Key to the Door

by Alan Sillitoe

  It was too good to last. Not that he became careless, he always had been. It was simply that his luck ran out and he was more ashamed afterwards at the thought of what a loon he must have looked to the girl assistant who saw him stuffing maps and books into his shirt, than for the crime, now revealed because he was caught, of stealing. At the cashbox he asked how much for a couple of mouldy Walter Scotts, and heard her say, the biggest shock he’d had for a long time: “You’d better take them books from up your jumper.” He did so, silent and white-faced: three books and two cloth-backed maps. “What’s your name and address?” No one was by the cashbox at that moment. He told her, but she didn’t write it down. Borstal, borstal, borstal were big words drum-beating against his brain. You’ll get sent to borstal for three years, and not the same one Bert’s bin in for the last six months, you can bet, so you’ll have no company. He stood. She looked at him. She was thin and bloodless, too, in a blue overall, young and old, eighteen and sixty, dying eyes and hands that slid the pile of books away and back on to the table when the manager emerged from a not-too-far-off doorway. Her heart he only knew the value of when she said softly: “Go on out, and don’t ever come in here again.” If the coppers had searched the house and found his book hoard he’d have been up for five years solid, but luckily the girl knew whose side she was on, and afterwards he wondered how much better the world would be if everybody stuck up for each other in that marvellous fashion.

  He whistled a tune from “The Arcadians,” getting dressed on a Friday night in the full blood of his sixteen years, not thinking of a criminal life but gazing at his books. The cupboard they stood in was a present from his grandparents when they decided it wouldn’t fit into the new abode of the Woodhouse. It still carried a smell of spices: curry and cinnamon, thyme and mustard seed, camomile and sennapods and pepper, not yet killed by the more pungent odours of damp and aging paper.

  White shirt flew on to him like a bird of peace, drawn together at the neck by a blue-dotted tie. He felt spruce and warm in his suit, the garb of a labouring man whose face was pale but whose muscles were hard enough to carry him along with confidence anywhere. He slammed the doors of his bookcase, put on his jacket, and ran downstairs. “Don’t be late,” his mother called as he let the back door of the scullery clatter to.

  It was spring in the street, late sun coming from the tops of snow-clouds, children running in and out of air-raid shelters that blocked any clear view from up to down. The mass of close-knit factories and houses was spread on the steady slope of a hillside, though this was hardly noticeable with feet firm on cobblestones taking him energetically towards his meeting with Pauline. He lit a fag and flicked the match on to a window-sill (a notice within said: WREATHS AND CROSSES MADE TO ORDER AT SHORT NOTICE), catching sight of his greased-up quiff that made him look, he laughed, as handsome as the day was long. People were still rolling home from work by the time he hit the boulevard. A toffee paper blew towards him in the wind, fastened itself like a badge on a tree trunk.

  She’ll be out any minute, he thought, approaching the factory, because the machines were switched off, leaving the high-sided street calm and quiet. It was a long, red-bricked, and straight-windowed building, a hundred years old though still in its prime. This sort of workpile had driven a nail of terror into him when he passed it as a child, not knowing what all the noise was about; but he knew now right enough, and wasn’t afraid of it, though on nearing any strange enormous factory at full blast he still felt a curious memory of half-fear stir in him at such compacted power that seemed pressing at every window ready to burst out like some fearful God-driven monster. Funny, he thought, how once you got in one it didn’t bother you, was peaceful almost because then you were on its side.

  He stood by the clocking-out machine, eyed but not bothered by the commissionaire in his Home Guard uniform, a grey-haired old ramrod about seventy wearing a fish-and-chip hat, and smiling at a mirror in his bogey-hole to adjust a row of medal ribbons. England’s last hope, Brian grinned, the old chokka. I bet he got them medals mowing down fuzzy-wuzzies. “Waiting for the girls, I suppose?” he called.

  “Waiting for a pal,” Brian responded after a pause. “Yo’ goin’ on p’rade, dad?”

  “’Appen,” the man said, turning huffily away. Brian knew him to be too old for it now, felt a bit sorry he’d spoken. Poor bastard. He wasn’t the only one around. Nottingham’s Chelsea Pensioners, they called them, doing part-time work to eke out their ten bob and joining the Home Guard while there was still time to get themselves a winter suit and topcoat, going to the drill-hall now and again to meet younger pals and listen to lectures, but mostly standing in pubs and swilling beer out of those who’d treat them. I wonder if he’d give a cup o’ tea to a deserter? Brian thought.

  He saw Jim Skelton on the stairs: “Hey up.”

  “How do.”

  “Where’s Pauline and Joan?”

  “Int’ lavatory dolling up,” Jim said. “It’s tekin’ ’em long enough as well.”

  “Fag?” Brian offered. “Fag, mate?”—to the old man.

  “I don’t mind,” he said. “Thanks very much.”

  “Ta,” Jim said. The three of them lit up. “It’s still ’ard to get ’em,” the old man chipped in, “even if you’ve got munney.”

  “It is an’ all,” Brian said. See all, hear all, say nowt. Eat all, drink all, pay nowt. There were a dozen cartons in the house, hidden in a wooden box under the coal, a present that crept in one night on his cousins’ backs. They’d not long since been lifted from a shop up the street, swiped from a shopkeeper who’d told Brian only the night before when he went there on the hunt for tobacco-hungry Seaton that he hadn’t a fag in the place. It was true right enough next morning after a visit from Colin and Dave. They’d not only cleared him out of fags, but silk stockings, a bottle of whisky, stacks of grub, cash.

  They savoured their cigarettes. “A couple o’ sixteen-year-olds like yo’ two ought to be in the Home Guards,” the chokka said. “Do you the world o’ good.” Brian went numb at this, as if somebody had called him bone-idle or a copper’s nark. “That’s what yo’ think, mate.”

  “I’d rather enjoy mysen than shoot a gun,” Jim told him. He was the same height as Brian but stockier, with a broad Tartar face, well-rounded dimpled chin, squared teeth and a squashed nose, ginger hair well flattened back from his forehead. He was a mechanic and looked after the girls’ sewing machines, saw that the khaki uniforms ran smoothly through so that everyone could get a share of that weekly bonus. Brian, though highly regarded by Jim for his store of books, respected him for his handiness with machines and electricity and the making of traction engines.

  The girls were down already, and out of the door before a word was spent between the four of them, spread in a line across the street. “Where are we going, then?” Pauline wanted to know.

  “Out,” Brian told her.

  “Clever bogger”—she thumped him.

  “Leave my mate alone,” Jim said.

  “Men,” Joan exclaimed. “Allus stick together. Where’re we goin’ anyway? That’s what I’d like to know as well.”

  Brian hoped he wouldn’t be contradicted: “Up Cherry Orchard.”

  “It’s too far,” Joan said. “I don’t know what you want to go up there for anyway.”

  “I do,” Jim laughed.

  “Well, you wain’t catch me going,” Pauline said decisively. Brian winked at him: we’ll go in that direction anyway. “You can stop that, fawce dog,” Pauline said. “I saw yer winking, Brian.”

  “You want your eyes testing, then.”

  “You’ll get yourn blacked if you aren’t careful,” she threw back. “He don’t half think he’s a clever dick,” Joan said, ganging up with her pal.

  “Go and get dive-bombed,” Brian said. “I only wanted you to come up Cherry Orchard.” Pauline was as tall as Brian: long brown hair spreading back over her buttoned-up, dark brown coat, which hid a ligher overall dress he’d glimpsed
as she came down the stairs. She had white skin, and large brown eyes that seemed to see everything as a defence against the fact that she saw very little. Jim said she was one of the fastest at her machine and wasn’t so dreamy as she appeared, though both agreed that you wouldn’t think so to look at her. On some evenings, when left to their own thoughts or emptiness, undisturbed by the lack of talk, they walked arm-in-arm along sunlit lanes and streets that were silent between knocking-off time and dusk. Brian felt her largeness when she was with him, noticed how delicate was the expression of her hands and face when seen against the gracelessness of her general movement. She had a good figure—he knew it well by now—fine pear-shaped breasts, noticeable hips, and legs a bit heavy. It was almost obtrusive—but not quite, for she was just below the stature that could have given her the label of a “strapping girl.”

  She was arm-in-arm with Joan in front, and they went down Ilkeston Road, followed at fifty yards by Brian and Jim. “They don’t seem in a good mood tonight.”

  “P’raps they’ve got the rags on,” Jim laughed.

  “I hope not,” Brian said. “I like Pauline, though. She’s a good sort, and passionate. How yo’ going on with Joan?”

  “All right. She don’t say a deal either. Never says a dicky-bird sometimes all night. I asked her what was wrong once. We’d been tot’ pictures, and I thought she was fed up and ready to chuck me. I said: ‘What’s up, duck?’ when I was walking her home later. ‘A penny for your thoughts,’ I said, and she burst out crying. She never told me what for either. I’d thought she looked a bit funny earlier on when she was in our house ’aving a cup of tea and some toast. When I kissed her good night, though, she was ever so passionate; so it blew over and she was as right as rain next day at work.”

  Brian saw Jim’s courting as a more intense affair than his own. Not only did Jim work near his sweetheart—often called over to fix the belt on her machine, or to clean and oil it—but she spent most of every evening helping Jim’s mother, or sitting with him to guard his sisters and brothers while his parents were at the pictures. Pauline had never been to the Seatons, and neither did Brian have the intimacy of being with her all day at work. They met on many nights of the week, but whereas Jim and Joan had a physical closeness about them like any young couple a year married, Brian and Pauline were still at the hit-and-run stage, would melt away and almost forget each other until the next date because only the need to make love drew them together. He had never asked her to come home and sit in with his mother and father, Fred and Arthur and Margaret and Sammy, as if she belonged there. He envied this state between Joan and the Skeltons, but was somehow unable to build up a similar relationship between himself and Pauline. He spent many evenings at her house, and the two families had at one time known each other, but Pauline had never in any case suggested that she come to his home. Brian thought that maybe she was too shy to ask this, and he used her shyness—if it existed—as a way of preventing her from doing so. The idea of Pauline at home with his father and mother gave him spasms of embarrassment, and he was unable to say whether this was because he thought he would be ashamed or whether it was because he knew Pauline would dislike it and feel out of place. He didn’t want his mother and father to know he was courting, wanted to keep his second life a secret from them, as if, should they know, it would result in their sharing this love and intimacy and making it less real to him. But when his mother once said: “I met Mrs. Mullinder today and she says you’re going out with their Pauline,” he didn’t feel at all embarrassed, though he still wouldn’t ask Pauline home. “I go out with her now and again,” he told his mother. “Well,” she said, “that’s all right. She’s a nice gel. Only don’t come here, though, if you get anybody into trouble.” And that was that.

  It was getting dark as they passed Radford Station. “Good,” Brian thought, “I don’t want to see anybody I know”—though no sooner had this crossed his mind than Uncle George came biking over the hill, from Woodhouse, calling as he went by: “Now then, Brian, you’re a bit young to be courting, aren’t you?” He put a good face on it, bawling back: “Ar, I’m doing all right an’ all.” Fancy shouting out like that, though he laughed at remembering back to when George had persuaded Vera to introduce him to a young unmarried woman in the yard, and she had sent Brian to tell Alice Dexter she wanted to see her a minute—all to help her stingy brother, blacksmith George. When Alice Dexter came into the house George picked up a newspaper to make her think he’d been reading like a sober educated man, but he’d been unable to read from birth and the paper was upside down. Which caused periodic laughs in the family, especially from Seaton, because he couldn’t read either and would never try to impress anybody that way by pretending he could.

  Wind blew across the bare dark stretch of the Cherry Orchard. “Are you all right, duck?” he said to Pauline. “Keep well wrapped up.”

  “It ain’t cold,” she whispered. The others were a merging shadow far to the left, intent on finding their own private hollow in which to snug down. He held her tightly around the waist. “We’ll find a good place.” Stars were pale and liquid-eyed, each as if nervous at not knowing whether it was next to be hidden away. “It’s marvellous out here. It’s warm and lonely.”

  “It is an’ all,” he responded. “My grandma used to live over there”—pointed far off into the darkness. “And my grandad. He was a blacksmith.” An inexplicable pride came at the thought of his grandfather having been a blacksmith. Blacksmith was a word of skill and hardiness: a smith makes things, and black means the toughest sort of work—like when I did that bout of flue-cleaning—the shaping of iron and steel between hammer and anvil, moved by muscle in a subtle mixture of controlled strength.

  “Ooooooh!” she drawled out. “Mek a wish, Brian.”

  “What for? Mind that bush.”

  “I saw a shooting star.”

  “I didn’t, though”—pulled out of his blacksmith world.

  “There’s another one, look”—still pointing.

  “Yes, I saw that one,” he was glad to own. “I’ve made a wish.”

  “So’ve I.”

  “What did yo’ wish?” he wanted to know.

  “I’m not telling you. It don’t cum true if you tell anybody.”

  “Well,” he teased, “I shan’t tell you what I wished then.”

  “I’m not asking you to,” she said, offended. “Don’t if you don’t want to.”

  “What do you think I am?” he cried, indignant. “If you wain’t tell me, I’m not going to tell yo’.”

  “Well,” she said, “if you tell me what yo’ wished, mine’ll still come true.”

  “Mine wain’t, though,” he reasoned, no thought of self-sacrifice.

  “P’raps our wishes was the same,” she ventured. This put him on his guard: “I bet they worn’t.” I didn’t wish we could get married, he told himself. It’s enough if she did, though I’ll bet she’ll be wrong. “You know what mine was, though, don’t you?” she said, pressing his hand. He did. It leapt across with no words, a shaft of love unseen in the darkness, meeting the wish he had made because no other was possible for him, being with his girl in the middle of the Cherry Orchard in the first darkness of a spring evening. Her words came sweet, into an isolation of something better than he’d ever known, even though it wasn’t the first time they’d worked out this desire between them.

  “Mine was the same,” he said, seeing the two lines written on the picture in the Nook parlour: “If you love me as I love you, nothing will ever part us two.” The sentiment quickly vanished because he thought that if he told it to Pauline she might laugh and see him as too sloppy to go out with. Not that he was unhappy at this.

  A moon was up, had severed all connection with the chimneypots of distant houses, was responsible for the faint luminous gleam that held the humps and hollows and solitary bushes back from the hand of complete darkness. A gentle warm infiltration of visibility overspread from hedge and houses to a vale of Serpent Woo
d, a vague light giving the impression that the dwindling countryside of the half-mile Cherry Orchard was a vast and untouchable heath-land through which no arteries of life ran. He pulled up a handful of fresh grass to smell. “I can’t see Jim and Joan any more,” she said.

  “They’re just over there,” he told her. “They’d hear us if we shouted.” To stop any idea of it he drew her to him, arms fastened around the waist and shoulders of her coat. He caught her mouth, half-open to start some reply to his remark, and felt the moist warm surprise of her lips that closed and hardened to a passionate response, her arms also reinforcing the kisses that she seemed to try and repulse only by increasing the forward pressing of her own. The uneven ground caused him to lurch, and though he kept balance without thinking where to place his feet, he succeeded in breaking the force of her kisses, holding her to him and placing his lips on her at such an angle that it was impossible for them to breathe. Both knew the meaning of this manoeuvre; it gave each a chance of proving that the power of greatest love was on his side; for the one who craved breath first bore the lesser love. The closeness of her body and the pressure of her face and lips hardened and sweetened the urgent rod of his loins. He moved his lips over hers, neither taking nor giving breath, prolonging the fleshy meeting with her mouth, which was one second dormant and then moving to prove that she loved him with all her strength and was nowhere near losing the contest. He went harder into her face, wanting to lift his head away from her, though, and laugh and pull in gusts and lettershapes of pure air, but the sweetness of Pauline, the well and slight shifting of her lips drew him in so that his kisses, like tears, grew in strength at the feel of her love.