A Kind of Loving (10 page)

'Come on,' I say, 'I'll walk you to the gate.'

'You've no need to, y'know.'

'I want to.'

'Oh, all right, then.'

We walk up this curving avenue, not touching, a foot apart,
till she stops at a gate.

'Is this it?'

'This is it.'

I look up at this little modern semi standing up above the road with the garden tumbling down to the fence. Two thousand five-hundred at today's prices, I reckon. Neat, though, and worth painting because it would look smart when you'd finished. Not like our house, dirty stone front, two storeys and an attic besides, and great big rooms. Not that it isn't cosy, because the Old Lady's good at making it that; but it needs a collier's coal supply to keep it warm and you could never call it smart. I don't know anything about Ingrid really and I wonder about her family and her father and mother and what her father's job is. I think I'm maybe a little bit timid of Ingrid's dad though I don't know why I should be because I've never seen him and I've done nothing to be ashamed of.

'Any more at home like you?'

'No, only little me,' and she laughs. Her lips are purple in
the lights and her complexion's a kind of dirty white colour. We
can't stand here all night, I think, and I wonder about kissing
her again. I wonder if she expects me to. It just isn't the same out
here, though.

She clicks the latch on the gate. 'Well, I'd better be getting in. Thanks for asking me out. I've enjoyed it.'

'I'm glad. See you tomorrow then.'

Now - now's the time while she's still close and her face is
turned up to me. She's waiting, wondering why I don't do it.

'Yes, see you tomorrow.'

Too late now; she's through the gate and shutting it behind
her. I watch her climb the four steps then walk up the steep path
to the corner of the house. She turns and lifts her hand up and I
wave back.

'Ey!'

'What?'

'Happy New Year!'

She laughs. 'Thanks. The same to you.'

I walk off, wondering what we'll be doing in a year's time, if
we'll still be seeing one another. Maybe I did right not to kiss her.
Perhaps it'll have given her a better opinion of me. Roll on
Saturday night. After a bit I break into a trot because I've a
lot too much to think about for walking.

CHAPTER 3

I

Saturday
morning and I'm down snug as a bug under the bedclothes and it seems like I'm dreaming somebody's calling my name. I come out of sleep with a jerk and hear the Old Lady at the bottom of the stairs, bawling fit to wake the street.

'Victor!
Victor!
How many more times?'

I open my eyes. 'Righto, I'm up." I look at the wallpaper two
feet from my nose. The Old Lady's choice it is: roses as big as
cabbages with trellising on a grey ground. There's flowers on the
window as well - frost flowers - and when I put my hand out
I can feel how cold it is in the room. Just for a few seconds, as I'm
lying there, it's any Saturday morning, with me going to help
Mr Van Huyten in his shop. And then I remember what makes
today special and the happy feeling opens up inside me like a big
yellow flower, all bright and sunny and warm.

I reach out for my watch and see it's two minutes past eight
and I'm going to have to look slippy, or else. I chuck the clothes
back and swing my legs out and bring them back sharpish
when my feet miss the mat and touch the lino, which feels cold
enough to fetch the skin off. I hang down over the side of the
bed and grabble for my socks. I put them on and then my
slippers. I get out of bed and then I have to take the slippers off again so's I can get my pyjama pants off. My britches feel as if
they could stand up on their own; no losing the creases this
weather. I'm nipping across to the bathroom when the Old Lady comes to the bottom of the stairs again and opens her mouth for
another rallentando. It cuts off as though somebody's throttled
her when she sees me.

"Bout time, an' all,' she says, and goes back down the passage
to the kitchen.

I'm out in a couple of ticks and half-way down the stairs
before I remember I won't have another chance for a shave before
I meet Ingrid. I nip back and lather up and cut myself five times
and bleed like a stuck pig. I meet young Jim on the landing and
he eyes the bits of toilet paper stuck all over my jib. 'You'll have
to get your knife and fork sharpened,' he says. 'Get lost,' I tell him as I patter downstairs. I'm in a bad enough mood as it is now thinking about meeting Ingrid with blobs of dried blood
all over my face.

It nearly makes my guts heave to smell the bacon and eggs
in the kitchen. The Old Lady slaps the plate in front of me as I
sit down.

'If it's a bit frizzled,' she says, 'you've only yourself to blame.
I called you
six
times. I don't know what you're getting like. It's
like trying to raise the dead shifting you out o' bed. You even
answer me in your sleep now.'

I get on with my chow and let her have a chunter. It does her
good to bind a bit. She's been up since about five getting the Old
Man off. The Old Feller's been telling her for thirty years that
he can manage on his own, but she won't have it. She says he'll
forget his snap or something if she doesn't see to him, and apart
from the odd times when she's been badly she's kept up the
routine.

She watches me clean the plate up with a piece of bread.

'Shovellin' your food into you like that,' she says. 'It can't
do you a bit o' good. An' don't you want a cup o' tea?'

I tell her I do, and a slice of bread and marmalade, and she sets about the loaf. She always grabs a loaf like it's a chicken
whose neck she's wringing.

'You'd better look sharp,' she says. 'You don't want to be late.
You don't want to give a bad impression, especially after that
five pound Mr Van Huyten gave you at Christmas.'

'One minute you're on about me bolting me food and the
next you're telling me to look sharp or I'll be late.'

' You should allow yourself time to do all you have to do, then
you could eat your meals in a proper manner and still get where
you have to go on time. You want to take a leaf out of your
cousin Walter's book. He has a system in a morning: so many
minutes for this and so many for that. You never see him bolting
his food or having to run for a bus.'

I pull a face. Cousin Walter's a tall thin cove with a big nose
who works in a bank. I don't like him; partly, I suppose, because
everybody in the family seems to think he's the last word. The
first time cousin Walter's taken bad for a crap in the morning
his system will go for a burton, I think to myself.

'I shan't be late', I tell the Old Lady, 'as long as you don't addle me with your nagging.'

'I'll addle your earhole, young man, if you talk to me about
nagging. You're not too big for a good slap, y'know, even if
you are at the shavin' stage ... Just look at your face. Fancy having to go out like that in a morning to wait on people in a shop.'

'I'll clean it up when I get there,' I tell her. Actually I'm a bit bothered about it myself. There's nothing niggles me more than cutting myself shaving because you've to go extra careful for days after for fear you open the places up again. But still, it's done now and it can't be helped. As for the Old Lady and her giving me a slap - well, she'd do it an' all and no bones about it. She's got no sense of humour, you know, and everybody knows it, bar her.

Another two minutes and I've had a cup of tea and two slices
of bread and marmalade and I'm out of the house and haring
down the hill to the bus stop. The sun's getting out fairly warm now but the frost has left some icy patches and I nearly come a
cropper once. What I'm after is that bus waiting on the corner
at the bottom. The conductor's standing on the platform looking
my way and I think at first he's waiting for me. But he rings the
bell while I'm twenty yards away and I have to put on an extra
spurt to catch the rail and heave myself aboard.

He's a miserable-looking bod with bad teeth that he's poking
into with a sharpened matchstick.

'You'll kill yourself one o' these days doin' that,' he says as I'm hanging on there drawing every breath as if it's my last. 'I could
stop the bus and make you get off.'

'You saw me comin', didn't you? Did you think I was practising for the mile, or summat?'

'Plenty more buses. We've got a schedule to keep to, y'know.'

There's a nice little four-letter word on the tip of my tongue but I swallow it and give him my fare. 'Threepenny.'

'Where you goin' to?'

'Market Street.'

'Fourpence.'

'It's only threepence from up the
hill.'

'That's the service bus,' the conductor says. 'It's fourpence
on this route because we go round by the Town Hall.'

I hand over another penny. 'Anyway, you're fourpence better
off than if I hadn't caught it,' I tell him.

He shakes his head and smacks his tongue behind his bad
teeth. 'Not me, mate. Makes no difference to me.'

I take the ticket and go upstairs thinking that he's the most
miserable bastard I'm likely to meet today and I've got him over
early, anyway.

Saturdays I go to work in Mr Van Huyten's gramophone
record and music shop in Market Street. There's only Mr Van Huyten in during the week, and Henry Thomas who does the repairs in the back; and on Saturdays I serve behind the counter
and help with the week-end rash. Mr Van Huyten's father was a
Dutchman but I reckon Mr Van himself is as English as I am
and the only things Dutch about him are his name and the way he talks sometimes if he gets excited, and that's double Dutch. People don't always know it's a Dutch name. They get the Van
bit mixed up with Von, and that's German. That's why they chucked bricks through Mr Van Huyten's father's windows in
the Great War. People weren't as educated then as they are now
and they didn't know that Mr Van Huyten and his father didn't
like the Gerries any more than anybody else in Cressley till Mr
Van joined up and came home in his Tommy's uniform. The Old
Man joined the same mob - the Koylis - and him and Mr Van
became pals, though Mr Van was a grown man and my dad was only a bit of a lad, younger than I am now. Something happened
to Mr Van Huyten's father's antique business after the war and
he shot himself one night and left Mr Van on his own. Mr Van had a lot of bad luck because he got married soon after this and
then his wife died of cancer after only a few years. So he was on
his own again and he never got married a second time. He made
a living for a long time playing the piano in theatre bands and for the silent pictures before he got the shop.

Mr Van Huyten's not exactly what you'd call a close friend of
the family but the Old Lady and Old Feller always think about
him and send him a card at Christmas and he was one of the
first names on the list of invitations to Chris's wedding. How I
got this job was from the Old Man seeing the ad for a part-time
assistant in the
Argus
one Saturday and mentioning it. I saw a chance for a bit of extra lolly and I fancied the job itself so the
Old Man went and fixed it up without more ado. That was
twelve months since and I've never regretted it. I like serving all the people who crowd into the shop on Saturdays, and seeing all
the different faces makes a change from looking at all the same old ones like Hassop and Miller and Rawlinson and Conroy up
at Whittaker's day after day. I sometimes think this is the kind of
job I'm cut out for, only there's no money in it as a full-time
thing, though the thirty bob Mr Van pays me for Saturday is a
grand bonus on top of my regular wage.