Part One, Chapter 2 - A Kind of Loving

I

the holidays over, it's back to the old routine with the same old crowd on top of the bus. Most of them get buried behind their papers and they're so quiet you'd hardly know one from the rest; but there's one or two you might call characters. There's the country squire type who gets on a couple of stops down the hill. He wears these thick hairy tweeds and a pepper-and-salt hat with the brim turned down all round, and a sporting gun would look more at home under his arm than the Daily Telegraph he always carries. Every time I look at this bloke's face it reminds me of a blood orange, all red with broken veins and this great big shiny conk jutting out hi the middle like something he presses into place every morning after he's shaved. He's a fresh-air fiend, this bloke, and all the chaps on the top deck shrink up in their seats the second they hear Ms brogues clatter on the steps. He always takes the same seat down the middle of the bus (unless somebody strange happens to be in it first - and whoever it is gets a dirty look for trespassing) and slams open every window in reach till the wind whistles through the top deck fit to blow your hat off. Wind, rain, sleet, snow, or even fog; it doesn't matter what the weather is, it's all the same to him - he lets it in through the windows. I reckon the saddest day of his life must have been when the open-air buses went out.

Bloodnok, I call this bloke after that feller in the Goon Show, and I don't think he's so bad, really. You can stick him provided you're well wrapped up. It's the talkers you have to watch out for, like this little elderly cove that gets on the stop after Bloodnok and always comes and sits with me like we're old pals or something. He has opinions on everything, this chap, and he's such a cheerful type, which is why everybody likes him so much.

'Well,' he says this morning, after he's parked himself at the side of me as usual, 'you wait months for it and then it's off in a couple of days.' He has a voice with a built-in megaphone that carries all over the bus, and all the regulars get a glassy look in their eyes when he opens up.

'Aye, that's right,' I say. Always agree with him, that's the drill. Never encourage him or you're done for.

He broddles about in his pipe a bit then lights it and puts a smoke screen up round us. He grows his own tobacco, he's always telling people, and he'll hold his hand out to show you this dry yellow stuff that looks like horse-shit that's been in the sun all day. Nobody contradicts him on this because nobody can think of a brand of tobacco that stinks so foul. It's when this bloke lights up that we're glad of Bloodnok and his open windows. 'I reckon we shan't be back more than half an hour before it seems as though we've never been away,' he says, sucking at Ms pipe, which he must have had since he was a young chap because the bowl's all burned down at one side and the stem's tied round with insulating tape where it's been broken. I reckon he must be either very fond of it like, or too skinny to buy a new one. I decide it's because he's too skinny, because blokes who talk like him are usually tight with their money.

'I reckon so,' I say.

'Don't know why we bother with Christmas,' he says at the top of his voice. "There's no religion left in it; no real feeling. It's just a mockery. Shopkeepers like it. It's all right for them, they can sell all they've got and more besides. All it is for anybody else is guzzling and swilling and sitting round dozy-like watching television... A mockery.'

He whips his hanky out and blows his nose with a loud noise and wipes his little grey moustache. He looks in the hanky to see what he's brought down before he puts it away again. 'Not that I'm a churchgoer meself,' he says. 'Full of hypocrisy and humbug, that's the churches today. And the parsons ... all mealy-mouthed little toads enjoying an easy living where they know they won't get sacked unless they offend somebody by preaching a sermon with a bit of honest to goodness hell-fire in it...'

"That's it.'

"And this television. I wouldn't have a set in my house. The wife's allus on about getting one. I've told her, though. "If you've got enough to buy a television set," I said, "you buy one. But the day it comes into this house, I go out ..." I just don't know what we're coming to. It's got the whole country. It's riddled with it. Riddled, from top to bottom.'

And so on, and on, and on ...

But I'm all right this morning because I can shut myself off by thinking about Ingrid. I'm going to get talking to her today. I don't know just how, but I am. We've been nodding to one another for a couple of years now, but it was only a month or so before Christmas that it dawned on me what a marvellous bint she really is. And she'd been there under my nose all the time ... Now I've reached the pitch where I've got to do something about it. I just have to. I've no idea of my chances, that's the trouble. I don't know whether I'm somebody special to her or just another tuppence-ha'penny draughtsman, one of thirty-odd in the firm. What I do know is I'll never find out unless I pull my socks up and do something. And the first step is to get talking to her.

I buy my morning paper in the bus station and cross over to wait for the other bus. I'm half-way between two islands when I see her in the queue and for a second all the people round me seem to vanish and I'm out there on my own with all the queue looking at me and me thinking about her and feeling as if everything in my mind is written plain across my face for them all to see. I think I'm going to colour up and I only just make the queue in time. Of course I only thought she was looking. In fact she only glanced my way and then went on talking to Miss Price from the typing pool. Why should she notice me in particular? Who am I? Just another bod from the D.O., and not one of the important ones either. I bet she never gives me two thoughts together. I bet if I left Whittaker's this week she'd hardly notice I'd gone. Oh, it's rotten the way you flog yourself like this: up one minute, down the next, and never knowing which is nearest the mark.

I step a bit out of line and watch her over the top of my Mirror. Ah, but she's a smart piece! Always so neat turned out and clean as clean. I hate bints with bitten fingernails and mucky hair who smell like last week's joint gone off and warmed up again. I could nearly throw up when I run into one of them. But Ingrid looks as if she has a bath every morning and her hair's always soft and clean and shining, lighter brown than mine and lighter still when the sun catches it. And these skirts and blouses and jumpers she wears are always washed and ironed and fit well and show her trim little figure off a treat. I reckon her legs are just about the best thing about her; they're a lovely shape and she wears high heels that set them off and nylons with never a ladder or a hole. I've never known a bint like her in all my born days and it isn't a bit of good me mooning over her because I haven't a chance in a million. Not a dog's.

I lift the paper up quick because it's just as though she knows somebody's watching her when she turns her head and looks straight at me.

The bus trundles in and stops. The conductor nips off the platform and round to the front for a lean on the radiator and a quick drag with the driver. By the time I reach the door the top deck's full and people are coming back down to stand inside. The usual second bus pulls in behind and most of the queue stand back to get on this. This is what I'd do usually but today I get on the first bus and stand. This way I'm all the nearer to Ingrid. She's sitting up at the front next to the aisle with a woman I don't know. I edge forward till I'm standing one seat behind her. The floor gives a shudder as the bus starts and I reach up and hold the bar and stand looking at her till the conductor's voice brings me to again. Now this bloke's well known on this run as a bit of a card. They say he's an ex-army sergeant and everybody knows he doesn't give a damn for anybody. You get the feeling that if the Archbishop of Canterbury got on in full rig-out he'd get the same treatment as anybody else, with maybe a bit of extra leg-pulling on the side. He's got more neck than many a comedian at Cressley Alhambra, and that's saying something. He gets up off the platform. 'Nab, then, you workers, getcha fares ready, perlease! An' look cheerful, for cryin' out loud. Think about them 'at started at half past seven while you lot were still hi bed ... Yes, miss? Three-pennorth of the best? Ta! — What's your pleasure, madam? A fourpenny one? Just like the geezer give his owd woman, eh? ... Yessir?'

He makes his way down the bus, giving with this horrible corny patter and I feel for some cash. I find a ha'penny in my overcoat pocket, what's left over from a tanner after riding down into town and buying the paper. I unbutton my coat to get at my trouser pockets, and there's nothing there. And nowhere else, either, except on the dressing-table at home. So I'm without my fare ... It's a thing that's never happened to me before, though I've heard of other people doing it. If there's nobody you can borrow from you give the conductor your name and address and pay later. But all my mates are upstairs and I can see myself explaining to this bod and him making sport of it. In front of Ingrid as well! It's the sort of thing you think's funny after, but not at the time. As the conductor works his way up towards me I take a quick scan of the faces. Sure enough, they're all upstairs. I'm in foreign territory here.

There's only two ways out of it, then. I can bluff it out with laughing boy or ... or I can borrow the fare from Ingrid. But I can't ask her for money. I hardly know her ... but then again, isn't this the best chance I'll ever have of getting to know her? Haven't I been wanting a chance, wondering about it all during the holidays?

Before I've time to think it over too much I'm leaning forward and touching her shoulder and catching the scent of her hair as she turns her head. Then she's looking straight into my face at a distance of one foot and my knees are weak and I can't think for a second what I'm supposed to be saying.

'Look, I'm in a bit of a spot. I've left my money at home and I wondered if you... I don't know anybody else down here, y'see.' Then she catches on and starts opening her bag, her neck going a bit pink. 'No,' I say, 'you get both fares.' And I straighten up and watch the pink spreading over her neck to her ears and over the one cheek I can see, and I love her madder than ever. I go all weak inside with it.

At our stop I stand back and wait for her to get off. I try to give her a smile but I can feel it doesn't amount to much.

'Thanks for saving me life.'

'Oh, that's all right.'

We start off up the lane to the Works.

'I'll see you get it back as soon as I get some money.'

'Oh, don't worry about it.'

'I never picked it up off the dressing-table. I had sixpence in my overcoat pocket so I never noticed till I was on the other bus, y'see. One of the lads'll help me out.'

'Well I'm not frantic for it,' she says. 'It's only threepence.'

'No, but it's your money and you want it back.'

'You can pay my fare some time.'

'Be glad to.'

Just give me the chance! And that's only the beginning. There's pictures and dances and theatres as well. Not to mention chocolates and nylons and bottles of scent and whatnot. She can have every penny I have. She's only to say the word.

We're both quiet now and I'm thinking, This is it, what I've been waiting for. I'm talking to her. What can I say? 'Dear Ingrid, I've been mad about you for months (well, one month, anyway). How do you feel about me? Will you make me the happiest bloke in Cressley and come to the pictures with me tonight?'

'Not a bad morning, is it?' I say.

'No, not bad at all, to say.'

To say what? That it's winter, I suppose. 'I wonder if we shall have some more snow soon.'

'I shouldn't wonder. It's cold enough for it.'

And who the heck cares? I can love her in snow or sunshine. If only I knew what she thinks of me. She seems friendly enough, but that could be plain ordinary politeness and not mean a thing. I'm pleasant myself every day with people I don't really like at all. What I want to do is give her a hint...

'Funny, isn't it?'

'Hmm? What?'

There she was, miles away, thinking about something else altogether. Or maybe somebody else. What then? Suppose she already has a boy friend? Oh, Lord, I've never really asked myself that one. Not straight out, anyway. I've always skated round it. But you never know. It's more than likely, if you think about it... how attractive she is an' all...

'I was just thinking we've worked at the same place for two or three years and we've never talked to one another before.'

'Yes,' she says, 'it is funny, isn't it?'

So it's funny. We're agreed on it. We fall quiet again and I beat my brains out. Why doesn't she say something? I hear somebody tramping up behind and I look round and see Miss Price coming up fast, striding out like a man.

'Good morning, Mr Brown. Are you returning refreshed from your holiday?'

'That's right.' Well, that's it. I've had it now.

Miss Price nods and sticks her big chin out as she falls in with us. She throws the end of her long muffler back over her shoulder and plants her feet down square in step with mine. Miss Price embarrasses me. She's too good to be true. She should be under contract to J. Arthur Rank by rights because I always think she looks as if she's lost her way from a British comedy picture. She's got a voice as well. Some of the staff say it's been known to carry the length of the Works, given the wind in the right quarter of course, and I wonder what it would be like to put her and the cheerful cove together in a railway tunnel.

'Have you had a nice Christmas, Vic?' Ingrid says, and I'm so tickled to hear her say my name that I can't think what to say for a minute. Not Mr Brown, like Miss Price. Not Victor, even; but Vic, just like my mates.

'Oh, so so, y'know,' I say. 'We had quite a time Boxing Day. My sister got married.'

'A charming girl,' Miss Price says, telling everybody for five hundred yards either way as well as Ingrid and me. 'And the groom - a most pleasant and intelligent young man, so my sister tells me.'

I remember now that she has a sister, another Miss Price, who's Domestic Science mistress at the Grammar School. She's come since my time.

'Was it a white wedding, Vic?' Ingrid asks, and I see I've got her interested now, anyway. Funny how birds are interested in weddings, even when it's somebody they don't know. 'What did your sister wear?' she says, wanting to know all the details.

I'm a bit out of my depth here and I flounder about for a minute till Miss Price comes to the rescue.

'My sister and I went to the church.' (Funny, but I never saw them.) 'She was so keen to see young Mr Lester marry, and I love a wedding at any time.'

There - even the ones who're past it!

Anyway, she trots out all the gen Ingrid wants and she says, 'I'd love to see the photos, Vic, when you get them.' We're just inside the door of the office building by now and Miss Price says,' Cheery-bye,' and stalks off down the long corridor.

Ingrid giggles. 'Isn't she a case?'

I say, 'Hmm.' I look after her where she's walking away. I don't know, I always feet a bit sorry somehow for people like that.

The bell rings while we're standing there and Ingrid says she'll have to go.

'Yes, okay. I'll try to get hold of the photos when they're ready.'

'Yes, do. I'd love to see them.'

She walks away after Miss Price and I go up the stairs. Bringing the photos will give me another chance to talk to her if I can't manage it any other way before then. I want to lean over the rail and watch her go, but there's too many people about, and Jimmy Slade, my mate at the office, comes up with a muffler on and bike clips and carrying his bike pump that he doesn't leave in the shed for fear somebody pinches it.

'Now then, cock.'

' Now then, Jimmy.'

'Back to it, eh?'

'Aye, back to it.'

We go up the steps together.

II

Whittaker's is about the biggest engineering works round Cressley. All down the side of the erection shop there's the name spelled out in white bricks - dawson whittaker a sons, ltd, engineers. This is so when you're on the train you'll know what that big mucky place was you passed just before Cressley Junction.

The first thing you think when you go into the offices is that whoever built them meant them to last a while. There's solid oak doors all over the place and a lick of varnish every ten years or so is all that's needed to keep them in trim. The top halves of most of the office walls are glass and when you stand at one end of the ground floor you can see right down through office after office where people are working at their desks or talking to one another with maybe their hands going, but you can't hear a thing, like watching television when the sound's gone. The drawing office is the biggest and it takes nearly all the length of the upstairs floor on one side of the building. There's more glass here than anywhere else. It's half glass on the corridor side and there's big windows looking out on the lane. Then the roof's half glazed and there's this big window, like a church window but with plain glass, up in the end wall. You've got plenty of light to work with all right but it's like a greenhouse in summer and a refrigerator in winter. The boards are in three lines and there's enough for thirty-five draughtsmen and designers. At the side of every board there's a plan press which gives a flat top for your drawings and filing room for all the old drawings that have been piling up since the firm began back in eighteen-seventy something. You have a drawer for yourself as well where you put your own stuff, such as sandwiches, the Manchester Guardian, the Daily Mirror, Snappy Nudes, Sporting Pink, and even reference books and drawing instruments, all depending what sort of bloke you are and what you're interested in. There's three smaller rooms open off the big office, one for the estimators, one for the tracing lasses, and one where the prints are done. The print machine's a carbon arc job and it looks a bit like one of them mechanical pianos where you put a penny in and it plays a tune that was in the Top Ten during the Boer War. The prints are done by a young lad called Laisterdyke and a lass called Phoebe Johnson. Then at the top end of the office there's two glass cubicles, one belonging to the assistant chief, Miller, who everybody likes, and the other to the chief, Hassop, who nobody much cares for.

The real boss is Mr Althorpe, the Chief Designs Engineer, and he has his own office (private - no glass) with his name on the door along the corridor. The work comes from him and Hassop and Miller pass it out to the section leaders. Each section leader has a team and this can vary from two or three to a dozen blokes depending how big the job is they're doing. You'd think in an office this size there'd be bags of chance for experience but each team specializes and once you know a particular job you can find yourself stuck with it year after year. Anyway, that's the D.O. at Whittaker's.

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 something 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 anybody 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 knowing. 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.

'I was just going to ask you if you'd seen that new musical Rise and Shine at the Palace,' she says. 'I was wondering what it was like.'

I haven't a clue what it's like, to be honest, but I say, 'I think it's good,' and I'm thinking, Now, now, now: what are you waiting for? 'I was thinking of going to see it myself one night this week, as a matter of fact,' I say. This is another fib, but I don't care. I have to clear my throat. 'P'raps ... er mebbe you'd like to come with me ... see it together ...'

She says, 'Oh!' just as if it's the last thing she'd have thought of and I begin to think how I can pass it off if she turns me down. 'Well, when?'

I can hardly sit still in the seat. I want to jump up and shout, I'm that excited. 'I'd thought of going tomorrow, but any night 'ud suit me really.'

'Tomorrow's New Year's Eve,' she says, 'and I'm going to a party. Can you make it Wednesday?'

'All right.' Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. I can make it any night or all of them. I just want it to be soon.

'Wednesday, then,' she says, and I nod. 'Wednesday.'

Before the bus pulls into the station we've fixed up what time we'll meet and where and everything. And to think, only this morning I wouldn't have given a bent penny for my chances. But that's how things work out sometimes.

Wednesday ... I just don't know how I'll live till then.

But course I do, and now here I am waiting on the corner at twenty-five to eight. She's late, but only five minutes, and I was here ten minutes early to make sure I didn't miss her so that makes it seem more. The weather's gone all soft all of a sudden. It's rained pretty hard today and though it's stopped now you can still feel it in the wind. The roads and pavements are shining in the lights and the car tyres sizzle as they go by. A black Super Snipe slides up to the kerb and I step back smartish as it throws water up out of the gutter. I look after this car and watch it stop and let a bloke out. Then I watch it pull away and pick up speed with exhaust smoke curling in the tail lights. Now if I had a car ... Dames go for bods with cars. It's only natural. And having a car would give you confidence, a sort of air, like. I imagine myself behind the wheel of a snappy little two-seater convertible - no need for anything big and swanky - rolling up to the kerb where Ingrid's waiting and enjoying the look on her face as I open the door and tell her to jump in. 'Where d'you fancy going tonight? What about nipping over to Leeds or Bradford to a show?' That's the way to take a bint out on a first date. And after the show, parked in some quiet spot and me with my arm round her listening to her say she's been mad about me all the time ... I can't even drive a car. I suppose I could learn soon enough, though. And I could probably afford to buy one if I saved up for about fifteen years and packed in smoking.

I'm all wrapped up in this and I don't see this other car whipping up for a stop till it goes by with a whoosh and shoots water all over my shoes and trouser legs. Bang goes the shine I spent so much time on till the Old Lady was getting suspicious. I think the creases in my pants will be all right, though, because my suit's Terylene, my new clerical grey that I got for Chris's wedding. And she won't notice my shoes in the dark. I'm pretty presentable otherwise, I think. I saved my shave till after tea and finished off with the after-shave lotion I paid six bob for on the way home from work so's I'd smell nice. And I've taken special care over brushing my teeth, making sure there was no tea-time sausage and chips stuck in the cracks. I reckon I couldn't do more for Diana Dors.

Quarter to. She isn't coming. That's the trouble with dames: you never know where you have them. Some blokes reckon that's all part of the game but I'm the type that likes things settled. I like to know where I stand. Like Chris and David do, for instance. They've certainly got something I'd like to find, but that's my secret and I don't tell anybody.

Ten to. You feel a bit daft standing on a corner with everybody passing by and knowing you're waiting for a bird who's late. They must know because nobody ever arranges to meet somebody at ten to and so she must either be late or not coming. I reckon a quarter of an hour's enough to give any bint but I'll give her till eight seeing as this is the first time. Then I'll just have to write it all off. Oh, but it's sickening the way you get all built up and then knocked down again.

'Hello.'

I jump and turn round and catch the fresh clean smell of her. Her eyes are sparkling in the lights and there's rain in her hair. Her lips are parted showing her teeth and she's breathing a bit fast as though she's been hurrying.

'I'm sorry I'm so late. I couldn't get away sooner ... I ran all the way... I felt sure you'd have given me up and gone.'

'No.' It's all I can think of to say I'm so busy looking at her. Gosh, but she's a smashing piece, and she's run all the way to meet me. She just said so.

'I knew you'd come,' I say at last, when I've had my fill of looking at her for the minute. And when I say it it's just as though I really did know all the time. 'You're not the sort of girl to stand a bloke up.'

'Why should I do that?' she says. 'I could have said no in the first place if I didn't want to come, couldn't I?'

I give a nod, eating her up with my eyes again. I can't believe it. I really can't. There must be a catch in it somewhere for this to happen to me.

'Well?' she says, and I realize I'm embarrassing her a bit staring like I am. So I say, 'Righto,' and we walk along the road to the picture house where the lights are blazing and the commissionaire's leaning against the pay-box talking to the cashier because there's nothing else for him to do. I reckon he'll be for the push any time now, the way things are.

'It's very quiet,' Ingrid says. 'I thought we might have to queue.'

"Three or four years ago, mebbe,' I say; 'but not nowadays. Cinema owners are on their beam ends. Why pay to see a bad picture when you can see one on television for nothing?' I've read this somewhere but she laughs and I let her think I've made it up. I'm wondering where she wants to sit and I don't like to ask her for fear it's the best seats and she won't like to say. I get two tickets for the back circle, the next to the best. Now she won't think I'm showing off and I shan't have started something I can't keep up if this turns into a regular thing. When the bint with a torch sees the two of us she flashes us up into the back where the courting couples are snogging away among the empty seats. I'm surprised when Ingrid goes up past a lot of empty rows and leads the way on to the very back row. We push past a couple sprawled out holding on to one another and they take no notice of us. We sit down in a double seat with no arm rest between us, which I think is a bit of all right. Ingrid decides in a minute she'd like her coat off and I help her with it. I have to put my arm round her to do this and I wonder if I dare keep it there. But I think it'll be rushing things a bit and that would be a pity after we're off to such a promising start.

There's a snap like elastic breaking from the couple on the row and the bint giggles and wrestles with the bloke.

'I feel like the psychiatrist who went to the Folies Bergere and spent all his time watching the audience.'

'What?' Ingrid says, and I don't know if she hasn't heard me or not got the joke.

'Skip it.' I feel for my cigs. 'Smoke?'

'Here.' She fumbles in her handbag. 'Let's eat this first.' She brings out a bar of chocolate and breaks it into pieces and puts them on her knee. We munch away and watch the picture. Fruit and nut, it is, and I'm very partial to it next to coffee cream.

We've come in near the end of the feature and I can't make much sense of it. The stories of most musical pictures are pretty silly, anyway. You nearly always have a hard-up company hoping their luck will change and somebody will put up the cash so's they can do this terrific show on Broadway. There's always a nice young producer chap who's in love with the sweet young bint and doesn't know it because the second fern lead, who's a regular bitch even if she has got bags of talent, has her hooks in him. And you always come to the place in the picture where somebody looks round this barn or whatever dump it is they're holing up in and says, 'But say, why can't we put the show on right here?' And from then on it's all plain sailing because there's sure to be a stinking rich backer in the audience on the night and while he's busy signing the cheque the nice young producer is backstage realizing all of a sudden how much he loves the sweet young bint and singing her a song to tell her so. Every so often you get one that's a cut above all this, but this one we're watching now isn't one of them. Not that I care, mind. I could watch Rin-tin-tin tonight because what I'm interested in isn't up on the screen, it's right here beside me. She's so near I'm dizzy with it, and I'm sneaking little looks at her all the time and wondering if she's really all eyes and ears for the picture like she seems, and how soon I can put my arm round her.

Now there's a few schools of thought about how you should carry on on a first date. Some say you shouldn't put a finger out of. place, and patience pays. At the other end of the line there's the caveman school. I reckon their methods only apply when you're out with a certain kind of bint who knows why you've asked her and comes expecting it. Then there's the middle-of-the-road boys who reckon you should at least show you know the difference between boys and girls and that you're interested in it. It depends what you're after, I always think. There's no doubt what the bloke on the row's after, for instance; and from the way the bint's holding him down it looks like he'll get it. But that's not the way I feel about Ingrid. I only want her to like me and let me be good to her. I want to be kind and gentle to her so bad it gushes up in me like a fountain whenever I think about her. And now, with her here, so close, in the dark ...

Well the way it happens is that the lights go up in the interval and the ice-cream comes round. I ask her if she wants some and she says no, so I don't bother myself either. I put my elbow up on the back of the seat while I'm talking to her and when the lights go down again all I have to do is drop my hand and it's where I want it to be. She's very cooperative, because as soon as she feels it on her shoulder she comes over and tucks herself away under my armpit and her hair's in my face and I've got this lovely smell of a high-class chemist's shop all round me. The next thing we know we're kissing for the very first time and it's marvellous.

There's quite a cold wind blowing when we come out of the pictures. We walk along the main road for a bit then turn off up the hill to where Ingrid lives. Neither of us says much. I want to say something that will fix what's happened in the pictures; only out here in the cold it's as though we've left it behind in the warmth and the dark and we might never find it again.

'I'm glad we came out together,' I say.

'You're not disappointed, then?' she says, and I feel like gaping at her. Disappointed!

'P'haps you'd like to try it again?' I say. 'What about the week-end?'

'If you like.'

And what if I don't like? Does it matter to her either way? What's a kiss on the back row of the pictures after all? It doesn't mean we've signed an agreement or something.

'No need to if you don't want,' I say, and I'm horrified at the way I'm inviting her to turn me down.

'I'd like to,' she says.

Well, that's okay, then. We stop at the end of their avenue. It's certainly a cold wind. I shove my hands down into my pockets and hunch my shoulders up. It's going, all that in the pictures. I can feel it slipping away. For all I know it might have gone for good ... If I could kiss her, though, maybe I'd catch a little bit of it to carry till next time. But here in the open we're like strangers again. I couldn't do it easy and natural the way it was in the pictures. It'd be like making a pass out here.

'Come on,' I say, 'I'll walk you to the gate.'

'You've no need to, y'know.'

'I want to.'

'Oh, all right, then.'

We walk up this curving avenue, not touching, a foot apart, till she stops at a gate.

'Is this it?'

'This is it.'

I look up at this little modern semi standing up above the road with the garden tumbling down to the fence. Two thousand five-hundred at today's prices, I reckon. Neat, though, and worth painting because it would look smart when you'd finished. Not like our house, dirty stone front, two storeys and an attic besides, and great big rooms. Not that it isn't cosy, because the Old Lady's good at making it that; but it needs a collier's coal supply to keep it warm and you could never call it smart. I don't know anything about Ingrid really and I wonder about her family and her father and mother and what her father's job is. I think I'm maybe a little bit timid of Ingrid's dad though I don't know why I should be because I've never seen him and I've done nothing to be ashamed of.

'Any more at home like you?'

'No, only little me,' and she laughs. Her lips are purple in the lights and her complexion's a kind of dirty white colour. We can't stand here all night, I think, and I wonder about kissing her again. I wonder if she expects me to. It just isn't the same out here, though.

She clicks the latch on the gate. 'Well, I'd better be getting in. Thanks for asking me out. I've enjoyed it.'

'I'm glad. See you tomorrow then.'

Now - now's the time while she's still close and her face is turned up to me. She's waiting, wondering why I don't do it.

'Yes, see you tomorrow.'

Too late now; she's through the gate and shutting it behind her. I watch her climb the four steps then walk up the steep path to the corner of the house. She turns and lifts her hand up and I wave back.

'Ey!'

'What?'

'Happy New Year!'

She laughs. 'Thanks. The same to you.'

I walk off, wondering what we'll be doing in a year's time, if we'll still be seeing one another. Maybe I did right not to kiss her. Perhaps it'll have given her a better opinion of me. Roll on Saturday night. After a bit I break into a trot because I've a lot too much to think about for walking.