A Kind of Loving (2 page)

'He's in the front room. He's been ready a good half-hour.'

A good mark for the scholar! I go through into the front room to find him. It's bedlam in there. Somebody's switched the wireless on and it's playing a record request programme at full blast.
Standing in the doorway I feel like shouting, 'Would anybody
like the wireless turning up a bit?
¹
There they are, milling about,
pulling at their clothes and messing about with make-up as they
jockey for position in front of the glass. Somebody's knocked
an ashtray on to the floor and the last of the three plaster geese
flying across the wallpaper is doing a nose-dive into the carpet.
Over in one corner, curled up as peaceful as if he's by himself in
the middle of a field, there's young Jim, with his nose in a book,
as per.

I reach past somebody and touch his knee. 'C'mon, Einstein.'

He gets up, thin, fifteen years old and too tall for his age, and marks the place in his book and follows me out. He's ushering at the church. You wouldn't think he's noticed anything unusual going on and when we get out on the front step and look at this big Rolls with white ribbons and white seat covers, he says, 'Just like a wedding, isn't it?' and I have to laugh.

Well I'm glad to be out of that lot and I take a butcher's at my
Est. 'Auntie Miriam first.' I give the driver the address and Jim
and I get into the taxi. Jim opens his book and retires again; but
I can't afford to; I've got a lot to do before eleven and I hope
Geoff Lister, my cousin, who's looking after
the other taxi, keeps
his end going as well. I check the list for the umpteenth time, wondering if we can get them all there on time. It's a tight list
and I'm proud of that because I'm saving David's money by
having one less car than they thought. But it makes no allowance
for lost time, so I'm hoping everybody's ready and waiting.

The taxi turns round in the street and moves off. The wedding's
under way.

II

It's snowed twice heavy in the fortnight before Christmas and it's
still lying about in like little grimy mountain ranges on either
side of the road where it curves down the hill. It looks as if there'!
more to come as well because the sky's like a thick grey blanket hanging behind the chimneys and rooftops with a reddish flush
over the bottom half where the sun's doing its best to break through. Cressley Town Silver Band's pitched in the forecourt
of the Prince of Wales on the corner and I get the sound of
'Hark! the Herald Angels Sing', as we slow down for the turn
coming louder as I wind the window down and give them a
shout.

'Oi!
Call at number thirty-seven. There's ten bob in it today.'
The conductor lifts his hand to show he's heard me and the
band carry on playing in the cold. I know the Old Man'll be
glad to have them call this morning because he'd be out with
them but for the wedding and he says it's the first Boxing Day play-out he's missed in more than twenty years.

I begin to think about things - the wedding and all that - as the
taxi bats down through town and young Jim goes on reading
in his corner. I reckon you can take all of us - me, my mother
and father, Chris, young Jim, and probably David as well - and
the only one enjoying it is the Old Lady.
She's
having the time
of her life; you c
an tell this by the way she's fussing about snap
ping everybody's heads off. She's been waiting years for this
day. Chris is twenty-seven now and I think there have been times
when the Old Lady was scared she was being left on the shelf,
just another schoolmarm with nothing to look forward to but
retiring on pension and maybe living with somebody else in the
same fix. But I never saw any reason for worrying; I knew all
along Chris would get married. I didn't see how she could miss, what with her looks and personality; because even if she is my own sister and I do say it myself, she's one of the grandest girls
any bloke could hope to meet. As I saw it, it was only a matter of
time before the right chap came along and snapped her up. But
the Old Lady isn't a big believer
in
right chaps; all she thinks of is
position and income and character; and the duller and plainer
they come the more character she seems to think they bring with
them. Good-looking blokes are all very well on the pictures or
television, but you keep your eye on them in real life because you
can't expect them to be any better than they should be with all
the temptation that must come their way.

That's the way the Old Lady thinks - or thought - and it's
probably why she didn't fall over herself to welcome David at
first, because he's good-looking and talks with a cut-glass accent
and comes from the south. And she knew nothing about him
except he was Senior English master at the Grammar School.
That was a point in his favour, though, because the Old Lady
thinks that schoolteachers were first in the queue when brains and general strength of character were handed out. She should
have seen some of them from where I was sitting not so long ago and she might have modified her ideas a bit. Anyway, it bothered
her because she couldn't chew the fat about David's background.
(His mother was a so-and-so - y'know, they kept that draper's
shop in Whiteley Street - and his father was a somebody else. He
had a sister that ran away with a feller from Wigan and left
three kids for the husband to bring up.) All that kind of stuff; it's the breath of life to the Old Lady, and she had to pacify herself by worming as much as she could out of Chris. Such
things as David was taken prisoner in North Africa when he
was only eighteen, his mother and dad were
killed in the London
blitz, and his girl friend got tired of .waiting and writing letters
and went and married somebody else. She'd never have g
ot a
hard-luck story like that out of David himself but she got it out
of Chris bit by bit; and then she went and turned right round and
couldn't do enough for him. She mothered him till I'm surprised
he's lasted till the wedding. But that's the Old Lady all over: hard
as nails on top and soft as a brush underneath.

Anyway, we make the first call and pick up Auntie Miriam
and Uncle Horace, who aren't very important and won't have
to mind being first and having to hang about at the church
half
the morning. I drop Jim off with them and give him bis
orders.

'Now get your nose out of that book and watch what you're doing. You show the bride's guests to the left and the groom's
to the right. Okay?'

'It's all so complicated,' Jim says. 'You should have put
somebody more intelligent on the job.'

'You're all we could spare, so watch what you're doing or it's a clip on the ear.'

'Bribery will get you nowhere,' Jim says, and I have to laugh
because he's a real wag at times.

'All right, have it your own way.' I whip the book out of his
hand 'But I'll take this and then mebbe you'll keep your mind on
the job.'

'Here, what am I supposed to do between times?' he says.

'Look at the gravestones. See'f there's anybody you know stopping there.'

I look at the title of the book as I get in with the driver -
Philosophy from Plato to the Present Day -
and pop it in the com
partment under the dashboard. There's times when young Jim
unnerves me, he's got so many brains. I wonder how I come
to have a brother like him, or a sister like Chris, for that
matter. And looking at it that way, it's me who's the odd man
out.

At a quarter to eleven prompt, like I planned, we leave the church for the last trip - home for Chris and the Old Man. All
without a hitch, I'm thinking, pleased with myself. Everybody
there for time and all going nicely, thanks. On the way we pass
the Old Lady doing her impersonation of Lady Docker, with
the two brats, Dotty and Mangy, making hideous faces through the back window.

And just after this it happens. We swing round a corner and
there's this dirty great piece of broken milk bottle lying jagged
edge up in the road. There's a crack like a gun going off and
bumping as the front offside tyre goes flat. The taxi swerves off the road across the pavement and stops with its front end up the
bank. The driver lets it roll back on to the road and then we both get out and look at the damage. He pushes his cap back, bending
down with his hands on his knees, and whistles.

'Now what?' I say. And everything's rushing into my mind at
once: Chris and the Old Man waiting at home, the church full
and no bride, and the Old Lady getting more ratty every second
that goes by.

'It's bad,' the driver says.

'I've noticed that,' I tell him. 'It's ten to eleven. What do we
do?'

' Change t'wheel,' he says.' There's nowt else for it.'

He takes his white coat off and then starts to peel off about
fifteen layers of pullovers and waistcoats that he has on underneath; all nice and steady like, as though it's Sunday and he's at
home in his backyard and out to make a morning of it. I hop round to the boot and rummage about for a jack. I slam it into
position and begin to crank, praying we shan't be bothered by
some copper with time on his hands and a lot of silly questions to
ask. I can't imagine this driver ever changed a
wheel before;
somebody must always have done it for him while he was strip
ping for action. As it is, he's hardly reached the working minimum
when I've got the spare wheel in position and I'm tightening nuts like mad. It's just after eleven when we get the car moving again,
and nearly ten past by the time we pull up at our gate.

The Old Man's on the front step with his hand over his eyes
like a sailor up in a crow's nest looking for land.'Where the
hummer have you been?' he says with p
anic in his voice. 'We're
late.'

I'm tempted for a second to give him a cheeky answer, like
we've called for a drink or something, but I see he's worried out of his wits so I just show him my dirty hands and tell him we've
had a puncture. Chris comes out meantime and though she's got
a coat on over her frock it doesn't hide that she looks a real
picture, just like somebody in one of them glossy women's mags.
'You'll knock 'em sideways,' I tell her. 'You'll knock 'em for
six.'

Well, once they begin it doesn't seem to matter that Chris
was late. After all it'll give her and David something to laugh
about later on. I slip her coat off for her and stay at the back
where I can get out first when it's all over. The organ switches from this soft background music it's been playing and starts on
the wedding march, booming out and filling the church. There's
a shuffle as all the guests stand up and Chris and the Old Man,
with Dotty and Mangy behind, start down the aisle to where
the vicar and David and his best man are waiting for them. A
real picture Chris looks, all in white, and her hair shining under
this little cap of net and flowers. Chris's hair is a sort of reddy brown like the Old Lady's was when she was young, but Jim
and I are both dark like the Old Man. I look down at the Old
Feller's feet and see he's remembered what I told him. There's a bit of a lopsided look about the congregation because our family's out in force and course David has no family, just the
few friends he's made since he came to Cressley.