by Stan Barstow
‘Oh, aye,’ the Old Lady says. ‘Oh, aye, leave it to t’men an’ it’ll be all right. I know.’ She nods her head a time or two. ‘Well them ’at lives t’longest ’ull see t’most.’
She goes into the kitchen and comes back in a minute with a couple of mugs. ‘Here’s your cocoa, if you can stomach any more liquid tonight.’
The Old Man lifts his eyebrows at me but says nothing.
‘Well I must say,’ the Old Lady says, sitting down, ‘’at Ingrid seems a decent enough lass. I’ll admit I was quite prepared to dislike her, but I changed me mind when I’d seen her. Time’ll tell whether I’m right or wrong, but I don’t think our Victor’s getting a bad lass for a wife. He could ha’ done worse.’
This is high praise from the Old Lady, and something to tell Ingrid when I see her again.
‘What’s her mother like, Vic?’ the Old Feller asks me.
‘D’you think you’ll get on with her?’
I pull a little face and shake my head. ‘She’s a bit of a rum’un, Dad. I don’t rightly know.’
The Old Feller looks at me and there’s a kind of frosty smile in his eyes. ‘Tha’re goin’ to have plenty o’ time to find out, lad,’ he says.
‘Married?’ Mr Van Huyten says. ‘Well, bless my soul! Congratulations, Victor. This is rather sudden, isn’t it? Or have I been out of touch?’
‘We kind of decided all at once.’
‘Ah, well, you impetuous young people,’ he says with a twinkle. ‘Of course you can take your first week’s holiday when you like. You must have a honeymoon.’ He makes a note in his diary. ‘The second week in May. No, I don’t see any objection to that.’
‘I’m afraid we shan’t be able to ask you to the wedding, Mr Van Huyten. It’s going to be a very small affair, y’see. Just close family like.’
‘Oh, that’s all right, Victor. I understand perfectly.’
I wonder if he does. And if he does he says not a dicky bird about it either now or later. He’s like that, of course, is Mr Van Huyten.
Henry’s a great believer in marriage.
‘Best thing you could do,’ he says when I tell him. ‘Marry early, get some kids and responsibility. It’s the making of a man, responsibility. And remember, marriage is what you make it. Look at me, for instance.’
I’m looking at him and think if he’s a for instance I don’t want any.
‘So a wife and six kids on my wage isn’t everybody’s cup of tea,’ Henry says. ‘But I’m happy with it, Vic, and that’s the main thing.’
And so he is. A wife with as much glamour as an old doormat; house like a pigsty from morning till night with kids bawling and wiping jam and bread on the wallpaper and crapping all over the place. And old Henry’s happy on it. And many a bloke with five thousand a year’s getting ulcers and worrying himself into the cemetery. It just goes to show. But what it goes to show I don’t rightly know, except maybe that people are different. And that’s the big snag; you can account for nearly all the trouble in the world when you say that.
All my mates, Jimmy Slade and Willy Lomas and the rest, I’m avoiding like the plague. And all the time I’m waiting for a miracle to happen to make it all come right and put things back where they were again.
6
I
But this is no fairy-tale and no miracle happens. The cell door shuts behind me and the key turns in the lock at eleven o’clock in the morning on the first Saturday in May at the registry office in Huddersfield Road. David’s my best man and Ingrid has a cousin of hers that I’ve never seen before as her bridesmaid. All I can think of when it’s over and we’re walking out into the sunshine again is how fast you sign yourself away. As we go through the gates into the street a bint goes by, wobbling a bit on stiletto heels. I sort of half-register the fact that she’s got nice legs and then all at once it comes over me that I’ll never be able to look at a bint with an open mind again. I’m a goner. The search is over for me. I’m a married man as of five minutes ago and soon I’ll be a father. It all clots up inside me in a hard lump of misery and I just can’t talk to anybody. Not that there’s much merry wedding conversation going on anyway. They’re all somehow feeling this wasn’t the way they wanted it and what should have been a big important and happy time has sort of crept up on them and caught them napping.
We go back to Rothwells’ and have a buffet meal and here the party begins to relax a bit. The Old Feller and Mr Rothwell get really chatty, but the two mothers are spending their time sizing one another up and kind of jockeying for position all the time as though they think the men are letting the side down the way they’re talking about football and this, that, and the other, nearly like old mates.
At half past one Ingrid and I go upstairs for a wash. There’s no changing to do because I’m travelling in my new dark blue suit and Ingrid’s going in the grey costume she’s worn at the wedding. When we come down we see her mother getting herself ready and Ingrid says, ‘Mother, would you mind if just Jean and Christine and David came with us to the station?’
Ma Rothwell’s jaw drops a mile at this. ‘But whatever for?’ she says. ‘Don’t you want your own mother to see you off on your honeymoon?’
‘I’d rather it wasn’t such a big party,’ lngrid says, and there’s something about the stubborn way she says it that suits me fine. I don’t want the band playing at the station, for one.
Well, Ma Rothwell looks as if she’s going to cry and Mr Rothwell chips in and says, ‘Yes, let her have her way, Esther. It’ll perhaps be just as well.’
Well there’s kisses and handshakes all round and I find Mrs Rothwell’s pudgy cheek up against my face so I kiss that and taste face-powder. Mr Rothwell gets hold of my hand like he means it and looks me straight in the eye. ‘I shan’t be here when you get back, so I’ll see you later. Just you look after her, now.’
‘I will.’
We take Mr Rothwell’s Oxford and David drives. We’ve timed it nicely and the train’s in when we go through the barrier. When we’re in the carriage and leaning out of the window for the last good-byes I meet Chris’s look, it seems to me for the first time since I broke the news at home. Because if there’s one person I’ve hated knowing about this, and felt ashamed in front of, it’s her. Now I see she’s smiling at me and I feel tons better just for that.
‘Look after her, Vic,’ she says. ‘She’ll need it. And you, Ingrid, be good to him. He’s not a bad lad, your husband.’
‘I know that,’ Ingrid says, and all at once she’s sobbing like a leaky tap, sniffing and blowing into her hanky.
David shakes my hand. ‘All the best, Vic.’
And then they’re waving to us as the train moves down the platform.
We sit down in opposite corners as the train pulls clear of the station and picks up speed. Ingrid blows her nose and puts her hanky away and gets her compact out and starts to cover the signs of her crying. She’s looking very smart and attractive and the grey costume suits her. I suppose to look at us anybody would take us for a normal happy honeymoon couple, very much in love and all that. She puts the compact away and looks at me.
‘Well, missis?’ I say.
‘Aye, mister?’
I smile at her. It’s not much of a smile to tell the truth, but I’m surprised I can muster one at all.
II
Scarborough’s sunny and a bit quiet because the season hasn’t properly begun yet. We get a taxi at the station and it takes us up on to the Esplanade overlooking the Spa and South Bay where Mrs Rothwell’s booked us in at a posher hotel than any I’ve ever stayed at before. There’s even a bloke in a white jacket in the lobby waiting to take our luggage upstairs when we arrive; though it’s no more than there should be for thirty bob a day apiece, low season rate. Just like Ma Rothwell to chuck my brass around, I think. But I don’t mind too much because you can keep yourself to yourself in these better places, and anyway, you can’t count the pennies on your honeymoon, can you?
When we’re getting rea
dy for bed that night we keep our backs turned to one another like a couple of bashful kids. But I catch sight of Ingrid in the dressing-table mirror as she slots the nightie down over her head and it seems to me her bust’s filling up and she’s showing a definite belly already. I never thought anybody could guess she was in the family way, but now I’m not so sure. I’ll be thinking about it all the week now and wondering if everybody knows, and us on our honeymoon.
We get into bed and put the light out and I take hold of her intending to make the most of the fact that we’ve got a licence for it now, but she stops me short when she says, ‘D’you think we should, Vic? Don’t you think it might be dangerous?’
I’m flabbergasted. ‘How d’you mean, dangerous?’
‘For the baby,’
‘But you’re hardly three months gone yet, what the heck! It’s ages yet before it gets dangerous. Didn’t your mother say anything about it?’
‘That’s what I mean. She said I’d to be careful.’
‘Hell! what’s she trying to do, spoil our honeymoon?’
‘She was only thinking about me, Vic.’
‘And doing her best to turn you stone cold on our wedding night.’ The bitch, I’m thinking, the damned interfering old bitch. And that’s what I’ve got to live with.
‘I’m sure she didn’t mean any harm.’
‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, Ingrid, it’s all in a book I bought.’
‘A book?’
‘Yeh, a book for people just getting married. It tells you how to go on.’
She giggles.
‘What’s funny?’
‘Most people, would say we knew “how to go on”.’
‘Well, I thought I might as well get genned up properly from the start. It says in there ’at you’re okay till about six months. I looked it up specially. I’ve got it in the case. I’ll get it out an’ show it you if you want.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’ She snuggles up closer and I think this is a lot better.
‘It’s told me a lot more things as well…’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as how to get you where I want you. How to rouse you an’ all that.’
She rubs her face against mine and I get hair in my mouth. ‘You know you’ve always known how to do that.’
‘Well, now I know even better.’ I start giving her a bit of the technique. ‘What you got this passion-killer on for?’
‘It’s not a passion-killer; it’s a passion-rouser. I bought it specially for you. It’s sheer nylon. Don’t you like it?’
‘I like it when I’m looking. I’m not looking now.’
‘Wait a minute, then.’
She pulls away from me and sits up in the bed.
‘Put it under the pillow in case there’s a fire.’
She giggles in the dark, and then she’s back and there’s nothing in the way any more.
‘Better?’
‘A lot better.’
I run my hand all the way down from her shoulder to her hips. ‘Remember that night at your house? Gosh, but I’ll never know how I held off that time, I wanted you that bad.’
‘You can have me now,’ she says, feeling for my mouth. ‘Oh, Vic,’ she says before she kisses me, ‘I do love you.’
And I’d give anything in the world to be able to say it back.
We’ve only been there a couple of days when we have our first quarrel.
There’s a couple stopping at this hotel. There’s a lot more people like, but there’s this couple who sit at the next table for meals and seem to want to be friendly. They’re a youngish-looking middle-aged couple who have a green Ford Consul parked out in front of the place. They’re not what you’d call well-off because you can tell that by his sports coat which has definitely seen better days, though she’s quite a snappy dresser. All the same, they have this something about them that puts them a cut or two above Ingrid and me. A kind of air, it is, of knowing their way about and what things are best and what are common. They’re not common, if you see what I mean. They talk nice as well. Not lah-di-da, but easy and natural, without any accent that shows where they come from. Anybody can place me straight away, and Ma Rothwell as well, no matter how she puts it on, but not these two.
Well it appears they live in Essex and this is the first time they’ve stayed on the Yorkshire coast and because Ingrid knows all round pretty well from having stayed here a lot as a kid she’s soon talking away nineteen to the dozen, telling them all the places they should see. Which is all very well, but before long I begin to notice how her voice is changing; how she’s putting it on like a telephone operator in a high-class knocking-shop. And it gets worse and worse and more and more obvious till I just can’t stand it any more, I’m that mad and embarrassed, and I have to get up and go out.
I wait for her on the steps, looking out across the road at the bay and Castle rock sticking out into the sea with the little boats and pleasure steamers hugging under it like chickens under an old hen.
‘What did you do that for?’ she says when she comes out.
‘What?’ I say, sulky like.
‘Barge out like that right in the middle of the conversation.’
‘I can leave a room without asking their permission, can’t I?’ I start down the steps and she follows me.
‘Well, what’s wrong with them, for goodness’ sake? I think they’re very nice people.’
‘Mebbe they are, but there’s no need to throw yourself at ’em just because they condescend to exchange a few words about the weather.’
‘And if they’d sat there all week and not spoken you’d have said they were stuck-up and snobbish. Well, it strikes me you’re the snob – an upside-down snob.’
I’m getting pretty riled now, more so because I know I’m partly at fault. ‘I’ve talked to better people than them in my time but they have to take me as I am, Yorkshire accent an’ all. I don’t put it on for anybody.’
‘And who does?’
‘You do. You sounded as if you were auditioning for the BBC and trying to kid ’em you’d come straight from Eton, or wherever it is they send these posh bints.’
‘I hadn’t noticed,’ she says, stiffening up.
‘Well I did, an’ I’ll bet they did an’ all. Why d’you want to throw yourself at people like that? Meet ’em half-way, be pleasant, okay. But there’s no need to gush and preen yourself as if they were royalty or something. People don’t think any better of you for trying to make out you’re better than you are.’
She says nothing to this and a bit of me’s sorry under the irritation. We walk on without saying anything for a bit, then I say, ‘Okay, let’s forget it.’
‘I think we’d better,’ she says, very quiet, and this is worse somehow than if she’d come out and bawled back at me.
We’ve got to the cliff lift now and there’s one at the top standing with its door open.
‘Where d’you want to go?’
‘I’m not particular.’
‘You want to go and look at the shops?’
‘No, we’d better save that for later in the week when we know how much money we have left.’
‘Well, I shan’t have so much left if that bloke stands about in the hall so much more,’ I say, trying to make a joke. ‘I feel as if I ought to put a bob into his hand every time I pass him.’
‘Shall we go down on the beach, then?’ she says.
‘Okay. We’ll get the papers and a couple of deck chairs and take it easy like a real old married couple.’
‘I suppose we ought to make the most of it,’ she says. ‘It’s the last holiday we’ll have on our own for a long, long time.’
It’s these casual remarks about us spending the rest of our lives together that chill me to the marrow, reminding me that this is real and not a dream. We walk together into the lift and I look down at her in her summer frock and wonder if it shows.
III
Next week I move my gear over to Rothwell’s ready for settling in. Th
ere’s not much, just my clothes, a few books, and one or two gramophone records. I leave the gram at home for young Jim because Ingrid already has one. Ingrid’s bed’s a three-quarter size, which is fair enough when we’re feeling matey, but not so good for sleeping comfortable; so we put this in the spare room and go into town and buy a new double one for us. This is our first bit of furniture and the only thing we need at present because the rest of the stuff in Ingrid’s room – dressing-table, wardrobe, and drawers – is enough for both of us. On the face of it this should give us a chance to save up for when we can get our own place, but now Ingrid’s packed her job in we only have my wage and by the time I’ve paid Ma Rothwell board and lodging for the two of us and I’ve had my National Health and income tax stopped at the shop we only have about fifty bob left over to pay for everything else – entertainment, clothes, and all the stuff we’ll need for the kid when it arrives. At this rate I can see us being stuck with Ingrid’s old lady for the next ten years and I don’t like the thought of this one little bit; because from the day I go there to the day I walk out I don’t feel at home in that house.
This is because Ma Rothwell and I don’t get along very well, like I expected. We don’t have words or anything like that (not at first, anyway) and there’s nothing really you can pin down and tell anybody about because you have to be around all the time and see how things lead up to things and hear the tone of voice things are said in to get the idea.
I’m not so bothered that she’s house-proud. I’m a pretty tidy sort of bloke myself and if she wants to empty ashtrays after me and shake the cushions about all the time and tell me she doesn’t want me to smoke upstairs or go up there in my shoes, well it’s her house and if she’s proud of it she can have it that way. It does get on your nerves after a bit, though.