Free A Kind of Loving by Stan Barstow Page B

the hill.'
    'That's the service bus,' the conductor says. 'It's fourpence on this route because we go round by the Town Hall.'
    I hand over another penny. 'Anyway, you're fourpence better off than if I hadn't caught it,' I tell him.
    He shakes his head and smacks his tongue behind his bad teeth. 'Not me, mate. Makes no difference to me.'
    I take the ticket and go upstairs thinking that he's the most miserable bastard I'm likely to meet today and I've got him over early, anyway.
    Saturdays I go to work in Mr Van Huyten's gramophone record and music shop in Market Street. There's only Mr Van Huyten in during the week, and Henry Thomas who does the repairs in the back; and on Saturdays I serve behind the counter and help with the week-end rash. Mr Van Huyten's father was a Dutchman but I reckon Mr Van himself is as English as I am and the only things Dutch about him are his name and the way he talks sometimes if he gets excited, and that's double Dutch. People don't always know it's a Dutch name. They get the Van bit mixed up with Von, and that's German. That's why they chucked bricks through Mr Van Huyten's father's windows in the Great War. People weren't as educated then as they are now and they didn't know that Mr Van Huyten and his father didn't like the Gerries any more than anybody else in Cressley till Mr Van joined up and came home in his Tommy's uniform. The Old Man joined the same mob - the Koylis - and him and Mr Van became pals, though Mr Van was a grown man and my dad was only a bit of a lad, younger than I am now. Something happened to Mr Van Huyten's father's antique business after the war and he shot himself one night and left Mr Van on his own. Mr Van had a lot of bad luck because he got married soon after this and then his wife died of cancer after only a few years. So he was on his own again and he never got married a second time. He made a living for a long time playing the piano in theatre bands and for the silent pictures before he got the shop.
    Mr Van Huyten's not exactly what you'd call a close friend of the family but the Old Lady and Old Feller always think about him and send him a card at Christmas and he was one of the first names on the list of invitations to Chris's wedding. How I got this job was from the Old Man seeing the ad for a part-time assistant in the Argus one Saturday and mentioning it. I saw a chance for a bit of extra lolly and I fancied the job itself so the Old Man went and fixed it up without more ado. That was twelve months since and I've never regretted it. I like serving all the people who crowd into the shop on Saturdays, and seeing all the different faces makes a change from looking at all the same old ones like Hassop and Miller and Rawlinson and Conroy up at Whittaker's day after day. I sometimes think this is the kind of job I'm cut out for, only there's no money in it as a full-time thing, though the thirty bob Mr Van pays me for Saturday is a grand bonus on top of my regular wage.
    It's going up to nine by the time I get to the shop and Mr Van's already opened. The Morris is standing outside and Henry's waiting for me to help him load it. Pale blue, the van is, with Mr Van Huyten's name on it in black letters. It's still new-looking because it's only six months old. The one before he'd had since pre-war and it could have been anybody's driving about. Mr Van's got his head down over his books in the little frosted-glass cubicle at the end of the long counter. Henry and I lug out two new TV sets, three that have been in for repair, and a new radiogram.
    'Some good sales this week, eh, Henry?' I say, when we've finished and we're having a breather by the van. 'Over two hundred quid's worth of goods there.'
    Henry's a little weedy bloke with a fat wife and five snotty- nosed kids. He wears glasses and his hair won't stick down though it always looks as though he's plastered everything he can think of on it, from liquid paraffin to lard. He gets a dokka from behind his ear and