A Kind of Loving (42 page)

'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.

CHAPTER 7

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 neigh
bour 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 after
noon. 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 some
where 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 hi
m 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 ram
paging 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.'