A Kind of Loving (32 page)

It's a cold night and teeming down with rain and we don't
fancy any of the pictures showing in town so I take her into the
Bluebird for a cup of coffee. I don't usually take her into places
like that because we might see somebody I know and they're
sure to get all the wrong ideas.

M thought you weren't coming,' she says when we get sat down at a table at the back. She's wearing a green mac and it's
wet on the shoulders. She takes her headscarf off and her hair's
dampish and pressed down to her head.

'I've been to the blood donation centre. I'd forgotten it was.
tonight or I'd have said half-an-hour later.'

'I didn't know you gave blood.'

'Every now and again.'

'How did you come to start doing that?'

'Oh, they had a bit of a drive on to find new donors and a
chap came to the door one night. I reckoned
if
it was all that
important to 'em I might as well give 'em a pint now and then.'

'Does it hurt? When they take it, I mean.'

'Naw, there's nothing to it. Me dad goes an' all. They got two
new names when they came to our house.'

She sips her coffee, dainty like, with her little finger sticking
out. She's got all sorts of little ways that put me on edge.

'I don't think I could face the sight of so much blood,' she
says. 'Especially my own.'

'You don't see any blood. The bottle's on the floor all the time.
You can see it if you lean over, but you don't have to.'

'But I thought... I've seen them on the pictures.'

'That's when they're being given blood. That's when the
bottle's up above.'

'Oh, I see.'

' Then they send you a card to tell you how it's been used.'

' Have you ever had yours used in anything exciting?'

'Well I'm a common group - "O" - and I've only been four
times.' I fish out the little blue card and show her the stickers on it, one for each visit. 'Usually it's just ordinary transfusions after operations. But it all helps. You've got to think of all the poor devils who need it and remember you never know when you might be in the same boat. It'd be hard cheese if they hadn't any, wouldn't it?'

She shivers, 'I hope
I never need any. I hate the thought of
hospitals and operations. I had enough with my arm.'

'You never know,' I say.

She drinks some more coffee, and I look past her at the room.
It's fairly full, it being a wet night, and there's all sort of people in, but mostly young 'uns passing the time on and flirting with one another, like that crowd in the middle with the lasses with
hedgerow haircuts and jeans and the lads in jeans as well, some
of them, and striped sweatshirts under their jackets. One of them
has a leather jacket and a crewcut He looks as though he's
walked out of an American picture. It's all Yankeeland these days.
If it goes big in America it takes here, like rock 'n' roll, for instance. Me, I like to look English because I reckon it's the finest country in the world, bar none. Not that it's heaven for
everybody, I suppose. There's an old keff sitting on his own down
there by the wall and I wonder what he thinks to it. Even from
the back you can see he hasn't had a shave for a week and he can't
have sat in a barber's chair for months. There's a ragged hole
in the top of his old trilby and he has a double-breasted navy blue overcoat that's dusty and without buttons and tied round
the waist with a length of string. It gives you a kind of shock to see people like him about these days and you can only think it's
their own fault. He might have boozed his way into that condi
tion for all I know. He might be a no-good waster that's scrounged
his way through life, too idle to do a day's work. You don't know.

But whichever way it is, there he is, old and on his own, and
probably without two ha'pennies to rub together and you can't
help feeling sorry and kind of sick inside to look at him.

'What are you looking at?' Ingrid says, watching me.

'Nothing, I'm just looking. My face is pointing that way.'

'Are you scared you'll see somebody you know?'

'Why should I be?'

'I sometimes think you're ashamed to be seen with me,' she
says, looking down into her cup.

'Why should I be?' I say, feeling my face go hot.

She shrugs. 'I don't know. I just get the feeling sometimes.'

I'm drawing patterns with a matchstick in a drop of spilt coffee
on the table-top and she turns her head and takes a look round
the place herself.

'Well,' she says in a minute, 'how does it feel to be a
man?'

I give a laugh. 'Ask me another.'

'Did you get any nice presents?'

I stretch my arm across the table to show her the watch. 'Me
mother an' dad bought me this. Isn't it a gem, eh?'

She takes hold of my wrist and turns it so she can see the watch
better. 'It's lovely... What else did you get?'

'Oh, Jim bought me a tie and Chris and David got me a book
of crime stories and an L.P. record of Tchaikovsky's Pathetic
Symphony.'

'My, my,' she says, lifting her eyebrows. 'Haven't we gone Highbrow lately!'

This niggles me no end. She's so satisfied that these yawping crooners are the last word.

'Well, what's wrong with it?' I say. 'It was written for people to like, wasn't it? What's wrong with me liking it?'

'Oh, nothing at all. Only there's lots of people who pretend
to like that kind of thing just because they think it makes them
Somebody.'

'You know me better than that.'

She shrugs.' Oh, if you like it you're welcome to it. Personally I can't stand it. I like something with a tune.'

'But there's bags of tunes in Tchaikovsky,' I say. 'You can't
get away from 'em ...' I stop. Be damned if I'm going to defend
myself for liking something that's worth something instead of the
latest boy wonder from Clacknecuddenthistle who gets on television because he happens to have a check shirt and a guitar and
a lot of bloody cheek.

We just sit there propping our chins on our hands and say nothing else for a bit.

'Would you like another cup o' coffee?" I ask her after a
minute or two,

'May as well,' she says. 'We can't go anywhere in this
rain.'

'It might have stopped now.'

'The grass'll be wet.'

I look at her. 'You're in a funny mood tonight. What you want
to make a crack like that for?'

'Anyway,' she says, 'it's the wrong time.'

' Oh, that's what's wrong with you, is it?'

'That and other things.'

I look away from her and wish I hadn't come. I didn't know I
was walking into this. I've never known her like this before.
Quiet sometimes, brooding a bit, maybe; but she's never
been sort of bitter like this. Well... I can't really blame her, I
suppose ...

'I'll get some more coffee.'

I go over to the serving counter that runs down one side of
the place with glass cases on top full of sandwiches and sticky
cream buns and eclairs and whatnot and this big shiny steaming
coffee machine in the middle. It kind of puts you off, the sight
of all that grub when you're not hungry.

When I get back to the table I see a flat brown-paper package on
the table by my place.

'What's this?'

'Open it and see.'

I strip off the brown paper and take this cig case out and hold it in my hands.

'Many happy returns,' she says.

I turn it over, looking at it. There's a little square with my
initials engraved in it: V.A.B. She's even remembered my middle
name. All of a sudden I'm touched, right deep down. I want to take her hand and say, 'I love you, Ingrid. From now on it's all going to be different' But I can't do it, because it wouldn't be
true.

'Do you like it?'

'It's lovely ... honest it is ... Thanks ever so much, Ingrid.
It's just what I need as well... I haven't got one...'

I look at the case and not at her when I say, 'I... I wish it
could be different, Ingrid. I really do.'

'But it can't, can it?'

'I don't want to be rotten to you, y'know.'

'I don't think you do.'

I open the case. 'How many does it hold, fifteen?'

'Yes, fifteen.'

'And it's got one o' them metal things for holding the cigs. I
like them better than the springs: they don't squash the cigs.'

'I was going to fill it for you,' she says, 'but I didn't have time
to get to a tobacconists'.'

'Did you buy it today?'

'They were engraving it. I collected it tonight, after work.'

'Well it's lovely, Ingrid, it really is.'

I snap it shut and look at the time by my new watch. 'What say we try and make the last show at the Ritz? It's that war picture. It might not be so bad.'

She nods, 'All right.'

We drink up and go out. As we pass the old keff I see that he's
making his tea last as long as he can and just as I'm going by him something makes me put my hand in my pocket and fish
half a crown out. 'Here you are; have another one on me.' I
drop the half-dollar by his cup and he just looks up sort of
bewildered like as I move on and follow Ingrid out.

'What was he saying to you?' she says as we go down the steps.

'Oh, nothing much.'

'Did he ask you for money?'

' No, he never said a word.'

'You gave him some, though, didn't you?'

'Well, what if I did?'

'How much did you give him?'

'Half a crown.'

'Half a crown! Whatever made you do that?'

'I just felt sorry for him, that's all. There's no law against it, is
there? You make me feel as if I'd thrown half a crown down a
drain."

'You probably might just as well have. Very likely he'll make a bee-line for the nearest pub.'

'Well, that's his fault, isn't it, not mine? If he's daft enough to
booze it, it's his lookout, not mine.'

We're walking along side by side and she takes my arm and gives it a squeeze. 'You're a funny lad,' she says.

'Don't I know it,' I say.

A while later we're together in the dark at the back of the
picture house and I'm holding her and kissing her and for a
while it's nearly like the first time I ever did it. Nearly - but not
quite.

CHAPTER 4

I