by Ted Lewis
“Your father and I want to tell you how much we liked Janet.”
“She liked you too, Mother.”
“Oh, Victor, she was delightful. Delightful. What a lovely girl she was.”
She inhaled smoke from her cigarette, her face showing the concern and seriousness of one right in their convictions.
“I want you to promise me something, Victor. Whatever happens, even if you don’t know her for very long, you must promise me to treat her with respect. She’s that kind of girl.”
“That’s what Dad said.”
“Your father’s a very intelligent man. He liked Janet. But you must promise me, Victor. Always treat her in the proper manner.”
A Saturday afternoon and raining.
“Hey up then Jerry, that’s the last of the beer in,” shouted Harry from the Hall. George Shearing sounds delicately spun from the turn-table.
Arnold, an ex-student turned professional dole-drawer, lolled idly on the settee, watching the preparations. The rain sheeted down outside and somewhere a clock struck three thirty. I arranged the records in a pile where I thought they might not get trampled. Harry bundled into the room.
“I say, you fellows, has anyone got a cigarette for a chap?”
He jumped up and down, squealing like a pig.
“Pee off,” said Arnold, the world’s worst cadger.
“Hare you are, Falstaff. Get hold of one of these,” I said.
“Ta love.”
“Got one for me then?” said Arnold.
“Pee off,” I said. Harry and I laughed and pointed at Arnold.
A car drew up outside. I looked out of the window into the terraced street and saw Paul Markham and his girl emerge from the car.
“Here he is. He looks like a poor man’s Stanley Baker in that sheepskin jacket,” I said. Harry and I laughed, banged on the window and pointed at Paul. He came over to the window and presented two fingers against the pane. A minute later he entered the room.
“Now then bastards,” he said. His girl sat down amid vistas of knees and stocking tops.
“Whey-hey,” said Arnold, in between picking his nose.
“I see Arnold’s here,” said Paul. “Anyway, I’ll have a drink instead.”
I went out into the kitchen and asked Jerry where the brown ales were. He got them and we went back into the front room. We opened the beer and passed it round.
“Rightlads,” said Paul. “Now do youreckon we’ve gotenoughale?”
“Ample,” said Harry. “Mam and Dad worked it out that if twenty people came over and above the usual gatecrashers, you should still have some left.”
“Right. Now listen fellers. This is my last party before I go to Aldershot in three weeks’ time. I shan’ be home much in the next two years for throwing parties, so I want it to be a real rave. But I’m paying Jerry for anything we break so don’t break nothing. And no kissing Stella while I’m gone because that’s no gaming.”
“What if she kisses me?” said Arnold.
“She’d kiss seven hundred and thirty-five other fellers before she got down to you, I expect,” said Paul.
“You want to get a girl like Vic”s, Paul,” said Arnold. “She doesn’t kiss anybody. Not even him. Does she Vicky?”
“That’s right, Arnold,” I said.
“When do you reckon you’ll get to touching her up then, Victor? Nineteen Eighty Four?”
“Sooner than that, Arnold, but not before I’ve kicked you in the crutch, which should be very shortly.”
“Eh up, everybody. Vicky’s got Lovers’ Nuts.”
“Shut up, Arnold,” said Stella.
“Are you bringing Janet tonight, Vic?” asked Paul.
“Yes, surprisingly. I mean, her mother’s let her out after nine for a change.”
Stella flashed one of her glances at me.
The rain continued pouring down. Paul and Jerry and Harry talked for a while about Paul’s imminent National Service and then we all fell silent, doing nothing but sitting and drinking our beer and contemplating the evening.
I looked out of the window. The rain had turned everything blue in the late afternoon. The row of houses across the narrow street seemed vague and distant in the haze.
The first party I had ever taken Janet to, I thought. The idea that we would be properly alone for the first time filled me with eagerness and apprehension. Perhaps she might go off with someone else. Perhaps she might treat me as she had done in the cinema that time. Perhaps she wouldn’t even come. I stopped thinking like that. I lay back in the armchair and looked at the rain and listened to George Shearing.
The drink was in my head, all round me, and Janet was there next to me and the violent party pushed her closer to me, and she held my hand hard but there was no one in the world like her because she was being there close, and others could jump in the river that didn’t separate us from me and her though she didn’t love me but, my God, someday. Put my arm round her waist to underline someday. Not too drunk to know she liked being at the party with me and she would kiss me now before I bust wide open with heated, indiscreet embarrassment for her. Now we danced and even closer came her feeling which was like Ravel’s Bolero: if it goes on any longer, the pleasure will drive you mad but not hers because it was the only feeling in which I could live without others. Every muscle ached because it wasn’t part of her, and she didn’t love it as much as I loved her. A great grinning face of Harold J. Burton became an object of love over her shoulder. Now then Fatstuff Harold J. Burton my voice said, giggling lovingly. Fatstuff HJB’s face receded into his glass of beer because I swayed slightly. Shapes and soft lights were visible through the noise but I didn’t hear anything.
We sat down on the settee. It was quieter now and I was somehow less drunk but still euphoric enough to tingle with every note of Coleman Hawkins’s ballad saxophone. And I was less extroverted, less demonstrative of my happiness. My impressionistic period had been pierced by an even clarity of mind. We sat perched on the edge of the settee. I held both her hands in mine. She was wearing a plain blue dress, close fitting from the hips upward but flaring slightly in the skirt. The dress had a pinafore neck and underneath the bodice part she wore a plain white blouse with a small velvet bow at the collar. Her soft hair brushed against her neck in its pony tail.
“Do you know, I was suddenly drunk for five minutes back there?”
“Yes, I know. I was beginning to get a little worried.”
“You must have been. It’s funny how it should come and go like that.”
“I don’t suppose you’re exactly sober now.”
“Oh no. Just less likely to fall down.”
I took my hands away from hers and took out my cigarettes. I put one in my mouth and began to light it. I put my free hand back amongst hers which were in her lap. The fingers of both her hands took hold of mine.
“You know,” I said, shaking out the match, “this is the best party I’ve ever been to in my life.”
“Why is that?”
I inhaled and turned to look at her.
“Because it’s the only party I’ve been to with you,” I said.
She said nothing but the pressure round my hand grew faintly stronger. The corners of her eyes crinkled slightly, the slight smile staying on her lips while she said:
“That’s nice of you to say, but I don’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re you.”
“And if it had been anyone else?”
“I still wouldn’t believe it.”
“Would you have wanted to believe it with someone else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“With me?”
“I don’t know.” She looked down at her lap. “Besides,” she said, “you’re a
little drunk.”
“I know. But I haven’t been drunk when I’ve said things like that before, have I?”
“I suppose not.”
“Look, I want you to tell me something.” I gripped her hand tightly. “I want you to tell me—I want to know if I mean anything to you. Anything at all. I mean, would you regret it if suddenly you weren’t to see me anymore?”
She looked at a point below my collar.
“Yes, I think I would. Yes,” she said slowly. I pushed her gently against the back of the settee. I held her hands against my chest.
“Listen,” I said, “I don’t know how to say what I’m going to say, but I must say it. You probably won’t like it.”
She said nothing, but kept looking into my face.
“Well, here it is. And I mean it. You won’t believe it.”
She disengaged one of her hands and brushed back a strand of hair from her forehead. The hand was trembling slightly.
“Well, it’s that I think—I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Her hand tightened slightly and then noticeably relaxed and then began to tighten again. Her eyes slowly searched my face. She said nothing. I pulled her closer to me. She brushed the edge of my jaw with her lips. I put my hand behind her head and pushed it forward so that her nose and mouth touched the sensitive area at the side of my Adam’s apple. Her breath tickled the skin of my neck. An uncertain hand moved up my chest and rested finally in the hair behind my ear.
“I do mean it.”
The fingers behind my ear moved slightly.
“Do you?”
“I know you don’t believe it.”
“Don’t I?”
“I wish you would. I wish you wanted to.”
She drew her head back slightly so that she could see my face. Both her hands were now linked behind my neck. Her face was serious, slightly troubled-looking, and her eyes were deep and asking young questions.
I looked into her face.
“I think—I think I’m glad that you said it,” she said.
She paused.
“It’s been said to me before, but I’ve never wanted anyone to say it before.”
“Perhaps—perhaps someday you’ll say it to me,” I said.
She hesitantly pulled me closer to her. I’d never seen her look more serious.
Then back came the drunkenness veiling the memory of words and deeds. I woke up lying in the back garden seeing nothing but the stars and hearing Harry say:
“It’s all right Janet. Don’t worry about him. He often gets like this. Just leave him… He’ll be all right.”
“But we can’t leave him lying there.”
“Has he been sick?”
“Yes.”
“Then he’ll be all right. He always sobers up after he’s been sick and he usually manages to carry on drinking.”
“But we can’t leave him here on the grass.”
Harry laughed.
“He’s ended up in worse places. Come on and have a drink.”
“He’ll soon sober up when he can’t see you anywhere.”
“Well...”
They went away. I opened my eyes fully.
I looked at the stars. The night was perfectly clear. I could hear the city humming away in the background.
Drunk and stupid though I was, nothing could obscure the way she had looked at me on the settee. There was nothing in the world I wanted more than to remain lying on my back and looking at the night sky and thinking about the way she had looked at me on the settee. I took out a cigarette and lit it. I smoked the cigarette and began to feel the cold. Then I wondered what she was doing. Panic caught me. Perhaps...
I got up from the grass as quickly as I could and staggered into the house. She was nowhere in the beer-stained mêlée in the kitchen. I forced my way down the hall, past the bedroom where as many people as could get in were breaking it off in the darkness. I pushed through into the front room. It wasn’t too crowded but I couldn’t see her anywhere in the room’s soft light. Where the hell is she, I thought. The bedroom. No, she couldn’t be. Fear spun me round in the doorway, but as I started to move into the hall, Harry’s voice called:
“Hey up George. Come and have a drink.”
I went back into the room. They had been leaning against the wall behind the door. Harry and Janet, having a drink talking together. I smiled in relief. Harry understood.
“Where did you think she was?” he said, smiling.
“I couldn’t see either of you. I wondered where you were.”
“How do you feel?” asked Janet. “You look awful.”
“I’m all right. God, what happened?”
“You were sick,” said Janet.
“I know, but before that?”
“You got drunk and told me and Janet to get lost.”
“What?”
“Ask Janet.”
“What did I say?”
Janet said nothing.
“One minute you were fine and laughing and joking with the two of us,” said Harry, “and then suddenly the conversation somehow turned and you muttered something about how me and Janet could go to hell, and you started loudly to tell us how we could get there and then you turned nasty green and disappeared into the garden.”
“Jesus, I wonder why that happened. I can’t remember it.”
A girl came up and began kissing Harry. They drifted out of the conversation.
“Janet, what did I say? My God, I’m sorry, whatever it was.”
“You were beginning to get pretty vile. Luckily you felt sick before you could say too much, but you were like a different person.”
I leant against the wall and closed my eyes.
“Janet,” I said, “whatever I said to you, I didn’t mean it. I can’t remember it but forgive me whatever it was.”
“I don’t know what to think. You asked me to go.”
“Hell fire.”
“You said you didn’t need anyone. Especially me.”
I still had my eyes closed. I stretched out an arm.
“Janet.”
No response.
“Please.”
She took my hand. I drew her to me.
“I love you,” I said. “Please.”
I opened my eyes. She was looking at me, vulnerable, questioning.
“You shouldn’t be that way, Vic. I didn’t know what to think. I almost went home.”
“I don’t understand it.”
She came closer.
“Vic,” she said.
I looked at her.
“I’ve liked being with you tonight. Very much,” she said. “In spite of the way you were. But remember, I’m still a young girl.”
“No. You are, but you’re not.”
“I like you, Vic,” she said.
During the next few weeks we carried on the same way as before the party. Lunchtimes, break-times, Saturday pictures. The party had begun the bridge between our separate identities, but I was still very much unsure of her. I felt that one wrong move on my part could splinter the whole delicate matchwood of the affair into too many pieces to pick up. It seemed impossible that she should want to go on seeing me and with each successive day the impossibility grew.
One day, we saw each other at lunchtime as usual. It was a few days before the end of term. We seldom stayed in college for a meal, preferring to go out and have a snack and a cup of tea in the Art Galley or in some small scruffy café.
We were having a cup of tea and a couple of cheese rolls in a milk bar. When we had finished them I said:
“Let’s go to Hartley’s and look at the records. I’ve got the money I was paid for playing last night. I think I can just run to a record.”
We went to Hartley’s and looked through the displayed selection of jazz records.
“This is the trouble you know,” I said after we had been through about fifty records. “I could have spent £20 just on some of these and I hadn’t thought about them until I saw them. There are lots more I’ve wanted for ages apart from any of these.”
“I’ve heard of hardly any of them.”
“No, well, I suppose not many people would have unless they were very interested. I am, so I know them all. It’s no virtue.”
We thumbed through some more.
“Do you like modem jazz?” I asked.
“I haven’t heard very much, but what I have heard, I’ve rather liked. I remember hearing a piano record at a party once,” (she wrinkled her brow in concentration, and pressed the back of her hand against her mouth). “What was the name of it? A pianist. A sort of very insistent rhythm to his playing.”
“Errol Garner?”
“Errol Garner. That’s it.” Her face lit up and we were both flushed with the pleasure of enjoying a meeting of tastes.
“He was really very good,” she said. “It gave me a kind of elevated feeling listening to his playing.”
“Oh, yes. I know what you mean. He’s tremendous.”
“I like Ella Fitzgerald very much, too. I think she has a lovely voice.”
“Yes, I do, too. Look, there’s one of hers here. Shall we play it? I’m going to buy one anyway.”
We went into a booth. I put the record on the turntable. It was a concert recording and on one side Ella was scatting with a large Jazz at the Phil group, and on the other side she was accompanied by the Oscar Peterson Quartet. On the Peterson side, she sang mainly ballads and one of them was “These Foolish Things.” She sang it really beautifully. You could feel the quietness of the audience, tense in the spell of this lyrical performance. I looked at Janet. She was quiet, too, listening to every word of the song, her eyes focused on nothing, yet not assuming any trace of affected emotion. I wanted to hold her and tell her again that I loved her, but I would have run the risk of appearing to cash in on the words and the mood of the song. When the track finished, Janet gave a small sigh.
“That was really lovely,” she said.
