Going Gently

by David Nobbs

  She held out her hand and, afterwards, felt almost certain that he’d given it a little squeeze. But she was feeling weak, and might have imagined it.

  She was wandering along a pavement in West Bromwich, thinking about Daniel Begelman, and suddenly there he was coming towards her, in this of all places. Not Daniel Begelman. Red Ron Rafferty. The Begelmans were in Spain. She’d received the letter this morning. ‘Israel is too new a country and too surrounded a country and too martial a country. They haven’t time for art yet. I simply couldn’t do good work there. I need space.’

  There he was, hunched against the biting wind in a long coat that might have been more appropriate in East Europe than West Bromwich.

  ‘Mrs Copson!’

  ‘We aren’t at the works now. Call me Kate.’

  ‘Bit off your beat, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not a policeman.’

  ‘I suppose bearing in mind the gulf between our social positions, the chasm I might call it, a drink would be out of the question?’

  ‘You know perfectly well, you infuriatingly clever man, that that is the one approach you could possibly use to get me to have a drink with you.’

  He led her into the nearest pub. She didn’t even notice its name. It had a series of small rooms, with warm fires. Pensioners were playing cards and dominoes. Office workers were eating liver-sausage sandwiches. Irishmen were digesting pickled onions and the Sporting Chronicle.

  ‘Pint of Guinness?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Ron. I’ve never had a pint of Guinness in my life.’

  ‘Never too late to start. Better in Dublin, of course,’

  And so she drank her first pint of Guinness. It took her a long time, long enough for Ron to drink four. It was pleasant, it was very slightly raffish, it was life.

  ‘How long is it since that day?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Nearly three years.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You were so anxious to be liked. I did like you, but I wasn’t letting on.’

  ‘Cruel man.’

  ‘What brings you to this neck of the woods?’

  ‘A bric-a-brac shop called Junk and Disorderly. A friend recommended it.’

  She didn’t tell him that she was determined to break up the great spaces and heavy furnishings of Copson Towers with little things, sweet things, cheap things, fun things, undistinguished things.

  ‘You aren’t comfortable as a magnate’s wife, are you, Kate?’

  ‘It’s rude to read people’s minds without asking if you can borrow them first.’

  He grinned. She noticed that he had marvellous teeth. Good though they were, she had seen enough of them for the time being. She needed to wipe the smile off his cheeky face.

  ‘I’m very happy with Walter, I do assure you, and he with me,’ she said, with a touch of asperity.

  ‘Oh, sure, sure, I wasn’t meaning that. There are limits even to my cheek. I meant, your Role in Society.’

  ‘Oh, my Role in Society. No, well, my son Maurice – he’s seventeen now, goodness, almost grown up – he once dubbed me Kate of the Two Settees.’

  He laughed. ‘There’s a title there,’ he said. ‘A Tale of Two Settees. Not quite Dickensian. You look surprised. Not because I know Dickens, surely?’

  ‘No. Yes.’

  ‘I love words, Kate. We Irish do.’

  ‘They pour out of us Welsh pretty freely too.’

  ‘So, this meeting of Celts is a serendipitous event.’

  She tried very hard not to look surprised again. He talked about Cork, his childhood, fishing trips, trout-tickling, drinking the Ring of Kerry dry. She talked about her family in Swansea, altering the details ever so slightly to make her origins just a little humbler than they’d been.

  When they left the pub he shook her hand and said, ‘Will you tell your husband about our meeting?’

  ‘Do you think I should?’ she asked.

  ‘I think you should. I hope you won’t.’

  She didn’t.

  Kate was astounded when he rang her at home.

  ‘Ron who?’ she said.

  ‘Ron Rafferty.’

  ‘Oh. Oh!’

  ‘You don’t like me ringing you at home?’

  ‘Well, I . . .’

  ‘There’s no risk. Your husband’s here. I’ve just seen him. I wondered about lunch tomorrow. A restaurant this time. Your world, not mine.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a very good idea.’

  ‘The same pub as before, then?’

  ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘No, I know. Twelve o’clock?’

  He rang off. Cheeky swine. Arrogant, irritating, handsome man. How did he know she wasn’t doing something next day? She often was. It so happened that she wasn’t. The luck of the Irish! No, it wasn’t lucky for him, because she wouldn’t go. Well, not definitely. Well, definitely not. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She needed to go to Junk and Disorderly again, though. They’d have new stuff in by now. She’d go to Junk and Disorderly and then decide whether to go to the pub or not. She’d go to Junk and Disorderly and not go to the pub, even though she’d be so close to it. That would show him. Except that it wouldn’t, because he wouldn’t know she’d been to Junk and Disorderly.

  Even as she left the shop she wasn’t sure if she would go. To go, to do his bidding, seemed . . . well . . . craven and pathetic. Not to go, on the other hand, would be . . . even more craven and pathetic. It would suggest that she was standing on the dignity of her social position.

  So she decided to go, but fifteen minutes late. That would give him a bit of a fright.

  To her chagrin, he didn’t look as though he had worried a jot. He seemed pleased that she’d come, though, and they had a pleasant time again.

  After that, he would phone every six weeks or so. She never asked why he had that particular day off. He always chose days that were convenient for her. The luck of the Irish.

  ‘You’re very lucky,’ she said once. ‘I’m usually very busy.’

  ‘Are you so? I am lucky, then.’

  The swine didn’t believe her!

  They always went to the same pub, she always had a pint of Guinness while he had four. Once they played darts. She felt emancipated! Ridiculous. No harm in it, though, and she went home feeling happier about being Kate of the Two Settees.

  Gradually, inevitably, given their interests and differences, a political element crept into their conversations. On their fourth meeting, Ron talked about the modest lives of the workers, the financial difficulties many of them faced. She found herself defending Walter, saying he wasn’t really rich, he worked hard, he took risks, he provided work.

  ‘I’m not fanatical,’ said Ron. ‘I believe you and Walter should have a better life than us.’

  Kate raised her eyebrows.

  ‘No. I’m serious. You should have a bigger home. A better car. A nicer bathroom. Better holidays. But you have three nice bathrooms. You shouldn’t have two until all your employees have one. You shouldn’t have three till all your employees have two. Your status should be modestly superior.’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that.’

  ‘No, but it should. Don’t you believe that, deep down, Kate of the Three Nice Bathrooms, who was once a communist?’

  Kate had to admit that she did. She went home, that time, feeling less happy about being Kate of the Two Settees.

  She decided that the next time she saw Ron she would tell him that she wasn’t going to see him any more.

  She didn’t tell him straight out. It wouldn’t have been subtle. She talked first about how unhappy she was not to be working. ‘I tell myself it’s important to be at home when Elizabeth gets back. She’s only thirteen. But if I had a teaching job I could get home too.’

  ‘Could you teach?’

  ‘I did. I taught history in Penance.’ She didn’t tell him that it had been a private school. ‘Sometimes I wond
er what happened to all those girls I taught.’

  Somehow she didn’t get round to ending it all. It wasn’t a sexual relationship. There was no harm in it. It would be awfully stiff and conventional to end it all.

  They didn’t meet for four months after that. She had to cancel one meeting because her father was knocked down by a lorry and broke his leg. She went to Swansea for several weeks then, missed Walter terribly, missed the sex; he came down for weekends, but the sex was never the same in Swansea.

  John Thomas Thomas came home from hospital, and said, ‘They tell me I’ll never walk without a stick again. That gives me something to live for, doesn’t it? To prove them wrong.’

  In Swansea, in that straight-living house, in chapel on Sundays, Kate knew that, although there was no harm in her relationship with Ron, there was harm in the secrecy of it. She must either tell Walter or end it, and telling Walter would mean ending it anyway.

  When she got back home, she began to look for teaching jobs, but she only wanted to teach history, and it would have to be within driving distance of home, and it proved impossible to find a suitable vacancy. When she told Ron this, at their next meeting, the meeting at which she must end it all, he said, ‘I bet you were a fine teacher,’ and she said, ‘I think I was pretty good,’ and he said, ‘I’d like to have been taught by you, that I would,’ and his casual acknowledgement of the gap between their ages gave her pain. She knew, in a flash, how disingenuous she had been in thinking that it wasn’t a sexual relationship. She felt confused, adrift, and again he read her mind infuriatingly. He looked her straight in the eyes and said, ‘Let’s talk of safer subjects, Kate. I don’t want danger any more than you. What does your man really think about the unions?’

  ‘Walter would need to feel he was in control,’ she said, ‘but he does have an innate sense of fairness. Push him too hard, he’ll resist. Be reasonable, he’ll give.’

  She felt uneasy about having said that. Had she gone too far? No, it was what she thought, and she was being sympathetic to the unions without sticking a knife in Walter’s back. She was glad, though, that this was to be their last meeting.

  He leapt up, said, ‘I have to go,’ leant across, kissed her for the first time, said, ‘Sorry,’ and left without giving her a chance to speak.

  She stayed for twenty minutes, determined to finish her Guinness and not feel embarrassed on her own. She thought about Ron. Had he been manipulating her? Had he always wanted to kiss her? Had he left so suddenly because he knew she would end their meetings? Why did he want to continue their meetings? When he’d said, ‘Sorry,’ had he meant ‘Sorry I have to rush’ or ‘Sorry I kissed you’?

  She took her empty glass back to the bar, put it on the counter, and said, ‘Thanks,’ the way she’d seen him do. Then she drove home feeling dismayed at the situation she had got herself into. She was fifty-one, damn it.

  That very evening Walter began talking about trouble ahead, union trouble. The honeymoon of the post-war years was over. The workers had realised that not as much had changed as they thought it had.

  ‘Do you remember that man who showed you round the works?’ he asked, as they sipped a drink before dinner – he a whisky, she a gin and tonic.

  Kate’s blood ran cold.

  ‘Yes, I . . . I remember him.’

  ‘He’s trouble.’

  Oh Lord. Try not to shake.

  ‘I thought he was nice.’

  ‘He is nice. That’s part of the trouble. He’s popular, he’s nice, but beneath the niceness, beneath that easy Irish charm, there’s ruthless ambition. You may not think it means much to be President of the National Union of Piston Makers, Flange Cutters and Scrag-end Offloaders, but it’s the culmination of his dreams. He feels flattered to be called Red Ron. He’s always wanted to be a big fish in a small pond. He is that now, and he finds it isn’t enough. He wants to increase the size of his pond. I don’t want him to have a pond at all. All those little unions that we have to deal with, it’s ridiculous.’

  ‘What on earth is a scrag-end offloader?’

  ‘Exactly. Nobody knows. It’s lost in the prehistory of the industrial revolution. He thinks I’m a greedy, grasping capitalist. He wants too much.’

  ‘Haven’t we got too much?’ she asked, very gently.

  ‘Is that what you really think?’

  ‘Well, I think we should have a bigger house than the workers. A better car. A nicer bathroom. But we have three nice bathrooms. You shouldn’t even have two until all your employees have one. Our status should be modestly superior.’

  ‘Good God, you sound just like him.’

  Kate did see Ron one more time. She couldn’t bring herself to break it off without telling him face to face. As she sipped her last-ever pint of Guinness, she said, ‘You didn’t tell me you were the President of the National Union of Piston Makers, Flange Cutters and Scrag-end Offloaders.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘No particular reason, except . . . I’m not a boasting man. Has your man been talking about me?’

  ‘Yes. He doesn’t even know what a scrag-end offloader is.’

  ‘He isn’t interested.’

  ‘What is a scrag-end offloader?’

  ‘Oh, something they used to do in the early days.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He grinned broadly, but Kate found that his charm wasn’t working as well as usual.

  ‘It’s all a load of bollocks to you, isn’t it?’ she said.

  ‘O’oh! Pub language!’

  ‘You’re just out to feather your nest.’

  ‘No! All right, I enjoy my power, such as it is, but I care about my members. We’ll be putting in a demand soon. Quite a big demand, though I have taken into account what you said about the man. Very valuable. Now what I want you to be is my eyes and ears.’

  Kate stared at him. She could feel the blood leaving her face. Her cheeks felt icy.

  ‘It isn’t going to be too difficult, Kate,’ he said. ‘Don’t look so alarmed. I don’t want a strike. I don’t want war. I want meaningful negotiations.’

  ‘Yes, you probably do, Ron, but Walter’s my husband. I can’t be your eyes and ears.’

  He sighed, as if he hadn’t wanted it to come to this.

  ‘I think you’ll find you can, Kate,’ he said, ‘because if I told him about us you’d be in big trouble.’

  ‘I feel such a fool,’ said Kate. ‘How could I not have known that you were using me?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know it myself,’ said Red Ron Rafferty. ‘I didn’t follow you to West Bromwich. This thing began by chance and carried on because I liked you and you liked me and I fancied you and you fancied me and that made me feel sad, Kate, because I will never be unfaithful to Eileen and you will never be unfaithful to Walter, so I thought, Well, maybe it’s best to end it, but I could never bring myself to, and so I formed my plan, because I saw that you sympathise with our cause. I liked you before I used you, Kate, I promise you that.’

  ‘You won’t tell Walter,’ said Kate. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘I think you’ll find that you have more to lose than I do, Kate.’

  ‘Oh yes, but you have too much to lose too. He’ll never negotiate with you if he knows about us. Never. You’re clever, Ron, but not clever enough.’

  They stared at each other. Kate felt very sad. She thought Ron did too. Behind them, a young man shuffled the dominoes rather noisily for his three pensioner friends.

  ‘I don’t know who’s winning the dominoes,’ said Kate, ‘but I think that you and I have played a draw.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘I shan’t finish my Guinness. The joy’s gone out of it.’

  ‘I’ll see you to your car.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes. I’m ashamed of myself. I’d like to end on a little note of courtesy.’

  They walked out of the pub together. Walter was leaning against his
new Rolls-Royce Silver Wraith.

  ‘I knew something was up, Kate,’ he said. ‘I know you too well. I hired a private detective. He’s in the pub. Phoned me from it. Said he’ll be in there, playing dominoes. I’d best go in and pay him. I hate having debts.’

  Kate sat in the rocking chair in the breakfast room where no breakfast was ever served, and rocked herself very gently. Her mother sat in a tall-backed hard chair at the other side of the unused fireplace.

  ‘What about the children?’ asked Bronwen, whose eyes were red from crying.

  ‘Walter’ll have them during school terms. Well, I say “them”. Maurice leaves school next month. It’s only Elizabeth really. I’m happy to have her in the holidays and any weekend when she wants to come to London during term time. She’s blossoming a bit at last. Making friends. I just hope this doesn’t hurt her too much.’

  They heard the front door open.

  ‘Here’s your father now,’ said Bronwen.

  Kate gave a sigh and stood up.

  ‘You don’t need to be frightened of him, Kate,’ said her mother rather severely. ‘He’s a kind man.’

  ‘I’m not frightened,’ said Kate. ‘I’m embarrassed.’

  John Thomas Thomas came slowly into the breakfast room, his stick in his right hand, Enid supporting his left arm, and looked at Kate gravely. It was fifteen years since he’d retired, but Kate felt like a junior pupil in the headmaster’s study.

  ‘Well well,’ he said. ‘Well well. Here we are again.’

  Kate kissed him.

  In the morning, after a nostalgic breakfast of laverbread and sausage meat, Kate said she thought she’d go into town, have a look around the shops, go to the Kardomah for a coffee. ‘Then I thought after lunch we might go for a run,’ she said.

  John Thomas Thomas brightened up.

  ‘Where did you have in mind?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, how much will your leg stand, Father?’

  ‘Oh that. Don’t worry about that. I don’t. I’ll walk without a stick yet.’