by Stan Barstow
We’re walking along side by side and she takes my arm and gives it a squeeze. ‘You’re a funny lad,’ she says.
‘Don’t I know it,’ I say.
A while later we’re together in the dark at the back of the picture house and I’m holding her and kissing her and for a while it’s nearly like the first time I ever did it. Nearly – but not quite.
4
I
Comes another Christmas. The day we shut the shop for the holidays Mr Van Huyten has a little chat with me and tells me how pleased he is with the way things have worked out. It’s nice to know you’re giving satisfaction somewhere, anyway, I think. Mr Van Huyten gives me a Christmas bonus of five pounds and I go out and blue three-ten of it on a powder compact for Ingrid.
On Boxing Day Chris and David invite us over to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. It doesn’t seem possible that it’s a whole year since they got married, and still, when I think of all that’s happened to me… The Old Man’s full of corny jokes about the first seven years being the worst and they’ve only another six to go. They laugh this off like they do the way the Old Lady’s always talking about the kids they’ll be having, though there isn’t a sign yet. I wonder if they’re having trouble in this direction and then think they’ve only been married a year anyway and when they have kids and how many is their business and nobody else’s. It’s typical of the Old Lady, though. First she couldn’t wait to get Chris married and now she’s all agog to be a grandmother. I don’t know what she’ll pester about after that. Me, I suppose. She’ll be dropping hints in my direction any time. Not that I’d mind if I could find the right girl and be sure she was the right one and not just a passing fancy like Ingrid. It seems to me being married must be something special if you can look as happy as Chris and David do after a year of it. As it is, seeing the way they are only shows up the difference between the way I thought of Ingrid a year ago and the way I am with her now.
One morning in January there’s a letter by my plate when I come down to breakfast. I recognise Ingrid’s writing on the envelope and as I sit down and pick it up I feel the Old Lady watching me through that second pair of eyes she has in the back of her head.
‘From your girl friend?’ she says.
‘What girl friend?’
‘What girl friend?’ There’s the sizzle of the eggs as she breaks them into the frying pan. ‘That lass you’re knocking about with,’ she says. I think for a minute she’s seen me with Ingrid, then she says, ‘That lass ’at sent you the card for your twenty-first and bought you the cigarette case.’
‘Oh, that. That was months ago.’
‘Don’t you see her nowadays, then?’
I don’t know how much she knows. You can never be sure with the Old Lady. ‘Oh, on an’ off. We’re friendly like.’
‘Well, then, what are you goin’ all round the houses about it for?’ she says. ‘Are you ashamed of her or summat?’
She turns round and I keep my face down over my cornflakes. ‘I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea, that’s all.’
She turns her face away again and splashes fat over the eggs.
‘What sort o’ wrong idea?’
‘That it’s serious or anything.’
She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know how it is wi’ young fowk nowadays; they don’t seem to know their own minds. just want to play fast an’ loose with one after the other. In my young days we either courted properly or left it alone.’
She brings the frying pan over from the cooker and lifts the eggs out on a knife – one on to Jim’s plate and one on to mine. She shares the bacon out as well, then puts the pan back on the cooker and turns the gas off. She picks her cup up and has a drink of tea, watching the two of us tuck into the bacon and eggs.
‘It’s different now,’ I tell her. ‘Times change. You know what they say nowadays – Play the field before you get married and you won’t want to after.’
‘There’s a lot o’ fowk got married quicker than they thought they would through playin’ t’field,’ the Old Lady says.
I haven’t liked this conversation from the start and like it even less the way it’s going now, so I shut up and say no more. The minutes tick away as we go on eating, and after a while the Old Lady says, ‘Well… aren’t you goin’ to open your letter?’
‘Read the letter, Vic, there’s a good lad,’ Jim says; ‘then you can tell us all the news.’
‘You’ll get a good clout if you don’t hold your tongue,’ the Old Lady says; ‘and there’s a bit o’ news for you!’
Jim’s sitting with his back to her and he pushes his tongue down between his bottom teeth and his lip, tucks his chin down into his neck, and rolls his eyes.
‘I can read it on the bus,’ I say, trying not to grin and bring the Old Lady down on Jim. ‘It isn’t important.’
‘It can’t be,’ the Old Lady says, real dry, ‘or she wouldn’t have bothered to write to you.’
Well, she does her best, but I’m not having any, and the letter’s still sealed in its envelope when I leave the house and walk down the hill to the bus stop. I’m pretty mad with Ingrid for sending it and starting all that with the Old Lady and I wonder why she couldn’t ring me up if she wanted to tell me something. I open the letter at the bus stop.
‘Dear Vic,’ she says, ‘I’ve been off work today with an upset stomach and as I shan’t be going back tomorrow (Thursday) I shan’t be able to come out to meet you. My mother’s going out, though, and you can come up to our house if you like. You know where I live. Just come to the back door and knock. Love, Ingrid.
‘PS. Don’t come before 7.30 because she’s not going out till seven.’
Now I like this very much. I’ve never been in Ingrid’s house but they’re sure to have a couch or a comfortable chair, and it’ll be a lot cosier than the park.
II
‘I couldn’t ring you up because Mother didn’t go out all afternoon,’ Ingrid says. ‘So I scribbled the letter and pretended I wanted a little walk for some fresh air to give me a chance to post it.’
‘You haven’t told your mother about me, then?’ I say.
‘Well, no, I haven’t. I mean, it’s not as if we were… well, courting, is it?’
‘No… no, it isn’t.’
‘Your parents don’t know about me, do they?’
‘Well they do and they don’t. I mean they saw your birthday card and they know a girl bought me the cigarette case; but they don’t know how often I see you or how it is between us.’
Ingrid blushes a bit. ‘I should think not… That’s the trouble isn’t it? I mean, we couldn’t tell anybody how it is, could we?’
‘As far as anybody else is concerned – anybody who happens to see us out, I mean – we’re just friends who go out with each other now and again.’
She says nothing to this, but looks into the fire, reaching out once, out of habit I suppose, to pull her skirt down over her knees. She’s showing quite a lot of leg actually, because her skirt’s on the short side and you sink right down into the velvet cushions in these chairs of theirs.
It’s the dining-room we’re in. I suppose they’re like us and don’t use the front room every day. This room’s cosy, though, with this leather three-piece suite and a fitted carpet in rust. There’s a console TV on one side of the fireplace and a little wireless on a table on the other. Ingrid’s ma must be a Royalty fan because there’s a big coloured photo of the Queen in her Coronation outfit on the wall over the fireplace. There’s a good fire and I’m feeling nice and comfortable and I’ve taken my jacket off and hung it on one of the dining-chairs.
I think Ingrid’s a bit excited at having me here while her mother’s back’s turn because she’s in a sort of light-hearted nervous mood and she laughs a lot. Or she was doing before we started talking about how it is with us and now she’s gone a bit quiet, as if it’s started her on studying, while she looks into the fire. I was just thinking before this that I’d have to get up and
kiss her any time now. And the way we are, cosy and private for the first time, who knows what might happen then? I look at the shape of her under this pale pink blouse and I want to look at her properly. I want to find out if my hands have been telling the truth about how lovely she is.
I stand up to get a fag out of my jacket. As I get the cig case out of my inside pocket I pull some more stuff out with it: my comb and wallet, and a little book of pin-ups that took my fancy in a shop where I was buying fags a day or two since. Ingrid’s just got up to straighten the curtains and there’s no hiding this book from her because she sees it there on the floor with this bint on the front revealing all. The next minute she’s bent down, got it, and jumped away as I try to grab it back.
‘C’mon, gimme,’
She laughs. ‘No. I’m going to look and see what a dirty-minded old thing you really are.’
She gets behind her chair and I know if I want the book I’ll have to chase her and take it off her. I’m a bit red, but I’m not going to make a song and dance about it, so I sit down in my chair and light my fag. When she sees I’m not bothering she comes round and sits down and starts to turn the pages. She seems to get real interested, having a real good look at every picture, just like a lad might do, and once or twice she gives a little giggle, when she comes to one she thinks is a bit more saucy than the rest, I suppose. I go over and sit on the arm of her chair and look down over her shoulder. I get a funny kind of thrill looking at pictures like these with her and I can feel the blood in my throat and my hands aren’t steady.
‘I don’t know how they can do it,’ she says, ‘standing in front of a photographer like that.’
‘I don’t suppose they think anything of it. It’s a job. Exploiting their natural assets, you might say,’
‘I’ll bet there’s some carrying on.’
‘Now who’s being dirty-minded?’
‘Well if you were taking photographs of women like this all day wouldn’t you feel like it? Now you can’t pretend you wouldn’t.’
‘Well, I’m not used to it. And anyway, I don’t know where you drop on jobs like that. There’d ha’ been some sense in it if me dad had apprenticed me to one o’ these blokes.’
She gives my leg a dig with her elbow. ‘Go on with you!’
She turns the pages. ‘She’s lovely, though. Isn’t she firm?’
‘No nicer than you,’ I say, and I’m glad she can’t see my face because my cheeks are on fire.
‘Get away,’ she says. ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do, though. I think your figure’s every bit as nice as hers.’
‘Look at her bust, though. I’ll bet she doesn’t even need a bra.’
I have to swallow a couple of times before I can speak.
‘Well, I think you’ve got… got lovely breasts. I’ve always thought so.’
‘Shut up,’ she says. ‘You’ll make me blush.’ And I can see her coming up pink about the ears and neck.
‘Course, I couldn’t swear to it, like… I mean…’
‘I know what you mean,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to go into details.’
I bend over her and lift her face up to mine. I kiss her but she doesn’t respond much. ‘I wish we could,’ I say.
‘Could what?’
‘Go into details.’
‘You want a lot, don’t you?’
I keep my face down, talking soft into her ear as she goes on turning the pages of the book, pretending to look to the end. Then I take the book off her and put it away. I go round the front of her chair and pull her to her feet by both hands and kiss her again. There’s still not much coming back; and I thought she was in a frisky mood. I’m mad for her now, though, and I’m sure she can feel my heart pumping away against her. I’ve got one hand between us, holding her through the blouse.
‘You know how I am about you, Ingrid,’ I say, spreading my feet to balance us.
‘That’s the trouble,’ she says. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Nobody’s ever got me this way before,’ I tell her, and it’s no lie.
‘But you don’t always feel like this, do you? And then you’re not bothered about me.’
I’m a bit ashamed. What can I say to her?
‘I don’t know how I do feel half the time,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve never been through this kind of thing before. I know I must seem a louse at times, but I don’t mean to be, and I’m not like that really. It’s just that sometimes I feel rotten about it all and then I think it’s not fair to either of us to carry on… I did try to break it off, y’know, when I found out it wasn’t the same as I’d thought.’
‘But I came running after you…’
I’m not liking this. We’ve managed pretty well without talk before, because I thought we both knew just how it was, and Ingrid seemed to have decided to make the best of it, even though it wasn’t what she wanted. But at least talking does give me a chance to make some excuse for myself and show her I know how she must feel even if on the outside I just seem selfish and out for my own ends. The trouble is there’s two sides to everybody and Ingrid brings out all the worst in me instead of the best.
It’s hard to say, the mood I’m in just now, but I reckon I owe her the chance if she wants to take it. ‘D’you want to pack it in?’ I say. ‘I reckon I can’t blame you if you do.’
She seems to think about it for a few seconds, standing close up to me and looking at the floor by my feet. Then she says, ‘No, I don’t want to pack it in.’ And when she lifts her face and kisses me there’s everything in it that she was holding back before.
I start to unbutton her blouse up the front and she doesn’t object to this because it’s no more than we’ve done before. It’s only when I start pulling it free of her skirt that she puts her hand over mine to stop me.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Somebody might come.’
‘You’re not expecting anybody, are you?’
‘No, but you never know.’
‘Lock the door.’
‘I already have.’
‘Well if anybody does come you can pretend you were in the bath or something,’ I tell her, saying the first thing that comes into my head.
‘Oh, Vic…’
‘C’mon, Ingrid, c’mon.’
‘It’s nothing, you know, really.’
‘Not to you. You’re a girl. It’s a lot to me. I think about nothing else sometimes. I lie in bed and imagine…’
‘Well I can’t do it while you’re here. You’ll have to go out.’
‘Oh, c’mon. I’ll do it for you.’
‘No, I can’t, Vic, honest. You’ll have to go out.’
‘Okay, then,’ I say, thinking you can’t expect everything at once. ‘I’ll go up to the bathroom.’
‘Its round the corner at the top of the stairs. You’ll give me time, won’t you?’
I look at my watch. ‘It’s half past now. I won’t come back till twenty to.’
She switches on the standard lamp by the television set and douses the main light. Then she goes to the fireplace and stands with one hand on it, looking down into the fire.
I go out and along the passage and up the stairs. The carpet’s thick under my feet. The house isn’t big but I’m impressed by the furnishings. It seems Mr Rothwell must have spent a load of dough making it comfortable for Ingrid and her ma while he’s away on his travels.
The bathroom has pink walls with black tiles to about chest height. Our bath at home stands on four cast-iron rests like animals’ feet but this is one of the modern boxed-in efforts, in black to match the tiles.
I wonder how I’m going to pass the next ten minutes and then I catch sight of myself in the glass over the washbasin and decide my hair needs combing; so I spend a bit of time on that, easing the waves in with my fingers till it’s just right. Then I wash my hand with the piece of blue scented soap and hold my hand under my mouth and try to smell my breath. It’s not a very good method but I’m not bothered because I don�
��t think I have any trouble that way. I put the lid down over the lavatory and sit down. My watch shows another five minutes to go. I sit down and think about Ingrid downstairs and wonder just what she’s doing. All at once I remember the Old Lady saying something to me a long time ago after I’d been in some kind of scrape – I can’t remember just what it was. But I remember she said, ‘Never do anything you’d be ashamed of your mother knowing about,’ and I’m thinking Oh, Christ, if she could only see me now, because if it depended on what she’s told me – or the Old Feller for that matter – I’d still be thinking you got babies by saving Co-op Cheques and that there isn’t any difference between men and women except women grow their hair longer and don’t have to shave. And then I get to thinking what a funny business it all is, this sex and blokes going mad over women and doing all sorts of daft things because of them. And it’s been the same since the world began and now here I am and it’s my turn and it makes you wonder where it’ll all end.
I deliberately wait two minutes over the ten I said before I go down. Then my legs are like jelly on the stairs.
III
A few days after, the first real snow of the winter arrives. It falls during the night and by the time people are up and getting on their way to work the snow ploughs have been busy clearing the roads. The snow lasts for nearly a fortnight and even after it’s gone there are still grubby patches of it in the fields and the corners where nobody walks. And it stays cold. In fact it’s colder than when the snow was here. Everything gets frozen up and the way the frost bites at you makes you wonder if it’ll ever turn warm again. This is the worst time of the year for open-air courting and Ingrid and I mostly go to the pictures on our night out. But now and again we just have to go into the park, even if it’s only into a shelter. Nights like this, when your hands are like blocks of ice, I think about their comfy dining-room and the fire and the couch. But we never get a chance like that again.
And now something’s changed. One time I’d never have thought of going all the way with Ingrid, like a bloke short of money wouldn’t think of robbing a bank. I’d be just asking for trouble. But since I’ve seen her and know just what she’s like, how gorgeous she really is, there’s always temptation like a little chap sitting on my shoulder and whispering in my ear, ‘Go on, find out what you want to know. Twenty-one years and you’ve never done it with anybody. You’ve gone so far, why not go that little bit further? It’s okay, thousands are doing it all the time, and she’s willing.’ Well, one night when the freeze is suddenly over and everything’s mild again we go to our old spot under the trees. This little chap is extra persuasive and it seems like either him or a mate of his is talking to Ingrid as well, because it happens. I don’t have to force her or even persuade her really; she seems as ready as I am; and it’s not till after that we stop and think about it.