by Stan Barstow
Quarter to. She isn’t coming. That’s the trouble with dames: you never know where you have them. Some blokes reckon that’s all part of the game but I’m the type that likes things settled. I like to know where I stand. Like Chris and David do, for instance. They’ve certainly got something I’d like to find, but that’s my secret and I don’t tell anybody.
Ten to. You feel a bit daft standing on a corner with everybody passing by and knowing you’re waiting for a bird who’s late. They must know because nobody ever arranges to meet somebody at ten to and so she must either be late or not coming. I reckon a quarter of an hour’s enough to give any bint but I’ll give her till eight seeing as this is the first time. Then I’ll just have to write it all off. Oh, but it’s sickening the way you get all built up and then knocked down again.
‘Hello.’
I jump and turn round and catch the fresh clean smell of her. Her eyes are sparkling in the lights and there’s rain in her hair. Her lips are parted showing her teeth and she’s breathing a bit fast as though she’s been hurrying.
‘I’m sorry I’m so late. I couldn’t get away sooner… I ran all the way… I felt sure you’d have given me up and gone.’
‘No.’ It’s all I can think of to say I’m so busy looking at her. Gosh, but she’s a smashing piece, and she’s run all the way to meet me. She just said so.
‘I knew you’d come,’ I say at last, when I’ve had my fill of looking at her for the minute. And when I say it it’s just as though I really did know all the time. ‘You’re not the sort of girl to stand a bloke up.’
‘Why should I do that?’ she says. ‘I could have said no in the first place if I didn’t want to come, couldn’t I?’
I give a nod, eating her up with my eyes again. I can’t believe it. I really can’t. There must be a catch in it somewhere for this to happen to me.
‘Well?’ she says, and I realise I’m embarrassing her a bit staring like I am. So I say, ‘Righto,’ and we walk along the road to the picture house where the lights are blazing and the commissionaire’s leaning against the pay-box talking to the cashier because there’s nothing else for him to do. I reckon he’ll be for the push any time now, the way things are.
‘It’s very quiet,’ Ingrid says. ‘I thought we might have to queue.’
‘Three or four years ago, mebbe,’ I say; ‘but not nowadays. Cinema owners are on their beam ends. Why pay to see a bad picture when you can see one on television for nothing?’ I’ve read this somewhere but she laughs and I let her think I’ve made it up. I’m wondering where she wants to sit and I don’t like to ask her for fear it’s the best seats and she won’t like to say. I get two tickets for the back circle, the next to the best. Now she won’t think I’m showing off and I shan’t have started something I can’t keep up if this turns into a regular thing. When the bint with a torch sees the two of us she flashes us up into the back where the courting couples are snogging away among the empty seats. I’m surprised when Ingrid goes up past a lot of empty rows and leads the way on to the very back row. We push past a couple sprawled out holding on to one another and they take no notice of us. We sit down in a double seat with no arm rest between us, which I think is a bit of all right. Ingrid decides in a minute she’d like her coat off and I help her with it. I have to put my arm round her to do this and I wonder if I dare keep it there. But I think it’ll be rushing things a bit and that would be a pity after we’re off to such a promising start.
There’s a snap like elastic breaking from the couple on the row and the bint giggles and wrestles with the bloke.
‘I feel like the psychiatrist who went to the Folies Bergère and spent all his time watching the audience.’
‘What?’ Ingrid says, and I don’t know if she hasn’t heard me or not got the joke.
‘Skip it.’ I feel for my cigs. ‘Smoke?’
‘Here.’ She fumbles in her handbag. ‘Let’s eat this first.’ She brings out a bar of chocolate and breaks it into pieces and puts them on her knee. We munch away and watch the picture. Fruit and nut, it is, and I’m very partial to it next to coffee cream.
We’ve come in near the end of the feature and I can’t make much sense of it. The stories of most musical pictures are pretty silly, anyway. You nearly always have a hard-up company hoping their luck will change and somebody will put up the cash so’s they can do this terrific show on Broadway. There’s always a nice young producer chap who’s in love with the sweet young bint and doesn’t know it because the second fem lead, who’s a regular bitch even if she has got bags of talent, has her hooks in him. And you always come to the place in the picture where somebody looks round this barn or whatever dump it is they’re holing up in and says, ‘But say, why can’t we put the show on right here?’ And from then on it’s all plain sailing because there’s sure to be a stinking rich backer in the audience on the night and while he’s busy signing the cheque the nice young producer is backstage realizing all of a sudden how much he loves the sweet young bint and singing her a song to tell her so. Every so often you get one that’s a cut above all this, but this one we’re watching now isn’t one of them. Not that I care, mind. I could watch Rin-tin-tin tonight because what I’m interested in isn’t up on the screen, it’s right here beside me. She’s so near I’m dizzy with it, and I’m sneaking little looks at her all the time and wondering if she’s really all eyes and ears for the picture like she seems, and how soon I can put my arm round her.
Now there’s a few schools of thought about how you should carry on on a first date. Some say you shouldn’t put a finger out of place, and patience pays. At the other end of the line there’s the caveman school. I reckon their methods only apply when you’re out with a certain kind of bint who knows why you’ve asked her and comes expecting it. Then there’s the middle-of-the-road boys who reckon you should at least show you know the difference between boys and girls and that you’re interested in it. It depends what you’re after, I always think. There’s no doubt what the bloke on the row’s after, for instance; and from the way the bint’s holding him down it looks like he’ll get it. But that’s not the way I feel about Ingrid. I only want her to like me and let me be good to her. I want to be kind and gentle to her so bad it gushes up in me like a fountain whenever I think about her. And now, with her here, so close, in the dark…
Well the way it happens is that the lights go up in the interval and the ice-cream comes round. I ask her if she wants some and she says no, so I don’t bother myself either. I put my elbow up on the back of the seat while I’m talking to her and when the lights go down again all I have to do is drop my hand and it’s where I want it to be. She’s very cooperative, because as soon as she feels it on her shoulder she comes over and tucks herself away under my armpit and her hair’s in my face and I’ve got this lovely smell of a high-class chemist’s shop all round me. The next thing we know we’re kissing for the very first time and it’s marvellous.
There’s quite a cold wind blowing when we come out of the pictures. We walk along the main road for a bit then turn off up the hill to where Ingrid lives. Neither of us says much. I want to say something that will fix what’s happened in the pictures; only out here in the cold it’s as though we’ve left it behind in the warmth and the dark and we might never find it again.
‘I’m glad we came out together,’ I say.
‘You’re not disappointed, then?’ she says, and I feel like gaping at her. Disappointed!
‘P’haps you’d like to try it again?’ I say. ‘What about the weekend?’
‘If you like.’
And what if I don’t like? Does it matter to her either way? What’s a kiss on the back row of the pictures after all? It doesn’t mean we’ve signed an agreement or something.
‘No need to if you don’t want,’ I say, and I’m horrified at the way I’m inviting her to turn me down.
‘I’d like to,’ she says.
Well, that’s okay, then. We stop at the end of their avenue. It’s ce
rtainly a cold wind. I shove my hands down into my pockets and hunch my shoulders up. It’s going, all that in the pictures. I can feel it slipping away. For all I know it might have gone for good… If I could kiss her, though, maybe I’d catch a little bit of it to carry till next time. But here in the open we’re like strangers again. I couldn’t do it easy and natural the way it was in the pictures. It’d be like making a pass out here.
‘Come on,’ I say, ‘I’ll walk you to the gate.’
‘You’ve no need to, y’know.’
‘I want to.’
‘Oh, all right, then.’
We walk up this curving avenue, not touching, a foot apart, till she stops at a gate.
‘Is this it?’
‘This is it.’
I look up at this little modern semi standing up above the road with the garden tumbling down to the fence. Two thousand five-hundred at today’s prices, I reckon. Neat, though, and worth painting because it would look smart when you’d finished. Not like our house, dirty stone front, two storeys and an attic besides, and great big rooms. Not that it isn’t cosy, because the Old Lady’s good at making it that; but it needs a collier’s coal supply to keep it warm and you could never call it smart. I don’t know anything about Ingrid really and I wonder about her family and her father and mother and what her father’s job is. I think I’m maybe a little bit timid of Ingrid’s dad though I don’t know why I should be because I’ve never seen him and I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of.
‘Any more at home like you?’
‘No, only little me,’ and she laughs. Her lips are purple in the lights and her complexion’s a kind of dirty white colour. We can’t stand here all night, I think, and I wonder about kissing her again. I wonder if she expects me to. It just isn’t the same out here, though.
She clicks the latch on the gate. ‘Well, I’d better be getting in. Thanks for asking me out. I’ve enjoyed it.’
‘I’m glad. See you tomorrow then.’
Now – now’s the time while she’s still close and her face is turned up to me. She’s waiting, wondering why I don’t do it.
‘Yes, see you tomorrow.’
Too late now; she’s through the gate and shutting it behind her. I watch her climb the four steps then walk up the steep path to the corner of the house. She turns and lifts her hand up and I wave back.
‘Ey!’
‘What?’
‘Happy New Year!’
She laughs. ‘Thanks. The same to you.’
I walk off, wondering what we’ll be doing in a year’s time, if we’ll still be seeing one another. Maybe I did right not to kiss her. Perhaps it’ll have given her a better opinion of me. Roll on Saturday night. After a bit I break into a trot because I’ve a lot too much to think about for walking.
3
I
Saturday morning and I’m down snug as a bug under the bedclothes and it seems like I’m dreaming somebody’s calling my name. I come out of sleep with a jerk and hear the Old Lady at the bottom of the stairs, bawling fit to wake the street.
‘Victor! Victor! How many more times?’
I open my eyes. ‘Righto, I’m up.’ I look at the wallpaper two feet from my nose. The Old Lady’s choice it is: roses as big as cabbages with trellising on a grey ground. There’s flowers on the window as well – frost flowers – and when I put my hand out I can feel how cold it is in the room. Just for a few seconds, as I’m lying there, it’s any Saturday morning, with me going to help Mr Van Huyten in his shop. And then I remember what makes today special and the happy feeling opens up inside me like a big yellow flower, all bright and sunny and warm.
I reach out for my watch and see it’s two minutes past eight and I’m going to have to look slippy, or else. I chuck the clothes back and swing my legs out and bring them back sharpish when my feet miss the mat and touch the lino, which feels cold enough to fetch the skin off. I hang down over the side of the bed and grobble for my socks. I put them on and then my slippers. I get out of bed and then I have to take the slippers off again so’s I can get my pyjama pants off. My britches feel as if they could stand up on their own; no losing the creases this weather. I’m nipping across to the bathroom when the Old Lady comes to the bottom of the stairs again and opens her mouth for another rallentando. It cuts off as though somebody’s throttled her when she sees me.
‘’Bout time, an’ all,’ she says, and goes back down the passage to the kitchen.
I’m out in a couple of ticks and halfway down the stairs before I remember I won’t have another chance for a shave before I meet Ingrid. I nip back and lather up and cut myself five times and bleed like a stuck pig. I meet young Jim on the landing and he eyes the bits of toilet paper stuck all over my jib. ‘You’ll have to get your knife and fork sharpened,’ he says. ‘Get lost,’ I tell him as I patter downstairs. I’m in a bad enough mood as it is now thinking about meeting Ingrid with blobs of dried blood all over my face.
It nearly makes my guts heave to smell the bacon and eggs in the kitchen. The Old Lady slaps the plate in front of me as I sit down.
‘If it’s a bit frizzled,’ she says, ‘you’ve only yourself to blame. I called you six times. I don’t know what you’re getting like. It’s like trying to raise the dead shifting you out o’ bed. You even answer me in your sleep now.’
I get on with my chow and let her have a chunter. It does her good to bind a bit. She’s been up since about five getting the Old Man off. The Old Feller’s been telling her for thirty years that he can manage on his own, but she won’t have it. She says he’ll forget his snap or something if she doesn’t see to him, and apart from the odd times when she’s been badly she’s kept up the routine.
She watches me clean the plate up with a piece of bread.
‘Shovellin’ your food into you like that,’ she says. ‘It can’t do you a bit o’ good. An’ don’t you want a cup o’ tea?’
I tell her I do, and a slice of bread and marmalade, and she sets about the loaf. She always grabs a loaf like it’s a chicken whose neck she’s wringing.
‘You’d better look sharp,’ she says. ‘You don’t want to be late. You don’t want to give a bad impression, especially after that five pound Mr Van Huyten gave you at Christmas.’
‘One minute you’re on about me bolting me food and the next you’re telling me to look sharp or I’ll be late.’
‘You should allow yourself time to do all you have to do, then you could eat your meals in a proper manner and still get where you have to go on time. You want to take a leaf out of your cousin Walter’s book. He has a system in a morning: so many minutes for this and so many for that. You never see him bolting his food or having to run for a bus.’
I pull a face. Cousin Walter’s a tall thin cove with a big nose who works in a bank. I don’t like him; partly, I suppose, because everybody in the family seems to think he’s the last word. The first time cousin Walter’s taken bad for a crap in the morning his system will go for a burton, I think to myself.
‘I shan’t be late’, I tell the Old Lady, ‘as long as you don’t addle me with your nagging.’
‘I’ll addle your earhole, young man, if you talk to me about nagging. You’re not too big for a good slap, y’know, even if you are at the shavin’ stage… Just look at your face. Fancy having to go out like that in a morning to wait on people in a shop.’
‘I’ll clean it up when I get there,’ I tell her. Actually I’m a bit bothered about it myself. There’s nothing niggles me more than cutting myself shaving because you’ve to go extra careful for days after for fear you open the places up again. But still, it’s done now and it can’t be helped. As for the Old Lady and her giving me a slap – well, she’d do it an’ all and no bones about it. She’s got no sense of humour, you know, and everybody knows it, bar her.
Another two minutes and I’ve had a cup of tea and two slices of bread and marmalade and I’m out of the house and haring down the hill to the bus stop. The sun’s getting out fairly warm
now but the frost has left some icy patches and I nearly come a cropper once. What I’m after is that bus waiting on the corner at the bottom. The conductor’s standing on the platform looking my way and I think at first he’s waiting for me. But he rings the bell while I’m twenty yards away and I have to put on an extra spurt to catch the rail and heave myself aboard.
He’s a miserable-looking bod with bad teeth that he’s poking into with a sharpened matchstick.
‘You’ll kill yourself one o’ these days doin’ that,’ he says as I’m hanging on there drawing every breath as if it’s my last. ‘I could stop the bus and make you get off.’
‘You saw me comin’, didn’t you? Did you think I was practising for the mile, or summat?’
‘Plenty more buses. We’ve got a schedule to keep to, y’know.’
There’s a nice little four-letter word on the tip of my tongue but I swallow it and give him my fare. ‘Threepenny.’
‘Where you goin’ to?’
‘Market Street.’
‘Fourpence.’
‘It’s only threepence from up the hill.’
‘That’s the service bus,’ the conductor says. ‘It’s fourpence on this route because we go round by the Town Hall.’
I hand over another penny. ‘Anyway, you’re fourpence better off than if I hadn’t caught it,’ I tell him.
He shakes his head and smacks his tongue behind his bad teeth. ‘Not me, mate. Makes no difference to me.’
I take the ticket and go upstairs thinking that he’s the most miserable bastard I’m likely to meet today and I’ve got him over early, anyway.
Saturdays I go to work in Mr Van Huyten’s gramophone record and music shop in Market Street. There’s only Mr Van Huyten in during the week, and Henry Thomas who does the repairs in the back; and on Saturdays I serve behind the counter and help with the weekend rush. Mr Van Huyten’s father was a Dutchman but I reckon Mr Van himself is as English as I am and the only things Dutch about him are his name and the way he talks sometimes if he gets excited, and that’s double Dutch. People don’t always know it’s a Dutch name. They get the Van bit mixed up with Von, and that’s German. That’s why they chucked bricks through Mr Van Huyten’s father’s windows in the Great War. People weren’t as educated then as they are now and they didn’t know that Mr Van Huyten and his father didn’t like the Gerries any more than anybody else in Cressley till Mr Van joined up and came home in his Tommy’s uniform. The Old Man joined the same mob – the Koylis – and him and Mr Van became pals, though Mr Van was a grown man and my dad was only a bit of a lad, younger than I am now. Something happened to Mr Van Huyten’s father’s antique business after the war and he shot himself one night and left Mr Van on his own. Mr Van had a lot of bad luck because he got married soon after this and then his wife died of cancer after only a few years. So he was on his own again and he never got married a second time. He made a living for a long time playing the piano in theatre bands and for the silent pictures before he got the shop.
