‘Is it safe?’
He could see the dampness of the grass glistening by his feet and, behind them, at the end of the lawn, the glassless windows of the summer-house.
‘Has the house been hit?’
He was craning his head to the tiles: smoke trailed off from one of the chimneys. ‘The sitting-room fire’s been burning all the time,’ he said, and was suddenly aware of the brightness in the sky which enabled him to see the details of the garden, as well as of the house itself.
‘It looks all right, apart from the glass.’
‘It’ll take ages to replace.’
‘We’ll see about it in the morning.’
‘That last explosion was in the village.’
‘A stray.’
‘Does it matter what it is?’ she said.
Glass crumbled in the kitchen: more glass crumbled in the hall. He could hear her calling, ‘Don’t put on the light,’ and the squeak of the oil-lamp as he realized, absurdly, she’d brought it with her.
‘I’ll make the tea,’ he said. ‘You sit down and I’ll sweep this up.’
‘Oh, I’ll help,’ she said, the light, from the re-lit oil-lamp, illuminating her features in such a way that her eyes appeared dark hollows and her nose extended; then, as the light was turned to the floor, she added, ‘I’ve never seen such a mess. We’ll never set it right.’
‘We’ll sleep down here. There’s too much glass upstairs,’ he said.
Having made the tea they sat in the kitchen, the curtains pinned down at the edges, the blanket still draped around her shoulders, for he could see now that she had begun to tremble, minutely, her hand shaking at one time so severely that she put down her cup and sat with her hand in both of his, their fingers clenched together.
Finally, to distract her, he secured the other curtains, put on the lights, and began to sweep the floor. The telephone rang: he heard her answer, ‘We’re both all right. We’re clearing up the mess,’ and when she came back she said, ‘Mrs Meredith’s all right. The village isn’t damaged!’
They fell asleep in the sitting-room and when, much later, Mrs Meredith arrived, they recommenced the clearing-up, a man appearing later in the day to begin the task of replacing the glass and, once the glass itself was in, Mrs Corrigan and Mrs Meredith began, meticulously, to tape each pane while Bryan went off to the town from where, in the afternoon, he called, reporting the damage, and describing the scenes of destruction in the streets around.
TWENTY-THREE
His father was standing at the gate, about to depart, the lane darkening, his dynamo switched on so that, as he had wheeled the bike across the yard, Bryan had seen the spluttering of the lamp, its light flickering down across the ruts, and had wondered if it were his father at all. The fact was, he invariably came to Feltham in the evenings, when he knew, in winter, his father would have gone.
‘Can you manage on your own up there?’ his father asked.
‘There’s Mrs Meredith as well,’ he said.
His father nodded, looking across the lane to the lighted forecourt of the Three Bells public house. The murmur of the stream came from the direction of the hump-backed bridge.
It was seven years since Bryan had gone to live at Chevet. Two years after the war had started Mr Corrigan had died: the shop had been sold and, rather than distress Mrs Corrigan by his leaving, his parents had agreed to his staying on.
‘We saw thy work in the paper. “Exhibited in town”. I never thought you would make it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Nay, a sculptor.’ Having prepared to mount the bike, drawing down the pedal, his father still stood there, looking off across the road.
‘Do you want a drink?’ Bryan asked.
His father ducked his head.
‘I’ll buy you one.’
‘All right,’ his father said. ‘You’re on.’
He wheeled his bike across the yard, the tyres rasping on the pebbles, his feet crunching, his back straightening suddenly as he leant his bike by the wall.
But for one other figure, the bar was deserted.
Bryan took their drinks to a corner table.
‘Been in here before?’ his father asked.
‘Once or twice.’
‘Who with?’
‘Margaret.’
‘She’s grown into a handsome woman.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘She knows her own mind. More than her father does at present.’
‘How do you get on with him?’
‘All right.’ Unsure how much he ought to relish the drink, he raised the glass slowly and sipped from the edge. ‘He ne’er recovered from the death of his wife. Margaret took over after that, and never looked back. She fills the space two women might have had. That’s why she’s blossomed.’
His father’s hands were black, the palms and the backs of them covered by mittens, the fingers bare, the dirt ingrained.
‘Let me get you another.’
‘Nay, one’s enough, one better be enough, if I’m going back to your mother.’ His father laughed, yet made no further objection when Bryan got up and crossed to the bar.
And yet, in a curious way, he despised his father: in glancing back, and seeing his figure shrouded in his overcoat – an army greatcoat dyed brown – and his cap and mittens, with their peculiar perversity in baring his fingers to the cold, he wished he’d had more pride.
‘Don’t you think that you’ve been used?’ Bryan asked, returning to the table.
‘In what way?’
‘Making wealth for other people of which you’ve scarcely had a share yourself. Or, at least,’ he added, ‘a share which has only been sufficient to keep you going.’
‘I haven’t had much choice,’ his father said. ‘I wa’ lucky to get a job. There weren’t many going when I started here.’
‘Yet you ought to own a third, perhaps a half of this farm, for the work you’ve done.’
His father drank slowly from his second glass. ‘Your mother won’t be pleased with this,’ he said. ‘Me supping here. The rows we’ve had about it in the past. But even that has changed. The war changed that. We see things differently. You might even say we’ve come together.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Because we had nought to start with, I count myself a rich man, Bryan.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Thy’s thinking of material wealth.’ He glanced up at him from beneath his cap. ‘It’s a knot I never unravelled: how you split up the world’s wealth in such a way that you don’t do away with each man’s effort.’
‘I might come home to live,’ he said.
‘What about Mrs Corrigan?’
‘It’s what we planned. I shan’t stay long. After that I’ll go to London.’
‘And Margaret?’
‘It’s time I left. I’ve made mistakes in the past I never recognized till now.’
‘I wa’ ne’er much keen on your going.’ His father lowered his head. ‘To Chevet.’
‘It was what I wanted,’ Bryan said.
‘It wa’ more your mother’s thing than mine.’
‘If I’d stayed at home I’d never have been what I am,’ Bryan said.
‘Is it that much different?’ his father asked.
‘It has been.’ He glanced at his father’s face again, the reddened cheeks, the stubbled chin, a smear of earth where he’d brushed his hand across it: ‘I’d like to come home,’ he said.
‘It was here,’ his father gestured to the door and, beyond the door, to the darkened farm outside, ‘I brought you on your bike.’ He lifted the glass, then, without drinking, lowered it again, ‘I always thought we ducked out,’ he added.
‘From what?’
‘From raising you in the way we should. That we all ducked out. We should have known better.’
‘if we did,’ Bryan said, ‘it’s over now. We can make,’ he added, ‘a fresh beginning.’
‘With something missing,’ his father said.
‘We can
still go on without it,’ Bryan said. ‘Even if,’ he added, ‘we know it was there in the first place.’
He glanced at his father’s face again, with its day’s growth of beard, with its frosted cheeks, and recognized in its expression a devotion he had never seen before, something intractable, that couldn’t be moved, was constant and which, in its having been created, he knew was there for good.
TWENTY-FOUR
Tables had been set out in the field at the back of the houses; bunting had been hung from wooden poles: pieces of coloured cloth and Union Jacks had been strewn along the fences. At the far end of the field, where it abutted on to the back gardens of the houses flanking Spinney Moor Crescent, two poles supported a banner which read ‘LONG LIVE OUR QUEEN’. A picture of Queen Elizabeth, in colour, was secured to a placard at the foot of each of the poles.
A gramophone was playing and several couples had begun to dance, the groups of children, still sitting at the tables, pushing back the chairs and benches.
Bryan had just come in from the field with Margaret; she wore a pale-blue dress, belted at the waist and, on coming into the house, had taken off her wide-brimmed hat, sitting at the table in the living-room in much the same fashion as he had first seen her sitting there, years before, on her first visit to the house.
And yet, as he brought in a tray with a pot of fresh tea and cups and saucers, he was reminded more distinctly of someone else – a figure so elusive that only when Margaret reached out to the teapot, and righted one of the cups, and insisted on pouring the tea herself, did he finally recognize, seated there, a youthful Mrs Corrigan – younger even than that first moment when he’d glimpsed her, seated at the kitchen table, at Feltham, in her blue-spotted dress and her wide-brimmed hat; and as her look came up, and he saw her smile, and he recognized, too, the Spencer eyes – set in a broader and more expansive face – she asked, ‘What are you gazing at? Anything wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ he said, glancing to the field where the dancing couples gyrated in the sun – his parents, he noticed, presently amongst them – and thought, ‘It’s strange how everything that is full of life has come back here. Like a heart from which the blood is pumped, expanding beyond this room, beyond these houses, beyond Spinney Top, out to the world, like that time,’ he reflected, ‘when I used to imagine a spirit at Christmas passing overhead, focusing its journey on every house and moving with the speed of light through a world that expanded to infinity in every direction.’
She followed his gaze herself, and specifically, Bryan thought, to where his brother had come into view dancing with his wife; almost aimlessly, having poured the tea, she said, ‘I read about your work. “A prodigal talent. Bought by several private collections.”’ She smiled. ‘So that’s what you meant by someone special.’ And, half anxiously, she asked, ‘What happens next?’
‘I mean to go on,’ he said, and wondered if he might tell her of his life-long dream that he was the successor to a line of monarchs, stretching back into the mists of time, and realized, in that moment, ‘But this is my kingdom, the kingdom of the heart; this is my rule: we are all a part of it,’ and he began, carelessly at first, to arrange the pieces on the tray before him, arranging, rearranging, and perhaps something in his movements persuaded Margaret to look across.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I see it’.
A Biography of David Storey
David Storey was a novelist, playwright, and artist. He won several awards, including the Macmillan Fiction Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Man Booker Prize.
Storey was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire, on July 13, 1933. He grew up in a coal-mining community, and his father worked in the Yorkshire mines for over forty years. These mining communities were to become the backdrop for many of his most notable works, such as the award-winning novels, Saville and This Sporting Life.
As a young man, Storey dreamt of becoming a painter. Avoiding a life of working down the pits, he commuted back and forth between playing rugby league in the North and attending the Slade School of Fine Art in London. He excelled in writing and art, exhibiting his work with West Riding Arts, the London Group, and the Young Contemporaries. He eventually became a fellow of University College London.
His father did not initially support his artistic dreams, and Storey had to pay his way through art school by working as a professional Rugby League football player. At eighteen years old, he signed a contract to play for the Leeds RLFC’s A-team as a second row and loose forward. Like the Yorkshire mines, Rugby League acted as the inspiration for some of his most important work. The Changing Room and the Macmillan Fiction Award–winning This Sporting Life explore the gritty and brutally violent world of one of England’s favorite sports.
Storey’s first novel, This Sporting Life, was published in 1960, and it proved to be a strong start to a long and impressive writing career. Critics often credit Storey for capturing the voices and everyday domestic lives of the working class. This Sporting Life was hailed as a classic example of British “kitchen sink” realism, and Storey has often been associated with other “Angry Young Men” of the 1960s, such as John Osborne and Alan Sillitoe. So successful was the book, that in 1963, This Sporting Life was adapted into a classic film, directed by Lindsay Anderson. The two lead actors, Richard Harris and Rachel Roberts, were both nominated for Academy Awards for their performances in the film.
Storey went on to win the Man Booker Prize for his novel Saville and the Somerset Maugham Award for Pasmore. His other novels include Flight into Camden, Radcliffe, A Serious Man, As It Happened, and Thin-Ice Skater. Beyond his success as a novelist, Storey was also an acclaimed playwright. After publishing three novels, his play The Restoration of Arnold Middleton premiered in the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 1966. He loved watching his work come to life, so much so that he went on to write fifteen plays, including The Contractor, Home, The Changing Room, In Celebration, Life Class, The Farm, Early Days, The March on Russia, and Stages. Much of Storey’s playwriting career is often connected with Lindsay Anderson, the director of This Sporting Life and Storey’s good friend. While running the Royal Court Theatre in London, he directed nine of Storey’s plays.
Storey passed away in 2017 at the age of eighty-three.
Storey with his wife, Barbara, and their two daughters, Helen and Kate, at their family home “Lyndhurst gardens” in the 1960s.
Storey in rehearsal for Home with Sir Ralph Richardson at the Royal Court Theatre in the 1970s.
Storey on a return visit to Wakefield during location hunts for This Sporting Life in the 1960s.
Storey visiting the North in the 1960s. During his trip he commented, “If Radcliffe ever needed a location, it could have been here.”
Storey in his home “Lyndhurst gardens” in 1971.
David rehearsing rugby passes with players in the 1971 production of The Changing Room.
Storey studied painting at Slade Art School in the early 1950s, and he returned to his passion later in life. He painted “The Houses on the Moors” in the late 1980s.
Storey painted “The Dancing Man” in the early 1990s.
Storey in family home “Willes Road” Belszie Park in London, 1998.
Photographs Courtesy of John Haynes (http://www.johnhaynesphotography.com).
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1982 by David Storey
Cover design by Mauricio Díaz
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1513-4
This edition published in 2015 by Open
Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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New York, NY 10014
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DAVID STOREY
FROM OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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