A Kind of Loving Read Online Free PDF

shave, d'you think?'
    'Save it till the Easter holidays,' he says.
    'How d'you mean? I'm shavin' every day now.'
    'If you want to go to all that trouble ... Are you going somew here?'
    'To a dance.'
    'At this time?'
    I look at my watch. 'Quart' to ten. The night's but young, me boy.'
    'Going out at this time to shuffle round a floor with a lot of smelly people to a so-called band,' he says.
    ' You wind your head in an' get on with your Latin.'
    ' How do you know it's Latin?'
    'I'll bet it's not Lady don't turn over.'
    'What's that?'
    'Nevermind.'
    'As a matter of fact,' he says, 'it's maths. And while you're here, there's a bit I don't quite follow.'
    'No use asking me. It's all Greek to me.' I realize I've made a corny joke. 'Hpw's that, eh? Maths - all Greek to me.'
    'Ha, ha,' Jim says, very sarcy. 'And you can knock it off, Vic. Old Cartwright was on to me the other day. He said he expected better maths marks from Vic Brown's brother.'
    This is enough to bring me out of the mirror again. 'He said that? Old Carthorse? I don't believe it.'
    "Strue,' Jim says. 'I daren't let on who I am in the French class but old Cartwright seems to think you were pretty good.'
    Ah, well... who cares about lousy old French anyway?
    I go back to the bed and pick Jim's exercise book up. 'What's the trouble, laddie?' I say, imitating old Carthorse's rumble.
    'Here.' Jim points it out in his text-book. 'I can't get this one out. I've been struggling with it for half an hour. I think the book must be wrong.'
    'I've never met one yet.' I go through his working out step by step and spot it as soon as I come to it. I drop the book in his lap. 'Try putting that last equation the other way up.'
    He looks.' Gosh... Well fancy me not seeing that.'
    'It's not seeing things like that 'at makes you fail exams.'
    'All right, bighead.'
    I rub my hand over my chin and fancy I hear the bristles rasp. 'Well, I haven't time for a shave anyway. I'm late enough.'
    ' Won't she wait?' Jim says.
    'Who?'
    'Who?' he says, grinning. 'Brigitte Bardot, of course; who else?'
    For a second I wonder if he's found out. Then I realize he can't have because nobody knows but me. Even she doesn't know yet. But she soon will now. She jolly soon will.

    Outside it's sharp and clear, real clean winter weather. From the look of the sky this morning we were in for some more snow but now it's full of stars and the frost nips your cheeks. I think about it for a minute and then start walking instead of waiting for a bus because it's too cold to hang about. In a minute I hear a bus topping the hill behind me and I break into a trot and beat it to the next stop. I get a threepenny into town. There's nobody else upstairs and I get in the back seat and have another butcher's at this book of pin-ups and nudes Willy Lomas lent me before the holidays. Cherie it's called and it's French, with a bint on the cover in a suspender belt and black nylons and nothing much else but a you-know-what look. 'Lush,' Willy said, and he was dead right. These Frenchies certainly know how to put a book like this together. Your guts melt when you look at some of these bints in there. There's some bkds in their underwear or nylon nighties, just covered up enough to set your imagination working and some others where you don't need any imagination at all. There's some writing as well that makes me wish I'd taken more notice in the French class at school because if it's anything to do with the pictures it must be pretty hot stuff. When I'm looking at these tarts I wonder for the three-thousandth time what It must be like, and I reckon I'd never manage to find out with these birds because it would be all up with me if one of them so much as came near me in the flesh.
    The funniest thing though is I don't think about Ingrid this way at all. Not that she isn't attractive, because she is; just about the most attractive girl I know. Only the way I think about her is sort of clean and pure and soft, as though just to touch