All the Way Home and All the Night Through

by Ted Lewis

  “I’ll have to go,” she said.

  “I’ll get you a taxi.”

  We walked down the street. The day was already beginning to arrive. We waited on the main road at the end of the street. Ten minutes passed. She gave me her telephone number and I lied to her when I said I’d phone her tomorrow. A taxi rolled up and I kissed her and she got in. I walked back to the remains of the party. I’ve never seen her since then.

  I met Janet the following afternoon.

  “Let’s not go to the pictures,” I said. “It’s too nice.”

  “Yes, it is. What will we do?”

  “Let’s take a bus out to Hetton Foreshore and lie in the sun.”

  “That would be lovely. Just you and me.”

  We walked to the bus stop.

  She looked dazzling. She had on a midnight blue shirt-style blouse and a white flared skirt. Her dark glasses flashed in the hot sun.

  I put my hand on her arm. She stopped walking and turned toward me.

  “Janet,” I said.

  She stood there looking at me. She smiled at me, waiting for me to go on. I couldn’t. There was nothing I could say. Nothing could atone for the night before, and there were no words to describe it. She would have to have been me to understand that it meant nothing, nothing at all.

  We lay in the grass on the river bank. The river swept softly away in its great still curve and the seven o’clock evening sun hung high and firm in a sky of uniform pale blueness. A slight breeze stirred the luminous grass and pleasantly tickled our foreheads. The hard, dry earth between the blades of grass smelled of the sun itself.

  “Vic,” said Janet.

  “Mm?” I rolled over and shaded my eyes against the sun.

  “Nothing really. I just wondered how the party went last night. Did you enjoy it?”

  “Well. For a start you weren’t there, were you?”

  “No.” She leant over me and tickled my nose. “But apart from that, how was it?”

  “Not bad. I had plenty to drink.”

  “Of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “And I thought of you.”

  “And?”

  “And I thought of you all the time.”

  “And did you think that you missed me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, I did. I wanted you to be there very much.”

  “How much?”

  “As much as always. I couldn’t more.”

  She sat up and stared in the direction of the river. She didn’t say anything for some time.

  “What are you thinking about?” I asked.

  “You.”

  “What?”

  “I was thinking: if we weren’t to go out together, if you didn’t want to see me anymore, I’d still like you. I mean, as a friend. I can’t imagine your not being in love with me, but even so, I couldn’t help but like you, even if it finished badly.”

  “Don’t be soft,” I said quietly. “It’s not going to finish.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Of course, it won’t.”

  “But even so. What I meant was, you’re too likeable not to like. Too—too nice.”

  “No, I’m not nice enough. By far.”

  She carried on looking at the river.

  I thought of the night before.

  “You help me, too,” she said. “You help me to see things properly and to be good and to enjoy life. I didn’t know where I was until I met you. People could influence me terribly easily, you know. I’d hold some private opinion and be afraid to voice it because I’d be afraid of the reception it might get. I felt inferior. Now I feel proud.”

  “But...”

  “Yes?”

  “But I’m not good. And I’m only nice because I couldn’t be any other way when I’m with you. But when I’m away from you—”

  She said nothing.

  “When I’m away, I’m different.”

  “Everyone’s like that. But since I’ve known you, when I am away from you, I can feel you, sense what you do for me, the benefit of you being the way you are just for me.”

  I lit a cigarette and thought about the next week. The end of term, the end of college, the end of seeing Janet everyday.

  My thoughts wouldn’t crystallize because the days without Janet were incomprehensible.

  “Don’t change when I’m in London, will you?” I said. “Please don’t.”

  She turned toward me.

  “How could I? I’d never need to.”

  “Janet,” I said. “Come here.”

  She came and lay by my side. We lay there for another hour and made love and looked at the sky and then we went back into the city. Janet went with me to the pier and I caught the ten-past-nine ferry to home for the rest of the weekend.

  I went for a drink with my father on Sunday lunchtime. The sun outside made the Wheatsheaf doubly brown and dark green on entering.

  “What is it, Vic?”

  “Pint please, ‘ad.”

  “A pint and a brown, Len, please.”

  We stood at the bar. Len passed us the drinks.

  “Good health,” said my father.

  “Cheers.”

  We drank. My father nodded at me and smiled his knowing smile.

  “Better for that, I should say,” he said.

  I nodded. He produced twenty “Seniors” from his twill jacket and offered me one. We lit up and inhaled.

  “Last week, then,” said my father.

  “Yep, that’s right.”

  “I expect you’ll be feeling a bit funny round about now.”

  “Yes, I expect I will.”

  “Still, the world’s in front of you. Set your stall out properly and you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s all your mother and I want, you know. For you to get on and have a good life. We want to see you happy and successful.”

  “I know. I—I appreciate all you’ve done. All your help. I hope I can get on well enough to deserve it.”

  “You will do. You will do. We did it because we wanted to.”

  He took a drink.

  “What’s the next step?” he asked.

  “My tutor’s given me some addresses for interviews in London and he reckons I should spend a week down there sorting them out.”

  “When were you banking on going?”

  “Give it a week after I’ve left college, see if my diploma comes through and give it a try then.”

  “Sounds a good enough idea.”

  We stood in silence for a few minutes, considering our worlds.

  “How does Janet fit into your scheme of things? Or doesn’t she?”

  “Well, I don’t know. I mean she’s got another three years to do at college, and she’s only seventeen. I know what I’d like to happen, I think. It’s just that the time’s so long. I don’t know.”

  “Well, I can speak for your mother as well in saying that nothing would please us more. If you’re meant to be together, you’ll finish up together. You get something behind you. You’ve plenty of time.”

  I took another drink.

  “I think I should be all right,” I said.

  “You’ve plenty of time,” said my father.

  “Well,” said Angela. “How does it feel to be leaving?”

  “Strange, I suppose,” I said. It was the last day. “You never quite believe it, really.”

  “What about Janet?”

  “What about Janet?”

  “Well, I don’t suppose you’ll be seeing much of her from now on.”

  “Of course,
I will. Not every bloody day, but I’ll be home most weekends. Why do you ask?”

  “Just wondered.”

  “Give over. It’s the last day. Give it a rest for five minutes.”

  “Have you moved out of your flat?”

  “Yes, most of the stuff’s at home. I’ve just got what I need for tonight. I’ll take it when I go tomorrow. I’m playing the final Steam Packet session tonight.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “No, not really. I—well, yes, of course, there are. Leaving the people I know, leaving the band, leaving the town. I’ve enjoyed these four years.”

  “It won’t be the same when you’ve gone.”

  “Go on. Say it: ‘Thank God!’”

  “I mean it.”

  “Get away.”

  “I do. You’re a gentleman, Vic.”

  “Me? That’s the last thing you could call me.”

  “No, you are. You’ve got natural manners.”

  “What, the way I’ve been to you?”

  “Oh, that. That’s nothing. It’s inside that matters. You can tell with you.”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say. You make me feel—I don’t know.”

  “I thought I’d tell you before you went,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been able to say it and face you if I thought you were coming back.”

  I put the last piece of cartridge in my folder. I straightened up. Janet and I were alone in the studio. The rest of college was almost empty, too. The noon sun flooded quietly in through the big windows.

  “Well, there it is,” I said.

  Janet said nothing. She stood with her arms folded, looking at the folder. I looked round the studio. The sounds of the midday traffic drifted in through the window.

  I turned to Janet.

  “Well, we’d better go.”

  She looked at me. Suddenly she stepped forward and put her arms round me, pressing herself close.

  “I don’t want you to leave,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  She clung to me, telling me that she didn’t want me to be leaving.

  Then we left the studio, walked down the stairs, out of the door, down the stone steps into the sun, across the road and into the pub to join the others. We all stayed till closing time and all the time Janet held my hand tightly. Once she almost cried, but she didn’t because of where she was but smiled instead and held my hand tighter than ever.

  “As you all know,” shouted Don through the microphone, “tonight the band breaks up for the summer holidays.” There was cheering and booing. “But we’ll be back in September. Although,” he said turning to me, “without Victor. He’s off to see what the tail is like somewhere else. I’m sure if there’s any going, he’ll manage to find it. So, as he stands on the piano and takes his trousers down as his last encore, I’m sure you’d all like to let him know it’s been great having him round. Victor!”

  I stood up. People cheered. I sort of waved and Harry blew a raspberry at me. I blew one back, Hamish blew a bigger one, then suddenly the whole band was blowing raspberries as hard as they could. I was glad of that because it prevented my showing how I was feeling. Perhaps prevented them showing how they were feeling, too.

  My mother handed me a cup of tea. My unopened suitcase was where I had put it down on the kitchen floor. I was sitting staring at the kitchen range. I took a drink of the tea.

  After a while my mother said:

  “It’s finished, then.”

  “Yep. Four years.”

  “You were sixteen when you went.”

  “Yes.”

  “It doesn’t seem very long ago.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She put her cup down.

  “You’ll be all right next week,” she said to me. “Everything changes.”

  I lazed about the summer countryside, stayed in bed too long, visited the pub in the evenings, trying not to acknowledge the uneasy feelings which would flit round in my stomach from time to time. These feelings were inspired by the fact of my realization that I would now no longer see Janet every day as I had for the past year. I trusted her, I knew she loved me, but what was to happen? What would she do, six months from now, say, when some attractive young man invited her to go out with him and I wasn’t there and they enjoyed the evening and they kissed and then someone else and—I didn’t like to think about it. Although I had cheated on Janet on those few occasions in the past, I couldn’t entertain the thought of Janet herself doing it, even though it might not be of any importance. The very thought of it made me squirm with pain, and at the age of twenty, one’s keener senses are more susceptible to the edge of senseless anguish which is easier understood at a later age. I wanted to trust her, I knew I could trust her, but self-doubt drove sad mistrust into my thoughts. On the two occasions I saw Janet in the first week, these doubts caused two miserable and unusual arguments. We made up after each one and told each other how we could never possibly change but my mind continued to be depressingly receptive to stupid mistrust.

  The week in London was a failure: I didn’t get a job. I returned home deflated and awed by the short, disinterested, and impersonal interviews.

  “So rather than spend the time chasing back and forth between London and Lincolnshire, I’m going to take the Advertiser’s Weekly which advertises for illustrators all the time and keep writing solidly until something turns up,” I told Janet. “It shouldn’t be more than a month before I get something.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll get something soon. Your work’s so good and one sees so much rubbish about you just can’t fail.”

  She paused and gripped my hand more tightly.

  “I just know you’re going to be successful. I know it.”

  July, August.

  I lay in bed with the window wide open. It was too hot to sleep. The night sky was unbearably still. I got out of bed and looked at my watch. It was half-past one. I walked over to the window and looked at the fields stretching down to the river. The night glow of the distant city narrowly illuminated the horizon.

  I hadn’t had any luck yet. The rejections were depressingly regular. My parents tried to cheer me up, but I was beginning to worry.

  I sat down by the window and hoped for my parent’s sake that I wouldn’t be much longer in getting fixed up. My father was giving me thirty bob a week every Friday, and every Friday I felt lousy taking it. He didn’t mind, I knew, but with every rejection I got, the acceptance of my father’s money was harder for me to take. I thought about Janet. I wished she were there. I had telephoned her earlier in the evening. We had talked for almost an hour, repeating ourselves, saying good-bye dozens of times, not wanting to go, wanting to be with each other. Next week she was to go on holiday to Guernsey with her mother and with Karen. I was tortured by the thought of Janet and Karen on a pleasant island in the sun, the danger it seemed to present. The sun, the sea, young people on holiday . . . and there I was, at home, jobless, parasitic, bored, jealous and doubtful.

  I got back into bed. Once I’ve got a job, I thought, once I’ve made a start, things will be better. I won’t have so much spare time to magnify this stupid jealousy.

  Come on, I thought. Hurry.

  “Nice lass is that, Victor,” said Mark while Janet was out at the Ladies. “You’d expect that coming from her background she’d have some kind of edge to her, be a bit phony like, but she really seems to enjoy it when you bring her to the pub. She sort of fits in, dead easy like.”

  “Yes. She’s always saying how she likes you lot.”

  “Does she? Well, you know, we like her. I must say that first time you told me about her I was kind of dubious. I thought, you know, she might be a bit Country Life and all what mummy says bu
t, well, she’s so natural like. You know what I’m like with birds, one wrong word and I’m through in the other bar, but not this one.”

  “I like her a lot, Mark. Yes, I really do.”

  It was the weekend before Janet was to go to Guernsey. The last time together for ten days. She had come to stay at my home on the Friday night and was staying till Monday. Tonight was Saturday and it was half-past seven. The windows of the Plough were wide open. The evening sun still warmed the air and the atmosphere in the pub was cool and easy. Voices of young girls drifted in from the Market Place. Occasionally a loudspeaker crackled from the park not far away where the annual gymkhana was taking place. These sounds apart, nothing moved the still air.

  It was early yet and the room we were in was relatively uncrowded. Janet and I were with Mark, Ron, and Geoff, three of the boys who comprised the group which had been fostered by the clammy Grammar School. Our friendship had grown in the enjoyment of the local cinema, in the respect for the local landscape, and we had found that our minds were in complete, almost telepathic, accord relating to what we felt were the basic ideals and difficulties to do with living. Mark worked on a market garden, Geoff drove a bread van, and Ron was a clerk at the Farmers’ Company in Ashton eight miles away. They were each two years older than myself.

  Janet rejoined us, threading her way through the tables. She sat down on the wall seat next to me and beamed at me in her parody of smug pride.

  “How’s the painting, Geoff?” I asked.

  “It rained yesterday and washed the pavement clean. I’ll have to start again.”

  “Do you paint, Geoff?” asked Janet.

  “No, I paint birds.”

  “Seriously, he does actually,” I said to her. “He paints birds. Feathered type. They’re very good.”

  “I tell you I’m just a rank amateur, accent on rank.”

  “No actually, they’re pretty good, Janet,” said Ron. He hit Geoff on the head with his hat. “Enough of this false modesty, Harper, you-all hypocrite, yuh.”

  “In that case, I’ll accept money.”

  “How do you get your reference?” asked Janet.

  “Out the end of a barrel.”

  “He shoots them and then stuffs them,” I said.

  “That’s right. I’m getting talked about.”