Saville

by David Storey

  ‘What you describe as medievalism you described initially as alienation,’ he said.

  ‘Philip did.’

  ‘It amounts to much the same thing,’ he said.

  ‘How would he describe this?’ she said. ‘Making love to a married woman.’

  ‘I’d imagine he’d describe it as symptomatic.’

  The man too had paused to gaze out across the valley.

  ‘As opposed to forming a relationship, that is, with someone of a proper age.’

  ‘What’s a proper age?’ he said.

  ‘A more compatible age,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not that old, are you, Liz?’ he said.

  ‘No, not really, I suppose,’ she said, yet slowly, as if he’d frightened her.

  They descended the hill in the direction of the town; it rose up on its ridge before them.

  ‘Have you anywhere in particular you’d like to go?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘We’ll go to the pictures.’

  Later that night she saw him on to the bus.

  Since the war a bus station had been built on derelict ground adjacent to the city centre: they stood waiting in a draughty concrete shelter; her own bus left from an adjoining stop.

  ‘I’ll start looking for a flat,’ she said. ‘Do you think you’d like to help?’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘To help to choose it.’

  ‘I don’t think I would.’ The bus station, late at night, was relatively deserted; occasionally an empty bus lumbered in or out; two or three tiny queues were scattered across the concrete spaces.

  ‘I don’t think you should rely on me at all,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ she said. And as the bus came into the station and its arriving passengers descended she added, ‘I’ll speak to Derek. He’s no right in getting in touch with you at all.’

  ‘What will you tell him?’

  ‘To mind his own affairs,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I don’t really mind so much about that,’ he said and, as the empty bus drew up, he stooped down to where her head nestled against his arm and kissed her.

  Mr Reagan had died: he collapsed one afternoon in the garden. His walks had been confined for some time to the yard at the back of the house, and the stretch of narrow garden that ran down to the field. Each day, when the weather was fine, he could be seen shuffling along the overgrown path to the fence where he could gaze over at the children playing in the field, and one tea-time his father, who had been watching him from the kitchen door, had called out, ‘Bryan’s fallen,’ and had hurried out across the yard.

  He and Mr Shaw had carried him inside.

  Two days later, without leaving his house again, he’d died.

  ‘Oh, he was a fine man,’ his father said. ‘He was fine in a way that men round here aren’t often fine,’ he added. ‘It’s a tragedy about his son.’

  Michael now had become a recluse; occasionally he could be seen about the village, invariably in the evenings: he went to the picture house alone, or would walk the road between the village and the station, as if setting out on a journey or coming back.

  ‘He wanted Michael to be a fighter. To take the world by the scruff of the neck.’

  ‘You can’t force people into what they’re not meant to be,’ his mother said.

  ‘Don’t I know that? Aren’t I the one exactly to know a thing like that?’ his father said. On the day of the funeral he had walked with Mrs Reagan behind the coffin; she had no relative. When he came back, flush-faced from drinking, he said, ‘Nay, he’s got some spirit in him. Did you know what he did at the Rose and Crown? Got up on a table and played his fiddle.’

  ‘Who did?’ his mother said.

  ‘Michael.’

  And a few days later Mrs Reagan came over to the yard and knocked on the door and when Colin answered it had handed him a parcel. It was bound up thickly with string.

  ‘Mr Reagan wanted you to have this, Colin,’ she said.

  ‘That was very kind of him,’ he said.

  ‘He looked on you with special favour,’ she said, almost formally, her narrow features flushing, her eyes, dark and set closely together, gazing at him over the bridge of her nose. ‘“The one nugget out of all this dross,”’ she added, imitating vaguely Mr Reagan’s accent.

  He watched her go back, round-shouldered, passing with strangely delicate steps across the backs.

  ‘Nay, look at this,’ his father said, standing at the table as he unwrapped the parcel. He found him the scissors to cut the string.

  Inside was the gold chain Mr Reagan invariably wore from his waistcoat pocket.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t a pebble after all,’ his father added, looking at the gold disc attached to the end.

  It was designed in the shape of a gold star and bore a Latin inscription.

  ‘“Aut vincere aut mori”,’ he read.

  ‘Sithee, he must have thought a lot to give you that,’ his father said, gazing at the chain. ‘He was a fine sport, was Bryan. In a better world than this he’d have had a grander life.’

  ‘So would we all,’ his mother said.

  ‘Nay,’ his father said. ‘But him especially. He could spot a poet. He had an eye. And he always stood up for his opinions.’

  ‘Yes, he was a grand neighbour, I suppose,’ his mother said, getting out her handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

  Two weeks later Mrs Reagan was taken ill herself. She went away to hospital; his mother went to visit her. Mrs Reagan however had already left the hospital and had been taken into a mental institution.

  ‘I can’t understand it, she was standing in that door a few days ago,’ his father said, more shocked by this than he had been by Reagan’s death. ‘I talked to her in the street a day or two after. Why, I even went to the funeral with her. She was as right as rain I thought after that.’

  ‘Nay, but she idolized him,’ his mother said. ‘She put him on a pedestal and thought he could do no wrong.’

  ‘Well, there’s no danger of that happening in this house,’ his father said. ‘No danger of that, I should say, at all.’

  For a few days Michael wasn’t seen by anyone; then, one evening, the lights were on in all the rooms: a car stood at the door. The sound of music and laughter came from the house.

  The following afternoon, with the curtains still drawn, three men emerged; they stood in the tiny garden, blinking in the sun, then finally climbed over the fence and sat in the field. A little later, white-faced, as if he’d just wakened, Michael joined them; he climbed over the fence with some difficulty and, to the three men’s laughter, stumbled in the grass the other side.

  ‘Nay, they look a dissolute lot,’ his mother said. ‘Poor Michael. His mother would go mad if she was here to see it.’

  ‘She has gone mad,’ his father said, standing at the door and gazing out with interest at the noisy group: they were wrestling with one another and Michael, his white arms visible, was endeavouring to join in.

  The men came again the following week-end; occasionally, too, they came odd weekdays. Sometimes a fourth figure, a woman, joined them. The Shaws complained about the noise: Michael, in his shirt-sleeves, holding a bottle, the laughing group behind him, stood in the yard struggling to apologize.

  On odd evenings other groups of two or three men, and occasionally the woman, re-appeared: Michael went away for over a fortnight. Stories came back of him being glimpsed in neighbouring towns, once of being arrested.

  Nevertheless, when he finally re-appeared, he was dressed in a suit; he wore a trilby hat; a scarf was knotted loosely round his neck.

  ‘I think his mother must have left him summat,’ his father said. ‘Some sort of inheritance she’s scraped together. He’s got his hands on it, I think, a bit too soon. Do you think I ought to go and talk to him?’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ his mother said.

  ‘Nay, I owe it to Bryan. He was a good friend to me,’ his father said. And one evening, when he knew Michael
was in, he went across.

  He came back an hour later.

  ‘Dost know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in their house,’ he said. ‘And now I have been I wish I hadn’t.’

  He sat pale-faced, half-trembling, beside the fire.

  ‘He’s sold every stick of furniture,’ his father added. ‘There’s nothing in that house but a chair and a bed. He must have taken it out at night. “Nay, Michael,” I said, “dost think your mother’s going to like all this?” Do you know what he said? “My mother’ll never see it again.” I said, “Even if she isn’t, and I hope she is, she’d scarce like to think of you living here like this.” “I like living here like this,” he said. “You don’t have to worry.” Don’t have to worry!’ His father shook his head. ‘“Nay, Michael,” I told him, “we worry about you because we knew your father, and we’ve known you”, I told him, “nearly all your life.” “Oh, I can take care of myself, Mr Saville,” he said. “It’s the first time, after all, I’ve had the chance.”’ His father wiped his eyes. ‘You know how his mother kept that house: cleaner even than Mrs Bletchley’s. Cleaner even than Mrs Shaw’s.’

  ‘Well, this house has never been dirty,’ his mother said.

  ‘Not dirty, but it’s always been lived in,’ his father said.

  ‘Well this house is as clean as anyone’s,’ his mother said.

  ‘But not morbidly clean, now is it?’ his father said, distressed to have to argue with his mother like this.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear he’s made such a mess of it,’ his mother said, yet grieved that her own efforts in this direction had gone uncohsidered.

  ‘Nay, I damn well wish I’d never gone,’ his father said. ‘I should have kept my nose clean out of it.’

  Colin met Reagan one evening in the street; he was wearing not only a suit, but a spotted bow-tie, and he carried a cane: his trilby hat was missing. His hair, which was longer now than it had ever been, fell down in a single greased swathe at the back of his neck.

  ‘Hi, Colin,’ he said, waving the cane casually and having crossed the street to greet him. A smell of scent came from his figure. His eyes were dark; they glared at him with a peculiar intensity; his forehead shone, his cheeks were sallow; a tooth was missing from the front of his mouth. ‘How have you been?’ he added. ‘I hear you’ve finished teaching.’

  ‘Not quite,’ he said.

  ‘Come into town one night and have a drink.’

  ‘Where do you usually go?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, any amount of spots. Not the Assembly Rooms, I can tell you that.’ He tapped the cane casually against his foot: there was some absurd parody evident in his dress, some grotesque misappliance of his father’s fastidiousness and style.

  ‘Are you working at present?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I have one or two things,’ he said. ‘I’ve joined a band, on a wholly voluntary basis. I don’t do much.’

  ‘How do you make a living?’ he said.

  ‘Oh,’ Michael said airily, ‘there are ways and means,’ and, as he moved off towards his darkened house, he added, ‘Remember now: I’ll hold you to that drink.’

  It was in fact several evenings later that he met him again; they were both converging on the city centre. Michael had evidently been upstairs on the bus, and must have been already there when he’d got on himself in the village.

  ‘I say,’ Reagan said, ‘are you up here for the night?’

  ‘I’m meeting a friend,’ he said, and indicated the hunched shape of Stephens waiting by a shop.

  Michael took one look at Stephens and glanced away. ‘Well, see you,’ he said casually and raised his hand. He carried no cane; he was dressed in a raincoat with a turned-up collar, his head looking even larger than usual beneath his trilby hat. ‘Do you see Belcher these days?’ he added.

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe one day we should get together.’ Yet he was already moving across the road and some other remark he made was lost.

  ‘Who was that remarkable-looking object?’ Stephens said.

  ‘A friend.’

  ‘He looks like an attenuated version of Humphrey Bogart,’ Stephens added from his own diminutive height and still gazing with amazement at the disappearing figure which, even from a distance, was conspicuous amongst the evening crowds. ‘What does he do?’

  ‘Nothing at present.’

  ‘Good God,’ he said. ‘Another like you.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve still got one or two weeks,’ he said.

  ‘Freewheeling, though. Freewheeling,’ Stephens said.

  And later, as he walked home with Stephens, down the hill towards the river, his friend, who had been in a convivial mood all evening, had added, ‘I’ll be leaving soon, of course, myself. Casting myself off from this rotten town: embarking from these shores of oblivion. I’ve given my notice in from the end of next term. I’ll be leaving for London in a couple of months. Why not come with me?’

  ‘We’ve been through all that’, he said, ‘before.’

  ‘You’ve other tricks up your sleeve, young Saville?’

  ‘None that I’m aware of, no,’ he said.

  ‘Still bound by convention, piety and a grotesque compliance to the family that hast engendered thou.’

  ‘I don’t think I’m bound to anyone,’ he said.

  Stephens hummed to himself for several seconds: hunched up, with his head thrust back, he represented, in the darkness of the street, a figure not altogether unlike a tortoise, scenting the air, inquisitive for food.

  ‘You don’t deceive me,’ he said, finally, and adding, ‘I saw through you from the very start. You’re Pilgrim bogged down at the gates of the city. Look southward, Colin: the land is bright.’

  In fact a moon shone in a clear sky before them. It was early summer.

  Numerous other figures drifted through the streets in the fading light: the town looked bright and clean.

  ‘And what are you going to do?’ Colin said.

  ‘I shall look around. I shall make inquiries. I have an introduction to a man in television.’

  Colin laughed.

  ‘Scorn not the medium of the prophets,’ Stephens said. ‘Television is the medium of the future.’

  ‘Whose future?’

  ‘My future,’ Stephens said. ‘I intend to contribute to a programme on which, in visual as well as verbal form, I shall give my views on the topics of the day. The re-emergence, for instance, of Germany as a major power, the confluence of its aims with those of America; the resurgence of Japan; the new Philistinism of the post-war intelligentsia; the seduction of the proletariat by a materialism even more hideous than the one that initially engulfed it; the gradual and unconscious debilitation of the west and the coming, inevitable war with Russia.’

  ‘It all sounds highly improbable,’ he said.

  ‘These are the themes of the present,’ Stephens said. ‘These are the issues that crowd in upon us every day: the disintegration of the psyche; the communalization of sensibility; the trivialization of human intercourse and reason; the birth, in Russia and elsewhere, of a re-incarnated bourgeoisie; the plethora of ignorance which, in our generation, after the age of elitism, will rule the world. Where do you place yourself’, he added, ‘in regard to that?’

  Colin walked along with his hands in his pockets; Stephens, his face streaming with sweat from the night’s drinking, regarded him with a smile.

  They came out on the bridge; Stephens’s house stood up a narrow street of newly built semi-detached houses almost opposite.

  The moon was reflected in the river.

  ‘Well? What do you believe in?’ Stephens added. He leaned up on the parapet and gazed at the water: the river coiled like a broad, quaintly luminous thoroughfare between the fabric of the mills on either bank.

  ‘I believe in doing good,’ he said.

  ‘Then you are a sentimentalist,’ Stephens said.

  ‘Not your kind of good. Not at all,’ he said.

  ‘You’re no
t a religious maniac as well as being an idealist?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t believe I’m an idealist at all,’ he said.

  They parted finally at the end of Stephens’s road: he could see his friend’s motorbike parked under a tarpaulin cover in one of the gardens.

  ‘I shall look you up when I leave for London,’ Stephens said. ‘I shall drench you with letters. “I come to turn children against their parents”, says Christ in one of the less sensational gospels and I, I can assure you, will do the same.’

  Colin crossed the road below the bridge and waited for his bus: sitting on the upper deck when it arrived was Michael.

  ‘Well,’ Reagan said, nodding his head. ‘I thought it was you. I saw you in the road ahead.’

  They sat side by side on a long, bench-like seat at the front of the bus.

  ‘Was that your friend you were talking to?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘He teaches at present,’ he said. ‘Though shortly, I believe, he’s going to London.’

  ‘I thought I might go there as well, in the not too distant future,’ Reagan said. ‘There are one or two openings for musicians,’ he added. His collar was undone; because of the low ceiling of the bus he’d removed his hat. ‘In addition to which I’ve one or two connections.’

  ‘Perhaps the two of you will meet,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, not in the circles I move in,’ Michael said. His hands, which were tiny and long-fingered, were clenched and unclenched in his raincoated lap.

  The sky had darkened: the lights of the bus lay out in a broad swathe in the moonlit road ahead.

  ‘If I knew I could get some accommodation I’d move out of the village,’ he added. ‘I can’t tell you how sick I am of living there. You have no privacy with the neighbours. You excepted, of course. Though you, I suppose, have always been different.’

  Colin waited; Reagan fingered his hat, poised on his rain-coated knees before him.

  ‘The fact is the house is a colliery house, and because my father worked at the pit they can’t throw me out. I thought at one time of offering to buy it. Then I thought if I did I could never sell it. All these years we’ve been paying rent: we’ve paid for that house ten times over. Well, so have you, I suppose,’ he added.