by David Storey
‘I failed too. Weak chest.’ He tapped it lightly with his hand. ‘And anaemia apparently. It’s probably just as well. It’s a terrible waste of time if you’ve got something you want to do.’
A car came down the road, and rattled on, accelerating, towards the station. It covered them for a moment in a cloud of dust.
Reagan brushed down his suit with his one free hand.
‘Are you getting married to your fiancée soon?’ he said.
‘We’re not engaged,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought you were. My mother mentioned something about it.’ He scratched his head.
‘She goes off to university in a couple of months. For three years.’
‘I say, that’s hard cheese,’ he said, affecting, momentarily, something of an accent.
The car, which had passed them on the hill, had turned and was now mounting back up the slope towards the village. As it drew abreast the horn was sounded and a moment later a head appeared.
‘Hello, old man,’ someone called, and, as the car pulled up, the head had turned, backwards. ‘Hello, there, Savvers.’
A moment later a figure in an officer’s uniform got out.
It wasn’t until it came close to him, its hands extended, that he recognized the sun-burnt features of Stafford half-hidden beneath the neb of the hat.
‘I’ll be going on, then,’ Reagan said after they’d shaken hands. ‘Leave you two to chin-wag about old times.’ His accent once again was heightened, and without waiting for an acknowledgment he set off up the road.
‘Jump in, for God’s sake,’ Stafford called. ‘I’ll drive you up.’ He added to Colin, ‘I’ve just called at your house. Your mother said you were on your way to the station. With old Maggie Dorman, after all this time.’
‘She’s just gone on the train,’ he said.
‘Don’t you see her home, then?’ Stafford said, holding the door of the car now and beckoning Reagan inside. He took his violin case from him and set it in the back. ‘In the front, old man. I hate people sitting behind.’
They sat abreast, squashed up against the gears, and coasted slowly towards the village.
‘I was just passing through,’ Stafford said. ‘And thought I’d call. I haven’t seen you for how long is it?’ not waiting for an answer but blowing his horn vigorously at children playing between the first of the houses.
‘Two years,’ Colin said. ‘At least.’
‘How’s old Prendergast?’ Stafford said, turning to Reagan.
‘He’s still alive. He hands me on some of his pupils,’ Reagan said. ‘We have an understanding in that respect. I do violin and he does piano.’
‘Poor old Prenny,’ Stafford said. He added, ‘Do you mean to say Maggie’s gone off on that train alone?’ He accelerated quickly now along the street. ‘What say to nipping into town and meeting her at the station? We could get there, if we hurry before the train arrives.’
‘I wouldn’t put you to all that trouble,’ he said.
‘No trouble to me, old man,’ he said. ‘Did you hear that Marion’s gone off nursing? Not available except during bank holidays and that.’
Reagan was dropped off at the corner of the street. He ducked his head to the window after taking out his violin from the seat behind.
‘That’s been very kind of you to give me the lift,’ he said as if the purpose of Stafford’s visit to the village had been this alone. ‘I’ll see you some time. If you’re ever near the Assembly Rooms on Saturday drop in for a dance.’ He nodded quickly and stepped back as the car shot forward, Stafford calling, ‘See you, Mic, old man. Look out.’
They turned out of the village and past the colliery, the car roaring, Stafford leaning casually back, whistling lightly between his teeth, his eyes scarcely visible beneath the brim of the hat.
‘How long have you been in the army?’ Colin said.
‘A year, old man. I thought I’d get it over with. I go up to Oxford a year from now. Get it all cleared up before I go.’ He glanced across, spinning the wheel wildly when, a moment later, he glanced back at the road.
They turned along the road towards the town.
‘Your old lady said you’d got exemption. That was a stroke of luck,’ he said. ‘I tried it, you know, but it didn’t work. Got a doctor’s note about a dicky heart. Couldn’t find anything when it came to the medical.’
‘Is there something the matter with your heart?’ he said.
‘I shouldn’t think so, old man.’ He whistled once more between his teeth. ‘I thought I might try it and give it a whirl.’
Every vehicle that came into sight on the same side of the road Stafford overtook: within a matter of minutes they were passing through the town. The sun had set. Its light still hung above the valley. When they turned into the station yard a row of gas lamps were being lit beneath the canopy above the station entrance. Stafford, leaving the engine running, ran off quickly up the steps, re-appearing moments later as Colin too got out and calling, ‘It’s all right, old man. We’ve got ten minutes. I told you we’d make it with time to spare.’
He leant in the car, turned off the engine, put his hat on the seat behind, then, running his hand across his fair, almost blondish hair, looked round freshly at the yard.
‘My God: do you remember coming here? That day we went to the flicks with Marion and Audrey?’ From somewhere, perhaps the rear of the car itself, he produced a small baton. As they moved to the steps he set it neatly beneath his arm, clenching his gloved hands behind his back.
A soldier, waiting in the station entrance, briskly saluted as they sauntered past.
Stafford flicked up his hand without moving his head.
‘Here it comes, old man. What will she say when she sees you again?’
Yet the train rattled through the station and disappeared down the line the other side. A gust of wind swept through the station.
‘Must be the express.’ Stafford snapped up his wrist, examined a silver-coloured watch fastened there, then added, ‘Another two minutes, I think, old boy.’
They went through to the platform. The small knots of people gathered there watched Stafford intently as he paced slowly to and fro: there was an unfamiliar erectness about his figure, the hair cut short, emphasizing the clarity of his features, an almost boyish candour which, strangely, he’d scarcely ever possessed as a youth.
‘We’re going abroad in a couple of weeks’ time,’ he said, gazing attentively now along the track. ‘Kenya. Though I don’t suppose I’ll be there for very long.’
‘Where else are you likely to go?’ he said.
‘It could be Malaya. Rumour has it, of course. Though I can’t be sure. I’ve applied for a home posting, in any case. I don’t think much to all this travel. I’m representing the Army, at rugger, you see, which is one little lever I’ve got. Apply it in the right place and I’ve a feeling, you know, it might do the trick.’
The dark cylinder of the engine had appeared suddenly down the track. The people on the platform stirred. Stafford began to smile, tapping his stick against his leg.
‘I’ve forgotten, almost, what old Maggie looked like. Does she still go on about women’s rights?’ He glanced over at Colin and began to laugh. ‘You weren’t in on that, at the time. My God. Some of the ideas she had were out of this world.’
When Margaret descended from the train she stared at Colin with such a look of incredulity, pausing by the carriage door as if for a moment she might get back inside, that he began to laugh, going forward to take her hand.
‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she said, her eyes wide, glancing back at the train itself. ‘Did you come in another carriage?’
‘Stafford brought me,’ he said, indicating the uniformed figure who, with mock bravura, saluted with his wooden baton and came forward, bowing slightly, to shake her hand.
‘My compliments, ma’am. May we escort you to your home?’ he said, then added, ‘Remember me?’
‘Good l
ord.’ She stepped back a moment and examined his figure. ‘You’ve been commissioned as well?’ she said.
‘That’s right,’ Stafford said and added, ‘As well as what?’
‘Oh, my brother’s commissioned. He’s in the Tank Corps, as a matter of fact.’
‘Ah.’ Stafford paused, his gaze drifting off to the view of the town beyond the station. ‘Not like us infantry wallahs, I can tell you that.’ He crooked his arm. ‘May we escort you to the car?’ he added.
Margaret laughed. She placed her arm in Stafford’s and, glancing at Colin, started off to the station entrance.
Colin walked along on the other side.
She gave in her ticket and they went through to the yard. Stafford opened the door.
‘I don’t think, with a lady,’ he said, ‘we can squash in, Col, as we did before. Do you mind handing out my hat before you get in the back?’
They drove slowly through the town. The light had faded. The car’s headlamps flooded out on the road ahead. Stafford described some of his activities over the previous year.
‘Hopkins, by the way, was in my squad at O.C.T.U.,’ he said. ‘Went into the Rifle Brigade. Now he is in Malaya, as a matter of fact. I heard Walker went in too, but failed to pass. He’s a sergeant in the Education Corps. Who else is there?’ He went through several more names of boys from the school he’d come across. ‘You don’t know how lucky you’ve been, old man,’ he added to Colin. ‘It’s a terrible fag. I mean, all we’re fighting at the moment are communists and wogs. Two years out of your life and nothing to show.’
They reached the house. Stafford looked over at the green-painted door in the garden wall.
‘Remember last time, my dear,’ he said, ‘Colin gallantly saw you home?’ He added, ‘I say, you know, I admire that hat.’
‘Why don’t you come in. Say hello to my parents now you’re here?’ she said.
‘Well, that’s very kind. I don’t think we’ve any other pressing engagement, have we, Col?’
He stepped down from the car and held the door. On Stafford’s arm, Margaret went before him up the path to the house. She knocked on the door, waiting for someone to answer it inside, calling to Colin, ‘Stay back to one side. See what they say,’ standing straight-faced, leaning on Stafford’s arm, when the door was finally drawn back and her mother appeared.
‘What on earth,’ her mother said, in much the same fashion as Margaret herself at the station.
Stafford saluted smartly.
‘Is this your daughter, ma’am?’ he said. ‘We found her wandering in the vicinity of the city railway station. She gave this as her address, though of course we quite anticipate this to be yet one more nefarious tale, a whole bevy of which she regaled us with on our compromising journey here.’
‘This is Neville Stafford, Mother,’ Margaret said. ‘He was a friend of Colin’s from school.’
‘Oh, there you are, Colin,’ Mrs Dorman said, gazing out to the darkness of the garden. She stepped aside to let Margaret and Stafford enter, shaking the latter’s hand and adding, ‘Go through to the room, Margaret. Your father’s there.’
Colin followed them inside. The doctor stood up from his chair by the fire, shaking Stafford’s hand, smiling, gazing at him with a look of wonder. ‘Oh, you’re one of these conscripts, are you?’ he said, gesturing at the uniform. ‘Sit down. Sit down. Would you like a drink?’
They stayed an hour. Stafford described to them freshly some of the incidents of his training, the tests he had passed before being accepted as an officer, a football match he had played in against the Royal Air Force, a night spent with fellow officers when he and several other platoons, on a training exercise, had got lost on a moor. The sound of traffic faded from the road below the house. A clock chimed slowly on a near-by church. ‘My God, just look at the time,’ Stafford said, bringing his watch up smartly. ‘We mustn’t keep these good people from their beauty sleep much longer. Maggie especially: it’d be a great pity to see those features fading because Stafford insisted in keeping her from her bed.’ He turned to Mrs Dorman. ‘I was commenting on her hat at the station. She really has the most wonderful clothes. I scarcely recognized her from the girl I knew two years ago. She really has’, he added, turning now to glance at Margaret directly, ‘come on a treat.’
Margaret laughed. Flushed already from Stafford’s accounts of his life in the army, the redness deepened. ‘Honestly, you make me sound dreadful. I couldn’t have been that bad, could I, Col?’
‘Oh, Colin never sees much of what’s going on. He’s too preoccupied with his thoughts is Colin,’ Stafford said. ‘The outward world and all its manifestations he passes by with scarcely a glance.’
Margaret’s mother, too, had begun to laugh. Almost another half hour, however, had passed before they finally went to the door.
‘I must really make a note of this address,’ Stafford said. ‘I’ve rarely spent such a delightful evening. If I’d known it was going to be as pleasant as this, I can assure you,’ he added with a bow to the mother, ‘I would have come much sooner. I really think Colin is a secretive fellow, keeping Margaret to himself. Why no one tells me these things’, he went on at the door, ‘I shall never discover. I go from one boring episode to another, while all the really interesting things happen to other people.’
The lights were switched on in the drive to see them to the road. The Dormans and Margaret stood in the porch until they’d reached the gate, Stafford calling, waiting for an answer, before he finally stepped through to the car outside.
‘I say, you really are a lucky dog,’ he said as they drove off in the direction of the town. ‘Talk about the chrysalis. I think it’s very sly of you, Savvers, of all the girls available, to have picked out Mag. She really has blossomed, while all the others, if Marion’s anything to go by, have begun to fade. They’ve got “hausfrau” stamped all over them.’
The streets of the town were now deserted. They turned out along the road towards the village. A last bus, its lights blazing, rattled past them in the opposite direction.
‘Are you and she engaged, or anything?’ Stafford said.
‘Not officially.’ He shook his head.
‘Well, unofficially, then?’ Stafford glanced quickly from the road ahead.
‘I’m not sure what it means,’ he said. ‘We’ve talked of getting married. She’s to do three years at university yet. If we haven’t married by that time, I suppose we’ll marry then.’
‘You don’t sound too sure,’ he said.
‘Oh, I’m sure about marrying her,’ he said.
‘Well, then?’ Stafford said.
‘It’s all that goes with it. The planning, the predetermined life. I thought we might go abroad together.’
‘What does Margaret think of that?’
‘I haven’t mentioned it,’ he said. ‘But I thought I might teach abroad. There’d be more freedom, and fewer demands.’ He paused.
‘Do you still write poetry?’ Stafford said.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Have you had any published?’
‘No.’ He shook his head.
‘Well: good luck to you both, in any case,’ Stafford said.
When they got to the village and had pulled up in front of the house the light went on in his parents’ bedroom. The curtain was pulled aside and a moment later the light went on in the passage and the front door was unlocked. His mother, her nightdress covered by a coat, came on to the step.
‘Would you like to come in, Neville? Have a cup of tea or anything?’ she said.
‘That’s very kind, Mrs Saville,’ Stafford said. He’d got out of the car with Colin and was standing by the bonnet, kicking loosely at the wheel as he talked. ‘I was just saying good night to Colin. I better be getting back.’
‘Well, I’ve kept a kettle on in case you wanted one,’ she said. ‘I thought, since he didn’t come back, you must have had a night out together.’
‘Oh, we’ve had that, Mrs Saville,
’ he said and laughed.
His mother glanced up, briefly, at the sky. Odd stars were visible through the thinning mist.
‘It’s quite a lovely night,’ his mother said.
‘Oh, it’s a grand night,’ Stafford said, looking up too, his fair hair glinting, almost luminous in the light from the door. ‘Yes, it’s a grand night,’ he said again, more slowly.
‘Well, there’s some tea waiting, if you want some,’ his mother said and holding her coat more closely to her stepped inside.
‘It’s been quite an eventful evening, after all, then,’ Stafford said, still kicking loosely at the wheel. ‘I won’t come in for the tea. You’ll thank your mother for me.’
‘Sure,’ he said.
‘I’ll say goodbye for now, then,’ Stafford added, and quickly put out his hand. ‘See you soon. I’ll drop you a line. Africa. The Far East. If you’ve got the odd word, you know, it’ll help fill in the time. There’s an awful lot of bumf in the army. Damn boring, really. I suppose Oxford’ll be the same. I’m not looking forward much to that. Still. Ours not to reason. Ours but to do and try.’
He got back in the car. The engine started. The tanned face was visible for a moment in the light from the dashboard, a hand was raised, then the car slid forward.
Colin watched it out of sight, then turned to the house.
*
Bletchley had stayed on at school a further year, won a scholarship, and had gone to university to study chemical engineering. He could be seen occasionally at week-ends or on holiday walking down the street in a university blazer, a large university scarf around his neck, smoking a pipe, a pile of books beneath his arm.
On several evenings that summer, while Margaret was away on holiday, Colin went with his friend to the Assembly Rooms in town. The ballroom occupied the entire first floor of the building, a long stone-built structure with tall windows and a pillared entrance, a broad, curving staircase sweeping up to the glass -panelled doors of the room itself. Here, in a small alcove at the side, a man sold tickets.
Reagan, it appeared, had taken over the running of the band. His tall figure, attired in evening dress and holding a baton, was posed in an attitude of studied nonchalance on the edge of a small dais at one end of the room. In front of each of the musicians stood a painted board with the initials MR painted in a single, scroll-like shape from top to bottom. He nodded casually over the heads of the dancers, as they entered, as if there were nothing unusual in their arrival at all, taking up a violin a little later and, stepping forward from the orchestra, playing directly into the microphone.