Free A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow Page A

to smell the bacon and eggs in the kitchen. The Old Lady slaps the plate in front of me as I sit down.
    'If it's a bit frizzled,' she says, 'you've only yourself to blame. I called you six times. I don't know what you're getting like. It's like trying to raise the dead shifting you out o' bed. You even answer me in your sleep now.'
    I get on with my chow and let her have a chunter. It does her good to bind a bit. She's been up since about five getting the Old Man off. The Old Feller's been telling her for thirty years that he can manage on his own, but she won't have it. She says he'll forget his snap or something if she doesn't see to him, and apart from the odd times when she's been badly she's kept up the routine.
    She watches me clean the plate up with a piece of bread.
    'Shovellin' your food into you like that,' she says. 'It can't do you a bit o' good. An' don't you want a cup o' tea?'
    I tell her I do, and a slice of bread and marmalade, and she sets about the loaf. She always grabs a loaf like it's a chicken whose neck she's wringing.
    'You'd better look sharp,' she says. 'You don't want to be late. You don't want to give a bad impression, especially after that five pound Mr Van Huyten gave you at Christmas.'
    'One minute you're on about me bolting me food and the next you're telling me to look sharp or I'll be late.'
    ' You should allow yourself time to do all you have to do, then you could eat your meals in a proper manner and still get where you have to go on time. You want to take a leaf out of your cousin Walter's book. He has a system in a morning: so many minutes for this and so many for that. You never see him bolting his food or having to run for a bus.'
    I pull a face. Cousin Walter's a tall thin cove with a big nose who works in a bank. I don't like him; partly, I suppose, because everybody in the family seems to think he's the last word. The first time cousin Walter's taken bad for a crap in the morning his system will go for a burton, I think to myself.
    'I shan't be late', I tell the Old Lady, 'as long as you don't addle me with your nagging.'
    'I'll addle your earhole, young man, if you talk to me about nagging. You're not too big for a good slap, y'know, even if you are at the shavin' stage ... Just look at your face. Fancy having to go out like that in a morning to wait on people in a shop.'
    'I'll clean it up when I get there,' I tell her. Actually I'm a bit bothered about it myself. There's nothing niggles me more than cutting myself shaving because you've to go extra careful for days after for fear you open the places up again. But still, it's done now and it can't be helped. As for the Old Lady and her giving me a slap - well, she'd do it an' all and no bones about it. She's got no sense of humour, you know, and everybody knows it, bar her.
    Another two minutes and I've had a cup of tea and two slices of bread and marmalade and I'm out of the house and haring down the hill to the bus stop. The sun's getting out fairly warm now but the frost has left some icy patches and I nearly come a cropper once. What I'm after is that bus waiting on the corner at the bottom. The conductor's standing on the platform looking my way and I think at first he's waiting for me. But he rings the bell while I'm twenty yards away and I have to put on an extra spurt to catch the rail and heave myself aboard.
    He's a miserable-looking bod with bad teeth that he's poking into with a sharpened matchstick.
    'You'll kill yourself one o' these days doin' that,' he says as I'm hanging on there drawing every breath as if it's my last. 'I could stop the bus and make you get off.'
    'You saw me comin', didn't you? Did you think I was practising for the mile, or summat?'
    'Plenty more buses. We've got a schedule to keep to, y'know.'
    There's a nice little four-letter word on the tip of my tongue but I swallow it and give him my fare. 'Threepenny.'
    'Where you goin' to?'
    'Market Street.'
    'Fourpence.'
    'It's only threepence from up