by Stan Barstow
‘Earn it,’ the Old Man says. ‘I’m glad you said earn it. I tell you what I tell everybody else, William. If you think you can addle twenty pound a week in t’pit, you can come an’ have a try. It can be done, an’ there’s fellers takin’ that kind o’ money out reg’lar. But they work like blacks for it. Aagh! all these fellers proppin’ bars up and openin’ their mouths. The hardest work they ever do is lift a pint glass. They wouldn’t last a shift down t’pit. I’ve done some coal-gettin’ an’ I know. I’m glad I haven’t to do it now. I’m a deputy an’ there’s many a man under me earnin’ more than I do; but I don’t begrudge ’em it because I’ve addled money t’same way an’ I know what it takes to do it. And there’s another thing –’
‘Now then, Arthur, that’s enough,’ the Old Lady says. ‘There’s no need to get arguin’. William’s entitled to his opinion.’
‘No man’s entitled to an opinion till he knows the facts. I’m just straightenin’ him out…’
The Old Lady and Auntie Edna look at one another and I decide it’s time I was on my way. I get up.
‘Are you goin’ to bed, Victor?’
‘No, I’m going out. There’s a special dance on in town. I thought I’d go over for an hour.’
‘What, at this time?’
‘They’ll only just have got warmed up.’
‘Well, better take a key. And don’t be too late; you’ve been on the go all day, y’know.’
‘Have a good time, Victor,’ Auntie Edna says.
IV
The first thing I do when I get upstairs is take a look at myself in the dressing-table mirror. It’s one of those with three glasses in and if you get the knack of adjusting them you can see what you look like from the side as well as straight on. It seems to me I’m spending altogether too much time these days either looking in mirrors at home or catching sight of myself in mirrors outside. I never knew there were so many mirrors; the world’s full of them, or shop windows with the blinds down, which amount to the same thing as far as what I’m talking about’s concerned. When I’m washing my hands at the office I can see another pair of hands just like mine doing the same. If I go to the pictures ten to one I’ll climb the stairs and come face to face with my twin brother coming up from the other side. (Only he’s not strictly my twin because he’s the opposite hand to me.) And I’ve only to look out of a bus at night to see this same opposite-handed me looking in from outside. It’s not that I’m conceited – at least, not most of the time – and when I see myself in a window or something I don’t think what a swell-looking geezer, but try to look at myself as though I’m somebody else and wonder what I think of me. And it’s actually that I’m not a swell-looking geezer. At least, not most of the time. I never used to be like this. I can remember when I didn’t give a monkey’s what I looked like or what anybody thought of me. But now it’s different; because now, you see, I’m conscious of women. Very conscious of them in fact.
When I’m looking in my mirror at home like I am now, I don’t think I’m so bad. Whichever way you look, and whoever’s doing the looking, you couldn’t call me ugly. Not handsome, maybe, but not ugly. My face is sort of square and what an author might call open, and it’s a good colour. (Thank God I’m not one of these blokes who’s plagued to death with boils and spots and blains and whatnot.) The scar over my left eye where I argued with the railing doesn’t help, though I wonder sometimes if it doesn’t make me look a bit tougher. I don’t know. And there’s always my hair. No two ways about that, I’ve got a head of hair any man would be proud of, thick and dark with a natural wave that needs only a touch of the fingers after it’s combed and glossy without a lot of cream. No doubt about my hair. And I have it cut every fortnight and never miss. Or only now and again. I could do with a couple more inches on my height. I’ve always had a yen for just two more inches. But still I’m not a little runt because I’ve got a good build… a nice deep chest that I’m not scared of showing off in swimming trunks, and square broad shoulders. And then – my clothes. Now there’s no denying I know how to dress. I don’t pay the earth for my suits but I know where they give you the right cut and I always keep my pants pressed and my shoes clean. And if my shirt’s just the least bit grubby at the collar, into the wash it goes. Ask the Old Lady. She says it’s like washing for an army keeping up to me alone.
So there I am – Victor Arthur Brown, twenty years old, one of the lads, and not very sure of himself under the cocky talk and dirty jokes and wisecracks. Take me or leave me, I’m all I’ve got. And what does it matter what you look like anyway? Every day you see the niftiest bints with the gloomiest-looking blokes; blokes you wouldn’t think any self-respecting bird would look twice at. And what do clothes matter? At least, decent clothes, because it seems you get on best if you look a freak these days and you’re always seeing wenches clinging like mad to bods in suits I wouldn’t wear as far as the front gate.
So what the hell!
I’m as presentable as the next bloke and I don’t see why Ingrid shouldn’t think the same way. Only, that’s what I think here in my own room; and the second I lay eyes on her I feel about as fetching as something dreamed up for a science-fiction picture.
I pull myself out of the glass and go and have a wash in the bathroom. Then I decide to go and borrow Jim’s new tie, the blue knitted one with the horizontal stripes. There’s a light showing, under his door and I find him sitting up in bed with an exercise book on his knee and a pencil in his hand.
I pick the tie up off the drawers. ‘Lend me this?’
He mumbles something. I don’t suppose he could care less. I start to put the tie on in the glass. Another glass.
‘I’ve never seen anybody make so much fuss over tying a tie,’ he says in a minute.
‘What fuss?’
‘All that twisting and turning and threading through. Why don’t you tie a knot an’ have done with it?’
‘That’s a Windsor knot,’ I tell him. I pull it into place and smooth my collar down. ‘When you tie a tie like that it makes a neat knot and it stays put.’
‘It’ll be all creased up now when I want it.’
‘What do you care?’
‘Hmm,’ he says, and goes back to his books.
‘It’s a nice tie.’
He says nothing.
‘Like to flog it?’
‘Eh?’
‘The tie. Would you like to sell it?’
‘I didn’t buy it. Me mother bought it.’
I look in the glass. It really is a smart tie; too good for Jim who doesn’t care about clothes anyway. ‘I’ll give you half a crown for it.’
‘It cost a lot more than that.’
‘You didn’t buy it.’
‘No, and how can I sell it when I didn’t buy it?’
‘You’d like the half-crown better, though, wouldn’t you?’ I say, looking at him through the glass. He’s always broke, Jim is, because he’s always buying something or saving up to buy something, like guinea pigs or rabbits to keep in the shed, or stamps for his collection, or something.
He’s watching me, turning something over in his mind. ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he says, ‘I’ll let you wear it whenever you like at threepence a time. And you owe me threepence now for tonight.’
‘Why did I open my big mouth?’ I fish in my pocket. ‘I haven’t any change, only a bob.’
‘That’ll do. You’ll have three more times to your credit.’ I chuck him the bob. ‘You don’t want to waste your time with medicine, laddie; you want to go into business. You’ll be a millionaire by the time you’re thirty.’ I go over to him and stick my chin out. ‘Do I need a shave, d’you think?’
‘Save it till the Easter holidays,’ he says.
‘How d’you mean? I’m shavin’ every day now.’
‘If you want to go to all that trouble… Are you going somewhere?’
‘To a dance.’
‘At this time?’
I look at my watch. ‘Quart’ to ten. Th
e night’s but young, me boy.’
‘Going out at this time to shuffle round a floor with a lot of smelly people to a so-called band,’ he says.
‘You wind your head in an’ get on with your Latin.’
‘How do you know it’s Latin?’
‘I’ll bet it’s not Lady don’t turn over.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Never mind.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ he says, ‘it’s maths. And while you’re here, there’s a bit I don’t quite follow.’
‘No use asking me. It’s all Greek to me.’ I realise I’ve made a corny joke. ‘How’s that, eh? Maths – all Greek to me.
‘Ha, ha,’ Jim says, very sarcy. ‘And you can knock it off, Vic. Old Cartwright was on to me the other day. He said he expected better maths marks from Vic Brown’s brother.’
This is enough to bring me out of the mirror again. ‘He said that? Old Carthorse? I don’t believe it.’
‘S’true,’ Jim says. ‘I daren’t let on who I am in the French class but old Cartwright seems to think you were pretty good.’
Ah, well… who cares about lousy old French anyway?
I go back to the bed and pick Jim’s exercise book up.
‘What’s the trouble, laddie?’ I say, imitating old Carthorse’s rumble.
‘Here.’ Jim points it out in his textbook. ‘I can’t get this one out. I’ve been struggling with it for half an hour. I think the book must be wrong.’
‘I’ve never met one yet.’ I go through his working out step by step and spot it as soon as I come to it. I drop the book in his lap. ‘Try putting that last equation the other way up.’ He looks. ‘Gosh… Well fancy me not seeing that.’
‘It’s not seeing things like that ’at makes you fail exams.’
‘All right, bighead.’
I rub my hand over my chin and fancy I hear the bristles rasp. ‘Well, I haven’t time for a shave anyway. I’m late enough.’
‘Won’t she wait?’ Jim says.
‘Who?’
‘Who?’ he says, grinning. ‘Brigitte Bardot, of course; who else?’
For a second I wonder if he’s found out. Then I realise he can’t have because nobody knows but me. Even she doesn’t know yet. But she soon will now. She jolly soon will.
Outside it’s sharp and clear, real clean winter weather. From the look of the sky this morning we were in for some more snow but now it’s full of stars and the frost nips your cheeks. I think about it for a minute and then start walking instead of waiting for a bus because it’s too cold to hang about. In a minute I hear a bus topping the hill behind me and I break into a trot and beat it to the next stop. I get a threepenny into town. There’s nobody else upstairs and I get in the back seat and have another butcher’s at this book of pin-ups and nudes Willy Lomas lent me before the holidays. Chérie it’s called and it’s French, with a bint on the cover in a suspender belt and black nylons and nothing much else but a you-know-what look. ‘Lush,’ Willy said, and he was dead right. These Frenchies certainly know how to put a book like this together. Your guts melt when you look at some of these bints in there. There’s some birds in their underwear or nylon nighties, just covered up enough to set your imagination working and some others where you don’t need any imagination at all. There’s some writing as well that makes me wish I’d taken more notice in the French class at school because if it’s anything to do with the pictures it must be pretty hot stuff. When I’m looking at these tarts I wonder for the three-thousandth time what It must be like, and I reckon I’d never manage to find out with these birds because it would be all up with me if one of them so much as came near me in the flesh.
The funniest thing though is I don’t think about Ingrid this way at all. Not that she isn’t attractive, because she is; just about the most attractive girl I know. Only the way I think about her is sort of clean and pure and soft, as though just to touch her cheek would be better than anything these other bints could give me.
Once I get thinking about Ingrid I forget about everything else and I overshoot my stop and have to walk back.
Walking down Illingworth Street I begin to feel pretty good about everything. I’ve got a good suit on and I’m clean and spruced up and my heels ringing on the pavement seem to give me more confidence, somehow. I know it’ll be the interval at the dance so I call in at the Ram’s Head, this pub up the street, for an odd one to put me right on top and a looksee if any of the lads are about. I go into the lounge. It’s jam-packed with the interval trade from the Gala Rooms and I can see across the bar into the smoke room where the band boys are having a quick one in them nifty fawn jackets they wear with maroon bow ties. I scramble for a glass of bitter and when I look round who should I see but Willy Lomas waving to me from a corner table. I go over an’ this lad he’s with – Harry Something-or-other, his name is – shoves up and makes room for me to sit down. They haven’t got their coats on and I ask them if they’ve been in the dance.
They both nod, and Willy says, ‘Packed out. Everybody dancin’ on your feet.’ He’s looking about as cheerful as he always does. I think it’s his face that does it. It’s long and white, like a clown’s, and his hair’s jet black and slicked back without a parting, smooth and shiny as your shoe toecap. He lifts his leg up and shows me a torn turn-up.
‘Put me leg out in a quickstep,’ he says. ‘Next thing I know some tart has her heel in me trouser bottom. Nearly went arse over tit.’
‘Any interestin’ talent?’ I say.
‘Usual crowd,’ Harry says, which tells me nothing that I want to know. Anyway, I don’t think they know Ingrid.
‘I rather fancy that singin’ bit they’ve got,’ Willy says.
‘A bit out o’ your class in’t she, Willy?’ Harry says. ‘It’d cost you a fortune to keep her in stockings.’
‘Well I can fancy it free, can’t I?’ Willy says.
‘Anyway, she’s married,’ I say.
‘How d’ye know? Willy says.
‘Because she wears a wedding ring, clot, that’s how.’
‘I sometimes think the married ’uns are the best in the long run,’ Harry says. ‘Least, they know what you’re after and you don’t have to break ’em in.’
‘I don’t want any fifteen-stone husband breathing down my neck,’ Willy says. ‘Give me the single ’uns every time. What I like is a nice willin’ little virgin who’s grateful to you for showing her how nice it is.’
He’s bragging now and I grin at Harry as he gives me a sly wink.
‘Trouble is,’ Willy says when he’s had a pull at his pint, ‘every bird I take a fancy to’s either wed or courtin’. You know, I picked one up at the Trocadero the other week. Smashin’ bit she was and she had that look about – y’know, no limit for the price of a bag of fish an’ chips. She let me walk her to Greenford – two mile – an’ then when I tried to steer her into a shop doorway to do a spot o’ neckin’ and fix up for another time, what d’you think she said? “Me fiancy wouldn’t like it,” she said. Her fiancy! Four mile I walked that night, for damn all!’
I laugh. I have a theory about Willy. I think he’ll end up married to a tart six-foot tall and as plain as the side of a warehouse and be bossed about for the rest of his life.
‘Aye, women are murder,’ Harry says, so it looks like he’s got troubles too. ‘I wa’ goin’ steady with a bint some time back. Twelve month I’d been courtin’ her an’ we were even thinking about getting engaged. She was allus on about it. “When’re we goin’ to get engaged, ‘Arry?” she says. Allus on about it.’
‘Oh, I’ve never thought about that,’ Willy says, and I have a quiet grin thinking about this six-foot tart who’s about somewhere waiting for him.
‘Well, I didn’t mind,’ Harry says. ‘She wore me down like. I wa’ ready to give in for a bit o’ peace an’ quiet. Then one weekend she goes over to stay with a cousin of hers in Warrington. Next thing I know she’s over there every weekend an’ I’m ditched for a bloody Yank.�
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‘Aye, uniforms an’ brass,’ Willy says. ‘You can’t compete with ’em.’
‘Have to get yourself a bus conductor’s job,’ I say. I’m thinking I’ll be as miserable as them if I stop here much longer. As it is, I’m all a-bubble inside from the thought of seeing Ingrid.
It’s quieter in the pub now and when I look round I can’t see any sign of the band boys so the interval must be over. I’m wasting good time.
‘Oh, by the way, Willy…’ I fish out Chérie and pass it to him, covering the tart on the front with my hand. ‘Thanks.’
Willy pockets it like a conjurer. ‘Think to it, Vic?’
‘Very nice. There’s one or two in there I wouldn’t mind getting friendly with.’
‘I’ll say,’ Willy says. ‘By, but I’ll have me a holiday in Paris next year – and to hell with Blackpool. Just see if I don’t.’
‘You don’t think they walk about streets wi’ nowt on, do you?’ Harry says.
‘Course not,’ Willy says. He leans over the table and lowers his voice. ‘But I’ll tell you what, though: there’s wenches over there ’at open their coats when they see you comin’ an’ they’ve got nowt on underneath.’
I start grinning and Harry says, ‘Gerraway!’
‘It’s right,’ Willy says. ‘I know a bloke what goes over reg’lar: one of the travellers at our place. He’s had it with more different bints than a lodging-house cat. An’ besides they’ve got knocking-shops on every corner, run by the gover’ment. All above board. You walk in, pay your money, an’ take your pick. just think if we had one’r two here in Cressley. We shouldn’t need to run after bints in dance halls: we could go an’ get what we wanted when we wanted it.’
‘I’m all for it,’ Harry says; ‘but you’re a bit late about Paris, Willy. They’ve shut ’em all up.’
‘Eh?’ Willy says. ‘How d’ye know?’
‘I read it in a book a bit back. They closed ’em just after the war.’
‘Well anyway,’ Willy says, a bit disappointed like, ‘you don’t have to look far for it.’
