by Stan Barstow
Dorothy’s on the far side of Ingrid and she’s saying something I can’t hear. It sounds like some private joke from the way she’s keeping her voice down and when she stops they both giggle. I feel they’re making cracks about me, and even if they’re not it’s rotten manners to carry on like that.
Then Dorothy lifts her voice and says, ‘Look that’s where Ralph Wilson lives now.’ There’s some pretty posh houses up on this side of the park and she’s pointing to this big place standing back behind some trees. I catch a glimpse of a car, maybe an Armstrong Siddeley, standing in the drive.
‘I didn’t know they’d moved,’ lngrid says.
‘Oh, yes, they’ve been up here a bit now,’ Dorothy says. ‘Proper stuck-up, he is, as well, since they went to live in a big house. He hardly speaks when he sees you.’
It sounds to me as though this Ralph Wilson’s a man after my own heart as far as Dorothy’s concerned.
‘I don’t see why he should get stuck-up all of a sudden,’ Ingrid says. ‘That house they lived in before was big enough and his family was always well-off. Anyway, he’s always friendly enough with me when I see him.’
‘Well, I think he should be friendly with you, if anybody,’ Dorothy says, and she’s got that tone of voice out again, like she knows a lot more than she’s saying. But Ingrid takes her up on it.
‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean after that time at the tennis club when you and him were locked in the changing-rooms and nobody could get in.’
‘You know very well it was Harry Norris who did that. He had the key all the time.’
‘Oh, I know; but I’m talking about what went on inside. You didn’t seem so bothered about getting out so quick, either of you.’
‘Just what everybody wanted, wasn’t it, for us to make a fuss?’
‘Everybody except Ralph Wilson. I think he put Harry Norris up to it in the first place.’
‘Well he didn’t get anything out of it if he did.’
‘That’s not what he said after. I heard some of the things he told the lads.’
‘I don’t know why you have to bring all this up,’ Ingrid says. ‘I’m sure Vic isn’t interested in old gossip like that.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Dorothy says.
‘You’re everybody’s best friend, aren’t you?’ I say.
‘What d’you mean by that?’ Dorothy says.
‘You know what I mean. First off you try to make out something about me, and now it’s Ingrid.’
I’ve had enough of this and I’ve a feeling I’ll say something any minute that’ll gum the works up good and proper. But I’m past caring. If this Dorothy’s spoilt our date she’s not going to get off scot free.
‘Who d’you think you are, anyway?’ she says to me. ‘I know things about you that you wouldn’t like spreading about.’
We’ve stopped walking now and I look her straight in her horrible clock. ‘You can’t scare me with that kind o’ talk,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t know anything about me that nobody else knows. And if you’re thinkin’ o’ making something up you’d better think again.’
‘Why, what will you do?’ she sneers, ever so clever.
Well I’ve got my rag out now and no mistake. I think of all the time I’ve been wanting Ingrid and the way I hoped we’d be tonight. And now she’s here spoiling everything with her mucky talk. So I let her have it, and to hell with everything.
‘I’ll take your pants down and slap your bloody arse,’ I tell her. ‘A pity nobody ever did it before.’
‘You lay a finger on me and I’ll have the police on you.’
‘After you’ve wiped the grin off your face.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘I mean any bloke who laid a finger on you ’ud deserve a medal. He’d have to have a sack over his head before he’d take you into a tennis pavilion.’
I think for a second she’s going to fly at me biting and scratching and I step one pace back and half lift my hands to keep her off. Then all at once she turns her back and bursts out crying like a kid.
‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ lngrid says.
‘Oh, what the hell,’ I say. ‘Why should she have it all her own way?’
Dorothy begins to walk away up the road, still blubbing, and Ingrid looks after her. ‘Look, she’s going.’
‘Well, what are you going to do?’
‘I can’t leave her now.’
‘After what she tried to make out about you?’
‘You don’t know her. That’s just her way. She didn’t mean anything.’
‘That’s what they all say, all these old gossips who go about making trouble. They never mean anything.’
‘You don’t know her.’
‘I don’t want to know her. I’ve seen enough of her.’
She stands on the edge of the pavement like she can’t make up her mind what to do, and I wonder why she keeps up the pretence.
‘Well I can’t leave her.’
‘What did you bring her for? You had a date with me, didn’t you?’
‘She just came to our house for tea and I didn’t want to send her away on her own. She’s my best friend.’
‘I’d never have known if you hadn’t told me.’
A likely story, I’m thinking. Why doesn’t she say straight out what she thinks? Why keep on pretending like this? Dorothy’s a good twenty yards away by now. She’s got her head down so it looks like the waterworks are still in operation.
‘I shall have to go to her,’ Ingrid says. ‘You’ve hurt her, y’know. She’s very sensitive, really.’
‘Why doesn’t she think other people might be?’
‘It’s just her way… I must go now…’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ll see you at work on Monday.’
‘I’m usually there.’ She walks backwards a few paces. ‘Good night then.’
‘Good night.’
She swings round and sets off after Dorothy who’s gone out of sight round a corner. I watch till she turns the corner herself then I walk back down the hill. I’m so miserable I just don’t give a damn for anything.
4
I
There’s only one good thing about Monday morning and that is Hassop’s away. I’m up talking to Miller in his office when the inter-com starts buzzing and Mr Althorpe’s light goes on. Miller lifts the receiver up and presses the switch and listens for a minute. Then he says, ‘No, he hasn’t come in yet, Mr Althorpe… Well, he did seem a bit under the weather on Friday… Yes, righto, I’ll come in now.’ He puts the receiver down and shoves a notepad in his smock pocket and makes for the door. Most of us in the D.O. wear smocks because it’s surprising the amount of muck there is about, what with pencil dust and grit from the Works. We had a bloke started once who wore a white one and set everybody off making cracks about ice-cream men because the standard colours are khaki and a sort of mucky grey. He didn’t stop long, this bod, because he didn’t fit in somehow.
‘I’ll see you later, Vic,’ Miller says as he’s going out.
‘What’s up with Hassop?’
‘Mister Hassop,’ Miller says, and goes out without answering.
I go back down the office and Jimmy looks up from his board next to mine. ‘Where’s old Dogknob this morning?’
‘Mister Dogknob to you,’ I say.
‘Mister Horace Edward Hassop Dogknob, Esquire,’ Jimmy says. ‘Some say “good old Hassop”; others know the blighter.’
I give myself the pleasure of sharpening a brand-new pencil. ‘Looks as if he’s badly. With a bit o’ luck it might turn into pneumonia and we shan’t see him for six months.’
‘A week’ll do for me,’ Jimmy says. ‘I’m grateful for small mercies.’
Conroy comes past with a roll of prints under his arm. He’s got his big head down in his shoulders and he looks as brussen as he always does.
‘What’s up with Hassop?’
‘Looks like flu.’
He gives a grunt and moves off. I’m not sorry. Conroy’s one of the bods at Whittaker’s I can do without very nicely, thank you.
I file the pencil point to a chisel shape and give the board a flick over with a duster. Everybody seems to be working even if Hassop is away. But Miller and the section leaders can keep order, and anyway, keeping your nose down is the best way of making the time pass. As soon as I try to settle down though, I start thinking about Ingrid and last night. I try to get my mind on my drawing, and do a few lines; but it’s no use – I just keep thinking about her. I look over at Jimmy and think I’d like to tell him and get some advice. But then I think I’ve made a twerp of myself and there’s no point in telling anybody else about that.
Miller comes back in a bit and calls me up to his office.
‘How d’you feel about a trip into town?’
‘I don’t mind,’ I tell him. ‘It’s not a bad morning out.’
‘Mr Hassop isn’t on the phone and Mr Althorpe wants a message taking to him and some papers bringing back. Do you know where he lives?’
‘Somewhere up Bradford Road, doesn’t he?’
That’s right. Here, I’ll jot the address down on a bit of paper.’
He hands me the paper and an envelope with Hassop’s name on it that he’s brought out of Althorpe’s office.
‘Righto, then, don’t be too long. And no stopping off for morning coffee on the way.’
‘I’m missing my tea break, remember,’ I say, and Miller says, ‘Gerrout of it,’ with a grin. He feels in his pocket. ‘Here’s a bob for your bus fare. You can keep the change.’
‘I suppose it’ll turn out to be sevenpence each way,’ I say as I go out.
I go and take my smock off and throw it over my buffet.
‘Taking the rest of the morning off, Brown?’ Jimmy says in his managing director’s voice.
‘I’m off up to see Hassop,’ I tell him. ‘Makes a change, a trip out in the middle of the morning. Any messages?’
‘Tell him we’ll buy him a grand wreath,’ Jimmy says.
Outside it’s bright and fine and there’s big white clouds scudding across the sky just like in spring, only it’s none too warm and you have to keep moving or you soon feel the cold. I amble down to the corner to wait for a bus. I feel in my pocket to make sure I’ve still got the envelope for Hassop. I hope Mrs Hassop, or whoever answers the door, won’t ask me up to see him because I know I shan’t know what to say to him. I get my cigs out and when I open the packet I see there’s three gone already this morning. I’m smoking like a mill chimney these days. I’ll be up to twenty a day if I don’t watch it, and I can’t afford that. Sometimes when I’m broke and I read about it causing lung cancer I think I’ll give up, but I can never be bothered to make the effort; and anyway, I like it. I put the packet away and decide I’ll wait till I drop off for a cup of coffee on the way back.
When I’m on the bus I start to think about Ingrid again. What I mean is, I’m always thinking about Ingrid but a lot of the time I have to think about other things as well, only now I can give all my attention to it. Oh, but she’s a swell piece! The more I see her and think about her the more I think she’s a real bobby dazzler. I reckon I can’t grumble really and I’m lucky to have taken her out three times. Well, twice, because you can’t count last night. That was a proper washout. Thinking about it now I wonder if I wasn’t a bit, well, cruel like with Dorothy. Not that she hadn’t it coming, mind. She must have been going about for some time saying just what she liked and getting away with it; but she tangled with the wrong bloke when she picked on me. I told her. Awful, though, the way she folded up soon as I really went for her. You could tell it hurt. Poor ugly bint. It cooked my goose with Ingrid, though, I bet, even if the oven wasn’t warming up already. Women are funny like that; they’re as catty as can be about one another, but let a man start and they don’t half close ranks in double-quick time.
The bus runs down through the shopping centre. There’s a lad with dusters tied round his feet dressing Granger’s big window and a fat woman with great big arms down on her knees scrubbing the foyer of the Plaza picture house. A bint with the neatest pair of gams I’ve seen in a fortnight stops for a minute to look at the stills in the boxes outside. Ah, well, there’s plenty more fish in the sea… I try to think this but it doesn’t help much. I change to a Bradford bus in the station and sit downstairs near the door because I’m not sure how far I have to go. The conductor comes in laughing at something a tart conductor has just said to him and rings the bell. I give him my fare and tell him I want to get off at Providence Avenue.
‘Watch out for the Maternity Hospital,’ he says. ‘You get off there.’
It’s only when he says this that I see the two bints on the bus with me both have buns in the oven, and three more get on up the hill. The conductor winks at me when he’s taken their fares. ‘We give more free rides than any other route,’ he says, and I grin.
‘Had any embarrassing moments?’
He laughs. ‘Aye, I have that, lad; but not on a bus!’
When I see the Maternity Hospital standing back behind these huge lawns I get off with the pregnant bints and watch them waddle across the road with their shoulders back. I wonder for a minute what it must be like to have a kid and then think I’m glad I’ll never know. I wonder about the other thing as well, and if women enjoy it as much as men. I’ve an idea they don’t, and anyway, it might not be all men crack it up to be. I don’t know, but I wonder. I wonder about it quite a lot these days, and as I’m going up the road to Hassop’s I think there might be a lot to be said for these knocking-shops blokes who’ve done military service abroad tell you about. You feel the need and you pay your money and get what you want. Just like drinking a glass of water when you’re thirsty. Nobody spends all his time thinking about water, except the bloke in a desert where there isn’t any. Some chaps spend a lot of time thinking about wine, though; but that’s drinking for pleasure like going to bed with a bint you’re in love with. When that happens with everything else you have together it must be just about the most wonderful thing in the world. But that’s love and it comes some time. The other thing’s biology, and you have that all along.
I think I’ve made a mistake till I check the number on a bit of paper Miller gave me. The house stands back from the road and there’s a lot of black soil packed down hard that must have been a garden at one time. It’s big and square, the house, and it looks a lot like a broken-down Working Men’s Club. I reckon it must have been standing right there the best part of a hundred years because the stone’s all grey-black and the flags round it are all sunk and sticking up in the corners any-old-how. There’s a bit of a porch with some coloured glass windows in it, red and yellow and green, round the door, and I go along the path and knock, still thinking somebody’s slipped up and given me the wrong address. There’s a kind of rising sun in frosted glass in the top half of the door and I give it a push and go into the porch when nobody answers my knock. Inside there’s the house door and a mat that’s worn nearly to strings on the step. There’s a pile of sacks and a rusty old paraffin stove and a crate of empty stout bottles as well. Everything smells damp and you get the idea it’s all rotting away here and nobody cares a hang. It’s a real rum do. I don’t like it much.
But there’s the number on the door all right, like the one on the paper, so this must be it. I get hold of a little bell-handle that’s in a kind of socket on the wall and pull on the chain. I put my head up to the door and listen for the bell but there’s no sound. I reckon that hasn’t worked since the Charge of the Light Brigade, so I give a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on the letter-box knocker.
Well I seem to have been standing there half the morning, and if it was just my say-so I’d have been off long since, when I hear somebody sliding a bolt on the inside. The door opens maybe six inches and this woman’s face appears in the gap. Her voice gives me a start; it’s as deep as a man’s.
‘Yerss?’
�
��I’ve called with a message for Mr Hassop,’ I say, watching this phizzog in the doorway. It’s long and baggy and sort of yellowish brown in colour and the eyes are stuck halfway out of it like brown marbles.
‘For Mr Hassop?’ the face says.
‘I’m from the Works – Whittaker’s. Mr Hassop does live here, doesn’t he?’
‘What is the message?’
When she talks she shows the biggest bottom teeth I’ve ever seen, square at the top and tapering down to the gums.
‘It’s written down.’ I show her the envelope. ‘Mr Althorpe sent it. He thought Mr Hassop must have flu when he didn’t come this morning. We knew he had a cold on Friday. I hope it’s nothing serious, only there’s so much flu about you can’t be too careful…’
There I go, yattering on and hardly knowing what I’m saying. But it makes me feel queer standing there in front of this face with these two marbles watching me. All at once a scrawny hand comes round the door and flicks the envelope away from me.
‘Wait.’
The face vanishes.
I stand there thinking this is the queerest do I’ve ever come across. I wait a good five minutes and then the door opens a bit wider as though a little puff of wind’s blown it. I push it open more and step inside.
I’m in a big hall with a bare tiled floor. There’s lots of nearly black unvarnished doors leading off, all shut. The stairs go up at the far end and there’s a tall window with a half-round top and some more of the coloured glass in it. There’s a smell of gas that’s not burning properly coming from somewhere and in a bit it seems to settle on my stomach and I don’t feel too cracky. But I hang on and there’s not a sound for maybe ten minutes and I’m beginning to think I must be at the wrong address after all and this woman is a loony who’s buzzed off with the envelope and isn’t coming back. I begin to work out what I can say back at the office and then all of a sudden a door opens upstairs somewhere and I hear these two voices going at it hammer and tongs bawling one another out. I can’t tell what they’re saying but in a minute they stop and this woman comes to the top of the stairs. I get a good view of her now and it makes me wish I’d stopped outside. If this is Hassop’s missis it’s time he put her back where he dug her up from. She comes down the stairs with her head back like a horrible imitation of a countess arriving at a ball or something. Her hair’s a dusty black and it’s piled up all any-old-how on top of her head. She’s got some kind of dressing-gown on made of a thin stuff, grey and dirty yellow, with like a feather collar to it. The marbles are on me as she gets to the bottom of the the stairs and comes across the hall. When she gets nearer I find there’s a queer smell about her and I wonder if she’s had a bath since the Great War.