by Ted Lewis
“Would you like a coffee?” she said.
“Well, I...”
“I was just making some. The kettle’s almost boiling. It won’t take a minute.”
She went out of the room as she spoke the last words, full of movement and urgent purpose. I waited where I was, going over what I was going to say to her, deciding the order of things to say.
Veronica came back with the coffee. She handed me mine but instead of settling herself down on one of her cushions as she usually did she went over to the window and propped her bottom on the window sill. She sipped her coffee, not looking at me, waiting for me to speak.
“I’m sorry I cleared off like that the other night,” I said. “In fact I got halfway down the road and I almost came back.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No, well, I didn’t think you’d want me to.”
She didn’t answer.
“That’s why I didn’t come last night. In case you didn’t want me to.”
“Of course I like to see you.”
“But what?”
“You know.”
“What.”
“Not in the same way as before.”
“I don’t get it. Either you want to see me or you don’t.”
“You’re doing it again. Deliberately not understanding. You always do that when you’re trying hard to win.”
“Look,” I said. “Listen. You mean you really want to stop seeing me?”
“I don’t want to, Victor. You know how I feel.”
“Then why are you being so stupid?”
“We went through this the other night.”
“Yes, and you started it.”
She shook her head.
“In one way. Only because you’re different now.”
“Different,” I said. “That’s all anybody seems to think about me these days. I’ve been getting it at work and now I’m getting it from you. They think that if you go to college or something you think you’re better than they are. I’m sup¬posed to think I’m something special. I’m just like everybody else.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“What?”
“You’re kidding yourself. You don’t think that at all.”
“What do I think, then?”
“You do think you’re something special because you’ve got something they haven’t got. I know, Victor. I mean, you even show it with Mart and Don.”
“Now look.”
“Oh, they don’t mind. They admire you for getting out of the net. But you just have to create that little bit of an edge with them, just to remind them.”
“Don’t be stupid. You know what I feel about Mart and Don.”
“You don’t know you’re doing it.”
“I don’t have to stay and listen to this, you know.”
“That’s true, Victor.”
“Look, what is this? I come here to apologise and all I get is the treatment.”
“I’ve told you, Victor. You’re changed. Things are differ¬ent.”
I put my coffee down on the mantelpiece.
“All right,” I said. “It’s up to you, if this is what you want.”
Veronica didn’t say anything.
“But just remember,” I said. “You’re the one that’s breaking things up.”
“All right, Victor, whatever you say.”
I walked out of the house and strode off down the road. The bloody cow. Making things turn out like that. Things hadn’t been meant to turn out like that at all. I paused at the corner and looked back but Veronica wasn’t running down the road after me.
I looked at my watch. It was ten past seven. I had five minutes to get to the Star. I began to run. The soft evening breeze roared in my ears. The faster I ran the more elated I became. Veronica could sweat. By the end of the week she’d be arranging ways of bumping into me accidentally on purpose. And then when she did, she’d be sorry.
I dashed into the Star.
“Shilling, please,” I said to Mrs Clarke.
“Evening, Victor,” she said. “Two good pictures tonight.”
The automatic ticket machine pumped out my shilling ticket.
“Tell your mother I can’t make the W.I.,” she called as I passed through into the tiny auditorium.
Mr Clarke took my ticket and gave me his customary sneer. The house lights were still up and the smell of dusty carbolic was perfume in my nostrils. I walked down the lino’d aisle. There was no one in the one-and-nines. In the shillings there were the three Sampson brothers, upright and attentive in their usual seats, smoking and eating Mars Bars. Mucky George, the man with no roof to his mouth, was sitting in the sixpennies, on the very front row, the Chicken Run, his arm resting on the back of the seat, his head twisted so that he could say “Hello” to everyone who came in. He never watched the film. He would stay like that until half an hour before the performances ended and then he would get up and say goodnight and trundle off home. Sometimes one of the Sampsons would stick out a leg and send George reeling up the aisle but George would only laugh his crazy laugh and repeat the goodnight. Mart and Don and Cec were sitting in Murderers Row, the back row of the shillings. They were slumped down in their seats, knees jammed up against the row in front, heads scarcely visible from the rows behind. I slipped into the row behind and banged on the back of each of their seats, quickly and loudly.
“Jesus Christ,” Mart said.
“I’m from the Watch Committee,” I said. “This film carries a ‘U’ certificate so you’ll all have to leave.”
“I almost swallowed me fucking Woody,” said Cec.
I swung my leg over the back of the seats and sat down next to Mart. Mr Clarke strutted down the aisle.
“Less of that climbing over seats,” he said. “Seat yourself in a proper manner.”
Mucky George said hello to Mr Clarke. The lights dimmed.
“Do you hear me?” said Mr Clarke.
We all ssh’d him in unison.
“Film’s starting,” Mart said to him. “Let’s have some quiet.”
Mr Clarke flashed his torch on and off and went back up the aisle. The certificate flashed up on the screen. The Charlie Kunz piano medley continued. The credits began. Columbia pictures presents: Seven Men from Now, starring Randolph Scott. Beautiful, but no sound track, just Charlie Kunz against a western landscape.
“Sam!” bellowed Ossie Sampson. “The piano!”
Mr Clarke swished through the curtain and a few seconds later the piano record stopped and the sound track blared from the screen, much too loud, but no one complained about that: to get the sound alone was enough.
“I didn’t know this was on first,” I said to Mart.
“Shouldn’t be,” Mart said. “Other one should be on first.”
“Christ, I could have missed it.”
“Knowing Sam he’ll probably run it backwards afterwards instead of the other one.”
We settled down to the picture. When it was over the four of us erupted with delight. The rest of the audience remained impassive, waiting for the next one.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned round. Jackson Simons was standing in the row behind me. He was wearing his flat cap and his sports jacket with all the buttons fastened up and a collarless shirt buttoned at the neck.
“Now, boy,” he said.
I’d known Jackson since I was about six, when we’d lived down Frys Road. I played with him quite a lot then, but he’d always been coming round to our house to call for me and my parents had discouraged him and then we’d moved, and so ever since I’d only seen him round the town or heard others talk of the great catastrophes that he seemed to attract to himself. Even when I’d known him, he’d been called Simple Simon.
“Now then, Jackson,” I said, wondering what he wanted.
“I’ll be seeing you tomorrow,” he said.
“You what?”
“Half past seven. When lorry leaves.”
“How do you mean?”
“Got a job with your dad, haven’t I?”
“A job with my dad?”
“Just been to see him. With Mam.” He indicated his mother, who was sitting in the back row of the shillings on the other side of the aisle. “Got laid off at Ropery last Friday so Mam’s been trying to get me fixed up. Tried Tileries and Ferriby Cliff and Hoppers but they were all full up. And Mam reckons steelworks is too far so we went to see your dad.”
“What, tonight?”
“Yeah. After we’d had our tea.”
“What did my dad say?”
“Said he couldn’t put me on permanent at present, but he needs extra hands and if I do all right he might be able to give me something more steady later on.”
“And you’re starting tomorrow?”
“Yeah. Eh, good picture that last one, wasn’t it? I missed beginning because of going to see your dad. What happened?”
“Nothing much.”
“Was that feller after him from the first?”
“Yeah.”
“Known him a long time, had he?”
“Yeah.”
“Thought so. Next one should be good, too.”
“Yeah.”
“Any road, see you in the morning, half past. It’ll be dead good.”
“Yeah, see you, Simmy.”
Jackson went back to his mother, I could just imagine her rolling up at our house, clutching her handbag, grim-faced until the job had been settled, the way she used to look when she’d marched up the drive at school to get satisfaction from the Headmaster about why Jackson had been bullied or why he’d been given extra homework.
“Christ,” said Cec. “He’ll close your old man down within a week.”
“He never got laid off from Ropery,” Mart said. “He got the push. He bust the twiner. I mean, he really bust it. They’ve had to send for a new one. Only Jackson Simons could do something like that.”
“Do you remember that Speech Day?” Don said. “When Gorbutt and that crowd locked him under the stage and old Doctor Ferriby was in the middle of his speech and Simmy started hammering on the trapdoor?”
“Jesus, yes,” said Mart.
We all laughed at the memory and as we laughed the trailers came on and our laughter died down. We always kept quiet for the trailers.
After the trailers finished the film that should have been shown first came on, a British second feature starring Jimmy Hanley and Rona Anderson. We stuck it for about quarter of an hour before Mart said:
“I believe the pubs don’t close till ten o’clock.”
“So I’ve heard,” Don said. “That means that the pubs will be open for almost exactly another hour and ten minutes.”
We got up and filed out of the row.
“See you in morning,” Jackson called from his seat.
“Yeah, see you,” I said.
Mucky George said hello to us as we went out.
Mr Clarke was standing in the cool foyer, hands in pockets, staring out at the empty street. We walked past him and Mart pushed open the glass door.
“Are you going?” said Mr Clarke.
“We couldn’t stand the suspense,” Mart said.
The evening was warm and still. The last traces of day¬light hung above the town and higher the sky was filled with motionless stars. There was no one about in the street. We drifted along High Street towards Junction Square. The lights of the Red Lion were orange in the evening’s blueness.
“I thought you were seeing Veronica tonight,” Mart said.
I’d been thinking about her as we walked along.
Now that I’d seen the film I’d wanted to see if my feelings had changed again. The soft evening was causing me to feel a pleasant nostalgia to colour my mind’s-eye picture of Veronica, and the rift that had happened was sweetening my feelings for her. The prospect of making it up was pleasant to consider. And being with the boys made it feel all the more comfortable.
“No, well,” I said, “I went round earlier, but she’s sulking. Thinks I’m knocking it off right left and centre with every bird at college.”
“And aren’t you?” Cec said.
“Perish the thought.”
“Sure,” said Don.
A warm glow of pride spread through me at the thought that the boys felt it was a matter of course that I was the college Casanova.
“No, but seriously, folks,” I said.
Later. In the pub.
“So there we are,” I said, “Me and Harry and these two birds and the party going on without us downstairs and Harry has to get up and go for a pee. So my bird being spark out by this time, the next thing I know is that Harry’s bird is up to her tricks with me, so what can I do? When Harry comes back he sees what’s going on, gets in the other side, wakes my bird up and starts going at it with her.”
The boys all laughed. Cec banged his glass on the bar for another round. Lila appeared from round the corner.
“What do you sods want now?” she said.
“Sniff of the barmaid’s apron,” said Cec.
“You’ll get it wrapped round your earhole more like,” Lila said.
She filled our glasses and went back round the corner. Cec handed round the drinks.
“Jesus, though,” Don said. “What a scene.”
“Hardly the British Legion,” said Cec.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Mart said. “They say Mrs Cleall always walks her labrador past White Lion when Buffaloes have their meeting.”
Of course the story I’d just told them hadn’t been true. I had been upstairs in a bedroom with Harry and two girls, but one of them had been Harry’s regular girlfriend Kate, and the other girl had been her friend Josie, who hadn’t taken to me at all. The only reason that she’d been in the bedroom was because she’d felt tired, and bored with the party, and had wanted to lie down. I’d gone along with her in case of something developing but nothing had so I’d lain down next to her and listened to the sounds of the party downstairs. Kate and Harry had gone to sleep as well, Kate having been quite drunk, and it had been true that Harry had got up and gone for a pee and while he’d been out of the room Kate had woken up briefly and asked where she was and where was Harry and I’d answered her and she’d gone back to sleep again and at that point the story that I’d just told the boys had occurred to me. But in the telling of it, although I knew the story to be untrue, it hadn’t seemed to me as if I’d been telling a lie. The things I’d said could have happened because the circumstances could have been permutated a number of different ways, and the way I’d invented the story seemed right for the moment, for the boys to hear, because they’d want it told that way, and they’d like me more because of the imaginary adventure.
“Yes,” said Cec, “you seem to be making your way out in the big wide world all right.”
“The Rake’s Progress,” said Don.
“Yeah, well we do do some work,” I said. “From time to time.”
“And then that’s usually drawing nudes.”
“No, but seriously,” I said, “I don’t want any of you to think that, well, I ram college down your throats or any¬thing. I mean, I know I go on about it—”
“Naw,” said Mart, “it’s interesting. Bloody sight more interesting than talking about Scunthorpe United and what happened in the winter of forty-seven.”
“No, but you know what I mean,” I said. “I don’t ever want you to think I think college makes any difference to us, you know, the way we are, because I always seem to be going on about
it.”
“I wish I could do something like that,” Don said. “I mean, a day in your life is more interesting than a day in mine at Milsons Electric, isn’t it? Therefore it’s bound to be more interesting talking about it, isn’t it?”
The same glow I’d felt earlier swept through me, this time tempered a little by guilt. Don was too bright to be doing what he was doing. They all were. I was the only one who had got away, and I felt I was doing it for them as much as for myself.
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t know, but I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea. You know, people get funny ideas.”
“Well, we’re not people, are we?” Mart said. There was a short embarrassed emotional silence which Cec broke up by going into the Island of Lost Souls routine.
“No, me not people. Me half-man, me half-beast. Me—thing.”
“Food—good. Fire—bad,” Don threw in from Bride of Frankenstein, but although the repartee smoothed the sur¬face of our collective embarrassment, underneath it Mart’s words had made us all conscious of our relationship, too conscious of it for us to be less than awkward with each other for the remainder of the evening.
At home, over supper, I said to my father:
“I saw Jackson Simons in the pictures.”
“Oh, yes?”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Come on. You know what. You’ve given him a job.”
“That’s right.”
“What for?”
“We need extra hands.”
“Hell, I know, but he’s a menace. I mean, you do know that.”
“Poor Jackson,” said my mother. “He’s always been a bit of a dope.”
“He’ll be all right.”
“He got the push from Ropery, you know. He wasn’t laid off.”
My father shrugged.
“Your dad felt sorry for him.”
“Now don’t you say that,” said my father. “I felt nothing of the sort. I need an extra man.”
“You’ll need two more to go around clearing up after Jackson,” I said.
“I think the lad’ll try hard,” my mother said. “He’s very enthusiastic, the lad is.”
“That’s not the kind of attitude you used to have when we lived opposite in West Acridge. It was always ‘Can’t you find anybody better than that to play with?’”