by Stan Barstow
I'm still standing there feeling slightly stupid and trying to think of something to say that might change the impression I'm sure she's got of me now when the landlord calls for the glasses and the tall bloke finishes his pint and looks at the others.
'Well, children, who's for home?'
We troop out into the car park where Conroy asks if anybody needs a lift; but they're all going the other way. One of the bods gets up behind the tall bloke on a scooter and the rest of them pile into an A40 that seems to belong to the bird I've been talking to because she climbs in behind the wheel.
But before she gets in she looks across at me.
'We might see you next week, then?'
'I'll see you, anyway,'I say. glad she hasn't gone off me altogether.
'Don't expect Vivien Leigh, though,'she says.
'I won't form any opinions till afterwards.'
'And not too many then,'she says.
The scooter leaves the yard with a roar and shoots off up the street. Under its noise the bird says something else that I don't catch before ducking out of sight on the other side of the car. I follow Conroy across the yard. When we're in the Morris I say:
'What did you say that bird's name was? The one I was talking to.'
'Donna Pennyman,'Albert says. 'She's nice, isn't she?'
'Yes, she is.'
I feel his glance fall on me for a second as he twists in his seat. But he says nothing else just now, concentrating on backing the car out into the busy road.
It isn't exactly the best time of year to swap a cosy job in a warm shop for the partly outdoor number I've got now. Although I'm feeling my way into things nice and steady and I'm not in charge of any contracts yet, there's always something coming up to fetch me out of the office and into the bays, apart from the fact that keeping an eye on what's going on out there is the best way of getting on top of it all.
Winter's settling in. Fog comes down with the dark most nights and the days are damp with the distances closed in by mist, and moisture lying on the banks of steel in the yard round the shops. Sometimes, to make a change, an east wind with a razor edge on it scythes in across the low fields. Then the labourers handling steel in the yard are better off in some ways than the workmen in the bays, because the big doors are always open and it's not as easy to keep warm standing in a draught at a machine or a bench as it is humping angle iron or tee section about; though there's always a bit of hanging about waiting for cranes involved in work of that kind and I don't envy the blokes who are doing it.
The men's nickname for Conroy is 'Yorky' and Jimmy is 'Yorky's mate'. I suppose I'd be Yorky's mate if I'd arrived second but as it is they don't seem to have thought of a name for me. Some of them call me Mr Brown and others soon get on to first-name terms. One or two take the mick in a friendly way about my accent, but they've been through all that with Jimmy, if not with Albert, and they soon get tired of it. There's nothing familiar about it. There hardly ever is between staff and shop-floor men unless somebody gets off on the wrong foot. Each side keeps its discreet distance and knows its place.
So that one day when I'm cutting through one of the bays and a voice hollers out over the thump and clatter of the machines, 'Hey, you!'I just keep on going, not thinking for a minute it's me who's being called to. Then it comes again -'Hey, you... Mister!'- and I automatically check myself for a second and look round. There's Bill Chisholm, one of the foremen, looking straight at me and, now he's seen me glance round, lifting his arm to wave me over to where he's standing by a bench with some cleats and drilled sections of various lengths and sizes on top. On one side of him there's an elderly fitter in a flat cap and on the other, lounging against the bench as if he'll fall over if he stands up straight, Chisholm's son, Wally, a lad of nineteen or twenty with tight blue jeans and, like he always has, a smirk on his face. Everything and anything makes Wally smirk. When there's nothing going off to amuse him he smirks at his own thoughts. As for Chisholm himself -I've known quite a few Yorkshire loud-mouthed know-alls in my time and they're bad enough. But London know-alls are worse because they're gifted a bit more with the gab and there's a whine in the voice that grates on my nerves. Chisholm is a Londoner and a know-all and so far I've kept out of his way.
Now I walk over to them.
'D'you want me?'
'We do want you, yes indeed. I was just going to phone the office for you.'
'Well I'm here. What's up?'
'You know, Mr Chisholm -'the elderly bloke starts, and Chisholm cuts him off short.
'Just a minute, Charlie.'He picks up a grubby print by one corner and pushes it over to me. 'This is yours, I believe? I'm right in saying it's yours?'
'Yeh, that's mine. What's up, is something wrong?'
Chisholm waves his hand at the clutter of steel on the old boy's bench.
'All this is wrong, that's what's wrong.'
'Won't it fit together, then?'
'No, it won't.'
'Is it the drawing?'
'I've got my own ideas,'Chisholm says in a very superior manner and making a lovely meal of it, 'but you tell us.'
'We'd better have a look, then.'I take my steel tape out and begin to run it over the drilling in the various pieces while Chisholm stands back with his arms folded, obviously waiting for me to condemn myself out of my own mouth.
His attitude has put my back up from the start but for a minute I'm keeping my mouth shut. There's no use me making a great bluster about the drawing being right and what the hell is he talking about because it's quite on the cards that it is wrong. You can drop some funny clangers when your mind wanders for a minute. I've done it before and I shall do it again. They say the man who never made a mistake never made anything. And this is a job I did a couple of weeks ago. I want breathing space to cast my mind back to what I was thinking of at the time.
It's not a major job; just a steel structure for holding a water tank, with a pump underneath. But what made it a bit tricky was that it has to go into a tight corner and be bolted on to two stanchions and a wall-member that aren't regularly spaced. I remember how careful I was with the measuring-up and the preliminary sketches.
So I stand there with three pairs of eyes and Wally's smirk on me, checking the parts against the drawing and knowing that if they're right and the drawing's wrong at least some of the steel's scrap unless I can see a way of rectifying it.
Then suddenly the penny drops. I begin to grin inside, but keep my face straight.
'Who marked this lot out, then?'
'He did. Wally,'Chisholm says, still with the same laboured air of waiting patiently for me to admit I'm wrong, and not seeing at all that I'm home and dry. It's this now that gets me shirty in my turn and this time it's me who cuts the old feller off as he tries to say something again.
'Has he got his boots on the proper feet?'
'Eh? What are you talking about?'
'He doesn't seem to know his right hand from his left, that's all.'
Chisholm starts to bluster but I see that the smirk has slipped off Wally's mug and he's not looking too sure of himself now.
'Look.'I pull two of the uprights to the edge of the bench. 'These want to be right and left hand. They've both been drilled right hand. There's some extra drilling for the pump bracket in the deep flange on the left-hand member and it's been drilled in the wrong one. Besides that, if they're both the same hand the diagonal stays won't marry up.'I look at Chisholm. 'I should've thought you'd see that straight away, Mr Chisholm.'
Now the old boy gets his word in. 'That's what I was trying to say.'He touches one of the sections. 'It's this one that's wrong.'
I look at him and nod. 'That's it.'
I get no pleasure in gloating over a bloke I've bested, even if he has asked for it, so I just stand there and say nothing else while Chisholm peers at the print, muttering to himself, and sees what he should have seen at the beginning, except he spotted me and jumped the gun.
'One as drawn, one opposite hand. Th
is drilling in opposite hand member only ... Why can't you draw the bloody thing out • properly instead of - '
'Oh, come on,'I say. 'If he can't read the drawing he shouldn't be marking out.'
He can't bluff any more. He turns on Wally.
'You're a bright little bugger, aren't you? Who's going to explain about all this wasted stuff?'
Wally shuffles his feet. He's the apple of his old man's eye, but not just at this minute.
'Well actually,'I say, 'it's not as bad as it looks. If you swap those two uprights round, make the right hand the left and the left the right, you should be able to mark out again and drill some extra holes. 'Course, you'll finish up. with some holes to spare but mebbe Mr Franklyn won't notice them and wonder how they got there.'
I say it quick and just once before I turn my back and walk away. I could show him what I mean in a few seconds but he'll work it out for himself when he gets over being made to look silly. Chisholm's not dim, just a bit impetuous; and in this case he's been very quick off the mark in going for me. I wonder why.
'I think I can tell you that,'Conroy says.
It's a couple of days later and Franklyn has suggested I should go out for the experience with Albert when he goes to look at a job he's doing: two loading bays for a firm of frozen-food manufacturers near Chelmsford. It's another damp grey day and I get chilled through from tramping about the site and doing nothing except listen to Conroy as he talks to our men and discusses things with the works engineer of the firm we're doing the job for. I decide I'll have to buy myself a thick donkey jacket that I won't mind getting dirty, and something tough to keep my feet warm in mud and wet grass. It's lovely to feel the warm air from the car heater wrap round my legs like an electric blanket as we drive back.
Conroy brings the subject up. I haven't mentioned it to anybody but it appears word's got round that I've had a bit of a barney with Chisholm and come off best. So I tell Albert the full tale.
'I mean, I don't like the clever sod, but he's not stupid, is he? If he'd done a quick check, or listened to what the old bloke was trying to say, instead of shouting me over ... I got the impression he was out to make me look silly. I don't know why.'
'He's been after a job in the drawing office for Wally,'Conroy says.
'Oh, aye?'
'We interviewed him, Franklyn and I, and we agreed he wasn't up to it. He's doing his City and Guilds at night school and he might turn out to be a decent fitter one day; but he's not drawing office material. When you came down Chisholm got the idea I was filling the office with my mates and you were the one who'd got Wally's job.'
'That's the way he sees it?'
'So I understand.'
'Oh Christ, so I've got that sort of a caper to contend with.'
'I shouldn't let it bother you,'Conroy says. 'Every firm has 'em.'
He flicks the headlight switch. I slump in my seat, wriggling my toes with enjoyment as we press on home through the misty darkness.
'Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, it's finished and done with.'
And so it is. As far as I'm concerned.
8
British actors playing Americans usually make me squirm. (It's on the pictures and the telly I'm talking about: I've never been much to the theatre except to see variety shows and there aren't so many of them about now. They used to mix seasons of plays with the variety stuff at Cressley Alhambra, but there's a block of offices on that site now; and the little Tivoli hasn't had a big name on its stage in years.) It's not the accents sounding phoney so much as the whole atmosphere feeling somehow wrong. They do say, though, that Americans believe their own version of England and, funnily enough, it's often far enough away from my own life - with its country mansions and cottages in sleepy little villages and Mummerzet servants, or else foggy London and Cockney taxi drivers -for me to take it hi too.
But with this production of A Streetcar Named Desire at the Palace all this doesn't bother me. I make my adjustments when I see the set: a door without a wall, a row of posts that lets you into the street outside the Kowalskis'apartment, and a bit of a bead curtain between the living-room and the bedroom that's supposed to stop anybody in either place hearing what's going off in the other.
Conroy and I go towards the end of the first week. 'Give 'em a day or two to play themselves in,'he says. 'They're always better then.'
He looks at me with a little smile.'She'll keep.'
'Who?'
'Fleur.'
'Oh. Is she in it?'
'She's playing the young bloke's girl friend.'
'Oh,'I say again; then, 'Will she keep, though?'
'What d'you mean?'
'Well she might. She might even get better. But you sometimes do see birds of about twenty who are right bang in their prime. Another twelve months and they start going to seed.'
'What about it?'
'Well then you think it's a rotten shame if nobody's having the benefit of something that'll never be as good again.'
'What makes you think nobody is with Fleur?'
'I don't know. I'm just speculating. You're the one who knows that crowd.'
'D'you make any wonder mothers used to turn pale when their daughters suggested going on the stage? Here's a modern enlightened young feller like yourself thinking that theatrical circles are hotbeds of vice and depravity.'
'I never said any such thing. Only there's a bishop spouting in the paper this morning about the country's morals going to pot and I just wonder where it's happening.'
'All round you. Where've you been?'
'Leading my clean wholesome life.'
'Aye, in clean wholesome Cressley, where nobody ever has a bit on the side and there are no bairns born out of wedlock.'
Well this could be a pretty accurate shot at me if I thought he meant it like that. And it confirms that he doesn't know enough to mean it or he'd hardly be tactless enough to say it. So I decide to get it out of the way.
'You know Ingrid was pregnant when we got married.'
'I wasn't sure. I believe somebody once did say they thought so. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have made that crack.'
'That's all right.'
'What happened to the baby?'
'Ingrid fell downstairs and brought on a miscarriage.'
'Bad luck.'
Bad luck what? That she lost the kid or that I needn't have married her after all? Though if I hadn't it might not have happened. Not that I'm saying I'd have been glad for it to happen and let me off the hook. What I can't get away from is knowing that I'd never have married her in the normal way. That's one clear thing among the rest of the circumstances, which are so mixed and entwined together that you can't say 'if only' about any of them because they all affect one another.
But Ingrid became a statistic: another bird pregnant on her wedding day; symptomatic of the breakdown in morality. Except she's never had it with anybody else before or since, and neither have I. So what's that symptomatic of? And what is morality anyway?
I want to ask Conroy about his marriage but though we're talking round this kind of topic I don't feel it's just the right time. He doesn't volunteer any information and I don't say anything else to him. So now he knows that Ingrid was having a kid when we got married; but that happens in a lot of cases and there's no more to it than simply the fact.
It's none of Albert's business that in my case a little bit of rank lousy luck led to something that wouldn't have happened otherwise, and that I've got something niggling me about my marriage. A sense of grievance, of knowing I've taken a wrong turning through force of circumstances and not through choice. A tendency to ask myself 'Is this all?'in the quiet moments of the night.
But still, I've accepted it on a practical level. This is it and make the best of it. (After all, I did walk out once for a few days and then come back.) And when I look outside it isn't for a cure. I'm not even looking seriously. Just with an academic interest in the tempting runners in the adultery stakes; of which there are plenty, but who's bothe
ring and what the hell? You know this is no cure for anything anyway, because this is the last thing bothering you, the last thing you can't find at home, with satisfaction given on both sides.
But when you see somebody like Fleur you speculate in an idle sort of way, along with every other man who's ever seen her and is normal in his instincts. She's gorgeous. You reckon every man should have somebody like her just once in his life and it's a crying shame she isn't for you. Then you wonder if she couldn't just possibly be in certain circumstances - wondering all this without stress or strain, and that maybe you'd muff it if the chance did offer itself on a plate with no bill underneath. All this a favourite pastime of the male mind. And then something sneaks up from one side and gives you a one-two clout that knocks all idle speculation about bed right out of your mind and leaves you so dizzy you don't know whether it's Ash Wednesday or Pancake Tuesday ...
The theatre's small and old-fashioned, like a music hall, with shabby red plush and peeling gilt. I reckon there isn't much money holding it together. Well, none to spare, anyway, though the audiences, are apparently good enough to let them change their plays fortnightly instead of every week, and this night, although it's Thursday and not the week-end, the house is about three-quarters full.
