by David Storey
Each morning he went into the street and with the other soldiers marched up and down. Children followed them on the pavements. On Sundays the soldiers walked in groups in the fields or down the road to the station, where they would sit on a wall by the bridge, gazing at the lines and smoking.
One day the soldier called Colin into his room and from his pack brought out several bullets. There were five of them, fastened together at the base. The cartridges were copper-coloured, the bullets silver. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You have them. I’ve a lot more here. He brought out several more, laying them on the bed. ‘You can have the gun as well,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it.’
He reached across for it by the door, pulled back the bolt and showed him how to slip in the bullets. ‘There now,’ he said. ‘You can shoot anybody you want.’
He laughed, watching Colin hold it, unaccustomed to the weight.
‘Nay, don’t point it at me,’ he said. ‘I’m your friend.’
When he went down his mother stood back across the kitchen, one hand raised to her cheek frowning.
‘You’ve never given him that?’ she said.
‘I have,’ the soldier said. ‘Why not? I don’t want it.’
‘Well,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see when his father comes.’
And his father too, when he came, looked at it and, in much the same manner, said, ‘You can’t give it away, can you?’ the soldier laughing and nodding his head.
‘I’ve lost it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’
‘Well,’ his father said. ‘I’ll put it away. It’s no good for Colin.’ Yet, although he locked it in the wardrobe in their bedroom, on an evening he would take it out, after the soldier had gone, and ram the bolt to and fro, put in and take out the bullets, and sight it at various objects outside the window. In the end, however, he gave it to the police and said that he had found it under a hedge.
‘Don’t you want to fight?’ he would ask the soldier, frowning.
‘I have been fighting,’ the soldier said.
‘But to fight again,’ his father said.
‘What for?’ the soldier asked him. He would lie back easily in a chair or stand in his stockinged feet in front of the fire, smiling down at his father and nodding his head.
‘To defend your country,’ his father said. ‘To defend freedom. To keep your wife and children from being captured.’
‘Nay, it’ll not make much difference,’ the soldier said. ‘Whoever’s here we’ll live much the same, one way or another. There’ll be the rich and the poor, and one or two lucky ones’, he went on, ‘between.’
‘Nay, I can’t make any sense of it,’ his father would say, rubbing his head, shy in the face of the soldier, suddenly uncertain. ‘Don’t you believe in anything?’
‘Not you could put your finger on,’ the soldier would say, smiling and lighting – if he hadn’t got one lit already – another cigarette.
‘He was nearly drowned. In the sea,’ his father said when the soldier had gone. ‘They picked him up in a small boat as he was going under for the third time,’ he added.
‘For the third tin, more likely,’ his mother said. ‘With all that sugar it’s a wonder he came up at all.’
‘Still, he’s given it all away,’ his father said.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m not surprised. Nearly everything he’s got is stolen.’
Yet long after the soldier had gone they continued to use the sugar, to sweeten tea and finally to make some jam.
When he left, marching off to the station in a long column, his father went with him, walking along the side of the road, across the fields. When he came back he sat by the fire, looking up at the buttons and the medals the soldier had left on the shelf. Then, after a while, he went up to the soldier’s room and tidied up the bed.
One evening, a short while later, Colin woke to the sound of the sirens and lay for a moment listening for the roar of planes and the crashing of bombs. But beyond the wailing there was no other noise at all.
Then he heard his father’s feet pounding on the stairs.
‘Come on, lad,’ his father said. ‘We’re all ready.’
‘Are they the sirens?’ he said.
‘They are.’
‘Have they started bombing?’
‘Nay, if we wait to see we’ll never get there at all,’ his father said.
His mother was already wrapped in her coat and had his own coat ready.
‘Come on. Come on.’ His father danced at the door. He’d already switched off the light and, in the silence as the sirens faded, other voices could be heard along the terrace.
‘Nay, we’ll wrap up warm,’ his mother said. ‘They’ll give us a minute, surely, before they start.’
‘A minute?’ His father had lit the lamp at the door, shielding one side with his hand. ‘They don’t give any minutes. Don’t worry. It’ll be down on our heads before we can start.’
They went out across the garden in single file, his father waiting impatiently while his mother locked the door. ‘We’d look well sitting there,’ she said, ‘and the entire house burgled.’
‘Burgled?’ his father said. ‘You think they’ll have time for that?’
‘I can’t hear any planes.’
‘You won’t hear them. Don’t worry. Not till they’re overhead.’ Grumbling, he led the way across the yard, the lamp lighting up the ground around his feet. ‘They’ll all be coming in now,’ he said. ‘Now they see what it’s all about.’
A voice had called across the backs and he’d paused, holding up the lamp.
‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Can you take our lads?’ a man had said.
‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘They’ll be safe with me.’
A small knot of figures emerged from the darkness, stumbling over the fences that separated the yards. They were four brothers, older than Colin, from a family farther down the terrace. Behind them came the figure of their father.
‘How many have you got room for, Harry?’ the man had said.
‘Oh,’ his father said. ‘We’ll squash a few in.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘We better be getting in,’ he added.
‘Can you take the missus?’ the man had said.
‘Oh, you’ll be all right with us,’ Saville said. ‘There’s room for you as well.’
They collected, then, around the steps, Saville fumbling in his pocket then stooping to the lamp and taking out his key.
Across the yard other figures had begun to converge on the shelter: Colin could make them out, vaguely, silhouetted against the sky, climbing fences, calling out in low voices towards the houses.
‘Mind the steps,’ his father said. ‘I’ll just unlock it.’
‘Which way will they come?’ someone said and the heads turned up towards the sky.
‘They could come any way,’ Saville said. He was at the bottom of the steps, below them, his figure stooped to the door, the lamp lighting up his face. The lock clicked, then the bolt was drawn back. ‘I’ll go in first,’ he added, ‘and light the other lamp.’
He opened the door, paused, then stepped inside.
‘Women and children first,’ a man had called behind.
From below them came a splash. It was followed a moment later by Saville’s shout, then the light inside the shelter was suddenly extinguished.
‘God damn and blast,’ the father said.
The splashing continued a little longer then, as someone switched on a torch, Saville re-appeared at the door below, his hair matted to his skull, his clothes clinging to his body.
‘The place is flooded,’ he said. In his hand he still held the miner’s lamp.
‘What’s that, Harry?’ someone said.
‘The shelter,’ he said.
‘You’re flooded out?’ he said.
‘It’s all that rain we’ve had,’ he said. ‘I should have watched it.’
‘Well, then,’ the mother said. ‘We better get back to the house.’
&nb
sp; ‘It’s catch us death of cold in theer, or a bomb under t’kitchen table,’ someone said and somewhere, at the back of the crowd, someone else had laughed.
Colin followed his father back to the house. ‘I can’t understand it,’ Saville said. ‘It shouldn’t have been flooded.’ He stood shivering, his teeth chattering, as he waited for his mother to unlock the door. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said. ‘Can’t you open it any faster?’
‘I can’t see,’ she said.
‘Where’s the lamp?’ he said, then realized he was holding it, sodden, in his hand.
Across the backs other voices were calling out and in a doorway someone else had begun to laugh.
‘Well, that was a quick raid,’ the mother said. ‘Let’s hope the all-clear goes soon.’
‘That water,’ Saville said. ‘I can’t understand it.’
‘All that work,’ the mother said. ‘For nothing.’
‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Saville said. ‘We’ll be as safe as houses.’
‘Where? In here?’
‘No.’ He shook his head, shivering, and pointed towards the shelter. ‘When I’ve drained it.’
‘Drained it?’ she said. ‘Tonight?’
‘Not tonight,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘It’ll be too late tomorrow.’
Saville shook his head, standing in his wet pants and vest before the fire. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘There’ll be no bombing tonight. I’ll have it drained by the time it starts.’
A few days later he brought a pump home from work. It was shaped rather like a pudding basin, and was made of heavy metal. Colin could only lift it with his father’s help. From one end ran a metal tube perhaps a yard long. It was this his father rested in the water. Then, panting, his face flushing at the exertion, he worked a little handle at the side. It was made of wood and as he jerked it to and fro there was a sucking noise inside the metal basin and out of a long rubber hose attached to the other side emerged a jet of water.
It came out in little spasms and starts, draining off across the garden.
His father worked it for an hour.
‘Is it empty, then?’ his mother said when they went in.
‘Empty?’ His father sat at the table, spreading out his arms. ‘It hasn’t shifted an inch.’
‘I told you buckets would do it faster.’
‘Buckets,’ he said and banged the table with his fist.
At the end of the week, however, Colin was helping to carry the buckets himself, his father kneeling by the door and stooping inside the shelter to fill them and he carrying them, half-spilling, across the yard to empty in the drain the other side. ‘Don’t empty them in the garden,’ his father said the first time he did so. ‘It’ll drain straight back. God damn and blast, it’ll be weeks before we’ve finished.’
The next raid, when the sirens went, they spent in a cupboard beneath the stairs. As on the previous raid they heard no sound at all. After a while his father got up to go to work. ‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t come out. You wait there until you hear the all-clear,’ shutting the door quietly and moving on tiptoe across the kitchen, breathing heavily as he wheeled his bike out into the yard. They heard the rasp of the tyres on the ashes, then the sound of his boot as he pushed himself off. Then, for a while, they sat in silence.
At last the mother got up. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘I’m not waiting here any longer,’ opening the cupboard door but turning back when he followed her and adding. ‘No, you stay there, Colin. I’ll tell you when to come out.’
He sat alone then with the lamp re-trimmed, heating up the tiny space, staring at the white walls of the cupboard, the odd boxes, the spare tyre from his father’s bike, the ribbed, zinc tub out of the top of which poked the week’s washing.
Outside he could hear his mother moving about, lighting the gas and, a little later, catching her foot against a chair.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she said through the door.
‘Yes,’ he said.
He heard the clinking of the cups and the water being poured into the pot.
When his mother opened the door he said, ‘Can I come out?’ before taking the cup.
‘No, you better stay there,’ she said. ‘If anything happens I can rush inside.’
When the door had closed again he watched the steam rising from the cup in the lamplight and saw the waves of heat distorting the shape of the tyre as they came out of the little holes round the top of the lamp.
When the all-clear sounded his mother opened the door. She stood listening, her head to one side, gazing at the ceiling, then said, ‘Well, then, it should be all right.’ He climbed back up to bed with the smell of the washing still about him, and the smell of the burning oil from the lamp.
Eventually they dispensed with the cupboard. When the sirens sounded he would go down to the kitchen and sit with his mother and with his father if he were home from work, the door of the cupboard open and sometimes the lamp lit in readiness inside.
Finally, when the bombing started in earnest, his father would take him out on to the step to watch.
The planes came from the east, flying high above the houses, with just the dull throbbing of their engines to indicate their passage, like some low moaning inside the head. Almost every night the sky to the west would be lit by flames, silhouetting the houses of the village, lifeless but for the odd whispered cries from the other doors and windows. It was as if the horizon burned, a dull, aching redness flung against the sky. Across it, intermittently, waved the beams of searchlights and occasionally came the crackle of gunfire, like some vague tapping overhead.
One day his father took Colin with him on a bus to the city. It took them almost an hour to get there, making detours up narrow lanes to tiny farms and hamlets, the bus cresting a hill finally to reveal the city still some distance off perched on a steep and rocky outcrop, its various spires and towers shining in the sun.
Only when they’d passed through the suburbs and crossed the river did they see the damage. The factories were still there, the mill chimneys: it was the houses alone that had been hit, street after street of rubble, the bus occasionally brought to a halt while gangs of men dug with shovels or signalled it through some narrow gap.
Smoke rose from the debris: small crowds of people stood about gazing at the fractured beams and the guttered windows of what had once been their homes.
In the centre of the city the cathedral and the old brick buildings surrounding it were still intact. The tall, black spire stood at the very summit of the escarpment, open on every side. Only its stonework, however, had been chipped, the soot-encrusted surface laid open to the yellowish texture underneath. It was as if it suffered from some huge infection, yellow spots gaping from the black. Some of its windows had been broken. Inside several women were picking up the glass
‘That’ll never be hit,’ his father said. ‘It’s as safe as houses. They need have no worry over that.’
Colin followed his father through the crowds. Saville stopping here and there, before a guttered shop or house, talking to the people, nodding his head, his small, stocky figure swelling with indignation.
‘By God, when it comes to bombing women and children it’s come to something. It has that.’
‘Ah, well, there’s no providence in bombs, one way or another,’ a man had said. He had, it seemed, been bombed out already. ‘The place they put me in got bombed out the night I was sent. They’re chasing me from one hole to another.’
When they reached home his father sat at the table, drinking his tea, describing what he had seen to his mother. ‘One row of houses we saw: perfect. Not a stick out of place. The only thing was that not one of them had a window. Blast: it had removed every bit of glass.’
‘They say there are ten thousand homeless,’ his mother said.
‘More,’ Saville said, ‘if I had a guess.’
Sometimes, on a morning, Colin would tie a magnet to a piece of string and pull it through the gutters of
the village. He seldom found anything but old bolts and nails. Once, however, he picked up a piece of greyish metal, torn at the edges, like paper, and slightly burned. He put it in a box, along with the war medals, the foreign coins, the cartridges, and the .303 bullets.
5
There were two parts to the village. The older part stood on a ridge a little to the north. It was made up of several old stone houses, still inhabited, an old manor house, deserted and falling into ruin, and the stone church which had once belonged to the manor. Two or three old farms stood here, back to back, their fields stretching out on every side, a system of mud lanes joining them together.
The more recent part of the village fell away on the lower ground to the south. At its centre stood the colliery with its twin headgears and its dykes and pyramids of slag, the terraced streets built for the miners strewn out on three sides like the spokes of a wheel: on the fourth side the slag ran off towards the country, the grey mounds of ash and rubble tumbling down finally at the edges of the nearest wood, one arm running off at the side of a little wagon track before it petered out amongst the fields.
The streets were numbered from one to five: they started with First Avenue, which stood in the shadow of the colliery, and ran round through ninety degrees to Fifth Avenue; here the streets had been named after trees, Beech, Holly, Laburnum, Willow. Once he had collected all the names and numbers in a book, along with the numbers of several cars which he had seen passing through the village on their way to the town, and the numbers of several railway engines he had seen passing through the station on the road to the south. Between the village and the station were strung out the various amenities of the village itself, the shops, a prefabricated Catholic Church, a Wesleyan Chapel, a greyhound track and, in a dip in the road, a small gas-works and a string of sewage beds. They stood amidst marshes and pools of stagnant water and the place was known locally as the Dell.
The surrounding countryside was given over entirely to farms, their hedged fields strewn out to the near, hilly horizon where, beyond a frieze of woodland or the silhouette of the fields themselves, a cloud of smoke or the tip of a slag heap would betray the presence of the other collieries stretching all around.