A Kind of Loving (41 page)

I wait for her on the steps, looking out across the road at the
bay and Castle rock sticking out into the sea with the little boats
and pleasure steamers hugging under it like chickens under an
old hen.

'What did you do that for?' she says when she comes out.

'What?' I say, sulky like.

'Barge out like that right in the middle of the conversation.'

'I can leave a room without asking their permission, can't!?'
I start down the steps and she follows me.

'Well, what's wrong with them, for goodness' sake? I think
they're very nice people.'

'Mebbe they are, but there's no need to throw yourself at 'em
just because they condescend to exchange a few words about the
weather.'

'And if they'd sat there all week and not spoken you'd have
said they were stuck-up and snobbish. Well, it strikes me you're
the snob - an upside-down snob.'

I'm getting pretty riled now, more so because I know I'm
partly at fault. 'I've talked to better people than them in my time
but they have to take me as I am, Yorkshire accent an' all. I don't
put it on for anybody.'

'And who does?'

'You do. You sounded as if you were auditioning for the
BBC and trying to kid 'em you'd come straight from Eton, or
wherever it is they send these posh bints.'

'I hadn't noticed,' she says, stiffening up.

'Well I did, an' I'll bet they did an' all. Why d'you want to
throw yourself at people like that? Meet 'em half-way, be pleas
ant, okay. But there's no need to gush and preen yourself as if they
were royalty or something. People don't think any better of you
for trying to make out you're better than you are.'

She says nothing to this and a bit of me's sorry under the irritation. We walk on without saying anything for a bit, then I say,'Okay, let's forget it.'

'I think we'd better,' she says, very quiet, and this is worse
somehow than if she'd come out and bawled back at me.

We've got to the cliff lift now and there's one at the top standing with its door open.

'Where d'you want to go?'

'I'm not particular.'

' You want to go and look at the shops?'

'No, we'd better save that for later in the week when we know
how much money we have left.'

'Well, I shan't have so much left if that bloke stands about
in the hall so much more,' I say, trying to make a joke. 'I
feel as if I ought to put a bob into Ms hand every time I pass him.'

'Shall we go down on the beach, then?' she says.

'Okay. We'll get the papers and a couple of deck chairs and take it easy like a real old married couple.'

'I suppose we ought to make the most of it,' she says. 'It's the last holiday we'll have on our own for a long, long time.'

It's these casual remarks about us spending the rest of our lives
together that chill me to the marrow, reminding me that this is real and not a dream. We walk together into the lift and I look
down at her in her summer frock and wonder if it shows.

III

Next week I move my gear over to Rothwells' ready for settling
in. There's not much, just my clothes, a few books, and one or
two gramophone records. I leave the gram at home for young
Jim because Ingrid already has one. Ingrid's bed's a three-quarter
size, which is fair enough when we're feeling matey, but not so good for sleeping comfortable; so we put this hi the spare room
and go into town and buy a new double one for us. This is our
first bit of furniture and the only thing we need at present because
the rest of the stuff in Ingrid's room - dressing-table, wardrobe,
and drawers - is enough for both of us. On the face of it this
should give us a chance to save up for when we can get our own place; but now Ingrid's packed her job in we only have my wage
and by the time I've paid Ma Rothwell board and lodging for
the two of us and I've had my National Health and income tax
stopped at the shop we only have about fifty bob left over to pay
for every thing else - entertainment, clothes, and all the stuff we'll
need for the kid when it arrives. At this rate I can see us being
stuck with Ingrid's old lady for the next ten years and I don't
like the thought of this one little bit; because from the day I
go there to the day I walk out I don't feel at home in that
house.

This is because Ma Rothwell and I don't get along very well,
like I expected. We don't have words or anything like that (not
at first, anyway) and there's nothing really you can pin down and tell anybody about because you have to be around all the time and see how things lead up to things and hear the tone of
voice things are said in to get the idea.

I'm not so bothered that she's house-proud. I'm a pretty tidy
sort of bloke myself and if she wants to empty ashtrays after me and shake the cushions about all the time and tell me she doesn't
want me to smoke upstairs or go up there in my shoes, well it's
her house and if she's proud of it she can have it that way. It
does get on your nerves after a bit, though.

But not as much as the way she talks. She talks the most
horrible bilge most of the time and she freezes up as though you've
insulted her if you dare to try to put her right. She has one or two favourite subjects. The Royal Family's one of them. She
keeps a scrapbook of the Queen and Philip and the kids and she
reads all these intimate stories about the way they live and takes them all for gospel. As if anybody really knows about them, and
they wouldn't be allowed to write it if they did. Another favourite
of hers is the way she puts shopkeepers in their places. To hear
her talk you'd think everybody in Cressley was out to do her down. But she doesn't let them get away with it, Ma Rothwell
doesn't. Oh, no, she puts them in their place all right. A proper
putter-in-place, she is. She never seems to see that if she was the big lady she thinks she is they'd all be falling over themselves to
be nice to her and so she ought to reckon they do even if they don't. Then there's politics. You don't need telling she's Con
servative. What else could she be but real true blue and never a good word for the Labour Party and the trade unions. If she had
her way trade unions would be abolished. And as for the miners,
well, they're just holding the country up to ransom, so she says,
and making trouble at every turn. She's not forgotten the Old Man's a miner, but it doesn't stop her shooting her mouth off about something she knows absolutely nothing about. And I
mustn't forget the coloured people, the West Indians and Pakistanis and so on. She'd pack that lot off home, and sharp about
it, because what with blackies on the buses and all you read about
in the papers it's getting as a respectable Englishwoman daren't put her nose outside her own door. In fact, she can hardly open
her mouth without showing everybody what a stupid, bigoted,
ignorant old cow she is. And I've got to live with her.

As for Ingrid, I don't think she had a serious thought to call
her own before she met me and I gave her something to think about, except what colour of coat she wanted for winter and whether she liked 'Criss Gross Quiz' better than 'Double Your
Money', or 'Take Your Pick' better than both.

It's not having a life of my own any more that really gets me
down, though. I don't seem to be able to do anything I want to do.
I try playing my records once - but only once. Before the first side's finished both Ingrid and her ma are bored to death and I
have to pack it in because they want television on. I always used
to like television before I came to live at Rothwells' but now I
hate the sight of it because it's on when I go in at tea-time and it
doesn't go off till it's time to go to bed. I've got to watch it,
though, because I can't read with the light out and I don't go
out much without Ingrid because her ma doesn't think it's
right.

I've been there about six weeks when we have our first little
set-to. Mr Van tells me one day that the Philharmonia Orchestra's
coming to Leeds and would I like to go over with him because it's
a real crack outfit and you don't often get a chance of hearing
them live.

'Well I don't know, Mr Van Huyten,' I say. 'I'd like to but I'm
not my own boss now, y'know.' I try to laugh. 'Married man
an' all that.'

'Bring your wife along, Victor,' he says. 'I'd be glad to have
the company of you both.'

I tell him I'll see what she says and I ask her that night if she'd like to go, only I make the mistake of doing it while her mother's there. Like I expected, she pulls a face. 'I'd be bored to tears,' she
says.

'Why don't you give it a try? There's always a first time.'

'Ingrid knows what she likes and she doesn't pretend to enjoy highbrow nonsense,' Ma Rothwell says, minding her own business as usual.

Well, I'm as wild as hell on a windy night at this and it's all I
can do to stop myself telling her just what I think. 'It's a matter
of opinion,' I say, holding it back. 'Makes a change from tele
vision quiz shows, though.'

She tightens her mouth up because she knows this is one for her.

'Anyway, I'd like to go if you won't.'

Now left to Ingrid this would be okay but the old cow has to put her two cents' worth in again. 'You have to sacrifice things
when you're married,' she says. 'Give and take.'

Now just what this has to do with me going to a symphony
concert I don't know. It's the sort of thing that makes me want
to climb the walls. It's stupid beyond belief.

'I don't see what that has to do with it. There's no harm in me
goin' to a concert, is there?'

She shrugs. (She can shrug in a more maddening way than
anybody I ever met.) 'If you want to carry on just as you did
before you were married it's got nothing to do with me. Though
I'm sure Ingrid will have something to say about it.' And she
bows out now she's done the damage.

'I don't know what you're getting at,' I tell her, and I don't.
You can't say anything when she talks like that because there's
no sense to argue at.

'You don't mind if I go, do you?' I say to Ingrid.

'When is it?'

'A fortnight on Saturday.'

'I don't know. We might want to go somewhere else.'

For a second I hate her enough to slap her silly face. To think
only three months ago I'd just to snap my fingers and she'd come
running. Now I'm married to her and it's as if her mother puts
her in a trance where she hasn't a mind of her own.

'Well, you'll have to forget about that,' I say, 'because I'm
going.'

This puts me in the dog-house and with Ma Rothwell around
I've no chance of sorting it out till we go up to bed.

'I didn't like the way you snapped at me tonight,' Ingrid says,
pulling her jumper over her head and shaking her hair free again.