Part Two, Chapter 6 - A Kind of Loving

I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'I will.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Well, missis?' I say.

'Aye, mister?'

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

II

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

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

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

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

'For the baby.'

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

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

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

' She was only thinking about me, Vic.'

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

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

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

'A book?'

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

She giggles.

'What's funny?'

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

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

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

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

'Such as?'

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

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

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

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

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

'Wait a minute, then.'

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

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

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

'Better?'

'A lot better.'

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

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

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

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

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

I wait for her on the steps, looking out across the road at the bay and Castle rock sticking out into the sea with the little boats and pleasure steamers hugging under it like chickens under an old hen.

'What did you do that for?' she says when she comes out.

'What?' I say, sulky like.

'Barge out like that right in the middle of the conversation.'

'I can leave a room without asking their permission, can't!?' I start down the steps and she follows me.

'Well, what's wrong with them, for goodness' sake? I think they're very nice people.'

'Mebbe they are, but there's no need to throw yourself at 'em just because they condescend to exchange a few words about the weather.'

'And if they'd sat there all week and not spoken you'd have said they were stuck-up and snobbish. Well, it strikes me you're the snob - an upside-down snob.'

I'm getting pretty riled now, more so because I know I'm partly at fault. 'I've talked to better people than them in my time but they have to take me as I am, Yorkshire accent an' all. I don't put it on for anybody.'

'And who does?'

'You do. You sounded as if you were auditioning for the BBC and trying to kid 'em you'd come straight from Eton, or wherever it is they send these posh bints.'

'I hadn't noticed,' she says, stiffening up.

'Well I did, an' I'll bet they did an' all. Why d'you want to throw yourself at people like that? Meet 'em half-way, be pleasant, okay. But there's no need to gush and preen yourself as if they were royalty or something. People don't think any better of you for trying to make out you're better than you are.'

She says nothing to this and a bit of me's sorry under the irritation. We walk on without saying anything for a bit, then I say,'Okay, let's forget it.'

'I think we'd better,' she says, very quiet, and this is worse somehow than if she'd come out and bawled back at me.

We've got to the cliff lift now and there's one at the top standing with its door open.

'Where d'you want to go?'

'I'm not particular.'

' You want to go and look at the shops?'

'No, we'd better save that for later in the week when we know how much money we have left.'

'Well, I shan't have so much left if that bloke stands about in the hall so much more,' I say, trying to make a joke. 'I feel as if I ought to put a bob into Ms hand every time I pass him.'

'Shall we go down on the beach, then?' she says.

'Okay. We'll get the papers and a couple of deck chairs and take it easy like a real old married couple.'

'I suppose we ought to make the most of it,' she says. 'It's the last holiday we'll have on our own for a long, long time.'

It's these casual remarks about us spending the rest of our lives together that chill me to the marrow, reminding me that this is real and not a dream. We walk together into the lift and I look down at her in her summer frock and wonder if it shows.

III

Next week I move my gear over to Rothwells' ready for settling in. There's not much, just my clothes, a few books, and one or two gramophone records. I leave the gram at home for young Jim because Ingrid already has one. Ingrid's bed's a three-quarter size, which is fair enough when we're feeling matey, but not so good for sleeping comfortable; so we put this hi the spare room and go into town and buy a new double one for us. This is our first bit of furniture and the only thing we need at present because the rest of the stuff in Ingrid's room - dressing-table, wardrobe, and drawers - is enough for both of us. On the face of it this should give us a chance to save up for when we can get our own place; but now Ingrid's packed her job in we only have my wage and by the time I've paid Ma Rothwell board and lodging for the two of us and I've had my National Health and income tax stopped at the shop we only have about fifty bob left over to pay for every thing else - entertainment, clothes, and all the stuff we'll need for the kid when it arrives. At this rate I can see us being stuck with Ingrid's old lady for the next ten years and I don't like the thought of this one little bit; because from the day I go there to the day I walk out I don't feel at home in that house.

This is because Ma Rothwell and I don't get along very well, like I expected. We don't have words or anything like that (not at first, anyway) and there's nothing really you can pin down and tell anybody about because you have to be around all the time and see how things lead up to things and hear the tone of voice things are said in to get the idea.

I'm not so bothered that she's house-proud. I'm a pretty tidy sort of bloke myself and if she wants to empty ashtrays after me and shake the cushions about all the time and tell me she doesn't want me to smoke upstairs or go up there in my shoes, well it's her house and if she's proud of it she can have it that way. It does get on your nerves after a bit, though.

But not as much as the way she talks. She talks the most horrible bilge most of the time and she freezes up as though you've insulted her if you dare to try to put her right. She has one or two favourite subjects. The Royal Family's one of them. She keeps a scrapbook of the Queen and Philip and the kids and she reads all these intimate stories about the way they live and takes them all for gospel. As if anybody really knows about them, and they wouldn't be allowed to write it if they did. Another favourite of hers is the way she puts shopkeepers in their places. To hear her talk you'd think everybody in Cressley was out to do her down. But she doesn't let them get away with it, Ma Rothwell doesn't. Oh, no, she puts them in their place all right. A proper putter-in-place, she is. She never seems to see that if she was the big lady she thinks she is they'd all be falling over themselves to be nice to her and so she ought to reckon they do even if they don't. Then there's politics. You don't need telling she's Conservative. What else could she be but real true blue and never a good word for the Labour Party and the trade unions. If she had her way trade unions would be abolished. And as for the miners, well, they're just holding the country up to ransom, so she says, and making trouble at every turn. She's not forgotten the Old Man's a miner, but it doesn't stop her shooting her mouth off about something she knows absolutely nothing about. And I mustn't forget the coloured people, the West Indians and Pakistanis and so on. She'd pack that lot off home, and sharp about it, because what with blackies on the buses and all you read about in the papers it's getting as a respectable Englishwoman daren't put her nose outside her own door. In fact, she can hardly open her mouth without showing everybody what a stupid, bigoted, ignorant old cow she is. And I've got to live with her.

As for Ingrid, I don't think she had a serious thought to call her own before she met me and I gave her something to think about, except what colour of coat she wanted for winter and whether she liked 'Criss Gross Quiz' better than 'Double Your Money', or 'Take Your Pick' better than both.

It's not having a life of my own any more that really gets me down, though. I don't seem to be able to do anything I want to do. I try playing my records once - but only once. Before the first side's finished both Ingrid and her ma are bored to death and I have to pack it in because they want television on. I always used to like television before I came to live at Rothwells' but now I hate the sight of it because it's on when I go in at tea-time and it doesn't go off till it's time to go to bed. I've got to watch it, though, because I can't read with the light out and I don't go out much without Ingrid because her ma doesn't think it's right.

I've been there about six weeks when we have our first little set-to. Mr Van tells me one day that the Philharmonia Orchestra's coming to Leeds and would I like to go over with him because it's a real crack outfit and you don't often get a chance of hearing them live.

'Well I don't know, Mr Van Huyten,' I say. 'I'd like to but I'm not my own boss now, y'know.' I try to laugh. 'Married man an' all that.'

'Bring your wife along, Victor,' he says. 'I'd be glad to have the company of you both.'

I tell him I'll see what she says and I ask her that night if she'd like to go, only I make the mistake of doing it while her mother's there. Like I expected, she pulls a face. 'I'd be bored to tears,' she says.

'Why don't you give it a try? There's always a first time.'

'Ingrid knows what she likes and she doesn't pretend to enjoy highbrow nonsense,' Ma Rothwell says, minding her own business as usual.

Well, I'm as wild as hell on a windy night at this and it's all I can do to stop myself telling her just what I think. 'It's a matter of opinion,' I say, holding it back. 'Makes a change from television quiz shows, though.'

She tightens her mouth up because she knows this is one for her.

'Anyway, I'd like to go if you won't.'

Now left to Ingrid this would be okay but the old cow has to put her two cents' worth in again. 'You have to sacrifice things when you're married,' she says. 'Give and take.'

Now just what this has to do with me going to a symphony concert I don't know. It's the sort of thing that makes me want to climb the walls. It's stupid beyond belief.

'I don't see what that has to do with it. There's no harm in me goin' to a concert, is there?'

She shrugs. (She can shrug in a more maddening way than anybody I ever met.) 'If you want to carry on just as you did before you were married it's got nothing to do with me. Though I'm sure Ingrid will have something to say about it.' And she bows out now she's done the damage.

'I don't know what you're getting at,' I tell her, and I don't. You can't say anything when she talks like that because there's no sense to argue at.

'You don't mind if I go, do you?' I say to Ingrid.

'When is it?'

'A fortnight on Saturday.'

'I don't know. We might want to go somewhere else.'

For a second I hate her enough to slap her silly face. To think only three months ago I'd just to snap my fingers and she'd come running. Now I'm married to her and it's as if her mother puts her in a trance where she hasn't a mind of her own.

'Well, you'll have to forget about that,' I say, 'because I'm going.'

This puts me in the dog-house and with Ma Rothwell around I've no chance of sorting it out till we go up to bed.

'I didn't like the way you snapped at me tonight,' Ingrid says, pulling her jumper over her head and shaking her hair free again.

'I didn't like the way everybody was telling me what I could and couldn't do. I don't know what the hell's coming over you these days, Ingrid. You're just an echo of your old lady.'

'I'd rather you didn't call her that, if you don't mind,'

'Well you know who I'm talking about.'

'You should show a bit of respect for her, Vic. After all, we are living in her house.'

'Don't I know it?'

She finishes undressing and gets into bed. 'Are you going to this concert?'

'Yes, I am.'

'You're going to make an issue of it?'

'Me?' I stand there in my shirt and underpants, pointing my finger at my chest. 'I'm making an issue of it? You let your mother drive me into a comer, don't do a thing to help me out, and then say I'm making an issue of it. Just because you'd rather stop at home yourself and watch some bloody silly television programme.'

'For goodness' sake keep your voice down. She can hear every word.'

'I don't care what she can hear,' I say, my voice getting louder still.

There's a tap on the door and Ma Rothwell says from outside, 'Are you all right, Ingrid?'

'Yes, Mother.'

I put the light out and get into bed. 'What the hell does she mean? Did she think I was hiding you or summat?'

She snuggles down under the clothes without bothering to answer me. Now she'll go to sleep and we've settled nothing. We'll wake up in the morning and it'll all start again. It's all boiling away inside me and there's no way of getting rid of it.

One day the phone rings in the shop and there's Jimmy on the other end of the line.

'Guess who walked into the office the other day,' he says. 'Old Conroy.'

'I thought he'd moved away altogether.'

'His family live in Bradford. He's not working at the moment because he's emigrating, off to Australia. He's fixing a get-together before he goes ...'

We talk a bit (it's quiet in the shop) and Jimmy tells me they're all going out to the Lord Nelson, that's a pub on the way to Bradford, for a booze-up and would I like to go. It'll be a kitty do with everybody chucking ten bob in at the beginning of the evening and drinking till it's gone. I tell him I don't know how I'm fixed for that night, but I'll let him know.

I know now I shan't be going but I mention it to Ingrid just to let her know the sort of sacrifices I'll make for the sake of peace and quiet.

'I always thought you didn't like Conroy,'she says.

'I got to like him well enough before he left. And anyway, it's a chance to see some of the lads again.'

' It'll be a drinking do, won't it?'

'What else?'

' Have you told him you'll go?'

'No, I put him off. You know very Well your mother 'ud go hairless if I as much as offered to go out on me own to a do like that.'

She looks at me sort of soft and gutless like. 'Oh, Vic, I don't want you to think you can't do anything on your own any more.'

'You want to tell your mother that sometime,' I say. 'If I set me mind on going, I'll go, and neither you nor your ma will stop me. But I'm all for a quiet life, and as I've got to live here I'll give it a miss.'

We're up in the bedroom as usual, the only place we can have a private talk - if we keep our voices down.

'I'll tell you straight, though,' I say. 'I didn't bargain for this bloody lot when I offered to marry you.'

' There's no need to swear,' she says.

'Swear?'

'Yes, swear. You do it so much these days you don't even notice it; and you never used to.'

' Circumstances were different. This is enough to make a parson swear.'

This is the way we always are now. The only chance we get to talk, except when we go out, which isn't often now that Ingrid's showing obvious (she's very self-conscious about it; and so am I, for that matter), is late at night and first thing in the morning. Well you know how you are first thing and at night it's as though we've time for nothing else but the grouses we've been saving up because we couldn't get rid of them earlier. So it seems like we do nothing but niggle and nag.

'You go if you want to,' she says.

'And get the big freeze treatment for it? No, thanks. I haven't forgotten the concert.'

' Well you went to that, didn't you?'

'And paid for it. Anybody'd have thought I'd spent the evening in a knocking-shop somewhere instead of a respectable symphony concert.'

'Well, it's up to you.'

'Aye, it's up to me. You never back me up, do you? You let your mother say just what she likes and you never think of siding with me, do you?'

' I don't see why I should fall out with my mother. I never used to and I won't start now.'

I chuck my keys and money with a clatter on to the dressing-table. ' Not even to save my face, eh?'

'She's my mother, Vic.'

'And I'm your husband; or have you forgotten now you've got the certificate to prove you have one? I know anybody 'ud take me for the lodger, but you can bet your boots I remember signing my name.'

'P'raps you're sorry you married me,' she says, and she should' know better, she really should, with me in the mood I'm in. -

"There's no bloody p'raps about it,'I tell her.

Well that sends her to bed in tears and leaves me walking up and down the bedroom itching to throw things about and break them from sheer frustration.

Oh, it's a great life, and we've only another thirty or forty years, of it to come.