened by the very strong gin and tonics, Nina wandered over to join them.
“Hi!” she said. “I wanted to ask how the lambs were getting along.”
Both men stared at her, quite rudely.
“Yes, fine,” said Lennox dismissively, then turned back to his friend. Nina felt stung. She’d been up all night helping this guy, and first he didn’t want them to come to the dance, and now he was completely ignoring her.
“Not dancing?” she asked, rather cheekily. His brow furrowed.
“No thanks,” he said shortly. The other man stared into the distance.
“I wasn’t asking,” said Nina, annoyed and embarrassed. “I just wondered, that’s all.”
“No,” said Lennox shortly. “Not for me.”
The silence became embarrassing and Nina was thinking about beating a retreat when, thankfully, a young man came up and asked her rather nervously if she would like to dance. She was about to politely refuse when, to her surprise, she spotted Surinder waltzing toward the dance floor in another chap’s arms.
“What. Are. You. Doing?” Nina hissed after her.
“Come on!” shouted Surinder. “For goodness’ sake. We’re not here for long! Might as well have a shot.”
Nina shook her head. “You’re crazy,” she said, before realizing that the young chap who’d asked her, whose name was Archie, was looking crestfallen and obviously feeling a bit of an idiot. She was conscious that all his friends were lined up watching them from the other side of the room, so with a glance to her left, where Lennox had dived back into conversation with his friend, she extended her hand.
“Of course, I’d love to,” she said loudly, while Archie flushed the same color as his hair. As he led her to the floor—or what felt to Nina a bit like a gladiatorial arena—she whispered, “You’re going to have to tell me what to do. I don’t know what’s going on.”
At this Archie looked less terrified, and puffed up his chest a little bit.
“Don’t you worry yourself,” he said. “You’re with me now! Just follow me.”
To begin with, Nina couldn’t follow anyone. It was a little like being on a ride at a fairground where you had to scream if you wanted to go faster. There was a lot of yelling and shouting, and some competitive arm swinging from the men, and at first it seemed to be nothing but a melee: a game of rugby on a dance floor.