by Stan Barstow
‘Are you thinking of leaving home, then?’
‘Well, I suppose I shall one day, when I get married, I mean.’
‘How old are you, Ingrid?’ I’ve guessed but I’m not sure. ‘I was eighteen just before Christmas.’ I’d have given her another year. ‘You’re only a kid,’ I say to tease her a bit. ‘You won’t be leaving your mother for a while.’
‘Well you’ve got to think about the future, haven’t you? Many a girl’s married and started a family at eighteen. Anyway, how old are you, Father Time, if it isn’t too personal a question?’
‘Twenty.’
‘I couldn’t really tell. It was the grey beard that put me off.’
I laugh. ‘Okay, okay.’ And inside I’m singing and shouting again. It’s all right, we’re getting along grand.
‘And what sort o’chap are you goinna marry? Somebody like your dad who’s away all the time?’
‘No fear. I want a husband who’s with me all the time, and I’ll risk getting fed-up with him.’
Just the way I want it: living and loving and laughing together, every day. It must be wonderful if you can hit it right. ‘You’ll have to wait an’ see about that till he turns up. He might turn out to be a sailor or something and that’ll be worse than ever.’
‘How d’you know he hasn’t turned up already?’ she says, and I give her a quick look, wondering what to make of this. ‘Well what are you doing out with me, then?’
‘Making him jealous,’ she says.
‘I see. Is he a big bloke?’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. He’s quite well-built, though.’
‘Handy with his fists?’
‘I don’t know. I should think he can take care of himself.’
‘Hmm.’ I pretend to raise my hat and turn back the way we’ve come. ‘Well, good night.’
She laughs. ‘Come on, I’ll take care of you.’
We’ve walked up this residential avenue that branches off the main road that runs out to Greenford past Cressley Moor and now we can see the big gates of Ravensnook Park with all the fancy ironwork and shields, and a little side gate standing open, Ingrid suggests we walk through that way and we go in past the lodge which is in darkness and on to one of the wide tarmac avenues where there’s empty flower-beds on each side and big trees.
‘What did you think when I didn’t turn up last night?’ she says after a bit.
‘I didn’t know what to think, really.’
‘I suppose it did occur to you that I might have got held up somewhere?’
‘It did cross me mind.’
‘You didn’t really think I’d made the date and then deliberately not turned up, did you?’
‘It has been known, y’know.’
‘Well you don’t know me very well if you think I could do a thing like that,’ she says, and it seems to me there’s a touch of frost in her voice now.
‘Well I don’t know you very well, do I? We’ve only been out together three times. Only twice with just the two of us. When you turned up with that Dorothy the other night I –’
‘I didn’t want her to come, you know. Only she often pops over on Sunday afternoons and stays to tea. I wasn’t expecting her last week and when she came I didn’t have a chance to explain to her till we were out of the house and then I couldn’t get rid of her without offending her. She’s like that, y’know. She got it into her head that she was coming to have a look at you and that was that. She said she’d only stop five minutes and then go.’
Well that clears that up. Now it’s just like we’re beginning again, only the funny thing is that Dorothy’s got us off to a flying start this time. I’ll bet she’d be mad if she knew!
‘You know what happened after that,’ lngrid says.
I do. Not half. Is she ticking me off just a little bit? I wonder. Maybe she is, and she’s probably right, because the mood I’m in now I can even think about Dorothy without wanting to puke.
‘I didn’t mean to open up on her like that, you know; only I couldn’t stand all them insinuations of hers. Not after the two dates we’d had. And when all that happened and you didn’t turn up last night, well, I just thought we’d had it. I thought you didn’t want to see me any more and you didn’t like telling me to me face.’
‘And it wasn’t that way at all!’ she says. ‘Doesn’t it just show how misunderstandings can come about? It’s a good job I did think of writing that note or I don’t know what might have happened.’
‘I can tell you what would have happened,’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t have bothered you again.’
The bandstand, a big one shaped like a fancy cake, looms up out of the dark. I say, ‘Let’s sit down,’ and steer Ingrid round a corner that’s a mass of rhododendron blossom in early summer on to a sidepath where I know there’s a seat.
‘Would it have bothered you if I hadn’t asked you out again?’ I say and it seems like a kind of shyness comes over her because all she says is, ‘What do you think?’ I say nothing to this but I show her by lifting my arm and putting it round her shoulders. She moves a bit nearer to me on the seat and I think how funny it is what can make the difference between you jogging along from day to day and thinking that life’s absolutely wonderful.
‘What on earth’s that you’ve got in your pocket?’ she says.
I take my arm away and sit up straight again. ‘A book.’
‘It feels like a brick.’
I take the book out of my pocket and hold it in my hands. ‘It’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Have you read it?’
Good heavens, no, she says, she can’t read books. She gets three magazines a week and can hardly get through them for watching telly. ‘Telly.’ I don’t like that word somehow. It always reminds me of fat ignorant pigs of people swilling stout and cackling like hens at the sort of jokes they put on them coloured seaside postcards; all about fat bellies and chamber pots and that sort of thing. You know. So I just go on holding the book and say nothing. There’s something just in the feel of a book, I always think; something solid that’s here to stay. Not like television, switched on and off like a tap. I think it’s a pity she doesn’t read because it means we shan’t ever be able to talk about the books we’ve both read and recommend them to one another.
‘They made a picture of it,’ I tell her, for something to say. ‘Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman.’
‘My namesake.’
‘Eh?’
‘Ingrid Bergman. That’s who I’m called after. Mother was mad on her at one time. Her and Leslie Howard. If I’d been a boy I’d probably have been called Leslie.’
‘I thought it was a queer name for an English girl,’ I say. ‘I was going to ask you about it.’
‘I don’t think it’s queer. I like it.’
‘I don’t mean queer that way. I mean unusual.’
‘Would you rather I was called Mary or Barbara, or something like that?’
‘Dorothy,’ I say. ‘That’s a name I’ve always liked.’
She digs me in the side. ‘Go on with you!’
I laugh and put the book away in the other pocket. ‘I like you just the way you are,’ I tell her.
There’s a little silence before she says, ‘Do you, Vic? Honest?’
I’d like to tell her I love her, I’m mad about her, but I can’t do it in cold blood like, so I make do for the time being by saying, ‘I wouldn’t have run after you like I have otherwise, would I?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
I slide my arm round her again and she comes over till her hair’s on my face. I turn my face and brush my mouth across her cheek and a second later I’m covering her face with little short kisses, planting them all over, on her forehead, her cheeks, her eyes, her nose, and then on her mouth. I kiss her the same way on the mouth, as though one long kiss isn’t good enough and I’ve got to go on kissing and breaking away and kissing again; and all the time I’m whispering her name to her over and over again.
And then, in a bit, we ease up and bre
ak away for a breather.
‘Phew!’ she says with a little laugh.
‘It’s rotten being a girl sometimes,’ she says after a bit. ‘Suppose you’d never asked me again after last Sunday. It might have been ages before I could make you see I still wanted to go out with you.’
‘That Dorothy. She nearly gummed up the works.’
‘She wouldn’t have minded, y’know. She’s a bit of a cat, really, even if she is a friend of mine. She’s jealous, y’know, because I’m going out with you. That’s her trouble: she’s jealous.’
‘Why doesn’t she find a chap for herself?’ I say, easy because I’ve got Ingrid and anybody can have Dorothy that fancies her.
‘She reckons she doesn’t like men. She pretends she’s above that sort of thing.’
‘Don’t any of ’em ever ask her out?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Hard lines.’
‘Well, she’s not attractive, is she? I mean, let’s be honest, you didn’t find her attractive, did you?’
‘I find you attractive,’ I say, thinking it’s time we were making contact again. We kiss again, a real long slow one this time that melts me to the soles of my boots till I think I might pass out from the way I feel about her. When we break off this time we keep our faces together and I run my fingers ever so gently across her forehead and down her cheek and then we kiss again, and all at once she begins to do exciting things with her tongue and I’m holding her and holding her because I can’t hold her close enough. And my mind’s working away now because as I see it the way she’s kissing me now she’s as good as giving me the green light to go a bit further and I wonder if I’m right because I’ll blow my brains out and no mistake if I balls it all up by offending her after all this. We kiss again and again she starts these wonderful tricks with her tongue and I think well that’s it all right and no mistake and she will think me a Sammy if I don’t do something now. I slip my hand into her coat and she twists a bit on the seat to make it easier for me. In a minute I’m inside her blouse but then I’m scuppered by all the harness and whatnot she’s got on underneath. She says something and pulls away a bit and puts her own hand up to her shoulder. Then she comes back and whispers ‘All right,’ and my hand’s in there again and I’m feeling the soft firm weight and the tip coming up hard under my thumb, and my guts are melting with tenderness for her. ‘God,’ I’m saying to her. ‘God, I’m crazy about you, Ingrid,’ and her fingers are up in my hair at the back and she’s curling and twisting them and saying, ‘Vic, oh, Vic,’ over and over again, and all I can think of is this is what I was born for, this is what I’ve been waiting for as long as I can remember. And that’s not all, because later, when my hand moves somewhere else, it’s as though she’s feeling just the same way as me, as though it’s what she’s been waiting for, because she quivers at my touch and sighs and then rests back in my arm and makes little noises in her throat as I love her like I never thought was possible except in imagination.
It’s not till after that she seems to wonder and then she says in a little whisper as she leans against my shoulder, ‘Vic … You don’t think I’m common, do you?’
‘Why?’
‘Because of… of just now?’
‘You haven’t to think that,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t think it.’
And then I’m covering her face with them little kisses again, covering every square inch because I want her to see I’m thanking her as well as loving her and that after tonight I love her more than ever.
It’s late when I get in and the Old Lady’s waiting up for me, standing with her back to the fire and winding the alarm clock for morning. The Old Man’s gone to bed apparently.
‘You’re a fine one,’ the Old Lady says as I’m blinking in the light.
‘How’s that?’
‘Getting invited out to yer tea and then slippin’ off like that. I don’t know what David thought, I’m sure.’
‘Did he say owt?’
‘He’s too well-mannered for that. You could take a lesson or two from him on how to behave yourself.’
‘I told Chris, Y’know. She said it was okay.’
‘Oh, our Christine ’ull stick up for you: she allus did. An’ anyway, what else could she say? She couldn’t keep you there if you said you were going out.’
I sit down in the easy chair and unlace my shoes. I know my face is a bit hot and red but my mouth’s set because I’m not going to let anything spoil tonight.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ the Old Lady says.
‘Look,’ I say, ‘I was invited to tea at me own sister’s, not Buckingham Palace. To tea. It didn’t mean I’d to stay till supper-time.’
The Old Lady picks her cup off the fireplace and drinks the last of the tea in it. ‘When you’re invited to tea,’ she says, nagging on, ‘you don’t just slope off the minute you leave the table.’
‘You’re exaggerating, as usual. Anyway, I explained it to Chris and she said it was all right.’
‘Explained what? I don’t even know where you’ve been that was so important.’
I get up and turn my back to her as I hunt for my slippers behind the chair. ‘I had a date.’
‘With a lass?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you knew a fortnight ago you’d be goin’ to our Christine’s today.’
‘I was supposed to meet her last night but there was a bit of a mix-up and we had to put if off till tonight.’
‘I thought you said you were out with a mate of yours last night?’
‘I was. I told you, there was a mix-up.’
‘It’s all mixed up to me,’ she says. ‘Hole-in-the-corner work.’
I’m getting wild because she’s doing it. She’s turning it all wrong. I can nearly hear her if she knew what happened in the park tonight, the way she’d turn it into something shabby and dirty, when it wasn’t like that at all. I put my slippers on and keep my face down, but I know she’s still watching me.
‘Do I know this lass?’
‘No.’
She says nothing else for a minute, then she says in a funny tight little voice, ‘Well, I reckon you’ll tell me what you want me to know about her in your own good time.’
‘What’s for supper?’
‘There’s a long-bun in the bread-bowl and you can make yourself a cup o’ cocoa. I’m going to bed.’
‘Have we plenty of milk?’
‘We’re not without.’
‘I’ll have a glass of milk, then.’
‘Leave enough for your father an’ me for breakfast, that’s all.’ She moves towards the door, carrying the alarm clock that’s ticking away like billy-ho in the quiet. ‘Don’t be too long as you come up, and don’t leave any lights on.’
I go into the kitchen and find the long-bun and slice it in two and spread it thick with best butter. I’m wondering why the Old Lady didn’t press a bit further about Ingrid; and then I come to the conclusion that she was pleased enough at the bottom of her to hear I’ve been out with a lass.
I take the long-bun and the milk and go and sit down in front of the fire. The trouble is that underneath it all I think it’s shabby and dirty as well, because it’s something nobody talks about, something you put up with because it’s necessary to make the world go on, and people who enjoy it are in the same class as drunkards and gamblers. And I can’t help thinking this even though I know it isn’t like that at all; not with Chris and David, surely, and not with Ingrid and me.
6
I
Next morning Hassop’s back, I think sooner than we expected and I’m dead sure sooner than we hoped.
‘I thought we might have another quiet week,’ Jimmy says as the boss goes into his office and shuts the door behind him. ‘Didn’t his sister give you any idea?’
‘It must have been in the envelope,’ I say with a grin. What do I care if Hassop is back? I’m happy, that’s the thing. Old Hassop isn’t so bad. He does his job in his own way and if he
does turn nasty once in a while, well, that’s a boss’s privilege. He’s got his trouble… That sister… If I had to live with a weird old bird like that maybe I’d be a bit bloody-minded at times. But, like I say, I’m happy. I haven’t actually spoken to Ingrid this morning but just to see her legs twinkling away in front in the mist was enough to bring last night back with a rush and make me think what a lucky, lucky dog I am. I feel like liking people. I can even see good points in the brussen bastard Conroy. Well, till dinner-time I can, anyway… What happens then is that there’s half a dozen of us hanging about round the plan files near the door, having a natter before the bell goes. Somebody’s just saying Conroy’s name when the door bursts open and in marches Conroy himself. He stops. ‘Who’s talking about me?’ he says. ‘Who mentioned my name?’
Well it wasn’t me, as it happens, but this sharp answer’s on the tip of my tongue without me hardly thinking and it’s too good to hold back.
‘I did,’ I say. ‘I was just saying I’d bought a pig and I didn’t know what to call it.’
Somebody behind me cracks out laughing and there’s grins on all the faces I can see except Conroy’s. He just stares for a second, going all stiff with rage. ‘Wha… you cheeky young bleeder…’And he comes for me with his arms punching out to either side, pushing lads away to clear a path to me. I stand my ground. I didn’t want to pick a quarrel, not today when I’m feeling so good, but I reckon it had to come sooner or later. My heart’s thumping because I reckon I’m in for a hiding; but I’m not going to let everybody see me back down.
I know the only way to save myself is to get in close, so I dodge the first punch that Conroy swings at my head and duck and throw myself forward under his fists and grab hold of him round the middle. I see the lino coming up to meet as I go down, taking Conroy with me. We roll about on the floor, bashing against plan files. I catch my ear on one of the drawer handles and nearly shout with the pain, and all the time I’m getting these short jabs on the side of the head as Conroy punches away and pushes and pulls at the same time, struggling to get free so’s he can really let me have it. Well, I’m soon nearly weeping, the punishment I’m taking and I’m scared I might show it any time. I pull away and twist my head to try to get it out of the way and I see Conroy’s fat leg right in front of my face with the trousers pulled tight across it. I don’t stop to think whether it’s fair fighting or not; I just dip my face and bite as hard as I can.
