The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

by Alan Sillitoe

  She stopped shouting and thumping the table for a minute, and then the waterworks began. Fair would you say it was-she sobbed her socks off--after all I've struggled and sweated, getting you up for school every morning when you was little and sitting you down to porridge and bacon before you went out into the snow with your topcoat on, which was more than any of the other little rag-bags in the yard wore because their dads and mams boozed the dole money--(she said this, she really did, because I was listening from a place where I couldn't help but hear it--and I'll swear blind our dad never boozed a penny of his dole money and we were still clambed half to death on it...) And I think of all the times when you was badly and I fetched the doctor, she went on screaming. Think of it. But I suppose you're too self-pinnyated to think, which is what my spoiling's done for you, aren't you? Eh?

  The tears stopped. I think you might have had the common decency to tell me you wanted to get married and had started courting. She didn't know how he'd managed it, that she didn't, especially when she'd kept her eyes on him so well. I shouldn't have let you go twice a week to that Co-op youth club of yourn, she shouted, suddenly realizing where he'd seen his chance. That was it. By God it was, that was it. And you telling me you was playing draughts and listening to blokes talk politics! Politics! That's what they called it, was it? First thing I knew. They called it summat else in my day, and it worn't such a pretty name, either. Ay, by God. And now you've got the cheek to stand there, still with your coat on, not even offering to drop all this married business. (She hadn't given him the chance to.) Why, Jim, how could you think about getting married (tap on again) when I've been so good to you? My poor lad, hasn't even realized what it's cost me and how I've worked to keep us together all these years, ever since your poor dad died. But I'll tell you one thing, my lad (tap off, sharp, and the big finger wagging), you'd better bring her to me and let me see her, and if she ain't up to much, yer can let her go and look for somebody else, if she still feels inclined.

  By God, I was all of a tremble myself when I climbed down from my perch, though I wouldn't have took it like Jim did, but would have bashed her between the eyes and slung my hook there and then. Jim was earning good money and could have gone anywhere in the country, the bloody fool.

  I suppose you'll be wondering how everybody in the yard knew all about what went on in Jim's house that night, and how it is that I'm able to tell word for word what Jim's mam said to him. Well, this is how it was: with Jim's house being so near the factory there's a ledge between the factory roof and his scullery window, the thickness of a double-brick wall, and I was thin-rapped enough to squeeze myself along this and listen-in. The scullery window was open, and so was the scullery door that led to the kitchen, so I heard all as went on. And nobody in the house twigged it either. I found this place out when I was eight, when I used to go monkey-climbing all over the buildings in our yard. It'd 'ave been dead easy to burgle the Scarfedales' house, except that there worn't anything much worth pinching, and except that the coppers would have jumped on me for it right away.

  Well, we all knew then what went off right enough, but what surprised everybody was that Jim Scarfedale meant what he said and wasn't going to let his mam play the bully and stop him from getting married. I was on my perch the second night when sucky Jim brought his young woman to face his tub-thumping mother. She'd made him promise that much, at least.

  I don't know why, but everybody in the yard expected to see some poor crumby-faced boss-eyed tart from Basford, a scruffy, half-baked, daft sort of piece that wouldn't say boo to a goose. But they got a shock. And so did I when I spied her through the scullery window. (Mrs. Scarfedale was crackers about fresh air, I will say that for her.) I'd never heard anybody talk so posh, as if she'd come straight out of an office, and it made me think that Jim hadn't lied after all when he said they'd talked about politics at the club.

  "Good evening, Mrs. Scarfedale," she said as she came in. There was a glint in her eye, and a way she had, that made me think she'd been born talking as posh as she did. I wondered what she saw in Jim, whether she'd found out, unbeknown to any of us, that he'd been left some money, or was going to win the Irish Sweepstake. But no, Jim wasn't lucky enough for either, and I suppose his mam was thinking this at the same time as I was. Nobody shook hands.

  "Sit down," Jim's mam said. She turned to the girl, and looked at her properly for the first time, hard. "I hear as you're wanting to marry my lad?"

  "That's right, Mrs. Scarfedale," she said, taking the best chair, though sitting in it stiff and not at her ease. "We're going to be married quite soon." Then she tried to be more friendly, because Jim had given her the eye, like a little dog. "My name's Phyllis Blunt. Call me Phyllis." She looked at Jim, and Jim smiled at her because she was so nice to his mam after all. He went on smiling, as if he'd been practising all the afternoon in the lavatory mirror at the place where he worked. Phyllis smiled back, as though she'd been used to smiling like that all her life. Smiles all over the place, but it didn't mean a thing.

  "What we have to do first," Jim said, putting his foot in it, though in a nice sociable way, "is get a ring."

  I could see the way things were going right enough. His mam. suddenly went blue in the face. "It ain't like that?" she brought out. "Is it?"

  She couldn't touch Phyllis with a barge-pole. "I'm not pregnant, if that's what you mean."

  Mrs. Scarfedale didn't know I was chiking, but I'll bet we both thought together: Where's the catch in it, then? though it soon dawned on me that there wasn't any catch, at least not of the sort we must have thought of. And if this had dawned on Mrs. Scarfedale at the same time as it did on me there wouldn't have been the bigger argument that night-all of them going at it worse than tigers--and perhaps poor Jim wouldn't have got married as quick as he did.

  "Well," his mother complained to our mam one day at the end of the yard about a month after they'd got spliced, "he's made his bed, and he can lie on it, even though it turns out to be a bed of nettles, which I for one told him it was bound to be."

  Yet everybody hoped Jim would be able to keep on lying on it, because they'd always had something against such domineering strugglers as Mrs. Scarfedale. Not that everybody in our yard hadn't been a struggler--and still was--one way or another. You had to be, or just lay down and die. But Jim's mam sort of carried a placard about saying: I'm a struggler but a cut above everybody else because I'm so good at it. You could tell a mile off that she was a struggler and that was what nobody liked.

  She was right about her lad though. Sod it, some people said. Jim didn't lie on his bed for long, though his wife wasn't a bad-looking piece and I can see now that he should have stayed between those sheets for longer than he did. Inside six months he was back, and we all wondered what could have gone wrong--as we saw him walking down the yard carrying a suit-case and two paper bundles, looking as miserable as sin and wearing the good suit he'd got married in to save it getting creased in the case. Well, I said to myself, I'll be back on my perch soon to find out what happened between Jim and his posh missis. Yes, we'd all been expecting him to come back to his mam if you want to know the dead honest truth, even though we hoped he wouldn't, poor lad. Because in the first three months of his being married he'd hardly come to see her at all, and most people thought from this that he'd settled down a treat and that married life must be suiting him. But I knew different, for when a bloke's just got married he comes home often to see his mam and dad--if he's happy. That's only natural. But Jim stayed away, or tried to, and that showed me that his wife was helping all she could to stop him seeing his mam. After them first three months though he came home more and more often--instead of the other way round--sometimes sleeping a night, which meant that his fights with Phyllis was getting worse and worse. That last time he came he had a bandage round his napper, a trilby hat stuck on top like a lop-sided crown.

  I got to my perch before Jim opened his back door, and I was able to see him come in and make out what sort of a welcome h
is mam gave him. She was clever, I will say that for her. If she had thought about it she could have stopped his marriage a dozen times by using a bit of craft I'll bet. There was no: "I told you so. You should have listened to me and then everything wouldn't have happened." No, she kissed him and mashed him a cup of tea, because she knew that if she played her cards right she could have him at home for good. You could see how glad she was--could hardly stop herself smiling--as she picked up his case and parcels and carried them upstairs to his room, meaning to make his bed while the kettle boiled, leaving him a blank ten-minute sit-down in peace which she knew was just what he wanted.

  But you should have seen poor old Jim, his face wickedbadly, forty-five if he looked a day, as if he'd just been let out of a Jap prisoner-of-war camp and staring--like he was crackers--at the same patch of carpet he'd stared at when he was only a kid on his pot. He'd always had a bit of a pain screwed into his mug--born that way I should think--but now it seemed as though he'd got an invisible sledgehammer hanging all the time in front of his miserable clock ready to fall against his snout. It would have made my heart bleed if I hadn't guessed he'd been such a sodding fool, getting wed with a nice tart and then making a mess of it all.

  He sat like that for a quarter of an hour, and I'll swear blind he didn't hear a single one of the homely sounds coming from upstairs, of his mam making his bed and fixing up his room, like I did. And I kept wishing she'd make haste and get done with it, but she knew what she was doing all right, dusting the mirror and polishing the pictures for her sucky lad.

  Well, she came down all of a smile (trying to hide it as best she could though) and set his bread and cheese out on the table, but he didn't touch a bite, only swigged three mugs of tea straight off while she sat in her chair and looked at him as if she, anyway, would make a good supper for him.

  "I'll tell you, mam," he began as soon as she came and set herself staring at him from the other end of the table to get him blabbing just like this. "I've been through hell in the last six months, and I never want to go through it again."

  It was like a dam breaking down. In fact the crack in a dam wall that you see on the pictures came into his forehead just like that, exactly. And once he got started there was no holding him back. "Tell me about it then, my lad"--though there was no need for her to have said this: he was trembling like a jelly, so that I was sometimes hard put to it to know what was going on. Honest, I can't tell it all in Jim's own words because it'd break my heart; and I really did feel sorry for him as he went on and on.

  "Mam," he moaned, dipping bread and butter in his tea, a thing I'm sure he'd never been able to do with his posh missis at the table, "she led me a dog's life. In fact a dog would have been better off in his kennel with an old bone to chew now and again than I was with her. It was all right at first, because you see, mam, she had some idea that a working bloke like myself was good and honest and all that sort of thing. I never knew whether she'd read this in a book or whether she'd known working blokes before that were different from me, but she might have read it because she had a few books in the house that I never looked at, and she never mentioned any other blokes in her life. She used to say that it was a treat to be able to marry and live with a bloke like me who used his bare hands for a living, because there weren't many blokes in the world, when you considered it, who did good hard labouring work. She said she'd die if ever she married a bloke as worked in an office and who crawled around his boss because he wanted to get on. So I thought it would go off all right, mam, honest I did, when she said nice things like this to me. It made the netting factory look better to me, and I didn't so much mind carrying bobbins from one machine to another. I was happy with her and I thought that she was happy with me. At first she made a bigger fuss of me than before we were married even, and when I came home at night she used to talk about politics and books and things, saying how the world was made for blokes like me and that we should run the world and not leave it to a lot of moneygrubbing capitalist bastards who didn't know any more about it than to talk like babies week after week and get nothing done that was any good to anybody. "But to tell you the truth, mam, I was too tired to talk politics after I'd done a hard day's graft, and then she started to ask questions, and would get ratty after a while when she began to see that I couldn't answer what she wanted to know. She asked me all sorts of things, about my bringing up, about my dad, about all the neighbours in the terrace, but I could never tell her much, anyway, not what she wanted to know, and that started a bit of trouble. At first she packed my lunches and dinners and there was always a nice hot tea and some clothes to change into waiting for me when I came home, but later on she wanted me to have a bath every night, and that caused a bit of trouble because I was too tired to have a bath and often I was too fagged out even to change my clothes. I wanted to sit in my overalls listening to the wireless and reading the paper in peace. Once when I was reading the paper and she was getting mad because I couldn't get my eyes off the football results she put a match to the bottom of the paper and I didn't know about it till the flames almost came into my face. I got a fright, I can tell you, because I thought we were still happy then. And she made a joke about it, and even went out to buy me another newspaper, so I thought it was all right and that it was only a rum joke she'd played. But not long after that when I'd got the racing on the wireless she said she couldn't stand the noise and that I should listen to something better, so she pulled the plug out and wouldn't put it back.

  "Yes, she did very well by me at first, that I will say, just like you, mam, but then she grew tired of it all, and started to read books all day, and there'd be nowt on the table at tea time when I came home dead to the wide except a packet of fags and a bag of toffees. She was all loving to me at first, but then she got sarcastic and said she couldn't stand the sight of me. 'Here comes the noble savage,' she called out when I came home, and used longer words I didn't know the meaning of when I asked her where my tea was. 'Get it yourself,' she said, and one day when I picked up one of her toffees from the table she threw the poker at me. I said I was hungry, but she just told me: 'Well, if you are, then crawl under the table to me and I'll give you something.' Honest, mam, I can't tell you one half of what went on, because you wouldn't want to hear it."

  (Not much, I thought. I could see her as large as life licking her chops.)

  "Tell me it all, my lad," she said. "Get it off your chest. I can see you've had a lot to put up with."

  "I did and all," he said. "The names she called me, mam. It made my hair stand on end. I never thought she was that sort, but I soon found out. She used to sit in front of the fire with nothing on, and when I said that she should get dressed in case a neighbour knocked at the door, she said she was only warming her meal-ticket that the noble savage had given her, and then she'd laugh, mam, in a way that made me so's I couldn't move. I had to get out when she carried on like that because I knew that if I stayed in she'd throw something and do damage.

  "I don't know where she is now. She packed up and took her things, saying she never wanted to see me again, that I could chuck myself in the canal for all she cared. She used to shout a lot about going down to London and seeing some real life, so I suppose that's where she's gone. There was four pounds ten and threepence in a jam-jar on the kitchen shelf and when she'd gone that was gone as well.

  "So I don't know, our mam, about anything, or what I'm going to do. I'd like to live here again with you if you'll have me. I'll pay you two quid a week regular for my board, and see you right. I can't put up with any of that any more because I can't stand it, and I don't suppose I'll ever leave home again after all that little lot of trouble. So if you'll have me back, mam, I'll be ever so glad. I'll work hard for you, that I will, and you'll never have to worry again. I'll do right by you and pay you back a bit for all the struggle you had in bringing me up. I heard at work the other day as I'm to have a ten bob rise next week, so if you let me stay I'll get a new wireless and pay the deposit on it. So let me
stay, our mam, because, I tell you, I've suffered a lot."

  And the way she kissed him made me sick, so I got down from my monkey-perch.

  Jim Scarfedale stayed, right enough, the great big baby. He was never happier in his life after getting the O. K. from his old woman. All his worries were over, he'd swear blind they were, even if you tried to tell him what a daft sod he was for not packing his shaving tackle and getting out, which I did try to tell him, only he thought I was cracked even more than he was himself, I suppose. His mother thought she'd got him back for good, though, and so did we all, but we were off the mark by a mile. If you weren't stone-blind you could see he was never the same old Jim after he'd been married: he got broody and never spoke to a soul, and nobody, not even his mam, could ever get out of him where he went to every night. His face went pudgy-white and his sandy mouse-hair fell out so much that he was nearly bald in six months. Even the few freckles he had went pale. He used to slink back from wherever he'd been at twelve o'clock, whether the night was winter or summer, and never a bloke would know what he got up to. And if you asked him right out loud, like as if you were crack ing a bit of a joke: "Where you been, Jim?" he'd make as if he hadn't beard a sound.

  It must have been a couple of years later when the copper came up our yard one moonlight night: I saw him from my bedroom window. He turned the corner, and I dodged back before he could spot me. You're in for it now, I said to myself, ripping lead from that empty house on Buckingham Street. You should have had more sense, you daft bogger (frightened to death I was, though I don't know why now), especially when you only got three and a tanner for it from Cooky. I always said you'd end up in Borstal, and here comes the copper to get you.