by David Storey
Beyond, too, in the Reagan house, Michael finally had disappeared: he was reported being seen in a seaside town, serving as a waiter, then as a doorman at a cinema. Workmen came and carried out refuse from the front room of the house. An elderly couple moved in, a miner who was still working at the pit, his wife and, a few weeks later, an older parent, a woman with white hair and a reddened face who, strangely, would come and stand in the garden as, years before, Mr Reagan himself had done. She would gaze over at the children playing in the field and occasionally, calling to them, pass them sweets across the wooden fence.
‘When you think of the war, and all we’ve lived through here together,’ his father said. ‘There’s only us and the Bletchleys left.’ The Battys, too, a year previously, had left the village, the father with a chest complaint which had made him leave the pit; the various brothers and sisters had moved to the town. ‘How long are we going to be here?’ he added. ‘No inside lavatory, no bath: there’s people who came here long after us have been re-housed.’
Once the impetus of Steven’s football had faded, his father went back into his previous decline. From going to watch every match he now, on occasion, made excuses, and though he would wait eagerly for Steven to come home each Saturday evening, the significance of Steven playing slowly died. He would sit with a fixed smile on his face as he listened to details of the game which, genially, Steven was always pleased to describe. When he did go to the match he came back invariably disgruntled, complaining bitterly about the cold, or the way Steven himself had been cheated or let down by the other players. The impetus of his children’s lives had passed him by, leaving him stranded. He would examine Richard’s books and question the marks, look at the remarkable results and favourable comments Richard brought home in his school reports, and gave some acknowledgment which both disappointed Richard and yet drove him on to greater efforts. A master came from the school to talk of Richard’s university chances.
‘Fancy,’ his father said when the man had gone, ‘who’d have thought it: to come so far from where we began.’
One week-end Bletchley came home. Colin called at his house. ‘Oh, come in,’ his mother said brightly when she opened the door. ‘He’s in the front room.’
Ian was now huge: his neck had thickened; a heavy jowl concealed his chin; his waist was scarcely concealed by a reddish waistcoat. He was sitting in his shirt-sleeves when Colin came in but quickly stood up and pulled on a jacket. He’d been watching television and didn’t turn it off. He appeared to be in no good humour, as if he resented being home.
‘I’ll leave you two together,’ Mrs Bletchley said, closing the door with a smile at Colin.
Bletchley almost filled the room; he indicated the only other chair to Colin and they sat down together, Bletchley’s gaze turned resentfully to the television screen. ‘How have you been?’ he said, watching the picture. ‘I hear your brother’s signed up for the City.’
He described his present teaching; he was, as a supernumerary, being moved on from school to school.
‘Don’t you fancy getting anything steady?’ Bletchley said. ‘Not that there’s much scope in any case in teaching.’ He took out a pipe and quickly lit it. ‘I’m on a management course at present. That’s why I’m home. No work but lectures for the next three weeks. After that I start in the office. I’ll have a department of my own inside three years: after that, the sky’s the limit.’
‘I’ll be leaving soon,’ he said.
‘Where to?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll go abroad.’
‘Teaching?’
‘Whatever comes to hand.’
Bletchley said nothing for a while: clearly, he’d cast him off in his mind. As if prompted by this thought, he said finally, ‘What happened to Reagan?’
‘He was working in a cinema, the last I heard.’
‘His mother died. Did he tell you that?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘My mother got a message from the hospital.’
‘Poor old Michael,’ he said.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I reckon he’ll be better off without. Do you remember that violin? And going to Sunday School? It seems funny to think of it.’ Bletchley gazed out at the street as he might at an unknown town. There was nothing to connect him with the place at all.
Mrs Bletchley brought in some tea.
‘Are you two going out?’ she said.
‘Where to?’ Bletchley said.
‘Oh, anywhere. Anywhere young men are likely to go,’ she said.
She set down the tea on a tiny table; the room was even cleaner than Mrs Shaw’s had been.
‘There’s nowhere to go to,’ Ian said. ‘Not round here.’ He turned, with renewed discontent, towards the television.
‘Well,’ Mrs Bletchley said, handing Colin the tea, ‘I’ll leave the two of you to it, then.’
‘It’s a terrible place. I don’t know why they go on living here,’ Bletchley said. Through the wall Colin could hear Richard’s voice calling to his mother: he wondered how much of their life had been heard through the wall, and what impression it had made on Bletchley. ‘I tell them to move, but they never do. Do you remember that Sheila you used to go with? She has seven children. Seven.’ He picked up his cup blindly, still gazing at the screen.
He was still gazing at it an hour later when Colin got up to leave. ‘Oh, are you going?’ Bletchley said, standing up himself and thrusting out his hand. ‘Where did you say you were going?’
‘Abroad,’ he said, grasping the podgy hand.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ve no idea.’ Bletchley gazed at him blindly, nodding his head.
‘It doesn’t sound very promising.’
‘No,’ he said.
‘What happened to that Stafford?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I never heard.’
‘Give my regards to your mother, in case I don’t see her before I leave,’ he said.
He’d already turned back to the screen before he’d reached the door.
‘How is your mother?’ Mrs Bletchley said and as he reached the door she added, ‘I’m sorry you’re not going out. I get so worried about Ian at times.’
‘Why?’ he said.
‘He’s progressing so well, but he ought to be married.’
‘Oh, he’s bound to be married soon,’ he said.
‘Do you think so? He never goes out with girls.’
‘Who does he go out with?’ he said.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘he drinks quite a lot, on top of which he studies. His work, too,’ she added, ‘is very demanding. His boss thinks he’ll be in charge of the works when he retires. And that, Ian’s told us, is in less than ten years!’ She gestured back to the kitchen where Mr Bletchley sat reading a paper. ‘We sit here at times and think of when you and Ian were boys and wonder how all these incredible things have happened. You’ll be leaving soon yourself.’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘Well,’ she said, gazing at him. ‘Give my love to your mother.’
One evening he was coming down the street and a figure came out of a ginnel at the end of the terrace and called his name, speculatively, as if unsure he’d identified him correctly.
At first he thought it was Reagan; then, in the light, he recognized the red hair.
‘Hi, Tongey,’ Batty said. ‘How ya’ keeping?’
‘All right,’ he said, and added, ‘What’re you doing down here?’
‘I came to see Stringer. I’ve just discovered he’s left.’ He gazed about him aimlessly, almost like Bletchley might have done, at the empty street.
‘They left two or three years ago,’ he said, and added, ‘Where have you been?’
‘I’ve been in the nick.’
‘What for?’
‘For nicking.’ Batty looked at him with a great deal of irritation; his tall figure was stooped, his head turned from the light.
‘Come and have a drink,’ Colin
said.
‘Where?’ Batty said.
‘Wherever you like.’
They walked back together towards the centre of the village.
‘You can’t lend us any money?’ Batty said.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How much do you want?’
‘How much have you got?’
‘Two or three pounds.’
‘Do you have a cheque book?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
Batty said nothing for a while. When they reached the public house at the centre of the village he went quickly ahead as if anxious to get inside: once in he went directly to a table.
Colin went to the bar and ordered the drinks, calling back to Batty to find out what he wanted.
‘Whisky,’ Batty said, and added, ‘A double,’ looking round slowly at the bar then shielding his face.
When he carried the drinks over he said, ‘How much would you like?’
‘As much as you want.’
‘How much have you got already?’
‘To tell you the truth,’ Batty said, avoiding looking at him directly, ‘I’m skint. I came out today. I’ve got the clothes on my back and nothing else.’
‘What were you had up for stealing?’ he said.
‘You name it,’ Batty said, emptying the glass at a single swallow.
Colin bought him another: the extraordinary pallor of Batty’s face was relieved by bright red patches on either cheek.
‘Stringer was my last bet.’
‘I can let you have ten pounds,’ he said.
Batty glanced away. ‘Well, it’s better than nothing, I reckon,’ he said.
When he’d written the cheque Batty examined it before putting it away.
‘I could change this, you know, and make it a hundred.’
‘Why don’t you?’ he said.
‘Are you tempting me?’ he said.
‘It’s up to you. If you can get away with it I reckon it’s worth it. There’s not that in the account,’ he added.
‘What you been doing with yourself?’ Batty said as if he had misjudged the success of Colin’s life entirely.
‘I’m teaching.’
‘Mug’s game.’
‘Like being in prison.’
‘I was in the nick because I was framed. I’ll never be framed again.’ He looked at his glass, which he’d emptied a second time at a single swallow.
‘Fancy another?’
‘I wouldn’t mind.’
‘Have you been back home?’ he asked him when he brought the drink across.
‘What for?’
‘Where are you going to sleep tonight?’
‘I’ll find somewhere,’ Batty said. ‘They live in town. My dad. I called today. They wouldn’t see me. Go with open arms: what do you get?’
‘What about your brothers?’
‘Two of ’em are inside already: their wives don’t reckon much to having me around.’
He gave him a pound when they went outside. He waited at the bus stop with him for a bus to take him back to town.
‘Do you remember that hut we had?’ Batty said. He looked about him at the deserted, lamp-lit street. ‘What a dump,’ he added. When the bus came he got on without adding anything further, climbed the stairs and disappeared.
One evening, visiting the town, he came out of a pub in something of a daze and gazed around. It was early evening: the sky was clear; sunlight lit up the roofs above his head; an evening bustle came from the city centre; farther along the road was the dark, pillared building of the Assembly Rooms; a faint sound of music drifted down the street.
He walked back slowly to the bus.
When, a little later, the bus crossed the river, the sun was setting beyond the mills.
‘It could be Italy,’ a voice said behind him and when he turned a man gestured off towards the river. ‘Italy,’ he said again, indicating the yellow light.
31
She had known the break was coming and said nothing when he told her.
He had told her he was leaving on two occasions before: both times, however, he’d finally come back.
Now, he could see, she knew it was different.
‘I’ll have to go,’ he said. ‘I have no choice.’
Still she didn’t answer.
He’d been sitting across the room; he got up and went to her chair. There was a peculiar immunity about her. Beyond her he could see directly into the street, the parked cars, the bustle of the town from the opposite end.
‘Will you stay here yourself?’ he said.
‘No.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
She sat with her back straight; she was wearing a light-blue dress; her hands were clenched in her lap, her head erect. Her gaze was abstracted: it was as if she’d removed herself from the room entirely.
‘Well,’ she said, putting up her hand. ‘We’d better say goodbye.’
He drew her up: almost formally, as whenever they met, they kissed each other on the cheek.
‘It’s very strange,’ she said. ‘This town. I wonder if I’ll ever leave it. In the old days children stayed in the same community. When we discover everywhere is very much the same, when we find that everyone is very much like us, when we realize the world is smaller than we thought, do you think we’ll all drift back? I used to despise Maureen for staying here; it is sterile in one sense, but does it have to be? Doesn’t the chance of renewal come wherever you live?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘You make it sound so clear. But all you do is take the destitution with you: of belonging nowhere; of belonging to no one; of knowing that nowhere you stay is very real.’
‘Why shouldn’t it be real?’ he said.
‘Don’t the dead, doesn’t the past only make it real?’
‘No,’ he said again. ‘The dead just hold it back.’
‘But what is there?’ she asked him. ‘Doesn’t everything finish the way it began? Won’t I end up working with my father? Despite all I might do in order to avoid it. I might even’, she added, ‘take over the shop.’
‘And marry a pharmacist’, he added, ‘to go with it?’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Although it would be terrible if it turned out you were right.’
‘Shakespeare never travelled farther than London; Michelangelo never went farther from Florence than Rome; Rembrandt stayed virtually where he was. It’s an illusion to think you’ve to break the mould. The mould may be the most precious thing you have.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I wouldn’t believe it. Travelling is only one way of breaking it.’
‘Why not stay?’
‘Would you want us to get married, then?’ he said.
She laughed: she was driving him in circles, yet it was an argument she couldn’t conclude.
‘My chances of victory are so much less than yours,’ she said.
‘In being older?’ he said.
‘In being a woman.’
‘But then, that should be more of a challenge.’
‘Yet I’m a woman formed’, she said, ‘by old conceptions. I believe, at the end of it, there is only one man. Just as for a man there is only one woman. Not any man, or any woman, but one man. And one woman. Despite the circumstance.’
‘In any case,’ he said, freshly, ‘I don’t believe it.’
‘Perhaps you’ll learn that later,’ she said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I refuse to believe it.’
‘You may refuse, my boy,’ she said. ‘But you’ll come to it in the end. One man: one woman. The unity of that is irrefutable; growth is impossible without it.’
It sounded so much like her older self that he laughed. He took her hand.
‘It’s been a friendship of a kind,’ he said.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t wish to make it sound decent,’ she said. ‘There’s a lot of bitterness here you’ll never see. I’m the senior partner. I’ve had my chance: I fee
l it’s my duty not to show it.’
‘But you try to diminish yourself so much,’ he said. ‘You make the mould yourself instead of allowing life to do it for you. I believe that life is limitless, that experience is limitless: yet it can’t be conceived by standing still.’
‘Go out and experience it, in that case, then,’ she said. ‘Perhaps when you come back, if you come back, you’ll see you may have been mistaken. What, after all, is a community if it isn’t formed by people who are committed, who commit their lives, and have their lives committed for them?’
‘But a community isn’t anything,’ he said. ‘It exists’, he went on, ‘of its own volition. When the volition goes, the community goes with it. It’s no good hanging on.’
‘Oh,’ she said bleakly, gazing at him as if there were a great deal she might have told him. It was like a child crying to be let outside a door.
‘I can see now’, he said, ‘the difference between us. You have no faith. Whereas everything that happens to me, even the worst things, merely strengthens mine. Because things are bad, because they only get worse, faith is all the stronger.’
‘Faith in what?’
‘Impossibility. Everything is allowable; everything is permissible; anything can happen. It’s arrogance’, he added, ‘to assume it can’t. Not an arrogance to assume it should.’
‘Well,’ she said quietly, sitting once more, gazing at her hands, the fingers intertwined, lying in her lap. ‘Well,’ she said, tired, as if he were a force that couldn’t be countered.
‘But I can do so much,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what makes me feel it: but I know it must be true.’ And when she looked up he said, ‘I was a pessimist like you. Now I’m different. I wish you’d take this assurance from me. For I haven’t just taken: I’ve given something back.’
‘Yes,’ she said, then added, ‘It’s only youth. You can’t give that back, however much you wanted.’
So they parted with a certain bitterness, she couldn’t help it. Perhaps even she thought, or hoped, one part of her, at this last moment too he would finally come back: that there was something intangible between them that only temporarily he resisted. Yet he never went again: his last glimpse of her was of her standing in the room, for she left him to close the door. He glanced back, frowning, as he might at a shadow he couldn’t make out, and feeling guilty, as he did now about almost everything.