“Wrong?” I said. “How do you mean, wrong?”
I was getting good. The tone of my voice was just right. The wary husband, innocent, realising that he is about to be cross-questioned by a jealous wife, puts himself on guard, creates a defense with aggressiveness.
Kate stood up.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“So I look terrible,” I said, walking over to the drinks and pouring one out. “I’ve been working all day. It’s gone midnight. That’s why I look terrible.”
Kate’s concern disappeared and her own defensive mechanism took over.
“And if you’ve been working late,” she said, “why wasn’t I told?”
“Because I forgot,” I said, taking a drink. “Quite a simple explanation, really.”
“You forgot.”
“Probably because I had too much to drink yesterday,” I said. “You’ll remember that I had too much to drink.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said.
“You don’t believe that I had too much to drink? But my love, you kept reminding me of the fact. Surely you remember that?”
“Shut up.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I didn’t begin the proceedings. I’ll rest my case.”
“You’ll tell me where you’ve been.”
I sat down in an armchair.
“I have been,” I said, “at the studio. All day. All evening. Working . . . mucked up some prints and so I had to redo the shots and I printed them up myself this evening so that there wouldn’t be another accident. That is why it is now a quarter past twelve.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Of course.”
“I think you’re having an affair.”
“Yes.”
“Just like the last time.”
“Of course.”
“Peter, tell me the truth.”
“You already know the truth.”
“I want to know.”
The phone rang. I knew who it would be.
I got up out of my chair and hurried into the studio, praying that Kate wouldn’t pick up the telephone in the other room.
I lifted the receiver and said, “Yes?”
“You left, then,” said Plender.
“I had to. My wife . . .”
“I said I’d be back to pick you up.”
“I know, but . . .”
“Well, then why didn’t you wait?”
“I had to get home. Listen, I have to go. My wife thinks I’m having an affair. This phone call . . .”
“She thinks you’re having an affair?” said Plender. “Well, that’s handy, so long as that’s all she suspects.”
“I’ll have to go.”
“When will the prints be ready?”
“The prints?”
“The pictures you took tonight.”
“I don’t know. Look . . .”
“I’ll pick them up tomorrow,” said Plender. “About midday.”
The line went dead.
I put the phone back on its cradle. Kate came into the room.
“Who was that?” she said.
“The printer,” I said. “The people who print the catalogue.”
Kate looked at me.
“They do work night shift, you know.”
Kate turned away and began to walk out of the room.
“They wanted to know if I was sending the negatives over for the morning shift. I should have let them know earlier. They phoned the studio and I’d gone and so they phoned here . . .”
Kate closed the door behind her.
PLENDER
The receptionist was just the way I imagined she’d be. Not too different to the way the other one had looked, from what I’d been able to tell. She said to me, “Who is it to see Mr. Knott?”
“Tell him it’s Mr. Plender,” I said. “He’s expecting me.” She flipped her appointment book open.
“There’s nothing down here,” she said.
“Probably not,” I said, looking at her. She looked back at me for as long as she could and then she pressed a switch and Knott’s voice crackled through the tinny intercom.
“Yes?” he said.
“There’s a Mr. Plender in reception,” said the girl, waiting for the glorious moment when Knott asked her if I’d got an appointment. “He says he’s expected.”
“I’ll come out,” said Knott.
The girl looked at me again. She thought she’d won. She thought Knott was just coming to see who the hell I was, so that I’d be proved a liar when I’d said I’d got an appointment. She sat back and waited.
Knott opened the inner door and I crossed the reception area and without a word closed the door behind me.
We went into Knott’s office. Knott turned to face me.
“I had to leave last night,” he said.
I sat down on one of his trendy chairs.
“But I said I’d be back,” I said. “And you only left ten minutes before I got there.”
“I couldn’t stay any longer,” he said. “I told you. My wife . . .”
“Yes, you told me, Peter,” I said. “And I told you—you have to do as I say. At least for the present. Otherwise you might do something that could land you in a lot of trouble. And if you’re in trouble, I’m in trouble. And I don’t want to land in trouble just because I did an old mate a favour.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter this time,” I said. “But you see what I mean, don’t you?”
He nodded his head.
“Anyway,” I said, “let’s forget it. How did the pictures turn out?”
He opened a drawer in his desk and took out a stiff backed envelope and pushed them over to me. I took the prints out and looked through them. Knott turned his back and looked out of the window.
“What are they for?” Knott said.
I tut-tutted.
“Now, Peter,” I said. “You know I’m not going to tell you. Wouldn’t be wise, would it?”
There was a silence. Then he said, “It was horrible. That’s why I left. That was the real reason. I couldn’t stand it any longer.”
I put the prints in my coat pocket.
“I thought it would have been right up your street,” I said.
He didn’t answer. I stood up and walked over to the door.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said.
He turned to face me.
“Tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “For dinner. What time would you like me to be there?”
I came out of the pictures. The second house queue scanned the leaving faces to get a preview of what the the picture had been like. Knott and his gang had got out before me and the ones with girls were showing off in front of their mates without girls, now the initial embarrassment was over. They’d all been up in the balcony, on the back row with the bookable double seats. I’d been downstairs in the shillings, on my own. They all had their Saturday night clobber on, and I was wearing my blazer, because my mam said what was the use of having two jackets when you could only wear one at a time.
I wandered over to the group.
“Eh up, Pete,” said Ghandi, “it’s Plender.”
Knott smiled his odd smile.
“Now then, Plender,” he said. “What did you think of the picture?”
I’d thought it was smashing but I said, “Not bad.”
“It was bloody terrible, man,” said Knott. “Bloody Doris Day.” He began to sing in a girl’s voice, a silly voice, “By the light of the silvery moon . . .”
Ghandi and Mouncey fell about laughing and the girls with them, Maureen Smith and Connie Sherwood, looked at me and giggled.
Knott stopped singing.
“Come on then,” he said, “let’s go up to Market Place.”
After the pictures chucked out that was where everybody went to on a Saturday night, just to hang about, waiting for the village buses to leave one by one. There was a Lovers’ Lane round the back where the cattle market was. Schoolboys without dates would send other schoolboys as envoys to groups of schoolgirls to tell the fancied one, “Harry Akester wants to know if you’ll go for a walk with him.” There’d be giggling and maybe the chosen one would leave her group and as a country bus would swish away into a September rain she and her suitor would sort of meet, halfway between their separate groups, then disappear into the wet blue dusk of Lovers’ Lane and kiss, thrust into damp hedges or propped up against rain-slick gateposts, the blue getting deeper, similar dark figures searching for a spot like theirs.
Knott began to walk away, holding Susan’s hand. His mates followed suit. I tagged on behind, knowing that the command hadn’t included me, but keeping the awareness to the back of my mind.
I was walking behind Dreevo and Denise Yarwood. They were holding hands and not talking.
“Looks a good picture next week, Dreevo,” I said.
Dreevo answered me without turning round.
“It’s donkeys old,” said Dreevo. “Saw it last year in Grimsby.”
In the Market Place I stood near Knott and Susan in Deweys doorway while Dreevo and the others took their girls down Lovers’ Lane and then saw them on to their buses. One by one the boys returned to the doorway. When they were all assembled Knott said, “Mam says we can all go up to our house and have our supper. Want to come?”
They all said yes and began to move off along the pavement. I began to think of an excuse to cover my embarrassment at not being included, like having to go to the chip shop for my mam, but Knott said, “Are you coming then, man?” in a voice that suggested I was being sullen and awkward.
At Peter’s house Mrs. Knott opened the door to us and gave a big welcome to Susan and the other lads. When she saw me she kept up her politeness but in a way that was meant to show me that she was less pleased to see me than she was to see the others. But again I forced the knowledge to the back of my brain because Knott had included me, he could have left me behind, and besides, I’d be near to Susan for the next hour or so.
We all went into the sitting room and Mrs. Knott brought in the supper and left us to it. Everybody got talking and the other lads were showing off a bit because Susan was the only girl there and soon the talk got round to what had happened at school recently.
“Here,” said Dreevo, “wasn’t Gilliatt supposed to be taking Jean Moss to pictures tonight?”
“God aye,” said Ghandi. “They were walking round Cricket Pitch all last week.”
“I didn’t see either of them,” said Knott.
Susan said, “She didn’t turn up. She was supposed to meet him off the half past bus in the Market Place.”
“Why not?” Peter asked.
“Somebody else asked her out and she decided to go with them.”
“What, and she didn’t tell him?”
“Well, she couldn’t, could she? She wasn’t asked till last night and there was no way she could let him know.”
“Typical lassies’ trick,” said Ghandi.
“I’d have done the same if I’d been her,” said Susan.
“What do you mean?” Peter asked.
“Well, not that I would, but any girl would rather go with Noel Fletcher than John Gilliatt.”
“Noel Fletcher!” said Ghandi. “That streak of gnat’s pee!”
“He’s a yob,” said Peter. “Thinks he owns the place riding round on that motor bike of his.”
“All the girls think he’s ever so good looking,” said Susan. “He looks like Dickie Valentine.”
“Dickie Valentine!” said Peter.
“He does,” said Susan. “All the girls at school think so.”
“It’s a rotten bloody trick, though,” said Ghandi, “not turning up like that. Don’t you reckon, Pete?”
Peter looked at me.
“Dunno,” he said. “Ask Brian.”
Peter and Susan looked at one another and snorted, suppressing laughter.
“God aye,” said Ghandi, laughing too, “that time behind the pavilion.”
“Naw, we shouldn’t laugh,” said Peter, laughing. “It was mean. Old Brian was waiting nearly half an hour.”
I began to go red.
“Hey up, Brian,” said Dreevo, “are you blushing?”
I shook my head.
“Eh, no though,” said Dreevo, “he is. He’s blushing.”
“I’m not,” I said, trying to smile, to show them how much I appreciated the joke.
“It was bloody funny, though,” said Ghandi. “We could hardly keep from laughing. We nearly gave it away, didn’t we?”
“I knew you were there a long time,” I said, “I kept it up because I knew you were there.”
“Rotten lying bugger,” said Peter. “You never knew anything of the sort.”
“I could see you,” I said.
“Why didn’t you let on, then?” said Dreevo.
“I told you. I was playing you up.”
Knott blew a raspberry.
There was a knock on the door and Peter’s mother poked her head into the room. “Peter, love,” she said. “Can I have a word with you a minute?”
“Yes, Mam,” said Peter. He got up and went to the door. As he went, I heard through the door his mother say, “I’m just making a drink and I wanted to know who’s for tea and who’s for—”
The door closed.
I got up and said, “Just going upstairs.”
That was where the toilet was.
I closed the door behind me. The coolness of the hall made me feel a bit better but there were still beads of sweat on my forehead.
I began to climb the stairs. At the end of the hall the kitchen door was open. I could hear cups and saucers being rattled. Mrs. Knott was talking to Peter.
“It’s not that I mind,” she said, “but you do spoil yourself sometimes. I mean, you didn’t really need to ask him to come. It’s not as though you’re great pals. And his mother. She just loves seeing people dragged down. She was always jealous of me, you know, when we lived down the Crescent. Oh, yes. Just because your dad wore a collar and could afford a car.”
I stopped on the stairs. Peter mumbled something in reply.
“And you must think about Susan. She might not like having to mix with that sort. I know her mother wouldn’t like it. I mean, you’ve got to better yourself, you’ve got to get on, and lads like Brian, well he’s all right the lad is, I’ve nothing against him, but lads like that’ll just hold you back. They’re no good to you. Now Alan and Tony, look at them. Totally different. They’re like you. They’ll be staying on at school and going on somewhere afterwards. College. Business. Good jobs. Those are the kind of people you’ll naturally be mixing with later on, when you’ve left the Brians of this world behind you. I was only talking to Alan’s mother the other day, she’s a lovely woman, saying how pleased I was that you and him had got friendly. Incidentally they’ve got a lovely house behind the shop. Have you ever been in?”