by David Storey
His father had left the room.
His mother stood watching her, a little helpless. So many moments like this had passed before.
There was little else to say. They waited in silence. Then, overhead, they heard their father in his room.
‘Can I give you a lift?’ she said.
He shook his head; he went with her to the car.
‘Are you in a bad mood?’ he said. Their mother watched them from the front door of the house.
‘No.’ She seemed surprised that he should think she was.
‘I’d like you to have stayed a bit longer,’ he said.
‘Oh, that house isn’t for me,’ she said, glancing back at her mother who stood on the step, smiling, her hands clenched together.
‘How are things with you?’ he said.
‘Very well.’ She half-smiled.
He thought, then, as he watched her sitting, small and delicate, behind the wheel of the large car, that he recognized her, sadly, for the first time.
As if aware of his mood she said, through the open window, ‘He couldn’t even wait, you know, to see me go.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘he’s had a lot to contend with,’ surprised himself that he should try and defend him.
‘Yes,’ she said, then added, ‘But still, this should be some consolation.’ She ran her hands round the wheel, gazing out through the windscreen at the narrow road. ‘I knew you’d go back,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘What else is there?’ She glanced up at him.
‘I don’t think that was the reason though,’ he said.
‘Well, I wouldn’t pretend to understand. I’m only a politician, boy.’ She laughed.
She started the engine. It scarcely made a sound.
‘Good luck with your election, then,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ She bowed her head, engaged the gear and glanced back. ‘At least, we have that in common,’ she said and signalled to the house.
His mother stood in the door waving until the car was out of sight.
He went out in the evening, walking, very much as he had done before, round the town. His father was in bed when he got back.
In the night he heard his father get up, the crack of his boots on the bare floor of the scullery, the pouring of water into a pot; the preparations to go to work.
After a while there was silence. He wondered if he had left. He heard no sound at all.
He got out of bed and went down.
From the stairs he heard a whimpering, like an animal.
When he went in the living room he saw his father dressed for work, sitting by the empty fire, crying into his hands.
‘Ah, now,’ he said, cut through.
His father, caught in his crying, seemed unable to release himself. He stood by him, unable to move.
‘Ah, come on, now,’ he said.
His father raised his head. Colin had never seen him in tears before. His face was red, his eyes shrunken.
‘I’d have done anything for you,’ his father said. ‘You know that.’
‘You have done,’ he said. ‘You’ve given me a lot.’
‘Aye. I know.’
‘I can’t mark time with it,’ he said. ‘I wish you’d see that.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I haven’t let you down.’
‘Let me down?’ he said. ‘If you’d have cut me heart out you couldn’t have hurt me more. I’m not learned. I know nothing. I know that. But by God, if you’d chosen to hurt me on purpose you couldn’t have picked a better road.’
He put his hand on his father’s shoulder. He felt the hardness through the rough shirt. It was like holding a bough.
‘Look,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’
His father was silent. He felt him trembling beneath him, as if he were on fire.
‘I’ll come with you,’ he said, ‘to work.’
‘What?’ his father said.
‘I’ll walk with you.’
‘Oh,’ he said, then added, ‘If you like.’
‘I’ll get dressed,’ he said. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
His mother was on the landing, standing in the lighted door of his room when he went back up.
‘Is he bad?’ she said.
‘It’s all right,’ he said, not sure.
His father was waiting when he went down, with his mother, in the kitchen.
‘Do you want a cup of tea before you go?’ she said.
‘I’ll be late,’ his father said. He began to grumble.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘we’ll manage.’
The estate was silent. It was a little before sunrise.
As they walked up the dark roads, his father’s boots echoing between the houses, the light began to spread beyond the roofs, faintly at first, illuminating banks of dark cloud.
An orange sheen appeared over the hill.
They walked mostly in silence, the sky to the west lit by the flares of the colliery and the silent banks of steam.
‘Well, I go in here,’ his father said when they reached the yard.
Other groups of men passed them in the road, calling out, glancing curiously at him in his suit.
‘I’ll be gone when you get back,’ he said.
He took his father’s hand. He seemed numb.
‘I’ll come up again.’
‘Aye.’
His father glanced up quickly, at his face.
‘Well, I’ll see you, Dad,’ he said and held his hand a moment before releasing it.
His father nodded, dazed. He seemed taken up slightly from the ground.
He watched his father go off towards the black buildings near the shaft.
As he neared them he turned round, his face lit up by the orange flares.
He nodded then turned, glancing round at the other men and disappeared.
As Pasmore walked back towards the estate the light expanded overhead. Thick clouds were laid out over the houses, drawing back to a greenish haze.
He walked round for a while, past his sister’s house with its closed curtains, across the top of the estate.
Rays of light spread out across the valley. A low mist stood in the valley bottom. Across the other side, the sky was dark, the light picking out the clumps of woodland and, beyond, the low contours of the hills.
When he reached home the sun had risen above the horizon and the banks of cloud had begun to move away.
His mother cooked his breakfast. She came to see him off at the station.
They sat together in the bus.
After he’d kissed her and climbed into the train she stood alone on the platform, looking up shyly.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘take care of yourself.’
‘Ah, yes.’ She nodded, smiling.
They stood watching one another until the train started.
‘Look after my dad,’ he said, smiling, as her figure slid away.
He leaned out and waved.
She put up her hand.
The train swung out, over the buildings, and she disappeared.
It ran swiftly across the valley, over the river.
The sky had cleared.
The sun shone down across the wheatfields, yellow, almost orange, laid out between the pits.
Somewhere, underneath, was his father, lying down.
Sometimes he asked her about Fowler, at night when he couldn’t sleep, or when they were out together with the children, examining her eyes, unable to follow their search backwards, like waiting at a door for a knock to be answered: to know if there were, after all, anyone inside.
He formed a curious image of him, as of an old man or
a child, someone beset by their incoherency and doubt. He wondered if, after all, he didn’t identify a little of himself in Fowler.
‘He always thought you would come back,’ she said.
‘Did he?’ It seemed curious that he, Fowler, uncertain about so many things, should have been confident about that.
‘And you?’
‘I didn’t,’ she said. ‘I suppose that was an insurance.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
It astonished him, that all this should be here, his wife, his family, extracted miraculously from the past, brought into the light.
Perhaps Fowler saw himself as the agent of this unearthing and had been content, once it was over, to go away. At least, this is what he understood, for one day, unannounced, he came to the house. He opened the door to find him standing on the step and, though surprised, felt almost pleased to see him.
He was deferential and quiet, smiling, looking round, shaking Kay’s hand as if, for the first time, they were being introduced, stooping down to the children. He seemed clumsy. It was warm. Intermittently he wiped his face with a handkerchief which he kept in a side pocket of his suit. With the children he appeared ill-at-ease, reassured only when they, like Kay, were distracted and left him alone: he sat upright, his head averted.
It might have been a mistake, yet when he had gone he felt grateful to Fowler.
He wondered if the other man didn’t despise him.
In the winter he returned to teaching. Outwardly, despite the events of the preceding year, little had changed. He still had a regular job, a home, a wife and children; the apparatus of his life from his books to the commercial van was virtually the same. Even the despair, it seemed, persisted.
Yet something had changed. It was hard to describe. He had been on a journey. At times it seemed scarcely credible he had survived. He still dreamed of the pit and the blackness. It existed all around him, an intensity, like a presentiment of love, or violence: he found it hard to tell.