Part Two, Chapter 7 - A Kind of Loving

I

I get back from the shop about half past six one night at the back end of August, in the middle of a heat wave, and find the house all locked up. I haven't got a key and I can't get in till Ingrid and her ma come back from shopping or wherever they've decided to go without bothering to tell me.

I haven't been feeling so hot this afternoon. I've had a blinding headache since just after dinner and I'm dead-tired. I'm standing outside the back door with my hands in my pockets and wondering how long they'll be when Mrs Oliphant our next-door neighbour comes out to shake the tablecloth. She spots me as she turns round to go back into the house and stops and gives me what I fancy's a queer look.

- 'Looks as if I'm locked out,' I say, feeling a bit of a Charlie about it. 'I don't suppose you know where they've gone?'

Well now she looks at me proper odd and no mistake about it as she comes up to the fence with the tablecloth over her arm. Red and white check, it is.

'But they're up at the hospital,' she says. 'Didn't you -'

'Hospital? It isn't Ingrid's day for ante-natal. That's on Tuesday ...' All at once it's as though somebody's kicked the bottom out of my belly and all my tripes are tumbling out. ' What's wrong?' I say.' What you lookin' at me like that for?'

'But surely,' she says, still gawping at me. 'It's Ingrid. They've taken her to hospital. She's had an accident.'

The sun seems to be burning right through my skull and Mrs Oliphant's face goes all swimmy and out of focus in front of me. I take hold of the fence and feel myself sway a bit.

'As far as I can understand it, she fell downstairs and brought on a miscarriage. They rushed her into hospital early this afternoon. It couldn't have been much after two. You mean to say you didn't know?'

I shake my head, partly to say no and partly to try and clear it.

My knees have taken their hook somewhere, leaving the rest of my legs to fend for themselves. I know if I don't sit down somewhere in a minute I might fall down.

'You'd better come in and sit down,' Mrs O. says, and opens the little connecting gate to let me through. 'It must have been a shock for you, but naturally I thought you'd know ... Come along in and sit down for a minute. There's a cup of tea left. You'll feel better in a few minutes.'

Mr Oliphant looks up from his evening paper as we go in.

"Here's young Mr Brown, Henry,' Mrs O. says. 'I've just found him outside the house. He couldn't get in and he didn't know anything about Ingrid till I told him... You just sit down there and I'll pour the tea. You'll feel better after it.'

'He didn't know?' Mr Oliphant says. 'But I thought you said it happened just after dinner?'

Mrs O. must give him a signal from behind me because he lets it drop.

'I haven't been feeling well all afternoon,' I mutter, and he looks at me.

'And you'll be feeling worse now, eh?' he says. He gets up and comes over to me, a big chap, in his shirt-sleeves, and puts his big hand on the back of my neck and shoves my head down between my knees and holds it there for a minute.' Now lean back and relax,' he says, letting go. 'There'll be a cup of tea for you in a minute and you'll feel better then.'

When Mrs Oliphant brings the cup and saucer I hold them tight for fear of dropping them and ask her if she's got a couple of aspirins to spare and she goes into the kitchen and comes back with the bottle. I swallow the aspirins and sip the tea. It's a bit weak and not very hot. The two young Oliphant kids come rampaging in from the garden and Mr O. turns them straight round and packs them off out again.

'I suppose Ingrid's mother would be too shaken up herself to let you know,' Mrs Oliphant says. 'You are on the telephone, I suppose?'

Yes, we're on the phone. And it's a good four hours since it happened. There's been plenty of time to let me know. I know it and so do Mr and Mrs Oliphant.

'Would you like to ring up from here?' Mr O. says. 'You can use our phone by all means.'

'Thanks,' I say. 'In a minute. I'll ring in a minute.'

Will she die? I'm wondering. What if she's dead already? What if I'm a widower just this minute and I don't know it? Free again ...

I finish the tea and then Mr Oliphant shows me where the phone is on a little shelf in the hall. 'D'you know the number?' I shake my head and he flips through the directory. Then he lifts the receiver, and says a number and waits. In a minute he says, 'Cressley Infirmary? Just a minute, please.' He holds the receiver out to me. 'Here you are.'

'Hello ... I'm inquiring about a Mrs Brown. She was brought in this afternoon. She had an accident, a miscarriage, early this afternoon... What? This is Mr Brown. My name's Victor Brown, hers is Ingrid ... Yes, all right.'

I look round but Mr Oliphant's gone. I stand there with the receiver to my ear and wait. There's a kid's pedal-car and a tricycle behind the front door and a rubber ball at the bottom of the stairs. I like the way the hall's decorated, with a light fawn paper on the walls and a dark blue with like little stars on the ceiling. I believe Mr O. does it all himself. I don't exactly know what he does for a living but they seem comfortable. They're nice people. Nice and steady and quiet and happy ...

'Hello?'

'Yes?'

'I'm afraid we've no news at the moment, Mr Brown. Mrs Brown is still hi the labour ward.'

'When will you know?'

'You could ring in about an hour. Or you could come up and wait. We'd tell you then as soon as there's anything to report.'

'All right, I'll come up. Thank you.'

Probably wondering why I'm not there already, I think as I go back into the dining-room and tell Mr and Mrs Oliphant.

'I'm sure she'll be all right,' Mrs O. says. 'I had a miscarriage once and I didn't even go away. I've had both my children since then, so you can see it didn't do me any harm. And Ingrid wasn't ' very far gone, was she?'

I wonder if she knows Ingrid was three months on the way when

we got married and I say, 'No, not far,' and leave it at that. 'She'll be all right,' Mrs Oliphant says. 'You'll see.' 'Are you going up there now?' Mr O. says, and I nod. 'Yes, I

thought I would.'

He gets up. 'I'll run you up in the car,' he says. "That's very good of you.' 'It won't take five minutes,' he says. 'You don't want to be

hanging about waiting for buses at a time like this.' 'No. Thanks very much.' 'What about your tea?' Mrs Oliphant says. 'Have you had anything to eat? You can't go running off on an empty stomach.

You might have to wait a while.' 'I don't want anything to eat, thanks.' 'I can make you some sandwiches in just a minute.' ' Thanks all the same, but I don't think I could face anything.' Mr Oliphant finishes fastening his tie and puts his jacket on.

'Come on, then,' he says. 'I'll run you up.'

The woman in the office isn't the one who was on the phone. Her voice was nice and clear but this one talks as if she's got a mouthful of toffee and she twists her words about it till you can hardly tell what she's saying.

I tell her who I am and what I'm here for and she asks me to sit down round in the hall. I go round the corner into this big high waiting-room with windows in the roof and long benches covered with blue leather and sit down. I seem to remember coming here when I was a kid. I look round at the brass plates with the names of all the local big-wigs who gave money to build this wing and at the double doors with 'Casualty Department' written over them. It must have been when I cut my head open on the railings and I probably sat here in front of these same doors, shivering from stem to stem, scared stiff at what they might be cooking up for me behind the porthole windows. There's a light on in there now, but nobody else waiting. I suppose they're ready to deal with anything that crops up. Always at it, somebody needing help.

Is she going to die? I wonder again. Is this the way it's all going to work out, with her dying and taking the baby with her? And they say there's a pattern to life. A plan. What plan? For me to fall in love with her and then fall out of love with her but still want her enough to give her the baby, so that we-have to get married when I don't love her and she can fall downstairs and kill herself and the kid and leave me free again? What sort of a plan's that, except maybe a plan to have me spending the rest of my life telling myself I killed her and if I'd held out that night ' in the park she'd be still alive?

I don't want her to die. I don't love her, but I don't want her to die.

The hospital smell's beginning to make me feel sick. I haven't got rid of the headache yet: the aspirins didn't do a bit of good. I don't like hospitals. I'm like thousands of others, I reckon -scared of the people who're here to help, scared of the pain that makes you better. I sit sideways on the seat and pull one knee up and rest my arm on the back so's I can put my forehead in my hand.

'Mr Brown?'

I jump, she's come up so quiet on rubber soles. I look at her, a little dark woman with glasses and a white coat unbuttoned, showing a dark frock underneath.

'Yes.'

'I'm Doctor Parker. I've just left your wife.'

'How is she?'

'As well as can be expected. She's had a very uncomfortable afternoon and lost a lot of blood, but we've given her a transfusion and she's going to be all right. I'm Sony about the baby, but I'm afraid we couldn't do anything to save it.'

'No.' I look at the floor.

"How long have you been married?'

'Three months.'

'I see ... you ...'

' She was having the baby before,'

'I see. Well, you'll have other children, all being well. This won't be the end of it for you.' ,

'Can I see her?' I say this without hardly thinking, as though it's something I think she's expecting me to say. But I'm not so sure I want to see her and it's a kind of relief when she says, 'I'd rather you didn't tonight.' I don't know how I'd feel to see Ingrid poorly. I might hate her and it show.

' Her mother's just left,' the doctor says. 'I'm afraid she wasn't very good for her. A rather emotional person. She's trying to get some sleep now. If you'd come earlier ...'

'I didn't know.'

'But it happened quite early this afternoon.'

'I was at work. I didn't get to know till I came home.'

'You mean your wife's mother didn't let you know?'

"The neighbours told me. I'd be the last one she'd think of telling.'

She looks at me without saying anything and I stand up.

' You can ring up first thing in the morning and visit tomorrow night at seven.'

' If she doesn't come.'

'Oh, you'll have priority for visiting.'

She walks me out to the door. 'Will you tell her I've been, and I came up as soon as I knew?'

' Yes. Anything else you'd like me to tell her?'

I shake my head. 'I don't think so. You can tell her not to worry; about the kid, I mean. I couldn't get used to the idea of being a father anyway.'

There's a bus coming down the hill as I go out of the hospital drive and I run and jump on as it stops. I go upstairs. Somehow I can't care about the kid because it never really was a kid. It wasn't really anything except an egg growing in Ingrid; something that made us have to get married. It wasn't a person so I can't feel bad about losing it. It's rotten to think it .would have been a person, though, sometime, and now it's finished like this, all mangled and dead from being bounced down the stairs. 'A very uncomfortable afternoon,' the doctor said. I shut my eyes and I can see her there on her back with her legs open and them pulling this bloody mess out of her.

The bus stinks of petrol and stale tobacco smoke and because it's practically empty it jolts and jumps about the road all down the hill, shaking my tripes about till I break out in a cold sweat of sickness. I run down the steps and jump off as it slows at the corner and make straight for a Gents across the road. I find a penny and go into one of the bogs and the bolt echoes about the place as it shoots home behind me. It all seems to hit me at once: being married, not loving Ingrid, Ma Rothwell, the niggling and nagging, now the miscarriage, and me not feeling well, and I lean over the lavatory and retch and retch fit to bring my boot soles up till finally I throw up. And then I'm saying out loud, 'Oh, bugger it, bugger, damn, and blast it all,' till there's nothing else to come up and nothing else to say and I'm just standing there trembling and empty and cold.

I must have made some noise because when I come out the attendant's standing their waiting for me.

^' You don't want to take it if you can't hold it,' he says, the interfering little bastard, the bossy little shithouse cleaner like the world's full of.

I just walk past him and say, 'Go f— yourself,' as I go out. He shouts something after me but I take no notice.

I can't make my mind up whether to go to Rothwells' or go home. I've a good mind at first not to go to Rothwells' ever again after this lot but then I think what a rough time Ingrid's had and I can't add to her troubles. Let her get out of hospital first and then see what happens. I wander round town for a bit, knowing I ought to go up home and tell them what's happened and knowing I've only got a second-hand tale and they'll want to know more than I can tell them and then it'll bring it all out and I can't be bothered going over all that tonight. Anyway, in the end I go up there and reckon I'm in a hurry and I'll call tomorrow when I've been up to the hospital. Then I push off over to Roth-wells' and walk in and find Ingrid's mother sitting with Mrs Oliphant, telling her all the tale - or her side of it. They've got the teapot going and Ma Rothwell's face is shocking to look at, all puffed up and ugly from crying.

Ma Rothwell won't look at me, but Mrs Oliphant says, 'Here's Victor now. How did you find her, Victor?'

'I haven't seen her,' I say, shooting a look at Ma Rothwell that's plain for Mrs O. to see. 'I was too late. She was going to sleep.'

All at once Ma Rothwell starts to cry out loud and it's horrible to hear her and watch the way her face kind of goes to pieces. 'I wish Ingrid had never laid eyes on him,' she says in a strangled sort of voice through this crying, and Mrs Oliphant says, 'Come now, Esther, you know it can't be Vic's fault. This sort of thing can happen to anybody.'

I'm standing at the back of the room and I feel myself going white and beginning to tremble with rage. It's only Mrs O. looking up and giving me a signal with her eyes that stops me from going for Ingrid's mother there and then. I go out and up to the bedroom and walk about there, still trembling and swearing out loud, calling Ma Rothwell every filthy name I can think of.

II

Late that night I hear a car pull up outside and when I get up in the morning Mr Rothwell's home. It seems she'd time to let him know even if she couldn't ring me. As it is I think it's only him coming stops me from having it out with her and packing up and leaving. He seems to calm her down and make her see sense. I don't know how much poison she drops in his mind about me but it doesn't seem to make any difference; he's the same with me as he always is when he comes home, quiet and friendly and decent. You kind of get the feeling with him that he respects you as a person like and not for the first time I think it's a pity he's not at home all the time.

Anyway, he takes a week of his holidays and stops till Ingrid comes home. They tell her they really should have kept her ten days or a fortnight but they let her come out providing she takes things very easy for a bit. Then Mr Rothwell's away back to his job and we're like we always were, only worse. It's like we're living in a dream, waiting for things to get back to normal, whatever that might be. Ma Rothwell hardly ever speaks to me and I don't say a dicky bird more to her than I have to.

It's Ingrid who gets my back up more now. Weeks after she's home her mother's still telling her how poorly she is and she mustn't do anything strenuous, and take it easy all the time. And Ingrid laps it all up and sits about all day as though she's in the last stages of a decline. To me she's just a pain in the neck, neither use nor ornament, sitting about like an invalid on Scarborough Spa all day and keeping me at a distance in bed. It goes on so long I tell her she ought to put a notice up: 'Fragile, don't touch.'

'How long's this going on?' I ask her one night when she's given me the cold shoulder again.,'You'll have to snap out of it sometime, y'know.'

' What d'you mean "snap out of it"?'

'What I say. You can't act up on the strength of your miscarriage for ever.'

'So you think I'm just putting on an act, do you?'

'Mebbe you don't know it. I think you an' your mother between you have got you into a frame of mind where you really think you're still poorly; and I'm getting a bit tired of it.'

'Always thinking of yourself,' she says. 'Never any consideration for me.'

'I married you when you were in trouble, didn't I? It's three months since the accident now and it's time I could make a pass at you without feeling like a dirty old man.'

She's drawn herself up all stiff and rigid now, just like her mother; If she knew how much like her mother she looks and how much I hate Ma Rothwell I don't think she'd risk getting on her high horse so much.

'If that's all you can think of,' she says, 'you'll just have to show a bit of will-power, that's all,'

It might be her mother talking, the way she says it. I look at her and I can hardly see the hot little bit I used to snogg with in the park. I don't know what's happened to her. I think they must have taken away her sex glands with the kid.

'Till when?' I say.' Till your mother gives the word? You know what your mother 'ud like to do, don't you, or are you too dense to see it? She'd like to make me do something that'd give her an excuse to push you into getting a divorce. Well, she's going the right way about it, I can tell you. I could have packed it in the day you had your accident for two pins. It took some doing, coming back here after the way your mother treated me.'

'Why did you come back, then?'

'Because we're married, and you'd got a plateful of trouble without me adding to it by walking out.'

'Very noble and kind,' she says, real sarcastic, as though she doesn't believe a word I've said.

' Well you think of a better reason, then.'

'I don't have to thank you for doing what any normal husband would do, do I?'

I could hit her, honest; I'm coming a bit nearer to it every day, and I've never struck a bint in my life.

'No, you don't. But it looks like I've to go down on my knees to get you to do what any normal wife would do. Well, I'll tell you straight now; I'm getting fed-up with this lot. I was all for making the best of it, but if we're married we're married. I'm not going to be just the lodger with special permission to share your bed providing I keep my hands to myself.'

And so on, etcetera, etcetera. And it gets us nowhere except maybe a bit nearer scratching each other's eyes out and dropping all pretence of making a go of it.

It's not hard to see that all these little dos are leading the way to a big dust-up. And it's not long in coming now.

I think it starts over a new winter coat for Ingrid. It's a small thing that's really a big thing and there's more to it than meets the eye. Anyway, Ingrid's got a wardrobe full of clothes, and I mean that. I think she must have spent all her money on them before we were married. Well, she needs a new winter coat like I need a new mother-in-law and besides that we've more or less agreed between us to do without things we don't really need so's we can save every penny towards the time when we can have a place of our own. And now here's Ma Rothwell talking Ingrid into spending twelve or fifteen quid of my money on something she can do without and never miss it. I tell her as much and we get lined up, Ma Rothwell on one side, me on the other, and Ingrid in the middle. As it happens I'm wanting to go out to the pictures that night and ask Ingrid if she fancies it, thinking that us going out will break the argument up before it gets going. Straight away her mother tells her that there's some television programme on she said she wanted to see.

So there we are: it's either pictures or television. On the face of it, that is. But I know that here and now we're going to settle something. It's Ma Rothwell or me, that's how I see it, and now's the time for Ingrid to show her mother she's got a husband and he comes first.

She ums and ahs for a bit while I get wilder and wilder, and then before she can say which she's going to do I settle it for her when I grab my coat and slam out in a black rage.

I'm still trembling on the bus. I feel the only way to relieve my feelings is by violence. I want to break windows, smash furniture up, and bash my fist into somebody's face. My idea of delight would be to get my hands round Ma Rothwell's neck and squeeze and squeeze till her stupid eyes drop out of her stupid head. I don't know what's happening to me. I never used to be like this. I'm beginning to get an idea of how blokes can be driven to murder.

III

I'm actually going up the steps to the pictures and feeling in my back pocket for the money when it strikes me I don't really want to go in at all now, and I stop. A bloke blunders into me from behind and I give him a 'sorry' over my shoulder as I turn round and go back to the pavement. I stand there and think how I'm going to spend the evening. I think about all my old mates and wonder what they're doing. I had a lot of mates and we had some good times together. Now I've nearly lost track of them. I haven't seen most of them in months. Being married's put me out of circulation and I haven't felt like meeting them anyway after the Charlie I made of myself. It's starting to drizzle and this only makes me feel lower. I walk up the road a bit and take shelter under an archway that leads between the shop fronts into a little cobbled back street. I stand there for a minute or two with a smart bint in a blue raincoat waiting for her boy friend. He comes along nearly straight away and collects her, a big fair lad in a short raincoat, and they walk off arm-in-arm to the pictures. I look round and see this pub-sign swinging up the street and I go under the archway and up to the door.

There's a bottle-blonde behind the bar in a frock made out of a sort of ice-blue chainmail that sparkles and glitters in the light reflected like splinters in the mirror that covers the top half of the wall behind the wine and spirit bottles and upturned glasses. Her skin's a nice soft creamy pinkish colour and she has a black beauty spot on her left cheek. I don't know what colour she'd be at half past seven in the morning with no heat in the bedroom and the curtains stiff with frost but I like it well enough now. The colour spreads from her neck on to her chest, which is nicely covered and promises well for lower down. I sit there with half a pint of bitter in front of me and watch her. I've always had a fancy for bints like this; real tough bints, hard as nails, know all the answers; ready to put blokes like me in their place in two ticks, but as sexy and willing as you could wish for with the right kind of chap. She comes and reaches down for something under the bar right in front of where I'm sitting and I see further into the top of her frock than's good for me in my frame of mind. Now, I think, if I'd had plenty of cash I could have picked up with a bint like this and I'd have been landed. Sex without complications, and love could wait till the right girl came along. Instead of that it all gets mixed up and complicated and before you know where you are you're miles and miles up the creek with not a paddle in sight. And then I get the old dragging feeling inside me, because I'm married, hooked, and even if I turn my head this very minute and see the right girl standing behind me with Welcome, Vic written all over her face there's not a damn thing I can do about it. I'm a marked man.

Well while I'm thinking this, which isn't more than a few seconds, the blonde's tinkering about under the bar and I've got my peepers trained into the neck of her frock, but without really seeing what's there, which shows what sort of a state I'm in. Then she straightens up and this chainmail flashes and sparkles and brings me back. I know she's seen me looking and I'm caught a bit short; but I can't say I wasn't looking really and I didn't see anything beyond the first glimpse. So I try to look her in the eye like a proper man of the world and for a couple of seconds she looks back, real cold and hard, like she's a duke's wife and I'm some little runt of a footman who's tried it on. Then she moves off along the counter and I see her wedding ring as she lifts her hand to work the beer pump.

'It's no good giving Maude the eye,' says somebody at my side. 'She's spoken for.'

I look round as Percy Walshaw pulls himself up on to the next buffet.

'Doesn't look as though that'd stop her, Percy.'

'Ah,' he says, 'you can't always go on appearances. She's as respectable as the vicar's wife.'

'Which vicar's that?' I say, and Percy laughs as the blonde bint comes along behind the counter and says good evening to him. He says good evening back and calls her by her first name.

'The usual?' she says, and Percy nods. 'Please.'

She takes a tankard off a hook and draws half a pint of bitter. I watch Percy take a good pull at it.

'How come the tankard?'

'I'm a regular, old cock. They look after the regulars.'

Still the same old Percy, I think to myself. He's a bloke about my age who I was at Grammar School with for a while, till he left among a lot of rumour that he'd been kicked out for having a bash at one of the lasses during the lunch-hour (I never did know how much truth there was in it) and went to a boarding school in the Midlands somewhere. Good pals we were for a bit, me and Percy, and though we don't see so much of one another nowadays we've always kept friendly. What I always liked about Percy was that he didn't throw his money in your face, though he liked to make the best of it. I had to find out he lived in a house with seven bedrooms and they had a maid and a housekeeper, and I liked him all the more for not bragging about it or thinking it made him any different from the other lads. I liked him even at his barmiest, and he could be pretty barmy at times, believe you me. I reckon it came from having too much money too young and an old man who didn't lick the tar out of him often enough. You don't have to look twice now to see there's plenty of lolly hanging on to him. He looks the part in this checked cap and fur-collared short overcoat that must have set him back nigh on thirty quid. And if I know him he won't have walked here either, nor come on the bus.

'Well, how's life, me old sweat?' he says. 'I haven't seen you around lately.'

The honest answer to this is 'bloody awful', but I give him the stock reply: 'Oh, just steady, y'know.'

'Still pushing a pencil?'

'No, I'm in a shop now. What about you?'

Percy empties his tankard and signals the blonde. He's fishing a fistful of silver out of his pocket. 'Same again?' I say thanks.

'I'm in the business, old lad,' he says when he's ordered the drinks. 'Finally capitulated. They're trying to make a salesman out of me. I think they'll do it too. I like beetling about the countryside flannelling people into placing orders. Just up my alley. Plenty of strange pubs. Bags of expenses.' He touches the bit of fair down on his top lip. 'That's why I'm growing the tash. People don't like to think they're dealing with a lad.'

The blonde puts the new drinks in front of us and Percy pays.

'Cheers.'

'All the best.'

Percy gets his cig case out and we light up. 'What's on the board tonight?' he says. 'Just passing an hour on?'

'Something like that.'

'You don't look too chirpy to me, Vic. Have you got the miseries or something?'

I admit I'm feeling a bit cheesed. 'You know how you get sometimes.'

'Hmm,' he says, as though he's never felt cheesed in his life but has to be polite. 'Started courting yet?'

Well, there's no getting out of it now.

' I'm a bit past that, Percy, lad.'

'Past it?'

"Aye, I'm married.'

Percy stares at me. 'You never are! Well you old dark horse, you. When did all this take place?'

'About six months since.'

'And you're sitting in pubs moping already?' He shakes his head. 'It's amazing what marriage will do to a good man.'

'Oh, wrap it up, Percy.'

'Takes away your sense of humour too.'

'I can laugh like bloody hell when I feel like it,' I tell Mm, 'only I don't feel like it tonight.'

'Proper browned off, eh?'

'To the back teeth.'

'Well, well...' He takes a swig from his tankard and reckons to wipe froth off his tash. 'I consider it me bounden duty to hoist an old school churn out of the doldrums,' he says. 'I'm at a bit of a loose end myself tonight. A date I had fell through at the last minute. What say we embark on a small crawl, eh?'

It sounds like a good idea. Not long ago I was wondering where my mates might be and now here's Percy -just the one to take me out of myself, if anybody can. I take my wallet out and check. I see I have a quid note in there.

'Righto, Percy, you're on.'

'Right,' Percy says. He swigs the last of his beer and waits for me to finish mine. 'Step this way,' he says, slapping me on the shoulder. 'The carriage awaits.'

Outside on the cobbles there's a two-seater sports job of a make I can't identify in the dark. 'Nice car,' I say as we get into these low bucket seats.

'Like it?' Percy says with pride in his voice. 'Triumph T.R.3. I talked the Old Man into buying it when I went out on the road. He wanted me to have a Humber or an Austin. More dignified, he said; but I won him over.'

Like you've been winning him over all your life, you old so and so, I think. But it certainly is a nice car...

He starts her up and she coughs and growls as though they've got a tiger down in the pub cellar. I feel a thrill in my guts at all this power, and I'm a bit jealous that it's Percy and not me behind the wheel.

'Ever been to the Monks' Rest?' he says, and I say no.

'New place out on the way to Bradford... La Posh... Right, that's the first stop.' He revs up fit to bust the windows. 'Hold your hat on.'

It seems to me we sample the beer in half the pubs in the West Riding hi the next three hours: two here, an odd one somewhere else, and always Percy with his hand on my arm, saying, 'C'mon, let's move on.' Until I lose count of the bars we've leaned against, the people we've talked to, the brews of ale we've tasted, and the Gents we've got rid of it in. In one place in Leeds Percy nearly fixes us up with a couple of hard-faced gin-drinking bints who like his line in dirty tales and his easy way with his brass; and he only breaks it off when, he remembers his car's only a two-seater and anyway I'm married and not my own man any more.

'P'haps I should ha' got the Humber after all.' he says as we go out and get into the car on the way to another port of call.

Closing-time finds us in a floodlit rpadhouse full of yellow wood and shiny chrome fittings somewhere Harrogate way. We walk out down the steps and weave our way between the cars in the park. Neither of us is too steady now and as Percy settles himself in his seat and slams the door he suddenly bursts out laughing. Not loud, but that quiet, helpless kind of laughing like when you don't know what you're laughing about but you just can't help it.

' How're you feeling, Vic?' he says.

'Pissed, Percy lad,' I say. 'Pissed as a flamin' newt.'

And then all at once I'm at it as well and we're both lolling back in our seats gurgling like drams, going on and on till it hurts across the middle under the ribs.

Eventually we get over it and Percy says, 'Well, I reckon we shall have to be heading for home. Where are we?'

'Somewhere near Harrogate, I think.'

'Never heard of it,' Percy says and I begin to feel a bit uneasy as he starts the car and lets it roll down on to the road.

'Are you okay, Percy?' I ask him. I'm thinking that this is all very well but we're in a powerful car and Percy's a bit on the mad side at the best of times.

'Never felt better,' he says. He's leaning forward with the neb of his cap touching the windscreen.'Which way?'

'I don't know.'

'Which way did we come in?'

'From the left, I think.'

'Okay, we'll go to the right. It's as good a way as any.'

He swings the car out into the road, changes up and puts his foot down hard. I feel as though a big hand pushes me back into the seat as we zoom away up the road. It's when I begin to feel scared that the effects of the booze start to lift. I've never been scared in a car before but I am now. I stick it for a bit, clenching my teeth and stiffening my legs against the bulkhead, but then I have to say something.

' Take it easy, Percy.'

'What?'Percy says.

'I said take it easy. It isn't daylight, y'know.'

Percy laughs and twitches the car under the tail of a big long distance lorry. For a second I'm ready to swear we went right underneath between the wheels. We roar up a narrow country lane with stone walls on both sides.

'Any idea where we are?' Percy says.

'Have I hell,' I say, startled. 'Don't you know?'

'I haven't known for the last ten minutes,' he shouts, full of good cheer. 'Took a wrong turning somewhere back yonder.'

'Well, we'll be in Scotland afore we know where we are, going at this speed. I might have been feeling a bit low earlier on but I'm not ready to snuff it yet.'

I think of Ingrid waiting up for me and me not turning up. The police going and breaking it to her. I wonder if she'd cry. Then there's my mother and dad and Chris ...

'Snuff it?' Percy says. 'What're you talking about? You're not scared, are you?'

'Yes, I am. It's dark, man, for Christ's sake, and you don't know the road.'

'We've got good lights,' is all he says, and on we go belting into the dark.

Well the headlights are powerful enough, admitted; but the dark's funny and shadows can look like real things and real things like nothing at all...

I catch a split-second glimpse of a sign. 'For Christ's sake, Percy, watch the bend. It's a right angle -' And then I can't talk, only shut my mouth and my eyes tight and brace myself for the smash as a tall drystone wall rushes at us up the beam of the headlights. I feel the sideways drag as Percy pulls the car round and hear the screech of stone on metal on my side of the car. Then we stop.

I stay like I am for a few seconds, with my head down. My heart's going like a donkey engine and my hands are trembling like leaves in the wind. We've no business to be unhurt and I can hardly believe we are.

Percy's jumped out as soon as we've stopped and run round to my side. He comes back now and gets in. 'A foot,' he says. 'Just another ruddy foot and we'd have made it.'

I say nothing. He starts the car up and puts it into reverse and pulls back clear of the wall. Then he gets out again. He taps on my window and I wind it down.

'Made a lousy mess of this wing,' he says.

I'm not bothered about Percy's wing, just my own skin.

'Could be worse, though. At least the wheels still go round.' He comes back round the other side and gets in again. 'We'd better beat it before we have parker trouble.'

I stop his hand as it reaches for the starter.

'Look, hold on a bit. I'm not ready for any more of that just yet.' I give a false kind of laugh. 'What time does the next bus go from here?'

Percy gives a short polite laugh and falls to drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

'A foot, though,' he says in a minute. 'Another foot and we'd have cleared it. What lousy luek!'

'I call it bloody good luck,' I tell him. 'A foot the other way and they'd have been scraping me off the wall in the morning.'

Percy turns his head and looks at me. 'You really are in a state, aren't you?'

'I thought that was it, Percy. I don't want to come as near as that again for a long, long time.'

Percy feels in the door pocket on his side. 'Hang on a tick. I've got the very thing ... Have I? Yes, here it is.' He's holding a metal flask and he unscrews the top before handing it to me. 'Have a pull at that.'

'What is it?'

'Brandy.'

'I think I've had enough to -'

'Go o-on. Do you good.'

I lift the flask and as I'm taking a swig Percy tilts it up so the stuff pours down my throat. I splutter and cough.

'How's that?'

'I'm on fire.'

'It'll change into a warm glow in a minute. You won't have a care in the world.'

He wipes the neck of the flask with his hand and takes a swig himself and says, 'A-agh!' Then he screws the cap back on and puts it away. He reaches for the starter. 'Ready now?'

'In a minute.' I open the door.

'What's up now?'

'I want a leak.'

'Okay. I'll back up and have a look at the sign.'

'Right,' he says when I'm back in the car. 'I know where we are now. We'll be home in quicksticks.'

'Take all the time you like, Percy lad,' I tell him. 'Take all night if you like.'

He laughs.

He's still laughing when he drops me off outside Rothwells' and shouts good night before rocketing away down the road like a bat out of hell.

IV

I'm not too steady on my feet. The brandy's stirred all the other booze up again and I'm as drunk as I was earlier. Only|not in the same way: not laughing drunk now, but mean and nasty drunk, spoiling for trouble if there's any coming. There's a light behind the front-room curtains so somebody's waiting up for me. There has to be somebody waiting because I haven't got a key. I've never had a key to this house. Anyway, I think, Ma Rothwell should be safely out of the way in bed by this time and if Ingrid's got anything to say about me coming home sozzled at going up to midnight, well, let her say it and see what happens. Just see what happens tonight.

But it's the old bitch herself who turns her head when I stand in the doorway, blinking in the light.

' Ingrid in bed?' I say, a bit taken aback like.

'She's been in bed over an hour. I should have been too if I hadn't had to wait up for you. Don't you know what time it is?'

I know, but I look at the little imitation marble clock on the mantelpiece. 'Ten to twelve.'

'Yes, ten to twelve, and people being kept from their beds waiting on your convenience till you decide you'll come home.'

I can tell from the way she lets her eyelids droop and her little podgy chin's tucked in that she's got it in for me. Well, all right, I think, if that's the way she wants it. I've practised giving her a piece of my mind so often I could do it in my sleep and I've always dreamed of having a real set-to with her one day. If she wants it now she can have it.

I feel a kind of relief, as though a big weight's lifting off me as I start the ball rolling. 'Home?' I say. 'You don't really mean that, do you? You don't really mean this is my home? I haven't even got a key. If I had a key you wouldn't have had to wait up for me. But I'm no more than a lodger here and you don't let me forget it.'

I watch the way her head turns. She's so dignified it's painful to watch her. I'm wondering how far I'll have to go before she drops the act and shows what a common piece she is at bottom.

'When you have a home of your own you'll be able to do as you like,' she says. 'I expect people who live in my house to accept my standards. Even if they haven't been brought up that way,' she says, standing up and gathering her knitting and smoothing her skirt down over her fat behind with one hand.

'I can see me getting a house. I can't rent one and I can't afford to buy one. We might get out of here round about 1968 the way I see it.'

'You know,' she says, 'you obviously don't feel the smallest shred of gratitude that I allowed you to come here to live.'

'You've got it wrong,' I tell her. 'We came here as a favour to you because you didn't want to lose your lovey-dovey daughter. Well, you've no need to worry; I don't like it any more than you do and you'll be rid of me the first chance that comes.'

'Which as you say doesn't seem likely for a long time.'

I'm taking my raincoat off now and having a bit of trouble with the buttons. I know she's watching me more carefully than she pretends to be.

'As soon as Ingrid feels like going back to work we'll be able to save more. Then we can buy a place.'

'I don't know that Ingrid wants to go back to work. She thinks like me - that a husband should be able to support a wife, or he's a poor fish.'

This isn't the way I've understood it. It seems to me half my trouble is not knowing whether to believe what Ingrid says or what her mother says she says. I'm getting mad.

'Well, she'll have to get rid of her fancy ideas. If she wants a house of her own she'll have to help to pay for it. I'm no mill-owner's son. Maybe that's what you had in mind for her, eh? Somebody loaded with brass to keep her in luxury all the rest of her life.'

' You're certainly not what I had in mind.'

'Well I married her. And bloody glad she was to have me, make no mistake.'

'Is there any need for language like that?'

Somehow I feel I'm not winning and this makes me all the madder. Here I am telling her all I've ever wanted to tell her and somehow she's not reacting. She's just taking it in her stride and making me feel small.

'Like what?' I say.

'You just swore.'

'I feel like swearing. I've felt like it ever since tea-time.'

'Well don't bring it in here. Save it for your friends. I imagine they're the type to appreciate it.'

'My friends,' I say, and I hear my voice rise to a kind of falsetto. 'You think your friends are the last word. A bunch of bloody jumped-up social climbers. I might tell you I've just been out with a bloke who's got more money behind him than you an' all your friends put together ever dreamed of.'

I'm feeling a wee bit queasy in the guts now. I think it's a mixture of petrol fumes, a pork pie I've had, and the brandy on top of all the other booze, that's done it. I make for a chair, nearly falling over a stupid rug on the way.

'It seems he's been spending some of it tonight on drink.'

'I've had a drink. I'm not denying it.'

'A drink. More like a dozen.'

'All right, I've had a dozen. And I enjoyed 'em. Is there any law against it?'

"There's an elementary sense of decency that stops a man coming home to his wife in such a condition.'

'So I've no sense of decency now, eh? I'd enough to marry your Ingrid when she was in trouble. Oh, I know I got her into trouble, but it takes two to do that, y'know. And don't think she wasn't getting what she wanted when I married her. She'd have married me any time, baby or no baby.'

' She'd have been in a position to listen to advice if she hadn't been seduced.'

"That's a good 'un. D'you think I had to tie her down to do it? Don't worry, if it hadn't been me it'd have been somebody else.'

I don't think this is strictly true but I'm past splitting hairs. I'm out to get Ma Rothwell foaming and I'm coming pretty near it now.

She trembles with rage. 'How dare you make such disgusting accusations against my daughter's character! You come in here, you little upstart, drunk, as though you own the house, and sully a good girl's name with your filthy talk...'

Well now I've really got her going and she looks as though she's good for a while yet, only I cut her short as I feel this queasy feeling suddenly spread out and up and before I know it I've leaned forward and thrown up on the nice cream carpet right in front of her. It's the easiest thing I ever remember: no heaving and retching and sweating -I just kind of hiccup and there it is on the carpet between my feet, all my tea and the pork pie I've had in the pub since, everything in a sloppy pinkish blob about the size of a tea-plate, mostly soft and creamy but with whole bits of stuff that have never tried to get digested stuck among it.

We both sort of look at it in surprise for a second or two and then, maybe it's the beer and I don't give a damn anyway, I don't know, but I start to giggle.

Ma Rothwell's mouth is open as though she's going to let me have it any second now, but it's as though she can't get the words out. Her whole body goes stiff and her eyes bulge and her hands are clenched up in front of her and it's just as though her voice has packed in and she's fighting and straining like mad to bring it back again. She's paralytic with rage. Her face has got past red and it's purple now. And there we are, the two of us, looking at one another across this puddle of sick, me waiting for what's going to happen and her looking as though she'll fall down and kick her heels and foam at the mouth any second now.

And I'm just thinking what a repulsive old sow she really is and how much I hate her when her voice-box starts operations again.

'You filthy pig,' she says. 'You filthy disgusting pig.'

It should hurt like hell for her to call me that and it probably would have any other time, but all I can see now is the funny side of it. I feel another giggle coming up and choke it back and splutter over it. But it's no good and I have to let it rip. And then I'm roiling back in the chair and laughing. I shout with laughing. It's as though I've never laughed before and I've only just found out how nice it is, and how lovely it is to let it come till you're helpless with it and it begins to hurt right across your guts.

I hear Ingrid's ma give a little scream and then the door slams, fair shaking the walls, and an ornament bounces down off the piano.

And now it doesn't seem as funny any more so in a minute I manage to give up and I light a fag and stretch my legs out, careful not to get my feet in the mess. I begin to smell it before long. Rotten it is, enough to make you want to throw up again, except there's nothing left to come. So I begin to think about cleaning it up, because it's one thing to throw up on Ma Roth-well's carpet and another to expect her to clean it up. I think about it. Newspaper's no good because it might go soft and split and then I'd get it on my hands. And if I use the dishcloth I'll only have to wash that out after. So I decide the coal shovel's the best thing and I get up and go into the kitchen and open the coal-place door and get the shovel out.

I have to use a bit of newspaper in the end to scrape the stuff off the shovel into the fire, but I get it up off the carpet okay. There's a bit of a coaly patch on the carpet from the shovel when I've finished but I reckon that can't be helped and Ma Rothwell will soon shift that with a bit of panshine or something. The little china jug she knocked down is in bits on the floor. It said 'Best wishes from Llandudno' round the outside before it was smashed and I've heard Mrs R. say she thought a lot about it because she got it on her honeymoon. I get a piece of writing-paper out of the bureau and write I didn't do this - you did and put it with the bits of jug on top of the piano. Then I sit down and light another fag.

In a bit it dawns on me I'm feeling randy and I reckon it's the beer and the fact that what with one thing and another I've been on starvation rations for the last three or four months. I wonder if Ingrid's asleep and if she'll come the don't-touch-me stuff if I go up and slip into bed and turn her over.

I get up and throw my cig into the fire. I fetch the fireguard and put it up and switch off the lights in the kitchen and the sitting-room, taking a last look at the patch on the carpet before I do. I know Ma Rothwell isn't going to like that, but I can't help it. I can't even be bothered to think about tomorrow. I reckon after tonight we can't carry on as per, but I can't be bothered thinking about it. All I want is to get into Ingrid's warm bed and make love to her like I've only just found out about it.

I go upstairs and start getting undressed by the landing light and I never think to look at the bed till I'm down to my underwear. Then I see that the clothes are pulled about and the pillow dented, but there's no Ingrid. I remember now sort of half-hearing voices while I was downstairs but I didn't pay any attention. I go out on the landing and knock on Ma Rothwell's door.

'Ingrid.'

There's no answer.

I knock a bit louder. 'Ingrid.'

Ma Rothwell's voice says, 'Go away.'

'I want Ingrid.'

'I won't let my daughter sleep with a drunken sot like you,' the old bitch says.

'You won't what?' This does it. I bang on the door with the side of my fist. 'I want my wife. Send her out, d'y'ear. Send her out.'

There's the sound of low voices, then Ingrid says something from the other side of the door.

'Go to bed, Vic.'

'You come on in here, where you belong.'

'I'm staying in here tonight.'

'I'll come in an' fetch you if you don't come out.'

'You can't get in; the door's locked.'

'Locked?' I try the handle. 'Dammit, what the hell are you playing at? D'y'ear? I said what the hell are you playing at?'

I thump on the door. I'm really going now.

'You'll wake the neighbours, Vic.'

'Bugger the neighbours. Let them see to their own troubles. Come on now, come out.'

'For the last time,' Ma Rothwell says. 'She's not leaving this room tonight.'

'All right, then, you old cow,' I shout, 'you've done it. She's made her choice an' now I know where I stand.'

I storm back into our bedroom and slam the door. I'd pack up and get out now, except I've no place to go. I finish getting undressed and I can hardly fasten my pyjama buttons I'm that wild.

I get into bed and lie there swearing in the dark, and then in a bit I cool down and begin to think about it all. This is what it all comes to, is it? I think. Bawling and swearing at midnight like people in a slum. This is where the dreams end ... I never wanted much in the first place, just a girl I could love, who loved me, one I could be pals with besides loving her and all that. Not much to want. Oh, I know I've brought it all on myself. I shouldn't have carried on with Ingrid once I knew how things were. But still, thousands must do it and get away with it and we have to go and slip up the first time. And now what happens tomorrow? Do I clear out and leave her? I can't stay now, that's for sure. I won't stay, and that's for certain. I've had what's commonly known as a bellyful.

I fall asleep thinking I won't and I have the most weird dream I ever remember. I'm walking along an ordinary street and I go into what looks like an ordinary pub. In fact it's the pub I met Percy in tonight. Only inside it's like a big hall, so big you can't see the walls, and there's a kind of swirly mist all round. As I'm standing there wondering what's going to happen I hear a horrible scream that dies away in a moan. I'm scared stiff, and all of a sudden the blonde from the pub comes out of the mist, walking a foot off the floor. She's stark naked and she's reaching out for me with hands that have fingernails six inches long and painted blood-red. It's the way she's looking at me that starts me running. There's pure murder on her face, it's all twitching and twisting, and I see that it isn't paint on her nails at all, but blood, dripping and dripping. I'm running and running and making no progress because my shoes weigh about fifty pounds apiece, and all the time I can feel this raving bint gaining on me. And just as them great sharp nails are clawing out for me, I wake up.

I'm hanging head down over the foot of the bed and the eiderdown and sheets are all over the floor. I'm in a cold sweat and my heart's thumping away like billy-ho. It's half past four. I tidy up and climb back into bed with a cig. I don't remember putting the cig out before I fall asleep again.

When I wake up the next time it's half past six and I know what I'm going to do. I get dressed with fifty little elves tapping away with hammers inside my head, but cut out washing and shaving for fear of waking the two of them in the next room. I pack as much of my stuff as I can into one case and open the window and drop it into the garden. Down in the kitchen I find half a bottle of milk and I swig this. I collect my raincoat from where I dropped it in the front room last night, put it on, and go and open the back door. As I step out and pull the door shut behind me I hear the Yale lock snap and I think, Now, it's done. No turning back now even if I wanted to. I collect the case from the front garden, trying to remember what I was thinking about to drop it out like that instead of bringing it down the stairs with me, and walk off down the steps to the gate and down the road.