by Ted Lewis
“What was foreseen?” I asked when she came out.
“Oh nothing.”
“What did she say?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“Come on, tell me,” I asked, but she wouldn’t budge.
We took the girls to the bus stop. Alex and Jenny were engrossed in kissing each other.
“Look,” I said to Janet, “I hope you don’t believe everything that people say about me at college. I mean, I wouldn’t want you to think I’d asked you out with me because, you know, I thought you were just another girl. Because I don’t at all. I’ve been meaning to ask you out since about the end of the first week at college.”
She looked at me with her expression of disbelief, apprehension, detachment, vulnerability and quietness.
“I haven’t enjoyed going out with anyone as much as I have tonight for years,” I said. “I don’t expect you to believe that, but I really mean it. I really do. I know we got soaking wet but I thought it was really nice tonight. I felt different.”
“It’s nice of you to say so,” she said, half smiling, but not with the eyes.
“I mean it, and there’s something else, too. I’d like to see you again, I mean, if you want to see me, that is.”
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Sure you will. But believe me, I don’t want you to take any notice of what people say. Look, it’s not as though I’m asking you to go out seriously with me,” I lied, “or anything; it’s just that I’d like to see you again because I really enjoyed tonight and, well, I don’t usually say this kind of thing,” I lied, “but I think you’re really very nice indeed.”
She considered what I said.
“Well, I quite enjoyed tonight, too. Thank you for asking me,” she said.
I put my hands on her shoulders and gently pulled her toward me. She looked into my eyes with a question. I pulled her closer. I kissed her. I felt those strands of hair on my forehead. She didn’t kiss back hard, but what kiss there was seemed worth all the others I’d known put together.
The next week I persuaded her to have a coffee with me one lunchtime. Like a clown I launched a frontal attack.
“You know,” I said, “Saturday was different. The fair I mean.”
“Why different?”
“Well, it just was. I mean, I enjoyed talking to you for one thing. With others, you know, I find that there’s nothing left to say after five minutes. But with you I found it easy. I didn’t have to force anything.”
“I don’t see why it should be any different with me.”
“It’s hard to say why, I suppose. It just was. And is.”
She said nothing.
“Anyway,” I said, “there you are.”
“I—I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me, you know,” she said.
“Such as?”
“I don’t want you to think well, that I’m like the others, that I’m likely to fall over at the crook of a finger.”
“I don’t expect you to do that at all,” I said.
“Because it won’t work with me. There couldn’t be anything... serious between us because I wouldn’t want anything like that.”
“Neither do I,” I said. “Look, all I want to say is that I liked talking to you and I’d like to see you again and that’s all there is to it. Hell, I thought you knew I wasn’t the type that went in for heavy romances and all that?”
“That’s probably the best. I think I’d like to see you again, but I’ve got a boyfriend I’m very fond of anyway, so there would be no possibility of anything serious happening between us.”
“That’s all right then. So long as we know where we are,” I said.
At two o’clock the following Saturday afternoon, I was waiting outside the Cecil Cinema. It was raining and a cold wind splattered raindrops in my face. I had been waiting for five minutes. Time passed. I looked at my watch. It said ten past two. I nervously considered whether or not she would come. I stared across the road, watching the shoppers shuffle to and fro. Then I saw Janet talking to a tall slim boy of about seventeen. He was standing with his hands in his mac pocket, looking downcast. Janet was talking quite urgently for her, moving her arms about quite animatedly. He turned away, and she crossed the road toward me. She gave me a smile, part exhilarated, part winsome. A smile she might wear when approaching a favourite pony.
She was wearing a fitted coat, a silk scarf round her neck, black pointed high-heeled shoes. She trotted toward me, her hands thrust into the high pockets of her coat, her pony tail swinging from side to side.
“Hello,” she said.
She took my arm. Her whole personality seemed subtly changed. More outgoing, more vivacious.
“Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t help it,” she said.
“So I saw.”
“Oh?”
“Who was it? Anyone special?”
“My boyfriend.” She squeezed my arm and smiled proudly. She wore a frail perfume that enhanced her youth to distraction. A feeling of desperation and lust churned about in my stomach.
“Anyway, let’s go in before we get soaking wet,” I said. I must have sounded like I felt because her smile dimmed slightly.
We entered the dark auditorium. The main film was just beginning. I helped her off with her coat and we sat down. After a while, my hand found hers. She gripped it non-committally. We sat like that throughout the whole programme. I scarcely noticed the film. I felt useless. The whole business was made up of depressing odds against me. Seeing her with this unexpected boyfriend, just having Saturday afternoon together, hearing her say she didn’t want anything serious, her general lack of response. But at the same time I wouldn’t have been anywhere else but there in the cinema with her.
We came out of the cinema at five thirty. Darkness had fallen.
“Well,” I said, “I expect you have to go home now.”
“Yes,” she said, “thanks very much for taking me. I enjoyed it.”
“Did you?” I said, fishing with a would-be cynical smile playing on my mouth.
“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”
“No reason. Anyway, I’ll take you to your bus.”
We walked along in silence. The rain had stopped but the cold wind blew damply round neon signs and chewing-gum machines. Steamy buses crowded with tea-bound shoppers swished and lurched through the blustery evening. I occasionally interspersed the silence with witty sayings, hoping that they would prove to her that I couldn’t care less.
We entered the bus station; I took her to her bus stop. The bus wasn’t in yet. We waited. I took her hand.
“I don’t suppose you have time for a drink?”
“No, I have to be back by six thirty.”
“Well, anyway, thanks for coming. I’ve enjoyed it.”
“Good.”
“Do you think you’d like to come out with me again?”
“I’ll see. Ask me next week.”
“Seriously, I hope you’ve enjoyed it.”
“Do you?”
Her bus came in.
“Well, I’ll see you on Monday,” I said.
She got on the bus and stood on the platform. I began to move away. The bus drew off. She waved and then went up the stairs. That was that. I looked round the bus station. I walked over to a newsstand and bought an evening paper, but it only had half-time scores in it. The only other thing to do was to go back to the digs and have my tea.
The following week was an improvement. I took her for lunchtime coffee twice.
She seemed to like being with me, but for every ten facts I told her about myself, I learned one fact about her. This was all I knew:
She was seventeen.
&nb
sp; Her real father was dead.
Her mother had remarried recently.
She lived with her mother and stepfather.
They all lived in a far-out suburb of the city which I knew to house a lot of the city’s wealthy.
Her boyfriend was called Randolph.
He was seventeen.
He wanted to be a doctor.
His father was a doctor.
His older sister was at the college which was irritating for me.
I learned that Janet could ski, ride and had appeared in the school production of Pygmalion, in which they had joined with the boys of the local boarding Grammar School. She had been to Majorca for her summer holiday that year. Her stepfather was very rich. Her real father had been rich but not as rich as her stepfather.
And that was about it.
But I saw her at morning and afternoon break-times, and occasionally our conversations seemed to grow more intimate, though afterward I realized that I had been doing most of the talking. But not everything was discouraging. Sometimes there would be spontaneous moments of laughter which seemed to bring us slightly closer together.
But on the whole I felt I was fighting a loser. She was too aloof, too doubtful of my sincerity, which my playing of the double game of bad bugger into nice guy seemed to foster rather than turn her toward me.
I had become completely indifferent to other influences outside her sphere.
Again the arrangement was to meet her at two o’clock on Saturday. This time outside the City Hall. It was a grey day, but dry. She arrived at quarter-past two.
“Do you mind awfully if we don’t do anything just yet?” she said. “I’ve just run into an old school friend I haven’t seen for some time. She’d like me to go for a coffee with her. Would you mind if we made it three o’clock?”
I was too taken by surprise to think rationally, so like a fool I said:
“No, not at all. I’ll meet you back here at three.”
“I hope you don’t mind, but it won’t be for long.”
“No, I don’t mind.”
She tripped off.
By the time she came back, I had had time to become coldly furious, although inside I was more frustrated at yet another thing having gone wrong. We walked along in the direction of the cinema.
“I must be mad,” I said, after a fittingly frozen silence.
“How do you mean?”
“You know very well. You’re the first girl that’s ever got away with anything like that. Normally, if a thing like that had happened, I wouldn’t have hung about. I’d have been off.”
“Well, why didn’t you go then?”
“I don’t know. I’m wondering myself.”
“Do you want to go?”
“I waited, didn’t I?”
“Yes, I suppose you did.”
She seemed rather amused.
After a pause she said:
“Look, I’m awfully sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. It wasn’t fair.”
I felt I was being made a clown of but I said:
“Never mind. I’m still here so there must be some reason for it.”
There was another pause.
“There was really no reason why you should stay,” she said.
“No reason at all.”
We approached the cinema.
“Anyhow,” she said, “I’m glad you stayed.”
We stopped walking. I looked her straight in the eye. I put my hands on her shoulders.
“I stayed because I wanted to.”
I moved closer.
“Let’s go in,” she said.
After the pictures I said to Janet:
“How about coming for a coffee. It’ll only take a quarter of an hour.”
“I must be home by eight.”
“You’ll be home by then. Come on.”
We went to a small café. It was a bit scruffy, but it was about all there was and it was handy. I hoped she didn’t mind it.
We sat down in a booth toward the back. The café was almost deserted. I brought the drinks over from the counter.
I stirred my coffee.
“I thought the film was awfully good,” said Janet.
“Yes, it wasn’t bad. It could have been much better, I thought.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I thought the editing was a bit slack.”
“Oh, I’m not sure I see what you mean.”
I explained what I meant. She listened attentively. Her attention was the most non-fatuous I had ever encountered.
Then we talked about college. About playing in the band. About her likes and dislikes.
She liked the country. She liked Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee. She liked skiing. She liked her mother’s white poodle. She liked Steve McQueen. She liked Jenny. Quite liked her. She liked walks in the winter. She liked sailing when a strong, warm wind blew her hair across her face. She liked some jazz. She liked Flamenco. She liked French films with Gerard Philippe.
She didn’t like the bus ride to college. She didn’t like Simon Golson, the life tutor. She didn’t like getting up in the mornings. She didn’t like men who wore Brylcreem. She didn’t like young men with county accents (although her accent was county, too). She didn’t like young men in county suits with county accents at the parties she went to. She didn’t like many of the parties she went to because of the young men with—etc, etc. She didn’t like her mother’s wit sometimes. She didn’t like having to be in by ten thirty. She didn’t like boys who drooped over her. She didn’t like boyfriends who let her make all the decisions.
Her ideas on things were non-emphatic. She expressed herself quietly, sometimes as though she expected some unseen being to take her up on every small point. Yet at other times she would burst into some vivacious attitude that died as quickly as it came.
We talked about boyfriends and girlfriends that we had had in the past. We derived vast amusement from details of their idiosyncratic traits. After that a more subdued mood came on us.
I covered her hand with mine on the tabletop. She didn’t draw it back.
“You know, I really like being with you. You make me feel very... very relaxed,” I said quietly.
“Do I?”
“I wish I could convince you that I mean it when I say I don’t think of you like other girls.”
“Why should it matter to you?” She smiled her faint smile.
My awkwardness returned.
“Because I like you. I know you don’t believe me.”
“Why should I?”
“No reason.”
I was miserable again. I put on a moody face and slipped into my reputation attitudes. After two minutes I became fed up with that.
“Listen. If I could convince you about everything that I’m not as bad as I seem, well... would you want to believe it?”
She looked at her cup.
“Look,” she said, “I... I like being with you. I can’t say that I don’t. I ought to, but—however. I’ve told you I have a boyfriend, and I’ve made it quite clear that I don’t think of you as—as a boyfriend. Apart from anything else, it wouldn’t work.”
“Why wouldn’t it?” I said urgently.
“Because I don’t want it to. I like you, you’re good fun. But that’s all I want. You promised you wouldn’t say anything about being serious.”
“I know, but...”
She played with the spoon in her saucer.
“But what?” she said.
I lit a cigarette.
“I know I promised not to talk like that but, well, the fact is, I’ve grown to like you more than I thought I would. I didn’t expect it,” I lied.
“You’ve only known me for a few wee
ks. How could you? You don’t expect me to believe that?”
“I see you every day. Oh, I can’t explain it. God, I’m not protesting undying love or anything, or even any kind of love, hell; you know what I’m like, but I’m just saying that I like you and I like you a lot.”
We paused, engrossed in ourselves. I looked at her indirectly. She was painfully attractive. Lovely and genuine. It was as though a romantic ideal that I’d had always inside me had been projected into real life. Of course, it had never had a face, any particular characteristic, but she was it, to perfection. The kind of girl that made you feel aware of your weaknesses, of your dirt, just by being the person she was.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She didn’t answer.
“Look, I really am. It’s probably that I’m not used to being with someone as nice as you are. The others...”
She rested her chin in her hands and looked at me with her large, distant eyes.
“Don’t think I don’t want to see you,” she said.
“I know what you mean. It’s me. I’m stupid.”
“It’s just that—that I’m not really ready for anything like that with anyone, and—”
“And if you were it wouldn’t be me anyway. I know.”
She didn’t say anything.
“I didn’t mean that,” I said. “I don’t know what’s up with me. I’m not usually like this.”
“No, it’s me. I’m sorry for not being as you want me.”
“You are as I want you. Don’t take any notice of me. I like you, you’re nice, and you’re as I want you. All right?”
I smiled at her. She looked straight at me. She smiled back uncertainly.
I looked at my watch.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“Ten to eight.”
I cursed myself for drawing her attention to the time.
“God. My mother will kill me. I’m to be home for dinner at eight. She’s invited people in. I’ll never get home in time.”
“Yes you will, if we get a taxi.”
“I’ve no money.”
“I said ‘we’. I’ll pay for it. Come on.”