A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Strangely enough,’ he glanced towards the lane as if someone might appear to stop him talking just as he had found the person he’d been looking for. ‘I’m in Nottingham for a few days, so thought it would be interesting to talk to you. My name’s David Ernest Dyslin. I was born near Pontllanfraith. I believe you know where that place is?’

  A satisfactory speed of mind was necessary when faced with surprise or embarrassment but, all the same, he should have known what was coming. He grasped the man’s arm. ‘Walk to the end of the yard with me,’ glad none of the family were near to crowd in and listen. To delay matters, whatever they might turn out to be – though he had a good idea – he asked: ‘What line of trade might you be in?’

  Dyslin smiled at such a question, the same faint curl of the lip as came onto Burton’s when amused at giving information from an unassailable vantage point. ‘I’m a solicitor, here on some will and property business for a client in Cardiff. I’ll be going back tomorrow, so I’m more than happy to find you.’

  ‘People don’t make such a point of it for nothing.’ He accepted the offered cigar from his leather case, as yet too astonished to think of him as his son, but refused a match and struck one of his own, holding the flame a few moments over the end of the cigar, then pressing the fire out with two fingers, and rubbing the burnt part of the match to a point. Making sure it was sharp enough, he stuck it in the end that would go into his mouth, firstly so that it could be held more securely between the teeth, and secondly that the juice would go into the wood instead of his mouth, and thirdly that the end of the cigar wouldn’t get soggy. Smoke flew out over the lane. ‘Now you’ve found me.’

  ‘Do you recall anything about the name Dyslin?’

  Burton puffed on the cigar – a good one – and looked into his eyes. ‘I knew a woman in Wales who had it.’

  ‘I’m her only child.’

  Every day, no matter how far back, was only yesterday as far as he was concerned but, judging by the age of the man before him, he could acknowledge that thirty-six years had passed all too quickly. ‘How is she?’

  Dyslin, fascinated by Burton’s procedure in lighting the cigar, thought he might follow it himself sometime. ‘She died, two years ago.’ He tapped ash on top of the fence while waiting for a phrase of regret – which didn’t come. ‘Before she died …’

  Burton wondered if there’d be any blawting, which would be disgraceful in a grown man. It was two years ago, after all.

  ‘She told me how I came into the world.’

  ‘We met on a train.’ Burton wished for such an adventure today, but knew it was unlikely to come more than once in a lifetime. ‘She told me her husband had just died. He was an engineer at some pit in Staffordshire.’

  ‘Your memory is good.’

  ‘It’s hard not to remember things like that.’ When did you forget anything, especially when silly damned people reminded you so unexpectedly? ‘You must have had a job finding me.’

  ‘Not at all. She told me your name and your calling, and where you came from. I’m used to tracing people.’

  There were many Burtons in Nottingham, but it could hardly be denied he’d found the right one. ‘How did you become a solicitor?’ Being told to mind his own business might provide sufficient reason for walking away, but Dyslin had the sense and politeness to tell him.

  ‘My uncle, the Methodist minister who took in my mother, was a good man, and I did so well at school he paid the two-hundred-pound premium for me to be an articled clerk for five years. After I qualified I enlisted and went to the war, like everyone else, and didn’t get into practice till I came out.’ In spite of the silence Burton knew he had more to say. ‘I got the notion of coming to see you as soon as the opportunity arose. I know my mother wanted it.’

  They observed each other with an intensity that couldn’t deny their connection, stance exactly alike, even something in the shape of their hands and the casual smoking of cigars. Dyslin was talkative, but Burton supposed he would be in such a situation. He could hardly have inherited the tongue-wag from his mother, who’d never said much. ‘She didn’t want to marry again?’

  ‘She told me that the only person she ever loved was you.’

  ‘I did think a lot of her, and it’s good of you to let me know.’

  ‘She said it, not me.’ He showed less of a smile. ‘But it’s been on my mind the last year or so to talk to you. I’d assumed my father to be the mining engineer, and you can imagine my surprise, for a while anyway, when she told me just before her death that it could only have been you, a journeyman blacksmith.’

  Burton gave a short dry laugh. ‘Strange things happen in the world.’

  ‘Anyway, you might like to know I’m getting on well in life.’ His smile turned from one of amusement to irony: ‘Though there were times during the war in France when I wished no one had ever met my mother.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you were the only one.’

  ‘At least I stayed alive, and came out a captain in the South Wales Borderers. Now I have three children, all on their way to being grown up.’

  So I’m a grandfather again, which makes seven, the last time I counted. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  He held something wrapped in tissue paper. ‘My mother wanted me to give you this. She said you wiped her tears with it at the worst time of her life.’

  Burton looked at the folded handkerchief. ‘So I did.’

  ‘I have a lot to thank you for.’

  He put the handkerchief in his pocket, something precious to remind him of Minnie. The regret that he hadn’t persisted in trying to marry her was caught by the tail as it sped through his mind. ‘She was a very fine woman. Knowing her was one of the best times of my life.’

  They stood in silence, till Dyslin said, ‘I understand you not inviting me into your house, while your wife is there.’

  ‘What happened between me and your mother was long before I got married.’

  ‘I imagine so. The war altered many attitudes, otherwise my mother might not have told me about you.’

  ‘Come and see me whenever you like.’

  Dyslin’s cigar went sparking into the lane. ‘I might not have another chance. If you want to reach me, here’s my address. My uncle was a father to me nearly all my life, but I don’t mind thinking a little of you in that way, though I shan’t bother you.’

  He’s just as obliging as his mother. Burton thought himself, lucky that it ran in the family. The white piece of calling card fitted into his waistcoat pocket, well hidden for going into the house. The handshake was so firm that Dyslin hoped no bones would need resetting before going back to the office, though whether the pressure made up for his putative father’s off-handedness was still hard to decide.

  Burton watched him striding down the lane, glad that at least one of his sons had made something of himself. He stood a few minutes, unable to move. Oliver had died, but he had gained another that had been growing up in Wales all the time Oliver was alive. The shock usually came long enough after the event to poleaxe him – for a moment or two. Life was long with so many happenings that you didn’t know about and therefore couldn’t control. He felt weirdly blinded as if, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, he didn’t belong in the world of smithery but in a more expansive, a richer and better style to which he was entitled yet had never been able to enter because he was doomed to be who he was.

  A shake of the head, he knew it wouldn’t do, and with the shadiness of dusk coming on went into the house to receive the expected questions from Mary Ann.

  ‘Who was he?’

  ‘The son of a friend I knew in Wales. He came to tell me his father died recently, and thought I’d like to know. They’ve done well for themselves. The chap was a solicitor up here on business. He didn’t go much out of his way.’

  ‘He looked a lot like you.’

  ‘Some must. I can’t help that.’

  ‘Ivy thought so as well.’

  ‘She would.’

/>   There was no way of getting anything out of him if he didn’t want to explain. ‘We can’t both be wrong. You don’t tell anybody what they want to know.’

  Why should I? It always pays to keep your trap shut. ‘Is there any whisky left in that bottle?’

  ‘It’s only half-gone.’

  ‘Make a pot of tea then, and we’ll put a splash in.’

  Pouring some into a glass, he complained it was tasteless. ‘Oswald and Thomas have been guzzling from the bottle, and levelled it up with water.’

  Such remarks weren’t as serious as might be assumed, she knew, or his words didn’t come out the way he wanted because he had held them back too long. Maybe he only spoke so as to hear the sound of his own voice, and when he did the children answered back and made him angry.

  But she was sure Oliver would never have drunk his father’s whisky on the sly, and the little I take, she thought, can’t make much difference. God help anyone if he caught them. Luckily it’s his nature to suspect everybody, then he can’t settle onto who in particular it was.

  Thomas and Oswald might well have glued their lips to it, Burton thought, and I wouldn’t put it past Ivy to sip a drop, or even Emily, whose eyes glistened unnaturally from time to time when she acted a bit dafter than usual. Maybe the whole family was at it, queued up to take their turn for a good swig when he wasn’t there, and if so they’d all end up a bit sillier than they already were, or with their livers eaten away, which would serve them right.

  ‘I suppose that’s what you used to do with your father’s whisky when he wasn’t looking,’ Mary Ann said. ‘But if you think it’s the others you’d better lock it up.’

  ‘I’ll be damned if I’ll do such a thing in my own house. If you can’t rely on your children to keep their hands off what doesn’t belong to them who can you rely on?’

  He didn’t wonder at her laugh, but she had her notions, and he had his. She was welcome to hers, and could say what she liked, but he would keep his to himself. In most ways he lived in the time of when they had fallen in love, she thought, and would never change, which didn’t make her unhappy. Holding more or less the same views was good for both, no matter how old they were beginning to look. All the same, she realized somewhat more than him how times were changing.

  He wanted to tell her about David Ernest Dyslin, being pleased more than not at the meeting, but nipped his tongue as she poured the tea, and he put a good measure of whisky in both cups. ‘We might as well drink it before the others sup it away.’

  If he wouldn’t tell her who the man Dyslin was she wouldn’t admit it was she who liked a tot from his bottle now and again. ‘That’s a devilish thing to say about your own children. They’d never dream of stealing your whisky. It’s just that the older you get the stronger it has to be.’

  He touched her hand. ‘I’ve got them weighed up.’

  ‘It takes one to know one.’ She liked talking, as a drop of the fiery stuff took effect. ‘That young man was your son, wasn’t he? It had something to do with when you were in Wales.’

  He gave a grunt, then smiled. ‘It happened long before we put the banns up.’

  ‘That’s nice to know.’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘You ought to have brought him into the house.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t.’

  ‘He’ll go away thinking we’re a pack of heathens, keeping him outside like that.’

  ‘He had no business around here.’

  ‘If he comes again I shall invite him in,’ though he was unlikely to return with the welcome he’d had.

  ‘He had to see what I looked like.’

  ‘I hope he wasn’t disappointed.’

  ‘He can please himself. Have some more whisky. It won’t harm you. It’s mostly water, only next time you have a nip when I’m not here don’t put too much in.’

  It pained Mary Ann that the children had always hated and feared their father. With Ivy it was more hate than fear, whereas the others feared more than they hated. Edith both hated and feared, but regarded him with contempt as well, and defied him as much as she could get away with, which was why she had been the first to escape by marrying Tommy Jackson. There had always been more of Burton in her than Burton could put up with, and she had more waywardness than he was able to tolerate.

  Pushing Douglas in his cot by Woodhouse on her way to see Mary Ann and her sisters, she stopped at the railway bridge because the way through was deep in mud, no dry place on either side to save her sinking in.

  She’d been trained by Mary Ann to be a good cook and housekeeper, so after Jackson’s death she had found work living in at a large house near Radcliffe. Douglas was looked after by Tommy’s parents, and she only saw him for a couple of hours on Sunday, which was pain enough for her full heart.

  She wondered how to avoid getting cold and wet to the ankles. The family was expecting her, and would worry if she didn’t appear.

  The tall bullish young man who came out of the beer-off wore a Norfolk jacket under his army greatcoat, and a white scarf hanging to his waist. ‘What’s wrong then, duck? Can’t you get through?’

  ‘It’s not that.’ She drew herself upright. ‘It’s just that I’m waiting for a nice big boat with a velvet seat to take me. One usually comes if I stand here long enough.’

  ‘That’s me, then,’ he laughed. ‘I’m not the Titanic, but I’ll get you through all right.’ Before she could think of anything really sarcastic he picked up the cot with Douglas in it and carried it into the tunnel. ‘I’ll come back for you in a bit.’

  He splashed his way along, and lodged the cot safely in a dry part of the track. ‘Just wait there, you little crumb,’ he said to the child. ‘And don’t cry, or I’ll stop your windpipe. Your mam’ll be here soon.’ Douglas opened his eyes and looked over the barrier with stolid curiosity, then smiled as if his father had come back undead from the war.

  Well-built and strong, he cradled Edith in his arms, and before she could say what the hell do you think you’re up to? he went splashing through the mud. ‘This is like milk chocolate. It’s nothing, a paddling pool. I was a gunner in the Royal Artillery at Wipers. Now that was what you could call mud. There was lakes of it. I was a sergeant, and they promoted me because everybody else was either dead, drowned in the mud, or in hospital.’

  She could well believe it. His brutal authority had a certain attraction, but only for as long as he would use it to protect a woman from the world, and not turn it against her – a young man to be wary of.

  ‘I hate mud more than death. I’d run from anything that looks like it. But this ain’t mud as I’ve known it. It’s more like cocoa, and fit to drink while I’m carrying somebody as nice and warm as you.’ He set her down, and the gap between his otherwise white and even teeth gave him a mischievous and untrustworthy look. ‘Don’t I deserve a kiss now?’

  ‘You deserve a couple, I suppose, but you aren’t going to get one. Thanks, all the same.’

  ‘I can wait,’ he said. ‘I’m going up the lane to the Cherry Orchard, so at least I can walk a little way with you. You can’t deny me that. Here, I’ll push your cot.’ She let him. ‘My name’s Doddoe. That’s what everybody calls me. Surname, Atkin. You can have my army number if you like. I’ll never forget that. But I didn’t hear what your name was. Must have been the guns that did my ears in.’

  She wondered how to get rid of him. ‘It’s Edith. And this is Douglas.’

  ‘Are you going very far, Edith? I’m going after rabbits in Robin’s Wood.’ He stopped the cot and stood closer than she liked, opened his coat to show nets spilling out. A ferret’s sharp little eyes from another pocket frightened her. Such a big girl, he thought, as if it might run up her legs and bite her quim. If it did I’d skin the little devil alive. ‘It’s only Percy.’ He laughed, and showed her a cosh. ‘It don’t even earn its keep, though it’s a hungry little bleeder.’ He resumed his pushing. ‘I’ll knock it on the napper one of these days and throw
it to the cat. Or I’ll sell him and buy myself a pint.’

  His talk sickened her, glad to stop by the gate. ‘I’m going in here, so you can let me have the cot now.’

  He was startled. ‘That’s Burton’s place.’

  ‘I know it is. He’s my father.’

  He put a hand to his cap, pushed it further back over his tight fair curls. ‘Bleddy hell! I don’t want anything to do with him. He’s a hard bogger. I once asked him for a job, and thought the swine was going to kill me.’

  ‘Don’t you talk about my father like that.’

  ‘Well, that’s how he is. But he’s got an eye for the women, I do know that much.’

  ‘You can piss off.’ She pushed him from the cot handle, and he seemed willing enough to walk up the lane alone, muttering about Burton, she was sure, words she had at one time used herself but didn’t care to hear from a poaching braggart like Doddoe Atkin. Burton was her father, after all.

  She watched the one-man poaching machine turn into the Cherry Orchard, thinking she would never marry someone like that, helpful though he had been, repeating the words with more determination on leaving the cot in the shed across the yard so that it wouldn’t get wet in the rain.

  She pulled Douglas into the house. Burton sat in his Windsor chair by the fire. ’emily, clear out of the way so that your married sister can sit down.’

  Emily sat on the rug to play with Douglas, her talk confirming for Burton that she was just the right age for him. ‘I thought I wouldn’t get here,’ Edith said. ‘I’ve never seen such deep mud under the bridge. But a chap called Doddoe Atkin carried the cot, with Douglas inside, all through it. He was very considerate.’

  She had heard many grunts from Burton but was long to recall the one he gave now. ‘He’s a bad sort, the worst of the lot. I know about him and his ways. The rest of his family’s rotten, as well. He was in the pub the other night with some of his pals, and I think he must have got thrown out of the army for swearing.’