by Stan Barstow
Mr Van Huyten’s not exactly what you’d call a close friend of the family but the Old Lady and Old Feller always think about him and send him a card at Christmas and he was one of the first names on the list of invitations to Chris’s wedding. How I got this job was from the Old Man seeing the ad for a part-time assistant in the Argus one Saturday and mentioning it. I saw a chance for a bit of extra lolly and I fancied the job itself so the Old Man went and fixed it up without more ado. That was twelve months since and I’ve never regretted it. I like serving all the people who crowd into the shop on Saturdays and seeing all the different faces makes a change from looking at all the same old ones like Hassop and Miller and Rawlinson and Conroy up at Whittaker’s day after day. I sometimes think this is the kind of job I’m cut out for, only there’s no money in it as a full-time thing, though the thirty bob Mr Van pays me for Saturday is a grand bonus on top of my regular wage.
It’s going up to nine by the time I get to the shop and Mr Van’s already opened. The Morris is standing outside and Henry’s waiting for me to help him load it. Pale blue, the van is, with Mr Van Huyten’s name on it in black letters. It’s still new-looking because it’s only six months old. The one before he’d had since pre-war and it could have been anybody’s driving about. Mr Van’s got his head down over his books in the little frosted-glass cubicle at the end of the long counter. Henry and I lug out two new TV sets, three that have been in for repair, and a new radiogram.
‘Some good sales this week, eh, Henry?’ I say, when we’ve finished and we’re having a breather by the van. ‘Over two hundred quid’s worth of goods there.’
Henry’s a little weedy bloke with a fat wife and five snotty-nosed kids. He wears glasses and his hair won’t stick down though it always looks as though he’s plastered everything he can think of on it, from liquid paraffin to lard. He gets a dokka from behind his ear and sticks it in his jib and lights up. He shakes his head and I know he’s having one of his sorrowful mornings. Not that he ever has what you could call a cheerful morning.
‘I wish I thought it could last, Vic,’ he says, and shakes his head again.
‘Last!’ I say. ‘Watcher talkin’ about, Henry? Business is booming. You just can’t meet the demand.’
But this is Henry all over – always looking on the black side – and even inventing one if he has to. I think maybe I’d be like him if I had a fat wife and five snotty-nosed kids. I have Ingrid in the back of my mind all the time and when I think of her and look at Henry I feel sorry for him.
‘How long will it go on booming, Vic?’ he says, puffing at his cig, ‘There’s got to be a saturation point somewhere, hasn’t there?’
‘Just look at records,’ I say. ‘You’d have thought TV would ha’ killed all that; but it hasn’t – just the opposite. They see a bloke on TV and run out to buy his latest record. And there’s new ones coming out every month.’
‘But you don’t buy a new television set every month, do you?’
‘So what? There’s maintenance, isn’t there? And what about cars? Yes, what about them? Look at the rate they turn them out. Where do they all go to? I don’t know. You’d think everybody in the country would have two apiece by this time; but I haven’t got one and you haven’t.’
‘Ah,’ says Henry, ‘but that’s a different kettle o’ fish. That’s a different thing altogether…’
I catch the gleam in his eye and see the way his hand goes up and I know all the signs. He’ll be quoting statistics in a minute and once Henry starts quoting statistics you’re done for. I don’t know where he gets them all from and I sometimes think he must make them up in his sleep without knowing it.
‘I’ve given this a lot of thought,’ he says. ‘It’s a sort of hobby of mine, as you know; and I’ve come to one or two conclusions.
‘You’d better save ’em till dinner-time, old cock, or you’ll have Mr Van on our tails for wasting time.’
Now Henry being conscientious, he sees the sense in this and shuts up straight away. But he sighs, and I reckon he’s doing this all the time when people are stopping him having his say. He stamps his tab-end out and buttons his smock up and opens the cab door.
‘All right,’ he says. ‘But we’re all living in a fool’s paradise, that’s all. A fool’s paradise, Vic. Full employment and business booming? It just isn’t feasible, lad. Don’t say I didn’t warn you when the crash comes.’
‘We’ll go on the dole together, Henry,’ I say, and grin.
He looks back at me. ‘Dole?’ he says. ‘You ask your dad about the dole, lad.’
And with this parting shot, as they say, he shuts the door and starts the engine. A proper job’s comforter, the Old Lady would call him. I wait till he’s gone off up the street and then go into the shop.
‘You’d better sell out and put your money in greengrocery, Mr Van Huyten,’ I say as I pass the desk, and Mr Van lifts his big shaggy head up behind the glass and gives me a serious look.
‘Oh, and why is that, Vic?’
‘Henry says we’re living in a fool’s paradise.’
‘Oh, Henry says. Our backyard economist.’ Mr Van laughs, opening his mouth and showing his teeth, all sticking out of the gums any-old-how like gravestones in a mouldy old churchyard where they don’t bury people any more. ‘What Henry doesn’t know about the workings of a wireless set doesn’t matter; but he’s a little undependable on the financial aspects of business, I fear.’ And Mr Van Huyten chuckles away as though Henry’s the comic find of the year.
I give him a minute to get over it then I ask him what I have to do.
‘Now let me see,’ he says, pushing his specs up on to his forehead. ‘Let me consider…’
Mr Van Huyten’s a bloke with something about him. He says things I never hear from anybody else in real life. And he dresses the part of a distinguished old gent, in a black jacket and striped trousers and a Come-to-Jesus collar. You have to look close to see the bits of breakfast on his waistcoat and pants, and the cig ash. Mr Van smokes a lot, only he doesn’t really smoke at all, if you see what I mean. He lights fags all day long and then lets them hang out of his mouth till the ash drops on to his books when he brushes it away kind of absent-minded like. Yes, he looks a real gent, and a touch I really go for is this white handkerchief that hangs half out of his top pocket. It’s real casual, artistic like, as if he’s saying, ‘Oh, yes, I know this is the way to dress, but I can’t be bothered with it really, you know.’
So he considers, and then he says, ‘I think you might check over that new consignment of records, if you don’t mind. I’ve no doubt some of them will be asked for before the day’s out and we should know where to put our hands on them.’
‘Right you are.’
‘If you don’t mind,’ though. He’s the boss, isn’t he, so who am I to mind? But that’s Mr Van all over, considerate, treats you like a person, and makes it a real pleasure to do things for him. So I begin to go through these records stacked in boxes behind the counter. There’s all the latest pop stuff here for the fans: Frankie Vaughan, Tommy Steele and Elvis. And they’ll be swarming all over the place this afternoon, buying loads of stuff and taking it home to play with the repeat on till both them and the neighbours are sick to death of it. Then they’ll come back next week for some more. Every weekend they’re here, buying records by big names who’ve been going years and blokes you won’t be able to remember eighteen months from now. I don’t take a lot of notice of Henry’s moaning but I sometimes wonder myself if it can last. In the meantime Mr Van Huyten must be doing very nicely thank you. He’s a Beethoven man himself, you know. I once heard him tell a customer he was very fond of the ‘later quartets’, whatever they might be. But he doesn’t mind keeping the business running on the profits from the other stuff. Me, I like all kinds of things, stuff with a tune you can whistle. Let’s face it, there’s a hell of a lot of crap passes over the counter. When I’ve checked the consignment over I pass the invoices over to Mr Van for spiking. I pick
out the records that are on order and sort the rest out ready for filing in their boxes. The box system’s my idea; before this Mr Van had his stock filed according to catalogue numbers.
‘Look, Mr Van Huyten,’ I said to him one Saturday morning; ‘I’ve been thinking about the way you’ve got your stock filed.’ And he stops what he’s doing to listen to me.
‘Now when somebody comes in for a record we look the number up in the catalogue and if we have it we make a single sale. Right?’
He nods, very patient like. ‘Right.’
‘And if we haven’t got it we offer to order it. But they don’t always want to wait and so they might go somewhere else.’
‘That’s right,’ Mr Van says. ‘We can’t stock everything.’
‘No, we can’t. But supposing we put the records in boxes and label ’em according to the artist – or the composers for the classical stuff. Then when a bloke comes in for a Perry Como, say, we get Perry Como’s box down and look for it there; and we let the customer look as well. That way he actually sees the records we’ve got instead of just names in a catalogue, which we might not have anyway. Ten to one he’ll spot something he’s forgotten or didn’t know about. That way we could sell mebbe three or four records for every one we sell now.’
He’s looking at me over his glasses. ‘You mean to let them browse, as they do in bookshops?’
‘That’s it. You’d never make a bookshop pay if you only let the customer see the one book he wants. Many a time they don’t know what they want, and this way we could have people coming in just to look through a box of the sort of records they fancy. Course, we’d have to keep an eye on them, see they don’t do any damage… You see what I mean. Mr Van Huyten?’
He nods. ‘I see what you mean, Victor. I’ll think about it and let you know.’ He goes back to his books but I know he will think about it like he says and then let me know what he thinks.
He brings it up again the next Saturday. ‘I like that idea of yours, Vic,’ he says. ‘How could we introduce it, do you think?’
I’m itching to get started straight away. ‘It shouldn’t he hard,’ I say. ‘All we need’s plenty of boxes, and I’ve got a kid’s stencilling outfit at home I can do the labels with.’
‘It’s the reorganization I’m thinking about, Victor. It will take time and you’re only here Saturdays, our busiest time.’
I tell him I’m willing to come in after work a couple of nights and he looks doubtful. ‘If you’re sure you don’t mind sacrificing your spare time,’ he says.
‘It’ll be a pleasure. I like doing jobs like that.’
‘And I’ll pay you the same rate as Saturday, then.’
‘Well, I wasn’t thinking about the money, Mr Van Huyten,’ I tell him, and I wasn’t. I don’t want him to think I’m on the make. It’s the idea that counts.
‘Well you just think about it now, my boy,’ he says. ‘You give me your time and I pay for it. That’s business.’
Anyway, I did the labels at home and went into the shop every night one week and got the sorting done. I’ve got a pretty good memory for anything I’m interested in and by the time I’d finished I thought I nearly knew the stock off by heart and could say practically without checking whether we had a record in or not. The first two nights Mr Van stayed with me but on the others he left me to lock up and take the key up to his house when I’d finished. It made me feel good to have him trust me like that. I mean, I could have walked out with nearly anything and he wouldn’t have known. Anyway, it started me thinking about something else – staggering the dinner hour on Saturdays so’s we didn’t have to shut the shop at the busiest time. We started doing this after a bit.
Anyway, now I’ve finished sorting the new records and I take a look round the shop. One time the customers used to listen to records on any old gram that was handy, but now there’s a couple of soundproof listening booths at one end of the shop. Even these aren’t enough some Saturdays, though, and I’m thinking about something I’ve seen in Leeds: a kind of arrangement of turntables and earphones so’s you can listen in private right out in the shop. I wonder if Mr Van Huyten would be interested in this idea and I think I’ll mention it to him some day soon.
II
‘Hello,’ she says. ‘I’ve brought my friend along. I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Oh, no… no,’ I say, like a clot. But what else can I say, for Pete’s sake? My heart’s dropped down into my boots with a thud because I know straight off my number’s up. This is one way of doing it, giving you the shove. They don’t refuse the date but they bring a girl friend along to keep you at arm’s length; and if you don’t ask them again, well, that’s okay, because that was the idea in the first place.
I look at them standing arm-in-arm under the lamp: Ingrid all neat and clean and fresh-smelling as usual, and this plain Jane with a muddy complexion, a big nose, and a mouth like a crack in a pie. I often wonder what it is makes bints pair off like this, one lovely and one horrible. You see it all the time and it must have turned more lads against one another than nearly anything else because if you’re hunting in pairs somebody’s got to have the horror. As it is, it looks as if I’ve got both of them and neither. And if the fact that she’s here isn’t enough the look this girl friend’s giving me says a mouthful.
Tonight’s Sunday and we were out together for the second time last night. It wasn’t like the first time, though. We went to a plushy cinema in the middle of town and all we could do was hold hands. Well that wasn’t bad but once we were outside again we seemed to lose all the headway we’d made, just like we did on Wednesday night. So it was my idea to go for a walk tonight and see how we’d make out outside all evening.
And now this. This is a brush-off if ever I’ve seen one.
‘This is Dorothy,’ Ingrid says. ‘And this is Vic.’
She was a nice girl as nice girls go and as nice girls go she went. This Dorothy says nothing but carries on giving me the look till I feel like asking her what she’s got on her mind. There we are, standing under the lamp; three of us, one too many, and that one is me, Joe Soap.
‘Do you know a girl called Mary Fitzpatrick?’ this Dorothy asks me all at once.
This is plain bints all over, the way they shoot questions at you that seem to have all sorts of things hidden in them. It makes me think she knows something nasty about me and I start to try and think what it can be. Plain bints know they can’t blind you with their looks so they have to get at you some other way.
‘Yes, I know her.’
‘You don’t know me, though, do you?’ she says, and the way she says it makes it sound like ‘But you’ll wish you did in a minute!’
‘I’ve never seen you before that I know of,’ I tell her.
‘But I know you,’ she says, ‘and I know Mary Fitzpatrick.’
‘Give her my love next time you see her,’ I say. What the hell’s she getting at? I wonder.
‘You used to give it to her yourself at one time, didn’t you?’
‘Me and Mary Fitzpatrick? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
Me and Mary Fitzpatrick used to live in the same street and I can remember dancing with her one time and another time walking her home because she was on her own and I was going the same way anyway. That’s all, and it’s a fact; because though I think she quite liked me she wasn’t my type and anyway she was a Catholic and I’m C. of E. when I’m anything and it’s no use letting religion in to balls things up. From the way this Dorothy’s talking though you’d think I put Mary Fitzpatrick in the family way.
‘I hardly knew her,’ I say and I wonder if Ingrid will believe this. But what does it matter now whether she believes it or not? She’s looking from one to the other of us like she’s taking it all in and I feel like slapping this Dorothy across the face because I know just what type she is now and it’s a type I don’t like a bit.
‘Well,’ Ingrid says, ‘which way shall we go?’
‘Any way you like,�
�� I say. The walk doesn’t seem like a good idea any more. It just makes me look too skinny to take her to the pictures again.
‘Shall we go this way, then; up towards the park?’
‘If you like.’
At least that’s going away from the centre of town and cuts down the risk of anybody I know seeing me with the two of them.
So we walk up the hill and they’re still linking on the pavement, holding on to one another as if they expect somebody to jump on them from round the corner. There isn’t enough room on the pavement for three abreast so I have to walk in the gutter. This seems to cut me off from Ingrid more than ever and I get a real strong feeling that I’m not wanted round these parts. I wonder how long I can stick it before I make an excuse and blow. It’s a grand night, though. As we come up over the hill where there’s houses on one side only we can see over the edge of the cliff to all the lights in the valley and up the opposite side where the road goes over the top to Calderford. It’s just the kind of night I was wishing for, hard and dry, just the night for walking and talking and getting to know somebody better. As it is, it’s all gone wrong and I’m getting nowhere. I haven’t said a word in over five minutes. This Dorothy cramps my style no end, and there’s not much point in making an effort anyway now all the signs are out. I’m not the brightest geezer in the world but I can read the writing on the wall as well as the next man.
