The Likes of Us by Stan Barstow Read Free Book Online Page B

their control, and she threw up her hands.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know,’ she cried. ‘I don’t know if it’s worth it or not.’
    â€˜You mean the house?’ he said, hoping she did, but knowing more.
    â€˜All of it,’ she said with passion. ‘Everything.’ And she turned her face from him.
    As he watched her his own face seemed to sag into lines of hopelessness and his nostrils quivered in
a heavy sigh. ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think you’d do it in the end.’
    â€˜I haven’t said I won’t, have I?’ she snapped over her shoulder.
    â€˜Well, what’s wrong, then?’ he said. ‘What is it?’
    â€˜It’s her,’ the girl said. ‘I saw her this afternoon. She followed me all round town. Everywhere I went, she followed. I thought about stopping and giving her a piece of my mind, but I knew she wouldn’t mind a scene.’
    â€˜You did right not to speak to her. She enjoys feeling badly done to. She always did. God!’ he said with feeling. ‘Why can’t she leave us alone? She gets her money regular, doesn’t she? What more does she want?’
    â€˜You,’ the girl said, turning to look at him.
    â€˜She never wanted me when she had me,’ he said. ‘A home, kids, the sort o’ things everybody gets married for – she never wanted any o’ them things.’
    â€˜You don’t know much about women, do you?’ the girl said.
    â€˜Not a thing. Not one damn thing.’
    â€˜She’s your wife,’ the girl said. ‘And that’s more than I’ll ever be.’
    She was near to tears now and he crossed the bare floorboards between them to take her in his arms and draw her to him.
    â€˜I’d marry you tomorrow. You know that.’
    â€˜I know, I know. But she’ll never set you free.’
    â€˜Who knows?’ he said past her shoulder. ‘One day, p’r’aps.’
    â€˜And till then?’
    â€˜That’s up to you. You’re the one with everything to lose. You’ve your people to face, an’ your friends. Folk’ll talk three times as much about you as me. They won’t blame me: they’ll blame you. They’ll say you’re a fool for risking everything for a bloke like me. They’ll say I can’t be much good anyway: I couldn’t keep steady with a woman when I was wed to her, so what chance have you to hold me without even your marriage lines. They’ll tell you I could leave you flat any time and you’d have no claim on me. She’s got all the claims. You’ll have nothing.’
    â€˜Oh, stop it,’ she said. ‘Stop it.’
    He turned away from her and felt for his cigarettes. The packet was empty and he crushed it and hurled it into the fireplace.
    â€˜Who the hell am I to ask you to do this? he said. ‘You could be lookin’ round for some lad your own age. Somebody ’at could marry you, all decent an’ above board.’
    She looked at him, thinking how different love was from the way she had always imagined it would be, and she came again to the verge of tears before his thin balding figure in the ill-fitting sports coat and creased flannel trousers, and the baffled way he took life’s blows on the face.
    She ran and clung to him. ‘I want you to ask me,’ she said; ‘because I want you. I want to give you peace and love and a home, and, someday, kids. Everything a man should have from a woman. Everything you’ve never had in your life.’
    â€˜You’re a grand kid,’ he said, stroking her hair. ‘So sweet and good and grand. I keep telling myself, if only I’d met you earlier, and then I remember that you were only a nipper then. You’re not much more now really.’
    â€˜I’ll be all the woman you’ll ever want,’ she said fiercely, clinging to him.