‘I must tell you, Drysdale, that I think you behaved none too well about this matter.’
‘I must tell you, Brigadier, that but for me you would now be the laughing-stock of the whole neighbourhood, and possibly even in jail.’
The conversation didn’t last much longer, but it left us where we’d been before the whole question of billboards came up, that is to say in outspoken opposition. As I say, we don’t much care for change in Cartersfield. But it looks as though the question of bunting may come up again this year, and I don’t know quite where to find an ally. I may even be reduced to suggesting to Hobson that I may have to suggest to Jack Solomons that his field would make a splendid site for a petrol station. But I may have to admit defeat. I rather enjoy defeat, it puts one in such a strong position if anything awful happens. And so often it does, very satisfactorily. My only regret about the whole billboard issue was that I stopped Hobson chopping the bloody thing down. I’d give anything to see that man in the prisoner’s dock.
5. Ruth and Allen
IT WAS a slack morning at Trinder’s, and Archie Ransome, who worked the petrol pumps, rarely had to leave his electric fire to answer the honk of waiting cars. His little cubby-hole behind the showroom was just right, he thought, with its fire and its chair and a packet of Woodbines always at hand. What more could a man want at his age? His white dustcoat, an innovation of Sid Trinder’s when petrol came off the ration, was smeared with oil, and his moustache was stained yellow with tobacco at the right side. His cap, worn low down over his eyes, had been given him twenty years ago by Mr Thompson-Crowley. Archie’s first job, aged thirteen, was stableboy at Mendleton Hall, and in seventy years he’d advanced from feeding horses to filling cars, by way of chauffering. When Mr Thompson-Crowley died, playing croquet with his granddaughter in 1937, a young barrister bought Mendleton Hall, and Archie, then sixty, had to move. With the small capital he had received from Mr Thompson-Crowley for his years of faithful service he set up a one-man taxi business in Cartersfield, moving the six miles from the village without any apparent reluctance. But the war came and put an end to that, and after the war, in which he was a mainstay of the Mason’s Arms platoon of the Home Guard, he went to Trinder’s. And there he stayed. Occasionally Sid Trinder would ask him if he didn’t want to retire.
‘Retire?’ he would say. ‘Why would I want to do that, Mr Trinder?’
And so he stayed on. He filled tanks with a scrupulous accuracy and never gave incorrect change. No one could see any reason why he shouldn’t stay on. He was one of the best-known people in Cartersfield, and Trinder’s without him became unthinkable. When Richard Dimbleby came from the BBC with Down Your Way, Archie was an obvious choice. Asked if he would like to have his life all over again, he said he didn’t think he’d want it any other way; his pet aversion was people who smoked while their cars were being filled up, he liked to go to horse shows, and he chose as his tune ‘Just A’Wearyin’ For You’ by Carrie Jacobs Bond. His wife, who was a few years younger, hobbled arthritically round their council house down by the station, and they watched television in the evenings. Sometimes their elder son and his wife, who lived a few doors down, came in and watched with them. He was a porter. Their other son had emigrated to New Zealand after the war, and wrote once a year to say how he was getting on.
Someone hooted, and he got out of his chair and went out to the pumps. It was early May, a day of bright sun and cold wind, with a few puddles from yesterday’s rain still lying in the garage’s yard.
‘How are you, Archie?’ said Jack Solomons. He stood beside his white Jaguar, hands in pockets.
‘Pretty good, thank you, Mr Solomons.’
‘Chilly today, isn’t it?’
‘The wireless says it’ll be warmer this afternoon. We’re in for a warm spell, they say.’
‘Oh, they’re always wrong,’ said Solomons.
‘I don’t know about that, Mr Solomons. They’re more often right than wrong, I’d say.’
‘Well, maybe. Give me ten gallons of the best, would you?’
‘Right you are, Mr Solomons.’
He unhooked the nozzle and started the pump. As he took off the cap of the petrol tank he said: ‘Looks like your car could do with a wash, Mr Solomons.’
‘You’re right there, Archie. Do you think they could manage that this morning?’
‘What time would you want it?’
‘Not till after lunch. There’s nothing much going on at the shop. I thought I’d take a breather and get her filled up.’
‘There’s George,’ said Archie. ‘I expect he can manage it for you, Mr Solomons. Hey, George,’ he called to another man in a white dustcoat who was walking across the yard.
‘Just a moment,’ he called back. He wrote something on a notepad, tore off the sheet and slipped it under the windscreen-wipers of a Morris 1000.
He came over to the pumps and said: ‘Good morning, Mr Solomons, can we do anything for you?’
George Nisbett was the foreman, a bustling white-haired man who’d been a sergeant in the RAF during the war, working on the maintenance of bombers.
‘You’ll think I’m lazy,’ said Solomons, ‘but I’m damned if I can be bothered to wash my own car. Can you do it for me?’
‘We can, Mr Solomons. What time would you like it? Would one o’clock be soon enough?’
‘That would be fine. My wife wants it this afternoon.’
‘Very good, Mr Solomons.’
‘And how’s Mrs Solomons?’ said Archie.
‘She’s very well, thank you.’
‘I’ll have someone bring it up to you when it’s ready, Mr Solomons. Just as soon as it’s done.’
‘Fine,’ said Solomons. ‘Charge it up, would you?’ He nodded casually to them and walked off towards the High Street, hands still in pockets.
‘Quiet morning, eh, Archie,’ said Nisbett, scribbling on his pad.
‘Suits me,’ said Archie. He put the cap back on the petrol tank, wiped his hands on a rag, then on his coat, and went back to his cubby-hole.
Nisbett got into the Jaguar, made a turn and drove through the yard to the repair shop. The mechanics were standing in a group with mugs of tea in their hands, talking.
‘Come on now, lads,’ said Nisbett. ‘Tea-break ended five minutes ago. Let’s get a move on.’
There was a general gulping of tea and stubbing of cigarettes. They all wore blue overalls of various dirtinesses. While the others moved back to work, one young man in very new overalls which were much too baggy for him began to gather up the mugs and spoons on a tray.
‘When you’ve done that, Allen,’ said Nisbett, ‘you can take Mr Solomons’ car out to the washing bay and wash it. Get it clean, mind. Don’t leave any flies on the radiator, remember. O.K.?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Allen. He was seventeen, just out of school, with brown eyes and a trace of red in the brown hairs which fell over his eyes.
‘And don’t call me “sir”, you monkey. You’ll have plenty of that when you’re called up. And don’t forget the wheels. And brush it out inside. I want you to make a really good job of it.’
Allen blushed and said: ‘I’ve never driven one of them.’
‘Here, I’ll show you. It’s just the usual shift.’ Nisbett demonstrated quickly. ‘Now, look sharp with those mugs and get on with it.’ He walked off to another part of the repair shop.
Allen took the tray through the office and into the little washroom. When he came out again the two secretaries looked up.
‘Well,’ said Joan Cartwright, ‘if it isn’t Mr Neverbeenkissed.’
‘I think he ought to be a film star, don’t you?’ said Betty Tarrant. She was blonde and twenty, given to silver nail-varnish.
‘To think of it,’ said Joan. ‘Seventeen and never been kissed. A nice-looking kid like that.’
‘What do you know about it?’ said Allen, blushing. ‘Want to try?’
‘You’ll kiss my arse, the lot of you, if you don’t get som
e work done,’ said Sid Trinder from an inner office.
‘Really,’ said Betty. ‘Such language. And from the boss.’
Allen went out, still blushing. He got into the Jaguar and started it, then gingerly put it in reverse. It wasn’t as difficult as he’d thought. He’d only been at Trinder’s a week and large cars still frightened him. He drove into the washing bay and took down the hose. The jet of water made a satisfactory tingling noise against the bodywork of the car.
Nisbett came in and said: ‘Good lad, you remembered to shut the windows this time.’
In his first week at Trinder’s Allen often wondered how he could possibly keep his job. He knew a fair amount about the inside of an engine, but a lot of simple things still baffled him. And he’d get very tense when given something to do, making easy jobs seem like gigantic labours. He’d forget obvious things, too. When he’d washed Brigadier Hobson’s car with the windows open Nisbett had treated him to a piece of parade-ground language that he didn’t think he could ever forget. And then there had been the time he simply could not get a car to start, and eventually one of the older mechanics had come over to see what was the matter, and he’d forgotten to switch the ignition on. Yet he knew he was perfectly capable of good work. And he wanted to do good work, too, he wanted the money.
If he had money—not very much, just a few spare pounds a week—he could take Ruth out. As he washed the car he thought about Ruth. Polishing the white car he imagined to himself that it was her white body he was stroking. He knew her arms were white, but there were a lot of white things he hadn’t yet seen, and which he didn’t know for sure were white, things he wanted very much to see and touch, things he had never seen on any woman, but which boys at school had talked about in a sniggering way, things they had boasted about seeing and touching. Allen suspected that most of them were as ignorant as himself. Not all of them, of course. There had been a girl in the fifth form who suddenly had to leave and later had a baby, and the boy, who was in Allen’s form, had to leave too, though they hadn’t married. It was odd, Allen thought, the way this boy had never joined in the sniggers and whispers of the others, had never shown any particular sign of being interested in women. And the girl hadn’t been much run after, either. Though she was pretty, all right. When he thought of what they had done together he found himself blushing again. Well, he’d learned something from that incident: never take risks. If his mother knew the way he thought about Ruth …
Ruth worked at G. H. Hudson’s, the chemist’s. She, too, was seventeen. He’d known her all his life, but never very well till they found themselves sitting next to each other in Mr Drysdale’s maths class. That was last year. He would watch her as she wrote, trying to catch her eye and hold it, but when she lifted her head it was rarely to look at Allen. She would glance at him, and sniff, but that was all. She was very quick and pert in her answers, too. But after school she would relent a little. They would go to the cinema together, and sometimes she would come and watch him playing football, but not often. Their evenings were too full of homework, and then Ruth left school. ‘I see,’ said Mr Drysdale at the beginning of the next term, ‘that the nation has lost yet another of its bright mathematical hopes to the world of commerce.’ This had annoyed Allen, though he couldn’t say why. The rest of the class had laughed, rather self-consciously, but he couldn’t see the joke. Ruth wasn’t stupid. Mr Drysdale was always making remarks that Allen couldn’t understand.
Next Easter Allen had left school, and a fortnight before he started work he’d gone to a dance at the Lord George Brunswick Memorial Hall. He stood with a group of other boys watching the band and the dancers. A group of girls stood on the opposite side of the hall. Occasionally one or other of the boys would cross the floor to ask a girl to dance with him. When he came back they would all ask him how it had been. The boy always made some disparaging remark. After a while Allen went up to Ruth. He felt very shy coming up to the group of girls, who all stopped giggling to watch him.
‘Would you like to dance?’ he said, abruptly. He meant to sound confident, but the words came out rather rudely.
‘With you?’ said Ruth. ‘Thanks, but I don’t dance with schoolboys. That’s cradle-snatching.’ She nudged the girl beside her. Both tittered.
‘I’m not a schoolboy,’ said Allen.
‘Aren’t you, now? Well, well. Quite grown up, aren’t we?’
‘Come on, Ruth,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to dance?’
‘I’m not sure if I do,’ she said lightly. Her foot tapped to the rhythm of the band. ‘Can you dance?’
‘Of course I can,’ said Allen. ‘Anyone can dance.’
‘Well, all right. Lindy, will you hold my bag?’
The other girl took it without saying anything. Then as they moved off she called: ‘Happy landings.’
They moved round the floor once without either of them speaking. Ruth’s eyes were on the other dancers, Allen’s mostly on his feet.
‘So you can dance, Allen.’
At once he lost the step. ‘Sorry.’ They went round the floor twice more, then the number ended.
‘Thanks,’ said Allen.
‘Thank you,’ said Ruth.
They stood for a moment awkwardly, still half in the dance embrace. Then Ruth said: ‘Oh, Lindy’s waving, excuse me.’
When he returned to the boys’ group someone said: ‘Didn’t know you were hot on her, Allen.’
‘I’m not hot on anyone,’ said Allen.
‘We saw you. Holding her like that.’
‘How else do you expect me to hold a girl?’
‘I could tell you.’ There was a general snigger.
‘Well,’ said Allen, ‘what are you doing standing around, then?’
The other boy imitated the headmaster: ‘“We must learn to be patient.”’ The headmaster said it every speech day, about any and every thing. Everyone laughed, and Allen didn’t feel he had to answer.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls‚’ said the band-leader over the loudspeaker, ‘take your partners, please, for the last dance.’
This was the signal for a general mixture of groups. Allen, failing to obtain Ruth, stood and watched her dance with Bill Ponsonby, the mayor’s son. To his surprise he felt extremely jealous. What hope could he have against the mayor’s son? He left the hall quickly to avoid the national anthem, and went home.
‘Did you have a good time?’ said his mother when he came in.
‘All right. You should be in bed, Mum.’
‘You can’t expect me to sleep easy in my bed,’ she said, ‘not while you’re running round the town after some girl.’
‘What d’you mean? It’s not late, only twelve.’
‘Only twelve,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Only twelve.’
‘I don’t have nothing to get up for in the morning.’
‘You could think of your mother, sitting here alone all evening.’
‘Well, what d’you expect me to do about it? Sit here with you?’
She glared at him. Then she said: ‘All right, I know. You’re as bad as your father. You want one thing and one thing only, and till you’ve got it you won’t be satisfied. Who is she?’
‘There isn’t any “she”. I was only at the dance, Mum.’
‘You think I haven’t been to a dance in my life? I’ve been to a few, I can tell you. I know what they’re like.’
He shrugged. ‘Well, I’m going to bed. Good night, Mum.’
‘Good night, Allen. Give us a kiss.’
He kissed her, and she held him for a moment and said: ‘It’s been lonely since your father went, Allen.’
‘I know, Mum. Good night.’
He went upstairs to his room. His father had died just after Christmas, and the death was one reason why he hadn’t stayed on at school. But I can’t stay home and look after Mum for the rest of my life, he thought, as he got into bed. Hell, no. Ruth. Was it true that there wasn’t any ‘she’? How were you supposed to know whether y
ou were in love with a girl or not? He pulled up the blanket and thought about her dancing with Bill Ponsonby. But he was soon asleep.
After that he’d seen Ruth much more often. Sometimes they met by chance, but mostly, he had to admit to himself, wasn’t by chance at all. And he didn’t really need the new toothbrush or the new razor-blades or the new comb he’d bought recently.
One morning he went into Hudson’s and bought some after-shaving lotion.
‘Oooh,’ said Ruth. ‘Who are you tidying yourself up for?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ said Allen.
Ruth wore a green smock, like all the girls at Hudson’s, with her name stitched in yellow over the pocket by her left breast. She had black hair that she wore long, brushing it back just enough to show her two green ear-rings, shamrocks.
‘Where did you get those?’ said Allen.
‘They were a present,’ she said, simply.
‘Bill Ponsonby, I dare say.’
‘Then you’d be telling yourself lies,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t accept a gift from a man. Who do you think I am?’ Her eyes shone with anger, real or pretended Allen couldn’t be sure.
‘I didn’t mean that.’
‘The idea!’
‘Well, Bill’s rich. He could afford things like that.’
She looked at her finger-nails for a moment, long and painted rather too red. Then she said: ‘Bill Ponsonby wouldn’t give anything to me, and you know it.’
‘He seemed to like you at the dance last Saturday.’
‘I don’t say he doesn’t like me.’ She raised her eyes and said: ‘I’m not good enough for the likes of him, and you know it, Allen.’
‘Well, you’re good enough for me, Ruth. Come to the pictures tonight?’
‘Why, I didn’t know you cared.’
‘Cut it out, Ruth. Are you coming or not?’
‘All right.’
‘I’ll be round about six.’
‘Don’t be late,’ she said. ‘It’s Fabian in the second feature.’
‘Fabian?’
‘You know, the one who sings “Hound Dog Man”.’
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