A Kind of Loving (40 page)

'Best thing you could do,' he says when I tell him. 'Marry
early, get some kids and responsibility. It's the making of a man,
responsibility. And remember, marriage is what you make it.
Look at me, for instance.'

I'm looking at him and think if he's a for instance I don't
want any.

'So a wife and six kids on my wage isn't everybody's cup of
tea,' Henry says. 'But I'm happy with it, Vic, and that's the main
thing.'
,

And so he is. A wife with as much glamour as an old doormat; house like a pigsty from morning till night with kids bawling and
wiping jam and bread on the wallpaper and crapping all over the
place. And old Henry's happy on it. And many a bloke with five
thousand a year's getting ulcers and worrying himself into the cemetery. It just goes to show. But what it goes to show I don't
rightly know, except maybe that people are different. And that's
the big snag; you can account for nearly all the trouble in the
world when you say that.

All my mates, Jimmy Slade and Willy Lomas and the rest,
I'm avoiding like the plague. And all the time I'm waiting for a miracle to happen to make it all come right and put things back
where they were again.

CHAPTER 6

I

but
this is no fairy-tale and no miracle happens. The cell door
shuts behind me and the key turns in the lock at eleven o'clock in
the morning on the first Saturday in May at the registry office
in Huddersfield Road. David's my best man and Ingrid has a
cousin of hers that I've never seen before as her bridesmaid. All I
can think of when it's over and we're walking out into the sun
shine again is how fast you sign yourself away. As we go through
the gates into the street a bint goes by, wobbling a bit on stiletto
heels. I sort of half-register the fact that she's got nice legs and
then all at once it comes over me that I'll never be able to look
at a bint with an open mind again. I'm a goner. The search is
over for me. I'm a married man as of five minutes ago and soon I'll be a father. It all clots up inside me in a hard lump of misery
and I just can't talk to anybody. Not that there's much merry
wedding conversation going on anyway. They're all somehow
feeling this wasn't the way they wanted it and what should have been a big important and happy time has sort of crept up on them
and caught them napping.

We go back to Rothwells' and have a buffet meal and here the
party begins to relax a bit. The Old Feller and Mr Rothwell get
really chatty, but the two mothers are spending their time sizing one another up and kind of jockeying for position all the time as
though they think the men are letting the side down the way
they're talking about football and this, that, and the other, nearly like old mates.

At half past one Ingrid and I go upstairs for a wash. There's
no changing to do because I'm travelling in my new dark blue suit and Ingrid's going in the grey costume she's worn at the
wedding. When we come down we see her mother getting herself
ready and Ingrid says, 'Mother, would you mind if just Jean and
Christine and David came with us to the station?'

Ma Rothwell's jaw drops a mile at this. 'But whatever for?'
she says. 'Don't you want your own mother to see you off on your honeymoon?'

'I'd rather it wasn't such a big party,' Ingrid says, and there's
something about the stubborn way she says it that suits me fine.
I don't want the band playing at the station, for one.

Well, Ma Rothwell looks as if she's going to cry and Mr
Rothwell chips in and says, 'Yes, let her have her way, Esther.
It'll perhaps be just as well.'

Well there's kisses and handshakes all round and I find Mrs
Rothwell's pudgy cheek up against my face sol kiss that and taste
face-powder. Mr Rothwell gets hold of my hand like he means it
and looks me straight in the eye. 'I shan't be here when you get
back, so I'll see you later. Just you look after her, now.'

'I will.'

We take Mr Rothwell's Oxford and David drives. We've timed
it nicely and the train's in when we go through the barrier. When
we're in the carriage and leaning out of the window for the last
good-byes I meet Chris's look, it seems to me for the first time
since I broke the news at home. Because if there's one person
I've hated knowing about this, and felt ashamed in front of, it's her. Now I see she's smiling at me and I feel tons better just for
that.

' Look after her, Vic,' she says.' She'll need it. And you, Ingrid,
be good to him. He's not a bad lad, your husband.'

'I know that,' Ingrid says, and all at once she's sobbing like a
leaky tap, sniffing and blowing into her hanky.

David shakes my hand. 'All the best, Vic.'

And then they're waving to us as the train moves down the
platform.

We sit down in opposite corners as the train pulls clear of the
station and picks up speed. Ingrid blows her nose and puts her
hanky away and gets her compact out and starts to cover the
signs of her crying. She's looking very smart and attractive and
the grey costume suits her. I suppose to look at us anybody would
take us for a normal happy honeymoon couple, very much in
love and all that. She puts the compact away and looks at
me.

'Well, missis?' I say.

'Aye, mister?'

I smile at her. It's not much of a smile to tell the truth, but I'm
surprised I can muster one at all.

II

Scarborough's sunny and a bit quiet because the season hasn't
properly begun yet. We get a taxi at the station and it takes us up
on to the Esplanade overlooking the Spa and South Bay where
Mrs Rothwell's booked us in at a posher hotel than any I've ever
stayed at before. There's even a bloke in a white jacket in the
lobby waiting to take our luggage upstairs when we arrive;
though it's no more than there should be for thirty bob a day
apiece, low season rate. Just like Ma Rothwell to chuck my brass
around, I think. But I don't mind too much because you can
keep yourself to yourself in these better places, and anyway, you
can't count the pennies on your honeymoon, can you?

When we're getting ready for bed that night we keep our backs
turned to one another like a couple of bashful kids. But I catch
sight of Ingrid in the dressing-table mirror as she slots the nightie
down over her head and it seems to me her bust's tilling up and she's showing a definite belly already. I never thought anybody could guess she was in the family way, but now I'm not so sure.
I'll be thinking about it all the week now and wondering if every
body knows, and us on our honeymoon.

We get into bed and put the light out and I take hold of her
intending to make the most of the fact that we've got a licence
for it now, but she stops me short when she says, 'D'you think we
should, Vic? Don't you think it might be dangerous?'

I'm flabbergasted. 'How d'you mean, dangerous?'

'For the baby.'

'But you're hardly three months gone yet, what the heck! It's
ages yet before it gets dangerous. Didn't your mother say any
thing about it?'

'That's what I mean. She said I'd to be careful.'

'Hell! what's she trying to do, spoil our honeymoon?'

' She was only thinking about me, Vic.'

'And doing her best to turn you stone cold on our wedding
night.' The bitch, I'm thinking, the damned interfering old bitch.
And that's what I've got to live with ...'

'I'm sure she didn't mean any harm.'

'Oh, for Pete's sake, Ingrid, it's all in a book I bought.'

'A book?'

' Yeh, a book for people just getting married. It tells you how
to go on.'

She giggles.

'What's funny?'

'Most people would say we knew "how to go on".'

'Well, I thought I might as well get genned up properly from
the start. It says in there 'at you're okay till about six months. I looked it up specially. I've got it in the case. I'll get it out an'
show it you if you want.'

'I'll take your word for it.' She snuggles up closer and I think
this is a lot better.

'It's told me a lot more things as well...'

'Such as?'

'Such as how to get you where I want you. How to rouse you
an' all that.'

She rubs her face against mine and I get hair in my mouth.
'You know you've always known how to do that.'

'Well, now I know even better.' I start giving her a bit of the technique. 'What you got this passion-killer on for?'

'It's not a passion-killer; it's a passion-rouser. I bought it
specially for you. It's sheer nylon. Don't you like it?'

'I like it when I'm looking. I'm not looking now.'

'Wait a minute, then.'

She pulls away from me and sits up in the bed.

'Put it under the pillow in case there's a fire.'

She giggles in the dark, and then she's back and there's nothing in the way any more.

'Better?'

'A lot better.'

I run my hand all the way down from her shoulder to her hips.
'Remember that night at your house? Gosh, but I'll never know
how I held off that time, I wanted you that bad.'

'You can have me now,' she says, feeling for my mouth. 'Oh, Vic,' she says before she kisses me, 'I do love you.'
And I'd give anything in the world to be able to say it back.

We've only been there a couple of days when we have our first
quarrel.

There's a couple stopping at this hotel. There's a lot more
people like, but there's this couple who sit at the next table for
meals and seem to want to be friendly. They're a youngish-looking
middle-aged couple who have a green Ford Consul parked out
in front of the place. They're not what you'd call well-off because
you can tell that by his sports coat which has definitely seen
better days, though she's quite a snappy dresser. All the same,
they have this something about them that puts them a cut or two
above Ingrid and me. A kind of air, it is, of knowing their way
about and what things are best and what are common.
They're
not common, if you see what I mean. They talk nice as well. Not lah-di-da, but easy and natural, without any accent that
shows where they come from. Anybody can place me straight
away, and Ma Roth well as well, no matter how she puts it on;
but not these two.

Well it appears they live in Essex and this is the first time they've
stayed on the Yorkshire coast and because Ingrid knows all round pretty well from having stayed here a lot as a kid she's soon talking away nineteen to the dozen, telling them all the
places they should see. Which is all very well, but before long I
begin to notice how her voice is changing; how she's putting it
on like a telephone operator in a high-class knocking-shop. And
it gets worse and worse and more and more obvious till I just
can't stand it any more, I'm that mad and embarrassed, and I have to get up and go out.