A Kind of Loving (11 page)

It's going up to nine by the time I get to the shop and Mr Van's
already opened. The Morris is standing outside and Henry's
waiting for me to help him load it. Pale blue, the van is, with Mr
Van Huyten's name on it in black letters. It's still new-looking
because it's only six months old. The one before he'd had since
pre-war and it could have been anybody's driving about. Mr
Van's got his head down over his books in the little frosted-glass
cubicle at the end of the long counter. Henry and I lug out two
new TV sets, three that have been in for repair, and a new
radiogram.

'Some good sales this week, eh, Henry?' I say, when we've
finished and we're having a breather by the van. 'Over two hundred quid's worth of goods there.'

Henry's a little weedy bloke with a fat wife and five snotty-
nosed kids. He wears glasses and his hair won't stick down though
it always looks as though he's plastered everything he can think
of on it, from liquid paraffin to lard. He gets a dokka from behind
his ear and sticks it in his jib and lights
up. He shakes his head
and I know he's having one of his sorrowful mornings. Not that he ever has what you could call a cheerful morning.

'I wish I thought it could last, Vic,' he says, and shakes his head again.

'Last!' I say. 'Watcher talkin' about, Henry? Business is
booming. You just can't meet the demand.'

But this is Henry all over - always looking on the black side -
and even inventing one if he has to. I think maybe I'd be like
him if I had a fat wife and five snotty-nosed kids. I have Ingrid in the back of my mind all the time and when I think of her and
look at Henry I feel sorry for him.

'How long will it go on booming, Vic?' he says, puffing at his cig,' there's got to be a saturation point somewhere, hasn't there?'

'Just look at records,' I say. 'You'd have thought TV would ha' killed all that; but it hasn't - just the opposite. They see a bloke on TV and run out to buy his latest record. And there's
new ones coming out every month.'

'But you don't buy a new television set every month, do you?'

'So what? There's maintenance, isn't there? And what about cars? Yes, what about them? Look at the rate they turn
them
out. Where do they all go to? I don't know. You'd think everybody in the country would have two apiece by this time; but I haven't got one and you haven't.'

'Ah,' says Henry, 'but that's a different kettle o' fish. That's
a different thing altogether ...'

I catch the gleam in his eye and see the way his hand goes up and I know all the signs. He'll be quoting statistics in a minute
and once Henry starts quoting statistics you're done for, I don't don't know where he gets them all from and I sometimes think
he must make them up in his sleep without knowing it.

'I've given this a lot of thought,' he says. 'It's a sort of hobby
of mine, as you know; and I've come to one or two con
clusions —'

'You'd better save 'em till dinner-time, old cock, or you'll have
Mr Van on our tails for wasting time.'

Now Henry being conscientious, he sees the sense hi this and shuts up straight away. But he sighs, and I reckon he's doing this
all the time when people are stopping him having his say. He
stamps Ms tab-end out and buttons his smock up and opens the
cab door.

'All right,' he says. 'But we're all living in a fool's paradise, that's all. A fool's paradise, Vic. Full employment and business
booming? It just isn't feasible, lad. Don't say I didn't warn you
when the crash comes.'

'We'll go on the dole together, Henry,' I say, and grin.

He looks back at me.' Dole?' he says.' You ask your dad about the dole, lad.'

And with this parting shot, as they say, he shuts the door and
starts the engine. A proper Job's comforter, the Old Lady would
call him. I wait till he's gone off up the street and then go into the
shop.

'You'd better sell out and put your money in greengrocery, Mr Van Huyten,' I say as I pass the desk, and Mr Van lifts his big shaggy head up behind the glass and gives me a serious
look.

'Oh, and why is that, Vic?'

'Henry says we're living in a fool's paradise.'

'Oh,
Henry
says. Our backyard economist.' Mr Van laughs, opening his mouth and showing his teeth, all sticking out of the
gums any-old-how like gravestones in a mouldy old churchyard
where they don't bury people any more. 'What Henry doesn't
know about the workings of a wireless set doesn't matter; but he's
a little undependable on the financial aspects of business, I fear.'
And Mr Van Huyten chuckles away as though Henry's the comic
find of the year.

I give him a minute to get over it then I ask him what I have to do.

'Now let me see,' he says, pushing his specs up on to his fore
head. 'Let me consider ...'

Mr Van Huyten's a bloke with something about him. He
says things I never hear from anybody else in real life. And he
dresses the part of a distinguished old gent, in a black jacket and striped trousers and a Come-to-Jesus collar. You have to
look close to see the bits of breakfast on his waistcoat and pants,
and the tig ash. Mr Van smokes a lot, only he doesn't really
smoke at all, if you see what I mean. He lights fags all day long and then lets them hang out of his mouth till the ash drops on to his books when he brushes it away kind of absent-minded like.
Yes, he looks a real gent, and a touch I really go for is this white
handkerchief that hangs half out of his top pocket. It's real
casual, artistic like, as if he's saying, 'Oh, yes, I know this is the
way to dress, but I can't be bothered with it really, you know.'

So he considers, and then he says, 'I think you might check
over that new consignment of records, if you don't mind. I've no
doubt some of them will be asked for before the day's out and we should know where to put our hands on them.'

'Right you are.'

'If you don't mind,' though. He's the boss, isn't he, so who
am I to mind? But that's Mr Van all over, considerate, treats you like a person, and makes it a real pleasure to do things for
him.

So I begin to go through these records stacked in boxes behind
the counter. There's all the latest pop stuff here for the fans: Frankie Vaughan, Tommy Steele, and Elvis. And they'll be
swarming all over the place this afternoon, buying loads of stuff and taking it home to play with the repeat on till both them and
the neighbours are sick to death of it. Then they'll come back
next week for some more. Every week-end they're here, buying records by big names who've been going years and blokes you
won't be able to remember eighteen months from now. I don't
take a lot of notice of Henry's moaning but I sometimes wonder
myself if it can last. In the meantime Mr Van Huyten must be
doing very nicely thank you. He's a Beethoven man himself, you know. I once heard him tell a customer he was very fond of the 'later quartets', whatever they might be. But he doesn't
mind keeping the business running on the profits from the other
stuff. Me, I like all kinds of things, stuff with a tune you can
whistle. Let's face it, there's a hell of a lot of crap passes over the
counter.

When I've checked the consignment over I pass the invoices
over to Mr Van for spiking. I pick out the records that are on order and sort the rest out ready for riling in their boxes. The
box system's my idea; before this Mr Van had his stock filed according to catalogue numbers.

'Look, Mr Van Huyten,' I said to him one Saturday morning; 'I've been thinking about the way you've got your stock filed.' And he stops what he's doing to listen to me.

'Now when somebody comes
in
for a record we look the
number up in the catalogue and if we have it we make a single
sale. Right?'

He nods, very patient like. 'Right.'

'And if we haven't got it we offer to order it. But they don't always want to wait and so they might go somewhere else.'

'That's right,' Mr Van says. 'We can't stock everything.'

'No, we can't. But supposing we put the records in boxes and
label 'em according to the artist - or the composers for the
classical stuff. Then when a bloke comes in for a Perry Como, say,
we get Perry Como's box down and look for it there; and we let
the customer look as well. That way he actually sees the records
we've got instead of just names in a catalogue, which we might not have anyway. Ten to one he'll spot something he's forgotten
or didn't know about. That way we could sell mebbe three or
four records for every one we sell now.'

He's looking at me over his glasses. 'You mean to let them browse, as they do in bookshops?'

'That's it. You'd never make a bookshop pay if you only let
the customer see the one book he wants. Many a time they don't
know what they want, and this way we could have people coming
in just to look through a box of the sort of records they fancy.
Course, we'd have to keep an eye on them, see they don't do any
damage... You see what I mean, Mr Van Huyten?'

He nods. 'I see what you mean, Victor. I'll think about it and
let you know.' He goes back to his books but I know he will think
about it like he says and then let me know what he thinks.

He brings it up again the next Saturday. 'I like that idea of
yours, Vic,' he says. 'How could we introduce it, do you think?'

I'm itching to get started straight away. 'It shouldn't be hard,' I
say. 'All we need's plenty of boxes, and I've got a kid's stencilling
outfit at home I can do the labels with.'

'It's the reorganization I'm thinking about, Victor. It will take
time and you're only here Saturdays, our busiest time.'

I tell him I'm willing to come in after work a couple of nights and he looks doubtful. 'If you're sure you don't mind sacrificing
your spare time,' he says.

'It'll be a pleasure. I like doing jobs like that.'

'And I'll pay you the same rate as Saturday, then.'

'Well, I wasn't thinking about the money, Mr Van Huyten,'
I tell him, and I wasn't. I don't want him to think I'm on the
make. It's the idea that counts.

'Well you just think about it now, my boy,' he says. 'You give
me your time and I pay for it. That's business.'

Anyway, I did the labels at home and went into the shop every
night one week and got the sorting done. I've got a pretty good
memory for anything I'm interested in and by the time I'd
finished I thought I nearly knew the stock off by heart and could
say practically without checking whether we had a record in or
not. The first two nights Mr Van stayed with me but on the others
he left me to lock up and take the key up to his house when I'd
finished. It made me feel good to have him trust me like that.
I mean, I could have walked out with nearly anything and he
wouldn't have known. Anyway, it started me thinking about
something else - staggering the dinner hour on Saturdays so's we didn't have to shut the shop at the busiest time. We started doing this after a bit.