A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘That’s true.’

  She tore out the pattern so that he could show it and make no mistake, and wrote down the size she wanted. ‘It’s at that big millinery shop on Exchange Walk. You can’t miss it.’

  He put her coin in a pocket that held no money of his. ‘I’ll be back when I can. If you’re not at the bar I’ll ask Mrs Lewin for you.’

  He could walk the couple of miles into town and back, but the less time taken the higher he might go in her esteem, so he caught the first train, and if the shopkeeper looked down his nose at working clothes he could jump up his rear end, because he loved Mary Ann, and by God he would have her, and go through fire and flood to do this little errand. Even if she said no to him again he wouldn’t stop thinking about her, and never stop asking either. He felt a letch at seeing any pretty woman, but it was more than that with Mary Ann, and he only knew that after their marriage she would adorn him as much as he would dignify her.

  It was a quick ten minutes from the station to Exchange Walk, between St Peter’s church and Old Market Square. He had to wait while a woman was being served, but it didn’t seem too long on thinking about married life with Mary Ann. The sallow assistant climbed three steps of a wooden ladder and took the white cotton gloves from behind glass. She laid them into paper, and he paid at the till with two one-shilling pieces from his own money, and put the farthing change into his pocket.

  On Lister Gate he knelt to retie a bootlace, and standing up saw Leah in his way, too close for his liking. ‘Don’t you know me?’ A basket overarm, her hair was untidy, and she wore rouge. ‘Why haven’t you been to see me?’ she smiled. ‘It’s over a year, and I’ve been hoping all the time that you would.’

  He knew her, such a handsome woman it was easy to see why he’d had a fling, but you never answered anyone who accosted you on the street. Yet he wondered why he had meddled with someone who did it on her husband and had the cheek to greet him with people going by.

  ‘What do you want?’ he had to say.

  ‘What do I want?’ she cried. ‘How can you ask me what I want?’

  He ought to have been pleasant, even promised to see her again, but with Mary Ann’s face before him such a response was less than reasonable. ‘Is your husband still shunting then? I haven’t seen him hurrying to work lately.’

  ‘What a rotten thing to say,’ she hissed. ‘After what we’ve done together, this is how you treat me.’

  ‘Get away from me.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see me anymore?’

  He pushed her aside. ‘God will pay you out.’ If only she hadn’t shouted. He wanted to turn back and knock her down, which was what she deserved. A slut with no pride. Tackling him on the street was the last thing she should have done. It was true enough that he’d had his way with her, but so had she with him. It was over a year ago, all fair and square, and now she pestered him, people beginning to stare, though what could you expect from a woman like that?

  He wondered what the world was coming to, as the train jangled out of the station, though with Mary Ann back in mind and the vital package in his large hands he became calmer. The Castle glared less severely from its rock now that his errand was done. Then it was gone, leaving Mary Ann’s face so present in the glass that Lenton station was being called.

  She looked as fresh and tempting as when he had left an hour ago. If his father ranted at his staying out so long from work he would tell the old so-and-so what to do with himself. He laid the packet on the bar, with the florin given to pay for it in the centre.

  ‘Are they in there?’

  ‘They were when I last saw the young woman pack them up. Nobody’s tampered with them since.’

  ‘What’s that florin for?’

  ‘Put it back in your pinafore.’

  She looked at the Queen’s image in her palm, then held up the gloves so clean and neat and, above all, fashionable. ‘Thank you, Ernest.’

  ‘You’ll look a treat in them when you’re dressed up.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You haven’t got to say anything. I did it because my heart wanted to.’ After a moment’s silence: ‘I’m putting the same old question.’

  A blush covered her face as the folded gloves went back into their paper, aware of the words he wanted to hear. ‘What sort of question?’

  ‘Shall you marry me?’ To ask before requesting a pint of ale showed how strong his mind was on the matter. The world spun before her, as if she would faint, though she reached across with a smile and touched his hand.

  ‘I will.’

  His forename on the certificate was spelled as ‘Earnest’, in the script of an elderly absent-minded man who had stood to write it. Ernest signified his agreement to the event by the mark of a cross, as did his father Thomas, both down as ‘blacksmiths’, on 25 January 1889, while Mary Ann’s father, Charles Tokins, was described as ‘engineer’.

  The bride’s signature was fair and steady, as was Emma Lewin’s as witness, who on that occasion consented to go into the Holy Trinity Church of the Parish of Lenton and see her friend and servant through the formality of marriage. She gave twenty pounds towards a trousseau, and allowed the saloon of her public house to be used for the reception, generosity Mary Ann remembered for the rest of her life.

  The saloon was filled with the relations of both families, and with friends of Ernest’s father who, thinking of trade, felt justified in inviting some of his customers after paying so much towards the celebrations.

  Ernest stood beside his bride, a single whisky to last the evening, not caring to drink more, because tonight would be the most important of his life, not the day that had seen the knot tied in church, but what was to come in their cottage across the road, where a room had been prepared for them before setting off for Matlock in the morning.

  Fully turned-up gas mantles gave a whitened aspect to the room – or as much as tobacco allowed – every face and figure clear, which Ernest liked because the only god he halfway respected was that of fire and illumination. He allowed Mary Ann to hold his hand surreptitiously, while observing the mob gathered at their splicing. She said she had been in love with him from the moment he first walked into the pub, that she had never loved any other man, nor ever would.

  Her father Charles Tokins had come from St Neots on the train. Tall and soundly built, and looking young for his age, with a well-shaped black beard, he had started work in an iron foundry as a boy. The family had left County Mayo in the 1840s to escape hunger and destitution caused, Mary Ann said – and Ernest saw no reason to disbelieve her – by the wickedness of the government in London.

  Ernest went through the crowd, to hear what Tokins was saying to his father. ‘I’d had enough of getting myself dirty working in the foundry, so I rented a workshop to repair penny-farthings and tricycles. I’d had a tricycle a few years, and knew others who had them. There’s plenty of flat land around where we live, but the roads aren’t in good repair, and a lot of people don’t know how to look after their machines. When one breaks down they can’t get it mended properly, so not only do I do it, but I’ve started buying and selling as well. I get new ones at a fair discount from the manufacturers at Coventry, and do enough trade to keep us quite nicely. We prosper, in other words.’ He drank his whisky, as if to get breath. ‘You can’t beat the bicycle for getting from place to place. I read in the newspaper the other day that somebody rode on a Humber from London to York in twenty-four hours.’

  ‘They make Humbers near here.’ Thomas at last got a word in. ‘At Beeston, a couple of miles away.’

  Tokins looked at the ash on his cigar, and gave it permission to fall. ‘He even beat Dick Turpin on Black Bess. The machine didn’t die when it got there, either.’

  ‘I wonder if he could have done the same distance the day after,’ Ernest said. ‘His legs wouldn’t have been much good by then.’

  ‘I’m making money out of the trade.’ Tokins was annoyed at the interruption. ‘That’s all I
know. If you want to come and live in St Neots, Ernest, I’ll set you on. Your father tells me you’re a fine blacksmith. You’d soon pick up the trade, and be an asset to us. I’d guarantee a better wage than if you stay here. Times are changing.’

  There must have been talk between Tokins and his father, but Ernest would jump for no man. ‘They always were.’

  Tokins saw him as too opinionated ever to get anywhere. ‘If you want to make the move, let me know. Mary Ann wouldn’t be unhappy, living close to us.’

  Tokins wanted his daughter back where he could keep an eye on her, and would be interfering in their lives in no time, so it was a cold idea as far as Ernest was concerned. In any case what man would want to work for his wife’s father? It was bad enough sweating for your own. ‘I’ll think about it,’ he said, not caring to make things difficult for Mary Ann.

  He went back to his wife, as if to be sure nobody had run her away after it had taken him so long to win her. Her dignity and calm beauty were dreamlike when she came to him from laughing with her bridesmaids. The step she had taken would never lead back to the happier days of her youth, Mrs Lewin thought as she too looked at her.

  Part Two

  1914

  FIVE

  Youngsters looked in the open door to see what he did, and they’re welcome to, Burton thought. They stand all clean in a row like so many sparrows on a wall, staring as if I deal with magic, and when I look up they’ve gone to a place that’ll teach them how to read and write, which they’ll learn if they’re sharp enough, though I’ve managed well without it, sometimes better than a lot of fools who think they’ve learned all there is to teach.

  Still, children might end up with more magic than I did, who never went to school because my father needed me, young as I was, two more hands making a difference, so he can’t be blamed for me not knowing my letters. There weren’t as many schools built then as there are now, but you can never blame your parents for anything, and those I’ve heard in the pub who whine against them have no pride, no backbone to stand on their own feet and blame themselves.

  My father gave me a trade that’s like gold, you can go anywhere with it, turn your hand to anything. There are smithies all over the place, at every pit and a lot of factories, wherever you go you’ll find one. Each village has enough work to keep more than one family, so nobody owes me anything and I owe not a penny to them.

  He took a bar of iron from the mound of heat, shook and tapped the sparks away. Like Vulcan or Tubal-Cain, his arms were bare, his eyes alert and, lean and agile as he had always been, and still was at forty-eight, battered the iron to his will. The world did not exist while he made the first bend of the shoe, saw that it was clean, and brought the two prongs to the right distance apart. He drove the holes fully through, and when the shoe came steaming bright blue from the bucket and the job was finished he looked up at the ever-familiar thin smoke lanced by light and fighting its way through the solitary square window.

  The forge, on a lane leading to the church at Lenton, was similar in size and structure to the one in Wales. Work never done, he set to making another, Oliver his eldest son of twenty-three standing by as his striker, a man as well trained as Burton at that age, and much like him in physique, though a trace of sensibility had blended into his features from Mary Ann, and given a more vulnerable aspect.

  Oswald, the second son, tackled the bellows with the dignified attentive face of a Norman warrior at the Battle of Hastings. Talk was impossible in the swinging of arms, the clatter of hammers, and the stench of coke, explaining the taciturnity of smiths who worked for hours without speaking.

  Burton took a silver snuff box from his apron pocket and tapped a small khaki mound of dust onto the back of his hand, held it under his nose, drew it sharply into one nostril and then the other. A moment’s stillness was followed by a twitch at the face signifying a violent inward sneeze rocking the system as the drug took effect, clearing his head so that for a few seconds the world showed in greater detail and more vivid colouring. At the sound of a customer leading a horse to be shod he went outside.

  Oswald put the hammer his brother had used on a bench by the wall, then took tobacco from his pouch to roll a cigarette. He and Oliver had been at school till they were thirteen, so could read and write, but they feared Burton, who would be sure to remind them with his fists if a mistake was made in their work. On the other hand, should a good job be turned out, he would give no sign of satisfaction.

  Glad to see the back of him, Oliver wiped his face with a rag, but went out to forestall any shout that he would be needed. A locomotive hauling coal wagons through a nearby cutting shrieked like a glutted kitehawk sighting more offal, so frightening the horse being shod that it broke free and scattered a couple of bystanders.

  Burton pushed the shoeing smith aside, took the reins and brought the head close, and looked in the eyes shimmering with panic. He stroked down the grain and, drawing breath, exhaled a warmth of intimate snuff-smelling reassurance up the nostrils to calm its heart, in the way his father had shown him even as a child, who had been drilled in how to do it by his father. How many generations such knowledge had come through he didn’t think to wonder. The worst time was when lightning flashed and a horse imagined that the head of fiery light was meant for it alone. Then you had to take care and, if you could, persuade it that lightning was unavailing against animals close to Thor’s heart. Lightning might go for men, if they got in its way, but never horses, those who cared for them also immune. A higher power looked after horse and farrier, and Burton supposed that even the first blacksmith on earth didn’t know where such protection came from, though they believed in it, and that the only friend of a horse was the blacksmith who fitted its shoes and sent it well-shod to work in comfort.

  No blacksmith ever harmed a horse, let alone killed one, and no horse wantonly killed a man, though many a man had been killed or injured while riding because he had done something daft, or hadn’t understood the animal. You had a feeling for horses other people didn’t have. You were born with it, and picked the rest up along the way, no horse impossible to tame, though he wouldn’t ride one, because no horse would trust him again, would smell the breath of the other horse, and think the blacksmith was sharing his favours. A horse, which will do what you want if you know how and what to tell it, would never stand for bad treatment.

  Oliver knew all that was in his father’s mind as he watched him still the horse. He had often seen him do it, but the thought now came, and he felt a spurt of triumph at the knowledge, that Burton, in spite of all his experience, had an inborn ancestral fear of horses that would never leave him. He had spotted his father’s one weakness, and wondered why it had taken him so long; because he himself had never been frightened of horses, but was glad at having found a slit in Burton’s armoured covering so small it could only become apparent to a son of his in the same trade,

  ‘Always get the shoe off slowly,’ Burton told the shoeing smith. ‘They think you’re going to hurt them if you don’t make them think you’re doing it in their time.’

  The train frightened it. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘It’s always the farrier’s fault. Learn to take care of them.’

  ‘I do take care.’

  He stood at the door before going inside. ‘Don’t answer back. Wait till you’ve got eight young ‘uns to feed like I have, then you’ll hold the horses still.’

  ‘Old Burton’s a hard one,’ said the drayman whose horse it was. ‘I wouldn’t like to work for him.’

  The shoeing smith looked towards the noise of hammering. ‘I’m fed up with the way he treats me.’ ‘Pack it in. Go somewhere else.’

  ‘I’d like to, but you work where you can. And every day there’s more motors on the road.’

  ‘Yeh, one day horses won’t be needed anymore.’

  ‘We get enough trade here,’ the shoeing smith said, ‘because Burton makes sure the work’s good. People know where to come. But he’s a hard man t
o be under.’

  ‘That’s because of the way he was brought up,’ the carter said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be one of his sons. He must have taken some stick from his own father to make him the man he is.’

  ‘It was his brother George who put him through the hoops. Or so I heard Burton say the other day when he was telling one of his lads off.’

  ‘I wonder what Burton was like when he was young?’

  ‘He never was young, if you ask me.’ The shoeing smith stood erect to rub his pained back. ‘Here you are. That should keep your nag going for a while.’

  ‘I hope so,’ the drayman said. ‘Two bob a time’s getting a bit expensive.’

  Burton had so much sweat on him as he stood in the doorway it looked as if he had dipped his head in the waterbutt. He held a hand over one eye where a spark had chipped the flesh below. ‘If you can find somebody to do it for less go and trade with them. But if you do, God help your horse.’ ‘Times are hard, Burton.’

  ‘They always were.’ Two of his daughters came along the lane. ‘What do you want?’

  Oval-faced Sabina, ten years old, shook her chestnut hair, and flushed at his sour greeting. He knew very well why they were there, because couldn’t he see the billy-cans of tea in her hand? ‘We’ve brought you your dinners.’

  ‘Put them down there.’

  Emily set the snap tins on the bench and stepped back as if he might hit her should she get too close. Eight years old and Burton’s youngest, everyone in the family regarded her as a bit touched, being slow-witted and more unpredictable than the others, with too much willingness in her smile to please whoever she met that she was never allowed out of the house on her own. Mary Ann told Burton that while it was his right to treat the children as he thought they deserved, he was never to strike Emily since, when she misbehaved, she didn’t altogether know what she was doing. He found it easy to do as Mary Ann wished because a mere look was enough to scare Emily. He picked up the cans with no word of thanks. ‘I thought you two were at school?’