Saville

by David Storey

  The baby he scarcely noticed. It was almost standing, prematurely, straight-backed, its tiny legs thrust out, its eyes light blue; it had a ferocious, almost obsessive energy; if it wasn’t watched it would crawl out to the yard, and once in the yard would disappear, finding its way to the street, on some occasions to the Battys’ kitchen, on others across the field to the street the other side. His mother would endlessly be endeavouring to restrain it, her cries of vexation ringing round the house while Colin in his room would be trying to do his work, calling down to her in the end, ‘Mother, I can’t work if you go on shouting.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do? Talk to it in sign language?’ she’d call from the stairs.

  ‘I just can’t work with all that noise.’

  ‘Richard, come here!’ she’d shout, distracted immediately by the child again.

  He took it for walks occasionally on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, if he had nothing better to do, Bletchley came with him; they would go to the Park.

  ‘The Park and nothing else,’ his mother would say. ‘I might be walking out that way and I’ll be popping in to have a look.’

  ‘You could take him in that case, then,’ he’d say.

  ‘Harry,’ his mother would call, ‘can you hear the way he talks?’

  ‘Just hold your tongue when you talk to your mother,’ his father would add.

  ‘It’s that I feel silly pushing out the pram,’ he said.

  ‘And you’d feel silly doing some of the things I’ve had to do,’ his father would call, invariably, during these incidents, preoccupied in some other room of the house.

  ‘Why can’t we just leave him in the yard?’ he would ask his mother.

  ‘Because he never stays in the yard,’ his mother said. ‘In any case, I would have thought you’d have been proud to take your brother out.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ he said, yet beneath his breath, afraid of the retribution this sentiment might bring.

  ‘I don’t know why you have to bring him,’ Bletchley would add, kicking the wheels of the pram as they walked along.

  Yet, despite his resentment, he and Bletchley and Richard, and sometimes even Steven, continued to go to the Park on Sunday mornings. Groups of other children would be wandering there, girls from Bletchley’s school with whom Bletchley himself exchanged insults and occasionally, whenever he could get near them, blows. It was the prospect of seeing the girls from the school which took them there and which, later, sustained them during the tedious hour and a half of Sunday School; afterwards, freed of the pram, they would wander round the paths of the Park, and occasionally along the tracks that led across the fields beyond, following diminutive, skirted figures who, to Bletchley’s taunts and jeers, would frequently, turning, call insults of their own: ‘Fatty,’ and ‘Belcher,’ and ‘Who’s your friend, then, Belch? Hasn’t he got his pram?’

  Bletchley gave him glowing accounts of his life at school, of episodes in the bushes which surrounded the building, a converted manor, and of even more lurid incidents which took place in the actual rooms. It was a long way from King Edward Grammar, and even farther from the impression he got of Bletchley himself, who, by reputation, was as actively despised at school as he was in the village; he felt a strange loyalty to his friend, his portly figure, and felt drawn to defend him whenever, in Bletchley’s presence, he was ridiculed or attacked.

  ‘Belcher’s all right,’ he would say to Batty who whenever he saw the gargantuan figure, would immediately run after him shouting, ‘Show us your knee-caps, Belch,’ or, ‘Lend us half your suit.’

  ‘He’s all right: he’s all right as an advertisement for plum-puddings,’ Batty would tell him, adding on one occasion, ‘Do you want a fight or something? If I want to shout after Belch I bloody shall.’

  They’d fought then for half an hour; the fight had drifted from the street: they fought in the yard of a house and then the field. He fought Batty as if he had been preparing for it now for years; he felt calm, preoccupied, self-possessed, hitting Batty strongly, refusing to be bound up in his looping arms. Blood came out on Batty’s face; he was aware of Batty’s brothers coming to the field, and of other figures standing in the yard and along the fences. Reagan’s voice called out: ‘Hit him, hit him harder,’ his waist-coated figure collarless, red-faced, standing by the fence.

  Batty finally had pinned him to the floor, beating him about his eyes and mouth: he flung his fists up at the reddened figure but Batty knelt casually above him, out of reach.

  ‘Go on, go on, our kid,’ his brothers called.

  Batty got up. Aware of his brothers’ shouts he paused. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  ‘Go on, bash him,’ his brothers called.

  Batty turned aside; he glanced back at Colin briefly as he got to his feet, then went on towards his house.

  ‘Go on, our kid,’ his brothers called.

  ‘Nay, he mu’n have fought him fair.’ His father had come out from the house and stood by the fence.

  Reagan had already turned towards his door.

  ‘He fought fair: you can’t say better than that,’ his father called.

  Farther along the terrace he saw Batty climbing the fence.

  ‘Thy ought to have beaten him,’ his father said. ‘Go under his guard, not try to stand outside. With fellers like that you’ve to go beneath.’

  ‘I suppose you’re satisfied,’ his mother said, standing at the door as they reached the house. ‘And what was it all about?’ she added.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said.

  ‘It looks like nothing. Just look at your eyes: they’re almost closed.’

  ‘Nay, they’ll come up like two beauties,’ his father said.

  ‘And look at his mouth,’ his mother cried.

  ‘He’ll not be speaking tomorrow either.’ His father laughed. ‘See nowt, and say nowt: we mu’n have a bit o’ peace at last.’

  Yet later he’d added, before he went to work, stooping to his boots to pull them on, ‘You must go under his guard when you’ve somebody big. Take my word for it, I ought to know. Hitting up you can hit much stronger.’

  He got up in his work clothes and, despite his pit boots, began to dance around. ‘Left, left, then right. One, two, then bring it over. If you’d have taken a bit more notice you’d have been all right.’

  He was still talking about the fight when he went to work, pedalling off slowly across the yard.

  ‘All wind,’ his mother said. ‘Don’t take any notice of your father in your fights.’

  He heard his father’s voice then his mother’s, then Steven’s feet as he ran through the passage. A moment later, as if antagonized by the commotion, the baby began to cry.

  He went through to his parents’ bedroom and looked down at the street. A red-painted bicycle with white mudguards was propped against the fence; it had a dynamo and electric lights, its handlebars curved down with rubber grips.

  He heard his father’s strange, half-strangled tone in the passage below, then his mother’s almost formal accompanying tone, then, in response to some remark or gesture on their visitor’s part, a sudden burst of laughter.

  ‘Come in. Come in, lad,’ his father said and almost at the same moment he had added, calling, ‘Colin. There’s someone here to see you, then.’

  When he went downstairs his father was standing awkwardly in front of the fire, smiling, his mother by the table, her hands clenched together, Steven by a chair uncertain now whether he might sit down; the baby was crawling across the floor, pacified for the moment by a piece of bread.

  Stafford appeared to be unaware that anything unusual had occurred; he lay stretched out in a chair, pulling off a pair of gloves then, casually, raising one leg and removing a cycle clip that held his trousers.

  ‘It was farther than I thought,’ he said. ‘I missed the bus so I came on the bike. I looked up the trains: there’s not one through till after tea, and not one back until late tonight.’ He showed no curiosity in the roo
m, or its inhabitants; it might have been a place he’d been coming into regularly for several years. Having removed his clips he dropped them on the table, his gloves beside them, and began to unfasten the buttons of his jacket. ‘You’ve some terrible hills round here,’ he added. ‘If I hadn’t a three-speed I couldn’t have managed.’

  ‘Oh, you need a bit of muscle to live round here,’ his father said. ‘None of your three-speed namby-pambies in a place like this.’

  ‘I can see that. I s’ll have to get into training,’ Stafford said, thickening his accent then and smiling.

  The baby, suddenly conscious of his strangeness, stood up by a chair and began to cry.

  ‘Now, then. Now, then,’ his mother said, lifting it quickly. ‘It’s only a young man who’s come to see you. We don’t need any more of that, then, do we?’

  ‘And this is Steven, Colin’s brother,’ his father said.

  Stafford nodded; he scarcely glanced in Steven’s direction, loosening his jacket then smoothing down his hair.

  ‘Would you like a cup o’ tea, or summat?’ his father said.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind. Or just a drink of water,’ Stafford said.

  He looked up at Colin for the first time since he’d come into the room.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’ve got here, then.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be tea, don’t worry,’ his father said. ‘You’re not coming here to sup us watter.’

  ‘Water,’ his mother said.

  ‘Water. Watter,’ his father said. ‘Dost think when you’re thirsty it makes any difference?’

  They went out a little later to show Stafford round the village. ‘He won’t have seen a place like this afore,’ his father said. ‘You know, where people work.’

  ‘Oh, it’s not all that different from where I live,’ Stafford said. At his father’s insistence he’d got up to wheel his bike through to the yard behind.

  ‘And where’s that, then?’ his father said.

  ‘It’s over at Spennymoor,’ Stafford said.

  ‘Oh, I know that well.’ His father laughed. ‘They have that big mill theer. What’s its name?’

  ‘Stafford’s. My family own it,’ Stafford said.

  His father’s face had paled. He looked as if, at that moment, he might have fallen down.

  ‘Oh, thy’s that Stafford,’ his father said, glancing quickly at his mother.

  Now, as they moved away from the house, Stafford had clapped his hands.

  ‘That gave your father a shock,’ he said. ‘Didn’t he know, do you think, or did he put it on?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think he knew,’ he said and shook his head.

  ‘People are funny about things like that. Money, I mean. As if it matters.’

  ‘I suppose if they haven’t got any’, he said, ‘it probably does.’

  ‘What difference does money make?’ Stafford said. He gazed over for a moment then shook his head. They were walking along the backs, Colin’s habitual path to get to the street outside. When he didn’t answer Stafford glanced about him, freshly; he gazed in at the open doors, at the dark, fire-lit kitchens. ‘If you have less money you have fewer worries,’ he added, as if quoting something he’d heard before.

  They came to the street.

  ‘What would you like to see?’ he said.

  ‘What do you usually do on Sundays?’ Stafford said.

  ‘Go to Sunday School.’ He gestured off, vaguely, in the direction of the church.

  ‘No, honestly?’ Stafford said. He gazed off, with fresh curiosity, along the street. ‘I suppose it’s too late to go,’ he added.

  ‘We could go to the Park, if you like,’ he said.

  Stafford looked round him at the houses. ‘Have you always lived here, or did you live somewhere else?’ he said.

  ‘I’ve always lived here,’ he said.

  ‘I come through the station on my way to school, but you can’t see up to the village,’ he said as if he’d wondered at the curiosity of this on his journeys through.

  They reached the centre of the village and turned up the hill towards the Park.

  Stringer and Batty were coming down the road, Batty with a stick which he flicked in the bushes on either side. When he saw Colin approaching he called to Stringer, who, without his gun, picked up a stone which he weighed, reflectively, in either hand.

  ‘Who’s your friend, Tongey?’ Batty said.

  ‘He’s from our school,’ he said, and added, ‘This is Lolly, and that’s Stringer,’ Stafford, his hands in his pockets, nodding, about to go on up the road.

  ‘Who says tha mu’n go up theer, then?’ Stringer said.

  ‘Up where?’ Stafford said and shook his head.

  ‘Up theer,’ Stringer said, suddenly dismayed by Stafford’s accent.

  ‘I don’t see that anyone mu’n say I have to go up theer or not, then,’ Stafford said, imitating Stringer’s accent.

  ‘Thy mu’n want thy nose knocking in, then?’ Stringer said. He put up his fist in Stafford’s face.

  ‘I’ mu’n not want anything knocking in, then,’ Stafford said, his voice faltering for a moment as he regarded Stringer’s fist.

  ‘Tha mu’n feel this, then,’ Stringer said, ‘if thy goes up theer. Nobody goes up theer without permission.’

  ‘Have we got permission, Colin?’ Stafford said. He looked half-alarmed at Batty, then, almost reluctantly, glanced at Colin.

  Stringer, turning his attention now to Colin, raised his fist again, waving it to and fro in front of his face.

  Assuming Batty wouldn’t do anything, he hit Stringer as hard as he could on the end of his nose.

  Stringer stepped back and covered his face.

  ‘Watch it. Watch it, Tongey,’ Batty said.

  He came over with the stick, tapping the end of it now in his other hand.

  ‘Watch it,’ he said. He tapped the stick more slowly, glancing at Stringer and then at Stafford, not sure, of the two of them, which to go to first.

  ‘We’ll go on up, then,’ Colin said. It was as if then, for a moment, nothing had happened; as he turned from Stringer Colin saw him swing his arm. Stringer lunged at him with his boot and then his fist and before he could give an answer ran off calling to the foot of the hill.

  Batty, deserted, stood gazing up the hill, his legs astride, the stick still in his hand.

  ‘Thy mu’n cop it when thy comes back down,’ he said. ‘I s’ll fetch our kid.’

  He walked backwards, then turned, still tapping the stick against his hand.

  ‘Thy look out, then, when you come back down.’

  ‘Aye: thy look out,’ Stringer called from the foot of the hill.

  ‘Who are those two?’ Stafford said.

  ‘I suppose they own the village,’ Colin said. Yet he felt a strange resentment now, as if Stafford had forced him to something he hadn’t wished.

  ‘All bluster I suppose, then,’ Stafford said.

  ‘Something like that,’ he said and turned off the hill to the gates of the Park, which, like the railings to the school playground, had been removed.

  Odd couples were walking along the paths inside, groups of children playing on the metal roundabout and swings.

  The afternoon was overcast; grey clouds mounded over the horizon beyond the pit: a light wind blew in from across the fields.

  ‘That looks good fun, then,’ Stafford said and with a sudden lightness ran down the hill, clambering on the box-like rocking-horse and calling out.

  Colin went down slowly; Stafford was standing on the side of the rocking-horse, swinging it violently up and down.

  ‘I say, get on the end,’ he said.

  Colin clambered up the other side.

  Another boy climbed on and Stafford laughed; he flung the rocking-horse from side to side, the metal arms knocking underneath, the boy who’d climbed on last holding to a handle, calling out.

  ‘Come on: rock it, Colin,’ Stafford said.

  Almost mechanically now he followed Staf
ford’s movements; the head of the rocking-horse, hard, with beady eyes and flaring, metal nostrils, flew up and down by Stafford’s head.

  A strange carelessness had come into Stafford’s movements; his coat flew up behind him, his face reddening, his eyes starting with a strange intentness.

  ‘Keep it going, Col,’ he said.

  The boy sitting on the rocking-horse half stood up.

  ‘Keep it going,’ Stafford said.

  The boy got off; the rocking-horse slowed.

  Before its swinging motion had finally stopped Stafford had sprung down and run across to the roundabout. Several children already were swinging it round: they dropped off quickly as they felt his weight.

  ‘Come and give it a push,’ he called.

  Another, larger boy got on. He ran at the side of the platform, pushing it round then, his legs swinging, he clambered on.

  Colin watched. Stafford climbed up the metal rigging, standing spread-eagled with his feet on a spar.

  ‘Shove it. Shove it faster,’ he called to the boy.

  The boy swung off; large, heavy, with studded boots and a torn jacket he pounded round the concrete track, the metal cusp of the roundabout clanging as it cracked against the top of the metal pole.

  ‘Sithee: ’od on tight,’ he said.

  Stafford called out, his figure flattened against the metal spars. The roundabout clanged to and fro, swaying, the metal framework spinning round.

  ‘Jump on. Jump on, Col,’ Stafford called, laughing now, his head bowed, his hair flung out. His jacket billowed up behind.

  Yet only moments later he was climbing down, the roundabout slowing, the boy pounding at the concrete track again.

  Stafford leapt off, the roundabout swaying up.

  ‘Why didn’t you jump on, then, Col?’ he said. Without waiting for an answer he moved over to the swings.

  Figures rose slowly, swaying on the chairs.

  Colin sat on the concrete seat beside the playground; Stafford, as the swing swept out from the metal stanchions, laughed and, tugging at the chains, called out.