A Kind of Loving (26 page)

' Cortfoy's looking for you,' I say, clapping him on the shoulder.

'Oh, what for?'

'Because you owe me a quid,' says Conroy, coming up from
the other side. 'You bet me a level quid I daren't do a number with the band.'

Lewis gets his wallet out and opens it. 'Ten bob, wasn't it?'

'A quid, you chiseller,' Cpnroy says, and reaches over and
plucks a pound note out of Lewis's wallet. He half turns away,
then turns round again. 'Put another quid up an' I'll do another
number,' he offers.

But Lewis won't throw his money away so easy, and Conroy
says to me, 'C'mon, then, young Browny; let's see about that
pint.'
'

On the way into the bar we meet Ken Rawlinson and bis girl
friend coming out. She's a thin blonde piece with a way of looking
straight through you as though you're not there.

'How do, Rawly,' Conroy says, and I see Rawly flinch. 'How
d'ye like my number?'

The blonde bit focuses her eyes on Conroy as though she's
just noticed him crawling out from under a stone.

'It's not whether I liked it or not that matters,' Rawly says,
real distant like; 'but what the management thinks.'

'Pity I forgot me fiddle,' Conroys says. Td've given you a violin concerto. A bit of Debewssy, eh?'

'Debussy didn't write a violin concerto,' the blonde piece
says, and takes Rawly by the arm and pulls him orTinto the crowd.

Conroy's laughing like a drain as we go into the bar. 'Bag a table,' he says, 'while I go get the wallop.'

I find a place by the wall under the mirrors and in a minute or
two Conroy comes over with his big hands round four glasses of
beer.

' Who're all these for?' I say as he lowers them on to the table.

'For us,' he says. 'Two apiece. They don't sell pints. Too
refined. Like Rawly.' He laughs.' Old Rawly.'

'Seems to me he got one up on you there, though, Conroy,'
I say. 'About the violin concerto, I mean.'

Conroy's taking a long pull at his glass. He shakes his head as he puts it down. 'He didn't say it:
she
did. Shouldn't be sur
prised if Rawly doesn't know Debussy from the Chancellor of the
Exchequer.'

I notice now that Conroy pronounces the name like the blonde
bit did and I begin to see that he was laying it on thick for Rawly's benefit. And I'm beginning to wonder if there isn't more to Conroy than meets the eye.

'On the other hand, maybe he does,' Conroy says, taking
another swig at his beer, 'He knows most of the names and he
drags 'em out at every opportunity. He's the sort of bloke who
goes once a year to a symphony concert and talks about it at the
top of his voice on the bus next morning. I can't stand him, young Browny. Him and his lousy Beethoven and bloody Dostoyevsky.
He knows the da-da-da-daa bit from Beethoven and I'll bet not
another note. And he wouldn't recognize a line of Dostoyevsky if you bawled it in his ear. He's a lousy fake, young Browny, and if
there's owt I can't stand it's a fake.'

Conroy's not letting talking stop him from drinking and he's
already emptied his first glass and started on the second.

'He buys
The Times
and the
Guardian
and the posh Sunday
papers and reads all the critics and thinks that's it. He likes to
blind you with a lot of names and facts. He can very likely tell
you that Tolstoy had duck-egg and chips for his tea on 13 March
1888, but you ask him what they called Aima Karenina's fancy
man and he'll look at you gone out.'

'Who's Anna Kar ... what's her name?'

'Karenina. She's a woman in a book of that name.'

' How do
you
know?'

'Because I've read the bloody thing,' Conroy says; 'that's how
I know ... What's up - surprised? Thought
Reveille
was ray
steady diet, did you? Well don't get me wrong, young Browny. I might be a loud-mouthed bastard at times but there's two sorts of
them. I'm one and Rawly's another. And I don't like his sort. If
you like Dostoyevsky and lousy Beethoven - all right. I reckon you're getting summat you won't get out
of Peg's Paper
and last
week's Top Ten. But there's no call to go about letting everybody
know what a fine cultured bod you are and thinking everybody
else are peasants.'

He finishes his second glass and pushes it away, I'm only halfway down my first one and he looks at the full one.

'Want that?'

'No, go on, you have it.' I push it towards him.

'I'll get you another for it in a minute, only I can't be bothered getting up just now.'

He takes a pull and smacks his lips.

'And what's more,' he says, 'I don't like this pansy approach to it all. Let's grow long hair and manicure our fingernails, or
else fill 'em with coal dust to show we can't be bothered with a
little thing like keeping clean. It must make some of these blokes
turn in their graves the types who lick their shirt-tails.'

Well, I'm fascinated at the way he's talking. I watch his hand on the glass as he lifts it again. Short and square-fingered, it is,
with a fuzz of dark hairs on the back. Conroy doesn't look too
intelligent, you know. He's got a square sort of face with a low
forehead and deep-set eyes. But I know he's got a good engineer
ing brain and he can turn out a line drawing that's a model for
anybody in the office. He's also rowdy and coarse and foul-
mouthed. And now here's a new slant on him altogether. Here's
a Conroy who knows a lot about books and music - good music
and good books - real heavyweight stuff that you think only horrible types like Rawly and old stagers like Mr Van Huyten are interested in. You sort of never associate that sort of thing with a liking for beer and dirty stories. Least, I never have till
now. The long and the short of it is, Conroy's a Highbrow.

'By shots, Conroy,' I say, 'I've never heard you talk like this
afor.'

'No,' he says, 'you haven't. Because when you see me I'm
sober; and now I'm pissed. Or near enough to make no differ
ence. Some blokes want to fight, others to shag every bird in
sight, and others just flake out. Me, I just talk... more and more
... just talk ...'

He empties his glass and looks into it kind of sorrowfully like. Then he drops a real bombshell.

'Did I ever tell you about my missis, young Browny?'

I'm gawping and he's not too drunk to notice.

' Shouldn't have said that,' he says.' Tales out of school.'

'I didn't even know you were married.'

'I'm not married now,' he says. 'And as far as anybody else
is concerned, I never have been. You let the cat out of the bag,
young Browny, and I'll knock your block off.'

'Oh, I shan't tell,' I say.' No need to worry about me telling.'

'No, you're not a bad lad, young Browny...' He looks round
at the bar as if he's wondering whether to go for some more beer.
All at once he pushes his chair back and gets up. 'Have to go shake hands with an old friend,' he says, and he goes off into
the crowd.

A bit later I'm standing in the ballroom doorway when I see
Ingrid by herself not far away. She's wearing a yellow frock with
big blue flowers on the skirt and gold-coloured dancing shoes.
I think she looks real keen and it's a pity I've fallen out of love
with her. I watch her for a minute or two and then something
makes me go over to her and ask her to dance. She glances at me just once when she accepts and not again during the ten minutes
we're on the floor. We don't say much either.

It's a slow waltz and they've turned the lights down a bit. I
find I like having her so near and I know the other signs, the way
my heart's flattering and I'm breathing as if I'm on top of a
mountain. It's just the way I feel when I look at some of these
nudes in magazines.
I
have my right hand in the middle of her
back, on the fastening of her brassiere, and
I
move it further over so she has to come closer. Still she doesn't look straight at me or
say anything in particular. It's just as though I'm just any one of
the bods.

I don't know what to make of myself now. Here I've been
telling myself I don't love her any more, and now
I'm
wanting her
again. But not in the old way. Once I'd have given anything just
to be here with her like this, but now I want her like I want the
bints in the magazines. It's not really
her
I want at all, if you sef
what I mean.

Maybe it's this and maybe it's because I think I ought to ba nice to her that makes me wonder if I should offer to take her
home after the Party. After all, it was more or less fixed that I'd
bring her, and now she's on her own. But when the set finishes I
decide not to say anything right now. If I see her at the end of the
Party and she's still on her own, then
I
might offer to see her
home. I'm not sure. I don't know really how I feel. Looking at her
now I'm nearly sorry I broke it off like I did.

II

First the bar packs up and then the clock in the tower strikes mid-.
night. The Party begins to fade away, all the life going out of it as
people begin to collect their coats before the rush starts. As I
come out of the cloakroom they're singing 'Auld Lang Syne', and
then the 'Queen' strikes up.

Jimmy comes over to me. 'How're you getting home?'

'Shanks' pony. It's the chauffeur's night off.'

'Miller's got his car outside. He's giving me and Pauline a lift.
He said to see if there was anybody else. Come on, you may as
well.'

I've sort of been half-looking round for Ingrid, but I'm not
all that bothered so I follow Jimmy across the foyer to where this red-headed bint from the typists', Pauline Lawrence, who Jimmy
seems to have got very friendly with tonight, is standing with
Miller and his wife.

'Ah, Vic,' Miller says. 'You joining us? Good ... You've met my wife, have you? Vic Brown, one of our bright young men.'

I say howdedo to Mrs Miller, who's a plainish sort of woman,
a bit on the dumpy side, and we all go out to the car park.
Miller's car's a biggish pre-war Lanchester in a sort of metallic fawn colour that I believe he picked up for a song. He's the sort
of bloke who's always running down post-war jobs because he
says they're tinny and have nothing in them. I pile in the back with
Jimmy and this Pauline. He seems to be doing very nicely for
himself there because he puts his arm round her straight away
and she settles down against him as though she's been doing it for months. Miller gives the windscreen a wipe over with a cloth and
gets in next to his missis.
,

'All okay back there?'he says, starting the engine..