“Listen, Hetty, I’ve been meaning to ask you for a long time, why can’t we be engaged?”
She laughed again, not in the least disconcerted, pressing his hand lightly.
“You’re such a dear, Arthur.”
His colour came and went. He blurted out:
“You know how I feel about you, Hetty. I think I’ve always felt that way. Remember how we played at the Law when we were kids. You’re the nicest girl I know. Father’ll be giving me a partnership soon…” His own incoherence brought him up short.
Hetty considered swiftly. She had been proposed to before, callow offers made usually in the semi-darkness when “sitting-out” at dances. But this was different, this was the real thing. And yet her shrewdness warned her not to hurry. She saw quite sharply how ridiculous her premature engagement to Arthur might be, the subject of gossip, malicious innuendo. Besides, she wanted to have her fling before she settled down.
“You’re a dear, Arthur,” she breathed, with downcast lashes. “A perfect dear. And you know how fond I am of you. But I do think we’re both a little young for anything, well, official. We’ve got our understanding, of course. Everything’s all right between us.”
“You do like me then, Hetty?” he whispered.
“Oh, Arthur, you know I do.”
An immense elation possessed him. At the facile intensity of his emotion tears came into his eyes. He felt unbelievably happy. He felt mature and manly, capable of anything, he could have thanked her on his knees for loving him.
A few minutes passed.
“Well,” she said with a sigh, “I suppose I must get back and see how old man Todd is getting on.”
He looked at his watch.
“Twenty to five. I promised to meet father at the five-ten train.”
“I’ll walk with you to the station.”
He smiled at her tenderly. Already her devotion to himself, as to her invalid father, entranced him. He beckoned to the waitress with a lordly confidence and paid the bill. They rose to go.
On the way out they stopped for a moment at Alan’s table. Alan was a good sort, a big heavy smiling fellow, inclined perhaps to be lazy and a little wild. But there was no real harm in him. He played football for the Northern Nomads, was in the Territorials and knew a few barmaids by their Christian names. Now amidst a certain amount of chaff and laughter he began to jolly Arthur for taking Hetty out to tea. Usually Arthur was painfully shy under banter, but this afternoon he scored off Alan right and left. His spirits bounded higher. He felt strong, happy, confident. He knew that little things would never worry him again, his flushing, his fits of lassitude and depression, his complex of inferiority, his jealousy. Purves, for instance, “glad-eyeing” Hetty, trying “to get off with her,” was no more than a silly little bank clerk, completely negligible. With a final repartee that set the table in a roar he lit a cigarette and gallantly escorted Hetty to the street.
They walked to the Central, Arthur bathed in a warm, unusual glow of self-approval, like an actor who had given a brilliant performance in a leading part. Yes, he had done well. He understood that Hetty wanted him to be like this: not stammering and sheepish but full of confidence, assured.
They entered the station and walked up the platform together, a little early, for the train was not in and Barras had not yet arrived. Suddenly Hetty stopped.
“By the way, Arthur,” she exclaimed, “I’ve just been wondering. Why did your father come to see mine to-day?”
He drew up, facing her, completely taken aback by the unexpectedness of her remark.
“It’s rather odd,” she smiled, “now I come to think of it. Dad can’t bear seeing any one when he’s seedy and yet he got on the telephone to Sleescale three times this morning. Why was it, Arthur?”
“I don’t know,” he hesitated, still staring at her. “As a matter of fact I was wondering why myself.” He paused. “I’ll ask father.”
She laughed and pressed his arm.
“Of course not, silly. Don’t look so serious, what in all the world does it matter?”
SEVENTEEN
At half-past four that afternoon David emerged from Bethel Street School and crossed the hard concrete playground towards the street. The school, already known as New Bethel Street to distinguish it from the old shut-down school, was a building of shiny, purplish bricks erected on a high piece of waste land at the top of Bethel Street. The opening of New Bethel Street six months ago had caused a general shuffle around amongst the county educational staff and a vacancy for one new junior teacher. It was this appointment that David had received.
New Bethel Street School was not pretty. It was semidetached severely into halves. Upon one half, in grey stone inset, was carved the word BOYS; upon the other, in equally huge letters, GIRLS. For each sex, separated by a menacing spiked fence, there was a vaulted entrance. A great many white tiles had got into the construction of the school and a smell of disinfectant somehow managed to permeate the corridors. Taken altogether the school succeeded in resembling a large public convenience.
David’s dark figure moved rapidly under the lowering and wind-swept sky and seemed to indicate that he was eager to leave the school. It was a cold night and as he had no coat he turned up the collar of his jacket and fairly spurted down the windy street. Suddenly he recognised and was inclined to smile at his own eagerness. He was still unused to the idea of himself as a married man and a master at New Bethel Street. He must, as Strother said, begin to cultivate decorum.
He had been married six months and was settled with Jenny in a small house behind the Dunes. A most tremendous business it had been finding the house — the right house, as Jenny put it. Naturally the Terraces were impossible: Jenny wouldn’t have looked at a miners’ row “for love nor money”; and David felt it wise in the meantime to be at the other end of the town from his parents. Their reaction to his marriage had made things difficult.
High and low they had searched. Rooms furnished or unfurnished Jenny would not have. But at last they had pitched on a small plaster-fronted detached house in Lamb Lane, the straggling continuation of Lamb Street. The house belonged to Wept’s wife, who had one or two “bits” of property in her own name in Sleescale, and who let them have the house for ten shillings a week because it had stood unlet for the previous two quarters and now showed signs of damp. Even so, the rent was more than David could afford on a salary of £70 a year. Still he had not wished to disappoint Jenny, who had from the first taken quite a fancy to the house, since it did not stand vulgarly in a row and had actually a patch of front garden. Jenny insisted that the garden would afford them a most refined seclusion and hinted romantically at the wonders she would work in the way of cultivating it.
Nor had he cared to stint her over the house’s furnishing: Jenny was so bright and intrepid, so set on having “the exact thing” that she would tirelessly ransack a dozen shops rather than confess defeat — how, in the face of such enthusiasm, could he freeze her warm housewifely spirit! Yet he had eventually been obliged to take a stand and in the end they had compromised. Three rooms of the house were furnished on credit: kitchen, parlour, bedroom — the last with a noble suite of stained walnut, the pride of Jenny’s heart. For the rest she had taken it out in chintzes, muslin curtains and a superb selection of lace doyleys.
David was happy… very happy in this house behind the Dunes — these last six months had been far and away the happiest of his life. And before that there had been the honeymoon. Never, never would David forget the joy of that week… those seven blessed days at Cullercoats. Naturally he had thought a honeymoon out of the question. But Jenny, tenacious as ever where romantic tradition was involved, had fiercely insisted; and Jenny, revealing unsuspected treasure, had produced fifteen pounds, her six years’ money from the Slattery savings fund, and handed it firmly to him. She had, moreover, in the face of all his protests, argued him into buying himself a new ready-made suit out of the money to replace the shabby grey he wore. Her way of putting it involved no humiliation. Jenny, at least, was never mean; where money was concerned Jenny never thought twice. He had bought the suit; they had spent the honeymoon on Jenny’s money. He would never in all his life forget Jenny for that.