A Kind of Loving (46 page)

'How's that?'

'I'm on fire.'

'It'll change into a warm glow in a minute. You won't have
a care in the world.'

He wipes the neck of the flask with his hand and takes a swig himself and says, 'A-agh!' Then he screws the cap back on and
puts it away. He reaches for the starter. 'Ready now?'

'In a minute.' I open the door.

'What's up now?'

'I want a leak.'

'Okay. I'll back up and have a look at the sign.'

'Right,' he says when I'm back in the car. 'I know where we
are now. We'll be home in quicksticks.'

'Take all the time you like, Percy lad,' I tell him. 'Take all
night if you like.'

He laughs.

He's still laughing when he drops me off outside Rothwells'
and shouts good night before rocketing away down the road like
a bat out of hell.

IV

I'm not too steady on my feet. The brandy's stirred all the other
booze up again and I'm as drunk as I was earlier. Only|not in the same way: not laughing drunk now, but mean and nasty
drunk, spoiling for trouble if there's any coming. There's a
light behind the front-room curtains so somebody's waiting up for
me. There has to be somebody waiting because I haven't got a key. I've never had a key to this house. Anyway, I think, Ma
Rothwell should be safely out of the way in bed by this time and
if Ingrid's got anything to say about me coming home sozzled
at going up to midnight, well, let her say it and see what happens.
Just see what happens tonight.

But it's the old bitch herself who turns her head when I stand
in the doorway, blinking in the light.

' Ingrid in bed?' I say, a bit taken aback like.

'She's been in bed over an hour. I should have been too if I
hadn't had to wait up for you. Don't you know what time it is?'

I know, but I look at the little imitation marble clock on the
mantelpiece. 'Ten to twelve.'

'Yes, ten to twelve, and people being kept from their beds
waiting on your convenience till you decide you'll come home.'

I can tell from the way she lets her eyelids droop and her little
podgy chin's tucked in that she's got it in for me. Well, all right, I think, if that's the way she wants it. I've practised giving her a
piece of my mind so often I could do it in my sleep and I've
always dreamed of having a real set-to with her one day. If she
wants it now she can have it.

I feel a kind of relief, as though a big weight's lifting off me
as I start the ball rolling. 'Home?' I say. 'You don't really mean that, do you? You don't really mean this is my home? I haven't even got a key. If I had a key you wouldn't have had to wait up
for me. But I'm no more than a lodger here and you don't let
me forget it.'

I watch the way her head turns. She's so dignified it's painful
to watch her. I'm wondering how far I'll have to go before she
drops the act and shows what a common piece she is at bottom.

'When you have a home of your own you'll be able to do as
you like,' she says. 'I expect people who live in my house to
accept my standards. Even if they haven't been brought up that
way,' she says, standing up and gathering her knitting and smoothing her skirt down over her fat behind with one hand.

'I
can see me getting a house. I can't rent one and I can't
afford to buy one. We might get out of here round about 1968 the way I see it.'

'You know,' she says, 'you obviously don't feel the smallest shred of gratitude that I allowed you to come here to live.'

'You've got it wrong,' I tell her. 'We came here as a favour to
you because you didn't want to lose your lovey-dovey daughter.
Well, you've no need to worry; I don't like it any more than
you do and you'll be rid of me the first chance that comes.'

'Which as you say doesn't seem likely for a long time.'

I'm taking my raincoat off now and having a bit of trouble with
the buttons. I know she's watching me more carefully than she
pretends to be.

'As soon as Ingrid feels like going back to work we'll be able
to save more. Then we can buy a place.'

'I don't know that Ingrid wants to go back to work. She thinks
like me - that a husband should be able to support a wife, or
he's a poor fish.'

This isn't the way I've understood it. It seems to me half my trouble is not knowing whether to believe what Ingrid says or what her mother says she says. I'm getting mad.

'Well, she'll have to get rid of her fancy ideas. If she wants a
house of her own she'll have to help to pay for it. I'm no mill-owner's son. Maybe that's what you had in mind for her, eh?
Somebody loaded with brass to keep her in luxury all the rest of
her life.'

'
You're
certainly not what I had in mind.'

'Well
I
married her. And bloody glad she was to have me,
make no mistake.'

'Is there any need for language like that?'

Somehow I feel I'm not winning and this makes me all the
madder. Here I am telling her all I've ever wanted to tell her
and somehow she's not reacting. She's just taking it in her stride
and making me feel small.

'Like what?' I say.

'You just swore.'

'I feel like swearing. I've felt like it ever since tea-time.'

'Well don't bring it in here. Save it for your friends. I imagine
they're the type to appreciate it.'

'My
friends,' I say, and I hear my voice rise to a kind of
falsetto. 'You think your friends are the last word. A bunch of
bloody jumped-up social climbers. I might tell you I've just
been out with a bloke who's got more money behind him than you
an' all your friends put together ever dreamed of.'

I'm feeling a wee bit queasy in the guts now. I think it's a
mixture of petrol fumes, a pork pie I've had, and the brandy on
top of all the other booze, that's done it. I make for a chair, nearly
falling over a stupid rug on the way.

'It seems he's been spending some of it tonight on drink.'

'I've had a drink. I'm not denying it.'

'A
drink. More like a dozen.'

'All right, I've had a dozen. And I enjoyed 'em. Is there any
law against it?'

"There's an elementary sense of decency that stops a man coming home to his wife in such a condition.'

'So I've no sense of decency now, eh? I'd enough to marry your Ingrid when she was
in
trouble. Oh, I know I got her into
trouble, but it takes two to do that, y'know. And don't think she
wasn't getting what she wanted when I married her. She'd have
married me any time, baby or no baby.'

' She'd have been in a position to listen to advice if she hadn't been seduced.'

"That's a good 'un. D'you think I had to tie her down to do it? Don't worry, if it hadn't been me it'd have been somebody
else.'

I don't think this is strictly true but I'm past splitting hairs.
I'm out to get Ma Rothwell foaming and I'm coming pretty
near it now.

She trembles with rage. 'How dare you make such disgusting accusations against my daughter's character! You come in here, you little upstart, drunk, as though you own the house, and sully
a good girl's name with your filthy talk...'

Well now I've really got her going and she looks as though she's good for a while yet, only I cut her short as
I
feel this queasy feeling suddenly spread out and up and before I know it I've leaned forward and thrown up on the nice cream carpet right in front of her. It's the easiest thing I ever remember: no heaving and retching and sweating -I just kind of hiccup and there it is on the carpet between my feet, all my tea and the pork pie I've had in the pub since, everything in a sloppy pinkish blob about the size of a tea-plate, mostly soft and creamy but with whole bits of stuff that have never tried to get digested stuck among it.

We both sort of look at it in surprise for a second or two and
then, maybe it's the beer and I don't give a damn anyway, I don't
know, but I start to giggle.

Ma Rothwell's mouth is open as though she's going to let me
have it any second now, but it's as though she can't get the words
out. Her whole body goes stiff and her eyes bulge and her hands
are clenched up in front of her and it's just as though her voice has packed in and she's fighting and straining like mad to bring
it back again. She's paralytic with rage. Her face has got past
red and it's purple now. And there we are, the two of us, looking
at one another across this puddle of sick, me waiting for what's going to happen and her looking as though she'll fall down and
kick her heels and foam at the mouth any second now.

And I'm just thinking what a repulsive old sow she really is and how much I hate her when her voice-box starts operations
again.

'You filthy pig,' she says. 'You filthy disgusting pig.'

It should hurt like hell for her to call me that and it probably would have any other time, but all I can see now is the funny
side of it. I feel another giggle coming up and choke it back and splutter over it. But it's no good and I have to let it rip. And then
I'm roiling back in the chair and laughing. I shout with laughing.
It's as though I've never laughed before and I've only just found
out how nice it is, and how lovely it is to let it come till you're helpless with it and it begins to hurt right across your guts.

I hear Ingrid's ma give a little scream and then the door slams,
fair shaking the walls, and an ornament bounces down off the
piano.

And now it doesn't seem as funny any more so in a minute
I manage to give up and I light a fag and stretch my legs out,
careful not to get my feet in the mess. I begin to smell it before
long. Rotten it is, enough to make you want to throw up again,
except there's nothing left to come. So I begin to think about cleaning it up, because it's one thing to throw up on Ma Roth-well's carpet and another to expect her to clean it up. I think
about it. Newspaper's no good because it might go soft and split
and then I'd get it on my hands. And if I use the dishcloth I'll
only have to wash that out after. So I decide the coal shovel's the
best thing and I get up and go into the kitchen and open the coal-place door and get the shovel out.

I have to use a bit of newspaper in the end to scrape the stuff
off the shovel into the fire, but I get it up off the carpet okay.
There's a bit of a coaly patch on the carpet from the shovel when
I've finished but I reckon that can't be helped and Ma Rothwell
will soon shift that with a bit of panshine or something. The little
china jug she knocked down is in bits on the floor. It said 'Best
wishes from Llandudno' round the outside before it was smashed
and I've heard Mrs R. say she thought a lot about it because she
got it on her honeymoon. I get a piece of writing-paper out of the
bureau and write
I di
dn
't do this
-
you did
and put it with
the bits of jug on top of the piano. Then I sit down and light
another fag.