Take a Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis

Author:Kingsley Amis [Amis Kingsley]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141961859
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2013-03-06T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

AND it turned out to go on being fine for some months. Jenny went round to Patrick’s flat so often that she began to notice how the old lady next door, who had a face like a tin box covered with skin, peered at her every time through the net curtain, but she soon cured that by waving and jumping up and down on the path. She was a widow, Patrick said, and Jenny realized that that must account for a lot. Of course, the pair of them did not only meet at the flat. There was the pictures, and the jazz sessions at the Ivy Bush, and a day at a race-track not far away by car where she won ten bob and bought them both champagne cocktails, and a Labour Party meeting with an M.P. down from London to speak on Kenya and Nyasaland and what people could do to help, and the dances (the best was the golf club dance – Patrick brought her a beautiful red rose to go with her slinky white dress and wide gold belt), and a wonderful day in London: they drove up on the Saturday morning and had lunch in the West End, went at her request to the Zoo in the afternoon and saw the new tiger cubs, had dinner at a real Italian restaurant with a marvellous fizzy wine that was better than champagne, and then went to a jazz club where the pianist was one of the three best outside the States, Patrick said. They did not get home until gone two.

She was rather nervous about introducing Patrick to her parents when they came down after Easter, but as it turned out things went off splendidly. Her mother quite fell for him, saying that he had lovely manners and a good job and that she could see it was a case. Her father said that he seemed a bit full of himself, but that at any rate he was a sight better than the fancynecktie brigade at home who sat in his chair and read his evening paper when they called for her to take her jitterbugging till all hours, and that he personally had nothing against Jews, there were good and bad like everyone else. Jenny said that Patrick was not a Jew; her father said: ‘You can tell by his name, lass. Schtundisch. German Jew. And you told me his mother’s in the clothing business. The Jews run that, it’s well known. Not that I’m prejudiced against ’em, mind. But it stands to reason. Schtundisch.’ He muttered ‘Schtundisch’ to himself whenever Patrick was mentioned until about the Saturday evening, and each time Jenny’s mother looked at him as if he was picking his nose. Actually it was only one of his ways, and happened with almost every new boy-friend: there had been Veelricht and Ullingheim and Lighlunt and Yohanstein and no doubt there would have been Tawmpzohn too if Dick was single. Jenny could see

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