All the Way Home and All the Night Through (26 page)

“It won't be the same when you've gone.”

“Go on. Say it: ‘Thank God!'”

“I mean it.”

“Get away.”

“I do. You're a gentleman, Vic.”

“Me? That's the last thing you could call me.”

“No, you are. You've got natural manners.”

“What, the way I've been to you?”

“Oh, that. That's nothing. It's inside that matters. You can tell with you.”

“Well, I don't know what to say. You make me feel—I don't know.”

“I thought I'd tell you before you went,” she said. “I wouldn't have been able to say it and face you if I thought you were coming back.”

I put the last piece of cartridge in my folder. I straightened up. Janet and I were alone in the studio. The rest of college was almost empty, too. The noon sun flooded quietly in through the big windows.

“Well, there it is,” I said.

Janet said nothing. She stood with her arms folded, looking at the folder. I looked round the studio. The sounds of the midday traffic drifted in through the window.

I turned to Janet.

“Well, we'd better go.”

She looked at me. Suddenly she stepped forward and put her arms round me, pressing herself close.

“I don't want you to leave,” she whispered.

“I know.”

She clung to me, telling me that she didn't want me to be leaving.

Then we left the studio, walked down the stairs, out of the door, down the stone steps into the sun, across the road and into the pub to join the others. We all stayed till closing time and all the time Janet held my hand tightly. Once she almost cried, but she didn't because of where she was but smiled instead and held my hand tighter than ever.

“As you all know,” shouted Don through the microphone, “tonight the band breaks up for the summer holidays.” There was cheering and booing. “But we'll be back in September. Although,” he said turning to me, “without Victor. He's off to see what the tail is like somewhere else. I'm sure if there's any going, he'll manage to find it. So, as he stands on the piano and takes his trousers down as his last encore, I'm sure you'd all like to let him know it's been great having him round. Victor!”

I stood up. People cheered. I sort of waved and Harry blew a raspberry at me. I blew one back, Hamish blew a bigger one, then suddenly the whole band was blowing raspberries as hard as they could. I was glad of that because it prevented my showing how I was feeling. Perhaps prevented them showing how they were feeling, too.

My mother handed me a cup of tea. My unopened suitcase was where I had put it down on the kitchen floor. I was sitting staring at the kitchen range. I took a drink of the tea.

After a while my mother said:

“It's finished, then.”

“Yep. Four years.”

“You were sixteen when you went.”

“Yes.”

“It doesn't seem very long ago.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“How do you feel?”

“I don't know.”

She put her cup down.

“You'll be all right next week,” she said to me. “Everything changes.”

I lazed about the summer countryside, stayed in bed too long, visited the pub in the evenings, trying not to acknowledge the uneasy feelings which would flit round in my stomach from time to time. These feelings were inspired by the fact of my realization that I would now no longer see Janet every day as I had for the past year. I trusted her, I knew she loved me, but what was to happen? What would she do, six months from now, say, when some attractive young man invited her to go out with him and I wasn't there and they enjoyed the evening and they kissed and then someone else and—I didn't like to think about it. Although I had cheated on Janet on those few occasions in the past, I couldn't entertain the thought of Janet herself doing it, even though it might not be of any importance. The very thought of it made me squirm with pain, and at the age of twenty, one's keener senses are more susceptible to the edge of senseless anguish which is easier understood at a later age. I wanted to trust her, I knew I could trust her, but self-doubt drove sad mistrust into my thoughts. On the two occasions I saw Janet in the first week, these doubts caused two miserable and unusual arguments. We made up after each one and told each other how we could never possibly change but my mind continued to be depressingly receptive to stupid mistrust.

The week in London was a failure: I didn't get a job. I returned home deflated and awed by the short, disinterested, and impersonal interviews.

“So rather than spend the time chasing back and forth between London and Lincolnshire, I'm going to take the
Advertiser's Weekly
which advertises for illustrators all the time and keep writing solidly until something turns up,” I told Janet. “It shouldn't be more than a month before I get something.”

“Oh, I'm sure you'll get something soon. Your work's so good and one sees so much rubbish about you just can't fail.”

She paused and gripped my hand more tightly.

“I just know you're going to be successful. I know it.”

July, August.

I lay in bed with the window wide open. It was too hot to sleep. The night sky was unbearably still. I got out of bed and looked at my watch. It was half-past one. I walked over to the window and looked at the fields stretching down to the river. The night glow of the distant city narrowly illuminated the horizon.

I hadn't had any luck yet. The rejections were depressingly regular. My parents tried to cheer me up, but I was beginning to worry.

I sat down by the window and hoped for my parent's sake that I wouldn't be much longer in getting fixed up. My father was giving me thirty bob a week every Friday, and every Friday I felt lousy taking it. He didn't mind, I knew, but with every rejection I got, the acceptance of my father's money was harder for me to take. I thought about Janet. I wished she were there. I had telephoned her earlier in the evening. We had talked for almost an hour, repeating ourselves, saying good-bye dozens of times, not wanting to go, wanting to be with each other. Next week she was to go on holiday to Guernsey with her mother and with Karen. I was tortured by the thought of Janet and Karen on a pleasant island in the sun, the danger it seemed to present. The sun, the sea, young people on holiday . . . and there I was, at home, jobless, parasitic, bored, jealous and doubtful.

I got back into bed. Once I've got a job, I thought, once I've made a start, things will be better. I won't have so much spare time to magnify this stupid jealousy.

Come on, I thought. Hurry.

“Nice lass is that, Victor,” said Mark while Janet was out at the Ladies. “You'd expect that coming from her background she'd have some kind of edge to her, be a bit phony like, but she really seems to enjoy it when you bring her to the pub. She sort of fits in, dead easy like.”

“Yes. She's always saying how she likes you lot.”

“Does she? Well, you know, we like her. I must say that first time you told me about her I was kind of dubious. I thought, you know, she might be a bit Country Life and all what mummy says but, well, she's so natural like. You know what I'm like with birds, one wrong word and I'm through in the other bar, but not this one.”

“I like her a lot, Mark. Yes, I really do.”

It was the weekend before Janet was to go to Guernsey. The last time together for ten days. She had come to stay at my home on the Friday night and was staying till Monday. Tonight was Saturday and it was half-past seven. The windows of the Plough were wide open. The evening sun still warmed the air and the atmosphere in the pub was cool and easy. Voices of young girls drifted in from the Market Place. Occasionally a loudspeaker crackled from the park not far away where the annual gymkhana was taking place. These sounds apart, nothing moved the still air.

It was early yet and the room we were in was relatively uncrowded. Janet and I were with Mark, Ron, and Geoff, three of the boys who comprised the group which had been fostered by the clammy Grammar School. Our friendship had grown in the enjoyment of the local cinema, in the respect for the local landscape, and we had found that our minds were in complete, almost telepathic, accord relating to what we felt were the basic ideals and difficulties to do with living. Mark worked on a market garden, Geoff drove a bread van, and Ron was a clerk at the Farmers' Company in Ashton eight miles away. They were each two years older than myself.

Janet rejoined us, threading her way through the tables. She sat down on the wall seat next to me and beamed at me in her parody of smug pride.

“How's the painting, Geoff?” I asked.

“It rained yesterday and washed the pavement clean. I'll have to start again.”

“Do you paint, Geoff?” asked Janet.

“No, I paint birds.”

“Seriously, he does actually,” I said to her. “He paints birds. Feathered type. They're very good.”

“I tell you I'm just a rank amateur, accent on rank.”

“No actually, they're pretty good, Janet,” said Ron. He hit Geoff on the head with his hat. “Enough of this false modesty, Harper, you-all hypocrite, yuh.”

“In that case, I'll accept money.”

“How do you get your reference?” asked Janet.

“Out the end of a barrel.”

“He shoots them and then stuffs them,” I said.

“That's right. I'm getting talked about.”

“You mean you've only just realized?” said Mark.

“I'm off shooting in the morning, actually. Anybody coming?”

“You're off aren't you, Mark?” asked Ron.

“Yeah, sho' nuff.”

“I reckon I might then. Long time since I went. What time?”

“I'm meeting Geoff at five o'clock.”

“Corner of Castledyke?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That lets you out,” said Mark to me, smiling.

“Sho 'nuff.”

“Why?” asked Janet.

“Why? Well, it does,” I said. “I mean, I can't see you relishing a shooting party at five in the morning.”

“Why not? I'd love to go.” She turned to the boys, blushing slightly. “If you wouldn't mind, that is.”

“We wouldn't mind, love,” said Geoff, “but you'll have trouble getting him out at that time in the morning.”

“You mean you'd like to go?” I asked her.

“Yes, if you would.”

“Right. We'll go then.”

We looked at each other and laughed.

We walked along the raised sandbagged river bank in single file. Somewhere the sun was beginning to shine but its early warmth had distilled a haze from the dew which diffusely hid the sky with a thin all-over greyness. The only sounds were the floppering of Geoff's gum boots, the clang of the lightship in the middle of the river and our feet as they fell along the damp grass.

Geoff led. A few minutes later he stopped and turned to us.

“This is it. We'll sit in here for a bit and wait for them to fly across.”

He pointed to a bushy hollow in the landward slope of the bank. We scrambled down after him.

We sat in a tight semi-circle, as far under the bushes as we could, talking quietly and smoking, our voices drifting softly upward into the slightly chilly air. Geoff's dog stood near the edge of the hollow, motionlessly watching and waiting.

We waited for about half an hour. Then Geoff seemed to sense something and crawled up the side of the hollow until he could see over the top of the bank.

“Here they are,” he said.

He slid back and quietly released the safety catch on his gun. He put the gun to his shoulder and craned his neck skyward, waiting for the birds to fly in from the river. He raised the barrel and tentatively sighted the gun. Then the birds appeared directly above us, high over the bank. There was about a half dozen of them. Geoff leaped out of the hollow. The birds veered off their course to fly parallel with the bank, sensing the danger in the unusual movement. Geoff pulled one of the triggers, his cheek folding over the butt with the tightness of his grip. The noise echoed to the other side of the river. The birds frantically turned in toward the land again. Geoff fired the other barrel. A bird seemed to trip in mid-air, and a few black spots which were feathers littered the shaken atmosphere. Then the bird folded up and began to fall like the curve in the latter half of a stone's throw. Geoff broke open the gun and inserted two more cartridges before the bird hit the ground about seventy yards away. Geoff's dog galloped off after it.

We walked across the huge marshy field toward the bird. Our footwear shone with dew from the tall grass. As we walked, the slight haze seemed to disperse instantly revealing the pale blue sky and allowing us to feel the faint warmth of the sun on our faces.

We stood and watched Geoff bend down and retrieve the bird undamaged from the dog's mouth. The bird's dark feathers gleamed in the sun. It had been a beautiful bird.

“You should be able to make a fair picture out of that, Geoff,” said Mark.

“Yeah. Give it a longer life than it would've had normally.” He stood up and grinned. Janet watched in a kind of enigmatic fascination. Geoff dropped the bird in his bag. We walked back toward the bank.

We lazed round the house for the rest of the day. Janet developed a headache round tea-time. We went for a walk down the garden to see if fresh air might help to get rid of it. We sat down on the grass under an apple tree.

“Well, after tomorrow I won't see you for ten days,” I said.

“It's the longest time since we started going out with each other.”

“It's a year this month since I set eyes on you, actually. At your school's dance.”

“It seems like five minutes.”

“It's been the best year ever.”

“I know.”

I looked at her and took her hand in both of mine.

“Janet, I know I've said this before, but I love you so much, I can't help saying it. Please, when you're in Guernsey think of me. Before anything happens.”