Saville

by David Storey

  Bletchley, after some hesitation about coming in his university blazer, had put on his suit. His face was red and beaming, preparing himself before their entry to be amused by if not scornful of what they would find inside, pausing however once they were at the door and gazing with a blank, flushed look of incredulity at the bony elegance of his friend across the room.

  Partly discomposed by Reagan’s appearance, and partly by the fact that none of the girls they could see in the immediate vicinity of the door were to his liking, Bletchley stood, his hands in his pockets, gazing with an aggrieved expression across the heads of the swaying dancers, turning finally to Colin and saying, ‘What a terrible lot. He really pulls in the dregs, as we might have imagined if we’d given it a little thought,’ a sweat already forming on his massive features, his thick red neck protruding in heavy rolls above his collar. As a last concession to his university identity, he’d put on a striped and crested university tie. ‘I should think most of the people here are colliers. As for the girls, I should think they’ve brought them in from the mill. Have I told you about the varsity dances? They go on sometimes till one in the morning and some of the girls don’t mind where they go on to after that.’

  Reagan came over during an interval between the tunes, his large head, with its long hair greased carefully back to disguise the protrusion at the rear, bobbing disjointedly above those of the now separated dancers, a small, official smile igniting his pallid features, nodding slightly to Bletchley and saying, ‘It was good of you to come, Ian. I’m glad you could make it,’ gesturing off across the room and adding, ‘Come over to the bar and have a drink.’

  ‘Only orange juice?’ Bletchley said following Reagan over and examining the glasses of those coming from a table at the opposite end of the room.

  ‘We haven’t got a licence yet,’ Reagan said. ‘In any case, in my experience, drink and dancing seldom mix. There’s bound to be trouble if we started selling beer, for instance,’ calling then across the heads before him to a woman in a dark dress and white apron. ‘Three oranges, Madge.’

  Colin recognized his aunt, now grey-haired and much fatter than when he had last seen her in his grandparents’ one-roomed bungalow, years before. He wondered for a moment whether she might acknowledge him, for she handed him his glass without a second look, passing one to Bletchley and saying to Reagan, ‘Nothing to put in it today, then, Michael?’

  ‘Hello, Aunty,’ Colin said.

  ‘Aunty. I’ll give you Aunty,’ the woman said, laughing, her look fading a moment later as, with a hand to her cheek, she added, ‘That’s not our Ellen’s eldest, is it? It’s not Colin, is it, love?’ laughing again when he leant across to shake her hand, the crowd milling round on either side. ‘Well, he was so high when I last saw him,’ she added to Reagan, measuring off a height level with the table. ‘And as proud and as protective of his mother as any man. Our Reg, you know, will hardly believe it. Wait till I tell our David. You might see them here: they come in sometimes, later. After they’ve had one or two in the boozer, you know.’

  They finally moved away from the table, his aunt’s gaze still fixed on him over the heads of the crowd, smiling, nodding, her attention scarcely on the glasses she was selling. ‘Would you believe it? That’s my nephew over there,’ he could hear her saying. ‘It’s years since I ever set eyes on him. I hope Reg and David come in before he goes.’

  ‘It’s very hot in here. Don’t you find it hot, Michael?’ Bletchley said, easing his finger inside his collar.

  ‘They keep the windows shut until they’ve sold enough refreshments,’ Reagan said. ‘Though if you’d like them open, Ian, you’ve only got to say.’

  ‘Oh, no. Don’t let me interfere with your normal way of running business,’ Bletchley said.

  ‘Perhaps you’d like a dance,’ Reagan said. ‘There’s a couple of our regular ladies who come unattended,’ he added. ‘I could introduce you to them. They usually sit on chairs just underneath the orchestra.’

  The two women were in their late twenties; they wore flared dresses, identical in shape, with a narrow waist, and heavy makeup. One of them wore glasses which, before dancing with Bletchley, she removed. One was named Martha, and the other, Bletchley’s partner, Joyce. They danced with a professional remoteness, evidently reconciled to and yet at the same time displeased with the incompetence of their respective partners. They circled the room at a steady pace, came under the beaming gaze of Reagan, and passed on with the heavy, swirling crowd.

  Coloured lights rotated slowly beneath the ceiling; a window had finally been opened at one end of the room, through which came, along with the roar of the Saturday night traffic outside, a cooling stream of air.

  Bletchley, plainly, was having trouble with his feet. He drew his partner’s attention to them from time to time, the two of them gazing down, she short-sightedly and apparently seeing nothing, he with a look of irritation as if they’d taken up some independent activity of their own. The huge, bull-shaped head, glistening across its massive brow and cheeks, would be lowered in the direction of the floor, the rouged and powdered face beside it, then, as if some fresh adjustment had been made invisibly to those ponderous shoes, they would set off with a fresh uncertainty, together.

  A gentlemen’s excuse-me was announced, Reagan’s voice enunciating the words carefully through the microphone as if he were placing each one in by hand, Bletchley coming across and bowing slightly to Martha, who, as if it were immaterial to her whom she danced with, immediately took his hand while Colin went over to the short-sighted Joyce, who, having found herself deserted, was gazing around her in consternation. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d wandered off.’

  They left an hour later. It had grown dark outside. All the windows of the room were open. As they went to the door Reagan, who was playing a violin accompaniment in front of the microphone, had gazed over the heads of the dancers in their direction, questioningly, almost plaintively, nodding with a smile, still playing, when Colin indicated they were going down to the street below.

  His aunt came over as they reached the door.

  ‘You’re not going yet?’ she said. ‘Our Reg and David haven’t come up. They’ll be so disappointed, you know, if they find you’ve gone.’

  ‘We’ll probably be up next Saturday,’ he said. ‘We could see them then.’

  ‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said, laughing, then seizing his hand. ‘And how is your mother? I heard she’d had an operation a year or two ago.’

  ‘Oh, it’s more than that,’ he said. ‘She’s fine. She’s keeping well.’

  ‘With a son like you I’m not surprised. I hear you’ve been to college and that. Not like our Reg and David: they’ve hardly learned to read.’

  ‘There might be a virtue in that,’ he said.

  ‘Well, they’re earning more than their father,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think it makes much difference. Money doesn’t make you happy. That’s why I come here: to see a bit of life.’

  A crowd of young men were coming up the stairs when they went outside; for all he knew his two cousins might have been amongst them. He followed Bletchley’s perspiring figure down to the door. A great burst of cheering and laughter came from the room above their heads.

  Once in the street the music welled out from the open windows.

  ‘How does Reagan get home afterwards?’ Bletchley asked, mopping his face.

  ‘He goes on the train, I think. There’s one just after twelve,’ he said.

  ‘Are you waiting till then?’ Bletchley said. ‘I think I’ll go on the bus.’

  ‘Oh, I think I’ll come as well,’ he said.

  ‘If you ask me,’ Bletchley said, as they went down to the stop, ‘I think Michael’s heading for trouble.’

  ‘He seems to think he’s doing well.’

  ‘I was talking to that girl we were dancing with.’ Bletchley ran his handkerchief round beneath his collar. ‘Apparently he hardly makes anything out of
it at all.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘Well, there’s the regular dance hall, the Emporium. They’ve got a bar there, and it’s twice as big. He only gets people here because he hardly charges them to go in. It’s just like Michael. Full of fantasies, you know. He’s no idea. Once he’s paid for the hire of the hall, and the staff, and he’s paid the band, he’s lucky if he makes more than two or three pounds a week. And all that talk of going on the radio. He even mentioned films to me.’

  When the bus finally drew in a tall, wiry, red-haired figure got off, followed by a smaller, stockier, black-haired one. Batty paused as he came along the queue, turning to Stringer, then saying directly to Bletchley, ‘How do, Belcher. How you been?’

  ‘I’ve been very well,’ Bletchley said. ‘And you?’

  ‘Where’re you going at this time of night, then, Belcher?’ Stringer said.

  ‘I’m going home, as a matter of fact,’ Bletchley said.

  ‘We’re going to hear the Reagan Orchestra,’ Batty said. He glanced at Colin. ‘Fancy coming up for a fling, then, Tonge?’

  ‘We’ve just been up for one,’ he said.

  The rest of the queue had moved on towards the bus.

  ‘Mic Reagan there, then, is he?’ Stringer said. He had recently, to match his hair and eyes, grown a black moustache. It formed a rectangular patch beneath his nose. Both of their faces, in the street light, had the freshness of colliers’ faces that had recently been scrubbed.

  ‘Michael’s there. He’s playing very well, for all that anyone will notice,’ Bletchley said.

  ‘Oh, we’ll notice it, Belcher,’ Batty said and, digging his elbow against Stringer, laughed.

  ‘Yeh, we’ll notice it,’ Stringer said.

  ‘See you sometime, Tongey,’ Batty said, waiting for this to be confirmed before he set off up the street after Stringer’s departing figure.

  They sat upstairs on the bus. Bletchley got out his pipe.

  ‘I don’t think those two will ever come to much good,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They’re different.’

  ‘Factory fodder. I don’t see what hope they have in their lives. I mean,’ he added, ‘what prospect do they have before them? A dance hall and a bottle of beer.’ He blew out a cloud of smoke. Something about the gesture reminded Colin of Dr Dorman. It was on this same bus, and at the same time on a Saturday evening, that he would ride back to the village after seeing Margaret. He gazed out of the window for a while. ‘I mean, it’s an animal existence when you come down to it. What do you think?’

  ‘Perhaps it’s all an animal existence,’ he said. He had to raise his voice above the rattle of the bus. Below them passed the dark waters of the river.

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t think it’s all an animal existence,’ Bletchley said as if calling now to the rest of the bus. ‘What’s science for, after all? Some men grow out of their environment. Whereas others just seem to sink into it. They make no effort at all, as far as I can see. Take Batty and Stringer. They’re prime examples.’ Another cloud of smoke drifted away from his seat across the rest of the bus. ‘I mean, they’re going to be stuck round here, aren’t they, for the rest of their lives.’

  The bus careered on through the darkness. Odd lights showed up from the darkened fields, from isolated farms or rows of terraces set down arbitrarily on the brow of a hill. Groups of people came into the lights below, waiting at the stops, others drifting off from the bus and disappearing in the dark. Farther off, the sky glowed with the lights of distant villages and, behind them, the dull, sombre redness of the town.

  ‘It’s like Darwin’s origin of the species,’ Bletchley said, sweating freshly in the heat of the bus. ‘Some of the species adapt, others don’t. In effect, when coal is acquired by wholly mechanical means or perhaps isn’t even needed at all, people like Batty and his brothers, and Stringer, won’t have a function. And when the function ceases so does the species, or those parts of it that can’t recognize or create a further function.’

  Soon the rattling of the bus grew too loud for Bletchley to make himself heard; he contented himself with digging Colin with his arm at some particular man or woman as they appeared at the top of the stairs or disappeared to the platform, each one evidently some illustration of his thesis, his head nodding significantly as he glanced across.

  The darkness finally gave way to the lights of the village; they descended towards it with increasing speed, Bletchley rising and making his way, swaying, to the stairs, where he waited, clutching the rail on either side while the bus negotiated the final corner. He was waiting on the pavement, tapping out his pipe against his heel, by the time Colin came down himself.

  They walked through the streets in silence, Bletchley’s shadow flung bulkily before them as they passed beneath the lights. Mr Bletchley at one point came cycling past on an upright bike, with a pannier behind the saddle. Since his demobilization he’d taken a job in a shunting yard adjoining a neighbouring village and frequently worked the same shifts as Colin’s father. Even though Colin nodded to him on this occasion Bletchley himself gave no sign at all, his father cycling on as if he expected none in any case, dismounting slowly when he reached the terrace and, without a backward look, disappearing down the alley at the side.

  ‘Wasn’t that your father?’ Colin said.

  ‘He’s working afternoons,’ Bletchley said refusing him even now any acknowledgment at all. ‘He’s doing overtime. I run up one or two bills at the varsity,’ he added. ‘He’s trying to pay them off.’

  ‘Aren’t you taking a job over the summer?’ Colin said.

  ‘I thought I might. The trouble is, I’ve got so much work to get through, I don’t think I’ll have the time to take a job. After all,’ he added, ‘there’s nothing else the old man can do. He can’t do my work for me, can he? And I don’t feel I’m particularly cut out for doing his. It gives him a goal to work towards, a motive, you see, beyond himself.’

  He’d re-filled his pipe by the time they reached the house. They stood for a moment by their respective doors, Bletchley lighting his pipe and puffing out, reflectively, several clouds of smoke.

  ‘Poor old Michael,’ he said, gazing down the street towards Reagan’s door. ‘I think all his troubles you could trace back to that time when he failed his eleven-plus. Do you remember that? He wrote an essay about being a nurse.’ He laughed, his heavy figure shaking as he leant up against the wall. ‘How are things with you, in any case?’ he added, the first time he’d inquired at all about Colin’s activities over the previous two years. ‘Is it a worthwhile undertaking, do you think? I thought of teaching, you know, for a while. But you know what they say about teachers? A man amongst children and a child amongst men.’ He still gazed down, however, towards Reagan’s door. Mr Reagan had appeared beneath a distant lamp, lurching unsteadily from side to side, holding on to the lamp and then, a moment later, to a near-by wall, standing, bowed, his shoulders stooped, then with a final, almost convulsive gesture, moving on towards his door. ‘I better be getting in. I might get another hour’s swotting,’ Bletchley said, his mother a moment later appearing beside him in the door.

  ‘There you are, Ian,’ she said, smiling at Colin. ‘Have you had a nice evening, love?’

  ‘We’ve been to Michael’s dance-hall,’ Bletchley said, puffing a cloud of smoke directly in her face. ‘There’s his father out here now, staggering home, it seems, from another. Either that or the Miners’ Institute. I’m sure he wouldn’t know if you could be bothered to ask him.’ He walked into the open door and called inside from the passage, ‘Anything for supper, Mum?’

  He could hear her voice and Bletchley’s, followed by the father’s, inside the house after the door had closed.

  Down the street itself the Reagans’ door had opened and Mrs Reagan’s thin, almost emaciated figure had appeared. ‘Is that you, Bryan?’ she called to the figure standing stooped above the gutter, and, a few moments later, having received no re
ply but a groan, went down the pavement, took his arm beneath her own and guided him in.

  ‘Reagan?’ Colin’s father said when he mentioned having seen him in the street outside. ‘There’s a wasted talent if ever there was one. He could have got anywhere with a mind like his. He had a sense of style, and taste. And now what is he? Stumbling from one bar to the next. He’ll be lucky if he keeps that job. Despite the years he’s put in, you know. He’s trouble with the pay now almost every week, and he’s been at it, you know, for over thirty years.’

  His father went along the backs a little later; they could hear him tapping at the Reagans’ door, then his voice, tentative, light, almost cheery: ‘Anything I can do, then, missis?’ and some fainter, answering voice inside. He came back, frowning in the light. ‘Nay, they want nowt from us,’ he added. ‘He was stretched out there on the kitchen floor, and she bent over him, going through his pockets. I reckon there’s nobody could help them now. That’s what comes, you know, from marriage. Marriage to the wrong person, I’m talking about,’ he went on quickly when his mother looked up. ‘Marry the wrong one and your life is finished. Marry the right one and your life is made.’

  24

  He saw her some distance away and didn’t recognize Stafford at first; accustomed perhaps to seeing him in a uniform, he thought it might have been her brother. Then he recognized the build and the fairness of the hair. Stafford was wearing a dark-coloured blazer and flannels: a white handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket.

  ‘I thought you were still on holiday,’ he said to her when he’d caught them up; aware of his steps they’d both turned, glanced away, aimlessly, then waited for him to draw abreast.