Saville (64 page)

‘I’ll tell you your trouble,’ his father said when he got back in the house. ‘Nothing to occupy you. And when you do get started you’ll find you’ve hardly anything to do. Teaching, you know,’ he added to his mother, ‘he can do it out of the back of his hand.’

‘It’s you who wanted me to go in for it,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t want you doing my job,’ his father said. Small and
faded, dressed in his underpants and shirt, he sat smoking, half-crouched on his chair, in front of the fire.

‘Why dismiss it, if it’s something you wanted me to do?’ he said.

‘Nay, it
is
something I wanted you to do,’ his father said again. ‘But it can’t stop me, can it, from saying it’s easy.’

‘But what am I supposed to make of that?’ he said, looking to his mother. She was standing at the sink, stooped, her hands slowly plying in the water, washing pots. ‘The job I end up with you say you despise.’

‘Nay, I don’t despise it,’ his father said, slowly, looking round. ‘There’s only muck attached to my job,’ he added. ‘Muck, and more muck, and sweat, and cursing, the like of which you never heard. We educated you for your job. We got you out of this.’

‘Why dismiss it?’ he said again. ‘What pride can I have in it if it’s something you despise?’

‘Nay, I don’t despise it. I’ve said I don’t despise it,’ his father said, getting to his feet and clearing some small, wooden, block-like toys from in front of the fire. ‘I can’t despise anybody who gets out of that colliery, I can tell you that.’

They were silent for a while. His mother washed the pots slowly in the corner, setting them on the board to dry. Colin took the cloth.

‘I mean, I can’t have anything against it, can I?’ his father suddenly added, speaking directly to his mother. He was standing over the fire, looking for an ash-tray to stub out his cigarette. Finally he flicked the ash into the fire and put the stub on the mantelpiece. ‘He’ll be earning as much as I do. And that’s after thirty years or longer, working down a pit.’

His mother didn’t answer. Her back bowed, she remained working at the sink.

‘I mean, if there’s one man that can appreciate a job like that, with two months’ holidays or longer, no shifts, no nights, no muck, no sweating out your guts when you’re over fifty, a nice pension when it’s over, writing poetry at week-ends or on an evening, and earning as much as a coal-miner does before he’s even started, then I reckon that man, you know, is me. If they want anybody to recommend school-teaching as a life, they’ve
only to come to me: I’ll have them all school-teachers before you can say Jack Robin. By God, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life it’s that only a bloody fool would do the sort of work that I do. Only somebody who’s mentally deficient.’

His mother turned from the sink.

‘I think I’ll go and lie down,’ she said.

‘What?’ His father turned from the fire; he’d just come down from the bed himself.

‘I think I’ll go up,’ she said.

Her face was ashen, her eyes dark, shadowed beneath the glasses.

‘Is anything the matter?’ his father said.

‘No. Nothing.’ She shook her head.

She walked past Colin to the stairs.

‘Nay, if there’s something the matter,’ his father said, ‘we can send Stevie for the doctor.’

‘There’s nothing,’ his mother said and a moment later came the sound of her feet as she mounted slowly to the landing. A few seconds after that the bed creaked; his father glanced across.

‘I don’t know why you’ve got to get her worked up,’ he said.

‘I thought you started it,’ Colin said.

‘Bringing these arguments into the house,’ his father said. ‘And going round with a face as long as this. If Margaret’s gone off with Stafford you’ve only yourself to blame.’

‘How am I to blame?’ he said.

‘Stuck here. Stuck writing. He gets out and does things. He doesn’t sit still.’

‘I don’t sit still,’ he said.

‘Don’t you?’ his father said, almost sulkily now. ‘What do you call this?’

‘I stay here because I have to support you.’

‘Support me?’

‘Support us,’ he said. ‘Support the family.’

‘Why support us?’

‘Because you can’t manage’, he said, ‘without.’

His father glanced away.

‘In any case, do you really think Margaret’s like that? From what you know of her?’ he added.

‘Nay, a woman takes no reckoning,’ his father said, yet quietly now. He looked up slowly towards the ceiling. ‘I better go up and see how she is.’

He heard their voices a little later from the room at the front. When his father came down he’d put on his trousers; he stood fidgeting by the fire for a moment, looking for a cigarette. Finally he picked up the stub he’d left on the mantelshelf. He stooped to the fire for a coal to light it, wincing then as he held it to his face.

‘She’s going to rest up there,’ he said. ‘I think she’ll be all right. She takes too much on herself, you know. If you could just do one or two things about the house. Though she’s a difficult woman to help, I can tell you that.’

His father went to work in the afternoon. After Colin had washed up the dinner pots he took his mother up a cup of tea. She was still sleeping, her round face turned from the curtained window, couched to the pillow, the blankets mounded round her head.

He put the cup down and went to the door; as he pulled it to, however, he heard her stir and a moment later her voice had called.

‘Is that you, then, love?’

He put his head back round the door.

‘I’ve just brought up some tea,’ he said. ‘Would you like some dinner as well?’

She eased herself slowly from the blanket. ‘Has your father gone to work?’ she said.

‘Half an hour ago,’ he said.

‘Did he have some dinner?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I had some meat for him. I hope he got it.’

‘Yes.’

He stood waiting by the bed. His mother hadn’t touched the tea.

‘Is there anything else you want?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right.’

She came down later, when he was clearing the kitchen.

She began looking around the room, about to set to work, going to the sink as if to go back to the washing-up.

‘I’ve cleared everything away,’ he said.

‘There’s your dad’s pit clothes I’ve got to wash for tomorrow,’ she said.

‘I’ll do them,’ he said.

‘And where’s Steven and Richard?’ she said, going to the window.

‘They’re out,’ he said.

‘Did they have their dinner?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

She took the clothes from him.

‘I’ll wash them. I’ll wash them in the sink,’ she said, setting a pan against the fire. ‘They need doing thoroughly, otherwise the dirt just clogs. And what you leave in’, she added, ‘you can never get put.’

He stood by the fireplace himself, watching her work.

‘Has Margaret been at all?’ she said.

He shook his head.

‘Nay, love, no one’s worth suffering over. Not at your age. Not at this time of your life,’ she said. She looked up slowly from the sink. She was rinsing the clothes in cold water from the tap. ‘All that your father said you mustn’t take to heart. He’s just had a hard life, that’s all. He’s doing work that a young man of thirty should be doing. He’s bound to feel embittered.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘He’s just grieved that he never had the same chance himself. He doesn’t mean to take anything from what you’ve done.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Ever since you were a baby you’ve kept things to yourself.’

She waited, her hands poised in the bowl, her head bowed to the sink.

‘I never thought I’d been secretive,’ he said.

‘Not secretive.’ She tried to smile, her face shadowed in the corner of the room. ‘I mean the things you feel you can never express. People can take advantage of that at times.’

‘Oh, I’ve never been aware of it.’

‘No,’ she said slowly, and looked back to the sink. ‘It means you’ll have to take hard knocks and never be able to show to other people what you feel.’

‘Oh, I’m not sure of that,’ he said and added lightly, ‘Here, let
me wash the shirts. You sit down for a bit. You can easily tell me if I’m not doing them right.’

She sat at the table. It reminded him of the time they had visited her parents, the same air of exhaustion, some senseless defeat by life, like flies dying in a corner.

‘Margaret’s still very young, you know. She doesn’t know her own mind yet. It’s not really fair’, she added, ‘to force her.’

‘Oh, I haven’t forced her to anything, Mother,’ he said.

‘No, but you’ve been very close to her,’ she said. ‘She’s never had a chance to look at anyone else. You’ve made big demands on her in a way she’s not aware. She’s bound to resist it. And with someone like Neville. Well, he has a lot of glamour, for one thing, I suppose.’

‘Oh, I don’t think things are as black as that,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose they aren’t. Not really.’

She came to the house that afternoon. At first he thought she must have come on the bus, then he realized that none could have come to the village from the direction of the town for at least the past half hour, and imagined then she must have been dropped off at the end of the street by Stafford.

His mother, after offering to make a cup of tea, went out of the kitchen, closing the door.

Margaret sat at the table, the bunch of flowers she’d brought before her, her coat folded on a chair. Colin finally took the kettle from the fire, assuming his mother wasn’t coming back, and made some tea.

She scarcely drank it, the cup before her, talking lightly now about her holiday, the French coast, the crossing to Dieppe, the friend’s house she’d stayed at.

He found a jug for the flowers and put them in.

‘Is Stafford still about?’ he said as he set the flowers back on the table.

‘I think he went back yesterday,’ she said.

‘How did you get here?’ he said.

‘I came on the bus.’ She glanced across, fingering the cup. ‘I walked around for a bit as a matter of fact.’

‘In the village?’

‘I went up near the church.’

He stood at the table, gazing down at her slight figure, the thin
features tanned with the sun, the delicate hands as they traced a pattern now on the edge of the cup.

‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

He went through to the passage. His mother was sitting in the room at the front, upright, her shoulders straight, gazing out to the street, the light reflecting from her glasses.

‘We’re just going out for a walk,’ he said.

‘All right,’ she said, distantly now, suddenly remote.

‘I’ve made some tea.’

‘All right,’ she said again.

‘Will you be all right on your own for a bit?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You go out, love.’

Margaret was waiting in the door. They walked across the backs.

‘People really are poor here, aren’t they?’ she said, looking in the open doors.

Only when seeing it with her eyes did he notice the broken doors, the blackened inside walls, the smears of grease and dirt around the switches, the latches, the bare tracts of earth and ash, the crumbling brickwork, the rusted drains and pipes. Periodically, in the past, attempts had been made to renovate the houses, areas of new brick had been inserted, new mortar, a concrete path laid down; in a matter of weeks the soot and smoke had absorbed them within the texture of the old.

‘It’s good of you to be able to come at all,’ he said. He took her hand; they went down the alleyway to the street outside.

They walked in silence then, turning along the road that led past the Dell, past the deserted colliery on the slope the other side, then crossing the railway in its cutting. The station was visible at its farthest end.

Behind them, smoke swirled down from the colliery, filtering out in a broad, thin cloud across the fields. The day was grey, the sky heavy.

They turned along a path that led from the road to a tract of woodland. It stretched away to their right, the ground slowly rising, the foot of the slope marked by a broad declivity in the bed of which lay a shallow lake. Odd pine trees grew from the sandy shore, one end of the lake blocked by a stone parapet, its
other petering out into marsh and swamp. Cattle stood knee deep along the edge of the water.

They walked along the stone parapet which formed a wall. Shoals of tiny fish weaved amongst the strands of weed and debris floating on the surface. Beyond, the path led up towards the wood.

A fire was burning in a clearing. A thin trail of blue smoke drifted off from a pile of blackened wood. A log, half-hollowed out by an axe, lay beside it.

Colin crouched by the fire. He blew the embers. Soon flames licked up amongst the pieces of wood.

Margaret sat on the log. She gazed off, vacantly, between the trees. The thin, light-grey patch of water showed up between the branches. From some way off, in the cutting, came the panting of an engine and somewhere, closer, at the top of the wood, the barking of a dog.

‘Will you be seeing Stafford again?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. She still gazed off towards the lake.

He put fresh pieces of wood on the fire.

‘Is he still going overseas?’ he said.

‘He doesn’t think so now.’

‘Even then, I suppose it’ll be difficult seeing him,’ he said.

‘I suppose it might be.’ She waited, looking down towards the fire. ‘He might get a posting near to the university.’

‘I suppose that would solve the problem, then.’

‘Yes,’ she said, gazing now directly at the flames. They flicked up around the pieces of wood, fresh smoke trailing off amongst the trees.

He got up slowly and for a moment stood gazing down at the fire himself.

‘I’m sorry it’s happened like this,’ she said.

‘You can’t help these things happening,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, and added, ‘I wouldn’t have believed it though, before.’

‘If you go back now you’ll be in time for the bus,’ he said.

She got up from the log.

They walked separately between the trees.

‘Did you write to Stafford while you were away?’ he said.