by David Storey
He turned away.
‘And if you have something to say to me, it’s better you say it to me. Not to my mother and dad,’ his brother added.
‘All I can say,’ Colin said, ‘I can say with this.’ He held up his fist.
‘Nay, I don’t mind fighting,’ his brother said as if, by his amiability, he could win him out of this.
‘Don’t you?’
‘I don’t at all.’
‘Nay, Steve,’ his father said.
‘Oh, let them,’ his mother said. ‘If Colin thinks he can perhaps he might find Steven more than he bargained for.’
And, locked into the logic of a fight, they went out in the backs. Perhaps even then Steven thought he might win him out of his mood, show by his conciliatoriness that he meant no harm. He stood smiling before him, strangely calm, almost acquiescent, putting up his fists as if he suspected the gesture alone would be sufficient to warn him off. Yet there was never any doubt in Colin’s mind; with some peculiar rage, drawn from the very depths of his nature, he drove his fist into Steven’s face: he saw his brother’s look of helplessness, the same guilelessness and acquiescence, as he felt the blow, as if his passivity had at last been shattered. Blood sprang out across Steven’s face; a look of anguish came into his eyes; his strength, physically sapped, came out of his body. Almost callously, and with no diminution of his anger, Colin threw him to the ground.
His brother lay still; he appeared quite dazed: when he attempted to rise he fell on his side. Colin had never hated anyone as he hated Steven: he hated his helplessness and he hated his pain. As his father came across the yard to help his brother he turned away. His mother, standing in the door, gazed past him. Her expression was hidden behind the light of her glasses; it was as if, in that moment, she’d been cut in two, unexpectedly, without reason. She attempted to speak, then said, ‘You bully,’ yet quietly, unable to express the depth of her rage. ‘You bully,’ she said again. ‘He never hit you.’
‘You asked him to.’
‘I didn’t ask him.’ She turned away. ‘What harm has he ever done to you?’
‘More’, he said, ‘than you imagine.’
He went out of the house; as he was coming away Steven was being helped into the kitchen.
‘No,’ he was saying. ‘I’m not really hurt,’ yet his voice sounded dazed and his movements heavy, uncertain now of what had happened.
Colin walked into the village; he caught a bus. Three-quarters of an hour later he was in the town. He sat in a pub. The blood roared through his head.
It was after midnight when he got back home; he’d taken the last bus in that direction and had had to walk the last four miles.
No lights were showing in the house; the front door was locked. He went round the back.
The back door, too, was locked.
A drainpipe led up to his bedroom window.
After several attempts, hoisting his foot on the kitchen sill, he clambered up: he pulled open the window and climbed inside.
No sound came from the house at all: a movement came finally from the adjoining room, Steven or Richard turning in bed.
He lay down: his clothes were stained from the soot of the pipe, his hands smelled of stagnant water.
A coughing, and then a dog barking came from across the backs.
He lay quite still; he closed his eyes.
The fumes of the beer and the cigarette smoke from the pub obscured the more prevalent odour of the pit.
27
‘This is Elizabeth,’ Callow said, and after a moment’s hesitation – stepping away slightly as if being recognized with her were something he disliked – he added, ‘We were going for a drink.’
The woman was somewhat smaller than Callow, with thick dark hair, half-concealed by a flowered scarf, and a broad, thickly featured face.
‘Come for a drink as well,’ she said. She indicated a pub across the city centre. It was early evening: lights flared out across the pavement.
The woman’s eyes were dark: they possessed a melancholic light, like those of a doctor examining a patient. She waited for Colin’s response with something of a smile. ‘I hear you teach at the same school,’ she said when they’d entered the pub and were seated at a table.
‘Endeavouring to,’ he said, bemused by the woman’s expression.
‘Well that’s all Phil does,’ she said, her attitude to Callow more that of a sister, or a neighbour, than that of a friend. ‘He daydreams most of the time, so you never really know whether he’s there or not.’
‘I don’t daydream. The school we teach in allows no daydreaming at all,’ Callow said. ‘Quite the reverse: it drives any poetic inclination clean out of you.’
‘Nevertheless, you do philosophize occasionally,’ the woman said. ‘You do put down your thoughts in the evening and allow your imagination a little licence.’ There were the seeds here of some old and familiar argument, half-mocking: she glanced across at Colin and smiled.
‘Colin writes: he’ll tell you how remorseless it is.’ Callow glanced at him for this to be confirmed.
‘Not two in the one building?’ the woman said. She was, if anything, older than Callow. There were thin lines at the corners of her eyes: she wore little if any make-up. ‘That place, despite your protestations, and its prosaic if not depressing appearance, is an incubus of poetic talent.’
‘I have no pretensions. It’s merely therapy for me,’ Callow said wearily, yet glancing too at Colin as he reached for his drink.
‘Do you teach, too?’ Colin asked the woman.
‘Never.’ She shook her head. Inside the pub she’d removed the scarf; her head was swept back from a prominent brow: there was something composed, assured and imperturbable about her expression. ‘I’m an independent lady,’ she said with an affected accent and looked at him directly as if to challenge him to make of this whatever he could.
Callow, moodily withdrawn now from the woman’s banter, had added nothing further, drinking lengthily from his glass, then, at the woman’s suggestion, getting up to order another.
He met the woman again a few days later. It was a Saturday morning: crowds of shoppers flooded the town. Seeing her outside a shop he had, familiarly, caught her arm: he felt her flinch at the touch.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said and he had the distinct impression that she’d already recognized him: that she’d seen him from a distance and had stopped, as if unconsciously, to wait.
‘Are you doing anything special?’ he said.
‘Nothing’, she said, ‘that couldn’t be delayed.’
They went into a restaurant in an adjoining alley; it was the same alleyway, he reflected, as they waited at a table, that he had gone up with his mother years before on his first visit to the school.
‘So you’re familiar with the place as well?’ she said when he made some remark describing this.
‘I was educated here,’ he said.
‘Educated,’ she said, looking at him slyly.
Her hair was greying at the temples; she watched him with the same companionable expression which characterized her relationship with Callow.
‘Don’t you lay much store by it?’ he said.
‘More than most,’ she said, ‘and less than some.’
‘Why do you always make fun of Callow?’
‘Do I?’ Neither his tone nor accusation had surprised her at all. ‘He’s such a stuffy old bird,’ she added, and leant across the table to touch his arm. ‘So are you, but a little bit younger.’
She smiled; her eyes were shielded by dark lashes, her eyelids, narrow, almost invisible beneath her brow.
‘Are you married?’ he asked directly.
‘I am,’ she said. She wore no ring.
‘Is your husband here?’ He gestured behind him, towards the town.
‘I hardly think so. Yet nevertheless’, she added, smiling at him still, ‘you could never be sure.’
She wore a dark-green coat; it had a fur collar. The brownness
of the collar gave her face, with its broad cheek-bones and narrow jaw, a peculiar intensity.
‘What does your husband do?’
‘He doesn’t do anything at present.’
‘What did he do?’
‘Is it important?’ she said. ‘I’d have thought, on the whole, it was impertinent to ask.’
There was a certain daintiness about her; her hands were small, her fingers delicate and thin. He watched her pick up her cup: her knuckles were crested white; the veins stood out on the back of her wrist.
‘He worked in a company run by his father,’ she added. ‘Then he broke away, intending to stand on his own two feet. Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed. He’ll go back to the firm, I imagine, and take it over when his father dies. We’re not living together, you see, at present.’
‘Are you divorced?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said, casually. ‘He wants me back.’
She watched him for a moment over her cup.
‘You’re very greedy,’ she added.
‘Am I?’
‘Very.’
She glanced away: her daintiness, her sudden bouts of petulance, simulated it seemed and in response to some imagined pattern of behaviour, had made him smile. He was smiling still when she glanced towards him.
‘Is anything the matter?’ she said.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Philip’, she said, ‘is quite impressed,’ and after a moment added, ‘Callow.’
‘What by?’
‘Your rapport with the students.’
‘I’d hardly call them students,’ he said.
‘He does.’
‘They’re really children.’
‘Isn’t that patronizing?’ she said watching him once more through hooded eyes.
‘I suppose it is.’ He smiled again. ‘I’m not much more than a child myself.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I believe you’re not.’
‘Does your husband live locally?’ he said.
‘Fairly locally.’ She paused. ‘I use my maiden name.’ She flushed, then added, ‘Elizabeth Bennett.’
It was as if the name should have had some significance for him. She watched him for a moment then said, ‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Who were you waiting for?’ he said.
‘No one. I saw you coming. I thought I’d wait for you,’ she said. There was some declaration of feeling here he thought he couldn’t avoid: a moment later when she added, ‘Do you want another coffee?’ he got up from the table and held her chair.
As she proceeded him out of the café he took her arm: outside in the street he didn’t release it.
‘Where are you going now?’ he said.
‘I’ll be going home,’ she said.
‘Is it far?’
‘Just out of town. I have a room at my sister’s. I usually walk back for the exercise.’
‘Do you have a job?’ he said.
‘I work at a chemist’s.’
‘At a shop?’
‘Is anything wrong?’
‘Why aren’t you working today?’ he said.
‘It’s run by my father. I go in’, she said, ‘whenever I please.’
Bennett’s, a chemist’s, stood conspicuously at a corner of the road leading up to the school.
‘I’ll walk back with you if you like,’ he said.
‘I usually walk through the Park,’ she said. ‘It’s longer, but it brings me out by my sister’s house.’
‘What does your sister do?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ she said as he led her across the road. ‘She’s married. She and her husband have no children. They frequently travel.’ After a moment she added, ‘They’re away at present.’
‘You haven’t any children?’
‘No,’ she said.
The road led down towards the river; on the flat land immediately at the foot of the city’s central hill a smaller hill stood up from a surrounding mass of trees: the roof of a large old house was visible beyond.
Paths led off through the grounds; a lake glistened amongst the trees. Birds flew up; the day was windy. As if in fear of the wind she held her coat to her, clasped across her chest.
‘And you? What do you intend to do?’ she said.
‘Oh.’ He gestured round. The trees obscured the view of the town. ‘I’ll teach.’
‘Forever?’
‘For a while.’ Then, bitterly, he added, ‘What alternative is there? It’s all ordained.’
‘Is it? You don’t strike me as a fatalist.’
Other figures moved off beneath the trees. To their right, as they proceeded in the direction of the river, the ruins of the old house were finally enveloped by the profile of the hill.
‘Philip said he’d seen some of your poems.’
‘Yes.’
‘In a magazine.’
‘I don’t think anyone reads it,’ he said.
‘Apparently they were reviewed in the national press.’
‘Three lines at the end of a paragraph,’ he said.
‘Were your family pleased?’
‘Yes,’ he said, though in fact his father’s response had been non-committal. Only his mother had read them with any interest, raising her glasses to gaze at the page. The print was small. She had studied them for quite some time and finally had looked up, flush-faced, as if, in her pleasure, suddenly embarrassed, and said, ‘Yes,’ quaintly, strangely, in half a whisper.
‘Are you and Callow close friends?’ he said.
‘Oh, very,’ she said, and laughed.
On reaching the Park he’d released her arm: they walked along a little distance apart.
‘I knew him before he was a teacher,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘He was a student. We both grew up in the town together. We perform for one another what I believe you would call a supernumerary role: namely we invariably stand in for someone else.’
She didn’t explain it further.
They walked along for a while in silence. The path led by a lake; a statue stood in a pillared alcove on a tiny island.
He had walked here quite frequently with Margaret; often they had sat on a seat gazing across at the island and the female statue, draped to its ankles, its breasts clearly outlined beneath its robe, its gaze inclined towards the water: it had seemed, in its calmness, so much a reflection of their own relationship. Now he walked by with another woman and scarcely glanced at it; it was as if a rupture with his past had taken place, tiny, and scarcely to be considered, but perceptible and, to the extent that he discarded so much of what he felt before, disheartening and repulsive.
He added nothing further until they’d reached the gates.
A road led off to a distant housing estate; close by, opposite the Park walls, stood several large houses: their backs looked on to fields running down to the river.
‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘We’re almost there. Do you fancy’, she added, ‘another coffee? Or do you intend on walking farther?’
‘I’ll come in,’ he said.
They walked along the road by the bevelled brick wall. Originally the retaining wall to the grounds of the ruined house, which now comprised the grounds of the Park, it had fallen down in one or two places, and they could see the gardens and several covered walks inside.
‘It’s a pleasant part to live,’ he said.
‘Is it?’ She looked back now at the Park herself. ‘I suppose so. I hadn’t noticed.’
The house stood away from the road at the end of a drive: bay-windows looked out on to a lawned garden.
Unlocking the front door she revealed a polished hall: a banistered staircase rose immediately ahead; large rooms with carpeted floors opened up on either side.
‘Go straight ahead,’ she said, indicating a door at the rear of the hall. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’
He heard her feet stamping overhead.
A window looked out to the garden at the back: flower-beds, bare with winter, ran down to a
distant hedge; wooden frames provided a covered walk. In the farthest distance were the hills across the valley; immediately beyond the hedge figures ran to and fro in a game of hockey.
She came in wearing a dark-brown dress. Her face, as a result of the walk, had regained some colour. She went directly to the fire, which was blazing behind a wire guard, and warmed her hands.
‘It won’t be a minute. It’s warmer at the back. We’re facing south.’ She indicated the window and the view beyond.
Later, when she brought in the coffee, she said, ‘I could get you something to eat if you like.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said.
‘What do you normally do at week-ends, in any case?’ she said.
‘I walk quite a bit.’
‘Don’t you have any friends?’
‘Most of them’, he said, ‘have left.’
‘The ugly duckling.’
‘Do you think that’s right?’
‘I don’t think that’s right. I thought you did.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘It’s odd,’ she said, gazing at him once more across a cup, as she had in the café, ‘but your mood has changed again. It seems to fluctuate like anything.’
He laughed. He looked round him at the house: the furniture was large and set down like boulders around the fire. From outside, faintly, came shouts and the occasional click of sticks against a ball.
‘Do you play sport?’
‘I did.’
‘Not any longer?’
‘No.’
‘A native of the city. Though, of course, not quite.’
‘Saxton isn’t really anywhere, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Alienated from his class, and with nowhere yet to go.’
‘Do I seem alienated?’ he said.
‘I believe that was Philip’s word. He’s always looking for a champion, you know.’
‘A champion in what way?’ he said.
‘Why, someone who’s come to the top from the bottom. He, you see, has gone from middle to middle. His father worked in an office in the county hall.’
‘I don’t think’, he said after a moment’s reflection, ‘I’d measure progress in terms of class.’
‘Wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘I mean’, she added, ‘not even as an intellectual?’