Saville (72 page)

‘In that case, you’re just confirming them in their roles,’ he said.

‘What rolls? Bread rolls?’

‘Encouraging them to submit to a situation which you, if you were in their place, wouldn’t tolerate at all.’

‘Nay, I wasn’t a duffer,’ the headmaster said. ‘Not that I’ve ought against duffers, but it’s no good teaching them the significance of higher mathematics or the beauties of Shakespeare if they can’t even spell margarine,’ he added.

‘What are the beauties of Shakespeare?’ he said.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had the time. Unlike you, I’ve been concerned with practicalities.’ He paused. ‘You’ll be saying next I’ve done no good.’

‘I’d like to think you’d done some good,’ he said.

‘Half the children I have here are the children of parents I’ve taught myself. More than half, three-quarters,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t mean you’ve done them any good,’ he said.

‘Ask them. You ask them. Would they send their children here if it wasn’t any good?’

‘But they’ve nowhere else to send them,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t say their incomes quite rose to the level of a private education.’

‘Tha’s too clever for your britches,’ the headmaster said. He got up from his desk once more: he went to the window and gazed out at the flowerless flower-beds. ‘You’ll give me no choice if tha goes on playing the music,’ he added.

‘I think I’ll get a longer wire and play it in the corridor,’ he said.

‘What are you, Saville? A communist?’ He turned from the window and advanced quickly across the room. He stood directly over him so that Colin, as if threatened, slowly got up.

‘Yes,’ he said.

Corcoran gazed at him in disbelief: the redness of his face had faded to a deathly pallor. ‘Communists don’t play music. They’re utilitarians like me,’ he said. ‘Only, with renegades like you, they put you up against a wall. If you were a communist,’ he added, ‘you wouldn’t be teaching here.’

‘Where would I be teaching?’ he said.

‘Nay, thy’d be in some crack-pot school. Not stuck in a mining village, not stuck in a place where, if they knew you were a communist, they’d kick you up the arse to the village limits.’

‘There’s a communist on the local miners’ union,’ he said.

‘Miners’ union? Nobody belongs to a union here. There’s not one miner you could tell me who’s been to a union meeting in twenty-five years. They leave it to all these maniacs like you, communists who think they’ve got a bit of power without realizing that that conservative, apathetic body of supporters are using
them
: they use people like you, the working classes, to do their canvassing and haranguing for them. Colliery-workers are the most conservative body of people thy can possibly imagine. I
ought to know, I’ve lived here fifty year: my father was a pit-man, and my brother is one, too. I’d have been down there meself, if I hadn’t have had the brains, and so would you. I’ll tell you: all they’re interested in isn’t changing society, but getting more money, and they’ll use a communist trade-union official, or King Kong if they want to, if they think he’ll do it for them.’

Colin stood back across the room: the headmaster, thumping one fist against his hand, paced up and down: it was as if, for a moment, he’d been forgotten.

‘Tha’s idealistic, like all of us were. Thy wants to change the world when the world itself doesn’t want a change: all it wants is bread and butter, preferably before anybody else, but
with
anybody else so long as it gets it.
Lower
the wages round here and you’d see a difference: put them up a bit each year and you’ll keep everything as it is. It’s why these communists never cotton on; if they kept the miners’ claims lower they’d have a chance: you’d see a revolution tomorrow morning. As it is, the silly buggers are sentimentalists like you, think because they’re working-men they live in the same conditions as they do in Russia. Why, a
tramp
is better off here than he is in any other country you mu’n care to mention. We’ve freedom here, tha knows. Freedom to do nought about ought if nobody wants to, and, if you want to know the truth, thank God that most of them don’t.’

‘You’re one of them,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You’re above it, then?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I know it could be different.’

‘Different to what?’

‘That people could be different. That the children could be different.’

‘Nay, they’ll still have to work down a pit,’ he said. ‘They’ll still have to work in a mill: they’ll still have to get married because they can’t control theirse’ns. They’ll still have to make do with nearly nought: what difference will music make, or poetry, or these books you’re alus on about? Tha’ll have ’em so refined they won’t want to work in a pit at all.’

‘Maybe that’s all to the good,’ he said.

‘Aye.
Thy
’d say that stuck in front of an empty fire, or teaching in a frozen school. I’ve seen all thy idealists, you know, before: put a bit of hardship in the way and they’re up top screaming before anybody else.’

‘I think things can be changed,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should all take it in turn to work down a pit.’

‘In turn?’

‘Three months down a year wouldn’t do you any harm. It wouldn’t do anybody any harm, if it comes to that. It’d probably do us all a lot of good.’

‘I can see thy daftness growing every minute: you’ll have us out theer sweeping the bloody street up next.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not? Because I’m trained and qualified to do something better. These skills don’t come out of the air, tha knows.’

‘It’s not difficult, teaching,’ he said. ‘You’d probably even do it better after three months sweeping the street.’ He looked out of the window now himself. ‘It could do with sweeping, in any case,’ he added.

‘I haven’t got the time, even if you have, to hold a philosophical discussion,’ the headmaster said returning briskly to his desk.

‘If you can’t hold it in a school where can you hold it?’ he said. ‘And if you can’t hold it with the head of a pedagogical institution, whom can you hold it with?’ he added.

‘Does that music go, or you?’

‘That’s for you to decide,’ he said.

‘Then you go, I’m afraid,’ he added. ‘Not that I’m not sorry. The football team’s improved by leaps and bounds since you came to the school. Unfortunately, life isn’t made up of bloody football. You’ll have two months’ notice from today and leave at the end of the term. I’ll notify the divisional office.’

‘What about a testimonial?’ he said.

‘For what?’

‘For another job.’

‘Art thy intending on remaining in teaching, then?’ He gazed up at him directly.

‘That’s all I’ve been trained to do,’ he said.

‘Nay, thy’ll not get a job with thy ideas,’ he said. ‘I’m a
liberal headmaster. Wait till thy comes across one with a few ideas of his own. Thy gramophone and record’ll be out of the window.’ He tapped his teeth with the end of a pen. ‘I’ll write you a testimonial,’ he added. ‘I’ll put “independence of ideas not normally encountered in our profession” and they can make on that whatever they want.’

‘I’ll be sorry to leave on the whole,’ he said.

‘I’ll put it around and they can buy you a present.’

‘Oh, I don’t really want a present,’ he said.

‘Nay, I don’t hold any enmity,’ the headmaster said. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a job to do. I’ve done it, one road or another, for forty years. Nobody’s complained, as far as I reckon. Based on that experience, I’d say you were wrong.’

A bell rang at the end of an adjoining corridor.

‘I’ll get back to the class.’

‘That’s right.’ The headmaster returned to the papers on his desk and, as he read them, got out a pipe. ‘By the way.’ He raised his head. ‘Thy’ll leave thy coffee money before tha leaves. We’ve had one or two leave who’ve forgotten that: it comes out of petty-cash, and the divisional office, I can tell you, have me account for every penny. They shit hot bricks if I’m a halfpenny out.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll see to that.’

‘Right,’ the headmaster said and, flushing at Colin’s smile, he lit his pipe.

‘How was that?’ she said.

‘All right.’

‘You’re hard to please.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘
I
think so. Perhaps others wouldn’t.’

It was a Saturday afternoon: they lay in the double-bed: her sister and brother-in-law were out.

‘In any case,’ she said, ‘they want me to leave.’

‘Why?’

‘They don’t like me bringing a man to the house.’

‘I’m not a man,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘You’re more a boy.’

‘I mean’, he said, ‘not any man.’

‘If I want that freedom they think I should take a place of my own.’

‘Will you?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I shall.’

A few days previously a man had come up to him in the street.

He had asked him his name, standing directly before him on the pavement; finally, having confirmed who Colin was, he had handed him a letter.

Inside the envelope across which his name had been scrawled in capital letters was a note which said, again in capital letters,
‘WOULD YOU LEAVE MY WIFE ALONE?’

He’d shown it to her when he’d arrived that afternoon.

She’d gazed at it for quite some time.

‘I suppose it must be Derek,’ she said. ‘It looks like Derek.’ She’d set the paper down. ‘Did the man say anything at all?’ she added.

‘Just asked my name and gave me the letter.’

Now she said, as she got up from the bed, ‘I suppose I ought to, in any case. Derek’s not above coming here, if he thinks it suits him.’

‘Why don’t you go back to him?’ he said.

‘You don’t know the Waltons. You don’t know
him
. That family is all-consuming. If he couldn’t break free, how could I? There are so many of them and their interests are so closely related.’

He watched her dress; there was a certain neatness in her movements, self-enclosed, as if she were unaware of dressing in the presence of someone else: she made no attempt to conceal herself.

‘You ought to be getting up yourself. They’ll probably be back within an hour.’

‘Do they know you use the bed?’ he said.

‘I doubt it.’

‘Haven’t you any qualms?’

‘Not really.’

‘Has it some significance? It being your sister’s bed?’

‘Why?’

‘I wondered.’

She gazed up at him, surprised.

‘We get on very well.’

‘Is she younger or older?’

‘Older.’

They went through to her room: it looked out to the fields at the back of the house. As it was, there was a certain strangeness in being in a family house yet having no relationship to the family. When she heard her sister’s return, the drone of the car in the drive outside, she went down to meet her.

As she came back up he could hear her voice: ‘Oh, Colin’s here,’ and, slightly lower, ‘I thought I’d warn you.’

He couldn’t hear the sister’s response, only the duller tone of the husband.

She brought up some tea; they sat on the single bed.

‘Why don’t we go down and drink it?’ he said.

‘Oh, Maureen doesn’t approve of this at all,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in trying to force it.’

They went out a little later; they walked in the Park. A certain listlessness came over him now whenever he went out with her. Initially he had liked it: liked it, above all, that she was a married woman. His earlier hallucination had never returned and he’d never attempted to explain it; a fortnight had passed before he’d gone back to see her and it was as if that first abortive attempt to sleep in the sister’s bed had never occurred. Callow avoided him at school. Invariably, most evenings, he rode into town on the back of Stephens’s bike and either went directly to Elizabeth’s sister’s house or met her by arrangement at some place close to the city centre or her father’s shop.

Frequently they walked in the fields, and lay together beneath the hedges.

‘Is Derek looking for evidence, do you think?’ he said.

‘For what?’

They walked by the pond; they paused opposite the statue. She’d brought some bread: she threw it to the ducks.

‘A divorce.’

‘Don’t you want to be cited?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I hadn’t thought.’

‘Don’t worry. You’ve arrived on the scene too late.’

Yet there was a hardness in her voice: he didn’t know whether it was to do with him or her husband.

She had slender arms, her skin pale, glowing, almost luminescent. It was a quality he’d never seen in anyone before. Some days when he met her her cheeks would glow; other days there was a peculiar dullness, or the strange, almost languid luminescence of the skin.

‘Since you’re an anarchist, I didn’t think you’d mind. Flouting convention, I mean,’ she said.

‘Am I an anarchist?’ he said. He’d told her already, the day it had happened, that he’d been fired from the school. She’d seemed relieved: she was feeling guilty, he thought, about Callow.

‘Well, you’re not a communist,’ she said. ‘Whatever you told your Mr Corcoran.’ And a moment later, she added, ‘You’re more a Calvinist,’ and when he laughed she said, ‘Well, aren’t you? What allegiance have you got? I’d say you were a medievalist, a feudalist.’

She threw the last pieces of bread to the ducks.

‘You make it sound’, he said, ‘like a crime.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘it probably is.’

‘I’d have thought attitudes like that came easily to hand. Aren’t you, after all,’ he added, ‘much the same?’

‘I doubt it,’ she said. ‘I’ve had my way, you see, made for me. You’ve got to make yours.’ And a moment later, glancing up at him, she added, ‘In whatever way you can.’

A man walked behind them, his hands in his pockets: when they’d paused to feed the ducks he’d paused as well, gazing at the birds, smiling when Elizabeth looked, and nodding his head.

Now, as they continued along the path, he followed them once more.

The mocking, half-affected look came back to her eyes. She watched him closely; her arm in his.

‘In the end, what the individual achieves is for the benefit of everyone,’ he said.