He stood by the clocking-out machine, eyed but not bothered by the commissionaire in his Home Guard uniform, a grey-haired old ramrod about seventy wearing a fish-and-chip hat, and smiling at a mirror in his bogey-hole to adjust a row of medal ribbons. England’s last hope, Brian grinned, the old chokka. I bet he got them medals mowing down fuzzy-wuzzies. “Waiting for the girls, I suppose?” he called.
“Waiting for a pal,” Brian responded after a pause. “Yo’ goin’ on p’rade, dad?”
“’Appen,” the man said, turning huffily away. Brian knew him to be too old for it now, felt a bit sorry he’d spoken. Poor bastard. He wasn’t the only one around. Nottingham’s Chelsea Pensioners, they called them, doing part-time work to eke out their ten bob and joining the Home Guard while there was still time to get themselves a winter suit and topcoat, going to the drill-hall now and again to meet younger pals and listen to lectures, but mostly standing in pubs and swilling beer out of those who’d treat them. I wonder if he’d give a cup o’ tea to a deserter? Brian thought.
He saw Jim Skelton on the stairs: “Hey up.”
“How do.”
“Where’s Pauline and Joan?”
“Int’ lavatory dolling up,” Jim said. “It’s tekin’ ’em long enough as well.”
“Fag?” Brian offered. “Fag, mate?”—to the old man.
“I don’t mind,” he said. “Thanks very much.”
“Ta,” Jim said. The three of them lit up. “It’s still ’ard to get ’em,” the old man chipped in, “even if you’ve got munney.”
“It is an’ all,” Brian said. See all, hear all, say nowt. Eat all, drink all, pay nowt. There were a dozen cartons in the house, hidden in a wooden box under the coal, a present that crept in one night on his cousins’ backs. They’d not long since been lifted from a shop up the street, swiped from a shopkeeper who’d told Brian only the night before when he went there on the hunt for tobacco-hungry Seaton that he hadn’t a fag in the place. It was true right enough next morning after a visit from Colin and Dave. They’d not only cleared him out of fags, but silk stockings, a bottle of whisky, stacks of grub, cash.
They savoured their cigarettes. “A couple o’ sixteen-year-olds like yo’ two ought to be in the Home Guards,” the chokka said. “Do you the world o’ good.” Brian went numb at this, as if somebody had called him bone-idle or a copper’s nark. “That’s what yo’ think, mate.”
“I’d rather enjoy mysen than shoot a gun,” Jim told him. He was the same height as Brian but stockier, with a broad Tartar face, well-rounded dimpled chin, squared teeth and a squashed nose, ginger hair well flattened back from his forehead. He was a mechanic and looked after the girls’ sewing machines, saw that the khaki uniforms ran smoothly through so that everyone could get a share of that weekly bonus. Brian, though highly regarded by Jim for his store of books, respected him for his handiness with machines and electricity and the making of traction engines.
The girls were down already, and out of the door before a word was spent between the four of them, spread in a line across the street. “Where are we going, then?” Pauline wanted to know.
“Out,” Brian told her.
“Clever bogger”—she thumped him.
“Leave my mate alone,” Jim said.
“Men,” Joan exclaimed. “Allus stick together. Where’re we goin’ anyway? That’s what I’d like to know as well.”
Brian hoped he wouldn’t be contradicted: “Up Cherry Orchard.”
“It’s too far,” Joan said. “I don’t know what you want to go up there for anyway.”
“I do,” Jim laughed.
“Well, you wain’t catch me going,” Pauline said decisively. Brian winked at him: we’ll go in that direction anyway. “You can stop that, fawce dog,” Pauline said. “I saw yer winking, Brian.”
“You want your eyes testing, then.”
“You’ll get yourn blacked if you aren’t careful,” she threw back. “He don’t half think he’s a clever dick,” Joan said, ganging up with her pal.
“Go and get dive-bombed,” Brian said. “I only wanted you to come up Cherry Orchard.” Pauline was as tall as Brian: long brown hair spreading back over her buttoned-up, dark brown coat, which hid a ligher overall dress he’d glimpsed as she came down the stairs. She had white skin, and large brown eyes that seemed to see everything as a defence against the fact that she saw very little. Jim said she was one of the fastest at her machine and wasn’t so dreamy as she appeared, though both agreed that you wouldn’t think so to look at her. On some evenings, when left to their own thoughts or emptiness, undisturbed by the lack of talk, they walked arm-in-arm along sunlit lanes and streets that were silent between knocking-off time and dusk. Brian felt her largeness when she was with him, noticed how delicate was the expression of her hands and face when seen against the gracelessness of her general movement. She had a good figure — he knew it well by now — fine pear-shaped breasts, noticeable hips, and legs a bit heavy. It was almost obtrusive — but not quite, for she was just below the stature that could have given her the label of a “strapping girl.”
She was arm-in-arm with Joan in front, and they went down Ilkeston Road, followed at fifty yards by Brian and Jim. “They don’t seem in a good mood tonight.”
“P’raps they’ve got the rags on,” Jim laughed.
“I hope not,” Brian said. “I like Pauline, though. She’s a good sort, and passionate. How yo’ going on with Joan?”
“All right. She don’t say a deal either. Never says a dicky-bird sometimes all night. I asked her what was wrong once. We’d been tot’ pictures, and I thought she was fed up and ready to chuck me. I said: ‘What’s up, duck?’ when I was walking her home later. ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ I said, and she burst out crying. She never told me what for either. I’d thought she looked a bit funny earlier on when she was in our house ’aving a cup of tea and some toast. When I kissed her good night, though, she was ever so passionate; so it blew over and she was as right as rain next day at work.”
Brian saw Jim’s courting as a more intense affair than his own. Not only did Jim work near his sweetheart — often called over to fix the belt on her machine, or to clean and oil it — but she spent most of every evening helping Jim’s mother, or sitting with him to guard his sisters and brothers while his parents were at the pictures. Pauline had never been to the Seatons, and neither did Brian have the intimacy of being with her all day at work. They met on many nights of the week, but whereas Jim and Joan had a physical closeness about them like any young couple a year married, Brian and Pauline were still at the hit-and-run stage, would melt away and almost forget each other until the next date because only the need to make love drew them together. He had never asked her to come home and sit in with his mother and father, Fred and Arthur and Margaret and Sammy, as if she belonged there. He envied this state between Joan and the Skeltons, but was somehow unable to build up a similar relationship between himself and Pauline. He spent many evenings at her house, and the two families had at one time known each other, but Pauline had never in any case suggested that she come to his home. Brian thought that maybe she was too shy to ask this, and he used her shyness — if it existed — as a way of preventing her from doing so. The idea of Pauline at home with his father and mother gave him spasms of embarrassment, and he was unable to say whether this was because he thought he would be ashamed or whether it was because he knew Pauline would dislike it and feel out of place. He didn’t want his mother and father to know he was courting, wanted to keep his second life a secret from them, as if, should they know, it would result in their sharing this love and intimacy and making it less real to him. But when his mother once said: “I met Mrs. Mullinder today and she says you’re going out with their Pauline,” he didn’t feel at all embarrassed, though he still wouldn’t ask Pauline home. “I go out with her now and again,” he told his mother. “Well,” she said, “that’s all right. She’s a nice gel. Only don’t come here, though, if you get anybody into trouble.” And that was that.