A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  He took the buckets back. ‘Carry these to the well, and get them clean.’ Work might ease the girl’s minds, but such hope had no chance.

  Thomas and Oswald were at the table with Sabina and Rebecca, no cloth spread, as if only alive to the white-faced pendulum clock on the wall, and the isolated heartbreak of a sob from one of the pale girls. ‘Where’s Mary Ann?’

  ‘In the parlour.’ Where you should be, Rebecca wanted to add but daren’t, because with Burton you had to rehearse every word before letting it out, and then press your teeth into your tongue to hold it back, more often than not.

  Curtains were drawn in mourning, though only a footpath passed the house. A small lamp was lit, and Burton faced her, the telegrams and a letter open between them. He nodded: ‘That’s all it takes, a few bits of paper.’

  She said it again. She said it every day. She came out with it every time she saw him or anyone. ‘He hadn’t been away four months, and now he’s gone forever.’ She said it to herself with every breath, every few seconds, no use telling her how often she said it, because she would more than likely go on saying it every minute till the day she died. And so would he go on saying it, and though he would say it only to himself you had to say something aloud now and again in case it was thought you had no heart.

  ‘He was killed by a horse, that’s what I can’t get over. The times I had to tell him to be careful. And he was careful, at least while I was looking. I know I did my duty in that respect. I drummed it into him from when he was a child. He knew as much about handling horses as I did. And then one had to kill him. It didn’t take the army long to rob him of his life. That’s what it must have been. The army killed him. If he hadn’t joined up he’d have been here now.’

  ‘It seems only yesterday that he was with us.’

  ‘Blawting won’t bring him back.’

  ‘I know,’ she wailed, ‘oh, I know.’

  ‘I could blawt as well, but it wouldn’t help.’ He spoke gently, afraid of too soft a tone in case he did weep.

  ‘I still can’t believe it,’ she said.

  ‘Nor can I. Read me the letter again, from his chaplain.’

  Her fingers shook, voice barely audible, though he’d heard the words a few times already. ‘“Your son died while shoeing a horse.’”

  ‘That’s wrong,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t killed while shoeing a horse. That’s a lie.’

  ‘A parson wouldn’t lie,’ she said.

  ‘Believe what you like. Go on.’

  ‘“He received a blow at the head from which he never recovered. He was an excellent soldier, and his friends in the regiment will miss him sorely. I very much regret having to send you such sad news. You might like to know that the horse which killed him was shot.”’ She folded the letter carefully back into its envelope. ‘A lot of good that did, to kill the horse. But it was kind of him to write and tell us what happened.’

  ‘I only wish I’d been there to shoot the horse myself,’ he said after a silence. ‘If I had been it wouldn’t have kicked him to death anyway. A few tricks up my sleeve would have settled its hash. It wouldn’t have got on its legs again for a month, either. Or I’d have pulled Oliver away and told him to leave it alone.’

  ‘You weren’t there, though, were you?’ She spoke as if he ought to have been, that it was his fault he hadn’t been there, but he knew that whatever happened to one of your children had to be your fault for having got them into the world. So she was right in what she said, and all he could do was help her inch by inch through her grief, while enduring his own.

  ‘I know a few more tricks than he did. I’ve had more experience. Our family’s been blacksmiths for generations, and none of them was injured by a horse, beyond the odd nudge or two. But why did he try to shoe a mad horse in the first place? He should have run away. He could have done. Nobody’s obliged to shoe a mad horse.’

  ‘I pleaded with him not to enlist,’ she said.

  ‘So did I, but you couldn’t tell him anything.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. I remember holding him up in my arms as a baby, and making him laugh. And how he used to laugh! I know what made him enlist. It had something to do with that girl.’

  He had been waiting for that. ‘No, it wasn’t because of me. He didn’t have to go. You can’t blame anybody. Everybody was joining up. They still are. There was a queue at the barracks, and he got pulled in with the others.’

  ‘It was about that girl,’ she said. ‘He didn’t tell me, but I’m sure I’m right.’

  There was no answer, and he could only let it rest, if ever it would, but if that was the case he’s got me for life, and maybe longer. ‘Blame it on me, if it’ll help.’

  ‘Nothing can help.’

  Nor me, either, he was unable to say. His large working hands reached across, but she drew hers away. ‘We’ve got to keep on living,’ he said, ‘that’s all I know. The girls are in the kitchen waiting for something to eat. Oswald and Thomas have been at work all day, and they’re hungry.’ As I am, but he couldn’t say that. ‘It’s time to get up and make the dinner. You look as if you could do with a bite.’

  Remembering their courting when she had served his beer with such a smile at the White Hart, and the glistening of her eyes on his first night back from Wales, caused him to put out his hand again. She lifted it to her lips, and washed his fingers with her tears. He regretted that the house was so full of children, and when they stood to embrace he could tell that she did too.

  There was nothing for it but to lead her into the kitchen so that she could start work on the meal everyone needed. Seeing the case of prize horseshoes on the wall he recalled how Oliver helped him put them in with the correct space between, an instinctively good eye for such arrangements, and enjoying that early confidence Burton placed in him.

  Mary Ann came out of the parlour like a sleepwalker, but now, looking around the room, she seemed to wake up, and began telling the girls what to do.

  An army wagon came from the railway station, a coffin on top with Oliver’s body inside, a Union Jack draped over. People stood by their front doors as it passed through Woodhouse, and went under the bridge up the lane. Four soldiers laid it on trestles in the parlour. ‘His sword’s on the coffin,’ the sergeant said, ‘and we’ll display it when we get to the church tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s a shame he wasn’t wearing it at the time.’ Burton took it from the scabbard. ‘He sharpened it, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘It looks a handy weapon. He ought to have rammed it into the horse.’

  ‘They were only given out last month, and he wouldn’t have had it at the time, being a shoeing smith.’

  The lid was lifted, and Mary Ann began keening again, his death more believable now that she could see his body. ‘They’ve done something to the face,’ Burton said. ‘He must have been knocked about a bit.’ The texture was that of false fruit he had seen on peoples’ tables, nothing like flesh, though he was glad it seemed normal enough to Mary Ann.

  His face was not so much at rest as utterly dead, made of putty, like that in a photograph taken at the seaside, with the head poked through a hole surrounded by unusual scenery, a bad copy of the living man, eyes closed, and cheeks more filled. Either the army diet had improved him, or cotton wool had been stuffed into his mouth at the undertaker’s parlour. The sword in its scabbard lay by his side, tunic buttons polished to shine like golden sovereigns.

  Mary Ann kissed him as if tears, falling on cheeks and lips, would recolour his features and bring him back to life. Burton wished to God they would, he’d have spilt some of his own then, and blood as well, and been the happiest man on earth, but nothing could do that. The army had killed him, and what else could you expect? No army looked after its men when there were so many to draw on. His father and mother had died in the fullness of their lives, and so had Mary Ann’s. Perhaps she was thinking of her parents but, whoever they had in mind, what was left of Oliver was here to receive the f
inal kisses of Mary Ann and the rest of the family, a scene to break the heart if you did but let it.

  He gave each soldier a glass of beer, and while they were drinking took the sergeant back into the parlour. ‘Now you can tell me what really happened to my son.’

  ‘How do you mean, sir?’

  ‘He wasn’t killed shoeing the horse when it kicked him.’

  ‘That’s what I was told.’

  ‘That was what you were told to tell me, but you know that’s not the truth.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you. No blacksmith was ever kicked while shoeing a horse. If a horse tried to kick while being seen to in that way it would fall down. A horse can’t kick on three legs. It’s an impossibility.’

  ‘I wouldn’t like to say anything about that, sir.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you would.’ He was lying, or he really didn’t know, so Burton let him go. They would never tell the truth.

  Emily, Sabina, Thomas, Oswald, Edith, Rebecca and Ivy: each face bore its misery as they stood at the coffin, resplendent happiness only on Emily’s face: ‘Oliver’s gone to heaven. He always said he would.’ Then her features distorted into tears.

  ‘I’ve told you,’ Burton said. ‘There’s to be no blawting in this family.’

  ‘Why can’t there be?’ Edith wailed. ‘He was worth a hundred of you.’

  A tremor at his cheeks, but he said nothing. Let them cry, for all the good it would do. It wouldn’t bring Oliver back. He was about to leave, unable to endure so much warranted grief, when the door rattled to let someone in.

  They saw Alma standing there. A loosely buttoned coat hung about her as if it had been rained on for a week, or as if she had slept in it under a hedge. She looked older to Burton than she should have. ‘What do you want?’

  Anyone could come in who wanted to, so he needn’t have spoken. One or two would call from Woodhouse or the sawmill, and the Ollington sons would show themselves on finishing work at Taylor’s farm.

  Alma pushed a way forward with bowed head to the coffin, hands together as if in prayer. Crying stopped, not because Burton had cowed them by his impossible demand not to blawt, but at Alma’s long intent look, eyes going from head to foot of the body as if to make sure all of it was there.

  She’s pregnant, Edith said to herself, like me, and then a weird scream of agonized distress shocked them, Alma’s wail going on until everyone except Burton was pulled into an intensity of keening that seemed to vibrate the walls. The girls turned to each other as if for explanation as to why their control had gone, or to comfort each other as they stared down at Oliver, unable to believe he was dead, that he would never again make them laugh at his jokes and quips, wanting him to get up from his coffin and say he had only been pretending. They turned to Burton, who had always kept them in order, as if daring him to condemn their behaviour.

  He looked at Alma, then over her shoulder to view Oliver, gazed about the room as if desperate to find refuge from the terrible unstoppable commotion on each mournful and individual face. After the long slow look his features suddenly shivered from their habitual iron composure, which none present had seen before and never would again. He drew out a large red handkerchief, and from the albeit noiseless movement behind the covering of his face, they knew that the soul was being torn out of him at last, Edith not alone in thinking that if it wasn’t now it never would be.

  Ivy and Rebecca helped Mary Ann to get the dinner ready, and Thomas went with Oswald to the well. Edith, having twigged what was wrong with Alma, walked arm-in-arm with her down the lane, since she had seemed too distressed to leave the house alone. ‘I can see you’re going to have a baby, duck. So am I. My husband’s Tommy Jackson. He went off with the gunners to France, and I haven’t heard from him for over a fortnight, so I’m beginning to wonder if he’s all right, but then, I would, wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I knew him,’ Alma said. ‘He’d sometimes come to the Sunday School and collect his little sister.’

  ‘That’s him, all right!’ Edith laughed. ‘Though I shouldn’t think he ever went there himself, the way he carried on with me. “I’ve rented a hedgebottom for the weekend,” he used to say. “It cost me the earth, but I know it’s going to be worth it. Just come with me, and let me show you where it is. I’ve fixed it up with a double bed and a birdcage!” He’s a real devil, but I’ve always loved him, and I know he loves me. What’s a man for if he can’t make you happy in that way? Oh, I’m sorry. You’re crying again. I feel like that as well,’ and they wept through the dim long tunnel, Edith stopping the moment they were in the open, unable to bear anyone seeing her upset. ‘When I have my baby I’ll call him Tommy, after his father, and I think I know what you’ll call yours. Our Oliver was a bit of a lad. All the girls liked him, and it never took much to see why.’

  She stammered. ‘I’m not sure what I’ll call him.’

  ‘Well, you’d better decide, because if you don’t have a name ready you might say the first one on the tip of your tongue, and afterwards it might not be the one you wanted. I must know what to call mine in case I blurt out my father’s, which is Ernest, and I never want to do that, because he’s been a bogger to me all my life, though he’s better to me now I’m married.’

  Alma felt close to Oliver’s goodlooking confident sister. She liked her, and in her misery wanted to hold her. ‘Mine might be a girl.’

  ‘Well then,’ Edith said, ‘if mine is I’ll call her Ivy, like my sister. My baby will always be Little Ivy, and my sister will be Big Ivy. That way there’d be a difference, and we’ll always know who’s who. I’ll walk you to the top of the road, duck, but then I must go back to help my mother.’ It was impossible not to weep. ‘I can’t believe our Oliver’s dead. It don’t seem true.’

  ‘I can’t believe it either. I never will.’ They embraced in mutual misery and concern.

  ‘I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow morning.’ Edith kissed her wet cheek. ‘It’s at Lenton, at eleven. I don’t suppose there’ll be many there, but I’d like all Nottingham to come and say goodbye to Oliver.’

  Mary Ann wept through the service, so many tears from the thirty or so in the church that you could rear a patch of prize marrows, Burton thought, who felt himself bleeding inside. Oliver deserved no less, but the vicar rattled on about what a good and upright Christian he had been, and what a pity God took him so young, as if the sanctimonious humbug had known him every day of his life. The army chaplain put in his sixpennyworth as well, and there were prayers and hymns, though the ceremony had to be drawn out if only for Mary Ann’s sake. The few tears he had blawted in the house were enough for him, having the rest of his life to mourn a beloved son who would have made an even better blacksmith than himself. Whether there would have been much work, with so many motors coming on the road, was something else to think about.

  The November sky over the cemetery increased the desolation as the people came out, mourners as if blind, hardly knowing where to stand, till vergers discreetly arranged the scene. Six troopers from Oliver’s regiment carried the coffin to the graveside, marking his departure with full military honours.

  The rain had waited specially, but what could you expect at a funeral? Fourteen riflemen formed up on either side of the grave, each file for the seven holes of a horseshoe, Burton surmised, a sergeant-major by the left hand row with three other NCOs. The vicar wore a cassock, and mortarboard with a tassel dropping behind, while the regimental chaplain in uniform stood close to Burton and Mary Ann. Eli and Tom and Harry and Morgan, all in their Sunday best, were further back by the wall, and others with nothing better to do had walked in from the street to see the show as if it was something on at the Theatre Royal. Away from everybody, and sharing a large umbrella with an older woman, Alma stood with a handkerchief to her mouth. Edith had told Burton of Alma’s condition, and he didn’t have to enquire whose baby it would be.

  The vicar spouted as if he couldn’t have enough of listening
to his own voice:

  ‘“The sun shall be no more thy light by day,

  Neither for brightness shall the moon

  Give light unto thee;

  But the Lord shall be unto thee

  An everlasting light.”’

  The sergeant-major barked: ‘Present!’

  All rifles pointed at the sky.

  ‘Load!’

  One blank cartridge went into each breech. ‘Fire!’

  Fourteen shots clattered into the dank air, and after the echoes had died away, and the lugubrious melody of The Last Post sounded, even traffic on the road seemed stopped by the slow notes of the bugle. The ceremonial scene was taken by the Nottingham Post photographer from his tripod a few yards behind the priests.

  Soldiers lowered the coffin, and Mary Ann sent down the first handful of soil with tears never to be her last.

  As Burton kept the gate open for her to come onto the road a man of the firing party said: ‘Just a minute, sir.’

  He held Mary Ann steady. ‘What do you want?’

  The corporal saluted, and took something from his pocket. ‘This is your son’s watch. I know he wanted me to give it to you.’

  Burton looked at it, and put it into his pocket. ‘Here’s a shilling for some beer.’

  ‘No, sir, that’s all right. Oh, and there’s something else.’ He gave him a slip of paper. ‘It’s a postal order for two shillings.’

  Mary Ann fainted, but Burton caught her before she could fall.

  A bottle of White Horse and a few quarts of Shipstone’s were laid out for those who came back to the house. Burton wanted to be at work, to lose himself in his own thoughts, but stood aside with a single whisky and let the others go to it, though few had much stomach for booze. The girls cut bread and butter, and brought in sandwiches on Mary Ann’s best plates to the parlour table, which none outside the family had seen before.