The Broken Chariot (44 page)

A laugh from Deborah sounded from the open door of the kitchen, where they were cutting and scraping at vegetables. Maud said something he couldn't make out, and both laughters duetted into the air.

Every inch of gutter around the structure was clogged with seeds and leaves, embedded in black mud, and the only way to clear it was by trawling four fingers along the trough and throwing the stinking mess overboard whenever the ridge became too high. He rammed stiff wire through the pipes to make certain the rain would be carried away instead of streaming down the walls and rotting the wood. Rose bush tendrils between the drain and glass edge of the roof were clipped and pulled out. He unthreaded each growth and pushed them back in spite of their aggressive thorns.

In a few days he would drive to Woking with Deborah and meet her parents. She hoped he would behave, and he thought he might be able to. ‘You'd better,' she said. There had been something more than usually stimulating, making love in his own house, and her cries were those of a shot fox when she came. He poured into her almost at the same time, on imagining her travails of giving birth.

His hand slipped, he grabbed a lower shoot but it was dead, came away with his weight. But it slowed his fall, and he landed without harm, persuading him to let only neutral matters go through his mind.

The branches were high above the hut, clear sky between, where they could do no damage. With a long-handled broom he swept the remaining seeds and leaves from the roof so that the sun would light through. Mindless though useful work was a tonic, and he was happy. The tree, cut back and rendered harmless, would only grow upwards. Its structure was neat and simplified, superfluous baggage gone, and a soft wind as of appreciation played among the remaining leaves. His mother would be happy too, though no doubt she'd blub a little at memories of Hugh when he brought her out to show what had been done.

Rounding off the job as a real workman should, he swept the inside tiles, and drew a bucket of water from the garden tap to mop them and enhance their black and whiteness. A table and two chairs streaked with green mould had to be wiped clean with a damp rag. The effort of his care and attention would impress because it was a mark of love, something to make up for not having been much of a son during most of his life.

He climbed the tree for a view of his work. The rectangular summerhouse, with its wide windows from waist to roof, stood in free space, renovated and accessible, a place complete. He got down to look across from the spot on which he had made his confession to Deborah. Instead of threatening, the tree stood guard, would grow tall and orderly, unencumbered by any rival encroacher.

Deborah called that coffee was ready. So was he. The work was finished. Out of something had come something more, a neutral structure for him, an edifice of memories for his mother. Next year the same would need to be done, and the year after that, for as many times as were thought necessary. He would live here with Deborah and the children when Maud was gone, so the maintenance would continue for as long as the summerhouse did not crumble, or for as long as he stayed alive.

A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight

Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.

So, like all his schoolmates, he left school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.

The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.

In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosis—only discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.

It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped living—there was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviews—and scripts for the films of his first two books,
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
and
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
, and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.

Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alan's books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.

Time passed … the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.… Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range extended. I usually went with him, and as by then I also was having work published, sometimes the invitation was to me, and he would assume the role of consort.

Looking back, I realize what a wonderful life we had then. But a year or two before his eightieth birthday, Alan told me he was not feeling well. It was always hard to persuade him to see the doctor; this time he suggested it himself. There were many hospital appointments for investigations and tests—the National Health Service was as excellent and thorough as ever—and a few weeks later the diagnosis came: There was a cancer at the base of his tongue. His suspicions were confirmed. Although he had continued to smoke his pipe (and the occasional cigar), now he stopped at once. The tragic program of treatments started, and the inevitable oscillations between hope and despair. Twice it seemed that he was cured; then it all began again. In April 2010, not long after his eighty-second birthday, Alan died. We had hoped he could die at home, but he needed the facilities of a good hospital. Months later, on a cupboard shelf in his study, I found the manuscript of
Moggerhanger
.

Sillitoe in Butterworth, Malaya, during his time in the RAF.

Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight shared their first home together, “Le Nid”, while living in Menton, France, 1952.

Sillitoe in Camden Town in 1958, soon after the publication of
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
.

Sillitoe at his desk in his country house in Wittersham, Kent, 1969.