A Kind of Loving (13 page)

'Well I can't leave her.'

'What did you bring her for? You had a date with me, didn't
you?'

' She just came to our house for tea and I didn't want to send
her away on her own. She's my best friend.'

'I'd never have known if you hadn't told me.'

A likely story, I'm thinking. Why doesn't she say straight out
what she thinks? Why keep on pretending like this? Dorothy's
a good twenty yards away by now. She's got her head down so it
looks like the waterworks are still in operation.

'I shall have to go to her,' Ingrid says. 'You've hurt her,
y'know. She's very sensitive, really.'

'Why doesn't she think other people might be?'

'It's just her way
...
I must go now ...'

'Okay.'

'I'll see you at work on Monday.'

'I'm usually there."

She walks backwards a few paces. 'Good night then.'

'Goodnight.'

She swings round and sets off after Dorothy who's gone out
of sight round a corner. I watch till she turns the corner herself
then I walk back down the hill. I'm so miserable I just don't
give a damn for anything.

CHAPTER 4

I

there's
only one good thing about Monday morning and that
is Hassop's away. I'm up talking to Miller in his office when the inter-corn starts buzzing and Mr Althorpe's light goes on. Miller
lifts the receiver up and presses the switch and listens for a minute. Then he says, 'No, he hasn't come in yet, Mr Althorpe
... Well, he did seem a bit under the weather on Friday ... Yes,
righto, I'll come in now.' He puts the receiver down and shoves
a note-pad in his smock pocket and makes for the door. Most of
us in the D.O. wear smocks because it's surprising the amount of
muck there is about, what with pencil dust and grit from the
Works. We had a bloke started once who wore a white one and set everybody off making cracks about ice-cream men because
the standard colours are khaki and a sort of mucky grey. He
didn't stop long, this bod, because he didn't fit in somehow.

'I'll see you later, Vic,' Miller says as he's going out.

'What's up with Hassop?'

'Mister
Hassop,' Miller says, and goes out without answering.

I go back down the office and Jimmy looks up from his board
next to mine. 'Where's old Dogknob this morning?'

'Mister Dogknob to you,' I say.

'Mister Horace Edward Hassop Dogknob, Esquire,' Jimmy says. 'Some say "good old Hassop"; others know the blighter.'

I give myself the pleasure of sharpening a brand-new pencil.
'Looks as if he's badly. With a bit o' luck it might turn into
pneumonia and we shan't see him for six months.'

'A week'll do for me,' Jimmy says. 'I'm grateful for small
mercies.'

Conroy comes past with a roll of prints under his arm. He's got his big head down in his shoulders and he looks as brussen
as he always does.

' What's up with Hassop?'

'Looks like flu.'

He gives a grunt and moves off. I'm not sorry. Conroy's one of the bods at Whittaker's I can do without very nicely, thank
you.

I file the pencil point to a chisel shape and give the board a flick over with a duster. Everybody seems to be working even if Hassop is away. But Miller and the section leaders can keep order, and anyway, keeping your nose down is the best way of making the time pass. As soon as I try to settle down though, I start thinking about Ingrid and last night. I try to get my mind on my drawing, and do a few lines; but it's no use -I just keep thinking about her. I look over at Jimmy and think I'd like to tell him and get some advice. But then I think I've made a twerp of myself and there's no point in telling anybody else about that.

Miller comes back in a bit and calls me up to his office.

'How d'you feel about a trip into town?'

'I don't mind,' I tell him. 'It's not a bad morning out.'

'Mr Hassop isn't on the phone and Mr Althorpe wants a
message taking to him and some papers bringing back. Do you
know where he lives?'

'Somewhere up Bradford Road, doesn't he?'

'That's right. Here, I'll jot the address down on a bit of paper.'

He hands me the paper and an envelope with Hassop's name
on it that he's brought out of Althorpe's office.

'Righto, then, don't be too long. And no stopping off for
morning coffee on the way.'

'I'm missing my tea break, remember,' I say, and Miller says,
'Gerrout of it,' with a grin. He feels in his pocket. 'Here's a bob
for your bus fare. You can keep the change.'

'I suppose it'll turn out to be sevenpence each way,' I say
as I go out.

I go and take my smock off and throw it over my buffet.

'Taking the rest of the morning off, Brown?' Jimmy says in his managing director's voice.

'I'm off up to see Hassop,' I tell him. 'Makes a change, a trip • out in the middle of the morning. Any messages?'

'Tell him we'll buy him a grand wreath,' Jimmy says.

Outside it's bright and fine and there's big white clouds
scudding across the sky just like in spring, only it's none too
warm and you have to keep moving or you soon feel the cold. I
amble down to the corner to wait for a bus. I feel in my pocket to make sure I've still got the envelope for Hassop. I hope Mrs
Hassop, or whoever answers the door, won't ask me up to see him
because I know I shan't know what to say to him. I get my cigs
out and when I open the packet I see there's three gone already
this morning. I'm smoking like a mill chimney these days. I'll be up to twenty a day if I don't watch it, and I can't afford that. Sometimes when I'm broke and I read about it causing lung
cancer I think I'll give up, but I can never be bothered to make
the effort; and anyway, I like it. I put the packet away and decide I'll wait till I drop off for a cup of coffee on the way back.

When I'm on the bus I start to think about Ingrid again. What
I mean is, I'm always thinking about Ingrid but a lot of the
time I have to think about other things as well, only now I can
give all my attention to it. Oh, but she's a swell piece! The more I see her and think about her the more I think she's a real bobby
dazzler. I reckon I can't grumble really and I'm lucky to have
taken her out three times. Well, twice, because you can't count
last night. That was a proper washout. Thinking about it now I wonder if I wasn't a bit, well, cruel like with Dorothy. Not that she hadn't it coming, mind. She must have been going
about for some time saying just what she liked and getting away
with it; but she tangled with the wrong bloke when she picked on
me. I told her. Awful, though, the way she folded up soon as I
really went for her. You could tell it hurt. Poor ugly bint. It
cooked my goose with Ingrid, though, I bet, even if the oven wasn't warming up already. Women are funny like that; they're
as catty as can be about one another, but let a man start and they
don't half close ranks in double-quick time.

The bus runs down through the shopping centre. There's a lad with dusters tied round his feet dressing Granger's big
window and a fat woman with great big arms down on her knees
scrubbing the foyer of the Plaza picture house. A bint with the
neatest pair of gams I've seen in a fortnight stops for a minute
to look at the stills in the boxes outside. Ah, well, there's plenty more fish in the sea... I try to think this but it doesn't help much.

I change to a Bradford bus in the station and sit downstairs near
the door because I'm not sure how far I have to go. The con
ductor comes in laughing at something a tart conductor has just
said to him and rings the bell. I give him my fare and tell him
I want to get off at Providence Avenue.

'Watch out for the Maternity Hospital,' he says. 'You get
off there.'

It's only when he says this that I see the two bints on the bus
with me both have buns in the oven, and three more get on up
the hill. The conductor winks at me when he's taken their fares.
'We give
more free rides than any other route,' he says, and I grin.

'Had any embarrassing moments?'

He laughs. 'Aye, I have that, lad; but not on a bus!'

When I see the Maternity Hospital standing back behind these
huge lawns I get off with the five pregnant bints and watch them
waddle across the road with their shoulders back. I wonder for a minute what it must be like to have a kid and then think I'm
glad I'll never know. I wonder about the other thing as well, and if women enjoy it as much as men. I've an idea they don't, and anyway, it might not be all men crack it up to be. I don't know,
but I wonder. I wonder about it quite a lot these days, and as I'm
going up the road to Hassop's I think there might be a lot to
be said for these fcnocking-shops blokes who've done military
service abroad tell you about. You feel the need and you pay
your money and get what you want. Just like drinking a glass of water when you're thirsty. Nobody spends al! his time thinking
about water, except the bloke in a desert where there isn't any.
Some chaps spend a lot of time thinking about wine, though; but that's drinking for pleasure, like going to bed with a bint
you're in love with. When that happens with everything else you
have together it must be just about the most wonderful thing in
the world. But that's love and it comes some time. The other
thing's biology, and you have that all along.

I think I've made a mistake till I check the number on a bit
of paper Miller gave me. The house stands back from the road
and there's a lot of black soil packed down hard that must have
been a garden at one time. It's big and square, the house, and it
looks a lot like a broken-down Working Men's Club. I reckon
it must have been standing right there the best part of a hundred
years because the stone's all grey-black and the flags round it are
all sunk and sticking up in the corners any-old-how. There's
a bit of a porch with some coloured glass windows in it, red and
yellow and green, round the door, and I go along the path and
knock, still thinking somebody's slipped up and given me the
wrong address. There's a kind of rising sun in frosted glass in the
top half of the door and I give it a push and go into the porch
when nobody answers my knock. Inside there's the house door
and a mat that's worn nearly to strings on the step. There's a
pile of sacks and a rusty old paraffin stove and a crate of empty
stout bottles as well. Everything smells damp and you get the
idea it's all rotting away here and nobody cares a hang. It's a real rum do. I don't like it much.

But there's the number on the door all right, like the one on the paper, so this must be it. I get hold of a little bell-handle
that's in a kind of socket on the wall and pull on the chain. I put my head up to the door and listen for the bell but there's
no sound. I reckon that hasn't worked since the Charge of the Light Brigade, so I give a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on the letter-box
knocker.