by Stan Barstow
‘Hmmm.’ Mr Van Huyten nods. ‘I’ve never known just how well or how badly draughtsmen were paid. I’ve always thought they should be paid a reasonable wage considering the skill and training involved…’ He clears his throat and feels for his hanky, bringing the smell of eucalyptus again.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘no doubt you’ve followed the trend of what I’ve been saying. As I said, it’s too early to make promises and raise hopes. What I require immediately, or as soon as it can be arranged, is someone whom I can like and trust to come and assist me.’
‘What you’re saying, Mr Van Huyten, is that you’d like me to come and work full-time in the shop.’
He nods again. ‘Correct,’ and he puts his hand up as I’m going to say something else. ‘Apparently you’ve never seriously considered it before and the last thing I want to do is divert you from your chosen course. That’s why I asked you how you liked your job. Now assuming the money was, shall we say comparable, and there were prospects of a future when – not next year, mind, but sometime – when you wouldn’t be just a shop assistant in a dead-end job, what would you say then?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Van Huyten.’ I think about it for a minute. ‘I rather fancy the idea. I’ve always liked working in the shop, as you know…’ I realise he’s not expecting an answer off the cuff, and I say, ‘Thanks very much for your offer, Mr Van Huyten, and I’d like to think it over, please.’
‘Well done,’ he says. ‘A very reasonable answer. The last thing I wanted was for you to jump to a decision without considering every side of the matter.’
‘I’ll have to talk it over at home, you see.’
‘Of course, of course. Naturally. I was going to suggest that I might discuss it with your father.’
‘I’ll tell him and maybe he’ll call in one day on his way home from work.’
I don’t stop long after this. Mr Van Huyten thanks me again for looking after the shop for the day and gives me a ten-bob bonus over what he usually pays me. I don’t want to take this but he won’t let me go without it.
I put it to my mother and dad at supper-time the same night.
‘Mr Van Huyten’s offered me a full-time job at the shop,’ I say, and watch the Old Lady’s face.
‘What did you say to that?’ she says.
‘I told him I’d think it over an’ see what you an’ me dad thought about it.’
‘I think you’re all right as you are,’ the Old Lady says. ‘What prospects is there in a shop?’
‘Hold on a minute,’ the Old Man says. ‘Just ho’d your hosses. It’s not like a job in just any shop. Mr Van Huyten thinks a lot about our Victor. He nearly looks on him like his own lad… just what did he say, Victor? He didn’t come out with it just like that, did he?’
‘Oh, no; he went all round the houses, talking about how old he was and he has no relatives and he didn’t want to divert me from my chosen course. You know how Mr Van Huyten talks.’
The Old Man nods. He’s pretty sharp in a lot of ways, the Old Man, and he’s on to this situation a sight quicker than the Old Lady is.
‘Aye,’ he says, ‘he’s a real gentleman all right.’
‘But there’s no money in being a shop assistant, Arthur,’ the Old Lady says. ‘Victor’s nearly twenty-one an’ he’ll be due for a substantial rise then.’
‘Oh, we talked about all that. He said the money would be all right.’
‘D’ye fancy it, though, Victor?’ the Old Man says. ‘You know you allus wanted to be a draughtsman. You remember how chuff you were when you got that letter to say you could start at Whittaker’s?’
‘I was only sixteen then. I’m not sure I want that kind o’ work now. It’s not what Mr Van Huyten said makes me say that: it’s been coming on for some time…’ I feel myself beginning to grin. ‘I wouldn’t mind, y’know. I rather fancy the idea.’
‘I think happen I’d better have a word with him,’ the Old Feller says.
‘Oh, aye, he said he thought you two ought to talk it over. I told him you might call in on your way home from work one day.’
‘I shan’t that!’ the Old Man says. ‘I shan’t call an’ see Mr Van Huyten in t’clothes I go to an’ from t’pit in. I’ll go up an’ have a talk with him one night when I’m washed an’ changed.’
III
A week later it’s all settled. I’m to go and work for Mr Van Huyten at eight pounds a week. When I’m twenty-one he’ll make it nine and he says I can depend on him to see I’m all right after that.
The first person I tell at Whittaker’s is Jimmy Slade. I tell him straight after the Easter holidays.
‘How d’you go about handing your notice in?’
‘I think the correct way is to write to the Managing Director and say something like, “Will you please take this as notice of my intention to terminate my employment with the Company on such and such a date.’
‘And how much notice do you have to give?’
‘I think you’re only bound to give a week but a fortnight’s fairer. And I should have a word with old Hassop first and tell him what you’re doing: then it doesn’t make him look a Charlie.’
‘I’m not looking forward to that.’
‘They reckon he even tried to get Conroy to stay on,’ Jimmy says; ‘and I always thought he hated his guts.’
‘He was pretty hot stuff, old Conroy. Hassop knew he was losing a good man. I don’t reckon I’m in his class as a draughtsman.’
The dinner-time bell rings as we’re talking and we follow everybody out of the office.
‘Funny thing about Conroy,’ I say, ‘I was just beginning to like him when he left.’
‘Oh, Albert wasn’t such a bad sort of chap,’ Jimmy says. ‘Once you made allowances for his ways you could get on with him okay. I always did prefer him to Lewis.’
‘Me an’ all, any day.’
‘Ah, well,’ Jimmy says. ‘If you’ve made your mind up you’ve made it up. I’ll miss you, old cock.’
‘Oh, come off it,’ I say. ‘I’m not emigrating to Timbuktu. We can have nights out together.’
‘Aye, right enough.’
We’ve got along the corridor nearly to the door when all of a sudden we hear a bint cry out and there’s a commotion at the bottom of the stairs. When we get nearer we see a crowd of birds and one or two bods gathered round somebody lying on the floor. Somebody says. ‘No, don’t move her; run for the Nurse,’ and one of the blokes goes dashing through the door.
We can’t see a thing from where we are and we can’t get past to get out. When one of the bints turns away I ask her, ‘What’s up? Who is it?’
‘It’s Ingrid Rothwell,’ she says, all in a flutter and a lap. ‘She’s fallen down the stairs. Right from top to bottom. She couldn’t save herself. She just gave a shout and went straight down.’
‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘I don’t think so. They’ve gone for the Nurse. She’s passed out and we daren’t move her.’
My heart’s going like a tom-tom and I don’t know where I am for a minute. Jimmy gets hold of my arm and steers me away. ‘C’mon; we’re only blocking the way. Let’s go to the canteen.’
We go back the long way round and hear about it later on. Ingrid’s come round by the time the Nurse gets there and she gets a couple of bods to carry her into the waiting-room while she rings up for an ambulance. Next day we hear they’ve X-rayed Ingrid at the infirmary and she’s broken her left arm. I get all this from Jimmy, who’s got it from Pauline Lawrence, who got it from the Nurse. I’m glad it’s not serious but now the shock’s passed I don’t feel much else. Anyway, I have to do something so I splash eight-and-six on a pound box of chocolates and send them with a little note by Pauline who’s going to visit Ingrid one night. I just say in the note I’m sorry it’s happened and I hope she’ll soon be better again. I don’t mention about leaving Whittaker’s. She can’t write back because it’s her left arm and she’s left-handed so she just tells Pauline to say thanks
for the chocs, which she does.
When I think about it I’m glad she can’t write because it means she can’t pin me down. What with her laid up and me leaving Whittaker’s I reckon this is the time to break off properly, for good. Then I might feel better all round and not so much of a louse. It’ll be all right if I don’t see her. I just shan’t think about her then.
That afternoon I tell Mr Hassop that I’m handing my notice in at the weekend. I don’t meet with much opposition. Maybe he’s not bothered either way, whether I go or stay. We have quite a long natter, though, and he tells me all the disadvantages of being a shop assistant and the opportunities open for draughtsmen. I tell him I’ve thought about all that and this isn’t just another shop assistant’s job because I’ve kind of got an interest in the business, and we leave it at that.
On the Friday morning I take my letter in to Miss Padgett, Mr Matthew’s secretary, and a fortnight later I’m away, just like Conroy, with my tackle in a case and a very nice pigskin notecase with my initials on it and a quid inside from the Staff.
Right at the last when they’re giving me the wallet and Hassop’s giving out with the bull like he did for Conroy, I’m swallowing hard and looking round at all their faces and having a last-minute touch of panic for fear I’m doing the wrong thing. Because now I can only remember the good times early on, when it all seemed exciting, before I got restless; and I think what a good bunch of lads they are, as grand a bunch all round as you’d meet in a day’s march, and I know I’ll miss them.
And that’s it. The next Monday morning I go to work full-time for Mr Van Huyten in his shop.
3
I
I settle down pretty quickly at the shop because I like the job as much as I thought I should. Mr Van Huyten tells me all about invoicing and the books and soon he’s leaving me to deal with all this on quiet days during the week. I get as I know the record catalogues inside out – even the classical stuff as well, and I begin to like hearing some of this as well as the jazz and pops, though I can’t really take to Mr Van Huyten’s Brahms and the ‘later quartets’ by Beethoven, the one Rawly was talking about having gone deaf that time. Chamber music’s not in my line: I like plenty of tunes and lots of bash and clatter in the orchestra and before long I find that old Tchaikovsky’s right up my alley. I get to know more about all this because Mr Van Huyten starts taking me over to Leeds and Bradford in his car when there’s some crack orchestra playing. A lot of it’s fit to put you to sleep but every now and then you get a real kick out of something they play, and sometimes you get a feeling you don’t like a certain piece now but you might if you heard it a few more times. Mr Van Huyten talks about music all the way there and back and I like hearing him tell the tale about the great composers and how some of them struggled to get a name and nobody cared for their music when it first came out. He’s real genned up, Mr Van Huyten is, and he makes it interesting: all about Mussorgsky going off his nut and Tchaikovsky writing to that old bint all those years without seeing her and trying to do himself in by drinking poisoned water. Some real boyos there were among them. Mr Van Huyten tells me to have patience with music and it’ll all open out like a big flower some day.
‘Why do they make it so hard to listen to?’ I ask him one night when we’re coming back from a Hallé concert in St George’s Hall in Bradford.
‘But they don’t set out to do that, Victor,’ he says. ‘That’s just the point. These popular tunes that you have in the… what do you call it – the Hit Parade? They’re so simple they go in one ear and out the other. How long do they last? A few weeks, or a month or two at the most. But this is music which endures for hundreds of years. It will be listened to as long as men live. Can you expect music of that stature to have the immediate appeal of a popular song? Someone once said that great art doesn’t reveal all its secrets at one glance. Be patient, let it work on you, let it flow over you. One day you’ll hear the most glorious music where you now hear only a din. You’ll hear it all, Victor, I hope. The thunder and majesty of Beethoven, the grace and tragic beauty of Mozart, the glorious singing of Brahms, the noble sadness of Elgar. It’s like a wonderful voyage of discovery, Victor, with magic over every horizon. Here is all the music in the world just waiting for you to find it. How I wish I could go back fifty years and discover it all afresh!’
When I’ve been at the shop awhile Mr Van Huyten lets me have a two-speed record player and some records cheap. I can see he’s out to turn me into a real music-lover; but I don’t mind. It’s like he says, a new discovery over every horizon, and it seems like each week I’m finding something new to like.
Sometimes I go out on jobs with Henry, mainly to help with the carrying and such, but I’m learning all the time, and in the quiet spells I go back into the workroom and watch him do the repairs and it’s surprising how much technical stuff you can pick up that way. At nights and weekends, besides playing records and the times I go out with Mr Van Huyten, I might have a night at the pictures with Willy or Jimmy, and the odd pint. Sometimes I go to a dance. I still think about this girl I’m going to run into one day, but I’m happy enough now and there’s no great hurry.
I hardly think about Ingrid at all. Out of sight, out of mind certainly works where she’s concerned. One time she sends me a picture postcard from Skegness where she’s convalescing at her aunty’s. There’s an address on it but I think at first I won’t bother writing back because it’s all over. Then I think there’s no harm in being civil so I get a picture of Cressley Town Hall and send her that. I write on it: ‘I don’t think I’ll come here again for my holidays because it’s a mucky place and it rains all the time. Hope you’re properly better soon.’ When I’m putting it in the letterbox I wonder if I’m not encouraging her and it might be better to tear it up and forget it; but I let it go.
II
The days draw out, the weather gets warmer, and it’s what we call summer, with a bitter laugh when we’ve said it.
One day towards the back end of June I’m leaning on the counter in the shop, feeling a bit cheesed. Mr Van Huyten’s doing his accounts in his little glass cubby-hole and Henry’s busy in the back. Things are a bit slack this morning and by ten o’clock we’ve had a woman in for a record catalogue, another woman with an electric iron for repair, and a bod who’s wandered round looking at TV sets and radiograms and wouldn’t let me tell him anything about them. ‘I’m just looking,’ he says. I know his type. He’ll go home and tell his family that the assistants at Van Huyten’s are too pushing. And if you take no notice of people when they come in they go away and say we don’t give them service and attention.
Anyway, I leave him be, and in a minute or two in comes a sprightly-looking bint with a hedgerow hairdo who asks for a record of Tommy Steele singing: ‘I’m the Only Man on the Island’. I serve her and take her money and watch her go down the shop. She’s wearing spike-heels that she’s not too steady on and a tight skirt that cuts her stride to about six inches. I wonder what happens if she ever forgets and tries to run for a bus. I notice skirts are getting shorter, which is something I don’t mind at all, and I’m looking at this bint’s legs as she prissys her way out and letting my thoughts wander a bit in the direction of subject normal when the door opens and another pair of legs comes in: a pair of neat slim legs in darkish nylons that I’d know anywhere. And all a once it’s just as though somebody’s given me a clout on the chest over the heart and I can’t breathe properly.
She comes up to the counter and says, ‘Hello, Vic.’
‘Hello, Ingrid. Are you better?’
‘Yes, thanks. I’m going back to work on Monday.’
‘Taken a fair while, hasn’t it?’
‘There were complications. It didn’t set right the first time and they had to break it again.’
‘You’ll have to take it easy a bit pounding the old typewriter.’
‘I suppose I shall. I expect I’ve lost my speed and everything now.’
‘How did it happe
n? I never did get the proper tale.’
‘Oh, I was wearing a new pair of shoes with high heels.’ She laughs. ‘That’s what vanity leads to.’
‘Anyway, so long as you’re all right now.’
She looks okay, pretty much as usual, in fact. She’s a bit tanned, and maybe a wee bit thinner than before. But not much, and not in the places that matter. I know, because I can’t help looking. She’s wearing a fawn short-sleeved jumper and the points of her threepenny bits are pushing the weave apart so you can see the white of her bra through.
‘It was nice of you to send the chocolates.’
‘Oh, that was nothing.’
‘I’m sorry I couldn’t write a note to thank you but it was my left arm, you see.’
‘That’s okay, Pauline said thanks.’
She looks down the counter at Mr Van Huyten doing his accounts and taking no notice of us. She opens her bag and takes a bit of paper out.
‘Have you any of these?’
I take the paper from her. My hand’s not too steady what with seeing her again so sudden like. There’s the titles of three popular records on the paper and down at the bottom she’s written ‘When can I see you again?’
Just for a second I think this is another record and then I catch on and, of all things to happen, I start to blush. I turn round to the shelf and get the boxes down and I can feel all the old excitement knotting up in me.
‘We have the first two,’ I tell her, getting the records out, ‘and we can get the other one in a couple of days.’
‘I’ll leave that one,’ she says, and I notice that she’s coloured up a bit as well and she can’t look me in the face. ‘Can I listen to the others, please?’
She’s probably heard them both a million times apiece already but I say, ‘Sure,’ and go round the counter and open the door of one of the listening booths.