A Kind of Loving (8 page)

I'm not sorry to be back because
I
quite like both the office and the work. I don't like either as much as I did the first two or three years I was here but I haven't got to the stage where I can't stand it any more so I don't mind. And besides, I've got another interest at work now.

I don't see her again till dinner-time and then it's in the canteen
with three tables and about thirty people between me and her.
She's sitting facing me and though she doesn't look at me I can't keep my eyes off her. She has a way of breaking off what she's
saying to throw her head back and laugh (she's got rather a
carrying laugh actually), and as I watch her I see how her neck
curves and I wonder what it would be like to run my hand up
over it and under her chin. There's a scar on her neck under her left ear and I want to put my fingers on that as well because I
can't bear the thought of the knife cutting into her.

Ken Rawlinson's sitting next to me with enough fountain pens and propelling pencils for half the office in his top pocket. He asks me to pass the water and this takes my mind off Ingrid for a minute. He's wearing that tie clip again. There's a few things about Rawly that get on my wires and this tie clip's one of them. It's one of these glider clips with a bit of fine chain on it. The idea is to slide the clip on to your shirt and let the chain hold your tie; but Rawly always wears it with the clip on both his tie and his shirt and the chain hanging down for fancy like. I've often wanted to put him right but I always think why should I? He's one of these blokes with ten bob each way on himself and so why should
I
care if he looks a clot?

He fills his glass up and says, 'I saw a very good French film
last night.'

'Oh, yes?'

'Gervaise,'
Rawly says. 'Based on a novel by Zola.' He
pokes about on his plate as if he expects to uncover something
nasty. 'Do you know his novels at all?'

"Fraid not.' Zola? Sounds like a game, like bingo or ludo
or canasta.

'An excellent writer. Surprisingly modern to say he wrote sixty
or seventy years ago.'

'Oh?'

'Very outspoken for his time. They banned his books in this country. Wouldn't wear them.'

' Sexy, eh?' This is more like it.

'Shall we say "direct"?' Rawly says and I think he can call it any name he likes as far as I'm concerned. I decide to take the
mickey a bit.

' Was this picture hot stuff?'

' Oh, X certificate and all that,' he says.' Nothing pornographic
about it, though. An adult film.'

'Be in French, I suppose?'

'Oh yes. Subtitled, of course, for those who don't know the
language.'

I gather from the way he says this that he doesn't include
himself in this lot of ignoramuses.

'Well I don't mind these foreign films when there's a bit of tit
or summat to see,' I say, watching
his face out of the corner of my
eye. His nose curls as though he's just noticed a bad smell and he
blushes ever so slightly. 'But I can't stand having to read what
they're saying at the bottom of the screen. Give me the good
old English language any day.'

'Everyone to his taste,' Rawly says, and turns and says some
thing to the bod on his other side.

I'm a bit sorry now that I've gone out of my way to make him think I'm just another cloth-head..But then, I think, what do I care what a nig-nog like Rawly thinks about me anyway?

The waitress puts a plate of sponge pudding and custard in
front of me and I'm just going to start in on it when I hear chairs
squeaking and see that Ingrid and her pals are leaving. She passes
so close to me her sleeve brushes my shoulder but she doesn't
flicker an eyelid to show she knows I'm there. So much for that.

I don't know what I'm flogging myself to death for. But it's
getting worse. Only just before the holidays I put eight-foot-two
over a row of dimensions that totted up to nine-foot-seven and
Bob Lacey, my section leader, pointed it out to me in a friendly
way and told me to watch what I was doing. It's a good job
Bob did spot it or there would have been a lot of angle-iron cut
and wasted in the shop. I'm getting so I expect to drop clangers
now and I nearly always check my drawings myself before I pass
them on to Bob. But one of these days I'll slip up and we'll all miss it and the next thing I know I'll be called down into the
Works to look at a pile of scrap iron worth maybe hundreds of
pounds. Then I'll have really had it.

I'm nearly sure that Hassop's got his eye on me as well. He
seems to be always nosing around, creeping up like he does, in
these school-issue glasses he wears, and breathing his bad breath
all over you. He's a littlish bloke with ginger hair. He hasn't all
that much left on his head now but there's always a fair amount
sprouting out of his nose. He always wears the same kind of
bluish grey suits that look neither new nor old, and he just seems
to wear one till it gets too shiny and then comes in another just
like it. You wish sometimes Hassop would get his hair off and
really bawl you out, but he never does. If he gets really mad he
goes white, but he hardly ever lets go except on the younger lads.
He daren't, that's his trouble, and everybody despises him for it.
But nobody goes too far because right behind Hassop there's Mr
Althorpe and he's a different kettle of fish altogether. Tell any
body to go to blazes, Althorpe would, and make no bones about
it. So everybody respects him, even if they don't like him like they like somebody like Miller, for instance.

So it seems to me that sooner or later, the way I'm going on, I'll wind up on Althorpe's carpet, and I can't see any way out of
it because I just can't get my mind off Ingrid. It's this not know
ing. If only I knew one way or the other just how I stand...

III

First you take an old knife (I used the broken one the Old Lady scrapes potatoes with) and get rid of all the mud, doing a bit of prising if it's caked up solid under the instep. Then when you've given them a good going over with a stiffish brush they're ready for the polish. (You really should take the laces out but I can't always be bothered going to that trouble, even though tonight I'm doing a special job.) I like to clean shoes, especially when I've got something on my mind, because giving your hands something to do kind of helps you think and sometimes it even takes your mind off things. I like to poke into the waxy polish and spread it all over the shoes and go at them like mad with the brush and watch the shine break through and deepen; then finish off with a velvet till the toecaps are like black glass. Tonight I'm cleaning the shoes because I'm going out; but I've got something on my mind as well; and every now and again I have to stop and tell myself it's true and it's really happened to me.

It was the same day I borrowed the bus fare from Ingrid.
I
got the feeling stronger than ever hi the afternoon that old Hassop had it in for me and when he sidles up at ten to five, and tells me a drawing I've had on the board since a week before Christmas is wanted first thing in the morning, I'm more sure than ever. It means I'll have to work over, and bang goes my chance of seeing Ingrid on the way home. Well, I have it to do whether it's really wanted or Hassop's keeping me back out of spite, so I settle down to it and hope it won't take me long. There's plenty bf work in the office and one or two sections stay behind > most nights of the week. But tonight being the first day back after the holidays nobody's in the mood and at half past five everybody packs up to go. The board lights click off as they all slope out in ones and twos. The tracers come through, wafting face powder all over the place and chattering fifty to the dozen like birds do. Then by twenty to six there's only me left besides Hassop and Miller, who always leave after everybody else. At
five to six I unpin the sheet and take it up to Hassop's office. Another five minutes goes by while he reckons to look
it
over and drops hints right left and centre about my work. Then I'm free to go.

Half the lights are out in the corridors and I can hear the
cleaners' buckets clanking somewhere. I go down the stairs and
I'm pushing on the big door when I hear these high heels come
tapping along the corridor behind me. I must go psychic for a
minute because I know straight off who it is and my heart gives a
little flutter. I turn round and she flashes a smile as though she's
glad to see me.

'I'm going your way,' she says.

I hold the door open for her and get a gorgeous whiff of her
scent as she goes by. We say good night to the commissionaire
and walk off down the lane. It seems she's feeling a bit peevish.

'Some people...' she says. "They don't think of starting their
letters till everybody else is going home.'

'You've got one an' all, have you?' I say.

'Have I got one!'

'An' who's yours?'

'Leslie Felton ... You'd think some people hadn't got homes
to go to. Not that you can blame
lam,
I suppose, with a wife like
he's got.'

'What's wrong with his wife?'

'Oh, she's a real shrew, by all accounts. Don't tell me you didn't know? I thought everybody did.'

It seems there's a lot I don't know and she starts to bring me
up to date. I don't have to make the conversation tonight;
she just rolls it out. She's as full of scandal as the Sunday papers
and by the time we get to the bus stop I know more about the
people who work at Whittaker's than I've learned all the time I've
been there.

I get both fares into town and she says, 'That makes us quits,'
and smiles.

She picks up where she left off and starts chattering again; but I'm not really listening now. My mind's working like mad on how I can make the most of this chance. I try to think of a way to get started and all the time the bus is tearing down the road into town. When I see the Grammar School sail by I kind of panic because we'll be in the station any minute now.

'Look, there's something I -' And she starts talking again at
the same time. We both stop.' Go on,' I say.