“There you are. It was your own fault.”
“I know. ButâOh, hell, what can I do?”
“Nowt, Victor. You'll have to face it. She's going to blossom out. There's a lot of fellers going to be mad for a girl like that. She's going to find it exciting suddenly having all these admirers.”
“But she had them when I was going out with her. It didn't matter then.”
“But you're not going out with her anymore, are you?”
Half-past six.
“You know what, Victor?”
“What, Ron?”
“I've always been a close friend of yours. We used to listen to my Kenton records in your attic.”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I know you. You've always been lucky with the birds.” He took a drink. “Bloody hell, I'm full. I mean, you have, haven't you?”
“I dunno.”
“Yes, you have. You have, haven't you?”
“All right.”
“Well, why the bloody hell does that Jean piss me about so much? I mean, holding herself back?”
“Maybe she wants to marry you?”
“Naw, she's too young. Even I can see that. There's going to be some handsome bugger come along and that'll be it. She thinks she loves me, but she's too young. But, no, why the hell can't she let me have something?”
“I dunno. Why should she? Why should any of the bitches? All they're interested in is themselves.” I said, with the wisdom of twenty.
“Yeah.”
I took a drink.
“Eh up, Ron. Shall we go home? I'm fed up with this place. We can be in the Plough by eight if we leave now. Pick up Mart on the way from the station. This place stinks.”
“I don't mind.”
We drank up and reeled out.
Ten o'clock.
“By hell, though, you two have been sinking some stuff, haven't you?” said Mart as he set the tray of drinks down on the table. Ron and I had our arms round each other. The Plough's singing room clavioline star was crashing out “Sugar in the Evening”. There were about six of us round the table singing along with everybody else, fit to bust.
“No, they've been sinking us. We haven't much lower to go. Have we, Ron?”
“Naw, about six inches.”
“That's what you need. Six inches and every bitch in town will be round,” I said.
“Except Jean,” said Ron.
“Naw. She's no different. None of them are.”
“She is.”
“Naw.”
“Course she bloody well is.”
“Look, I've told you what she's like.”
“I haven't met one yet.”
“Well, I have.”
“Well, it's up to you then. Get stuck across her.”
“She's not like that.”
I laughed.
“I tell you, she isn't.”
I carried on laughing.
“Listen,Victor, shurrup.”
“I wish she was here now. I'd show her what for.”
“Naw, nobody could.”
“I could.”
“Shurrup, Victor. I know her.”
“No, you don't. I'm telling you, if she was here now, I could have her away before tomorrow morning.”
“Don't be bloody silly, Victor.”
“I'm not being. It's right.”
“Knock it off.”
“Why the hell should I? I'm telling you a fact.”
“Listen. Shut your trap.”
“What's the matter, Ron? Frightened I'm right?”
“I'm telling you. Can it.”
“Why? You've got to face up to these things, Ron. Some of us have got it and some of us haven't.”
“Are you asking for something, Vic? Because if you are, you're going the right way about getting it.”
“Suit yourself. Say the word.”
“Pack it in, Vic,” said Mart. “Leave it.”
“I was only telling Ronâ”
“We know what you were telling him. Now wrap up and have a drink, will you?”
“Ron, I'm sorry about what I said upstairs. You're a good bloke.” I had stopped him on the way into the gents as I was leaving.
“Don't talk to me.” He pushed me to one side and walked over to the stalls. I leant against the wall.
“What's the matter with you, then?” I bawled. “Can't you take a bloody apology?”
He spun round and sped over to me. He clutched me by the collar of my jacket.
“Listen. You've just about said enough for one night. Now shut it or it'll get shut for you.”
“Go on then, you miserable sod!” I shouted. “You can't tom Jean so you'd better try and prove yourself on me.”
“I'm warning you, Victor.”
“Come on, Ron. If you can't start it, I will.”
I pushed him away from me.
“You've got to hit me first, Vic. I'm not starting it.”
“Right!” I screamed, and went for him.
I think he hit me no more than three times. Once in the body and twice on the head. They were hard punches, but it wasn't their hardness that knocked the fight out of me. Once I felt the blows, I had accomplished what I had set out to do.
I fell against the wall and slid down to the floor. I could hardly see. One eye began to close up.
“I didn't mean it, Ron. I didn't want to fight you,” I said, not seeing anything. “I didn't mean anything I said.”
“You pathetic bastard. You make me want to throw up,” he said. I heard him go out, back into the pub.
I got up and looked at my reflection in the washbasin mirror. I was going to have a very black eye.
I walked out of the pub. The night was still and warm and starry. I was now less drunk than I had been. I looked toward the market place. Groups of young boys and younger girls stood round talking and laughing, sometimes shrieking. The terrible thought of Janet actually being with someone else filled my whole body. Images of her with the nameless person pressed into my brain with awful clearness.
“Janet. You know I love you. You know I do,” I said, then I walked off in the direction of our house.
“Fighting. Drinking yourself stupid. It's about time you straight-ened yourself out,” said my father the next day. “You can't live at home forever, you know.”
“I know that. Good God, do you think I like it?”
“Well then, why don't you make more of an effort to get a job? You're not trying hard enough.”
“My work's at an agency now, isn't it? Or had you forgotten?”
“But that's only one place. If I were you, I'd be working everyday, doing more specimens, banging them in. Apart from anything else, it'd take your mind off being stuck at home all day long.”
“Well, you're not me, are you?”
“I know this: you'd do a damn sight better doing some of your work than sitting in that pub every night of the week.”
“It's better than sitting at home.”
“We're only trying to help you, Vic,” said my mother.
“That's all we're trying to do,” said my father. “We know how down you get, but you should try and help yourself more. Not for us, for you. It doesn't cost all that much to keep you at home, you know. It's not that. We want you to get on, for yourself.”
“I know,” I said. “I know. I'm not trying hard enough.”
“We feel for you, Victor, when people ask you what you're doing,” said my mother.
“I know. It's just that things are a bit difficult at the moment. You know, in general.”
“We guessed as much,” she said. “Can't you tell us about it?”
“I'd rather not, not just now, anyway. It'll sort itself out. I'll tell you then.”
“We may be able to help,” she said.
“Maybe. Anyway. I'll get some work done. I'll go down to Story's and get some materials. I'll start today.”
“That's better. You can do it,” said my father, “and don't let things get you down. They have a habit of sorting themselves out.”
Every day I ached for Janet to telephone but she didn't, and again the following weekend I found myself making my way across the river. I hoped I wouldn't meet anyone and at the same time I knew that I would feel just as depressed if I didn't.
I toured the lunchtime pubs, the ones with music in them. I sat and drank alone, thinking about Janet, reliving the past year, becoming more maudlin as record succeeded record and drink succeeded drink.
The pubs closed and I drifted into a cinema, intermittently losing myself in the film. Then the lights went up and I felt a tap on my shoulder. I looked round. Arnold was sitting behind me, grinning.
“Hello, Arn,” I said.
“Now then, Victor. What are you doing over here?”
“Nothing much. Having a few drinks.”
“I won't ask you why you don't get in touch with anybody nowadays.”
“No. I wouldn't.”
He climbed over the row of seats and sat next to me.
“What are you doing? I mean as far as work's concerned.”
“I've got one or two things going. I've a chance of a job in an agency. Pretty promising really.”
“Good stuff. You'll be pleased with yourself.”
“Yeah.”
We stood outside the cinema. It was a quarter-past six.
“What are you doing now?” asked Arnold.
“Well, I was going to have a drink. Fancy one?”
“Yeah, all right.”
We strolled along the pavement. Arnold wasn't the best person in the world to drink with, but he was there, and I felt like some company. It might help to take my mind off things, I thought.
We wandered into the public bar of a scruffy pub off the main road. The bar was empty. A record player stood on the bar, and a barmaid was loading it with records. She clicked the starting mechanism and a record clattered onto the turntable.
We began to drink. We talked now and then but at first we mainly sat and stared at our reflections behind the bar. My thoughts covered the usual impossibly painful routes round the happenings of the last weeks. My body was in a constant state of tension from which no release seemed foreseeable. All I wanted was to see Janet and to put things right. I knew I could if I saw her. I knew her love too well not to know it was possible.
“Hey, listen to this,” said Arnold.
“Yeah. That's more like it. That's the thing.”
Instead of the usual top pops, Buddy Greco's up tempo small group recording of “The Lady is a Tramp” had fallen onto the turntable. It sounded free and exhilarating in comparison to the rest of the selection. Its mood elevated us, left us wanting to hear it again. Time passed and we grew happier in each other's company. After a few more drinks and a few more plays of the record, I found myself quite enjoying being with Arnold, and I felt more sympathetic toward him than usual. The drink had given a pleasantly self-indulgent colour to my thoughts about Janet.
“How about going to the Miami?” I said in a moment of bravado. Immediately I said it, I became apprehensive. I knew that if Janet was being bought a drink in town that was where she would be taken. That was where all the would-be smooth boys took their dates. The thought of seeing her with someone else induced a cold sick feeling in my stomach, but I'd had enough to drink to be reckless. So what, said a part of my mind. But another part reminded me how I might feel if I did see Janet. It was almost enough to hold me back. But because it was almost impossible to imagine seeing her with someone else, my feelings weren't strong enough to keep me away.
We shuffled through the swing doors. The bar was crowded. Best suits and Saturday afternoon hairdo's lounged arrogantly about the place. The air was full of the kind of self-advertising, condescending laughter that's usually found in places like the Miami bar issuing from people who behaved in the way they imagined that people in advertisements would behave. They even held their cigarettes in the same manner. Perhaps they were accurate in the way they wore their clothes and in the way they stood about, but they definitely were not in the way they pro-nounced their words. The closest observation could never completely obliterate their Yorkshire accents; although judging by the confidence with which they attempted to transform their native lilt, it seemed as though they felt they were completely succeeding. On the whole they gave me a pain in the left cheek. I knew one or two of them, and they weren't too bad, provided you could be with them alone, away from the birds they wanted to impress with their panache. We forged our way through the conclave of backs which demonstrated their affront at being asked to excuse by scarcely moving. Normally I would have made the most of my elbows, but my now sole concern was in fearfully scanning the room in the hope of not seeing Janet. My eyes flickered from face to face, but I couldn't see her. Even so, a terrible apprehension existed in me which became more acute as the minutes passed.
We finally reached the bar where a few of the smoother members of the mob were gathered together doing their pre-party drinking. We joined them and immediately Arnold was all over them in order to find out where the party was. I made my presence felt as little as possible, remaining on the outside of the group, hoping that no one would start talking about Janet. I was standing next to Dick Castle, Karen's boyfriend. He was quiet and polite and sensitive as usual, and I knew he understood better than the others how I was feeling and I hated him for it.
I kept looking back toward the entrance, and each time I expected with an awful certainty to see Janet and an escort come into the bar. The apprehension grew in intensity and after about half an hour, I decided I had better leave before Janet arrived, as I was sure she would.
“Do you fancy a change of scene?” I asked Dick. I didn't want to leave on my own and have everyone realizing the reason for my separate departure.
“What, are you going somewhere else, Vic?” asked Arnold.
“It was an idea, yes.”
“Good one. It's too crowded in here,” he said. “Anybody else keen?”
Everybody else was. So we all drank up and began to move off. Still, I thought, at least in another pub I'll be safe. It was a relief to get out onto the pavement into the dark night air. Soft rain flicked about in the wind.