Take a Girl Like You Read online

  Kingsley Amis

  TAKE A GIRL LIKE YOU

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  TAKE A GIRL LIKE YOU

  Kingsley Amis’s (1922–1995) works take a humorous yet highly critical look at British society, especially in the period following the end of the Second World War. Born in London, Amis explored his disillusionment in novels such as That Uncertain Feeling (1955). His other works include The Green Man (1970), Stanley and the Women (1984), and The Old Devils (1986), which won the Booker Prize. Amis also wrote poetry, criticism and short stories.

  TO

  MAVIS AND GEOFF NICHOLSON

  Where shall I go when I go where I go?

  Go, gentle maid, go lead the apes in hell.

  Chapter One

  ‘HALLO, Miss Bunn,’ Dick Thompson said on a note of celebration. ‘Do come in, that’s right. Here, let me take that for you. I expect you’d like to go straight up, wouldn’t you?’

  Jenny Bunn, a slender girl of twenty with very dark colouring, watched him turn and cross the square hall. His body was tilted forward and to the right, probably with the weight of her zip bag. He moved with short quick steps that were also somehow uncertain, as if he was going down a hill. With her music case in one hand and her tangerine-coloured topcoat thrown over the other arm she followed him up the stairs. These had rubber strips along the edge of each one, like stairs in a café.

  On the landing a door opened and a rather plump girl came out. She was wearing a white blouse with a velvet bow, a very full skirt, and navy-blue knee socks. The most noticeable thing about her face was a pair of large brown eyes. Fixing these on Jenny, she said with a foreign accent: ‘I shan’t be in to supper, Dick.’ With that she went past and began going down the stairs.

  Dick Thompson wheeled round and called: ‘Oh, Anna, this is –,’ but the girl could not have heard, because she went on going down the stairs. ‘That was Anna le Page,’ he explained to Jenny. ‘A grand girl. You’ll like her very much, that I can guarantee. Everybody does. She’s French, you see.’

  ‘She looked nice.’

  ‘Oh, she’s a grand girl. Anything you want to know, Anna’ll tell you. Here we are, then. I think you’ll find there’s plenty of room if you plan properly. Supper wont’ be ready for a minute or two, so you’ve timed it quite nicely. Now you’ve got all this cupboard, you see, but not this bottom drawer here, I’m afraid. The wife likes to keep spare bedding and so on in there. I say, is this all the stuff you’ve brought? It doesn’t seem very …’

  ‘My mother’s sending the rest of my things on next week,’ Jenny said defensively. ‘They weren’t all quite back from the cleaners.’ When she said this she stuttered a little.

  ‘I see, yes. I hope you like these curtains; we didn’t feel really sure about them.’

  ‘Oh, I think they’re lovely. I love those big –’

  ‘We weren’t really sure they went with the room. Don’t you think they’re a bit on the heavy side?’

  ‘Oh, no, it’s the kind of material that –’

  ‘Good, good. We’ve never felt really happy about them. Well, before I leave you to yourself I’ll just show you he geography, shall I?’

  ‘Thank you very much.’ Jenny wondered what he could mean.

  ‘Come along then. I expect you’ll want a wash, won’t you? Now this is …’ – he pushed open a door and showed a rather old-looking water-closet hissing quietly to itself – ‘there, and over here we’ve got the bathroom. We’ll have to arrange a time-table for that for the mornings but we needn’t worry about that just now. Have a bath whenever you want one, of course. Except in the mornings, if you don’t mind. That’s the geyser here,’ he went on to point out. ‘I’ll just show you how it works while I’m about it. Oh, and before I forget: I know you won’t mind my saying this, but do try if you will to remember not to wash your, you know, your stuff in running hot water. It wastes fuel, you see. We had a lot of trouble like that with the girl who had your room before, quite apart from her habit of … Now personally I can’t bear a house with notices up all over the place, do this and don’t do that and keep off the grass and thank you very much, so I’m just going to ask you to try and remember. Is that all right?’

  ‘Yes of course, Mr Thompson.’

  ‘It’s common sense really, isn’t it? Now this thing’s perfectly simple when you understand it. This affair here turns until it’s against this red mark – mind you don’t go beyond it – then …’ He put a metal flint-scratcher into the mouth of the geyser and went clicking away. A jet of blue flame appeared, roaring feebly. ‘Now the water; here we go. Hallo, that’s funny. The whole issue should light up now.’

  He tried the flint again. After a while there was a puffing explosion. It was fairly loud, and to go with it there was a jagged flame that came billowing out some way from the mouth of the geyser, which was where it had started.

  Dick Thompson jerked himself upright, overdoing it so that he danced for a moment on the linoleum. He said: ‘It shouldn’t do that. I expect the water-pressure’s a bit down. It sometimes is round here. Not usually at this time of the evening, though. It should be all right normally. You’ll soon get used to it.’

  Jenny looked up at the geyser and swallowed. It towered over her and seemed very fat, many sizes larger than herself and capable of behaving in almost any way.

  The rumbling and splashing stopped. ‘If the flame should suddenly take it into its head to go out, don’t try to relight it with the flint thing whatever you do. Turn the whole issue off and start again. And if it starts to spit, then turn it off double-quick. It’s quite a reliable old contraption.’ He gave the geyser a familiar and affectionate slap on its smooth white flank, making a loud booming noise which sounded somehow sad. ‘Should be, anyway, considering what I had to pay for it. The price things are these days, if you let yourself brood on it it’d turn your hair grey. That’s our precious Tory government for you. We never had it so good, eh? Well, this won’t do. See you downstairs in seven or eight minutes, Miss Bunn, but don’t hurry yourself unduly.’

  ‘I’ll be very quick.’

  ‘Good, good. Well, I hope you’ll be happy here. Things are pretty informal round here, you’ll find, we don’t stand much on ceremony. We’re all friends in this house. I think you’ll like it.’ He gazed at her for a moment, tilting his head on its long neck and smiling, then made a little noise like someone settling down to their favourite meal. ‘I hope so, anyway, Miss Bunn. See you soon, then.’

  He went away quickly, and although he now carried no zip bag his gait was just as easy to notice. In fact he seemed to be doing it more than before.

  As Jenny bustled about having a very quick wash in cold water and brushing her hair, she gradually forgot about the geyser. But the ordeal of coming into a strange house still weighed upon her, especially since she was tired after travelling: seven and a half hours it had been, from door to door. And in the morning there was the appointment with the Head, Miss Sinclair, who was going to show her round the school and explain her duties to her.

  Miss Sinclair had been very kind to her when she came down for the interview. She had not asked Jenny any questions about why she proposed coming all this way south for her first job, which was just as well, because the true answer was too embarrassing to give – how could she have explained in public that she wanted to get as far away from her home town as possible so as to forget how she had been hurt? Miss Sinclair was not inquisitive, and her manner had shown that she was not going to keep reminding Jenny of her youth and inexperience. But she was the sort of career woman who expected efficiency from her staff and was not going to put up with anything less: her grey tailored suit, square-cut unpolished fingernails, and tightly packed naturally wavy grey hair had managed between them to make this plain. And the day after tomorrow all those children were going to come trooping in, laughing, squealing, crying, making faces, punching one another, falling over, and she was going to have to do something about every bit of that. Her teaching-practice report had said that she was inclined to be too lenient – could she stop herself being it? The school was huge and there were all those other staff all of
them older than she. Where’s that disgusting noise coming from, Miss Smith? – I think it must be Miss Bunn’s as usual, Miss Brown.

  Then there was the coming to a strange part of the world. It was not only a matter of this being a country town, even though it did seem to be very near London, instead of its being the large manufacturing city she had lived in all her life. What had made her feel nervous, in the bus coming up from the station, was thinking of the enormous number of total strangers there were about. Just a glance out of the window now showed house after house full of them.

  That was no way for a sensible girl to go on. Deliberately, as she put on fresh lipstick, she set herself to think about Mr Thompson. He was obviously a nice enough man, if only because it had been Miss Sinclair who had fixed up for her to have digs in his house. But she did wish she understood more about him and about how he had come to be as he was. He was too kind and cheerful, and not badly dressed enough (he was wearing a collar and a self-colour tie even though his trousers were that very dark grey flannel kind), and not really old enough either, to be the kind of man to take in lodgers. He had treated her almost like a guest, or at least a relation. And how was it that he was an auctioneer, as Miss Sinclair had written to her? Chalking or sticking the numbers on, reading out about dinner services, and getting through the going-going-gone part was not enough to count as a full-time job for a grown man, a man past thirty. And why did the rims of his glasses not go all the way round the lenses? Perhaps time would show.

  Before going down she looked round her room, which she knew she could brighten up in no time, and felt happy again. It was her base for a new life, one she could tackle all right and in which she was not going to be hurt. Coming here really had been the right thing.

  Shutting her door behind her, she just had time to notice that it had a little brass knocker on it, in the form of a terrestrial globe wearing a straw hat and carrying a cane, before the sound of the front door being violently opened made her jump. A tall young man with curly brown hair and a sunburnt face was coming in. He caught sight of her when she got to the half-landing and she had to go down the whole bottom flight with him staring at her. The look on his face was one which she had got used to seeing on men’s faces – some of them quite old men – when they first saw her, and sometimes when they had seen her before. Usually they seemed not to know they were giving her any particular kind of look, but this one did seem to know, and not to care much. He was handsome in a rather sissy way, and was pretending to have forgotten he still had his hand on the open door. She could tell that if he had been smoking a cigarette he would have taken it out of his mouth and thrown it away without taking his eyes off her. As was her habit in this situation, she stared right back at him as blankly as she could.

  ‘Hallo,’ he said when she reached him. ‘Are you a friend of Anna’s?’ He had a deep voice with a slight London accent.

  ‘Anna’s? Oh, the French girl. No. At least, not yet. I’ve only just arrived. I’ve just come to live here.’

  ‘Oh, you have, have you? How funny, though. I could have sworn you were French. It’s the way you look.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ Jenny said positively, ‘I’m English.’ She said it positively because thinking she was French (or Italian, or Spanish, or – once each – Greek or Portuguese) on the evidence of the way she looked had evidently been enough to get quite a number of new acquaintances to start trying it on with her straight away. There had even been that time in Market Square at home when a man had accosted her and, on finding she was not a tart after all, had apologized by saying: ‘I’m awfully sorry, I thought you were French.’ What could it be like to actually live in France?

  ‘Then you must be the young lady who’s come to teach at Albert Road,’ the man was saying. ‘Well, I never did. French or not, you certainly don’t look like a schoolmistress.’

  To take the lead off him, Jenny said: ‘If you’re looking for Miss le Page I’m afraid she’s gone out.’

  ‘Oh? Are you sure?’

  ‘Oh yes, I saw her go out about ten minutes ago. She said she wouldn’t be in for supper.’

  ‘That’s funny. She told me …’ He blinked and pursed his lips, still looking at her closely. ‘I wonder what’s best to do.’

  ‘I could give her a message for you if you like.’

  ‘That might be a good idea. Let’s see …’

  He had still not composed his message when a door opened at the end of the short passage that led rearwards from the hall. A voice easily recognizable as Dick Thompson’s called out: ‘Hallo, Patrick, come on in. Thought I heard you.’

  A spasm of pain or something crossed the man’s face and he whispered a word or two to himself. Then with great warmth he said: ‘Hallo there, Dick, how are you? I think I’d really better be off, thanks all the same. Got a lot to do. First night back, you know.’

  ‘Oh, come on, don’t be mouldy. Stay and be introduced to our new member.’

  The man gave Jenny an extra look. ‘Well, I suppose I could do that, couldn’t I, now you come to mention it? Just a few minutes, then.’

  ‘That’s my boy.’ Dick Thompson introduced the man as Patrick Standish and took them into what would have had to be the kitchen. Its door had another little brass knocker on it, this time representing a religious-looking person on a donkey. The room was a long narrow one that ended with a further door and a large, oblong, buff-coloured stove. A medium-sized woman with reddish hair and a purple dress was doing something to the stove, but stopped when they came in. She had a snouty kind of face which was not completely unpretty. It broke into a smile at the sight of Patrick Standish, then went ordinary again at the sight of Jenny.

  ‘Hallo, Martha,’ Patrick Standish said. He was wearing a stone-coloured corduroy jacket with a navy-blue scarf knotted round his neck. Both of them helped considerably to give him his sissy look, without hiding the fact that he was older than she had thought at first, round about thirty.

  ‘Hallo. I’m afraid Anna’s gone out.’

  ‘So I’ve just been hearing. Never mind, she’ll have to come back some time, won’t she?’

  ‘Pretty late, if her recent behaviour’s any guide.’

  ‘Ah, these continentals. They live life to the full in a way that we can only –’

  ‘A rakish sports car seems to have got into the habit of picking her up here.’

  ‘Hope it’s a nice chap driving. Hope it’s a chap, in fact.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a chap all right.’

  ‘This is Miss Bunn, dear,’ Dick Thompson broke in in a slightly ticking-off tone.

  ‘I rather thought it might be. How do you do? You found us all right, then. I expect you’re hungry, aren’t you? We might as well get on with it, I suppose. Dick, get the cruet, will you, and the sauce?’ Mrs Thompson spoke quickly turning her face to and fro without looking at Jenny, and blinking a good deal. Over her shoulder she said: ‘Have you eaten, Patrick? Sure? Well, you won’t mind watching us eat, will you?’

  ‘Watching the animals feeding,’ her husband corrected her, showing Jenny her place at the table. This piece of furniture was covered with a plastic cloth in large red-and-white check, which did not stop it being like the water-closet upstairs in looking old: not antique, just old. The armchairs, one of which was a rocker with a long round cushion on it, had the same old look. But the hard chairs were the newlywed-suite kind often on show in the windows of shops. They had semicircular backs.

  Mrs Thompson put a plate of fish and potatoes in front of Jenny. The fish was probably haddock, with a horny, pimply skin. There were a lot of potatoes, with some unexpected colours to be seen among them here and there. They were steaming briskly. So was the fish.

  Dick Thompson sat down with emphasis, moving his shoulders about a lot so that his flimsy dark hair fell forward. Very genially, he said: ‘Well, I suppose I’d better put you in the picture about our Miss Bunn, Patrick. It appears she’s come down to infant-teach at Albert Road, the renown of which must have spread far and wide, because her home is located as far away as –’