Saville

by David Storey

  His mother came into the kitchen holding a bunch of flowers.

  ‘Look what Margaret’s brought,’ she said, flushed, holding them out.

  Colin got up. He’d been about to put on his shoes, and stood there for a moment in his stockinged feet. His two brothers, who’d been roughly prepared for the occasion, got up from the floor where they were playing.

  ‘See here, Ellen,’ his father’s voice came from the stairs, ‘have you got a shirt?’

  Still holding the flowers, perhaps as a signal, his mother went through to the passage.

  ‘Harry? Margaret’s here. You’ll find your shirt in one of the drawers,’ her voice followed by a significant pause then, as if some further message had been passed between them, his father answered, ‘All right, then. One of the drawers,’ his feet sounding on the floor above their heads.

  ‘I got here sooner than I thought,’ Margaret said again, looking across then, and adding, ‘Are these your brothers?’

  ‘This is Steve,’ he said, indicating the taller of the two. ‘And this is Richard.’

  ‘Hello, Steven,’ she said. ‘Hello, Richard.’

  ‘Hello, Miss,’ Steven said, confused.

  ‘Oh, you needn’t call me anything,’ she said, laughing. ‘Unless you want to call me Margaret.’

  His mother came in and started looking for a glass. In the end she found a jug, filled it with water, and put the flowers in that.

  ‘You’ve met Colin’s brothers, then,’ she said, as if this were a privilege which, but for her acquaintanceship with Colin, Margaret might easily have been denied, calling to Steven then to clear a chair. ‘Make room, then, love, for Margaret to sit down.’

  Colin sat down himself. He pulled on his shoes. Margaret was wearing a light-coloured coat which she’d already taken off as she came in the door and now laid on a chair at the back of the room. She sat by the fire, which was heavily stoked.

  His father came in a moment later, his face red and freshly shaved; his collar was opened and he wore no tie. He advanced shyly into the room, shaking Margaret’s hand as she was introduced, ducking his head, then saying, ‘I’ve lost my tie. I wonder if it’s down here, Ellen,’ his mother drawing the tie out finally from the chair where Margaret was sitting. ‘He leaves everything where he drops it,’ she said, flushing deeper, then adding, ‘Harry, for goodness’ sake, put your tie on outside the room.’

  ‘Nay, you don’t mind me putting my tie on, do you, Margaret?’ his father said, glancing directly at her then ducking his head to the fractured glass above the sink. Yet the darkness scarcely left his face, an uncertainty at having someone like this inside the room.

  ‘Would you like some tea, love?’ his mother said. ‘I was going to get a proper tea ready a little later,’ standing with her hands clasped, gazing at Margaret through her glasses, the lenses of which, reflecting the light, obscured her expression.

  ‘Oh, I’d love a cup of tea,’ Margaret said and added, ‘I’ll get it, if you like,’ going to the kettle at the sink where, startled, his father stood back from straightening his tie. She ran the tap, looked round for a stove, saw none, and went directly to the fire. She set the kettle against the flames.

  ‘We’re having a gas stove put in shortly,’ his mother said, more alarmed by this gesture than by anything that had occurred inside that room for some considerable time, standing by the fire, anxious now to re-set the kettle.

  ‘Do you do all your cooking on the fire, Mrs Saville?’ Margaret said.

  ‘I have done, till now. And that’s how many years, then, Harry?’ his mother said.

  ‘Oh we’ve been here some time,’ his father said, refusing to count, gazing in amazement at the bright figure of the girl.

  ‘Twenty years it must be, over,’ his mother added. She glanced at Colin: he had half-risen from his chair at the incident with the kettle, but now sat back with a resigned air, moving his feet for his brothers who, distracted by Margaret’s arrival, had begun to play once again on the floor.

  ‘Aye. Nearly a quarter of a century,’ his father said. ‘It seems just like yesterday when we first arrived. We hadn’t got much, I can tell you that. We lived down the street, you know. They knocked it down a few year after and built another row.’

  ‘Oh, we haven’t done so bad,’ his mother said, sitting down at the table as if to distract his father. ‘There’s plenty worse off, I can tell you that.’

  ‘Oh, plenty,’ his father said.

  ‘And where do you live, Margaret?’ his mother added. ‘In town, or out of it?’

  ‘Just on its edge, Mrs Saville,’ Margaret said, glancing at Colin.

  ‘I suppose in the outskirts, yes,’ he said.

  ‘And you’re at the High School?’ his father said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and added, ‘For what it’s worth.’

  ‘Oh, it’s worth quite a lot,’ his father said. ‘Without an education where could you go,’ he added, ‘and what could you do? You’ve come to the right person to tell you that.’

  ‘Oh, now, Harry,’ his mother said. ‘You’ve done quite well. You know you have.’

  ‘Aye. But with the chances of an education there’s no telling where I might have gone,’ his father said. ‘That’s where people like you and Colin are very lucky.’

  His father now was almost fifty; his hair was greying. He’d long since removed his moustache. His skin was heavily lined, his figure small, almost shrivelled, his look gaunt; even now, with the liveliness induced in him by the presence of the girl, there was a heaviness in his movements, a slowness in his voice, as if at the back of his mind were some dark dream or vision he couldn’t displace.

  ‘Aye, we’ve all done very well,’ he added as if, finally, to dispel this mood.

  They went out walking a little later while his mother prepared the tea. Margaret had offered to help with this as well, but his mother had insisted they should go. ‘Now, I don’t want you prying into all my secrets, do I?’ she said primly, feeling threatened by the girl.

  They walked in silence for a while. Colin turned up the hill towards the Park. There was an air of desolation about the village, the pit silent but for the faint hum of the dynamo. It was autumn and most of the greenery about the place had gone.

  ‘We could look at the church,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing of any interest.’

  He turned up the lane leading to the dark, stone building. Mounds of dead leaves had drifted up against the hedge. The door to the building, however, was locked.

  ‘Do you still go to church?’ she said.

  ‘Occasionally.’ He shrugged.

  They went up the overgrown track to the manor. The caretaker, since the end of the war, had left. The place more than ever now was falling into ruin. Great blocks of stone had fallen into the drive itself. They looked in through the empty windows.

  ‘It’s strange: but I can’t imagine you living here,’ she said. She gestured to the village below. A faint trail of yellowish fumes drifted off from the colliery heap. The houses, but for odd strands of smoke, were lifeless. The air was still.

  ‘Why not?’ He’d climbed up the steps at the front of the manor, suggesting she might look in the now unshuttered windows.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, and shook her head. She’d gone on walking around the side of the building; he followed her after a moment. She was standing in the overgrown yard at the back. Vague areas of cobbles and flagstones showed beneath the weeds and grass.

  ‘My father used to drill in the Home Guard here,’ he said, indicating the now roofless outbuilding where the desk and the chairs and the various pieces of equipment had been stored. A strand of the rope which had fastened the bayoneting targets to the trees was still dangling from a branch. The stairs, however, which had led up to the centre of the main building, from the back, had now collapsed. ‘I used to come here with Steven in a pram. I’d set him under the trees, then climb up through the building.’

  ‘Haven’t you ever thou
ght of moving from that house?’ she said.

  ‘Often,’ he said. ‘We’re on the list. They’re going to build a new estate, outside the village. They haven’t started yet,’ he added. ‘In any case, compared to some people, we’ve more than enough.’

  They set off back towards the road. He described to her some of the games they’d played, pointing out the Dell across the village. They came out finally opposite the Park. The bare trees stood out starkly across the slope, the apparatus in the playground at the bottom now eroded and, in one or two instances, collapsed entirely.

  ‘Don’t you mind it being so poor?’ she said.

  ‘I’ve always minded it,’ he said. ‘But living in it, for most of the time you never notice.’ He added, ‘We’ve been better off than most. It’s that I’ve been aware of more than anything else.’

  They sat on a bench for a while at the top of the slope, disinclined to go any farther. The bare fields stretched away below the Park, in one of which a tractor, ploughing, chugged slowly up and down. A railway engine came coasting along the straight length of track and disappeared into the cutting before the junction.

  ‘I suppose you were lucky even to get out of it,’ she said. ‘I mean, into town and to school, and away from this.’

  ‘I think I’ll get away for good, in any case,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to hold me here, you see. Well, not really.’

  She glanced across.

  ‘I ought really to help out at home, when I start working, you see,’ he said. ‘While Steven and Richard get through. There’s still quite a bit to go,’ he added, helplessly now, and looked away.

  ‘One tyranny’, she said, ‘is replaced by another.’

  ‘Is it?’ he said. ‘Is it as easy as that?’

  ‘Like teaching a bird to fly, then insisting that it shouldn’t.’ After a moment she added, ‘Don’t you ever want to change it?’

  ‘How?’ he said.

  ‘So people like you don’t have to live like this.’

  ‘I won’t have to live like this.’

  ‘Won’t you?’ she said and added, ‘Somebody will.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, looking to the trees below. ‘But things improve.’

  ‘Do they?’ The irony of their previous conversation had suddenly returned.

  ‘Why do you always lecture me?’ he said.

  ‘Because you’re so complacent,’ she said. ‘So still.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought complacent,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. She laughed. ‘It’s complacency, I suppose, that makes you think so.’ And after a moment she added, ‘Don’t you feel any responsibility towards your class?’

  ‘What class?’ he said.

  ‘This.’ She gestured round.

  ‘None.’

  She was silent for a while.

  ‘Should I?’ he said.

  ‘There’s no should,’ she said. ‘Or ought.’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘But you hoped there might be.’ After a moment he said, ‘The responsibility I feel I couldn’t describe,’ and a little later, having added nothing further, they got up from the bench and moved away.

  As they came down through the village Bletchley, dressed in a pair of shorts and a blazer, cycled slowly past them in the road. He was waiting at the front of the house when they arrived, adjusting something on the bike itself. They still, on Sunday evenings, occasionally went to church together, more out of habit than anything else.

  Bletchley’s red knees gleamed as he stooped to the bike, his face flushed, bright-eyed, as he looked across. ‘I thought it was you,’ he said, glancing at Margaret, sternly, as if her entry to the house would somehow be denied unless it had been sanctioned by an introduction.

  ‘This is Margaret Dorman,’ Colin said.

  Bletchley nodded, saying nothing.

  ‘And this is Ian Bletchley,’ he added. ‘He lives next door.’

  Bletchley nodded again, his flush deepening as if he suspected it were really him she had come to see.

  ‘We’re just going in for tea,’ Colin said and Bletchley had finally said, ‘I hope you enjoy it,’ as if his long-held view regarding the Saville household would be vindicated by what they found inside. He rammed his bike against the wall and, his vast figure glowing from his recent exertions, his legs almost luminous beneath the bottom of his shorts, he banged open his own front door and went inside.

  His mother had changed her dress. Perhaps this was what had discomposed her from the beginning, that she hadn’t had time to prepare herself. She had only two dresses in any case, a brown, faintly speckled one which she wore now, and a dark-grey one which, alternating with a skirt and jumper, she wore about the house.

  The jug of flowers had been set in the centre of the table. Around it were arranged the various plates, with one large plate containing meat paste sandwiches immediately beside it. A tin of fruit had been opened by the sink.

  His two brothers were already waiting by the table, Steven uncertain where to put himself, while Richard, who had recently been crying, was wiping his face with a flannel. His mother, who was finishing the arranging of the table, looked up, smiling, as they entered. A few moments later his father appeared, smoking, from the yard outside. ‘So this is where we are,’ he said, clapping his hands and rubbing them as if some argument had taken place during their absence and he were now energetically trying to remove its atmosphere. ‘Did you get far round our beautiful village?’

  ‘Far enough, Mr Saville,’ Margaret said, her spirits reviving slightly at the sight of his father. ‘Is there anything I can do, Mrs Saville?’ she added.

  ‘It’s all ready, love,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to wash your hands, that is.’

  ‘Oh, we’d better wash our hands,’ his father said, going to the sink directly and rolling up his sleeves. He began to sing, cheerily, as he ran the tap.

  Colin waited for Margaret to go before him. Then, when he’d washed his own hands and dried them, he held her chair and they sat down at the table. There were only four chairs, so the two younger boys stood at the side, gazing at the sandwiches, waiting impatiently while the plate was handed first to Margaret, then to their mother, their father then handing it to Colin. ‘No wolfing, now,’ his father said. ‘Eat slowly. Give good food’, he added, glancing pleasantly at Margaret, ‘time to digest.’

  When the sandwiches were consumed and his mother had asked Margaret if she would like any more, the tinned fruit was brought over to the table. His mother served it out, stooping short-sightedly to the bowls, balancing the variety of fruits, lifting one cherry from one bowl, replacing it with a piece of pear, then asking Margaret, ‘Would you like some cream, love?’ which his father also brought over to the table, a small, round tin with two punctured holes. ‘Oh, do put it in a jug, Harry,’ she said.

  ‘Nay, it’s cream in a tin, and it’s cream in a jug,’ his father said. ‘So what’s the difference?’

  ‘Still, it looks better in a jug,’ she said severely, flushing, his father going to the cupboard and waiting patiently beside the upturned tin while its contents trickled out. ‘Or you could have the top of the milk. I’ve still got a bottle untouched,’ his mother said.

  ‘Oh, the cream will do fine, Mrs Saville,’ Margaret said, watching his father’s expression now with fascination and taking the jug from him finally with a smile.

  When the last of the fruit had gone, and his two brothers had assiduously cleaned round their plates, Richard standing on tiptoe, his elbow raised, to finish off completely, slowly licking his spoon and looking over at Margaret as if she herself were responsible for the provision of all this food, a sponge cake was brought out from the cupboard in the wall.

  ‘And where has this been hiding?’ his father said. ‘We’ve had no news of this, then, have we?’ picking up a knife to cut it himself.

  ‘And if you had’, his mother said, glancing at Margaret, ‘there’d be none of it left for tea.’

  ‘That’s true. That’s p
erfectly correct,’ his father said, handing the first piece to Margaret on the blade of the knife, his mother adding, ‘Oh, now, can’t you pass it properly? You bring the plate to you, not pass it over.’

  ‘Oh, we never have much time for etiquette down a coal-mine,’ his father said, again to Margaret.

  ‘You’re not down a coal-mine now, though,’ his mother said. She added to Margaret, ‘Though at times, going by their manners, you’d begin to think they were.’

  ‘Aye, well,’ his father said, in a tone of self-pity. ‘Some of us aren’t as well trained as others. I suppose I’ve to show up my ignorance now and again. I’m sure Margaret will forgive me.’

  ‘It’s not a question of forgiving, it’s just a question of practicality and common sense,’ his mother said, flushing, her expression invisible behind her glasses.

  ‘Practicality: that’s another of those words,’ his father said. ‘You can’t sit down to a meal in this house without a dictionary ready,’ returning perhaps to some vestige of the argument they’d had while they were walking round the village.

  ‘Would you like some more tea, love?’ his mother said, holding out her hand for Margaret’s cup and drawing the episode firmly to a close.

  There was a further argument later over the washing-up. ‘You sit down, love. I’ll do it,’ his mother had said when, the moment the meal was over, Margaret began to clear the table.

  ‘Oh, I can do something for my keep, Mrs Saville,’ Margaret said, taking a pile of plates to the sink. The moment she was there, seeing there was no hot-water tap, she filled the kettle and took it to the fire.

  ‘Oh, guests don’t have to do housework,’ his mother said cheerily, taking the kettle from her and setting it quickly in the flames herself.

  ‘Nay, we’ll all do it,’ his father said, removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to sit there and watch you wash up, Mother. Steve, go to the yard and fill the bucket,’ then running the tap noisily to rinse the plates.

  ‘Nay, love, I can do it when Margaret’s gone,’ his mother said fiercely. ‘There’s no reason to make such a fuss of it.’