A Start in Life (6 page)

I went to Claudine's house. Her mother was at a meeting and her father had gone to the pub, so we made a play for each other even while still in the kitchen, moaning for it after the week-long separation caused by her blood-rags. The clouds were shifting and her breath smelled sweet. There was an instant rise in me, as if by some magic all the blood she'd lost had gone into my backbone. Not that I needed it, but it was plain that something special was on its way to happening, because into my intense kisses kept floating the vision of the country house I'd seen the day before, and in this picture there was a rainbow showing towards the Trent, the building itself under a shed of eternal sunshine, so that I was attacked by the sweet-rat of sentimentality, so strongly in fact that I felt like fainting, as if actually getting the flu that I had shammed the day before to Weekley. I felt insane, but this view of that ideal love-house reduced me to tenderness. Her back was to the gas stove, and in my new-found consideration I saw that this wasn't comfortable, so steered her gently round the corner by the living-room door, and on up the stairs. She seemed frightened at where I wanted to go, but my soft kisses on every other step so surprised her that she daren't say anything.

‘Where's your room?' I asked, my throat so parched I had to repeat it. But I opened another door showing her parents' double bed flanked by wardrobe and dressing-table, and we went in there.

‘No,' she pleaded. ‘No, dearest, not in here.' As if she hadn't spoken I went on kissing her till I could close the door behind us. I caught at a bedside light, which shone dimly over the counterpane. She felt terrible, I realized, having it on the place where her mother and father had always done it, and I was sorry afterwards that she hadn't enjoyed it as much as usual. But to me it was the greatest fuck of my life so far, tooling sweet Claudine on her parents' well-worn platform, as if I were getting the power and sweetness from their first ten years together. It seemed we were all in the room at the same time, wrapped and crawling among each other. Claudine's tense and tearful face had its eyes shut tight as if to get the full benefit of my kisses and tongue, as well as every other part of me. When she reluctantly came under my fingers, more tears and groans let out of her, as if it were the greatest disaster in the world, that we'd done it here – and would go on coming upstairs to the same place for it whenever we got the chance. When I lost myself in her at last, my backbone seemed to shift out of place.

We lay stupefied, not knowing what to say. Downstairs, she gave me supper of bread and cheese, and tea, which was all I wanted. The air was light blue, and it was the greatest food in the world. She sat opposite, sipping her cup of tea, and I became uneasy at her gaze. ‘I don't mind getting engaged to you,' I said, ‘but if we did we wouldn't be able to get married for a few years. We're both too young.'

She smiled nicely, and that was all I wanted to see, except that everything I did seemed like a trick. ‘That'd be all right,' she said. ‘We'd be sure of each other then, wouldn't we?'

So we decided to be engaged, though agreed not to say anything for a few days to her parents, or to my mother who wouldn't have been all that interested anyway, except to call me a bloody fool. I made up my mind that when we announced it I'd tell Claudine about my good amount of money saved. By then I hoped to have collected the hundred from Clegg as an extra commission for helping to sell his house.

For the rest of the evening I made myself agreeable to her mother and father, so that Mrs Forks thought I was a dedicated Communist and hoped I might one day join the Young Communist League. Mr Forks pumped me about my job at the estate agent's, and I told him enough bullshit to make him suppose I'd become a big influence in the firm after I'd taken my examinations.

I missed the last bus home, but the two miles flew by me, and I didn't remember passing the usual landmarks, as if I were walking blind but on a sure radar beam that couldn't but lead me to wherever I wanted to go in the world.

The following afternoon I had to take a driving test. I was so affable to the inspector, yet careful, quick to know the rules, and at the same time go slow enough to keep cool and obey every dotted ‘i' in the Highway Code, that I passed first time. This was considered a rare and famous feat in the office, and I was more stunned at it than anybody. They joked about me having slipped the tester a handful of pound notes, and we had a good laugh about it. I went to a pub with Peter Fen and Ron Butter, two of the older clerks, so that they could buy me a celebration drink, double brandies all round. We sat in the lounge of the Royal Children, smoking Whiffs I'd bought at the bar, and that I decided to smoke from then on instead of cigarettes. If I rationed myself to three a day it wouldn't be more expensive, and was bound to make a good impression. In any case, I liked the taste of them, especially with brandy, so I went to the counter for three more doubles.

Ron drove me to Aspley in his Morris, because it was on his way to Nuthall, where he lived with his newborn wife in a bungalow they'd got on a mortgage. I said goodbye and see you in the sweatshop tomorrow, swaying slightly as I made for the gate to Claudine's house.

She smelt it straight away, the ultimate sin of a man about to become engaged, who'd strayed from his occasional half-pint and sunk to the degradation of ‘shorts'. I took off my overcoat and sat down. ‘It's not right,' she said. ‘You reek of it. I never thought you'd start drinking whisky – at a time like this as well.'

‘Brandy,' I said, lighting a Whiff.

‘Please don't do it again,' she said. ‘I love you, and I wouldn't want to marry anybody who drank like that.'

‘I'm not
drunk
,' I said, ‘honest, duck. Not on three doubles. I can tek a lot more than that.'

‘You seem drunk to me.'

‘That's because you're not me.'

‘I'm glad I'm not, then. It's terrible, getting drunk like that.' She didn't look as nice as she had the night before, but I felt my love and sympathy too deeply for that to worry me. ‘I've passed my driving test. I promise not to get drunk again.'

She said all right at this, and actually smiled. ‘It'll be for your good, as well as mine, for
our
good,' was her conjugal way of putting it – ‘if you really stop drinking.'

I said that in any case I didn't
like
the stuff, that it meant nothing to me, that the taste was rotten and burned my throat. All the same, she took my victorious driving test to be a great move in the war of ‘getting on', saying I'd be so much more useful to the firm that I'd no doubt be given a responsible post in it soon.

Latching quickly on to her enthusiasm I went into a fantasy at how I might one day be able to save up for my own car, gloating to myself not only over the secret hoard of my savings but also about the money I was going to land from the sale of Cleggy's house.

We sat on the settee and kissed, but after a few minutes her parents came in and the television began shattering the room while supper was being put on the table. The old man thought I was even more of a lad when I told him about the driving test and the brandies, and yet, in spite of their friendly umbrella, I had a feeling of not belonging in this happy family that seemed all ready, out of the goodness of their souls, to treat me so well – even as a son. I was not really uneasy, because at the same time I felt a fundamental need to be with them and, while eating and talking, to remember the previous night when I had all but stripped Claudine and made love to her on their rich and wonderful bed. I was dead set to wallow in mother, father and wife, which was good for every string-end of me. Even though I felt an impostor who might be shown up at any moment for what I was and slung into the blustery autumn rain, I drank the unsuspecting familiarity they gave out. The thought that the real me had got at last what I actually wanted made me smile rather than become fearful as the evening wore on. I could bear this, and much more, and I felt so shifty and happy that I never stopped asking myself how much
they
could take, a vague sensation that drifted over from time to time. After several such evenings Claudine and I decided that we'd tell of our engagement on her twentieth birthday, which was to come on the following week. Everything seemed made to hold us together, even such a flimsy and insignificant secret as this.

A client came into the office and wanted to see a house that we had on our books at Mapperley, whose rough details had been advertised in the previous day's
Post
. Only Mr Weekley and I were in the office, and he had an appointment in half an hour, so when he tutted from his thin lips I offered to drive the parson-looking client to Mapperley. It appealed to Weekley: ‘Think you can drive my car?'

‘I passed my test, sir.'

‘True. You'll never be as careful a driver as you are now, so close to your test.' He gave me the keys: ‘Be doubly careful, then. It's my car.'

The fact that I had a passenger in the back gave me confidence for threading a way through the town traffic. While still obeying the rules I branched off from Mansfield Road and went on with the uphill climb, to a district of villas and large houses I hadn't much explored as a kid. Percy Parson asked: ‘Have you seen the house?'

‘Not yet,' I said. ‘But it's supposed to be in good order.' It wasn't, though neither was it in an advanced stage of senile decay like some of the places we handled. The owners had left, and I took him from room to room, making doors shut behind me as best I could, because Weekley had always advised: ‘When you're in an empty house, shut the doors of the rooms you stand in, because the client has a better feeling and can imagine how he'd live in it with his furniture. But if the house is still furnished, and the rooms cluttered with somebody else's rammel, leave the doors open, so that the client inspecting the house can see how big it would be when empty. Psychological tricks, Michael. Experience. Intuition. There's more to this business than technical qualifications!' I don't know whether or not he was right, but I always took his advice, though whether this particular bit was ever crucial in making a person buy anything I shall never know.

I felt in such a good state of mind that I showed the man over the house as if I'd spent my childhood there, and even as if my parents had grown up in it, but that now I wanted to sell it, though only with the most piercing regret, because my sweetheart lived in the delectable countryside, and I was gallant and loving enough to go and live there when we married each other. The story would have been as full of holes as the spout end of a watering-can, so I let it die a silent, undignified death.

On the way back I didn't speak, so that the client could make up his mind whether or not he wanted the house, my rhapsodies either to sink in or push him away from it for good. The fact was I had thoughts of my own, wondering when Wainfleet was going to come into the office and make his offer for Clegg's house at Farnsfield. It should already have been done, and I rehearsed an appreciative smile for when I came face to face with that hundred pounds Clegg had promised. A momentary uncertainty flitted into me now and again, and I cursed as I nearly had my lamp taken off by a delivery van moving too quickly out from the kerb.

It was expected of me that as soon as I left work I should make my way up by the post office and meet Claudine outside the Elite cinema, the point she would reach after leaving her place at the same time. It was an easy and pleasant rendezvous to keep, for a while. We would kiss and, if the sky was dry, walk up Talbot Street, leaving the city centre behind and below. Sometimes we would go by the Ropewalk, stopping to look over the houses of the park and, on a clear day, gaze at the smoky valley of the Trent.

On one such evening, when the nights of autumn were drawing in, I felt the urge to get away from Claudine and go back home. This sensation of wanting to make a sudden escape confused me, because it was only part of my real desire at that moment, the other half of which was to go with Claudine and make love in her house. Our arms were fast and affectionately locked as we walked, and she was telling me some woe-tale of how the tyrant of a manageress at her office was threatening to make them work late as from next week if they didn't get through their day's quota by knocking-off time – or some such thing I was meant to drink in as if I were her twin sister. But I felt a definite twinge of panic drawing me towards my home, and when we reached Canning Circus I said: ‘Look, sweetheart, I'll put you on a bus here. I've got to go.'

It was the simplest wish in the world, but she suspected a trick: ‘Where are you going?'

‘I've got to go home,' I told her.

Something was frightening me, but it only seemed to her as if I was up to no good: ‘Why, what's the matter, then?'

I was foolish enough to be honest: ‘I don't know, duck. I've just got to get home' – mad at myself for not knowing what was ratting at me.

‘You're going to see somebody else, aren't you? Aren't you?'

I should have admitted that I was, in order to get away quickly, but I couldn't lie at that moment, because I was too disturbed, and I hated being like that, as if I were letting myself down at not being able to lie. ‘Come home with me,' I said, ‘then you'll see. We'll go on to your house after.'

But she wouldn't do this. I'd asked her before to come to where I lived, but she always made up some excuse not to, the truth being that having spent most of her life on an open-housing estate she was afraid of the dark cobbled streets of Old Radford. I might just as well not have spoken.

‘All right,' I said, ‘let's go on to your place. I won't go home.' In any case, the fear had left me, and I no longer felt the great alarm of a few minutes before. But every tack and move was the wrong one, because she now thought I'd really tried some deception on her, and that I'd only backed down when she had opposed it so firmly. All the way to Aspley she worried at me and wouldn't let go, trying to find out why I'd wanted to go off without her all of a sudden. The walk worked it out of her, yet it poisoned the whole evening so that neither of us enjoyed it. Even the kisses were tasteless, though at the last one outside her back door we both said how much we loved each other. She insisted on walking me to the bus stop, as proof of her love, but I knew it was because she wanted to make sure that I got on the right one, and didn't go off to see some other girl, even at that late hour.