Getting It Right (32 page)

‘Well, couldn’t you tell me some things, and then I could see whether they seem like that to me?’

‘I could. I could try. Tell you what. I’ll make out a sort of list of different things and you could try some of them.’

‘Okay.’ She sounded defeated in some way, he didn’t know why. There suddenly didn’t seem to be anything to say, so he said he thought he ought to be going.

‘Okay.’

As they walked down the passage to the door, he did think of something.

‘What are you going to do when you finish your apprenticeship?’

‘I don’t know. Try and get a job nearer home. My mother wanted to sell this house and start a small business so that we could live where we work because of Andrew, but I don’t
think there’ll be enough money. I’ll have to get a job first, and save a bit before that.’ She sounded dispirited at the prospect. ‘I’m just tired,’ she said.
‘It’ll all seem easier in the morning.’

‘Good night, Jenny.’

‘Good night, Gavin.’

She stood at the door while he put on his helmet and mounted his bike.

‘Thanks for the evening,’ she called.

‘I’ll try and make it a better one next time.’

She smiled then, and rolled her eyes like she did in the salon.

On the way home, he thought that it must be the night with Joan that had made so many things (with other people) seem so much easier.

Saturday morning found Gavin at Waterloo catching the 11.30 to Weybridge. It was a sparklingly beautiful day, but he felt gloomy. He was doing exactly what he had told his
mother at breakfast, and then Minnie on the telephone, he would certainly not – not on your life – do. Go to Weybridge to have lunch with Minnie and her parents. Three telephone calls
had spelled his defeat. They had begun during breakfast, which on Saturdays was a much more leisurely affair – with Minnie.

‘Gavin?’

‘Yes?’

‘You can come, can’t you?’

‘I can’t really, I – ’

‘But I’ve
told
them you’re coming now. Your mother said last night that she was sure you’d be pleased to come. It would be extremely rude if you
didn’t.’

‘My mother didn’t know what I was doing this weekend when she said that.’

‘What
are
you doing, then?’

‘I’ve got a lot of things to do. Work to catch up on.’

‘Work! You don’t usually work on Saturdays. I know that.’

‘I’m very sorry, Minnie, but I’m not coming for the weekend.’

‘Why not?’ She was wailing when he said: ‘Because I’m not, that’s all,’ and put down the receiver.

He had hardly returned to his bacon and eggs, when the telephone rang again.

‘Just come for one night. I’ve got a very special reason for asking you.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t possibly tell you on the phone . . . Telephone. Oh, Gavin, do just for once do something for me when I need it so badly.
Please!
’

‘Sorry. I told you. I can’t come. I don’t want to come,’ he added to make weight . . . Again he put down the receiver. This time he left it off, but his mother, who did
not like the milk to be left on the doorstep for a split second if she could help it in case it went bad, had heard the milkman, and, as usual, had scurried out down the path to meet him. When she
came back, she said: ‘The receiver was off. You naughty boy. I don’t know where your manners have gone, I’m sure.’ So of course it rang again.

‘Look; if you’d just come for lunch. You needn’t stay long. Just come. It’s my parents, you see. I’ve told them you’re coming. I’ll meet you at the
station. It’s Weybridge. Catch the 11.30.’ And then
she
rang off.

Anybody in their right mind, anybody with any gumption at all, would have just let her stew: meet the train and find him not on it. He hadn’t turned out to be one of those people. He had
used up all his gumption sulking with his mother at breakfast. After a brief, sharp interchange about why on earth he didn’t want to go for a nice weekend when she’d cleaned his tie and
spent the evening going through his socks, and he had said that he would manage his own affairs without any interference from her, and then, from the piercing glance she gave him, wondered whether
he had chosen a rather unfortunate word, she had plonked his bacon and eggs back from the warmer and on to the table and gone into a general harangue about how he had changed lately – how he
was secretive, always dashing about, never home till heaven knew when and what did he think his father thought of it all (this by now interspersed with the telephone calls to which he knew she
listened with breathless interest), he had sulked: refused to say anything until her commentary on his life simply ran out. Mrs Lamb’s sulking, however, was a very active affair; she trembled
with repression, and emitted sounds – heavy sighs, sniffs, even grinding her real teeth against the false ones in a menacing manner that implied she might erupt into words again at any
moment, and only the deadest of silences with his eyes on his plate prevented it (he thought). His tacit agreement to go for lunch which she interrogated out of him – ‘So you’ve
changed your mind again, have you? Well, thank someone for that!’ ‘Catching a train are you?’ – and various other questions that he did not answer, or at least deny, had
informed her that he must be going and had cleared the air from pitch-black ignorance to the twilight of bare knowledge. It was details that she liked and felt baulked of.

Sitting in the sullenly dirty little railway carriage, it occurred to him that his life
had
changed a good deal of late. He was not, at least not exactly, the same person that he had
been a few weeks ago. Was it the night with Joan that had changed everything? He could no longer be sure: the episode, for lack of any follow up – he had not heard from her and did not even
know exactly where she was – had resolved itself into legend. He sometimes was not absolutely sure that it had happened, or happened the way that he remembered it. He even felt spasms of
resentment, since she, he felt, had annihilated those dreams of beautiful, compliant girls – his private company for so many years – and put only this single instance of herself in
their place. Recapturing something – re-running that script – was proving less and less satisfactory. In exchange for that, he felt less apprehensive about things. The trouble was that
he was so accustomed to apprehension he felt its loss – almost as though it had been a pleasure, rather than an acute discomfort. It was as though, in relation to people, he didn’t have
any other feeling – except those few idyllic hours with Joan. Take today, for instance. He wasn’t
frightened
of what it would be like, while not having the least idea what it
would be like. He didn’t expect to enjoy it much: Minnie had a way of turning quite ordinary situations into something bizarre. Then he thought that probably the presence of her parents would
inhibit her. He wondered briefly, and with such ignorance about them, that he soon gave it up. At least he would discover whether they did indeed live in a castle with a deer park, but at Weybridge
this seemed unlikely. Her sister had the air and the voice of a lot of people who came to the salon and the likelihood was that the parents would be the same.

As the train trundled through south London past rows of little houses with well-tended back gardens he was reminded of Jenny and her request for some things that she could get into (that she
might find interesting, or beautiful or extraordinary). Looking back, he realized that he had actually been touched by her asking him, in a way that had seized him up. He hadn’t really been
very understanding about that: he could
see
that she felt trapped in a backwater and she obviously wanted to try not to be. He’d just been rather matter of fact about it all –
and vague. He
had
said he’d make out some kind of list for her. He got his battered leather loose-leaf notebook out of his pocket. Instantly his mind became a blank. The Arts –
all the branches of them and the enormous
amount
of everything – defied distinctions and choices. Anyway, how did he know what she knew, let alone might like? Supposing everything he
thought of turned out to be like the history book that she couldn’t get into? Well, it wouldn’t, of course. He wrote down MUSIC in capitals at the head of a page. She must have heard
some
music, but probably didn’t know what it was. Well, if she recognized anything he suggested, she’d get some confidence – people usually enjoyed recognition, something
familiar cropping up – like tunes they had heard people whistling in the street turning up in the middle of an opera. But it wouldn’t be much good suggesting operas to her. He had had
the feeling that money was scarce, and he knew that juniors earned a very bare wage. She might be getting some State benefit for Andrew, and she might not. He guessed she wouldn’t have any
hi-fi and he had the impression that there wasn’t even a telly. Well, they would have a radio, and if she looked in the paper, she would find things to listen to. Mozart, he wrote. Chopin,
Beethoven, Tchaikovsky (always a good way in for beginners). She might take to Bach. Haydn; the B.B.C. were always making him Composer of the Week. Perhaps he’d better get her a copy of
Radio Times
and mark the evening music for a week: yes – that was a good idea. Really, of course, the best thing would be for him to play her carefully selected records so that he
could
see
what she enjoyed, or didn’t, as the case might be. But he’d never invited a girl to his room before – at any time, for anything – and he had a fair idea
of the effect that doing so would have upon his mother. He moved on to PICTURES. Andrew seemed a bit young to take to public galleries; not that they wouldn’t let him in, but trundling him
about and worrying whether he was bored or wanted to go to the lavatory would take her mind off what she’d come to see. She needed someone to
do
that with. He thought the Tate was a
better introduction than the National Gallery, but the great thing about taking people for the first time to galleries was not to take them for too long. He supposed she could go to some of the
galleries near where they worked in her lunch hour. He’d have to choose those for her. Really, one way of starting to look at pictures was to look at them in books: he’d got a fair
number at home, but there was the Mrs Lamb problem again. (It crossed his mind then, in a sneaky kind of way, that his parents would be going on holiday, and that possibly Jenny and Andrew could
come over in their absence.) They could go for a picnic in Hadley Woods, and then he could take them home for tea and really show her things . . . He thought about that for a bit, and it seemed a
thoroughly good idea. It would save her from getting depressed from trying composers or painters who meant nothing to her. It was very important to start right; acquire the muscles for appreciation
slowly. Take poetry, for instance. It would be no good getting her books to struggle through – at least not until she had heard some poetry that moved her – once she had found something
and been caught by it, more of the same could follow, and she could be left to herself. People unaccustomed to reading poetry had awful trouble with the rhythms, and often thereby lost the sense.
He had never tried educating anybody before, and the thought excited him. He turned over a new page and wrote LITERATURE at the top. Perhaps the best way to start her off on that would be to choose
a first-class short story and read it aloud to her. A ghost story perhaps; or one of de Maupassant’s little slivers of life, or Kipling – but not Saki. He was just settling down to
considering the merits of ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ and ‘The Maltese Cat’, when he realized, with a shock, that the train was reaching Weybridge.

She was there to meet him, of course: she could be relied upon to be reliable when he didn’t want her to be. If she hadn’t been there, he reflected morosely, he could have gone
straight back to London as he hadn’t the faintest idea where her parents lived. But she was there, wearing a pair of faded and insultingly patched jeans and a T-shirt that had been put in the
washing machine with some other wrong colour.

‘Hullo,’ she said, as though she was surprised and not particularly pleased to see him.

‘Hullo.’

They walked out of the station where her battered little car was parked. Her hair looked dirty to him, and she seemed even paler than he remembered.

‘I gave up the painting kick,’ she said as they got into the car. ‘You were right about
that
. Too much hassle.’

‘Why were you so keen to get me to come today?’

‘Oh!’ There was a long pause. ‘If you must know, my father’s furious with me. He’s threatening to stop my allowance completely. Goes on and on about my not working
enough (what
at
, for God’s sake?) and says I have disreputable friends. So I told him a reputable friend was coming all the way from London to see me. Got it?

‘There’s a swimming pool,’ she said as he didn’t reply. ‘And a tennis court, but I don’t suppose you play tennis.’

‘No, I don’t. I can swim though – learned in the public baths.’

‘I’ve made you cross now, haven’t I? Honestly. I don’t mean to. I love you really. I think you’re marvellous. And, if you think it’s unfair of me to make you
meet my horrible parents, just think what I did for you about your mum.’

‘What did you do for me?’

‘All that pretending to be grand to please her.
You
remember!’

He thought of pointing out that he had not in the least wanted her to meet his mother, and then decided that a first-class row just before his lunch would be too much. Of course, if it was a bad
enough row, perhaps he needn’t go to the lunch at all? He had to face (for the hundredth time) what a lot he would go through to avoid rows.

‘Just for the record,’ he said. ‘What is your father called?’

‘He’s called Sir Gordon Munday. My mother’s called Stella, but she won’t notice what you call her. She doesn’t notice much at all.’

He looked at her in some surprise when she said this, wondering what she meant, and noticed that her profile was almost beautiful if her skin hadn’t been so stretched over her bones, like
silk on a model aeroplane.