A Kind of Loving (30 page)

'And how much notice do you have to give?'

'I think you're only bound to give a week but a fortnight's fairer. And I should have a word with old Hassop first and tell
him what you're doing; then it doesn't make him look a Charlie.'

'I'm not looking forward to that.'

'They reckon he even tried to get Conroy to stay on, Jimmy says; 'and I always thought he hated his guts.'

'He was pretty hot stuff, old Conroy. Hassop knew he was
losing a good man. I don't reckon I'm in his class as a draughts
man.'

The dinner-time bell rings as we're talking and we follow
everybody out of the office.

'Funny thing about Conroy,' I say, 'I was just beginning to like him when he left.'

' Oh, Albert wasn't such a bad sort of chap,' Jimmy says.' Once
you made allowances for his ways you
could get on with him okay. I always did prefer him to Lewis.'

'Me an'all, any day.'

'Ah, well,' Jimmy says.
'If you've made your mind up you've
made it up. I'll miss you, old cock.'

'Oh, come off it,' I say. 'I'm not emigrating to Timbuktu. We
can have nights out together.'

'Aye, right enough.'

We've got along the corridor nearly to the door when all of
a sudden we hear a bint cry out and there's a commotion at the
bottom of the stairs. When we get nearer we see a crowd of birds
and one or two bods gathered round somebody lying on the
floor.

Somebody says. 'No, don't move her; run for the Nurse,' and
one of the blokes goes dashing through the door.

We can't see a thing from where we are and we can't get past to
get out. When one of the bints turns away I ask her, 'What's
up? Who is it?'

'It's Ingrid Rothwell,' she says, all in a flutter and a flap.
'She's fallen down the stairs. Right from top to bottom. She couldn't save herself She just gave a shout and went straight
down.'

'Is there anything we can do?'

'I don't think so. They've gone for the Nurse. She's passed out
and we daren't move her.'

My heart's going like a tom-tom and I don't know where I am
for a minute. Jimmy gets hold of my arm and steers me away. 'C'mon; we're only blocking the way. Let's go to the canteen.'

We go back the long way round and hear about it later on,
Ingrid's come round by the time the Nurse gets there and she gets
a couple of bods to carry her into the waiting-room while she rings up for an ambulance. Next day we hear they've X-rayed Ingrid at the infirmary and she's broken her left arm. I get all
this from Jimmy, who's got it from Pauline Lawrence, who got
it from the Nurse. I'm glad it's not serious but now the shock's
passed I don't feel much else. Anyway, I have to do something so
I splash eight-and-six on a pound box of chocolates and send
them with a little note by Pauline who's going to visit Ingrid one
night. I just say in the note I'm sorry it's happened and I hope she'll soon be better again. I don't mention about leaving Whittaker's. She can't write back because it's her left arm and she's left-handed so she just tells Pauline to say thanks for the
chocs, which she does.

When I think about it I'm glad she can't write because it
means she can't pin me down. What with her laid up and me
leaving Whittaker's I reckon this is the time to break off properly,
for good. Then I might feel better all round and not so much of a
louse. It'll be all right if I don't see her. I just shan't think about
her then.

That afternoon I tell Mr Hassop that I'm handing my notice in at the week-end. I don't meet with much opposition. Maybe
he's not bothered either way, whether I go or stay. We have quite
a long natter, though, and he tells me all the disadvantages of
being a shop assistant and the opportunities open for draughts
men. I tell him I've thought about all that and this isn't just
another shop assistant's job because I've kind of got an interest
in the business, and we leave it at that.

On the Friday morning I take my letter In to Miss Padgett, Mr
Matthew's secretary, and a fortnight later I'm away, just like
Conroy, with my tackle in a case and a very nice pigskin notecase
with my initials on it and a quid inside from the Staff.

Right at the last when they're giving me the wallet and Hassop's
giving out with the bull like he did for Conroy, I'm swallowing
hard and looking round at all their faces and having a last-minute
touch of panic for fear I'm doing the wrong thing. Because now
I can only remember the good times early on, when it all seemed
exciting, before I got restless; and I think what a good bunch of
lads they are, as grand a bunch all round as you'd meet in a day's
march, and I know I'll miss them.

And that's it. The next Monday morning I go to work full-time
for Mr Van Huyten in his shop.

CHAPTER 3

I

I
settle
down pretty quickly at the shop because I like the job
as much as I thought I should. Mr
Van Huyten tells me all
about invoicing and the books and soon he's leaving me to deal
with all this on quiet days during the week. I get as I know the
record catalogues inside out - even the classical stuff as well, and I
begin to like hearing some of this as well as the jazz and pops,
though I can't really take to Mr Van Huyten's Brahms and the
'later quartets' by Beethoven, the one Rawly was talking about
having gone deaf that time. Chamber music's not in my line:
I like plenty of tunes and lots of bash and clatter in the orchestra
and before long I find that old Tchaikovsky's right up my alley.
I get to know more about all this because Mr Van Huyten starts
taking me over to Leeds and Bradford in his car when there's
some crack orchestra playing. A lot of it's fit to put you to sleep
but every now and then you get a real kick out of something they
play, and sometimes you get a feeling you don't like a certain
piece now but you might if you heard it a few more times. Mr
Van Huyten talks about music all the way there and back and I like hearing him tell the tale about the great composers and how some of them struggled to get a name and nobody cared
for their music when it first came out. He's real genned up, Mr
Van Huyten is, and he makes it interesting: all about Mussorgsky
going off his nut and Tchaikovsky writing to that old bint all
those years without seeing her and trying to do himself in by drinking poisoned water. Some real boyos there were among
them. Mr Van Huyten tells me to have patience with music and it'll all open out like a big flower some day.

'Why do they make it so hard to listen to?' I ask him one
night when we're coming back from a Halle concert in St George's
Hall in Bradford.

'But they don't set out to do that, Victor,' he says. 'That's just
the point. These popular tunes that you have in the... what do
you call it - the Hit Parade? They're so simple they go in one ear
and out the other. How long do they last? A few weeks, or a
month or two at the most. But this is music which endures for
hundreds of years. It will be listened to as long as men live. Can you expect music of that stature to have the immediate appeal of a popular song? Someone once said that great art doesn't reveal all its secrets at one glance. Be patient, let it work on you, let it
flow over you. One day you'll hear the most glorious music where
you now hear only a din. You'll hear it all, Victor, I hope. The thunder and majesty of Beethoven, the grace and tragic beauty
of Mozart, the glorious singing of Brahms, the noble sadness of
Elgar. It's like a wonderful voyage of discovery, Victor, with
magic over every horizon. Here is all the music in the world just waiting for you to find it. How I wish I could go back fifty years
and discover it all afresh!'

When I've been at the shop awhile Mr Van Huyten lets me
have a two-speed record player and some records cheap. I can
see he's out to turn me into a real music-lover; but I don't
mind. It's like he says, a new discovery over every horizon, and
it seems like each week I'm finding something new to like.

Sometimes I go out on jobs with Henry, mainly to help with
the carrying and such, but I'm learning all the time, and in the
quiet spells I go back into the workroom and watch him do the
repairs and it's surprising how much technical stuff you can pick
up that way. At nights and week-ends, besides playing records
and the times I go out with Mr Van Huyten, I might have a night
at the pictures with Willy or Jimmy, and the odd pint. Sometimes
I go to a dance. I still think about this girl I'm going to run into
one day, but I'm happy enough now and there's no great
hurry.

I hardly think about Ingrid at all. Out of sight, out of mind certainly works where she's concerned. One time she sends me a picture postcard from Skegness where she's convalescing at her aunty's. There's an address on it but I think at first I won't bother writing back because it's all over. Then I think there's no harm in being civil so I get a picture of Cressley Town Hall and send her that. I write on it: 'I don't think I'll come here again for my holidays because it's a mucky place and it rains all the
time. Hope you're properly better soon.' When I'm putting it in the letterbox I wonder if I'm not encouraging her and it might be better to tear it up and forget it; but I let it go.

II

The days draw out, the weather gets warmer, and it's what we
call summer, with a bitter laugh when we've said it.

One day towards the back end of June I'm leaning on the
counter in the shop, feeling a bit cheesed. Mr Van Huyten's doing
Ms accounts in his little glass cubby-hole and Henry's busy in
the back. Things are a bit slack this morning and by ten o'clock
we've had a woman in for a record catalogue, another woman
with an electric iron for repair, and a bod who's wandered round
looking at TV sets and radiograms and wouldn't let me tell him
anything about them. 'I'm just looking,' he says. I know his type.
He'll go home and tell his family that the assistants at Van
Huyten's are too pushing. And if you take no notice of people
when they come in they go away and say we don't give them
service and attention.

Anyway, I leave him be, and in a minute or two in comes a sprightly-looking bint with a hedgerow hairdo who asks for a
record of Tommy Steele singing: 'I'm the Only Man on the
Island'. I serve her and take her money and watch her go down
the shop. She's wearing spike-heels that she's not too steady on
and a tight skirt that cuts her stride to about six inches. I wonder
what happens if she ever forgets and tries to run for a bus. I
notice skirts are getting shorter, which is something I don't mind
at all, and I'm looking at this bint's legs as she prissys her way out
and letting my thoughts wander a bit
in
the direction of subject
normal when the door opens and another pair of legs comes in:
a pair of neat slim legs in darkish nylons that I'd know anywhere.
And all at once it's just as though somebody's given me a clout on the chest over the heart and I can't breathe properly.

She comes up to the counter and says,'Hello, Vic.'