Saville (38 page)

He was boxing with one of the senior boys, his left hand held straight out.

‘Don’t wait when you come in, Thompson,’ Carter said. ‘Come in with your left and, if you’re going to do nothing else, step out. Don’t hang around to see what’s going to happen.’

He demonstrated Thompson’s move again.

‘Let’s have young Saville in again,’ he said. ‘He can show you how not to do it, if nothing else.’

Colin climbed in beneath the rope.

He kneaded each glove against his palm. The master, having called the senior boys across, wiped his neck and arms on a towel; he wiped his face and chest. Finally he hung the towel across the rope: it ran round, a single strand, along the tops of the padded posts.

‘Watch my counter, Saville. It might come up; it might go down – I might counter with my left if it comes to that. Don’t do what Thompson does: bang one in then hang around.’

Colin took up his guard. Carter crouched down; he raised his head each time he intended to throw an instructional blow, but now, his forehead furrowed, he gazed keenly at him across his gloves: it was like fighting an ape, or a grizzled monkey, the thin face thrust menacingly down.

Colin struck out with his left hand and moved away; he struck out with his left again, both times failing even to make contact with Carter’s bobbing head. Each time he put out his hand that tiny head had slipped away; he put out his right, missed, then once again, measuring the distance, put out the left: something of a smile crossed Carter’s face.

Colin moved forward; he had some vague notion of keeping so close that, no matter how quickly Carter moved, he could muffle
the blow. From one corner of the ring he drove him to another; from there he drove him to the next; he threw his left out continuously now, feeling it at one point crack comfortably against the master’s face, saw, briefly, his look of consternation, then, his own head bowed, his right hand tucked up against his cheek, bore in with his shoulder, releasing his right as he came in close. With his left he banged at Carter’s head. He stepped back, measured the distance to the master’s chin, pulled back his right and felt, almost simultaneously, a sharp, needle-like pain in the middle of his chest. A flicker of colour shot across his eyes; for a moment he wasn’t aware of anything at all, a vague redness, then a blueness, and a moment later he was gazing up at the metal, rivet-studded beams that crossed the ceiling.

‘The first rule of boxing’, Carter said, ‘is never to lose your head.’

Voices echoed from across the gym; there was the familiar rattle of the punch-bag against a metal frame. One or two figures outside the ring were leaping up and down. Perhaps, after all, they thought he’d slipped.

He got slowly to his feet. He felt a towel thrust into his hand, smelt its odour of dust and sweat and, when he finally looked up, saw Carter in the ring with one of the senior boys, parrying blows, calling, then parrying again.

‘You can get changed, then, Saville,’ the master said, casually, calling across his shoulder almost at the same moment as he spoke to the other boy.

He hung the towel on the rope, crossed the gym, and went into the changing-room beyond. A single light, shielded by wire-netting, shone down on the dusty floor.

Carter came in as he finished changing. The towel now he’d hung around his neck, his jet-black hair brushed freshly back: it lay like a textureless lacquer across the top of his head.

‘There’s no point in trying to get one over on me,’ he said. ‘I’m here to teach. I’m not paid to be, and I’ve no intention of becoming, a punch-bag. Do I make my meaning clear?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘Sir.’

‘You can brawl all you want in the field outside; you can brawl all you want, if it comes to that, at home. When you step inside that ring it’s with the purpose of learning something, not
much, but a little bit about boxing. Do I make my meaning clear?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘If you fancy coming again I’d be glad to see you. If not, no hard feelings.’ He put out his hand.

After a moment’s hesitation Colin took it.

As he was leaving he glanced through the sliding doors into the interior of the gym; sunlight, diffused by the frosted glass, fell in a broad panel across the floor. Dancing in and out of the shadows were the white-vested figures of the senior boys, ducking, weaving, their breathing staccato, irregular, following him out to the gymnasium door.

It was early evening. The first offices had begun to empty, a thin trickle of figures moving down the narrow streets towards the city centre; there were odd groups of girls in the winter uniform of dark-blue skirts and white blouses, the dark-blue coats hanging almost to their ankles: now, instead of the straw hats, they wore berets. Groups of older boys from the school had joined them; they stood on the pavements around the city centre, in front of the windows of the large hotel, leaning against the walls, one leg hitched up, or feet astride, hands in pockets, their caps pushed carelessly to the backs of their heads.

The bus was full. He sat upstairs. The windows, all closed, had begun to steam up. Fields flew past; figures rose; others came up the narrow stairs beside him. When he reached the village he could scarcely stand.

The air was cold. The sun had gone. He walked through the narrow streets with a strange feeling of physical suspension.

‘The war’ll be over before another year is out. Don’t have any doubts of that,’ his father said.

He sat with Mr Reagan in the porch, their backs to the kitchen, the afternoon shadows spread out before them.

They’d sat there for an hour, Mr Reagan’s voice drifting in, faintly, to where Colin sat at the kitchen table; occasionally Mr Reagan glanced back to make some remark, half-laughing, nodding his head: ‘There’s an object lesson to us all: there’s a boy who’s not going to be fastened up for long. There’s a boy with prospects, Harry,’ his father laughing and glancing in, half-serious,
to watch him at his work. ‘Go in the front room if you want to concentrate,’ he told him and Colin, glancing up, had shaken his head, reluctant at times like this, when his mother was out, as on this occasion, visiting her parents, to lock himself up in some room of the house.

‘Once it is over you’ll see things change,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘There’ll be none of this living like paupers, fastened up beneath a stone, scratting a living like a rat in a hole.’

‘Nay, I suppose things won’t change much,’ his father said, glancing into the kitchen once again, at the worn coverings on the floor, at the dilapidated furniture. ‘Things were hard enough afore the war, I don’t think they’ll get much easier after.’

A certain quietness had come over his father during the previous year; he no longer read the newspapers as avidly as before, nor silenced the family so vehemently to hear each bulletin on the wireless. It was as if some issue with which he was passionately concerned had been decided, and he was now looking round for other things to fight; as if the emotions which engaged him when he read a paper, or listened on the wireless to the account of a battle, of miles advanced, of enemy equipment taken, were looking for some other exploit, some other turmoil, to focus on. His main part-time duty now was that of warden; the house was the principal fire-point for the street: a pump, brass-coloured and with a wooden handle, was stored with a length of narrow hosepipe in the cupboard beneath the stairs. A large, decaying house, adjacent to the colliery yard, had been taken over as an air-raid post, two rooms made habitable, and groups of men worked shifts, making tea, sleeping there, or leaning up against the walls outside, smoking and gazing vacantly to the colliery yard, keeping a lookout whenever the sirens went. There were few raids now on the surrounding towns; one night two planes had bombed the town and Colin on his way to school the following morning had seen from the bus window a house with its outside walls peeled off standing amidst a pile of rubble.

‘There’ll be no more unemployment,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘It’ll not be like the last time. Officers selling laces: no jobs to go to, and no homes to go to, too.’

His braces showed whenever he leaned forward; he’d come without his jacket but on top of his waistcoat had put on a knitted
cardigan. Small loops were attached to each end of the braces, the tops of his underpants showing underneath.

‘I can’t see as there’ll be much difference,’ his father said. ‘Those that had the money afore have still got it, and those that haven’t it are still without.’

‘Oh, there’ll be a big shake-up when this is over,’ Mr Reagan said. He was smoking a pipe, a recent acquisition, and the smell of it drifted into the back of the room. The films of smoke, like gossamer, hung in the air outside the door. ‘There’s been too many killed, and too many countries affected for it to be the same as it was before.’

‘Aye, I suppose we’ll see one or two improvements,’ his father said, sighing, and with no conviction in his voice at all.

There were steps across the yard.

Mrs Shaw came into view.

‘And what problems of the world have you been straightening out?’ she said. ‘What shape is it in now, after your cogitations?’

‘Oh, we’ve rounded it up, Mrs Shaw,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Taken off the edges.’

‘Nay, well, I didn’t know we had any,’ Mrs Shaw said.

‘You can be sure it’s in better shape, any road,’ his father said. ‘Two words from Reagan over any problem and you mu’n wonder where it wa’ afore he came.’

‘Oh, now, I don’t claim any great philosophical virtues, Harry,’ Mr Reagan said, standing to Mrs Shaw at first with something of a bow. The ends of his braces with their little white tapes had re-appeared. ‘I have but the general view of things, namely that things themselves are getting better.’

‘Well, they couldn’t get worse,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘Oh, now, what a doleful yard we have this evening,’ Mr Reagan said. Having offered his seat in the porch to Mrs Shaw, and having seen it gracefully refused, he sat down again, hitching up the knees of his pin-stripe trousers. ‘Spring on its way, if I’m not mistaken, when a young man’s fancy turns to love. And a young woman’s, too, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘I don’t notice any young men round here. Nor young women come to that,’ Mrs Shaw had said. She gave a scream which broke into a laugh. ‘And what do you think, Mrs Bletchley?’ she’d called across.

Mrs Bletchley’s voice came floating back.

‘Oh, I’d keep my distance from those two romancers, Mrs Shaw. Especially when they gang together.’

‘Now, would we gang together, ladies?’ Mr Reagan said. He’d risen from the step again, this time presumably to bow to Mrs Bletchley, who remained hidden beyond the angle of the door. ‘In the presence of two such charming members of the opposite sex would a man like myself, or a man like Mr Saville, think, even if we were overwhelmed entirely, of ganging up? Each man for himself in this world, Mrs Bletchley.’

‘Oh, now, just listen to him,’ Mrs Bletchley said, her voice, like Mrs Shaw’s, breaking into a scream and then, less violently, a laugh. ‘He’s got a tongue like a spoon of sugar. All sorts of things go past before you’ve even noticed. It’s a good job he lives two doors away, and not next door,’ she added, ‘or I think we’d have some trouble.’

‘Would I let a brick wall, let alone a window or a door, come between me and the ones that I admire, Mrs Bletchley?’ Mr Reagan said.

Both women had laughed again; a high-pitched wail came beseechingly from either side of the open door.

‘Just listen to the man,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘Oh, beauty can be admired from a distance, over any number of years, Mrs Bletchley,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘The most carefree of us have passions that it might astonish the closest of our friends to hear. Isn’t that so, Harry?’ Reagan added.

‘Nay,
he
mu’n have summat
he
never confesses to,’ his father said, glancing uneasily behind, as if this aspect of Mr Reagan’s neighbourly existence wasn’t one he was particularly anxious for Colin to hear.

‘Ah, what secrets the most inconspicuous of us harbour in our bosoms, Mrs Bletchley,’ Mr Reagan added, his large head turning casually from one side to the other, his thin neck reddening as if in measure of the feelings that the sight of these two women had suddenly inspired. ‘Might each one go about his labour, but he doesn’t at some point lift his head and glimpse in some distant door or window a head, a face, a pretty hand or ear, that catches a secret fancy, Mrs Bletchley. Who’s to say, now, whose pretty hand or whose pretty ear, whose face or figure,
etcetera, is not the one to inspire him; and who’s to say who the person is who keeps such longings wrapped secretly up inside his bosom?’

‘More sugar, more sugar,’ Mrs Bletchley said, breaking into a laugh, if anything, even wilder.

‘If I were a few years younger I might very well be leaping yon wooden fence and giving your heart a little flutter,’ Mr Reagan said, half-rising from the steps.

‘Mr Reagan,’ Mrs Bletchley said, ‘it’s a good job Mr Shaw isn’t here or Mr Bletchley, now,’ she added.

‘Who’s to say what he might get up to if there wasn’t someone to keep an eye on him,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

The two women’s laughter came once more, alternately screeching, from either side of the open door.

‘If Mr Bletchley were here,’ Mr Reagan said, ‘wouldn’t I be the one to remind him of what a treasure he’s left behind. While he fights for King and Country, would I, now, be the one to make demands upon his wife.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you might do, if I gave you even half a chance,’ Mrs Bletchley said, her voice raised higher now beyond the door and fading off into another laugh.

‘Is that an invitation or merely a speculation, Mrs Bletchley?’ Mr Reagan asked. He stood up on the step, his arms poised as if he’d leap the fence from where he was standing.

‘Oh,’ Mrs Bletchley said and gave a screech, which was immediately echoed from the other side.

‘Restrain me, Harry. Restrain me,’ Mr Reagan said, putting his hand down now to his father’s shoulder. ‘But the woman’s a provocation, I haven’t a doubt.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Bletchley said again, her voice sounding farther from the door.