He changed into draped jacket and narrow-bottomed trousers, and now stood by the door of the Match looking around the L-shaped room. Brenda and Winnie were sitting at a corner table over a couple of stouts. Brenda looked up and smiled. She hadn’t expected to see him. ‘Mind if I sit down?’ he asked.
‘’Course I don’t.’ Her head was dipped pensively forward and she took short swallows of the stout, her throat hidden until she put the glass down. Arthur wondered what she was trying to hide, feeling somehow that he was not wanted, despite the fact that his offer to buy them drinks was graciously accepted.
‘Is anything wrong, duck?’ he said to her.
She looked up and smiled. ‘I’m all right.’
‘We’ll go somewhere else if you like. This place’s as dead as a graveyard tonight,’ he said, turning his back on those jostling each other at the bar.
‘I want to stay here,’ she said mildly.
She has a date, he thought, to meet some man or other.
‘Suits me, then,’ he put in, and asked the waiter to bring more drinks. Winnie enquired: had he had a good time at the camp? and he praised it for a holiday, saying it was better than Blackpool because instead of salt-water to swim in there had been strong beer. He hadn’t seen Winnie since Brenda’s gin-and-tonic party, and she looked even more desirable now, for she was clearly dressed-up to kill, with smart white blouse and black suit and hair just permed, as if she had made up her mind to go all out for a good time after hearing that her husband Bill was making hay while the sun shone with a German woman on the Rhine. Arthur thought this a good guess, for the Match had the worst reputation in town. He couldn’t keep his eyes from her, and felt like a king buying drinks for two such gorgeous and tractable women.
He leaned towards Brenda. ‘You don’t look very happy tonight, duck. Aren’t you glad to see me?’
She finished the stout before answering. ‘Didn’t they learn you to write at the school you went to?’
So that was it. He hadn’t written to her. ‘I didn’t have time, duck. I told you before I went that I might be too busy.’
‘Even a postcard?’ she said sullenly.
‘I tell you, we were kept busy from start to finish. As soon as I got my feet inside the camp they chucked a rifle into my hands and made us do a scheme. Ten miles at the trot with fixed bayonet in the pouring rain, crawlin’ through woods and getting scratched to boggery in the brambles. I tell yer I couldn’t even lift a cup o’ tea to my lips by the time we’d finished. Then we got drill, lectures, guards, unarmed combat, map-readin’, every minute that God sent, as well as going most days on the range. You got no idea how they put us through it. They got their money’s worth all right. I meant to write to you all the time, but I didn’t get a minute to myself, no kiddin’. I didn’t even write a word to mam. She was worried to death about me and called me all the rotters under the sun as soon as I stepped in the house this afternoon, saying she thought I’d got shot in the guts or got squashed under a tank or summat like that.’
‘Didn’t you ‘ave any time in the evening?’ she asked, not quite convinced despite the earnest look on his face.
‘Evenings?’ he said resentfully. ‘The bastards had us polishing the billet floor until ten, or pulling our rifles through. Bull we had from getting there to coming away. I didn’t get out for a single drink, I was so dead beat. There was guards to do as well, nearly every night. I tell you, it was the worse fortnight I’ve ever spent.’
He won her over, yet asked himself why he hadn’t written a letter, and the truth was, he discovered, that he had forgotten. He had thought of her from time to time, true, but it never occurred to him to write. Besides, he asked himself, wouldn’t it have been dangerous? Suppose Jack had picked it up from the mat one morning and read it? Jack was a good bloke, but deep in his ways and hard to weigh-up, one of the sort that might go right out of his path to make trouble if he suddenly woke up to the fact that you had been doing it on him for a long time. Apart from this, writing letters was too much like hard work.
He made no progress with Brenda. But Winnie was more pliable. However, at nine o’clock he surprised them both by saying he was going home to sleep after his hard fortnight with the army. ‘It’s early,’ Brenda said, but she hardly objected to his leaving.
‘Don’t bother about us, though,’ Winnie laughed, an expression of mirth that boded no good for her husband. ‘We can take care of ourselves.’
The doors closed behind him. He hurried up the street, pushed his way through a gang of soldiers towards lights and main-road traffic, walking away from the obstinacy of two women who had no use for him. He cursed them in foul, well-polished language; they had come out for a night on the batter, he said to himself, and had got the shock of their lives when he walked into the Match and settled himself at their table. They had drunk his stout, and hadn’t got guts enough to say he was not wanted. Not that he minded them drinking his stout. He expected it from Nottingham women who, he told himself, were cheeky-daft, and thought so much of themselves that they would drink your ale whether they liked your company or not. Whores, all of them. Never again. They’d had all they were going to get from him. Brenda wasn’t worth the trouble he’d been through to keep her. As if it made any difference whether he had written to her or not. It was only an excuse to make trouble. Most likely, when he went away, she had been glad to see the back of him, and had passed the whole fortnight doing the dirty on him, not to mention on poor old Jack. Instead of boozing in the Match she should be at home looking after her two kids, the poor little sods. If ever I get married, he thought, and have a wife that carries on like Brenda and Winnie carry on, I’ll give her the biggest pasting any woman ever had. I’d kill her. My wife’ll have to look after any kids I fill her with, keep the house spotless. And if she’s good at that I might let her go to the pictures now and again and take her out for a drink on Saturday. But if I thought she was carrying on behind my back she’d be sent back to her mother with two black eyes before she knew what’s happening. By God she would.
He walked towards Slab Square, his bones aching for the noise of a public house, wanting to lose himself in a waterfall of ale and laughter. The main road was lit by overhead lamps furtively shining, as if ready to fall into darkness at a moment’s notice on sighting a reconnoitring member of the Lord’s Day Observance Society. Sunday, he thought bitterly, even preferring Monday though it meant the first grinding day of the week. Various pubs gave signs of life, but it was not of the intense violence needed to relieve the weight of woman-trouble trying to drag him down into the bright clean gutter.
A group of people had gathered at the gate of St Mary’s. Lights still shone within the church, and a Daimler car sloped like a prize black spaniel by the kerb. Arthur pushed his way through, hoping the Horse and Groom would be a safe bet for noise on Sunday night. Irish navvies sometimes gathered there to booze away the last of their wages before drawing a sub from the gaffer on Monday morning. His cousin once worked with them, and said that each weekend it was common that two would agree to fight for each other’s wagepackets in some corner of the nearest field, the condition being that the winner must leave a pound for the loser’s hostel fees. Hard-headed bastards with no feelings, Arthur thought, pushing his way into the bright lights of his selected pub, revived by beer fumes even before drawing his first pint from the counter.
‘It’s a quiet night,’ he said to the woman as she set his jar down.
‘Yes,’ she answered, tightening her arms and smiling only with her thin lips. ‘We had trouble here last Saturday. They started fighting’ — meaning the absent navvies — ‘so the police came in and cleared them all out. Didn’t you hear about it? We nearly lost our licence.’ He explained that he had been away. ‘They’re a rough lot, them Micks,’ he agreed.
‘You should’ve seen ‘em,’ she went on, not without a certain pride, ‘they fought like lions. And I hear they go to church on Sunday because they’re Cath’lics. I don’t under
stand it, I’m sure, I don’t.’
‘That’s their way,’ he remarked, ‘but it ain’t mine. I’ve never been in a church in my life. I ain’t even been christened.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ll go into church when you get married, I’ll tell you that much.’
‘Not me,’ he laughed, pushing his empty jar towards her. ‘For one thing I wain’t get married, and for another, if I do, I’ll go to the registry office.’
‘You’ll have to see what your lady-friend says about that. You never can tell what she’ll be like.’
‘Well, if she’s like that I wain’t marry her. I’ve got an aunt who’s religious, and she’s got it bad now. Her lad was killed by a car when he was ten, and she’s never bin the same since. Not only that, but she’s drinking herself to death at the same time. She puts back bottles and bottles of stout all day. So I wain’t marry a tart that’s religious.’
‘If you’re in love, you’ll marry anything,’ she told him.
‘Not me. Another one, duck. Black-and-tan this time.’ A few tables were occupied, and he considered the noise nothing to write home about. He noticed an interesting table by the far wall from which some hilarity came. Of the four that sat there he singled out a young girl whose fingers rested by a glass of shandy. Her brown hair was patterned attractively into an oval shape at the back of her head, a diamond piece of brown silk scarf came down from her coat collar, and from what he could see of the front — no rings on her fingers — she wore only lipstick and looked pale enough to be having her periods. They belong to the same family, he deduced, for though the girl didn’t do much talking, she let herself say from time to time: ‘But that’s not right, our mam,’ in quite a loud voice, then became silent again while her mother went on talking to the young man and woman with them. These two latter were married, Arthur decided. Daughter and son-in-law, though they might be son and daughter-in-law. And the girl was her daughter, certainly. Their faces showed it. He thought it marvellous that, ring or no ring, you could always tell a married from a single woman. It was a matter of intuition. You looked at her for half a second and said to yourself: ‘She’s married,’ or ‘She’s not married,’ and nine times out of ten you were right. Another thing about young women was — though here you weren’t always so right — that you could tell from her face, even if she was dressed in a voluminous coat, the size and shape of her breasts. With a tight-lipped whippet-faced talkative woman they were as flat as porridge-plates or tinier than pheasants’ eggs, but with an open-mouthed cheeky-faced, laughing woman you always had something to get hold of. The still-waters-run-deep women were often hardest to solve in this matter: mostly they turned out well, but if by chance they didn’t then they made up for it in passion. And the girl that now caught his eye as she turned to say something else to her mother, fell into the divided category of the latter class. He was served with his black-and-tan.
She looked in his direction. Thought I wouldn’t have the cheek to keep on staring, he said to himself, smiling and lifting his hand to acknowledge the sign she had not yet given him. Then she smiled, and turned away quickly to argue against some story of her mother’s. He lifted his drink, and faced himself in the huge mirror over the bar.
Why not? he thought. Because she’s with her mother, you daft sod. So what? Because her mother wouldn’t like it, that’s why. But her mother isn’t going to get it. I’ll tell the … She seems a nice, friendly girl, good reason for me to do what I can. He looked again and saw her white neck. Must have taken her scarf off because it was too hot. He was sorry she was busy talking to the others. Knows I’m trying to catch her eye, he thought. Twenty-five minutes to closing time, and the sands were running out.
He turned back to the bar for another drink. The woman who served had seen him before with Brenda, and asked where his friend was.
‘Friend?’ he said. ‘She worn’t my friend. She was a cousin o’ mine from Sheffield, come to see us on a visit. I was just showing her the town. She’s gone back now.’
‘I’m not being nosy,’ she said. ‘Only I thought you looked a bit lonely.’
‘No fear,’ he replied. ‘I like being lonely sometimes. I feel good when I’m alone, because I live at home in a big family, and I wok all day wi’ thousands of other people, so being alone is a treat for me. There’s nowt I like better than going out into the country on my bike and fishing near Cotgrave or Trowel and sitting for hours by meself.’
‘I see what you mean,’ she answered. ‘I feel like that as well. It’s no fun, you know, keeping a pub, with people coming in and out every day and keeping you at it till all hours. But then, what can you do? It’s a good living. Yes, my duck? What can I do for you?’ She spoke this last piece in a louder voice, looking over Arthur’s shoulder. He turned, and stepped aside so that the girl he had been looking at could come to the bar. She thanked him, and asked the woman for four packets of crisps. Her coat was open, showing a dress of deep yellow with buttons the same colour all the way down. In a sly one-second glance he noted her slim but good figure.
‘Is it somebody’s birthday?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she answered readily. ‘It’s mam’s silver wedding.’
The woman laid both crisps and change on the counter and went to the far end of the bar to serve a double-whisky. ‘I can’t see your dad,’ he said. ‘Is he dead?’
‘Separated,’ she replied. ‘It started as a joke, mam celebrating her silver wedding, and I don’t like jokes like that.’
Oh, don’t you? he thought. ‘Have a drink then, duck, while you’re here.’
She looked over her shoulder at the others, and, seeing them still talking, said: ‘All right. I’ll have a shandy if you don’t mind. What’s that black stuff you’re drinking? It looks like treacle.’ He told her. ‘I’ve heard of it,’ she said. ‘I think I tasted it once, but it was too strong.’ She sipped her shandy. ‘This is as much as I can take.’
‘Well, I’m not a boozer either, only I felt like a drink tonight because I’ve just got back off my fifteen days. A bloke deserves a drink after that.’
‘I’ll bet he does. What are you in?’
‘Army. But I’ll be done next year.’
‘Shall you be glad?’
‘Not much I wain’t. I can’t get out quick enough.’
‘My sister married a man in the air force,’ she told him. ‘He looked ever so nice in his uniform. He’s out now though, and they’ve got a house up Wollaton. She’s expecting a baby next week.’
‘Do you live up that way?’ he asked, his drink not touched.
‘No,’ she answered, ‘up Broxtowe, on the estate. I like living in them nice new houses. It’s a long way from the shops, but there’s plenty of fresh air.’ He suggested she take the crisps to her family and come back to the bar. ‘All right,’ she said. He heard her say loudly to her mother that she had met a friend from work and wanted to talk to him. He drank.
‘Is your mother deaf?’ he asked when she came back, offering a cigarette.
‘Yes, she is. And when people hear me shouting at her in the street they think I’m a pan-mouth. No duck, I don’t smoke, thanks.’
He laughed, and asked her name.
‘Doreen. A rotten name ain’t it?’ She pushed out her tongue, healthy, spade-shaped, and drew it back into its warm retreat.
‘What’s wrong wi’ it? Doreen’s all right. My name’s Arthur. Neither on ‘em’s up to much, but it ain’t our fault, is it?’
‘Well, I can think of better names than mine, I can tell yer.’
He drew the last drop of black-and-tan from his jar. ‘Nobody’s satisfied wi’ what they’ve got, if you ask me. There’d be summat wrong with the world if they was. Where do you work then?’
‘Me? Harris’s, the hairnet factory. All right, I will have a fag. I’d better not let mam see me though, or she’ll get on to me. I’ve worked there four years now, since I left school.’
I thought so, he said to himself. Nineteen. ‘I’m
in the bike trade myself,’ he told her. ‘I like working at a big place; you get a bonus at Christmas, a trip to Blackpool, sports club where you can go for a drink. They look after you in a factory.’ Like boggery, he thought. She had emptied her glass. ‘Have another shandy. Come on, it wain’t get you drunk. Shandy, missis,’ he called out. ‘Besides, it’s your mother’s silver wedding.’
‘You don’t have to be that nice just to get me a drink. I’ll have a shandy. You like your black-and-tan as well.’
‘You’re a sharp ‘un,’ he said, finishing his second since she came. ‘You don’t miss much.’
‘It don’t pay to miss owt,’ she laughed.
‘What do you do in the week?’ he ventured. ‘Do you ever go to’t pictures?’
She looked at him with brown suspicious eyes. ‘Only on Monday. Why?’
‘That’s funny, because I go out on a Monday night as well to’t pictures. I allus think Monday’s the best night of the week for that sort of thing, because I go for a drink and see my pals at the weekend, and on the other days I have a lot to do, mending my bike, or getting my tackle ready for fishing. And Monday night is allus best for the pictures because the new ones are on then. Which one do you go to?’
‘The Granby.’
‘I go there sometimes on a Monday,’ he said, ‘and I’ve never seen you before.’
‘That’s because hundreds of other people go as well,’ she answered facetiously.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow night at seven, then,’ he said.
‘Fast worker, aren’t you? All right, but not on the back row.’
‘Why not? I can’t see unless I sit right on the back row. If I get near the front the picture goes all blurred. Something’s wrong with my eyes, I suppose.’
‘You want glasses,’ she said, ‘by the sound of it.’
‘I know. I’ll get some some day. They wouldn’t suit me though. I’d look too much like a boss-eyed bookie, or a rent collector. But my eyes aren’t that bad. I won’t want glasses until I’m sixty, and I might not live that long.’