If she became pregnant and he tried to say it wasn’t his she would scream so loud and long that everybody would not only know but would find out who he was, and he would be sent back in disgrace to school. All the boys would cheer because he’d put a tart in the family way. Or he wouldn’t be sent back to school but would have to marry her, which notion made him screw back a laugh at the scene of his mother and father trying to fathom someone like Eileen.
She thumped his chest. ‘It’s nowt to laugh about.’
‘I didn’t say it was. I can cope, though.’ He had sat on the toilet putting one on for practice, and flushed it away when he couldn’t resist shooting into it.
‘Spread your mac on the path and let’s lay down,’ she urged him.
He felt like Doctor Livingstone going into terra incognita, land unknown in more ways than one, with so much to explore and map. Nervousness was subdued by assuming her to be a friendly native ciceroning him through all the motions, and he was glad she knew the way when she leaned back and drew him into her heavenly softness. He muttered how much he loved her, as if he had indeed been there a few times already but the paradise of this occasion blotted the others out.
‘I ’ad it last night,’ he said to Archie in the canteen, though thinking it ungallant to say he had been with Eileen.
‘Took you long enough. She’s not a bad girl, though, is she? I’ve often fancied her mysenn.’
Herbert spooned into his bread pudding. ‘Who do you mean?’
‘What do you mean who do I mean?’ At least he leaned across so that only Bert could hear. And why not? Courting, they called it. One of the men walking by shouted: ‘You’ll need a lot o’ frenchies wi’ that one, Bert.’
Herbert’s impulse was to grab hold of the foul-mouth fuckpig and push his head into a bucket of cold suds and hold it there till the shit showed through his trousers, as Archie had threatened someone in his hearing, but you were expected to tolerate and even half condone such ribald joshing. If you really felt bad about it you could wait and pay him back at a time and place of your choosing.
Eileen heard it as well, her workbench close enough, though even that didn’t call for a punch-up, because neither was it the custom to be a Sir Galahad, since the girl would scorn the thought that she was unable to stick up for herself. Eileen, thank you very much, could do all that with knobs on, which she went on to prove in no uncertain terms, calling out in a voice plangent enough, in spite of ear-drumming machinery, to reverberate from one end of the shop to the other: ‘You’re jealous, that’s what yo’ are, you sex-starved four-eyed wanking sight for sore eyes.’ Cheers and laughs from the other women at least took the vapid shine from the man’s face. Bert got on with his work, having to force an impassive expression at such blistering language from a girl who on the street would look as if — to use the local term — butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.
Even on weekday nights they went hand in hand over the Ha’penny Toll Bridge (the best tuppence ever spent) and so many packets of rubbers were called for that there were few hedge bottoms around Clifton and Wilford he and Eileen hadn’t snugged into. She occasionally complained that he was a bit too rough in his speech so he toned it down as much as he dared: ‘What can you expect? I was dragged up in Radford, and you can’t get much rougher than that.’ All the same, he liked it when in her soppier moments she showed a liking for the more genteel life, though finally, like Archie Bleasby, he wondered what was the use of slogging your guts out for days on end at a machine if you had to behave yourself at the weekend. Hadn’t he left all such poxy notions behind at his school?
Five
Space at either end of the long table for his elbows made sure that nobody could come too close. Electricity dried the air, and he felt at ease, readers silent but for the odd cough or foot-scrape. A young girl round-shouldered herself over an open book and he wondered whether putting on his old school voice would help him to get acquainted.
Everybody had a cold, sniffles and hacks around the compass, but compared to the factory it was a civilized atmosphere which he had to sample now and again or go off his head. He wasn’t a Nottingham lad like Archie Bleasby, so could never let on to his mates about sitting in the library. Not that they would have bothered him, or been too surprised perhaps, because most of them read, even if only comics or the Daily Mirror, but he had to keep some part separate from his labouring status, and would have needed a stint in the library even if he had been born in the area. Coming on evenings when he hadn’t enough backbone to go out with Eileen made life among the fog people more tolerable.
Fog people had never known any other area except the one they lived in, and couldn’t see beyond the poor visibility of its enclosure. He remembered the glamour of India, had lived in Sussex and Gloucestershire, and made a perfect escape, like an initiative test, from the prison camp at school where he had learned more in the scholastic line than any of them ever could. The fog around him had been blown away from early days, though it would be dangerous to let the fact go to his head. Even coming out of the library with three books in a carrier bag felt like a betrayal of his own existence.
He didn’t see why he should try to hide his reading from Mrs Denman, however, and sat in her parlour with his face behind a book until bedtime at half past ten. She was old enough to realize that people could have many sides to themselves. ‘It’s good to see you doing summat else, Bert, except boozing with that low life Archie Bleasby, and going out with girls.’
‘It teks my mind off things.’
‘Frank says the same. He likes to get his head stuck in a book, as well.’
Standing in his undershirt before the wardrobe mirror, he stiffened his muscles and felt them rock hard, while Ralph dampened a finger-end and turned the pages of Health and Efficiency, gloating over the full and naked bosoms. ‘I suppose you think you’re Charles Atlas?’
‘They’re more like muscles than them sparrows’ kneecaps yo’ve got above yer elbows.’
Ralph gave what he thought was a superior and enigmatic smile. ‘You didn’t use that sort of language when you first came to live here.’
‘That were ten years ago, surry.’ Talking to Ralph, he could gauge what progress he was making in the factory lingo. ‘Or near enough, any road up.’
‘Only a few months, if I remember.’
Herbert pulled the bedclothes up to his neck. ‘If you keep on reading books like that you’ll wank yourself into a bit o’ dandelion fluff.’ The factory was rich with such phrases, but let poncy Ralph think it one of his. ‘You should get Mary to do it for you. I’ll bet she’d be on’y too willin’.’
‘I don’t think she would at all.’
Herbert’s tone was as gruff as could be managed. ‘Just get ’er in the bushes, and slip it in.’
Ralph winced, and put the magazine under his pillow. ‘Mary’s waiting until we’re married, and I must say I respect her for it.’
‘If yer don’t gerrit in beforehand yer wain’t know whether she’s worth marryin’.’
He pulled the light off, seeming dead set on sleep. ‘It’s easier said than done.’
Bert scoffed. ‘It’s easier done than said, with my lovely bit o’ stuff.’
‘Yes, but Mary and I are in love.’
‘What difference does that mek?’ Herbert sensed that some part of Ralph relished his dirty talk, so paused and put a note of menace into the tone. ‘When are yer goin’ ter bring ’er ’ome to tea?’