by Ted Lewis
The door opened once again and Angela entered in all her glory, accompanied by one of her Ted-girl friends. She moved down the aisle of tables, looked at Karen and me (one for me and one for Karen then back to me), and sat down non-committedly with Matthew’s group. Shrieks arose from their table and they were off.
Hilary and Gwen and their non-college girlfriends arrived. None of them looked at me. They, too, joined Matthew by drawing up another table.
I had done a stupid thing the previous evening. During the interval at the Steam Packet, I had concluded that the girl situation wasn’t up to much. So I went and sat next to Hilary. And talked to her. So afterward, we got into the trumpet-player’s car and went off to the pub that Harry’s folks ran. Just the band and a few other girls. We stayed till about one o’clock, drinking and playing darts with Harry’s parents. Then I took Hilary off to my place, which was just up the road. She was in bed with me until half-past two. I had had to shoot a line to persuade her there. Give her hope. Afterward, I got her a taxi. Before she got in, I had made some vague promises. Then, this afternoon I had seen her in a café in town. Harry and I got as far as the door without being seen. I had looked back to see her pained face staring in my direction. We had then fled. So now here she was. I wondered what would happen.
At the dance. No signs of Janet. Karen being happily proprietary round my piano. The hand stomping along, sweatily. Dim lights, a mass of breathing, steaming dancers filling the college hall. Shouts to and fro between the band and friends, and only nine o’clock.
The band was set up on the floor, not on the stage, so it was easy for people to lean on the piano and talk to the rhythm section. The feeling between band and audience was intimate. I caught sight of Janet while we were playing “In a Persian Market”. She was standing at the back of the hall, looking in the direction of the band. She was with a girl I had never seen before. She saw I was looking at her. Her friend saw it, too. She said something to Janet. I thought she nodded, but I was too far away to tell. Karen was leaning against the piano. I looked up at her and smiled. We finished the number. I looked over to where Janet had been standing. She wasn’t there. Karen had gone, probably to the ladies. The front line were reclining in their chairs, dabbing the sweat from themselves. I turned back to the keyboard and lit a cigarette. Janet and her friend rounded the corner of the piano. Janet walked with her arms gently folded.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello,” I said.
She looked at the keyboard.
“How are you enjoying it?” I said.
“It’s quite good.”
“What do you think of the band?”
“You all seem very good. You seem to enjoy yourselves.”
My pulse was going in leaps and bounds. My chest felt as though it was turning inside out. No one said anything. She seemed to stand there forever without anybody saying anything. She looked like no one else I had ever seen. I sensed the slight perfume drifting from her cool flared dress, a dress so utterly feminine that it made me feel good just to be near it. She still had her arms folded. A soft woolen cardigan hung down from her shoulders, its empty arms swinging quietly at her sides. Don began announcing the next number and Karen returned. Janet and friend moved quietly away. A great shriek rose from somewhere on the other side of the band. I turned round to see what was going on.
“I want Victor, Victor, Victor.”
The last word ascended to the roof at screaming pitch. Hilary, sod me. Tears streamed down her face. Gwen was gripping her by the shoulders.
“Shut up, Hilary. Shurrup!”
Hilary wailed again. She was very drunk. Her blouse had come half out of her jeans. She shook herself free of Gwen. She began to make for the piano, staggering and sobbing. Jerry Coward, the chucker-out at the Steam Packet, slid down from his perch on the stage. Hilary fell on Harry. Harry had only been half on his seat and he over-balanced, finishing up on the floor.
“The trombonist will play the next number lying flat on his back on the floor.” announced Don. Hilary had gone down, too. Jerry had got to her and he and Gwen picked her up.
“Victor.”
She tried to break away again. A large semi-circle of watchers had formed. Jerry tried to talk to her, and so did Gwen. She wouldn’t listen. She screamed again. Gwen tried to smack her face but missed. Don stomped in the number. The band struck up. Jerry slid his arm behind Hilary’s knees and carried her out. She was still screaming. I turned round and joined the band in playing the number. I looked at Karen. She didn’t know whether to smile or whether she should look guilty. She certainly looked embarrassed. I shrugged at her and put on a long-suffering face. She gave me a stupid smile which meant nothing.
“Do you think Hilary wanted something,Vic?” shouted Hamish, the bass player.
It gave me an excuse to release my tension in laughter. Poor bloody Hilary. People looked at me as they danced past. It couldn’t be helped. Anyway, I thought, it should be fuel to the fire.
During the interval, I took Karen over to where some girl students were dispensing orange juice. I seated myself on the trestle table. Karen remained standing, taking intermittent sips from her orange juice.
“What a way to carry on,” said Karen.
Over her shoulder I could see Janet. I shrugged at Karen.
Janet was standing with a mature young man of infinite smoothness.
“I mean in public and that,” said Karen.
The young man was superbly nonchalant in his conversation with Janet.
“She’ll be all right,” I said.
He must have come along with Janet and her friend. He looked the type.
“Didn’t you feel embarrassed by it?” asked Karen.
Janet caught me looking at her again. She didn’t look away for almost three seconds.
“Naw, course not. I’m used to it.”
I pealed with coarse laughter. Karen saw that I was joking and giggled along with me. Only just in time though. Gwen presented herself in front of us.
“Well, I hope you’re satisfied,” she said.
I looked at Karen. She didn’t look anywhere.
“Why?” I asked.
“You ought to be disgusted with yourself. It was all your fault. She’s out there crying now.”
“What could I do? Christ, I didn’t do anything. She was drunk.”
“Aren’t you coming to say something to her?”
“Gwen, I’m with Karen. When you’ve got that and the fact that Hilary and me are finished through your head, I hope you’ll leave us alone. You know, just for a few minutes.”
She left us. Karen said:
“Perhaps you should go and see her. Just for a minute.”
I gave her a long look. She didn’t say anything else. I went down to the gents just before we continued playing. There were the usual young drunks decorating the floor or heaving over the basins. I bumped into Matthew’s Sam as I was leaving.
“Good games with Hilary then, Vic?”
“I wouldn’t have come if I’d known she was going to be that way.”
“Liar.”
We laughed.
“I often wondered when I’d have my first girl hysterical over me.”
“Conceited bastard.”
“That’s me.”
At the end of the dance. Everyone putting coats on, some arranging how to get to the parties, some desperately chatting up the pathetic left-overs. I was waiting for Karen to come down from the ladies. Hilary was standing some feet away with Gwen and fellow commiserators. She looked in my direction and said something to Gwen. Gwen’s face tightened into annoyance. She shook her head. Hilary said something else and began walking toward me. I heard Gwen say, “No Hilary,” but Hilary took no notice. I waited.
“I’m sorry, Vic.” Her voic
e was flat and sober now. Her face was grey and streaked with dead tears. Her coat was draped round her shoulders. She looked dreadful.
“No need to be sorry, Hilary.”
Janet was just behind her, being helped into her coat by the smooth one.
“No, I shouldn’t have gone on like that. It must have been awful for you.”
“Well...”
Silence.
“Well, anyway,” she said. She tried to smile, then turned away and went back to Gwen and the group.
“Your mother won’t mind if we get you back by one o’clock, will she?” said the smooth one to Janet.
“I said I would go straight home after the dance.”
“Not if we have you home at one, on the dot? Surely that would be all right?”
“Well... all right, but no later.”
Karen came down from the ladies. She had fixed up to stay the night with Jenny, so she was eager with freedom. She clutched my hand.
“Where are we going?”
The lights had been turned up immediately after the last number. They were beginning to make me feel sober, feel conscious of my sweat-congealing clothes.
“The trumpet-player’s got some idea of driving further up the river and taking some beer on to Hetton foreshore.”
“Hetton foreshore? How exciting,” said Karen.
Harry came up, hand in hand with Jenny. He was beaming fit to burst.
“I say, are we off with Simon or what?” I said. “He seems set on this foreshore idea.”
“May as well,” said Harry. “We’ll pick up a crate from my place. We can always go back there later on.”
Janet and her two friends began walking toward the door.
“Goodnight, Janet,” chirped Karen.
Janet turned slightly but kept on walking.
“Goodnight, Karen,” she said.
We all drove off to Hetton foreshore. There were two other car-loads besides Simon’s. Harry and Jenny, Karen and I, and some girl Simon had picked up went in Simon’s car. The girls commiserated with me about the Hilary scene. It was something for them to get their teeth into. Harry laughed at them outright.
We were in the country now. Simon turned the car onto the tracks which ran, wood-lined, down to the beach. He stopped the car in a clearing, mudguard deep in long grass. The other cars drew up behind. Headlights went out and engines cut off. Everything was doubly quiet after the noise of the journey. Rain tapped softly on the roof. Dark purple clouds toiled above the treetops. No one said anything. Simon kissed his girl; I kissed Karen.
“Here we are then,” said Simon. “Shove the beer over, Harry.”
Harry took bottles out of the crate and passed them round. I drank some of mine and thought of Janet. I wondered what kind of a party she had gone to. I thought of her face and her dress. Her hair and her perfume. I thought of my home and my parents. Of my friends, the close ones, the boys at home. I thought of our cat, William. I thought of my grandmother. Of my childhood. I thought of the good parts of being at school. I thought of Janet saying Hello to me. I thought of the way her mouth had said the word. I thought of the river running broad and black out to sea, of the eels in the bottom of the river, of the lightships on top. Of the wet pebbles on the shore being tickled by the rain, of the wet grass round the car. I thought of everything as though each individual item had been invested with a warm and reverent importance of its own. Everything seemed worth love and respect: the rain, the sky, people, everything. I was no longer proud about Hilary’s scene. There was nothing which was not worth compassion. I felt a true seriousness, a true responsibility. I wanted to feel the earth. I wanted to be the rain to show it how much I respected it. I wanted everything and everyone to know how much I cared about being right and good. It was as though thinking about Janet was the catalyst for making me feel like this.
“Let’s see what it’s like outside,” said Simon.
He and his girl got out of the car. People from the other cars were already cackling and thrashing about in the undergrowth.
“Come on, Harry,” said Jenny.
“Oh heck.”
“Come on, let’s go and look at the river.”
“Heckins.”
“Come on.”
“Heck though. Okaden.”
Karen and I stayed in the car. We began necking. Heavily. She had on a dress which buttoned all the way down the front. I unfastened the buttons. She offered no resistance, but when I moved my hand away from her slip-encased breasts and began sliding it lower down, she began half-heartedly to fasten the buttons. I moved her hands away from the buttons and undid the few she had refastened.
“Okay, Vic,” she breathed.
My hand continued on its interrupted journey. With my free hand I slid her open dress from her shoulders and down her arms as far as the sleeves would allow it. She pressed closer to me. I heard screams and shrieks from outside the car, far away on the beach.
“What if somebody comes?” she whispered, nervous and excited.
“Nobody’ll come.”
I kissed her. My hand was almost there. She started writhing in excitement. Then she stopped my hand again. If I’d taken her hand away from mine and carried on, I don’t think she would have stopped me. But I didn’t and she didn’t know what to do. I took my hand away. She began to fasten the buttons again, a little bewildered, a little relieved. Harry’s voice cackled out noisily. He and Jenny were almost on top of the car. I hurriedly helped Karen with the rest of the buttons. Harry and Jenny got in.
“Are my feet wet or are my feet wet?” said Harry.
Jenny laughed. She sat on his knee.
“Never mind then,” she said, and kissed him on his forehead.
“All right then.”
Karen pulled me toward her and kissed me with even more fervor than before.
“I think you’re very nice,” I breathed in her ear.
“Oh, Vic,” she said. We kissed again. Then Simon came back and we drove off to Harry’s pub. We stayed till about half-past three. Simon dropped me off at my place and then drove away to take the girls home. I watched the car move off. The rain had stopped and I could see the stars poking through the remnants of the rain clouds. Dynamos whirred in the power station a few streets away. I took out my key and opened the front door.
A light sharp wind blew over the reeds, skimming the sandbagged banks of the river. The fishing pits rippled excitedly, cutting up the image of the full-blown scudding sky. The river sped noisily past the disused brickworks, its sound triumphantly nonchalant in my ears.
I had crossed the river to home on Sunday morning after the dance. My parents had been glad to see me, and my mother had prepared an enormous Sunday lunch for me. Afterward I called Philip, a good friend of mine who was studying medicine in London. His term hadn’t begun yet and he was still on holiday at home. Now we walked down by the river, making the best of the riotous mixture of wind, water and sky that was a sun-whipped Sunday afternoon in autumn.
We crouched in a brick-littered hollow near the speckled beach, temporarily out of the wind so that we could light up and smoke and talk without everything being snatched away by the elements.
Philip and I had always been very close. I told him about Janet.
“So you see,” I said, “she’s not going to take two looks at me when there are guys like that smooth bastard at the dance zooming her all over town in their TR 2’s.”
Philip reflected, practising his bedside manner.
“It seems to me,” he said, “that the only problem is yourself. In this case, you seem to be your own worst enemy. Until you get rid of this caste conscious bit, you’re not going to get anywhere at all.”
“That’s like saying the best cure for insomnia is a good night’s sleep. I can’t change what I feel
. I mean, I’ve seen it. She’s perfectly at ease with her own type, but when it comes to talking with Herberts like me, she gets all withdrawn and quiet.”
“There could be another reason for it, you know. Look at it this way. Have you ever thought what sort of a picture you present to her? I mean how long have you been at college? Three years. Right? You’ve been out with a lot of girls. Right? You get yourself talked about. You get a reputation. You get cocky with it. You do, don’t you? Come on. Right? You play in the band and everything, and you prat round as if nothing mattered, as if you cared for no one. Look at the Hilary bit last night. You carried on playing the piano. Anyway, suppose this girl was interested in you, attracted by you. Now don’t give me that. You said yourself she came over to the piano, that her friend knew who you were. She wouldn’t know if Janet hadn’t told her, would she, and why should Janet tell her? Anyway, supposing she’s interested. She comes from school, straight to college. She sees you. She likes what she sees. Except she sees you being rude with Angela, being callous with Hilary and loving with Karen. What would you think if the position were reversed? You’d think you wouldn’t stand a chance with someone so obviously careless. Even when you talked to her and Jenny, you hardly ever said a word to her. Yes, I know why, but she doesn’t. What do you expect her to do, ask you to go out with her herself? If you ask me, I’d say she was scared stiff.”
He paused for a minute.
“That is,” he said slyly, “if she’s at all interested.”
I smiled.
“You give me hope, Brother,” I said. “But I hope you’re right.”
“Right? I’m always right. But seriously folks, I’d get stuck in if I were you.”
“I’ll do my best.”
“Tell me, is she as good as you say she is?”
“Yes, I think she is,” I said.
The fair was coming. It struck me on the Monday after I had talked to Philip. This was it. The fair came annually, for one week. A great fair it was, too, covering acres and acres of land reclaimed from the blitz. It was the largest non-permanent fair I had ever seen. It was the real herald of winter. Crowds from the college attended, their gay faces gasping excited frosty breath in time to a million rock records whose sounds mingled across stall and waltzer. This would be the ideal event to which I could invite Janet.
