by Stan Barstow
She gives me the big envelope she’s carrying and says in this basso profundo voice, ‘There was no need for you to come in.’
I say sorry and ask how Hassop is.
‘It’s all in the envelope,’ she says.
‘Oh, well, righto, then. I’ll go straight back and give it to Mr Althorpe. Hope he’ll soon be up and about again…’
She says nothing and these marbles are fixed on me and I wonder what we’re both doing standing there while I babble on. It seems she’s not going to show me out, so I say, ‘Well, I’ll be getting off, then,’ and walk to the door. She stands stock-still, just the marbles swivelling as I get to the door. It’s only when I swing the door wide open and a great ray of sunshine shoots in that she moves. Then she suddenly half-runs towards me with her hands up as though she’s after clawing my eyes out.
‘Close the door,’ she says. ‘Close the door.’
Well, I’m all for this, but with me and her on opposite sides, so I say good morning and nip smartly out. The door slams as if she’s thrown all her weight behind it and the knocker jumps and gives a rap. I hear the bolt shoot home again and I get out of the porch and walk smartish up the path and don’t look back till I’m out on the pavement. I’m thinking then that if that’s what Hassop has to put up with it’s no wonder he isn’t the life and soul of the party.
II
I drop off in town for a coffee at the Bluebird Snack Bar, and I light that cig up I promised myself earlier. It’s something unusual for me to be downtown on a working morning and I’m a bit surprised, like I always am, to see so many people about. I don’t mean just women shopping and that, but blokes wandering about as they like while me and my kind are tied up earning a living. Quite a few of them are coloured bods, Indians and Pakistanis mostly. They all look alike to me, with long faces and high cheek bones, thin wrists and big teeth. They have right thick black glossy hair that shines as if they use half a bottle of cream on it at a time. I’ve never seen a well-dressed one yet and I don’t suppose most of them are well-off. I reckon even the ones who aren’t working though are better off on National Assistance here than they would be working at home; and I suppose there’ll be some of them who don’t bother about getting a job so long as the Government’s willing to keep them. That’s what a lot of people have against them, but I always think you can’t just lump people together like that. I reckon there’ll be right ’uns and wrong ’uns among them like there is with anybody else. They don’t seem to cause much bother, and mind their own business. All the same, though, I wouldn’t like to be a bird walking home late at night by myself up Colville Road. There’s so many of them living up there the locals call it the Road to Mandalay. God! I’m glad I’m English. I’m glad a dozen times a week when I read in the papers all that’s going on in the world.
It’s quiet in the snack bar and I enjoy my coffee and sit there thinking how nice it would be if Ingrid was to walk in and we could have a quiet little chat and I’d maybe get to know where I stand. Not that I don’t know already. I reckon it’s all up. But I still can’t take it somehow that it’s all over after just two dates – three if you count last night. We were getting along fine as far as I could see. There wasn’t the slightest sign of anything going wrong till that Dorothy turned up. I wonder if I got Ingrid wrong about that. Perhaps Dorothy did just turn up and Ingrid couldn’t get rid of her, like she said. If she did I made a real mess of things by going for her like I did. Oh, I don’t know. Bints are the very devil to understand.
I’m feeling a bit peckish so I go to get my cup filled again and buy a sausage roll to stave off the pangs till dinner-time.
There’s only one way to find out and that’s to ask her for another date. If she says yes, all well and good. If she says no it can’t be any worse than now when I’m wondering and imagining the worst and hoping for something better. So I decide: I’ll ask her, and if I can’t screw myself up to doing it to her face I’ll write her a little note and get young Laisterdyke to give it to her.
I’m sitting there drinking my second cup of coffee and thinking about Ingrid and hearing somebody bashing pots about in the back place when who should walk in but Les Jackson with his left hand all done up in a big boxing glove of bandages. He spots me as he turns round and he lifts his eyebrows and brings his cup over to the table, holding his bad hand up against his chest. The bandages are all fresh and clean.
‘Howdo, Vic.’
‘’Lo, Les. What the hell you been doin’ to your hand?’
‘That dame,’ Les says. ‘What thighs!’ He sits down laughing. ‘I had an argument with a drilling machine Friday morning.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘Slit all down the side of me hand an’ taken the tip off one finger.’
‘Christ!’
Les sips his tea and I take my cigs out and offer him one. ‘Have a picture of Queen Victoria.’ I take another myself and we light up. Les pulls on his like he hasn’t had a smoke in a week.
‘Just what I need,’ he says. ‘I’ve been up to the infirmary. I’ve to go up every morning to have the dressings changed.’
‘Give you some stick?’
‘It’s not so bad now. Gave me gyp Friday, though, when I just done it, I nearly passed out on ’em. They’ve one of the tough Irish sisters in Casualty up there. I told her they ought to give you a whiff o’ summat afore they start messing about. “What, a big husky chap like yourself?” she says. “You’re soft, man.”‘
‘Aye, an’ I’m soft an’ all when it comes to owt like that,’ I tell him. I’m looking at the bandages and imagining the mess underneath and I can’t help turning cold and shivering.
‘What you doing out this time o’ morning, anyway?’ Les says. ‘Are you laiking?’
‘No, I’ve just been taking a message to my boss’s house. He’s off badly.’
‘Having ten minutes at the firm’s expense now, eh?’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Got it cushy, you office boys.’
‘Come off it. It’s your own fault if you’re wearing overalls instead of a collar an’ tie. A grammar school lad drilling lumps o’ metal.’
‘Aw, I like to make things. I allus did. I couldn’t abide sitting at a desk all day. Too much like school… I say, guess who I ran into just now – Old Roster.’
‘Gerraway!’
‘I did that!’
‘Old Roster… I haven’t seen him in years. Did he speak to you?’
‘Oh aye. I said good morning like and he stopped and took a good look at me. You know the way he does it – first over his glasses then through ’em. Then he says, “Jackson, isn’t it? Yes – Jackson. Good heavens, boy, what have you done to your hand?” We must have stood for a good ten minutes talkin’ about this an’ that. Fancy him remembering me name, though.’
‘Oh, he’s not a bad lad, Roster. Plenty worse than him.’
‘I’ll say.’
‘He didn’t remind you about the time we sewed the armholes of his gown up, did he?’
We have a laugh as we think about that, then Les shoves his cup to one side and leans over the table and lowers his voice a bit. ‘Didja hear the one about the chap with a wooden leg who went on his honeymoon?’ he says.
I haven’t heard it.
I get back to the office about half-eleven and take the envelope in to Miller.
‘Did you see Mr Hassop?’ he asks me.
‘No, just his wife.’
‘It must have been his sister; Mr Hassop isn’t married. Did she say how he was?’
‘She said it was all in the envelope.’
Miller looks at me as if he thinks I’m trying to be funny.
‘How d’you mean, in the envelope?’
‘That’s what she said. I asked how he was and she said it was all in the envelope.’
Miller turns the envelope over in his hands. It’s got Mr Althorpe’s name on it so he can’t open it.
‘Have you seen her, this sister?’ I ask him, be
cause now I’m back in the office I’m wondering if I can have imagined it all.
‘No, I don’t know much about Mr Hassop’s private life. He’s very reserved about it.’
‘I don’t wonder. Honest, Jack, she’s the queerest bird I’ve ever run across.’ And I start to tell him all about it and he rests his behind on his desk and shoves his specs up on his nose with his forefinger now and again, the way he does, as he listens to me.
‘Hmmm,’ he says when I’ve finished. ‘Well, you’d better not say anything about it in the office. We don’t want Mr Hassop’s personal affairs bandying about the place.’
I say no, course not, and Miller picks the envelope up to take it in to Mr Althorpe. He looks back as he’s going out. ‘You say this dressing-gown thing had a feather collar on it?’ he says.
‘Looked like feathers to me.’
He says ‘Hmmm’ again, and beetles off out.
I go down the office to my board.
‘And how’s the draughtsman’s friend, this morning?’ Jimmy says.
‘It’s all in the envelope,’ I say, and start laughing. It’s got all the makings of a good catchphrase for Jimmy and me once I’ve told him the tale.
‘What’s so funny?’ he says.
‘Tell you later.’ I reckon it’ll be okay to tell him outside. It’ll have to be; I can’t keep a thing like that to myself. I go over and lean on his board. ‘Didja hear the one about the bloke with the wooden leg ’at got married and went on his honeymoon?’
He hasn’t heard it either.
III
Now I’ve decided to ask Ingrid out again I can’t think of anything else for wondering how I’m going to go about it and what she’ll say. I see her at dinner-time in the canteen only I can’t keep my mind right on her because Ken Rawlinson’s yattering away about a symphony concert he’s been to in Leeds Town Hall on Sunday night.
‘…and it’s tragic to think he never actually heard the biggest part of his own music.’
‘What?’ I say. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Beethoven.’
‘How’s that? Did he snuff it young, or summat?’
‘He was afflicted with deafness.’
‘Well how could he compose music if he was deaf?’ The stuff this bighead Rawly comes out with. He’ll be talking about blind painters next.
‘It was all in his mind,’ Rawly says. ‘All he had to do was write it down.’
‘Without hearing it?’
‘Of course. All this business you see in films where the composer sits picking out a melody at the piano is a Hollywood myth. Or at least, it’s grossly exaggerated. A musician of the first rank has only to see the music to hear it in his mind. And a composer has no need actually to hear the music to put it down on paper.’
This is interesting. It even makes me forget Ingrid for a minute. Course, I don’t believe all Rawly says, because he’s a big show-off, but I can always check on this with Mr Van Huyten. He’s sure to know.
‘A first-class musician,’ Rawly says, ‘can read an orchestral score as easily as the average person can read a book.’
‘And he’s only himself to blame if anybody plays a wrong note, eh?’
‘Exactly. In fact some musicians so despair of hearing the perfect performance of a favourite work that they give up listening to music and read scores instead.’
‘Like playing with yourself because you can’t find the perfect woman,’ says Conroy on the other side of Rawly, and Rawly goes as red as fire and carries on with his dinner without another word.
I have to smile at this because although I don’t like Conroy any more than I like Rawly I think it’s a very smart remark and I’m ready to see Rawly taken down a peg any time. It’s shut him up, anyway, and now I can concentrate on Ingrid again. I like her. I like everything about her. I like the way her hair’s cut short and waves over her ears. I like the little dimples at the corners of her mouth and the mouth itself, all soft and full and made for kisses. I remember me kissing it and wonder if I ever will again. She knows I’m watching her and just once, for a second, her eyes slide round to mine. Then away again. You might think we’ve never spoken two words to one another. All that in the warm and the dark in the pictures; you might think it had never happened.
I’m still dreaming about her at half past three when she comes through the office with her notebook and pencil to take some letters for Miller. I let my eyes slide up over the top edge of the board and follow her all the way. Such a trim little behind she has in that skirt, and them darkish nylons show her legs off a treat.
‘Isn’t it sweet, Jeff?’ somebody says near by, and I jump. Conroy and his pal Lewis are leaning on Conroy’s board watching me. They’re both laughing in that sarcastic way Conroy has and Lewis copies.
‘Doesn’t it do your heart good to see it?’ Conroy says.
‘What’s up wi’ you two?’ I say, as if I didn’t know.
‘Don’t come it, young Browny,’ Conroy says. ‘We know you’re doing a bit for our Miss Rothwell, the Siren of the Typing Pool.’
‘Why don’t you mind your own bloody business?’ I say, and look down at my board as if I’m going to carry on working.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve got into the front room yet, young Browny.’ Conroy says. ‘A bit of knee-trembling up the back passage just now, eh?’
‘Up the front passage an’ all, I’ll bet,’ Lewis sniggers. I’m going red and I can feel myself getting mad in a hard lump in my chest. I say nothing, because it’ll only make them worse. But one of these days I’ll give that Lewis one right in the guts. Conroy’s too heavy for me, but Lewis is just my barrow and one day he’ll open his big gob too far when there’s nobody around to keep the peace…
They haven’t done yet, either.
‘You want to be careful there, young Browny,’ Conroy says. ‘She’s a hot bit o’ stuff, our Miss Rothwell. A bit out of your class, I’d say. You want to leave her to the men.’
I keep my head down, reckoning to be drawing. But they won’t lay off. My heart’s hammering now and I can’t hold the pencil still, so I grip it and press it down hard on to the paper so it won’t show.
‘Know what they call her?’ Conroy says. ‘What her nickname is? They call her the Praying Mantis. You know what a Praying Mantis is, don’t you?’
I say nothing, holding myself in tight, waiting for them to lay off.
‘Well it’s an insect, something like a big grasshopper, and the female eats the male while they’re actually on the job together. Just gobbles him up bit by bit.’
‘And you can guess which bit she leaves till last,’ Lewis says, nearly killing himself with laughing.
‘That’s a bloody rotten thing to say, Conroy,’ I say, bringing my head up. ‘Why don’t you mind your own business, you lousy swine!’
‘What’s that?’ Conroy says, and gets off his elbows. ‘Say that again, you young sod, an’ I’ll –’
I’m saved in the nick of time when Miller opens his office door and shouts for Conroy. He goes off and Lewis comes over to me and sticks his face over the edge of the board. He’s nicely shaved and his hair’s slicked back with a dead straight parting. They always say Lewis has a haircut every ten days. Very particular about his appearance he is. Clean as you like on the outside and as mucky as a sewer in.
‘You want to be careful with your language, young Browny,’ he says, ‘or you’ll be getting a thick ear for your cheek.’
This is about as much as I’m taking and I grap for Lewis’s tie and nearly throttle him pulling him over the edge of the board. ‘You say much more, Lewis, an’ I’ll wrap a bunch o’ fives round your bloody neck.’ He waves his arms about and goes red in the face as I hold him. ‘You’re a poor bloody fish without Conroy to back you up, an’ don’t forget it.’
I give him a push as I let go and he stands there gasping and pulling at his tie as he wonders whether to make anything of it. Then Miller and Conroy come down the office to Conroy’s board and he can sli
nk away without losing any more face.
IV
I don’t get a chance to talk to Ingrid going home Monday and I hope I might do better next morning. Instead, though, I get tied up with Jimmy in the middle of a whole drove of people while Ingrid walks on in front with some more women. When I get into the office I scribble a quick note asking if I can see her tonight. I roll a couple of drawings up and mosey down to the print room. The machine’s humming away in there and the lamps are trundling to and fro along the rails with the light from them swooping about the walls and ceiling. Phoebe Johnson’s on her own, doing a few little dance steps in front of the machine as though it’s a juke box in a coffee bar. Phoebe’s at this sort of thing all day long: humming calypso songs to herself and twitching her elbows and shoulders about. She’s only sixteen but she’s a real voluptuous-looking bit with curvy hips and two at the front any film star would be proud of. There’s rumour about among the lads that she’s a sure thing, but that’s just wishful thinking because I happen to know a couple of blokes who’ve dated her and there’s nothing doing. Phoebe believes in Romance and that’s got nothing to do with what nearly every bloke she goes out with is interested in; though I reckon she knows she’ll have to put up with it when she gets married, whoever the bod happens to be.
