The Death of William Posters: A Novel (The William Posters Trilogy Book 1)

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘If I’d had enough food in my belly to get here I might. There ain’t anything like that, in these days. As soon as we get enough bread and cheese in us we have to start looking for a soul. It’s a waste of time though.’

  ‘What do you want to look for?’

  ‘A world to build, maybe.’

  ‘Fine, pal. But you got to pull a few down first.’

  ‘I don’t mind starting that way.’

  ‘I almost know,’ Shelley said, ‘what the sailors of Odysseus must have felt, seeing an island for the first time, that had no soul because they hadn’t yet poured out there libations on its beaches. They carried their souls in wine-jars, and that was three thousand years ago.’

  ‘Cut the Homer,’ Frank said, ‘and tell me about yourself.’

  Shelley had a gentle way of speech, for he liked to be ironic without giving offence. ‘That’s hard. History at Chicago. Then work on Madison Avenue. But I gave that up, though I was careful to save out of my fifteen thousand a year – to do a lot of travelling around. Sure, Frank, I’ve been around, but we won’t talk about that. I have a girl in Barcelona who I love-up and leave every few months – which brings me out to this neck of the woods. One day I think the poor girl won’t be here because she’s involved with the C N T – the good old C N T – getting their stuff printed and handed out.’

  ‘I thought that mob wasn’t operating any more,’ Frank said.

  He smiled. ‘Well, you can never stop anybody. Look at the French, they’ve half a million soldiers in Algeria, and the shindig going on there is no big celebration for any man at all.’

  ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘Ask me where I’ve never been,’ Shelley said, a jocular brush-off. ‘I go quietly. Pussyfoot. Back in the silent watches of my room – wherever it happens to be – I open my case and play patience, shuffle a lot of little books from one hand to the other, fan them out, and choose a passport. Soft-shoe-shuffling from hot spot to hot spot, after a few lessons in Cuba. In Spanish, you understand?’

  ‘If you’re not a nark,’ Frank grinned, ‘how do you know that I’m not?’

  ‘If you aren’t forthcoming, Frank, you cease to operate. Get me?’

  ‘As long as you get yourself, that’s all that matters.’ The water was like ink, ship turning in it. A light still flipped its beams from the outermost rock. More people were on deck, and an English voice brayed: ‘I say, what a fabulous colour the water is!’ His wife agreed, in a similar bray. Frank reached for the cognac, and told Shelley to drink until he no longer felt the cold. A heavy ball of blood on the horizon. Stars gave final signals. The beige houses of a fishing village passed between sphinx-cliffs. But the sea here wouldn’t accept warmth or colour from the sun, clung to its sombre cold. The wind bit now, and people kept back into the superstructure, feet shaken by the stubborn jolts of a donkey engine.

  Frank went down the narrow companionway, out of the nagging wind. Myra was about to get her case from the cabin, but a Spanish woman lifted it for her. Frank took it, appreciating her help. ‘Do you want some coffee?’

  ‘Not till we land.’

  ‘Sleep O.K.?’

  ‘Very well. It was so calm.’

  ‘Let’s go on deck then. We’ll dock soon, and you ought to see the view first.’ She said good-bye to the Spanish woman, to kisses, laughter, and delicate touches of her stomach. Frank went up with her case.

  The ship was turning, bows sliding along the eastern hills whose summits slumped above a bank of blue cloud, rounded the headland and carried them into Palma Bay. ‘I’ll be staying at the Fonda España,’ Shelley said. His face had lost the open truculence of early morning, a stern gaze was still fixed on the island. ‘Call me some time and we’ll have a drink.’

  ‘Let’s have one now,’ Frank said, ‘There’s some left.’ As though the hills had pushed towards them an unwanted cloud, the ship ran into a roll of mist, and instead of an all-flanking view of city and waterfront, the boat’s fog signal sent its blunted death-hoot over the bay. Shelley grinned, then grimaced, hands for once out of his pockets and pressed together on the rail as if praying. They drank until brown and yellow houses appeared near the shore.

  The ship was snapped up by the grey-jawed breakwater, moved slowly towards the towered and pinnacled cathedral shooting up above the ramparts. Grey, jagged mountains to the left were like the fossilized end of some prehistoric eruption. The wind had died, vanished, leaving warmth and sunlight over the seaport and island. ‘I hope the kid in there can feel this sight,’ Frank said, holding her hand.

  ‘There’ll be a lot more beauty yet,’ she said.

  ‘Naples and Genoa,’ Shelley called. ‘Or New York. New York takes some beating.’ Rowing boats moved out of the ship’s track like shoals of small-fry confused at the descending presence of a bigger fish whose food they did not happen to be. Frank tossed the empty drink-bottle into green water, then moved their luggage to where sailors were erecting block-and-tackle for lowering the gangway. On one side of the bay were bright and fashionable suburbs; on the other were cranes and warehouses. The ship edged along, almost at a stop. The excitement of people on the quay, and those on the ship about to land, spanned the narrowing channel like electric current breaking down a condenser. Beneath his brandied and buoyant spirits Frank felt layers of tiredness clamouring for rest. He’d been up all night, unable to sleep, his brain matched to the racing engines of the ship.

  The train traversed a plain of red-earthed field clouded with almond and carob trees. After half an hour a rocky terrain of olives lifted them into long tunnels, in which everyone stopped talking to wait for the sun to re-flood the wooden-benched carriages. The earthquake rifting across Myra’s life left her incapable of focusing herself on the matter within and the world in front of her eyes. Under the sudden warmth her senses rebelled, became sharp. The last months of upheaval couldn’t be put down to nothing. Things happened for a purpose. Frank’s eyes were fixed more often out of the window than on her, which she didn’t mind, but which told her there was no certainty of her continuing to live with him. She had felt at peace with George, but some turbulence in Frank was buried too deep to put her at ease. Maybe to have his baby was the best and most logical solution, enough proof of love for him ever to want. Romance, as Frank had said, is finished. And maybe he was right. Life is difficult enough without that agony piled on top as well. Love is cosmic, real love coming when you spurn the need for it. Love then released goes out to everyone else. But not on its own. One must see that it did.

  She shivered. Fresh air had the scent of lemons and oranges, and a subtle odour of snow from the high face of a far-off mountain. It was the sort of air that made Frank feel hungry and ready for love, both at the same time. Myra no longer wondered why her friend had stayed so long out of England. The sea lay in a corner of the horizon, pale blue and calm, slightly darker than the descending light-grey of the mountainsides.

  Frank sat in shirt sleeves to feel the new air closer to him. The train swayed downhill with such speed that at one point Myra felt afraid it would shoot over some stony bank and kill them all. Then she smiled at the fact that fear and life were reappearing. ‘Are you glad we came?’ he asked, thinking the landscape impressed her. The train slowed along the contour line, turned into the bowl of the valley through lush plants, trees and high cane, over the narrow bridge of a stream.

  ‘I am,’ she answered with a smile.

  Joanna was on the platform, a tall woman wearing fashionable expatriate clothes. Myra had told him that she and her husband lived abroad because they were poor, and Frank now saw that there must be more than one sort of poverty. Her welcome was genuine, in that few people passed by or called on them in the winter months. Long hair swung down her back, and she had a tanned, almost swarthy face, a prominent nose, wide lips and almond eyes. Frank was introduced. She kissed Myra: ‘I was sorry to hear it all,’ she said. ‘Not that I ever liked George. But I know you’ll soon forget’ – a look at her s
tomach and another smile.

  Frank carried the cases down the steps and into the little plaza, where a taxi was waiting. ‘Larry thought he’d put in an hour’s work, so he couldn’t run me down in the car.’ They went two miles along the valley, and away from the sea, through farms, gardens and orange groves. Joanna’s husband was an American writer, a short thin auburn man with grey darting eyes, and features as sharp as his wife’s were generous. From six every morning till one he shut himself in a whitewashed room at the back of the house, bars at the window because a donkey had stabled there before they bought the property.

  Frank and Myra had a room under gnarled wooden beams. The bed was mahogany and Spanish, a matrimonial bed hugely placed on the uneven floor. There was a wardrobe, a chair, chest of drawers and a straw mat of island make. Window and wooden shutters opened down the valley, over the smoky autumnal air of citrus trees, a trundling stream with deep banks winding between gardens and tile-roofed houses. Across the valley were the precipitous olive green slopes of the mountain range down which their train had roamed.

  Myra sat on the bed: ‘We made it.’

  ‘Didn’t you think we would?’ He was unpacking the case.

  ‘I was too absorbed in travelling. I’m relieved we’re here, though. Maybe I can find myself again.’

  ‘You mean it’s an anti-climax? I never want to be myself again. I’m hoping that’s impossible.’

  ‘Perhaps you came out of England to avoid it?’

  ‘This place is exactly how I imagined it,’ he said, ‘with such weather. It’s not warm, but it’s sunny. This room is fine. This bed, the window, the beams, the crooked floor. There’s something heavy and good about it, a sort of dignity, untouched by machines or traffic. It’ll be O.K. for a while, but only for a rest. It’s not real life – for me.’

  She took the dark ribbon from her hair, ran it through her fingers. If she and George had had similar tastes, she and Frank certainly didn’t meet in their opinions. It took time to discover such things, but how much less than it had about George! Did that mean she was wiser now, or was Frank a far simpler man? Joanna called out that coffee was ready, and they walked down without speaking.

  They sat on the terrace to a breakfast of fresh rolls and cuts from a solid block of jam that Joanna had stopped the taxi to buy, coming back from town. Larry was reticent in his enquiries about their journey. Frank asked how long they’d lived there. ‘Eight years,’ Larry said, ‘and it’s not a day too long, for me. I never speak for Joanna, but I know she feels the same.’ He was puzzled when Frank didn’t readily agree that exile and solitude were wonderful. But Frank felt an uncertainty about everything while travelling, in which opinions could only be reactions – yet true enough when they managed to escape him.

  Joanna smiled, touched her husband’s arm. ‘It’s wonderful living here. I couldn’t go back to London or America, ever. I’m uneasy when I move off the island, as if I might die before I see it again.’ She laughed, to prove her sentiments deep and genuine. Larry thought this unnecessary, too revealing perhaps, and grimaced – but so that she couldn’t see it. Frank guessed they must have a rather submerged sort of relationship, a passionate couple fighting each other with torpedoes and submarines, deepsea mines and harbour netting, rather than with tanks and dive-bombers, clubs and boiling oil. They’ll take a lifetime to kill each other, and call it love – which was one way of doing it. Such people were cheerful in front of others, and it was a happy breakfast out in the Majorcan sun, with hot rolls and coffee to push the dawn brandy into second place.

  ‘The main reason for my being on this island,’ Larry said, ‘isn’t only that I feel I’ve still got possession of my soul, but that it helps it to stay healthy as well. I can watch the seasons come and go. I can smell and see the real earth. I can see things growing on the trees. It’s quiet enough for me to think. This is life to me.’

  Myra was inside talking with Joanna, both recouping the gall and breadcrumbs of two married lives. ‘I don’t need to pamper my soul,’ Frank said. ‘If it doesn’t like the life I lead it can lump it. This place would be death to me.’

  ‘You’re a different sort of person,’ Larry said. ‘I need a god to believe in, even if it’s only a composite of these hills, trees, Joanna, this house. I write my stories and live my life in that, framework. It’s narrowing at times, but enriching as well. I envy the way you feel. You’re the Uncomplicated Person.’

  Frank took this as a compliment: ‘I’m the empty man, the man without religion. All I believe in is houses and factories, food and power-stations, bridges and coalmines and death, turning millions of things out on a machine that people can use, people who also turn out millions of things that other people can use. It’s no use harping back to poaching rights and cottage industries. We’ve got to forget all that and come to terms with cities and machines and moon landings. We’re going to become new men, whether we like it or not, and I know I’m not going to like it.’

  ‘You mean mankind has to lose its soul?’ Larry suggested.

  ‘What soul? Still, if you want to put it like that, you can. All the space that’s left by kicking out the soul is taken by a railway, a hammer, a whole landscape of industrial and material necessity. The soul is so big that you can get all these things in, and more. The bum-bailiffs march up to the soul and sling God out kicking and screaming. Then the real things of life move in, and that space that God inhabited (all his bloody mansions) is enormous. We can get so much in there.’

  ‘Who’s “we”?’ Larry asked.

  ‘People who think like me, and those who have it in their blood but don’t yet know how to think. I had to step out of factories to realize this, though I’ve always felt it, and that’s a fact.’

  Larry’s sallow face had turned pale. ‘How can you live like that?’

  ‘I’ve been living like it all my life,’ Frank told him, lighting a brown-papered Spanish cigarette. He tapped his heart: ‘It’s rich enough inside, in here. It’s getting richer, the more I live and know.’

  It was a long, convivial day. They drank a bottle of Cinzano before lunch. Frank hauled up buckets of icy water from the well to go with it. Even in the sun cold air lingered from the dawn and they sat with jerseys on, talking right up to the confines of an exhausted midnight – when he followed Myra up to bed.

  In spite of the cold she was drifting into sleep, too tired to wait for Frank and a possible exchange of views on the day. Sleep was revolving far away, between two flying storms of snow and sand. Her heavy weight drifted her down, away from the sway of trains, the purring of last night’s boat, the incessant talk and the smell of cold oranges. She was beyond the clash of tree branches outside the window, her body sinking and settling, eyes forced shut into a dark world that was empty except for a spark of light that never went out, an illuminated distant life-dot recognized as the stirring inside her.

  They could either rent a furnished house in Majorca, and arrange for Myra to have the baby here, or go somewhere else and not bother too much about where the baby was born. They sat in a café, looking out at the muddy square while they discussed it. Rain had been falling ten days without stop. In such a monsoon the house was small for the four of them. The continual thumping of Larry’s typewriter made it seem as if they were still on a ship. The noise penetrated Frank’s reading and drove him to walk along lanes and mule-tracks whether it rained or not. The mountains were swathed in cloths of rain, cloud-shirts, mist boiling up the valleys, clinging by grey fingernails to escarpments and treetops. Larry said it was usual weather for the time of the year. ‘December and January are better,’ he said, ‘but February and March get lousy again.’

  Frank was in favour of moving. So was Myra. They set out on a boat to the mainland, wet decks and cold ironwork steaming through drizzle. Blue domes of Valencia did not shine in the distance. Harbour lights and quays stretched before the boat which edged towards tie-up, still a thrilling part of any journey for Frank. Beyond the customs sheds an
orange tram passed on its way into the city.

  They stood on the open deck rather than queue to get off, Myra in no condition to be pitched among bundles and boxes on a swaying gangway. Once on the quayside Frank walked into the hold of the ship and pulled out his trunk.

  The road was straight and flat through dingy suburbs, their taxi dodging trams, swinging around cars and bicycles. Larry had given them addresses of cheap pensions in all the southern towns. Rain clouds hung over the city. Having once started on a journey Frank wanted to get it over as soon as possible. If Frank had been George, thought Myra, they would have stayed a few days in Valencia at such a time instead of rushing on without any thought. In fact George wouldn’t even have started the journey, and she couldn’t finally decide what she wanted most. Maybe they’d miss the train, then they’d have to stay for a while. Frank didn’t even know where the journey would end, but wherever it was, he felt a need to reach it.

  With ten minutes to go he booked the trunk and bought tickets. The only place for Myra to sit was a small emergency seat near the door. The train moved almost as soon as their luggage was in, pulling away between tall buildings and wide boulevards out of the middle city. The first night they met he had seen her off on a train from Paddington – into blackness and never to be met again, lights, noise and smells different from this lit-up uneasy move together into the Spanish south. ‘Another four hundred miles, and we’ll be in Granada,’ he said.

  ‘I’d like to know where we’re really going,’ she said. ‘I like travelling at the moment, and wouldn’t mind if we never stopped, but where are we going right now?’

  ‘We’ll go to Tangier,’ he said, eyes fixed on row after row of orange trees flickering by, content again at the feel of a train under him. ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Africa!’

  ‘Don’t think I’m worrying,’ she said, ‘but where am I going to have the baby?’ The train ran into sun, clear sky over flat fertile land spreading to mountain peaks. He took the brandy from the travelling basket: ‘Tangier’s a big town. Have it there.’