Saville (16 page)

‘I never get any thanks. Ever,’ she said.

‘Then don’t go expecting any,’ he told her.

‘If I did nothing at all she’d have some right to complain.’

‘Aye. She’d be in a right mess all right.’ His father would look away, uncomfortable when she cried.

Sometimes on the bus back the conductor said, ‘Are you all right, love?’ leaning over her, his hand on the back of the seat.

She would wipe her eyes then blow her nose and try to see the money in her purse.

‘People are like that when they grow old,’ she said, and other times she would say, ‘Never expect anything of people then you’ll never get hurt.’

However, at Christmas or on their birthdays she would take over a present or even a special cake that she had baked herself. ‘There’s a time for forgiving,’ she would say whenever his father complained and he would turn away saying, ‘Let them find out what it’s like on their own. They’ll soon come begging.’ On their birthdays, or sometimes on the Saturdays when she went over, she would cook them a meal, grandfather Swanson lying on the couch gazing at the ceiling, his white hair falling in thin wisps over his cheeks, his grandmother sitting in a rocking chair by the fire saying, ‘Two potatoes will be enough,’ or, ‘If you use all that cabbage, Ellen, we’ll be without for the rest of the week.’

‘I’ll buy you some more, Mother,’ his mother would say, ‘before I go.’

‘If you have the money you can always manage.’

Sometimes she stood over the pans with her eyes full of tears, wiping them away on the back of her hand, his grandmother taking no notice.

‘I’ve no patience with you, I haven’t,’ his father said when she got back, enraged himself and banging the table with his hand.
Yet he would add, ‘No, no, sit down. I’ll make you a pot of tea before I go to work.’

Grandfather Saville had fought in the First World War. He would sit looking at the newspaper through a pair of heavy black-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose, his head held back, studying the pictures but never the text. ‘Look at this, Colin,’ he would tell him, holding the paper up so that he could see the picture of a burnt-out building or a tank with its turret broken open or slumped down in a hole without its tracks. ‘They don’t fight wars now like they used to. In those days it was man to man. Now they think nothing of bombing women and children, or shelling people miles away they never see.’

In the evenings when Colin was ready for bed and had changed into his pyjamas, and his mother had looked in his ears and at his neck, his grandfather would say, ‘Sit down, lad, for five minutes,’ and when his mother complained, saying, ‘He hasn’t even said his prayers yet, he’s going to be late into bed,’ he would answer, ‘What I have to tell him, Ellen, won’t take more than a nod of your head.’

Or when he was already in bed and had put out the light his grandfather would come in and say, ‘Are you awake, lad? They’ve sent me up to bed as well. Sitting down there listening to the wireless. They’ll listen to ought, people nowadays. In one ear, out the next.’

His grandfather had been to Russia. He would sometimes call to Mr Reagan in the street or in the backs saying, ‘Come in, come in. The missis will make us a cup of tea,’ and when Mr Reagan had come in and, carefully easing up his trousers, taken a seat at the table, he would say, ‘Did I tell you the time I was in Russia?’ and when Mr Reagan had answered, ‘Yes, I believe you did,’ he would say. ‘We went in to save the Czar. Would you believe it? A socialist all my life and when they call me up they send me to shoot the workers.’

‘War’s an unpleasant thing,’ Mr Reagan said, ‘even at the best of times.’ He was himself only a year ahead of the latest drafting and would sit at the table when his grandfather had finished, saying, ‘A colliery official like myself is as important to the pit as any miner, perhaps more so. Yet do I get deferment? I do not. Why, only the other day one of the owners came up to me and said,
“We shall have to get someone out of retirement to take your place, Reagan, or one of the women out of the offices.” Why, it’s taken years of training to get where I am.’

‘Have you ever seen snow?’ his grandfather would ask him.

‘Snow?’ Mr Reagan said.

‘Marching for days with it up to here.’

‘Oh, a biscuit would go very well with it,’ Mr Reagan said whenever his mother put down his cup of tea. ‘That’s very kind of you indeed. Ah, ginger. A favourite.’

‘Moscow,’ his grandfather said. ‘Landed at Sebastopol in the Crimea and marched four hundred miles and all the way back again. Wolves? We fought everything. We even fought women.’

‘Women?’ Mr Reagan said, sipping his tea.

‘They come in at night when you’re asleep, with sticks and shovels, and try and take your food,’ his grandfather said. ‘Why, one woman could take ten men apart in a matter of seconds.’

‘I can well believe it,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘If they left wars to women they’d be over in half the time. Perhaps even sooner.’

‘When we left we were shelled.’

Mr Reagan nodded and bit his biscuit.

‘Came down on you from every side. The Heights of Sebastopol,’ his grandfather said. ‘We threw everything off the ship that we could and filled the hold full of women and children. Aristocrats. Hundreds of them. When we reached Istanbul they wouldn’t let them out until we’d de-loused them.’

‘Istanbul? Now, isn’t that in Turkey?’ Mr Reagan said.

‘Filled the holds with disinfectant and they had to swim around for hours. When I came ashore a woman offered me a gold necklace to marry her so that she could come back to England.’

‘That sounds a very tempting offer,’ Mr Reagan said, re-crossing his legs.

‘They were all at it. You could have anything you wanted,’ his grandfather said. ‘There was nowt they wouldn’t do, given half the chance.’

‘Here, Colin,’ his mother would say. ‘Will you take the bucket and fill it up with coal?’

‘It won’t do the lad any harm, missis,’ his grandfather said, ‘to hear where his forebears came from.’

‘The Irish Revolution’, Mr Reagan said, ‘was very much the same.’

‘You fought there, then, Mr Reagan?’ his grandfather said.

‘No, no. But I had an uncle who was killed in Belfast.’

‘The Black and Tans,’ his grandfather said.

‘Ah, yes,’ Mr Reagan said, and shook his head.

If his father came in and found them talking he would say to Mr Reagan, ‘Has my dad told you about the harem in Constantinople?’ and when Mr Reagan said, ‘No, no, I don’t believe he has, Harry, that’s the one thing he hasn’t mentioned,’ and winked at his father, he would add, ‘Show us your leg, Dad,’ and his grandfather would pull up his trouser to reveal a long white scar running the length of his calf. ‘There,’ his father said. ‘The guards caught him one as he was nipping over the wall.’

‘On the way out,’ his grandfather said, smiling with his new teeth.

‘On his way out, Mr Reagan,’ his father said.

‘It’s a miracle I’ve still got a leg at all,’ his grandfather said, laughing, his father getting up then as he choked to tap his back.

At night he said two prayers that his mother had taught him since starting Sunday School, kneeling by the bed, his head pressed against his hands. ‘God bless Mother, Father and little Steve, and make Colin a good boy. Amen’, and, ‘Lord keep us safe this night, secure from all our fears, may angels guard us while we sleep, till morning light appears.’ Then he said, ‘Please God, let me pass the examination. Amen’, and pressing his head against the blankets repeated it three times before climbing into bed.

His uncle called at the house. He was small like his father, with the same light-coloured hair and blue eyes and even the same moustache, though he was younger, and would come into the house without knocking, saying, ‘Ellen, and how’s our favourite lass?’

His mother’s temples reddened and she would turn away to the fire, to the kettle, and put on a pot of tea as if his appearance caused her no surprise at all, saying, ‘Don’t you knock before you come in?’ and he would say, ‘Not when I’m visiting my favourite sister.’

‘Sister-in-law,’ she would tell him and he would answer, ‘Well, then, aren’t I going to have a kiss?’

He had been called up into the Air Force and usually came in his uniform, his cap tucked into the lapel on his shoulder, parking a blue-painted lorry with an R.A.F. insignia on its cabin on a piece of waste ground at the end of the road. When he had kissed his mother on the cheek and hugged her a moment he would stand with his back to the fire clapping his hands together and saying, ‘Well, then, who wants a round?’ shadow-boxing for a while then adding, if no one responded, ‘Aren’t we going to have a cup of tea?’ and then, ‘Here you are, Steven. Here you are, Colin. See what I have in my pocket.’

He usually brought a bar of chocolate or, failing that, would bring out a coin and press it into their hands saying, ‘Don’t tell your mother where you got it or she’ll want it back’, and adding in a louder voice still, ‘Now, then, make sure she doesn’t hear.’

When his father came in he was always serious, saying, ‘How are you, Jack?’ shaking his hand before sitting down at the table and perhaps adding, ‘Have they given you a cup of tea?’

‘It’s on the boil, Harry,’ he’d tell him, clapping his hands again and looking over at his mother. ‘I wish I was a miner and that’s for sure. Fighting on the Home Front. There’s nothing to beat it.’

‘Oh, I’ll swop you any time,’ his father told him. ‘Riding around in a lorry. You never risk ought but a bloody puncture.’

‘Don’t worry. The Jerries are over our station every night,’ his uncle said.

‘He doesn’t look as though he’s worried, does he, Dad?’ his father said and his grandfather shook his head and added, ‘Have you brought us ought, Jack? What’s in the back of your lorry?’

They walked down sometimes and looked inside and sometimes his uncle would say, ‘Come on, Colin. Jump up inside,’ and they would sit together in the large seat, smelling of oil and petrol, Steven sitting between Colin’s legs, while his mother would say, ‘Don’t take them far, Jack, I want them back for dinner.’

‘Just round the town,’ his uncle would shout over the roar of the engine, which he revved up for some time before they began, attracting the attention of the people in the other houses.

He drove, always, very fast. They started with a jerk, the tyres squealing, and ended with one. Because he was a small man his uncle’s head was scarcely visible from outside and he would sit on a cushion, occasionally half-standing to see ahead, pulling himself up on the wheel and saying, ‘Now, then, what happens here?’ whenever they came to a bend. If someone got in the way he would shout out, ‘Just look at that. They don’t know how to use a road let alone a vehicle.’

‘Mad Jack they used to call him,’ his father said when they got back. ‘And Mad Jack he still is.’

‘Mad as a hatter, me,’ his uncle said and if his father had come down from his afternoon sleep before going off on the night shift he would say, ‘Don’t you keep proper hours in this house? I keep coming here hoping to find you at work and my lovely sister-in-law on her own.’

‘It’s a good job I do work nights,’ his father would say, sitting down at the table and looking up, blinking his eyes, at his brother.

For several weeks before the examination Colin had returned to doing his nightly essays and his nightly sums while his father sat across the table correcting them, occasionally, if he had to go to work, leaving them on the sideboard to correct when he came home in the morning. ‘What’s the decimal for three-tenths?’ he said when he came down on a morning. ‘They won’t give you any longer than that. How do you spell hippopotamus?’

The day before the exams he and the other children who were taking them were given a new pen, a new pencil and a new ruler at school to bring home with them. In the evening Colin had gone to bed early, his mother coming up to tuck in the blankets and his father coming up before he got ready for work. ‘Think of something nice,’ he said, ‘like your holidays, and you’ll soon be asleep. An extra hour’s sleep before midnight is as good as half a dozen next morning.’ And after he had gone out his grandfather came in and said, ‘Are you asleep, lad? Spend this on ought you like,’ putting a coin in his hand. When the door had closed he put on the light and saw that it was half-a-crown.

He seemed to be awake all night. He heard his father go to
work, wheeling his bike out into the yard, calling out to Mrs Shaw as she came out of her door to get some coal. Then, only a few minutes later it seemed, he heard his grandfather climbing into bed and singing as he often did now, ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,’ his voice trailing off into a vague murmuring and moaning. Then, later, he heard his mother raking the fire and bolting the back door, coming up the stairs to her room, saying something to Steven, who for that night was sleeping with her, then going back down to bring him a drink. All night he lay awake turning fifths into decimals, decimals of a pound into shillings and pence, spelling circumference, ostrich and those words that his father had made him learn by heart. He was still struggling to convert a fraction of a yard into feet and inches when he felt his mother holding his shoulder and saying, ‘It’s time to get up, Colin. I’ll warm some water for your wash.’ When he went down his clothes were lying over the arm of the chair by the fire, his trousers pressed, his socks just mended, his shoes freshly polished in the hearth. His mother had been up early to iron his shirt and it was stretched on a clothes horse in front of the fire. ‘I cleaned your shoes then you won’t get polish on your hands,’ she said. The bowl of water stood steaming in the sink.

A little later his father came back from work, wheeling in his bike, the shoulders of his overcoat and the top of his flat cap wet, the wheels of the bike leaving a wet track on the floor. ‘It’s just started,’ he said. ‘Cold enough to snow,’ shaking his coat as he took it off. ‘Have you got a bit of spare paper’, he added, ‘to put in your pocket? It’s just what you’ll need for working things out.’ He washed his hands at the sink, then tore a sheet from the colliery pad and folded it up ready for him to take. ‘Is his ruler and his pen out?’ he asked his mother, and took them down off the mantelpiece to examine the nib, saying, ‘This isn’t very strong. One good bit of writing and it’ll break in two. Haven’t we got one he can take with him, Ellen?’