A Kind of Loving

by Stan Barstow

  ‘Is that why you married her, Vic? I’ve wondered.’

  ‘Well now you know.’

  ‘But there must have been something, Vic.’

  ‘You’re a woman. I don’t know if you’d understand. You only know you and David and you want to thank your lucky stars for that. It doesn’t happen to everybody. I thought it was like that with me an’ Ingrid right at the beginning, but it didn’t last long.’

  ‘But you still went on seeing her.’

  ‘Yes, I did… For other reasons.’

  ‘Wasn’t that… well, selfish?’

  ‘I did pack it up once. I thought it was over. But she came after me. I knew I was being a rotten dog but she still wanted me so I thought I might as well have what was going. One night I went a bit too far and now I’m paying for it. It’s worked out bloody expensive, Chris, I can tell you…’

  I sit there with my head in my hands and Chris says nothing for a bit. When she does say something it makes me jerk my head up and look at her.

  ‘Well, after all, Vic, you’ve made your own bed, haven’t you?’

  I’m stunned, as though somebody’s hit me over the head.

  ‘You say that? That’s what everybody else’ll say. Can’t you say nothing else?’

  ‘Well haven’t you?’ she says. ‘It’s the truth, after all.’

  ‘I expected something different from you.’

  ‘I’ll have to be honest with you, Vic. I think you’ve only yourself to blame. If you hadn’t played about with this girl you wouldn’t be here like this now. Right’s right and wrong’s no man’s right.’

  I can’t get over it. I hardly know her. This isn’t the Chris I used to run to, the one you could depend on to show you the way out, the thing to do. Coming here was the first thing I thought of, and now I’m getting what I could have got free at home.

  ‘You sound like my mother.’

  ‘And why not? She knows and she’d say the same thing to you. You’re married and you just can’t dismiss the fact.’

  I feel all the bitterness come up sour in my throat. ‘I’m married all right. You all made sure I’d get married. You all stood round pushing. There wasn’t one of you said no don’t do it if you don’t want to.’

  ‘It wasn’t a case of wanting to or not wanting to. You pushed yourself when you did what you did with Ingrid. At least you had the backbone to face your responsibilities.’

  ‘For life. Black’s black and white’s white. Haven’t any of you ever heard of a bloody colour called grey?’

  ‘You’re swearing a lot, Vic. You never used to.’

  Everybody’s telling me that: that I’m swearing a lot. I wonder why it is…

  ‘I don’t know what to say, Chris,’ I say in a minute. ‘I could always talk to you. We seemed closer together. You could always understand better than they could.’

  ‘Perhaps I understand now better than they would, but I can’t simply wave my magic wand and make it all come right. You came here this morning with some vague idea that you could tell me all about it and it would all turn out to be like it was before you were married. That’s it, isn’t it? Trust Chris to get me out of it. Well, I’m sorry, Vic, but it can’t be done. It’s a bit too big for that.’

  I turn round in my chair and look out of the window. They’ve got a nice view on a clear day but now it’s just mucky and grey and damp and all you can see is the mills down by the river with the big chimneys sticking up into the mist.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Chris says after a while.

  ‘I don’t know… I know one thing, though; I’m not going back to live with that old cow Ma Rothwell.’

  ‘She probably wouldn’t have you back now, anyway.’

  ‘No…’ I haven’t told Chris about me throwing up on the carpet. It’s one detail I’d rather she didn’t know.

  ‘Well that makes it easier.’

  David comes in from the bedroom, stuffing cigs and matches and papers into his pockets. He buys nice suits, David, but he ruins them with the amount of stuff he packs into the pockets.

  ‘Vic’s left Ingrid,’ Chris tell him.

  ‘I’d gathered as much,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, Vic. That it’s come to that, I mean. Anything we can do?’

  ‘It looks as though there is,’ Chris says. ‘We shall have to put him up here for tonight at least, I think.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself out for me.’

  She turns on me. ‘It’s no use being silly-clever about it, Vic,’ she says. ‘Where else can you go? You won’t want to go home just yet, I suppose?’

  All of a sudden I feel my face begin to slip. I can’t hold it, keep it together. It crumples up. ‘I haven’t got a home,’ I say. ‘I haven’t got a bloody home.’ And then my face is down in my arms and I’m crying without trying to stop it, crying away with it all coming out; all of six months bottled up and now coming away.

  II

  I sleep on the studio couch in the sitting-room that night and for a good few nights after. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve no plans. Any idea I might have of going back home and picking up where I left off is soon scotched because next day Chris tells me she’s seen the Old Lady.

  ‘Has she been here?’

  ‘No, I called on the way back from school.’

  ‘You told her, I suppose?’

  ‘That’s what I went for. She has to know, Vic, and it’s better coming from one of us than from somebody in the street.’

  ‘I suppose so. What did she say?’

  ‘She was upset.’ I see Chris hesitate. ‘She says she doesn’t want to see you till you’ve patched it up with Ingrid again.’

  I feel my mouth tighten. ‘If that’s the way she wants it … She’ll have to wait a long time, that’s all.’

  ‘I told her I didn’t think she was being fair; that you should be able to come to her when you’re in trouble. But she said you should have gone straight to her if you felt like that. I think she’s hurt that you didn’t go there first.’

  ‘I wanted advice, not a row with all the old proverbs thrown in.’

  ‘As it happens you didn’t get much more here, did you?’

  I shrug.

  David comes in with a loaded briefcase. Exercise books, I suppose. He says, ‘Hi,’ to me and kisses Chris. I look away for a minute. I can’t bear to watch them. It’s the worst of being here, seeing how happy they are.

  ‘I’ve just been talking to Fowler downstairs,’ David says, dropping the briefcase in a chair. ‘He’s got a job in Canada.’

  ‘Have they decided to go?’ Chris says.

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s just a question of time now, apparently. Making all the arrangements and all that.’

  I can see Chris has something on her mind.

  ‘How long did he say it would be?’

  ‘About six weeks or a couple of months, I think. They’ve only just decided.’

  ‘What are they going to do about the lease of the flat?’

  ‘Give it up, I suppose.’

  Chris looks at me and David says. ‘Oh, I see what you’re –’

  ‘Vic,’ Chris says. ‘Do you think you and Ingrid would have been all right if you’d been on your own?’

  ‘I dunno. We’d have been better. At least we could have brought things out and talked about them and said what we had to say.’

  ‘Suppose you could get the Fowlers’ flat, do you think Ingrid would come?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I can feel myself being pushed into another corner and I shy away from it. ‘It’s too soon, Chris. I don’t know what I want to do.’

  ‘Could you afford it?’ she says. ‘It’s four pounds a week.’

  ‘Not on my wage.’

  ‘Suppose Ingrid got another job?’

  ‘I suppose we could then. Only her mother doesn’t want her to go out to work again. She thinks a husband should be able to keep a wife.’

  ‘Let’s leave her mother out of it. She’s had too much to say already.’
>
  ‘I don’t know…’

  ‘David,’ Chris says, ‘pop down and see Mr Fowler. Tell him you know somebody who might want the flat. Ask him how long he’ll hold it before he advertises or asks anybody else. He might have somebody in mind, of course.’

  David goes out again and I say, ‘Look, Chris, I don’t know. I’m all mixed up. I don’t know what I want to do.’

  ‘If he’ll hold the flat it’ll give you a breathing space while you decide.’

  ‘Suppose the landlord’s got somebody else on his list?’

  ‘It doesn’t work quite like that. These flats are leased year by year. It’s up to the outgoing tenant who he surrenders his lease to, though the landlord can always refuse to renew it if he disapproves. The Fowlers only renewed their lease a couple of months ago.’

  ‘But that means I’ll have to find a lump sum and I just haven’t got it.’

  ‘Don’t worry about that. We’ll raise the money somehow and you can pay back week by week. Anyway, all that can be settled later. The point is, do you want it? Will you give it a try?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know, Chris.’

  She comes down on her knees in front of me and takes my hands in hers. ‘Look, Vic, I know you’re unhappy, and I want to help you. We both do.’

  I turn my head away. ‘I’ve had enough, Chris. It’s just a big cheat. A lousy cheat.’

  ‘I know what you wanted, Vic,’ she says. ‘It’s what most people want, though they’re not all conscious of it. They want the other half of themselves, the other person who will make them whole. I’m happy to say I’ve found that with David. There was no doubt in my mind at the beginning and there’s been none since.

  ‘People talk glibly of being in love. Magazines and films are full of it. But there’s a difference between that and loving. You can be in love with someone you hardly know – all romance and rapture and starry eyes. Oh, it’s all true, Vic. It can happen just the way they say it does. But you don’t love a person till you know him or her inside out, until you’ve lived with them and shared experience: sadness, joy, living – you’ve got to share living before you can find love. Being in love doesn’t last, but you can find love to take its place. Do you know what I mean, Vic?’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘With some people that shared experience drives them apart, but with others it welds them still more strongly together. Through losing your baby you and Ingrid have shared tragedy early. Don’t let it drive you apart, Vic. Be strong. Let it give you something, not take away.’

  ‘We never had it in the beginning,’ I say.

  ‘Well try to find it now, Vic,’ Chris says. ‘Think of Ingrid. She loves you, or she did, I know. Losing the baby was much more of an ordeal to her than it could be to you. She needs somebody, Vic – not her mother – but somebody strong, to look after her and comfort her and make her see that life can be good again. You could do that, Vic. You could do that for Ingrid.’ She squeezes my hands. ‘Be strong, Vic. Don’t give up. Make your marriage work. ‘I’m not offering you the easy way out, am I?’ she says in a minute.

  I haven’t time to think up an answer to this before David comes back and Chris gets up off her knees.

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He’s got nobody else in mind. He’ll hold it for a week.’

  I run my hand through my hair. ‘Only a week. It’s not long enough, Chris.’

  She looks at me. ‘I think it is, Vic. Quite long enough.’

  ‘How are you fixed for money?’ David asks me.

  ‘I’ve about thirty quid. Not a lot, is it?’

  ‘Well if that’s all that’s on your mind, don’t worry. We can let you have a bit and you can pay us back when you can.’

  I look up and there’s Chris looking from me to David with that lovely little smile on her face that seems to say, ‘There’s my man. I didn’t have to ask him – he knew.’

  ‘It… it’s really very good of you, David.’

  ‘Glad to be able to help. Families should stick together, I always think.’

  III

  A couple of days later Mr Rothwell comes home. I suppose Ingrid’s mother’s sent for him. He’ll be thinking he’s had nothing but urgent messages to come home since he heard about me. Anyway, how I know about it this time is because he rings me up at the shop.

  ‘Vic? This is Ingrid’s father. I want to talk to you.’

  I’m sure I don’t want to talk to him. I imagine the way Ma Rothwell must have ranted on about me coming in drunk and spewing on the carpet and I think he’ll probably want to take a poke at me when he does see me.

  ‘Well, what about?’

  ‘Don’t be so bloody ingenuous,’ he says. ‘What do you think it’s about?’

  ‘Well, when, then? I’m working now.’

  ‘Where do you have your lunch?’

  ‘At a little cafe round the corner.’

  ‘D’you know the Dolphin, that pub in Bread Street?’

  I say I do.

  ‘Meet me there at half past twelve… Hello? Are you still there? I thought we’d been cut off. You will be there, won’t you?’

  I say okay, I’ll be there, and he rings off.

  I’ve got butterflies in my stomach all the rest of the morning, wondering what he’s going to say, but when I get there at dinner-time he seems quite reasonable, like he always is. We order and he doesn’t start till the soup’s served.

  ‘It’s quite a mess, taken all round, isn’t it?’ he says.

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘I’ve a good mind to send you a cleaning bill for the carpet.’

  I feel myself going red. ‘I’m sorry about that. It was an accident. I was pretty sozzled but I didn’t mean to do that.’

  ‘It seems the beer loosened your tongue a bit, too,’ he says.

  I say nothing.

  ‘Perhaps you had some cause to fly off the handle; I don’t know. I’ve only heard one side of it.’ He lifts his spoon and sucks in some tomato soup. ‘Like to tell me your story?’

  I shuffle about a bit on the chair. ‘I don’t see how I can, really.’

  ‘You mean without offending me? Well try.’

  ‘Well it’s just that I don’t think Ingrid’s mother liked me from the start and she’s never given us a chance. We’ve never seemed to be married at all, really. I never felt I could say what I thought without getting her back up. I don’t know if you know it, but she influences Ingrid quite a lot.’

  He nods. ‘I know. Perhaps that’s partly due to me being away so much.’

  ‘Well it got so Ingrid listened to her mother first all the time. I felt like a lodger, only worse, because a lodger can come and go as he likes and she was always rubbing it in that I had obligations and responsibilities, but I never had a chance to take responsibility because I was just nobody about the place… Then when the accident happened and she never let me know I was so wild I nearly walked out there and then.’

  ‘What do you mean, she never let you know?’

  I tell him about coming home to find the house locked, and how Mrs Oliphant told me what had happened. I get a definite impression he didn’t know about this, but he doesn’t let on.

  ‘She even tried to blame me for that,’ I tell him. I’m not enjoying this. It’s not easy to run down a bloke’s wife to his face, even if he has invited you to do it. ‘You might ha’ thought I’d stood at the top of the stairs and pushed her…’

  I’m hoping he’ll say something about this and give away how much he knows, but he doesn’t.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘you decided to stay.’

  ‘Yes… And then things just got worse. Ingrid didn’t seem to have any life in her any more. She just moped about the place like she was going off into a decline and nothing I said could snap her out of it. She said I’d no consideration.’

  ‘It was a big shock to her, you know.’

  ‘I know it must have been, but she can’t act as if it happened last wee
k for the rest of her life. I just got the feeling her mother was encouraging her not to get better.’

  ‘So you’d say, then, by and large, that Ingrid’s mother was at the bottom of all the trouble?’ he says, watching me.

  ‘Well… yes, I would.’ It is embarrassing, you know, calling a bloke’s wife to his face, especially if he happens to be a decent sort of cove. And there’s another thing – I have to lay all the blame on Ma Rothwell because I can’t tell him what the real trouble is: that I never loved Ingrid in the first place and all this on top of that was a bit too much for anybody to take.

  The waitress comes over and serves the main course. I look at it, mashed potatoes, cabbage, and mutton. I don’t feel much like it.

  ‘Like a glass of beer?’ Mr Rothwell says.

  ‘No, thanks. I shall feel sleepy all afternoon if I have any. He orders a pale ale for himself. ‘Not much of a drinker, are you?’

  ‘No, I’m not. I get drunk pretty easily, really.’

  ‘Oh, don’t feel ashamed about it,’ he says. ‘It’s a point in your favour, actually.’ He picks his knife and fork up. It doesn’t seem as if this is putting him off his grub anyway.

  ‘What are your plans now, then?’ he says. ‘Are you living at home again?’

  ‘No, I’m at my sister’s.’

  ‘Not very well in with your father and mother, is that it?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You seem to be quite an outcast.’

  ‘I’m getting used to it. I’ve felt like one long enough.’

  ‘You know,’ he says, waving his knife about, ‘I get the impression that you feel badly done to and have for some time. Almost as though marriage itself was something that had been imposed on you.’

  I begin to feel uncomfortable because he’s getting too warm for my liking.

  ‘Do you wish you’d never got married?’ he says.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Why did you get married?’ he says, his eye on me. ‘Because you loved Ingrid or because of the baby?’

  I don’t answer this one.

  ‘All right, then; do you want to stay married to Ingrid?’