Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘You know what the neighbours can do?’ he said derisively.

  ‘Shut up,’ she hissed. ‘It’s all right for you, but Bill’s coming home tomorrow night. I’ll be in big trouble if anybody sees me with you.’

  Having a cold made him reckless, but her sharp sensible retort put him back on guard, and he kept quiet until they were in the house. ‘I don’t think anyone saw us come in,’ she said, switching on the kitchen lights.

  ‘You’ll be all right.’ He held her gently and bent down to kiss her. She threw her arms around him, taking his kisses with the greed of a passionate woman who had been parted too long from her husband. ‘Shall we go upstairs, duck?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, but be quiet.’

  He followed, loving her on every second stair, loins aching for her small wild body, remembering that he had recently ascended another set of stairs under different circumstances. The evening had begun, and the evening was about to end. She stripped to her underwear and lay in bed waiting for him. Never had an evening begun so sadly and ended so well, he reflected, peeling off his socks.

  7

  Jack took a short cut through the Frame Shop, for time was valuable since his promotion. Arthur was surprised at his appearance as he walked down the gangway: he seemed to have shrunk in size during the last month: he was sallow in the face, his lips were half open as if he were talking to himself, the black hair remembered as so glossy was now lank and dead, and he came into the shop looking as though he had no right there, nodding furtively to Robboe, and making his way between rows of machinery towards Arthur.

  Arthur had tried to imagine the scene when Jack was finally let into the house last Monday night, into his living-room littered with wet towels, empty glasses and gin bottles, and a long zinc bath of still steaming water. What had Em’ler said to him? He would have offered his right arm to have been an invisible listener. Even Brenda did not know, for though the gin and hot bath had been successful she did not say much to Arthur, sitting glumly a few days later in the Royal Coach and being sarcastic when she spoke any word at all.

  He stopped work when Jack approached, clapped him on the back, said how glad he was to see him, that he should come more often so that they could natter like old times. ‘But I suppose you’re too stuck up now you’ve got such a posh job. One of these days they’ll make you a foreman and then you won’t even speak to me when we pass on the street.’

  Jack received these sallies frigidly, his dark eyes taking in the familiar details of the lathe, darting into the sud-bin, up to the pulley-wheels, on to the turret — everywhere but at Arthur’s face. ‘You should be glad to see me,’ he said, ‘because I’ve got something to tell you.’

  ‘You’ve won the pools, I suppose?’

  His face became earnest and sad. ‘I wish you’d be serious and listen to what I’m going to say. I haven’t got much time. I’ve got to be back at my job in ten minutes.’

  ‘What is it then?’ Arthur was annoyed and uneasy because Jack was nervous, and he didn’t get on well with people who threw their nervousness in his face.

  ‘I’ve come to give you fair warning,’ Jack went on. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this, but being as we’re supposed to be friends, I will. You’d better be on your guard for the next couple of days because two big swaddies are after you. They’re going to bash you up, so don’t say I didn’t warn you, though God knows, you don’t deserve to be warned after what you’ve done. You should have had more sense, at your age.’

  Arthur thought: in a case like this, say nothing. Let him do all the talking. Encourage him by: ‘I don’t know why two swaddies should be after my guts. But thanks for telling me anyway.’

  Jack almost looked at him, but couldn’t quite fix his gaze. It moved to a stack of work, and he said: ‘You’re a crafty bogger, Arthur. I think you know very well why they’re after you, but in case you don’t I’ll tell you. One of the swaddies is Bill, Winnie’s husband. He says you’ve been carrying on with his wife. He says as well that you’ve been carrying on with Brenda. Well, I don’t know about his wife. You may have been carrying on with her for all I know. But I think he was wrong about Brenda. I like to know things in black and white, straight, and I know what black is and what white is in this case. I’m sure he’s wrong about Brenda. But if he wasn’t, I’ll give you fair warning, Arthur. I’ll cause trouble for you if you do carry on with Brenda. But then, I think you’re my friend, and wouldn’t do such a thing. I think you’re all right, deep down.’

  Jack clenched and unfolded his fist all through his long speech, and at the end of it Arthur passed him a piece of clean rag, which was accepted to wipe sweat slowly from his mouth and forehead. ‘You can be dead sure there’s nowt between me and Brenda,’ Arthur said. He was not worried by what he had just heard, yet felt that after his triumphant night with Winnie the forces of righteousness were closing-in, spoiling the fangs and blunting the claws of his existence. But one could never say that. Luck was always changing. It thumped you with knuckledusters on the back of the neck one minute, and stuffed your gob with sugar the next. The thing was: not to weaken. Like Jack, for instance.

  ‘You know,’ Arthur said, ‘these two big swaddies might be after me, but if it comes to a fight I’ll give ‘em a run for their money. They want to be careful. I shan’t run away from ‘em.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No, I know you wain’t. I wish you would, though, because if you don’t keep out of their way it’ll mean trouble for you.’

  ‘And trouble for them bastards,’ Arthur swore, feeling his back pressed too close to the wall. He did not like to fight, and would avoid it by all means possible: only the stupid fought with their fists, when they hadn’t the brains to argue: it was a poor way out of any problem. Yet when you were cornered, with two big swaddies after blood — two big heathens who had no brains and couldn’t listen to argument — then you could only lash out with your fists and smash whatever hundredweight sacks of coal came for you.

  ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ Jack said.

  ‘I won’t. Thanks for the favour. I’ll look out.’

  ‘See you another time then.’ He was already on his way down the gangway.

  ‘So long,’ Arthur called, twisting the turret with such force that its noisy clack echoed above the sound of other machinery.

  At knocking-off time he walked along Eddison Road with his head high, unnoticed in the crowd, thinking how right Jack had been, for he could swear that two swaddies had trailed him a few evenings ago. He had thought that perhaps they were policemen, but concluded this to be impossible because as far as he knew he had snatched no bags, burst no gas meters, coshed no shopkeepers. And so Jack had explained it all. He made up the story as he walked along: Bill had arrived from Germany, and the same night had called at the beer-off by the street-end, and stood talking to one of the tight-lipped women that passed for neighbours, who had lost no time in saying what a good woman and wife Winnie had been while Bill was away, yet at the same time hinting that something fishy had been going on the night before, adding that Winnie had been seen in the Peach Tree with a young chap who was tall and had fair hair. In the knocking-about that took place when Bill got back to the house Winnie had ended up with a black eye and Bill with the claw-marks of a tiger down one side of his face, and Winnie said that of course she had been in the Peach Tree with Arthur, but that he had been waiting to see Brenda, her sister, who had turned up after ten minutes, during which time she had only taken advantage of one measly gin-and-orange. As for bringing him back to the house he could ask Brenda whose bed he had gone back to, though he was to say nothing about it to Jack on pain of another fanciful tiger-claw design down the other side of his face. But Bill had been so enraged at this trouble when he had expected bliss to be his lot after a rough crossing from the Hook that he was determined to make Arthur pay for it. A young man that carried on with two married women should be stopped dead in his tracks. He had tackled Jack on the question: a bloke called Arthur w
ho works at your factory is carrying on with your wife, Jack. Jack hadn’t believed him, but Bill said he could prove that Arthur went back home with Brenda last Monday night. Jack had laughed in his face, saying that he was home last Monday night and that Brenda had been in all evening with a friend of hers called Em’ler, an old mate from the stocking factory. He must have felt sheepish in adding that Em’ler had been drunk — not quite the right sort of friend to have — and that his wife was upstairs in a dead stupor in which she lay until morning. Bill swore that Jack was a bloody fool. Jack had smiled. Bill had said, all right, then. He was home for ten days and was going to get this young bastard who wanted to break up their happy married lives. A mate of his was on leave at the same time and they would shadow him, and bash him up one of these nights. Jack had seen that Bill was in earnest, and so had warned Arthur.

  He turned in at the yard-end. Dusk was spreading between the houses, turning into a cold, windy April evening. His heavy boots clobbered their way down the yard. Lifting the back-door latch he passed through the scullery and hung his coat in the parlour. He usually said: ‘Hey up,’ to the rest of the family, but this evening he was too preoccupied for politeness, seating himself morosely at the table and waiting for his mother to pour him a cup of tea. The wireless was drumming away, and the first thing he said was:

  ‘Turn that thing off.’

  But it was playing some Old Time waltzes that his mother liked. ‘Leave it on,’ she said. ‘It’s nice music’.

  ‘Well, pour me a cup o’ tea, then,’ he demanded.

  She looked up at him. ‘What’s up wi’ yo’ tonight? Pullin’ a megrim like that.’

  He didn’t answer. The wireless was left on. His elder brother Fred sat at the table doing a crossword. He wondered what was on Arthur’s mind, seeing him drink his cup of tea without saying a word. ‘I’m going upstairs to listen to the wireless,’ Fred announced.

  Arthur followed him, and sat on the bed.

  ‘You don’t seem very happy,’ Fred said. ‘What’s the trouble?’

  He didn’t want to explain his worries. ‘Nowt,’ he answered in the last stages of dejection. Lighting a cigarette he walked to the window and hurled the dead match outside as if it were a stone and he wanted it to hit someone; stood for a moment to watch kids playing beneath the lighted streetlamps, hearing the distant hooting of traffic and the soft throbbing of factory engines at the end of the terrace. ‘If you want to know what’s up,’ he said, ‘two blokes are after me, a couple of swaddies’ — and he told everything. ‘Winnie’s husband’s on leave from Germany, and he’s out with one of his pals to get me before they go back.’

  ‘Keep out of their way for a bit, then,’ Fred advised him. ‘Are you going out tonight?’

  ‘I was thinking about it.’

  ‘I’ll go with you. I’d like a walk.’ If I can’t help him much in a fight I can at least see that he doesn’t get into one, Fred told himself.

  ‘Are you sure you want to come?’ He didn’t feel like leading Fred into any trouble. With himself, it didn’t matter.

  ‘I said I wanted a walk, didn’t I?’

  ‘It’s your funeral then,’ Arthur warned him.

  ‘And yours,’ Fred retorted, ‘for getting mixed-up in a thing like this.’

  Neither used overcoats, hoping to warm themselves by a quick walk to the pub, and then to be re-stoked by a pint or two. Fred admitted, walking up the yard, that he was broke as usual — thirty-bob sickness benefit didn’t go far — and Arthur said that the drinks would be on him. Mrs Bull stood at the yard-end, her moon-face a beacon scanning the street for news of established wrecks and for rumours of those next destined for the dogs, peering through half-darkness to find out who was nipping to Taylor’s for a basket of grub on tick. Arthur unknowingly nudged her in passing.

  ‘Mind what ye’r doin’,’ she shouted after him. ‘Yer young bleeder.’

  ‘I think you bumped into her,’ Fred explained.

  Arthur turned: ‘I didn’t see yer,’ he cried. ‘You stand there so often I thought you was a new pillar the builders had put up. You want to be careful: I might ‘ave stopped and stubbed my fag out on you by accident. Though I don’t suppose it’d have bin the first time that that’s ‘appened.’

  She shook her fist. ‘You cheeky sod. I’ve seen you carryin’ on wi’ married women. I copped you the other night down town, and don’t say I didn’t.’ She kept a chock-a-block arsenal of blackmailing scandal ready to level with foresight and backsight at those that crossed her path in the wrong direction, sniping with tracer and dum-dum from sandbags of ancient gossip.

  ‘You want to mind yer own business, you nosy bogger,’ Arthur shouted.

  ‘Ah!’ she cried, in the sort of knowing voice that maddened him, ‘so as dirty people like you can prosper!’

  Fred pulled at his arm. ‘She’s barmy,’ he said. ‘She’s got the ox.’

  They walked uphill to the Peacock, in which few people sat because it was still early, and found a table in a corner across from the bar. Arthur fetched the drinks: stout for himself, and a pint for Fred.

  Arthur drank eight bottles of stout, and Fred realized, seeing him drink like this, how much he was worried. Also, Arthur always smoked heavily during boozing, but now he was putting back pint after pint of stout without even noticing the packet of cigarettes that Fred slid on to the table. ‘You want to take it easy,’ he warned him.

  ‘What for?’ It was an uncompromising request, implying that he wanted to be left alone.

  ‘Because you’ll get drunk. You’ll start fighting.’

  ‘No I wain’t. I’ve got enough on my konk wi’out getting into a fight.’ It was a logical answer, but Fred knew that it meant nothing if a force of anger came up before he had time to think. At the seventh bottle he exclaimed, ‘Look, stupid, I don’t want to have to carry you home.’

  ‘Who’s askin’ yer ter carry me ‘ome?’

  ‘Nobody. You never do. You just conk out.’

  ‘How many times have yer seen me conk out from too much booze?’ he asked truculently.

  ‘Twice. But that was enough.’

  Arthur gave him a black look, but Fred stared back until he relaxed and merely said: ‘If I conk out it wain’t be on yo’, so don’t worry yoursen.’

  ‘I’ll watch it,’ Fred rejoined. ‘I’m not going to lug you right down Ilkeston Road in the dark. Especially if you start spewin’ all over the place.’ He wasn’t yet worried: eight bottles of stout were nothing to panic about.

  ‘A drink’ll do me good tonight,’ Arthur said.

  ‘A drink’s all right, but not a bath in it.’

  Arthur laughed, but it was the laugh of a man caught unawares by something funny at a time when he saw nothing to laugh at in the general situation. ‘You aren’t drinkin’ much yoursen.’

  Fred tapped the half-pint before him. ‘Somebody’s got to stay sober and look after you.’

  ‘You insultin’ bastard. I don’t want no lookin’ after.’

  ‘Not much you don’t.’ Fred piled it on. ‘Anybody who goes carryin’-on with two married women and lets their husbands find out about it wants lookin’ after.’

  Arthur disliked having the subject brought into the open. ‘I didn’t let them know about it. Some neighbours must have seen me, and opened their traps. They won’t let a bloke live.’

  ‘Them swaddies wain’t let you live, when they get you.’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ he affirmed. ‘Wait and see.’

  ‘That’s what I’m doing. Only if they’re around tonight I’ll be here to help you. I don’t want to have you rolling drunk all over the place and not be able to do anything when they see you. Anyway, if you do see ‘em, take my tip, and run. It’s the best thing to do. You told me they’re both big bastards on leave from Germany. You can’t stand up to ‘em with all that piss inside you.’

  ‘I can allus fight better when I’ve had summat to drink,’ Arthur answered. ‘It makes me mad. If
I saw ‘em when I was sober I might want to shake ‘ands wi’ ‘em an’ say: “How do, lads? Sorry, but you shun’t ‘ave bin such stupid bastards as to sign on for ten years wi’ the army, then you could ‘ave looked after yer wives a bit better.” But if I’ve ‘ad some drink I’ll just lash into ‘em.’

  Four youths were amusing themselves at the dartboard, two teams coming excitedly down from three-o-one, shouting out each score with such vehemence that Fred thought ninety-thousand quid had been promised as a prize. They were either bad players, or drunk, for darts were hitting the wall and board-wires, falling over the floor like wounded birds. One dart player, with an exaggerated swing of his arm, slung a dart forcefully in the general direction of the board. Its steel tip clicked loudly on an outer wire, ricocheted, and turned a few graceful somersaults in the air above Arthur’s leg.

  Sitting at a table, Arthur always found difficulty in placing his legs in a comfortable position. He could only find accommodation for one of them beneath this particular table. The other was outstretched over the floor, showing a space of flesh between the top of his short socks and the pulled-up bottom of his trousers. The antics of the flying dart ended by plummeting downwards and sticking in the soft meaty part of his exposed ankle, then hanging down from his flesh.

  His leg twitched, but he did not jump up from the sudden pain, being so busy thinking about his trouble that not even a brick on his head or a firework explosion would have roused him. He bent forward, plucked out the dart, and laid it on the table beside his glass.

  Fred was always amazed at the way a fight started; a defective machine was set in motion and you knew it was going to break itself up unless you ran to the switch and stopped it. But at such moments he became too interested in the movement towards destruction, and the machine turned into a twisted mass of nuts and bolts on the floor.