A Kind of Loving (7 page)

He makes his way down the bus, giving with this horrible corny patter and I feel for some cash. I find a ha'penny in my
overcoat pocket, what's left over from a tanner after riding down into town and buying the paper. I unbutton my coat to get at my trouser pockets, and there's nothing there. And nowhere else, either, except on the dressing-table at home. So I'm without my fare ... It's a thing that's never happened to me before, though I've heard of other people doing it. If there's nobody you can borrow from you give the conductor your name and address and pay later. But all my mates are upstairs and I can see myself explaining to this bod and him making sport of it. In front of Ingrid as well! It's the sort of thing you think's funny after, but not at the time. As the conductor works his way up towards me I take a quick scan of the faces. Sure enough, they're all upstairs. I'm in foreign territory here.

There's only two ways out of it, then. I can bluff it out with laughing boy or ... or I can borrow the fare from Ingrid. But I can't ask
her
for money. I hardly know her ... but then again, isn't this the best chance I'll ever have of getting to know her? Haven't I been wanting a chance, wondering about it all during the holidays?

Before I've time to think it over too much I'm leaning forward
and touching her shoulder and catching the scent of her hair
as she turns her head. Then she's looking straight into my face
at a distance of one foot and my knees are weak and I can't
think for a second what I'm supposed to be saying.

'Look, I'm in a bit of a spot. I've left my money at home and I wondered if you... I don't know anybody else down here, y'see.'
Then she catches on and starts opening her bag, her neck going a
bit pink. 'No,' I say, 'you get both fares.' And I straighten up
and watch the pink spreading over her neck to her ears and over
the one cheek I can see, and I love her madder than ever. I go all
weak inside with it.

At our stop I stand back and wait for her to get off. I try to give
her a smile but I can feel it doesn't amount to much.

'Thanks for saving me life.'

'Oh, that's all right.'

We start off up the lane to the Works.

'I'll see you get it back as soon as I get some money.'

'Oh, don't worry about it.'

'I never picked it up off the dressing-table. I had sixpence in
my overcoat pocket so I never noticed till I was on the other bus,
y'see. One of the lads'll help me out.'

'Well I'm not frantic for it,' she says. 'It's only threepence.'

'No, but it's your money and you want it back.'

'You can pay my fare some time.'

'Be glad to.'

Just give me the chance! And that's only the beginning. There's
pictures and dances and theatres as well. Not to mention chocolates and nylons and bottles of scent and whatnot. She can have
every penny I have. She's only to say the word.

We're both quiet now and I'm thinking, This is it, what I've
been waiting for. I'm talking to her. What can I say? 'Dear
Ingrid, I've been mad about you for months (well, one month,
anyway). How do you feel about me? Will you make me the happiest bloke in Cressley and come to the pictures with me
tonight?'

'Not a bad morning, is it?' I say.

'No, not bad at all, to say.'

To say what? That it's winter, I suppose. 'I wonder if we shall
have some more snow soon.'

'I shouldn't wonder. It's cold enough for it.'

And who the heck cares? I can love her in snow or sunshine. If only I knew what she thinks of me. She seems friendly enough, but that could be plain ordinary politeness and not mean a thing. I'm pleasant myself every day with people I don't really like at all. What I want to do is give her a hint...

'Funny, isn't it?'

'Hmm? What?'

There she was, miles away, thinking about something else altogether. Or maybe
somebody
else. What then? Suppose she already has a boy friend? Oh, Lord, I've never really asked myself that one. Not straight out, anyway. I've always skated round it. But you never know. It's more than likely, if you think about it... how attractive she is an' all...

'I was just thinking we've worked at the same place for two or
three years and we've never talked to one another before.'

'Yes,' she says, 'it is funny, isn't it?'

So it's funny. We're agreed on it. We fall quiet again and I
beat my brains out. Why doesn't
she
say something? I hear somebody tramping up behind and
I
look round and see Miss
Price coming up fast, striding out like a man.

'Good morning, Mr Brown. Are you returning refreshed from
your holiday?'

'That's right.' Well, that's it. I've had it now.

Miss Price nods and sticks her big chin out as she falls in with
us. She throws the end of her long muffler back over her shoulder
and plants her feet down square in step with mine. Miss Price
embarrasses me. She's too good to be true. She should be under
contract to J. Arthur Rank by rights because I always think she
looks as if she's lost her way from a British comedy picture.
She's
got a voice as well. Some of the staff say it's been known to carry
the length of the Works, given the wind in the right quarter of
course, and I wonder what it would be like to put her and the
cheerful cove together in a railway tunnel.

'Have you had a nice Christmas, Vic?' Ingrid says, and I'm
so tickled to hear her say my name that I can't think what to say for a minute. Not Mr Brown, like Miss Price. Not Victor, even;
but Vic, just like my mates.

'Oh, so so, y'know,' I say. 'We had quite a time Boxing Day. My sister got married.'

'A charming girl,' Miss Price says, telling everybody for five
hundred yards either way as well as Ingrid and me. 'And the
groom - a most pleasant and intelligent young man, so my sister tells me.'

I remember now that she has a sister, another Miss Price,
who's Domestic Science mistress at the Grammar School. She's
come since my time.

'Was it a white wedding, Vic?' Ingrid asks, and I see I've got
her interested now, anyway. Funny how birds are interested
in weddings, even when it's somebody they don't know.
'What did your sister wear?' she says, wanting to know all the
details.

I'm a bit out of my depth here and I flounder about for a
minute till Miss Price comes to the rescue.

'My sister and I went to the church.' (Funny, but I never
saw them.) 'She was so keen to see young Mr Lester marry, and I love a wedding at any time.'

There - even the ones who're past it!

Anyway, she trots out all the gen Ingrid wants and she says,
'I'd love to see the photos, Vic, when you get them.' We're just
inside the door of the office building by now and Miss Price
says,' Cheery-bye,' and stalks off down the long corridor.

Ingrid giggles. 'Isn't she a case?'

I say, 'Hmm.' I look after her where she's walking away. I don't know, I always feet a bit sorry somehow for people like that.

The bell rings while we're standing there and Ingrid says she'll have to go.

'Yes, okay. I'll try to get hold of the photos when they're
ready.'

'Yes, do. I'd love to see them.'

She walks away after Miss Price and I go up the stairs. Bring
ing the photos will give me another chance to talk to her if I
can't manage it any other way before then. I want to lean over
the rail and watch her go, but there's too many people about,
and Jimmy Slade, my mate at the office, comes up with a muffler
on and bike clips and carrying his bike pump that he doesn't
leave in the shed for fear somebody pinches it.

'Now then, cock.'

' Now then, Jimmy.'

'Back to it, eh?'

'Aye, back to it.'

We go up the steps together.

II

Whittaker's is about the biggest engineering works round Cressley. All down the side of the erection shop there's the name spelled out in white bricks -
dawson whittaker
a
sons, ltd, engineers.
This is so when you're on the train you'll know what that big mucky place was you passed just before Cressley Junction.

The first thing you think when you go into the offices is that
whoever built them meant them to last a while. There's solid oak
doors all over the place and a lick of varnish every ten years or
so is all that's needed to keep them in trim. The top halves of
most of the office walls are glass and when you stand at one end
of the ground floor you can see right down through office after office where people are working at their desks or talking to one
another with maybe their hands going, but you can't hear a
thing, like watching television when the sound's gone. The draw
ing office is the biggest and it takes nearly all the length of the
upstairs floor on one side of the building. There's more glass
here than anywhere else. It's half glass on the corridor side and
there's big windows looking out on the lane. Then the roof's half
glazed and there's this big window, like a church window but
with plain glass, up in the end wall. You've got plenty of light
to work with all right but it's like a greenhouse in summer and a
refrigerator in winter. The boards are in three lines and there's enough for thirty-five draughtsmen and designers. At the side of every board there's a plan press which gives a flat top for
your drawings and filing room for all the old drawings that have
been piling up since the firm began back in eighteen-seventy something. You have a drawer for yourself as well where you
put your own stuff, such as sandwiches, the
Manchester Guardian,
the
Daily Mirror, Snappy Nudes, Sporting Pink,
and even
reference books and drawing instruments, all depending what
sort of bloke you are and what you're interested in. There's three
smaller rooms open off the big office, one for the estimators, one for the tracing lasses, and one where the prints are done.
The print machine's a carbon arc job and it looks a bit like one
of them mechanical pianos where you put a penny in and it plays
a tune that was in the Top Ten during the Boer War. The prints
are done by a young lad called Laisterdyke and a lass called Phoebe Johnson. Then at the top end of the office there's two
glass cubicles, one belonging to the assistant chief, Miller, who
everybody likes, and the other to the chief, Hassop, who nobody much cares for.

The real boss is Mr Althorpe, the Chief Designs Engineer,
and he has his own office (private - no
glass) with his name on
the door along the corridor. The work comes from him and
Hassop and Miller pass it out to the section leaders. Each section
leader has a team and this can vary from two or three to a dozen
blokes depending how big the job is they're doing. You'd think
in an office this size there'd be bags of chance for experience but each team specializes and once you know a particular job
you can find yourself stuck with it year after year. Anyway, that's
the D.O. at Whittaker's.