Or so Mark had said the other night; and rather to my surprise I found myself resenting the fact that I was using someone else’s opinions, even this. He was undoubtedly right, I thought as I went out of the church; but I should have preferred him to be wrong.

But whether he was right or wrong, there was no point in thinking constructively about the girl. It was better that she should remain a face and no more than a face, a kind of superior pin-up to carry in my wallet. I had to be realistic about the situation; realistic enough in fact to acknowledge that no situation could exist between me and the girl. But this acknowledging it wasn’t the same thing as liking it; watching her disappear round the corner into Market Street I suddenly felt tired, middle-aged, and in need of a drink.

2

Brown scowled at the letter as if to browbeat it into submission. “The awkward old bastard!” he said.

I smiled to indicate how right he was but didn’t bother to an­swer him; I knew my father-in-law’s Monday moods all too well.

“He’s trying it on, that’s what he’s doing. He knows bloody well he’s got us by the short hairs—” He crumpled the letter into a ball and threw it across the room. “I’d like to break his sod­ding neck!”

I stifled a yawn. There seemed to have been a great many of these scenes lately; before making even the simplest decision he seemed to find it necessary to lash himself into a blind rage.

I rose and went to the window. I looked eastwards towards Warley. On a clear day I could distinguish the spire of Hawcombe Parish Church. Hawcombe, a drab little village on the outskirts of Warley, had no great interest for me; but I preferred it to the straggle of brick boxes which constituted Brown and Co. This afternoon there was no escape; the hills were hidden by the rain.

Behind me I heard his fingers drumming on the desk; I knew the act by heart now. I stared out of the window into the scrap­yard, the place from where, as Brown had explained to Harry time and time again, it all started. And the place where Grandad had started, and I’m not ashamed to admit it, sonny. Yes, I shov­elled scrap in a yard just like this. Mind, I was younger then. My mother cried the first day I came home. You’re covered with rust – that’s funny, isn’t it, sonny? You don’t seem able to scrub it away; and everything you eat tastes of rust. And you’re always thirsty. The scrap? From aeroplanes and cutlery and motor-cars – look, that’s a fork stamping, nothing’s wasted, you see.

And then Grandad took charge of one of the arc furnaces. And he worked hard and he went to night school and he got to be a foreman and he went on learning all the time. And, whatever they say, sonny, people were glad to help him. Everyone respects a man who’s come up the hard way.