Saville

12

A narrow footpath wound behind the backs of several large, brick-built houses, coming out finally at the edge of a field. Other fields, hedged, swept up to a low horizon of trees and houses.

In the centre of the principal field stood a cricket pitch marked off behind a barrier of rope. A brick-built pavilion adjoined the opening of the path on to the field itself, beside it a smaller one, painted green and built of wood. It was in the second, slightly decaying structure, the base of its woodwork beginning to rot, that boys of his own age were already changing.

The two dimly lit rooms inside were crowded; at one point he found his clothes removed from a peg and finally he folded them up inside his satchel and, waiting until the others had gone, hung that on a peg already occupied inside the door.

The youngest boys had been called over to a pitch at the farthest side of the field. Two masters were standing there, one of them Platt, short and squat, and one he hadn’t seen before. He too was a small man, and slightly built; he had thin grey hair which, with a slow, hesitant gesture, he would fold across his head. His eyes were dark and moist; he nodded at the boys, checking their names with a list in his hand.

Groups of boys ran up and down on the remaining pitches; names were being called and whistles blown while, on the largest pitch of all, with tall, broad-based goal-posts painted in the school colours of dark blue and gold, boys the size of men had begun a game.

‘What boys have played rugby union before?’ Platt had said. He blew a whistle. ‘Will you pay attention’, he shouted, ‘to what’s being said.’

Colin jumped up and down. His boots were worn over at the outer edges; the football shirt itself was far too large. He’d rolled up the sleeves and tucked the bottom of the shirt between his legs. He could feel it flap out behind him when he ran.

‘Those who’ve played rugby union’, the second master said, ‘can stand over here.’

He formed a group around him beneath the posts.

‘What boys have played rugby league, then?’ Platt said.

One or two boys put up their hands.

‘We don’t want any rugby league players here.’ He gave a laugh. ‘We’ll reserve judgment on those who have played the game,’ he added.

He glanced around.

‘There are three sports played in this area at this time of the year,’ Platt said. ‘One is soccer, a game which, in my opinion, might, with profit, have been reserved for girls; one is rugby league, which is played very largely by people for money; and the third is rugby union, a fair and equitable game, played at our oldest universities as well as by all our major public schools. It is a game conceived by and therefore, quite naturally, played by gentlemen, and gentlemanly shall be the conduct of those who play the game under Mr Hepworth’s and my supervision.’ He gestured to the slight figure standing beneath the posts. ‘We wish to choose a team, of course. One to represent the school at Junior level. All of you present will have an opportunity to compete for places, bearing in mind, particularly those who have played under the professional code, that gentlemanly conduct and playing to the rules at all times are the qualities both Mr Hepworth and I are looking for. Fisticuffs, bad temper and inconsiderate running with the ball – characteristic, I might tell you, of the professional code – are not required at King Edward’s. I can tell you that for nothing.’ He gazed round at the jerseyed figures for several seconds. ‘Now, then: names. When I call them out you’ll line up here.’

Several boys were later dismissed. They went off slowly, kicking their heels, some indifferent, calling later from the pavilion as they dashed out from a shower.

By the end of the afternoon only half the boys were left. Colin ran up and down. He had never played the game before. The first time the ball came to him he passed it on, wildly, to a boy much larger than himself.

‘You, you there. Haven’t you ever passed a ball, boy?’ Platt had said.

He took the oval ball and held it by his chest.

‘Laces in the direction you want the ball to go. Ball vertical. Now: have a try yourself.’

He passed the ball.

Platt shook his head.

‘Stand on the side for a bit,’ he said.

He stood with several other boys, waiting to be dismissed. Groups from the other pitches were already drifting off. The older boys alone were running up and down.

‘You. You there, boy,’ Platt had called.

He ran back on the pitch.

‘Do you know how to form a scrum, boy?’ Platt had said.

He put his head down and linked his arm to the boy beside him. They put their heads between the hips of the boys in front. He saw the ball tossed into the mass of players, and saw it go out between his legs.

The game went on. The ball came loose between his feet. He picked it up and began to run.

He ran round one boy then, with a sickening crunch, ran into several others.

He fell between their legs, saw feet kicking round his head, released the ball and rolled away.

‘Well played, boy. That’s the method,’ Platt had said.

He ran with the ball again; he pulled another boy down. He felt a dull pleasure as the game progressed. He did nothing to draw attention to himself.

Names were read out at the end of the match. ‘Nichols, Beresford, Jones, Saville.’ He completed the list. ‘Those not read out will report to Mr Hodges at the Spion Kop field next games afternoon,’ Platt said.

The two masters walked away. One or two boys walked with them. Others drifted over to the senior pitch. Names were mentioned and players pointed out. ‘Swallow. Tranter. Smith Major. Cornforth.’ The ground shook as the players pounded past. Weals were left in the grass at each of the tackles.

He went back to the pavilion; his arms and legs had begun to ache. There was a basin to wash in at the back of the room: most of the boys hadn’t bothered, they put their clothes on over the mud and stains.

By the time he set off for the bus he could scarcely walk; his feet were sore from the boots, his shoulders ached from the weight of the bag. When he got on the bus he fell asleep, waking briefly when it lurched across the hump-backed bridge and only finally roused himself when it descended, rattling, towards the village.

He stayed up even later that night. In addition to the French he had Maths and Latin. The Latin, however much he tried, he couldn’t get right.

‘You’ve been three hours on it,’ his mother said. ‘Ifs after my bed-time, never mind yours.’

‘I’ve got to get it right,’ he said.

‘Let me write in the book,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell him that you tried.’

He held the book from her.

‘For goodness’ sake,’ she said, ‘if you work like this you’ll be worn out completely by the end of the week.’

He went to bed with the work unfinished. He was late for the bus the following morning, catching one that came almost half an hour later.

Assembly had started. He stood outside with several other boys, allowed in finally after the prayers were finished. His name was taken down.

‘What’s this? One boy late this morning?’ Hodges said as he marked the register for the afternoon. ‘Not Saville double l, then, is it? Not finding out, I suppose, how to spell his name correctly.’

‘No, sir,’ he said.

He’d already given the Latin in.

‘Distinguished himself, I gather, on the rugger field. So Mr Platt and Mr Hepworth tell me.’ He gazed at him from his desk over the top of his glasses. ‘Rugger doesn’t entitle you to privileges, boy. However well you play. Do you understand that, Saville double l?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Well, double l, I don’t expect to see another late mark against your name.’ He removed his glasses. ‘Let me see your record book.’

He took it down to the desk.

‘I shall mark it on this occasion, double l, as a warning not only to you but to all the rest.’ He glanced around him and drew out his pen. ‘A bad record at this point of the term is a very bad thing indeed. It sets a tone for the book which it is very difficult to eradicate, particularly for a boy just starting and for a master looking at it to see what sort of lad he is.’

‘I was late for the bus,’ he said.

‘We’re all late for the bus, double l, if we all get up late for the bus,’ he said.

He blotted the record, which he’d written in red ink, and handed him the book.

‘Let that be a lesson to anyone else who feels inclined to miss the bus,’ he said. ‘Back to your place, then, double l.’

When he got back to his desk he looked at the book. ‘Late for his third morning at school. J.T.H.’, had been written in the column.

He put up his hand.

‘What is it, double l? Is anything the matter?’

‘What you’ve written here isn’t correct,’ he said.

‘What’s that, Saville?’

He saw the eyes tighten behind Hodges’s glasses. The colour deepened swiftly in his face.

‘What you’ve written in my record book,’ he said.

‘What’s that, boy?’

He waited.

‘Do you know how to address a master, Saville?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘That’s the first “sir” I’ve heard, Saville, from the moment you stood up.’

‘The bad record you’ve given me, sir, makes it sound as though I’ve been late for three mornings running.’

He waited once again.

‘Read to me what’s written, Saville.’

‘“Late for his third morning at school,”’ he read aloud.

Hodges waited.

‘I think that’s perfectly clear.’

He took out his pen. ‘Bring your book to me again, then, Saville.’

He went down through the class to the teacher’s desk. The bell had already sounded for the afternoon lesson.

‘I shall give you a second bad record, Saville, for insubordination. I needn’t tell you how serious two bad records in one day can be. Three in one week and it’s my duty to report you to Mr Walker. At this time on Friday I shall require you to bring me this book again. If any other master has found it necessary to endorse my opinion of your behaviour the matter will be out of my hands completely.’

He wrote again in the book with the same red ink. He blotted it carefully and handed it back. The door had already opened and a master appeared.

‘Is that understood, then, Saville?’

‘Yes,’ he said and went back to his desk.

‘It’s seldom been my duty to give two bad records on the one occasion,’ the master added, looking at the class. ‘I’m sure Mr Hepworth will agree that it’s a singular disappointment to any master to have to perform such a duty in respect of a member of his own class. I can’t tell you with what regret I look upon this incident. I hope, now that it has occurred, that it makes our positions clear, and that nothing remotely like it will happen again. Take out your books for Mr Hepworth’s lesson. I shan’t, if I can help it, refer to this incident again.’

He went out, removing his glasses, and, in total silence, closed the door.

Hepworth said nothing for several seconds. He stood at the back of the class; then, pushing his hand across his head, he walked slowly down to the desk at the front.

‘Please open your atlases at page thirty-one,’ he said.

Colin waited outside the staff-room at the end of the afternoon. He didn’t see Hodges.

He waited in the drive.

Finally Platt came out, walking to the gate; he went across to him and touched his cap.

‘What is it, boy? Out with it,’ Platt had said. He had a brief-case in his hand, a hat on his head, his overcoat unbuttoned, and was plainly in a hurry.

‘Has Mr Hodges come out of the staff-room, sir?’ he said.

‘Hodges? Free period last period. He goes home early. What did you want to see him about?’

‘I wanted to make a complaint,’ he said.

‘See him in the morning if it’s anything important. Otherwise leave a message in the office, boy,’ he said.

He was almost in tears when he reached the bus.

‘Why, what is it? Whatever’s happened?’ his father said when he got to the house.

He showed him the book.

He saw the whiteness rise to his father’s face.

‘By God, I s’ll come to school in the morning.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’ll make it worse.’

‘I’ll not make it worse than this, don’t worry.’

‘I’ll talk to him on my own,’ he said.

‘Don’t worry, lad. I’ll set it straight.’

‘You can’t set it straight. It’s written in.’

‘I’ll have it written out,’ his father said.

‘But you can’t do anything,’ he said, ‘but make it worse.’

‘Don’t worry, lad. I’ll sort it out.’

His father went the following day. Colin was called to the headmaster’s study after the break-bell went. The headmaster himself was sitting at a desk; books lined the walls; a window looked down on to the crowded field below. There were framed photographs on the wall and in the corner, on a wooden pedestal, stood a massive globe.

A face in profile, like a mask, was set in a frame above a wooden mantelpiece. Its eyes were closed; it echoed, in its features, something of the headmaster’s narrow face. Pale-blue eyes looked out from beneath bushy brows.

‘Your father came to see me this morning. About this incident with Mr Hodges,’ the headmaster said.

‘Yes, sir.’ He nodded. ‘He said he would.’

‘It seems you were late on your third morning at school, and complained at the way Mr Hodges had phrased the remark in your record book. He said your manner was insolent and amounted, in his view, to insubordination.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘It’s a master’s privilege to make judgments on your conduct, Saville. Not only is it his privilege, but it’s also, in Mr Hodges’s case, his particular duty. Not only is he a master with great experience, but with a great deal of feeling and sympathy for boys your age. If this is his judgment, then his judgment is correct; it’s one I trust. I take a very dim view of boys who, when they get themselves into trouble, see no other resort but to complain to their parents, who come to the school with a wholly distorted view of the entire affair.’

‘I asked my father not to come here, sir.’ He gazed past the thinly featured face to the field below.

‘He says you’ve had trouble with your homework, Saville.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘If at the end of an hour and a half it’s not completed, it’s better to make a note in your book to this effect and report your difficulties to the appropriate master – not stay up so late that you’re too tired in the morning to catch your bus.’

‘Yes, sir.’

He glanced down at the desk. ‘I’m sorry this has happened so early in your career in the school. Mr Hodges, to make his own feelings quite clear, has offered to erase the two records from your book and has suggested I issue you with a new one. I’m afraid, despite his recommendation, that that is something I won’t and can’t allow. The record book is there for all to see, and is the most important document you’ll carry though the school. I hope from the incident you’ll learn a useful lesson: that the masters and the mistresses are here not to punish you for misdemeanours, but to instruct and guide, and, whenever in their view it is necessary, to reprimand. I hope you’ll learn from this to trust their judgment. I’d like you to report to me at the end of the term, with your record book complete, and we’ll see, from looking at it, precisely where you stand.’

He went out to the office. A grey-haired secretary with a red, sunburnt face was working at a desk; she glanced up, smiling, and said, ‘Was there any message?’

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘That’ll be all, then, Saville,’ she said.

He went through to the corridor, then, since the bell marking the end of break hadn’t sounded, down to the field.

He stood by the wooden fence. He looked up at the headmaster’s window. The school’s coat-of-arms with its motto, which he hadn’t noticed while he was in the room, was set in the middle of the diamond-shaped panes in coloured glass.

His father, when he got home that evening, had been subdued.

‘I’ll give you that he’s fair,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you that. And Hodges. I spoke to both of them,’ he added.

It was the first time he’d seen his father back down from something he believed.

‘They said it wouldn’t influence them in any way. I mean, about your work,’ he added.

‘At least it’s over and settled,’ his mother said.

‘Aye, it’s cleared the air,’ his father said. ‘Though tha mu’n never miss that bus again,’ he added.

In the second week, at football, Stafford appeared. Saville had spoken to him occasionally in the field at the back of the school, and had walked down with him one afternoon into town, parting at the narrow opening which, he’d discovered earlier, led down towards the station. On the Thursday afternoon Stafford was standing on the pitch when Colin arrived for football, his hands on his hips, apparently unconcerned by all the activity going on around. He dug his heel against the grass, glancing round at the other pitches, then smoothing down his hair with slow, almost conscious gestures as if anxious to move away to something less demanding.

He played amongst the backs. He had a slender, almost delicate physique; he stood around a great deal, his arms folded, chewing grass, always anxious to talk to the other players, sometimes picking up stones or clods of earth from the pitch and throwing them off on either side. He ran with the ball; he moved so slowly that it seemed impossible then that he wouldn’t be caught; he slipped away, half-gliding, turning slowly, almost lethargically between the outstretched arms, avoiding one group of figures and then another and finally, when he appeared to be bored by the ease with which he eluded his opponents, he threw the ball away to another boy, who was immediately tackled.

‘More effort, Stafford. More effort,’ Platt said. He wrote on his list and nodded to Hepworth.

In all, thirty boys had been left in the game; occasionally they changed sides, swapping jerseys. The rest of the boys had been sent away. The remainder, on the whole, were in the third year, some in the second; Stafford, Colin himself and two other boys were all that remained from the first.

At half-time they were called in a loose circle in the centre of the pitch.

‘Now all you boys’, Platt said, ‘will come here every Tuesday and Thursday. You’ll form the nucleus of our Under 13 Team. Is that understood, then, Stafford?’

Stafford, after joining in the circle, had laid down in the grass. He lay with his head in his hands, gazing at the sky. His eyes, when Colin glanced over, appeared to be closed.

At Platt’s inquiry he raised his head.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘That’s not going to be too inconvenient for you, Stafford?’ Platt had said.

‘No, sir.’ Stafford sat up slowly, pushing his hand across his head. ‘I was feeling tired.’

‘That’s all right, Stafford,’ Platt had said.

As he continued talking to the boys Platt moved slowly round the circle, gesturing, calling names, offering advice, outlining the team’s plans for the coming season, ending up finally only a few inches from where Stafford was sitting. ‘Harrison will be captain,’ he said, indicating a large, bulky boy with fattish legs and hair almost as fair as Stafford’s. ‘This will be his third year in the team and I want you to listen to any advice he has to give.’ He half-lifted Stafford with one hand as he got to his feet. ‘You’ll go on Harrison’s side, Stafford. And I want more effort in this second half.’

At one point in the middle of the game Stafford got the ball almost directly in front of where Colin was standing; he went to him, intending to drag him down. He saw the half-awareness in Stafford’s eyes, the strange flexing of his back as he moved aside and a moment later when it seemed he had no way to go, Stafford moved past him, casually, his figure tensing to meet those moving up behind. He ran to one side of the pitch, slipped past two boys, avoiding a third, then, to Platt’s and Hepworth’s shouts, put the ball down between the posts.

He walked back slowly, his cheeks flushed, his eyes gleaming, as if he’d been driven to something he hadn’t wished to do.

‘Stafford, you might have gone straighter,’ Platt had said. ‘Straight down the middle is the quickest way.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Stafford said. He stood with his hands on his hips. The redness of his cheeks had scarcely faded.

Finally, a few moments later, when the kick had been taken, the whistle went.

Stafford had already left the pitch; he jogged off slowly. As Colin changed he saw him coming back from the senior pavilion where he’d had a shower; later, setting off down the ginnel, he heard someone coming up behind him and, turning, saw Stafford smiling now and waving.

‘Platt’s a bit of a stickler,’ he said. ‘What do you think?’

‘He doesn’t seem to miss much, I suppose,’ Colin told him.

Stafford’s hair was neatly combed; he hadn’t, as yet, put on his cap.

‘Where were you last week?’ Colin asked him.

‘I played at Spion Kop. They sent me up here.’

There was no sense of achievement or even pride in Stafford; more, it was an inconvenience he was stressing, something which, in the near future, he intended to set right.

‘It seems you’ll be in the team,’ Colin said.

‘Do you think so?’ He’d already forgotten about the game: he was looking down at his jacket, checking the buttons, feeling in his pockets. He carried a neat canvas hold-all in his other hand.

‘If Harrison’s the captain, and you’re playing on his side.’

‘He’s a bit of a lump. Did you see the way he moved around?’

He walked on quickly, as if anxious to get away from the field.

‘I thought of getting a letter.’

Colin looked across.

‘From a doctor.’ They came out from the ginnel. ‘If you get a letter saying you’re not supposed to be playing games you get two afternoons off free. What do you think? We could spend them at the pictures.’

‘I couldn’t get a letter,’ he said.

‘I can get one for you. No bother at all.’ They were passing by the school. Stafford paid it no attention. At one point, glancing in a shop window lower down the street, he took out a comb and, pausing, combed his hair.

Colin waited.

‘You don’t enjoy all that, then, do you?’ Stafford said.

‘All what?’

Stafford shrugged.

‘Running round that field. And having that big fat lump jump on top of you.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Tell me your christian name and I’ll get a letter. If two of us do it, it looks better than one.’

‘It’s Colin.’

‘Okay, Col. Leave it to me.’

He went off down the narrow opening leading to the station.

Colin watched him: he didn’t look back.

He never saw the letter. He never discovered whether Stafford had even got one; despite his mentioning it on one occasion Stafford never referred to it again. He avoided walking with him whenever he could; Colin would see his friend hurrying to the ginnel with the other boys, or, if he himself were already in front, walking behind slowly, waiting for someone else to catch him up. In school itself they scarcely met; he could be seen occasionally lounging against the wall at the end of the field, or against the fence, his hands in his pockets, his back rounded as he slowly kicked the grass, laughing, calling to other boys who invariably came up and whom, characteristically, he never approached.

Once, on a Tuesday afternoon, Colin caught him up.

‘You played well this afternoon,’ he said.

Stafford glanced up. He’d been walking by himself, along the ginnel, his canvas bag beneath his arm.

‘Oh, that. Platt seems pleased enough. I’ve been picked for the team next Saturday. At least, that’s what Hepworth says.’

‘What position are you playing?’

‘Stand-off half.’

Stafford kicked the ground, slowly, as he walked along.

‘They’ve made me vice-captain as well it seems.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Platty told me.’

When they reached the turning to the station Stafford glanced across.

‘How do you get to school?’ he said.

‘By bus.’

‘Don’t you ever come by train?’

‘No,’ Colin said.

‘Where do you come from?’ Stafford said.

‘Saxton.’

‘The train I come on comes through there. It goes back that way as well. It’s twice as quick as coming by bus.’

‘It costs more on the train,’ Colin said.

‘You could easily cough it up.’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’ He shook his head.

‘Hasn’t your father enough money even for that?’

‘He prefers to use it on other things,’ he said.

Stafford looked at him slowly; his eyes had lightened.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ he said.

He went off whistling, his bag now dangling from his hand.

He was made a reserve the following week; he struggled with Latin. Between waking and sleeping was a continual movement: rising, running for the bus, the hour-long journey through the villages, the approach to the city, the walk to school, assembly, lessons, break-time, lunch. After lunch came the smell of cooking from the cloisters below, the distant droning of the master’s voice, a brief interlude of tiredness, a slow lethargy induced by the under-ventilated room. Only after the middle of the afternoon had passed did a lightness return; the briskness of the final lesson, the hasty collecting of books, the walk through the narrow streets of the town to the stop immediately below the walls of the black cathedral.

In the evening he sometimes played in the field at the back of the house; the rest of the time he spent on homework. The village involved him less and less; it was more of an inconvenience, its distance and remoteness. He seldom saw his father: sometimes he would have left on a morning before his father came home from work, or, if he were working afternoons, he’d be in bed by the time his father got back; only when he worked a morning shift would they be at home together, in the evening – occasions now that he’d learnt to dread, the examination of his books, the marks.

‘Nay, they aren’t so good, then, are they? C minus. What’s C stand for?’

‘Gamma,’ he said.

‘And what’s Gamma when it’s at home?’ his father said. He explained the system of marking.

‘Nay, that’s one out of ten.’ He looked at him with a sudden fury, the familiar whiteness spreading round his eyes.

‘There’s Delta,’ he said. ‘They give that too.’

‘Do they? And what’s Delta when it’s at home?’ he said.

‘Less than Gamma minus.’

‘Nay, Delta must be nought,’ he said. ‘I can’t understand why they don’t put it into English. Ten out of ten, one out of ten. I can’t see the point of all these words.’

He’d go through each of the books quite slowly, examining the marks, the ticks, the crosses, the smallest correction.

‘Sithee, even I could do that. Thy’s not been paying attention.’

‘Oh, let him be when he’s at home,’ his mother said.

‘Let him be what? Slovenly and lazy? Content to do things he knows with a bit of effort, he can do much better?’

‘Let him have a pit of peace when he comes back home,’ she’d tell him.

‘Just look at the stuff,’ he’d say. He’d push the book beneath her face. ‘“Conclusion”: he could spell that three years ago.’

‘Well how do you spell conclusion, then?’ she’d say.

‘Nay, damn it all, he’s the one at school,’ he’d tell her. ‘I’m the ignorant one round here.’

Colin could hear his parents from his room at night, either arguing in the kitchen, where, he knew from the way his books had been disturbed, they went through his work together; or, later, if his father was working mornings or afternoons, from their bedroom at the front.

‘All right. He isn’t good at physics. Then he can get good at physics. Same with Latin. They’re not that difficult. If six hundred other children can do them, I can’t see why he should be an exception.’

He would start going through the work with Colin at night; by the time the first term was almost over his father had learnt how to conjugate Latin verbs; he’d learnt how to construct a simple Latin phrase; how to work out algebraic equations, how to distinguish between compounds and oxides, alkalis and acids, how to tell the difference on maps between deciduous and coniferous vegetation. During those weeks when his father worked nights or afternoons, he would find notes left for him, the correction of some work he’d done the previous evening, or some revised account of work his father had come across in one of his books, elaborating, usually in a clumsy manner, suggestions in the margins by dissatisfied teachers.

One Saturday afternoon he was chosen to play in the football team against another school. His father came to watch.

There were two games being played, a second-team match, and the junior match; his father, unfamiliar with the field, had wandered over to the senior pitch. He was still standing there when the junior game began, and only came over after fifteen minutes. Small, wearing an overcoat against the briskness of the late autumn weather, he was the only other adult there apart from Platt and Hepworth. His shouts had filled the field. ‘Go on! Go on! Run with it! Grab him!’ while Platt and Hepworth, glancing across at him, called more quietly, ‘Feet, school, feet’, and, ‘Back up your captain, Edward’s.’

‘Grab him! Grab him!’ his father called.

‘Feet, Edward’s,’ Platt had called, his voice fading at the violence of his father’s cries.

At half-time oranges were brought on to the field.

Platt, who’d brought them on a tray and given them out, took Colin aside once they’d all been eaten.

‘Is that your only jersey, Saville?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I’ve sent Hopkins over to the groundsman to get another.’ He indicated one of the reserves who was already coming back. ‘For one thing the shirt’s too large, for another the colours of the school have faded.’

‘I haven’t got another,’ he said.

‘Then you’ll have to buy another. If you want to play in the school team you won’t be allowed, I’m afraid, to play in that.’

He moved on, casually, to the other boys.

‘Come on, King Edward’s,’ his father called. ‘Get stuck in this second half.’ His face flushed, his hands fisted, he paced briskly up and down at the side of the pitch.

‘Whose father is that, then?’ Stafford said.

‘I don’t know,’ Harrison said. He shook his head.

‘He wouldn’t shout like that if he had to play.’

‘He wouldn’t shout at all’, Harrison said, ‘if he had any sense.’

The game now was more bewildering than any he’d played in. The other side on the whole were bigger; he found himself lost amidst a morass of arms and legs, his head banged down against the frosted ground, his knees torn, his elbows bruised. Twice he ran with the ball and twice he felt it taken from his hands, his arms wrenched back, his fingers bent, his hands crushed beneath stamping boots.

‘Stafford, hold the ball. Hold the ball, Stafford,’ Platt began to shout.

Yet Stafford, aware of the figures waiting, or rushing up as he took the ball, would pass it away carefully to either side. There was an earnestness in the way he played, as if he were judging which parts of the game he might avoid.

‘Hold it, Stafford. Go through the middle,’ Platt had called.

Colin took the ball; he passed to Stafford. He saw the look of surprise on Stafford’s face, the tensing of the eyes, and saw the quick look round for one of his side. There was no one near. He began to run, slowly, still looking round; he avoided one boy and then another, casual, still slow, almost insolent, waiting for someone to come towards him. No one came; each of the school’s team was hanging back.

He ran to one side; there was an instinct in the team that Stafford should run: he stepped aside, avoiding another boy and then effortlessly, half-pausing, looking for no one now, waited as players from the other team came up, stepping aside, slowly, an inflection of his body sending one group of players one way while he went another.

He crossed the line. Platt and Hepworth and his father threw up their arms. Stafford put down the ball, glanced round, then, the ball beneath his arm, walked back.

‘I’ll kick it,’ he said as Harrison came to take it from him.

The ball was held from the ground; he stepped back a pace, swung his leg and, as the opponents ran up, the ball curved over their heads between the posts.

His hands on his hips, his cheeks white, his eyes blazing, he walked slowly back.

At the end of the game Stafford came up to him as they left the pitch.

‘Don’t pass to me like that again.’

‘There was no one else to pass it to,’ he said.

‘Then do what I do. Bend down, or pretend to be looking the other way.’

His father, he noticed, had walked away. He stood at the gate of the field, by the opening to the ginnel, his face red, his hands pushed deeply into the pockets of his coat. He stamped his feet against the cold.

They went into the showers.

His father was still waiting at the gate as he left the field.

‘We’ve to go into tea with the other team,’ he said.

‘That’s all right,’ he said. ‘You enjoy yourself in theer. I’ll wait out here.’

‘Why don’t you come in as well?’ he said. The room occupied the basement of the groundsman’s house. He could see where the games equipment had been pushed to one side: a wooden table had been set in the middle.

‘No, no. You go in. I’ll be all right out here.’ He added ‘Teams and officials in theer, you know.’

Plates of sandwiches and cakes had been set out on the table. At the end of the room, by the door, a broad window looked out to a yard and, beyond the yard, to the field. The goal-posts were visible above a hedge.

Platt came in, followed by Hepworth and two masters from the other school. The other team came in. Stafford, his hair combed, his clipped pens showing in his blazer pocket, sat alone: he glanced up briefly as Hepworth tapped his back, but got up when the first boys began to leave. He picked up his canvas bag from the door and went out to the yard.

When Colin followed he saw his father talking to Stafford at the mouth of the ginnel. He’d evidently stopped him and, gesturing behind him, was talking about the match.

‘Oh, here’s Colin,’ he said. ‘Which way do you go, then, lad?’

‘I’m going to the station,’ Stafford said, looking back at him, surprised.

‘We’ll go down with you. We catch a bus in town,’ his father said.

They walked through the ginnel.

‘Thy’s got a good future there, if you put your back into it,’ his father said.

‘Oh, it’s too rough a game for me, Mr Saville,’ Stafford said.

His father laughed, looking at Stafford in some surprise.

‘Rough? I can’t see there’s much rough about it,’ his father said.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Stafford said. ‘If you’re playing out there you’d think it was rough. Particularly when they kick you instead of the ball.’ A certain neatness had come into his movements; even his voice was clipped, the accent sharp.

His father, intrigued, had glanced across.

‘There are rougher things than that,’ he said. ‘Give me football every time, tha knows.’

‘If there are, then I hope to keep away from them. It seems silly to go seeking roughness,’ Stafford said.

He left them at the opening leading to the station.

‘You go that way, then?’ his father said.

‘If I rush now I might just catch an early train,’ Stafford said. He put out his hand. ‘It’s been nice meeting you, Mr Saville.’ He swung his bag, as he turned, beneath his arm.

‘Well played, then, lad,’ his father said.

He watched him cross the road to the alley.

‘Well, that’s a bright ’un, then,’ his father said. ‘He could have won that match, tha knows, himself.’

Still talking of Stafford, they walked down to the stop.

‘And who was that feller with the jet black hair?’ his father said.

‘Platt,’ he said.

‘He came up to me and asked me who I was waiting for.’

‘What did you tell him?’ Colin said.

‘I said I was waiting for thee.’ He laughed. ‘“Didn’t you hear me cheering?” I said.’

He laughed again.

‘He said I needed a new shirt. If I wanted to go on playing,’ Colin said.

‘And where do we conjure new shirts from?’ his father asked.

On the bus, however, he added, ‘Well, then, I suppose we might,’ and a moment later, ‘I wish he’d mentioned a shirt to me. By God, I’d have shirted Mr Platt all right. I’ve a damn good mind to write him a letter.’

‘I shouldn’t write to him,’ he said.

‘Nay, I mu’n think about it though,’ he said.

Towards the end of that month his mother went away, to hospital, and in the mornings he and Steven went to Mrs Shaw’s for breakfast. His father was working mornings and got home each day in the afternoon. He was there to put Steven to bed at night but would come into Colin’s room each morning at five, whispering, laying the alarm clock beside his bed.

‘I’ll be off now. Tha mu’n not sleep in.’

Half-woken, he would gaze up blearily at his father’s face.

‘Sithee, then, I’m off. Mrs Shaw’ll look after Steve. Don’t be late for the bus,’ he’d add.

He’d hear his father’s feet go down through the house, the back door close, the key turned in the lock then slipped back through the letter box. Scarcely would he have fallen asleep it seemed than the alarm clock went. One morning he’d slept on to be woken by Mrs Shaw banging on the door downstairs.

He was more tired now than at any time since he’d started at the school; coming home in the bus each evening, watching the fields and villages pass, the colliery heaps, the distant glimpses of ponds and lakes he felt, at the thought of his father in the house, a kind of dread: grey-faced, red-eyed, washing dishes or turning, wearily, to cook the food, it was as if he and Steven and himself had been left behind.

He’d even, one Sunday morning, gone into Mrs Shaw’s to clean her brasses; other memories of his mother flooded back. Neither he nor Steven could go and visit her; he would watch his father wheel out his bike each evening, the saddle-bag bulging with a parcel, clean clothes or fruit, sometimes a book he’d borrowed from work, and be waiting for him, two hours later when, with an exhausted eagerness and anxiety, he came cycling back.

‘Sithee, aren’t you in bed then, yet?’

He’d be fingering his homework, or reading a book by the light of the fire.

‘Tha mu’n go to bed,’ his father would add, ‘I’ve got a key,’ yet glad, beneath his anxiety, that he hadn’t gone yet.

They’d sit by the fire while his father brewed some tea.

‘She’s champion. She’s looking well,’ he’d tell him. ‘She won’t be long in theer, don’t worry.’

He’d talk to him, then, about his work, the pit, about Fernley, Roberts, Hopkirk and Marshall, new names and old names, about accidents at the face itself, a roof collapsing, a machine being stuck, about a man being caught beneath a rock.

His father had no one else to talk to now. It would be two hours or more after his bed-time frequently before Colin went to bed; his father would follow him. ‘Now you get to sleep. I’ll put out the light. I’ll set thy alarm for seven o’clock.’

It was always half-past six when the alarm clock went; at the last minute, as if loath to let him sleep in, he’d set it earlier. ‘Think on. As soon as it rings, get up. If Mrs Shaw sleeps in tha’ll be in trouble.’

He often had the feeling that his father wanted him to get up as well, to see him off to work; he would often cough in the kitchen below as he got on his clothes, or trim his lamp in the yard outside, flashing a light against the window. Later, when Colin got up, he would have to waken his brother, pull back his covers, get him dressed; he was four years old, yet, with the absence of his mother, he would often cry.

‘Mam?’ he would call, anxious, listening, as if overnight she’d come back to her room.

‘She won’t be long,’ he’d tell him.

‘Mam?’ his brother would call.

He would pull on his clothes, which Steven could do himself but always resisted now. Sometimes he would lie in bed, moaning, his head to the pillow, and he himself would sit on the edge, his energy gone, waiting. Only the clock and the thought of being late would finally drag him back to his brother and the bed.

‘Steve? She’ll have us breakfast ready.’

‘Mam? I want my Mam.’

‘Don’t you want any breakfast, then?’ he’d ask him.

‘I want me Mam. Mam? ’ he would call again.

Sometimes, still crying, he left him at Mrs Shaw’s.

‘Oh, he’ll be all right with me. I’ll have him clean my brasses. And I take him to the swings in the afternoon.’

She would sit him on her knee, her gaunt figure upright, Steven, pale-faced, leaning apprehensively against her.

‘Don’t worry. He’ll be all right. You get off to school. Don’t fret. His father’ll be home in two or three hours. “Not my Steve? Not our Steve?” he’ll say. “He’s never worried!”’

There was a coldness about the school; he felt nothing from the moment he walked between the gates to the moment he came out. Only on the bus would the nagging return, a slow tugging, as if he were being brought down inside.

His mother gave birth to a son. His father was waiting for him when he came home one day, smiling, dressed in his suit. He’d just come back from seeing her.

‘He’s a beauty, lad. As big as a tree. What do you think we mu’n call it? Your mother’s thought of Richard, then.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Do you like it, then?’

‘Yes.’

Steven came in.

‘Now, then,’ his father said. He picked him up. ‘What dost think to a brother, then?’ He held out his arm. ‘Sithee, his leg’s no thicker than that.’ He wiggled his finger. ‘By God, but I’m feeling glad.’

His mother came home. His father and Steven had gone to fetch her. ‘Can’t I have a day off school?’ he said. ‘You could write a letter.’

‘Nay, they’d never let you off for that. She mu’n be here when thy comes back home, tha knows.’ He laughed at his dismay and rubbed his head. ‘Just think on: thy’ll have two brothers waiting for you, then, at tea.’

He’d felt the excitement then all day. While his mother had been away she’d written him letters: he’d taken them with him in his bag to school. For days he waited for some meaning to emerge, reading them again, uncertain of what the phrases meant. ‘How much I miss you.’ ‘I hope, Colin, you’re looking after Steve.’ ‘I hope your work is going well.’ ‘Don’t forget to get up on time.’ ‘All my love.’ There’d been a row of kisses at the foot of each: his mother seldom if ever kissed him in any case.

In the end he’d left the letters on the kitchen table.

‘Have you finished with these?’ his father said and when he nodded his head he dropped them in the fire.

Now, coming back on the bus from school, he sat at the front as if he expected his mother to materialize in the road ahead.

When he reached the village he ran to the house.

There was no one in.

He ran upstairs: he looked in his parents’ room, he looked in his own and then in Steve’s.

He went back down; he glanced out at the yard. He went through to the room at the front and looked in there.

The house was silent.

He went through to the kitchen, stood at the door; he gazed along the terrace. Already, with the early evening, it was growing dark. A vast cloud of steam whirled up from the colliery yard.

He went down the terrace to Mrs Shaw’s. He could hear his mother’s voice inside: he heard her laughter, then Mr Shaw’s.

His knock at first had gone unheard. He knocked again.

A moment later he heard his father call.

‘Sithee, then, there’s someone at the door.’

He heard his mother’s laughter, high, shrill, then the latch was lifted and the door pulled back.

‘It’s thy Colin, then. Come in, lad.’ Mr Shaw, still laughing, had stepped aside. ‘Come in, then, Colin, and see your brother.’

His mother was standing directly beneath the electric light in the middle of the kitchen: one side of her was lit up by the light from the fire. In her arms, wrapped in a white shawl, she was holding a baby; she’d just taken it from Mrs Shaw, who was leaning across, one finger extended, to stroke its cheek.

‘Why, Colin, love,’ she said. ‘You’ve got back quick.’

His father stood by the fire; he held a glass in his hand. Steven, eating a biscuit, was sitting at the table.

‘Why, how are you, love?’ his mother said. She leaned down, with one free hand; she pressed her lips against his cheek.

‘Look at your brother. Who do you think he looks like, then?’

She held the baby down; a red, tightly wrinkled face gazed up from inside the shawl.

He looked at the face, then shook his head.

‘Dost think he looks like me?’ his father said. His face was flushed; he leant back, glancing at Mr Shaw, and laughed. ‘Or dost think he looks like the postman, then?’

‘Nay, whatever will he think?’ Mrs Shaw had said. A bottle and several empty glasses stood by an empty plate.

‘Nay, round here,’ his father said, ‘you mu’n never tell.’ Mrs Shaw had laughed again.

‘Get on with you, Harry,’ Mrs Shaw had said. She turned to the baby and stroked its head.

‘He’s been a damn good brother has Colin,’ Mr Shaw had said. ‘He’s looked to that lad like a father would.’

‘Is there anything in for tea?’ he said.

‘Tea, sithee. And thy’s only just got home,’ Mr Shaw had said.

He laughed again.

‘Well, here’s to t’third ’un,’ his father said. He emptied the glass. ‘Another mouth to feed,’ he added.

‘Aye. Thy better be going careful, Harry.’ Mr Shaw had laughed again. ‘Thy’ll be needing a new house as well as a pram.’

‘Nay, this is t’last, as far as I’m concerned,’ his father said. ‘There mu’n be no more, then, after this.’ He smacked his lips then laughed again. ‘Sithee, it’s not every day we’ve summat to celebrate,’ he added.

‘Thy mu’n find summat afore long, though, Harry,’ Mr Shaw had said.

They laughed again.

‘There’s two lads ready for food if I’m not mistaken,’ Mrs Shaw had said. ‘And one of em’s not just come home for the first time either.’ She stroked the baby’s face again. ‘Nay, but he’s like you, Ellen,’ she added.

‘Let’s hope, though, he grows up to look like me,’ his father said.

Colin went to the door.

‘Mind the blackout,’ Mr Shaw had said.

The light went out: his mother came to the door, stooping, the baby in her arms, looking for the step.

‘Two down, then, love,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

They crossed the yard; he could hear his father, still standing in the kitchen.

‘Nay, I can’t leave here wi’ one or two drops still left,’ he said.

Mr Shaw had laughed.

Steven’s voice had called. His father’s voice echoed from the yard.

‘Put the light on, love,’ his mother said. ‘Never mind the door,’ she added.

She came in, the baby held upright, its head against her arm.

‘There, now. There, then, love,’ she said.

She laid it on a chair.

‘Can you get me a nappy?’ she said, her back towards him now. ‘You’ll find it in the cupboard.’

He opened the cupboard door beside the fire. He took out the nappy.

The baby, behind him, had begun to cry.

‘He’s just had his feed. So he can’t be hungry yet,’ she said.

Its legs were thrust out in tiny spasms. Its hands, fisted, waved to and fro before its face.

‘Well, then. I’ll just take him up for a bit,’ she said.

She went to the stairs; he could hear her a moment later in the bedroom at the front.

The kitchen door had opened. His father came in.

‘Sithee, has she taken him up? Has she taken him up to bed for cheers?’ he said.

He took off his jacket. His face was flushed, his collar undone.

‘There, then. Did’st see thy brother, then?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘What did I tell you, lad? She’s come home in the end.’

His father went to the fire, swaying, then loosened his tie.

‘By go, old Shaw had a bottle, then.’ He belched, slowly, then held his chest. ‘I mu’n get off to bed. I haven’t had a sleep, tha knows, today. I mu’n be off again at five. Thy’ll know that, then, o’ course,’ he added. ‘Thy’s been here long enough, then, an’t ’a?’

He sat down in a chair; his eyes were closed. Steven came in; he held another biscuit.

‘Is my mother here?’ he said.

His mother came down. Like his father, her face too was flushed.

‘He might sleep for an hour,’ she said. ‘Though all that noise, I think, has wakened him for good.’

She looked over to the table.

‘What are you doing, then, love?’ she said.

‘My homework,’ he said. He bent to the book.

‘Nay, can’t you give it a miss for once?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. He shook his head.

‘He’s worked like a Trojan, has Colin,’ his father said. ‘He’s looked after this house as good as a woman. He’s had it cleaned a time or two, floors polished, pots washed. And lit that fire for when I come back in,’ he added.

His head sank over, slowly; a few moments later he began to snore.

‘See, then: your father’s drunk too much,’ his mother said. ‘He always lets it go to his head,’ she added.

‘I’ll go in the other room to work,’ he said.

He picked up the book.

‘Will you, love? That’s good of you. I wouldn’t want to disturb him,’ his mother said. ‘And I’ll get your tea ready for you’, she called after him, ‘in a couple of minutes.’

He went in the other room and drew the curtains. The room was cold. A fire hadn’t been lit in the room for several weeks.

He put on the light and began to read; through the wall, intermittently, came his mother’s voice and then, more rhythmically, his father’s snores.

13

‘How far can you bend it?’ Batty said.

He was holding the branch against his chest. In his other hand he held the gun.

‘Pull it right back, then fasten it with the string.’

Colin fastened off the branch, then cut the remnant of string with Batty’s knife.

From farther back, near the hut, came Steven’s shout.

‘Thy wants to leave him at home, thy young ’un,’ Batty said. ‘He mu’n give it away, where we have the hut.’

Batty had grown much taller in recent months; his figure had narrowed, the legs drawn out, the thin, red-thatched head set on top of a limb-like neck. He was taller now than any of his brothers; even his father looked up to him whenever they spoke, and his mother’s head came scarcely to his chest.

Now, having set the branch, they went back to the hut: it was Stringer, he discovered, who was playing with Steven. He was riding him up and down, upright, on his back. Steven clutched at the twigs as they passed above his head, startled, wide-eyed, uncertain of Stringer’s mood. Frequently, even when Colin was there, they would set his brother to some ill-considered task, urging him to climb a dangerous tree, to mend the fragile roof, to walk along a sunken path with brackish pools on either side, to wade into a part of the swamp where they hadn’t been before, Steven sinking to his knees before they hauled him out. There was an imperturbability about his brother which nothing disturbed.

‘Here, Stringer,’ Batty called. ‘We’ve set another.’

‘Tha mu’n catch us coming through if tha sets any more, then, Lolly,’ Stringer said.

He lifted Steven from his shoulders and set him down; blue-eyed, his face flushed, Steven ran off inside the hut.

‘What mu’n thy do theer, then, Tongey?’ Batty said.

‘Do wheer, then, Lolly?’ Stringer said.

‘At Tongey’s school, then,’ Batty said.

Stringer took his gun which Batty had borrowed.

‘We mu’n go theer one day. We mu’n wave to him’, Stringer said, ‘between the bars.’

Stringer laughed. He sighted the gun. He sat down on an upturned box beside the wooden door.

From inside the hut came the sound of Steven poking the fire.

‘Dost sit in a room, then,’ Batty said, ‘or dost thy have to move around?’

‘For some lessons we move. Though most of them’, Colin said, ‘we stay where we are.’

‘Which ones do you move for?’ Batty said.

He examined Colin for a moment with narrowed eyes.

‘Chemistry,’ he said.

‘It’s a big place, then.’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘I suppose they have cleaners in, an’ all, at night.’

‘They come as we’re leaving,’ Colin said.

‘I bet they have some cleaning up.’

‘I suppose they have,’ he said. ‘Though we put the chairs up’, he added, ‘before we leave.’

‘Up wheer?’

‘On top of the desks.’

Batty looked up from the corner of his eye.

‘Wheer dost t’headmaster keep all his books and equipment, then?’

‘In the stock-room,’ he said.

‘Wheer’s that, then?’

‘Next to the secretary’s office.’

‘I suppose thy’s been in a time or two. Getting new books, tha knows, and things.’

‘No,’ he said.

Batty looked away, then said, ‘If thy has two afternoons up on yon playing field laking footer I suppose there’s nobody left,’ and added, ‘In the school, I mean.’

‘There might be one or two.’

‘Oh, aye?’

‘Thy knows what Lolly’s after, dost ’a?’ Stringer said.

‘Tha mu’n shut thy mouth afore I put summat in it,’ Batty said.

He turned to the hut.

‘What’s thy young ’un cooking, then?’

They went inside.

‘Thy knows what Batty Industries are, then, do you?’ Stringer said.

Batty took the pan from Steven and looked inside.

‘Biggest industrial combine in Saxton,’ Stringer said.

‘And thy’ll have t’biggest thick ear in Saxton if thy doesn’t shut it up, then,’ Batty said.

‘Bloody field-marshal, tha knows, is Loll.’

Batty stirred the pan; he’d taken out his knife, unfolding the blade.

‘Their two kids are up in court this week.’

‘I’ve telled thee,’ Batty said. He waved the knife.

Steven, laughing, put up his hand.

‘Work afternoons down t’pit and half the neet, then, somewhere else.’

Batty leapt across; Stringer, already, had sprung aside.

Steven, still laughing, ran over to the door; Stringer was running off across the swamp.

‘I mu’n cop him one day,’ Batty said. He cleaned the blade of the knife against his sleeve. ‘And when I do he mu’n get the feel of this.’

He went back to the pan.

‘I better be getting Steven home,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you having some of this, then?’ Batty said.

‘I better be getting him back,’ he said.

‘Can’t I have some, Colin?’ Steven said.

There were beans in the pan, and bits of bread.

‘It’s past your bed-time now,’ he said.

‘Thy have some afore thy leaves, then,’ Batty said.

He set the pan down.

‘Sithee, thy can have first taste.’

He held out the beans on the tip of the knife.

‘Theer, then, young ’un. Dost fancy that?’

It was over an hour later before they reached the road. His father was coming down the slope from the village, pushing his bike, looking over the hedge towards the pens.

‘There you are. I’ve been looking for you, you know, for hours.’ He mounted the bike. ‘I’m going to be late for work,’ he added. ‘Go on. Get off. You mu’n tell your mother where a f’und you.’

He watched his father cycle off; to walk more quickly he set Steven on his back. He was still carrying him when they reached the house.

‘What do you call this?’ his mother said. ‘Your father’s out looking for you. He’ll be late for work.’

‘We saw him. Down by the sewage pens,’ he said.

‘You’ve not been playing there?’ she said.

She’d been stooping to the fire where she’d been baking bread: the loaves, rising, were standing in the hearth.

‘You’ve never had Steven there?’ she said.

Before he could answer she had struck his head.

‘Get those clothes off before you come in here. Just look at them,’ she said.

She took Steven to the sink in the corner and washed his legs; she washed his hands and arms, and then his face.

Upstairs, a moment later, the baby cried.

‘Just look at his neck: he must have been soaking in the stuff,’ she said. ‘Just smell his clothes.’ She held them to his face. ‘And yours.’

He went to bed; he lay listening to his mother as she took Richard from his cot. He and Steven now slept together; already, despite his crying, his younger brother had fallen asleep.

He turned in the bed; he held his hand against his cheek: the skin still throbbed. With the smell of sewage around him he fell asleep.

‘Back up. Back up, School,’ Platt had said.

He stood on the touch-line, his collar up, a scarf wound round his neck, his hands thrust down, heavily, into his overcoat pockets.

‘Back up, School! Feet! Feet!’

Snow lay in odd patches round the edges of the pitch.

Colin took the ball; he ran against a line of figures: his arm swung out.

The whistle blew. He went on running: his collar was caught and then his arm; his legs were swept away. He fell down; snow was crushed up against his cheek.

The whistle blew again.

‘Free kick against King Edward’s,’ the referee had said.

He pointed Colin out.

‘If you use your fist again I’m afraid I’ll have to send you off,’ he said.

Platt, red-faced, was standing still.

The players fell back. The kick was taken.

‘Just watch how you play, Saville,’ Harrison said. His face, too, was turning red.

He could scarcely feel his fingers; the cold had numbed his feet. He ran for the ball, felt it bounce away and got down, stooping, ready for the scrum.

Stafford took the ball; he kicked: it soared down the field and floated into touch.

‘Well kicked, Stafford,’ Platt had called.

Stafford did a great deal of kicking now. It was more positive than passing and had none of the disadvantages of trying to run: his clothes at the end of a match were almost as clean as when he began. He folded back his hair and with a slight raising of his shoulders jogged after the ball.

At the edge of the field stood a stone pavilion: white-painted windows echoed the whiteness of the snow that had collected in odd ridges around the eaves and ornamental chimneys.

Beyond, in the faint haze, lay a line of wooded hills; snow-covered fields ran up to silhouetted copses. The sky overhead was clear; a frost had fallen.

‘Harder, Edward’s! Harder!’ Platt had called.

Before the match, arriving early in a coach, they’d been shown around the school: dormitories with rows of beds; studies, with casement windows, shelves of books and fires; a library, a gymnasium with a gleaming, spotless floor; a tennis court indoors; a science room from whose tall windows they’d gazed out, briefly, to the distant line of hills and woods.

Trees overlooked the school; they screened the pitch so that as the sun descended vague shadows, like ribs, spread out across the grass.

Steam rose from the scrum, the boys’ breath rose in clouds as they waited for the ball then ran, slow-limbed, as Stafford casually kicked it into touch. There was an air of desolation about the place: Platt’s voice echoed now and the referee’s whistle or the calling of the boys lingered on, faintly, beneath the trees.

‘On, School! On, School!’ Platt had said.

They ran to and fro.

The field darkened.

‘Just look at my fingers. I think they’re swelling,’ Hopkins said. ‘They’ll hardly move.’

A large boy, with broad features, he was the one Colin got down with in the scrum. Though smaller than Harrison, he had much the same build, lumbering, almost careless. His knees were reddened with cold. His teeth chattered as they leant down. He gave a whimper: blood ran down from his cheek and round his mouth.

‘Do you want to go off, then?’ Colin said.

‘They won’t let you,’ Hopkins said. ‘In any case,’ he added, darkening, ‘we’ve got to win.’

Colin ran aimlessly towards the ball; he ran so slowly that the ball, continuously, moved away. There was a pointlessness to sport which he’d never sensed before: a plodding after things which, even if they should occur, were over in a second.

‘Feet, School! Feet, School!’ Platt had said.

Rooks rose slowly from the trees; wheeling, they climbed then, as the game ended, descended once again.

‘Three cheers for Edward’s. Hip, hip.’

‘Hooray.’

‘Hip, hip.’

‘Hooray.’

‘Hip, hip.’

‘Three cheers for St Benedict’s,’ Harrison said.

The sound faded as they crossed the field.

‘I shan’t consider you for the next match, Saville.’

Platt, his hands still in his pockets, walked beside him; but for the fact that he’d heard the voice he would have doubted that he’d even spoken.

‘Yes.’

‘Foul play is something I particularly take objection to. It lets down the individual, but more important, it lets down the school.’

‘Yes.’

‘It’ll be a long time before I forget today.’

‘Yes.’

He waited; already the other players had gone ahead.

Platt, as if nothing had occurred, had turned aside. He called out cheerily to the referee.

Colin took off his boots; his feet were sore. He walked on slowly to where the steam already rose from the pavilion doors.

He sat alone on the bus on the journey back.

Stafford sat at the back with Harrison and Hopkins, singing; most of the players had gathered round, gazing backwards, kneeling on the seats.

Platt sat at the front beside the driver; occasionally he glanced round and smiled.

The sun had set. The bus ran on in virtual darkness. Colin caught a brief glimpse of trees outside, of hills silhouetted against a lightless sky. In the window opposite he saw his face, the bulk of the seat behind, the pallid shape, the dark shadow beneath his eyes, his hair, uncombed, still wet from the showers.

‘Not singing?’ Stafford said. He slumped down beside him in the seat.

‘No.’

‘Come and sit at the back.’

‘No thanks.’

‘I’m not keen on sitting there, either. I suppose you have to on a thing like this.’

‘A good game today, Stafford,’ Platt said, calling from the scat in front.

‘I think it went our way, sir,’ Stafford said.

Platt had smiled, nodded; he turned his head.

‘I better get back, then,’ Stafford said.

‘Okay,’ he said.

The figure beside him rose, pulling on the seat in front, then turning to the aisle.

‘See you.’

‘See you,’ Colin said.

The singing continued; it had scarcely faded when they reached the town.

His parents were in bed when he got back home.

‘Wherever have you been till this time?’ his mother said.

‘Playing,’ he said. ‘It was farther than I thought.’

‘I’ve been down to the bus stop twice.’

‘We went on a coach.’

‘If you went in a coach couldn’t you get back before this time, then?’

He turned to the stairs.

‘And don’t wake Richard when you get undressed.’

Moments later, however, after he’d reached his room, he heard the familiar wail from beyond the wall.

‘God Almighty, isn’t there any peace for anyone?’ his father said, calling, from the darkness of their room.

‘In decimals everything is measured in tenths, whereas in this country we have the privilege of measuring everything in twelfths, boy,’ Hodges said.

He leant his arm against the desk.

‘What instances are there of the use of tenths in the monetary system, Saville?’ he added.

‘A ten shilling note.’ He shook his head.

‘Do I hear a suffix to that remark?’ he said.

‘Sir,’ he said.

‘A ten shilling note, then. Anything else?’

‘A ten pound note.’

‘A ten pound note.’

‘Twenty shillings in the pound,’ he said.

‘Walker: have you any examples you’re eager to give?’

Small, light-haired, with a bright red nose, Walker, after a moment’s hesitation, had shaken his head.

‘No further examples forthcoming, then?’

Walker, once again, had shaken his head.

‘What about the use of twelfths, then, Walker?’ Hodges said.

‘Twelve pennies in a shilling sir,’ he said.

‘Twelve pennies in a shilling. Brilliant. Anything else?’

‘No, sir,’ Walker said.

‘What about half-pennies, Walker?’ Hodges said.

‘Twenty-four half-pennies in the shilling, sir,’ Walker said.

‘Brilliant, Walker. Anything else?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Are you quite sure, Walker?’ Hodges said.

‘Forty-eight farthings in a shilling, sir,’ he said.

‘Walker, I can see, is coming out, very slowly, from his habitual coma,’ Hodges said. ‘What are you doing, Walker?’

‘I’m coming out from my habitual coma,’ Walker said.

‘And what word do we use to distinguish our system from the so-called metric system, Saville?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. He shook his head.

‘Did I not hear the suffix once again?’ he said.

‘Sir,’ he said.

‘Saville doesn’t know. Does anyone else? Walker, I suppose, this is far above your head?’

‘What sir?’ Walker said.

‘What do we call the system that uses twelfths instead of tenths?’ he said.

‘The Imperial system,’ someone said.

‘Why Imperial, Walker?’ Hodges said.

‘Has it something to do with the king, sir?’ Walker said.

‘It might. Indeed, it might very easily, Walker,’ Hodges said.

He looked around.

‘It comes, need I mention it to a class steeped already in the subject, from the Latin what?’

He paused.

‘From imperialis. From imperialis. Meaning?’

‘To do with kings, sir,’ someone said.

‘Not to do with kings precisely. To do with authority, Stephens. Command.’

He took off his glass and wiped them on his gown.

‘Imperium: command, dominion. In other words, a system that, in this instance, has to do with empire.’

‘Yes, sir,’Walker said.

‘Certain unfortunate nations may use the decimal system because they have nothing better to fall back on, Stephens.’

Stephens had nodded his head.

‘Whereas we, in this country, and in those lands that constitute our empire, and our dominions, Stephens, use a measure which, for better or worse, is peculiar to ourselves. Peculiar, that is, to an imperial nation. Imperialis, imperium. To a nation which is used to authority, to dominion, Stephens. How many pennies in a pound?’

Stephens paused; he raised his hand. Then, finally, he lowered it and shook his head.

He was a pale, thin-featured boy; he sat immediately in front of Colin. His hair was thin and long, hanging in greasy strands across his narrow head. His back was bowed by some malformation. His legs were swollen round the knees as if in some peculiar way the upper and the lower parts had been bracketed together by artificial means.

‘Two hundred and forty.’ Colin whispered behind his hand to the back of Stephens’s head.

‘What was that, Saville?’ Hodges said.

Stephens’s head had begun to tremble.

‘Were you telling him the answer, Saville?’ Hodges said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Will you stand up, Saville?’

The class had turned.

‘Your name is Saville, I take it?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I haven’t been deceived into assuming it was Saville, with or without a double l, when all the time it was really Stephens?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘How many pennies in a pound, then, Stephens?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ Stephens said and shook his head.

‘You don’t know, boy? For God’s sake, how did you get into this school? A five-year-old child could tell me that.’

Stephens bowed his head; he began to cry.

‘Don’t blub, Stephens,’ Hodges said. ‘I’m asking you a reasonable question. There’s not one person in this class who couldn’t answer it.’

Several hands went up.

‘Saville: can I have your record book?’ he said.

He got out the book from his inside pocket, saw that Hodges expected him to walk down to his desk, and stepped out in the aisle.

‘In your own time, Saville, of course. I can hardly expect your efforts to be directed to the convenience of someone else.’ He glanced at Stephens. ‘While I’m inscribing Saville’s record for impertinence it will give you, Stephens, several vital seconds in which to work out a suitable answer. And by suitable I mean of course, since our subject, I believe, is mathematics, a correct one. Have you understood that, Stephens?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Stephens said. He bowed his head.

‘The principle of learning, Saville, isn’t that one should learn on behalf of someone else, but that one should do such learning as is required, in this establishment at least, on a wholly personal basis. How is one to learn anything if there is someone sitting behind you who is content to do it for you?’ He opened the book. ‘I see you have a good record here. Geography, from Mr Hepworth. That’s hardly a creditable first term’s work.’ He wrote in red in the opposite column, the gesture exaggerated slightly to demonstrate his displeasure to the class. He blotted the book and then, not glancing at him but holding it out sideways and gazing absorbedly at Stephens, added, ‘And what conclusion have you come to, Stephens?’

Only after a moment was Hodges aware of the book still in his hand.

Stephens gave his answer, repeated it louder at Hodges’s insistence, then the master said, ‘You may have your book back now, Saville.’

‘Thank you sir,’ he said.

‘Saville: would you come back here, boy,’ Hodges said.

Colin turned in the aisle, saw the redness rising, slowly, round Hodges’s eyes, and went back to the desk.

‘I’ve noticed my blandishments, Saville, carry very little weight. I detect an insolence in your manner which, the more I attempt to accommodate it, grows, it seems to me, from day to day. I shall ask the headmaster to speak to you. For one day at least I’ve had enough of your face. You’ll put your work away and go and stand outside the door.’

He replaced his books inside his desk, closed the lid and, without glancing at the others, crossed to the classroom door, opened it and stepped outside. The corridor was empty. He closed the door behind him.

He leant against the wall. An older boy went past. He glanced back at him down the length of the corridor, then, still gazing back, went on up the stairs at the opposite end.

The drone of a master’s voice came from the classroom opposite. He could hear Hodges’s voice coming quietly from the room behind, the occasional voice of a boy answering a question, the scraping of a chair, a desk. Other voices drifted down from adjacent rooms. He could hear the roar of a lorry passing in the road outside.

The door to the office opened; the secretary came out: her face reddened, almost cheerful, she started down the corridor past him. She carried several papers beneath her arm.

‘Have you been sent out?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Is that Mr Hodges’s class?’ she said.

‘Yes.’

She nodded, adjusted the papers beneath her arm, and went on down the corridor to the masters’ common-room at the opposite end.

She re-appeared a few moments later, walking past without a gesture, her shoes echoing on the stone-flagged floor.

She went back inside her room and closed the door.

The school was silent. He could hear, from the farthest distance, the sound of a master’s voice raised in anger, the calling of a name.

Laughter came from the room behind, then the sharp, hissing call of, ‘Sir, sir!’ as Hodges waited for an answer.

Some further laughter came a moment later.

The door opened; a boy came out, glanced across, then went on down the corridor and out of the school door.

He came back a few moments later and went back in.

Colin waited. He tapped his feet slowly against the stone-flagged floor; he pushed himself gently against the wall.

The sound of footsteps descending came from the stairs at the nearest end.

A tall, gowned figure appeared in the corridor, silhouetted for a moment against the light. A face came into view, thickboned, large-featured; the hair above was short and dark: it stood on end and projected forwards over a massive brow. A heavy, broad-knuckled hand gripped several books.

Colin moved back to the door and stood beside it, his hands behind his back.

‘What are you doing here?’ the master said. He smelled of tobacco; his teeth were large and irregularly set inside his mouth.

‘I’ve been sent out. For insolence,’ he said.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Saville.’

‘What class is it?’

‘Arithmetic,’ he said.

‘That’s Mr Hodges’s, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Yes.’

The man had paused.

‘And what insolence is it, Saville?’

‘For telling someone else an answer.’

The master gazed down at him for a while, then shook his head.

‘We don’t care for insolence here,’ he said. ‘It gets you nowhere, and if you’re missing a class you’re missing out on work as well.’

‘Yes.’

The man had frowned.

‘Stand up from that wall,’ he said.

He stepped past him quickly and opened the door.

Hodges, caught in the midst of some appeal, had paused.

‘There’s a boy out here who says he’s been sent out for insolence,’ he said. There was silence in the room beyond.

‘That’s perfectly correct, Mr Gannen,’ Hodges said, his voice instructional, as if he were speaking on behalf of everyone in the room as well.

‘I’d like to add to that, Mr Hodges, loutish behaviour,’ the master said. ‘I find him standing here as if he’d been sent out specifically to prop up the building.’ He turned to Colin. ‘Shoulders back, chin in, hands behind your back,’ he called.

‘I expect one or two people are going to see him standing there, Mr Gannen,’ Hodges said. ‘I’m glad you’ve brought an additonal impertinence to my notice.’

‘I’ll be passing along again in one or two seconds,’ the master said. ‘I’ll keep my eye on him and anyone else, for that matter, who thinks it’s for wholly recreational purposes that he’s sent outside.’

He closed the door.

A murmur came from the room behind.

‘One foot from the wall,’ the master said.

He adjusted the books beneath his arm and, without glancing back, went down to the common-room at the opposite end. The door was closed.

The room behind fell silent; faintly came the drone of Hodges’s voice.

The door to the office suddenly opened.

The headmaster came out, glanced down the corridor, then went out of the door at the nearest end.

The door slammed shut.

Another boy went past.

A desk lid was banged in the room behind.

His shoulders ached.

A boy came out of the classroom opposite the office, went into the office, then came out with a bell.

He came along the corridor to ring it.

There was a shuffling of feet in the room behind. A door down the corridor suddenly opened: figures hurried out.

Hodges appeared at the door behind.

His head erect, he appeared on the point of walking past him.

‘I’ve decided, Saville, to postpone any reference of your behaviour to Mr Walker. Since Mr Gannen is now acquainted with it, and since Mr Gannen, as you are probably aware, is the deputy-head, I shall leave the situation for the present precisely where it is; namely, that I and Mr Gannen have taken note of your insolent behaviour and any further expression of it will leave me with no alternative but to carry out my original intent. Have you understood that, Saville?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You have my permission to go to your desk and collect your books for what I hope will be a singularly amicable lesson.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Hodges swung away; his figure was caught up in those surging from the classrooms on either side.

He went back in the classroom and opened his desk.

‘What did he say to you?’ Stephens said.

‘Nothing, really,’ Colin said.

‘See here. Your school’s been broken into,’ his father said.

He folded the paper up and ran his finger across the lines.

‘Two hundred and forty pounds’ worth of stuff’s been stolen.’

He read the paper intently for a while.

‘They got in at the side through a broken window. They think it’s somebody local, then.’

‘They’ll break into anything, these days,’ his mother said. ‘No counting how much good they’re doing. Hospitals, churches: you see it all the time.’

‘There’s not many banks get broken into,’ his father said.

‘No. Don’t worry. They take trouble there.’

‘Can I go out now?’ Colin said.

‘Sithee, hast done all thy errands?’ his father said.

‘I think he has,’ his mother said.

‘What about his homework, then?’

‘I can do that tomorrow afternoon,’ he said.

‘Thy’s Sunday School tomorrow,’ his father said.

‘Nay, let him go,’ his mother said.

She was worn and faded; since the birth of Richard there’d been a greyness in her face. When they went out to the shops she would say, ‘You’ll have to take the basket, Colin. I can’t bear lifting anything now.’ On washdays she would wait for him to come home from school and they’d spend an evening together in the kitchen, he lifting the water to the metal tub, plying the peggy stick up and down, sliding the tub to the grate outside. Other times, white-faced, she’d be sitting at the fire, the clothes half-washed, or standing at the sink, round-shouldered, the water cold, trying to wash the clothes by hand.

‘Are you sure there’s nothing he can do?’ his father said.

‘Nay, he’s done enough for now,’ she said.

Colin went out to the backs; Steven, with one or two other children, was playing in the field.

‘Now don’t be late for your dinner,’ his mother said.

He went to the Dell. Smoke from the colliery hung close to the village.

It was beginning to rain. A stream of thick brown water ran along the beck; a cloud of black smoke drifted from the gasworks chimney. The metal container, full, loomed up mistily beyond the hedge.

The shed was locked. He loosened a panel and climbed inside; he lit a candle. Two black objects slid out beneath the door.

The stove was hot; he put on wood: flames licked up around the metal pipe.

There was a steady drumming, like fingers tapping, on the metal roof.

Then, from the direction of the sewage pens, came a low-pitched scream.

He picked up a stick.

A second scream sounded from the pens and then, moments later, he heard the sound of movements in the mud outside.

A key was turned in a lock, a chain removed; a metal bar was raised and the door pushed back.

Batty stood there, a box in his arms, gazing in.

‘I’ve never locked you in, then, have I, Col?’

‘I got in under the wall,’ he said.

‘What wall?’

Batty looked round him at the hut.

‘Nay, thy’s never, then.’ He put down the box. ‘Dost make a habit of breaking in?’

‘I’ll mend it for you, if you like,’ he said.

‘Nay, tha’ll never.’

Batty bent to the wood. He replaced the panel.

‘Thy mu’n stay if thy wants to, I suppose,’ he said.

Colin sat by the fire.

‘Tha mu’n stay and have some dinner.’

‘What dinner?’ Colin said.

‘I’ve got some grub.’ He gestured at the box.

‘I’ll have to get home for it,’ he said.

‘I’ve got some other stuff, an’ all.’ He gestured at the box again.

‘What sort of stuff?’

Batty opened the box. He took out a piece of newspaper, unwrapped it and showed him a piece of meat.

‘I wa’ going to save it, tha knows. Until to-neet. Stringer’s coming, and one or two more.’

He took out a bottle.

‘Gin,’ Batty said. ‘One drop o’ this and tha’s out like a leet.’

‘I’ll try and get down tonight,’ he said.

‘Tha can have a sup now, tha knows, if you like.’

He began to unscrew the bottle.

‘I’d better be getting back,’ he said.

He went to the door. Batty, the bottle in his hand, had followed him out.

‘Sithee, then: here’s to it,’ Batty said.

He raised the bottle, drank briefly, and began to cough.

‘I’ll see you later,’ Colin said.

‘Tha’s not running off just ’cos I’ve come in, then?’ Batty said.

‘No,’ he said.

He set off through the drizzle; a steady pattering came from the swamp. Smoke from the hut’s fire hung in thin wreaths around the bushes. His feet were wet by the time he reached the road.

‘You’re back early. Dinner’s not for another hour,’ his mother said.

‘I thought I’d come back’, he said, ‘to help.’

‘Help. Two mysteries in one morning,’ his mother said.

‘Move up! Move up, boy,’ Gannen said.

Colin closed his eyes; he judged the curve of the track and ran more quickly. When he opened his eyes he found he was last: the remaining runners were strung out in a line ahead. Following Stafford’s example in the previous race he ran quickly enough at the finish to get fifth place. ‘Bad luck, Saville,’ Macready said. A tall, thin man with a gingerish moustache, he stood by the finish writing names. ‘If you’d come up sooner you’d have got a place. First four go through, you know, to Saturday’s final.’

He walked away; he could see Gannen making towards him across the field.

‘Saville.’ He waved his arm.

Colin turned towards him, making some display of the effort he’d made.

‘You’re a slacker, Saville. You could have come in easily second or third.’

‘I ran as fast as I could,’ he said.

‘You ran as fast as you wanted. You’re a slacker. You’ll come to no good. What other events are you entered in?’

‘The long-jump, sir,’ he said.

‘I’ll come and watch you in the long-jump, Saville. Do you understand that, boy?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you in the relay, too?’

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘You’ve got out of that as well, then, have you?’ He took out a book and wrote inside. ‘I’ve put you back in the relay, and if you don’t run as fast as you can you’ll feel the weight of my foot behind you. Do you understand that, Saville?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Two-thirty, Saturday.’

Colin walked over to the pavilion. Stafford, his canvas bag beneath his arm, was coming out.

‘What did Gannen want?’ he said.

‘He thought I didn’t run fast enough,’ he said.

‘What you’ve got to do is run as fast as you can,’ Stafford said, ‘but with a shorter stride. It’s surprising how slow it makes you go.’

He took out a comb and smoothed his hair.

‘Are you running in anything on Saturday?’ Colin said.

‘Nothing,’ Stafford said. ‘I’ve got out of it all.’

Calling to some boys he ran off, alertly, towards the ginnel.

Colin watched him go, then turned into the pavilion to find his clothes.

‘That’s more like it, Saville.’

Colin went back to where he’d left his blazer and put it on.

‘You’ve jumped well there, Colin,’ his father said.

The remaining jumpers ran off in turn.

‘Which is your mark?’ his father added, straining between the figures in front to look at the wooden pegs driven in at the edge of the pit.

The masters stooped down; the crowd had drifted off.

‘We mu’n stay and see where you’ve come in,’ his father said.

Gannen had turned.

A boy came past.

‘You’ve come in third, Walters. And you’ve come in second, Saville,’ Gannen said.

‘Second,’ his father said and, almost involuntarily, shook his hand. ‘What else are you racing in?’ he added.

‘The relay,’ he said for a second time, for he’d already explained the events at home.

‘Sithee, then: you mu’n run well in that.’

He went back with his father across the field.

They sat on a bank beneath a hedge. Other events had already begun. Immediately beneath them was the finishing line. Across the centre of the field lay a sprinting track, and to their right, by the pavilion, a high-jump pit.

A master with a loudspeaker announced each event.

‘You mu’n tell me who everybody is,’ his father said.

Colin pointed out Gannen, who, a pencil in his hand and a sheaf of papers, was still standing by the jumping pit; he pointed out Platt, whom his father already knew, and then Hodges in his clerical collar, holding the tape on the running track with Macready.

‘I suppose I know him, an’ all,’ his father said.

Boys in white vests jogged slowly to and fro. Odd groups at irregular intervals, set off around the track. Whistles blew, on a blackboard in the centre of the field numbers were chalked up and rubbed off again.

When the relay was announced he went down to the track. He ran from one corner of the field to the one adjacent to the finish. His team came second.

He went to the pavilion and got changed quickly; when he came out a little later his father was waiting at the gate. They walked together along the ginnel.

‘Where’s that other lad today?’ his father said. ‘The one that doesn’t like trying ought.’

‘He was eliminated earlier on,’ he said.

‘Aye. I mu’n expect he was,’ his father said. ‘As bright as a new pin and twice as sharp.’

When they reached the stop they stood in a queue of shoppers; boys from the school with their parents drifted past.

‘It’s a good school, all right,’ his father said.

‘Why’s that?’

‘You can tell by the way they dress.’ He paused. ‘And the way they organize things,’ he added.

Colin waited.

‘They get the best out of you, I can tell you that.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Not like where I wuk.’ His father laughed. ‘Where I wuk their number one aim is to put you under.’

The bus drew up. They climbed upstairs. His father sank down in the seat beside him.

‘Thy being at that school means everything to me. Whatever happens, I want you to know that, lad,’ he added.

14

There were pieces of machinery inside the shed, a work bench, a tyre from the tractor, a number of shovels and spades, a cluster of forks, and, leaning against the wall, the only unspoiled object there, a motor-bike.

‘You’re up bright and early,’ the foreman said. ‘Quarter to eight, I make it.’ He took out a watch from his waistcoat pocket. ‘Got your snap, then, have you?’

‘Did you see the farmer?’ he said.

‘He said I could take you on.’ He added, ‘He’ll be coming down here himself today.’

‘How much do I get?’ he said. He’d been down the previous day to ask for a job.

‘Nay, you mu’n not ask me, old lad.’ He put back his watch. ‘I’m t’on’y foreman here, tha knows. The me’ster’ll tell you that himself.’

Colin sat down on a pile of sacking at the door of the shed. The tractor stood in the rutted yard outside; a binder stood beneath an overhanging roof beyond. The sheds formed a tiny cluster in the middle of the fields, their roofs supported by baulks of timber – so low that when entering even he had to bow his head. Only where the binder stood were the roof beams any higher.

The foreman, having removed his jacket, had gone out to the tractor. He lit a piece of rag, put it in a hole at the front, and began to swing the handle.

Colin got up and went across.

‘Nay, stand back,’ the foreman said. ‘This thing can give a kick when it begins to fire.’

He swung the handle.

‘It takes time to get warmed up, tha knows.’

He swung again.

There was a low sucking sound from inside the engine.

The foreman pulled out the piece of rag, stamped on it, then lit another. He flicked a lighter from his waistcoat pocket, put the blazing rag inside the hole, then quickly swung the handle, swung again, then stepped back sharply as the engine fired.

It puffed up a cloud of smoke from its vertical exhaust; a few moments later, after listening to the engine, he slowed it down and, wiping his hands on a cloth, came back across the yard.

‘Is this a regular job, or just your holidays?’ he said.

‘The holidays.’

‘Tha’s not been lakin’ truant, then?’

‘No.’

‘Here’s Jack,’ he said as a man in overalls rode into the yard. He got off his bike and pushed it to the shed. ‘Yon rabbit’s turned up: the one that came looking for a job,’ the foreman said. He added, ‘Mention work round here and you don’t see many folk for dust.’

The man had a long, thin face, with bony hands and arms; his hair was thin and cropped closely to his head. When he’d put his bike inside the shed he took off his jacket and opened a carrier bag hanging on the handle.

‘I mu’n have me breakfast. I never had time this morning,’ he said.

He took out a sandwich, coming to sit by Colin on the pile of sacks.

The foreman had brought out a scythe from the back of the shed; its blade was wrapped in sacking bound on with lengths of string. He slowly unfastened it, drawing out the blade.

A third man had arrived; he was short, thick-limbed with bowed legs, and older than the other two. He came walking along the path that led off, by a hedge, across the fields. He too wore a cap and carried a small brown bag, fastened with string across his shoulder.

‘Here’s Gordon: better late than never,’ the second man had said. He finished his sandwich and put the remainder inside his carrier bag.

‘We mu’n get yon binder oiled up, afore the me’ster comes down, Jack,’ the foreman said. He placed the blade of the scythe against the sacks and went back once more inside the shed; he came out with the binder’s saw-toothed blade, wrapped, like the scythe had been, in sacking.

‘I see yon young ’un’s come,’ the bow-legged man had said.

He took off his cap and wiped his brow.

‘By God, we mu’n see the corn dry early today.’

He looked from the fields to Colin and back again.

‘It mu’n be too early to go in yet,’ the foreman said. In addition to the binder’s blade he’d brought out a small hand scythe which, sharpening on a stone, he brought over to the sacks.

‘Dost know how to use one of these?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Then I’ve got just the job for thee.’

He led the way across the yard. The tractor, puffing out its smoke, trembled on its massive tyres.

The foreman crossed the rutted track beyond the yard; they climbed a fence. A large field stretched down to a railway embankment; the grass was long; clumps of trees stood up in scattered copses. All across the field, in broad stretches, grew mounds of nettles.

Several horses were grazing by the fence.

‘I want you to cut them down,’ he said, indicating the nettles. ‘You know how to use a scythe, I take it?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Always cut away. Never cut towards.’

The grass was damp; his feet, in walking from the fence, were already wet.

The foreman disappeared towards the yard.

He worked quickly; he looked round at the immensity of the field, counted the nearest clumps, and worked more quickly still.

The sun was hot. A thin mist which had lain over the fields when he’d first set off had faded; the heat came down from a cloudless sky.

The horses, as he worked near them, raised their heads; he fed one or two with clumps of grass.

A car came up the track; it went past the opening to the yard and continued along the track to a distant house.

A train went past; the horses raised their heads: one of them began to gallop. It circuited the field: he could feel the ground tremble as it galloped past.

The car came back; he saw a fair-haired figure gazing out, then it turned into the road and disappeared.

Mounds of thistles and nettles were strewn out behind him now across the field; he switched the scythe to his other hand. The horses, their tails flicking at the heat, had moved into the shade beneath the trees.

The thumping of the tractor faded.

He’d been working for about an hour when the foreman reappeared. He called from the fence and waved.

When Colin reached the yard the bow-legged man was sharpening a scythe. The foreman was sharpening another; the binder and the tractor had disappeared. The second man was still sitting on the sacks. ‘Wheerst thy been, then?’ he said, finishing a sandwich.

‘Are you ready, Jack?’ the foreman said.

‘Aye, we’re ready, Tom,’ the second man said. ‘I’ve been waiting here for hours.’

They set off along a rutted track that ran round the back of the sheds. It followed the edge of a field, a metal fence on one side, marking off the grounds of a large stone house, wheat growing on the other. The crop had been blown down and flattened; as they walked along the foreman would stoop into the field and lift the stalks with the end of the scythe. Some of the heads were blackened.

‘He’ll not be pleased, will Smithy, when he s’es he’s got black rot.’

The other two men however took little notice as they walked along. The bow-legged man, the scythe on his shoulder, hung behind, talking to the bony man, who was still eating a sandwich, his carrier in his hand.

They came out on to a broad field which flowed off in an even wave to a near horizon; on the opposite side, at its lowest end, it ran up against a field of pasture, divided from it by a hawthorn hedge and by a copse of stunted, windswept trees.

‘Here’s the starting line, then, Gordon,’ the foreman said. ‘Up hill or down, whichever you choose.’

‘Am I having Jack, or the young ’un?’ the bow-legged man had said.

‘Nay, I’ll have him with me to begin with,’ the foreman said.

‘Then we’ll have downhill.’ The bony man laughed, setting his bag and his jacket beneath the hedge.

They set off, then, in opposite directions, cutting at the corn. The bow-legged man, scythed a track down the edge of the field, the taller man, stooping behind, binding up the corn in sheaves and propping them against the hedge. The foreman started up the slope, working for a while with casual strokes as if, absent-mindedly, he were sweeping a room.

After cutting several feet along the edge of the corn he came back to where Colin was picking up the strands.

He made one sheaf secure, then fastened another.

‘Theer, then, have you got the hang of it?’ he said.

He went back to the scythe.

To the weals and swellings on the backs of his hands were now added the cuts from the straw: thistles grew in clumps, threaded through with strands of wheat. Like the tall, bony man behind him, he leant the sheaves up against the hedge.

The heat had increased; they worked slowly up the hill.

‘Soft hands, have you?’ At intervals the foreman paused. ‘Shove ’em in salt water when you get home tonight.’

The sun rose higher; soon the other two men were tiny dots at the foot of the field. Beyond, in the pasture, cows moved slowly against the hedge: a narrow lane wound off towards a distant line of houses, large, built of brick and shrouded by trees. In the farthest distance, beyond other corn fields, stood the long, broken-backed outline of a colliery heap, a column of smoke drifting off in a vast, black seepage overhead. Intermittently, clouds of steam shot up, as large as hills.

A car came along the track from the sheds; it raised a cloud of dust at the entrance to the field.

A man got out, red-faced, burly; he took off a trilby hat and wiped his brow, gazing up to where Colin and the foreman worked.

‘Keep working. That’s Smithy,’ the foreman said.

The figure, examining the sheaves, came along the hedge. Colin went on working until a voice called out behind.

‘How’s it going, Tom?’

‘I think it’s going all right,’ the foreman said. ‘We’ll have it opened out, I think, tonight.’

‘Tha mu’n get round here in a day at least. This weather’ll never last.’ The man had pale-blue eyes; his legs were jodhpured. He glanced at Colin and shook his head. ‘What’s this twopence ha’penny worth o’ nowt?’

‘This is Colin,’ the foreman said.

‘How old are you, lad?’ the farmer said.

‘Eleven,’ Colin said.

‘Tha mu’n be fo’teen if anyone asks.’ He looked to the foreman. ‘And how’s he been working, then?’

‘Oh, he’s been all right,’ the foreman said. He winked to the farmer and nodded his head. ‘He’s been cutting yon thistles. He’s got half on ’em, I reckon, i’ the back of his hands.’

‘He’s not teking ’em home for fodder, is he?’

‘Aye,’ the foreman said. ‘I reckon he shall.’

‘And how’s that suit you?’ the farmer said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘How long are you going to be with us, then?’ he said. ‘Not here today and gone tomorrow?’

‘I can stay till the middle of September,’ he said.

‘Two months you can give us, then?’ He glanced, half-smiling, at the other man. ‘We’ve gotten us a full-time workman, Tom.’

‘Aye, he mu’n see us in with the harvest,’ the foreman said.

The farmer glanced down at Colin’s hands.

‘Where do you live, then, lad?’ he said.

‘Saxton.’

‘By go, tha’s got a long ride to get here, then.’ He looked down the field to the other men. ‘And what’s thy surname?’

‘Saville.’

‘Saville from Saxton. Well, A mu’n remember that.’ He turned to the foreman. ‘I’ll drop in tomorrow and see you start.’

He went down, slowly, to the other men, examining the heads of the corn. He talked to the men for a while, then returned to the car.

They worked till lunch-time; covered in dust, they went back to the shed.

The foreman sat apart to eat his food; the bow-legged man and the tall, bony man sat across the yard. They talked between themselves, lying in the shade beneath a tree, the older man scarcely speaking yet laughing frequently at what the other one had said.

Colin sat on the sacks by the door of the shed. He drank the bottle of cold tea his mother had given him and ate the dried-egg sandwiches she’d made.

The foreman drew out his watch at one o’clock.

‘Jack. Gordon.’ He got up slowly, lifting his scythe. He’d brought a thermos which he propped up by his bike. There was a smell of straw and grease from inside the shed.

The two men lay back beneath the tree.

‘No rest for the wicked,’ the taller one had said.

They set off to the field. Clouds of dust rose from their feet as they walked along. They climbed the field.

By mid-afternoon, working slowly, they’d reached the top.

‘There’ll be an hour or two of overtime tonight,’ the foreman said. He took out his watch which, since he’d removed his waist-coat, he’d transferred to the waistband of his trousers. ‘Are you all right for an hour or two?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘As long as you like.’

The foreman, throughout the day, had spoken little; when his back wasn’t stooped to the scythe he was sharpening the blade, or, his gaze half-abstracted, he’d be staring back, watching the sheaf he was fastening, then nodding his head.

Colin, as he worked, was adding up the money he’d earn. Eight hours on the first day would be seventy-two pence. Seventy-two pence were six shillings. If he worked overtime for an hour he’d make another ninepence, plus fourpence half-penny; if he worked overtime for two hours he’d make two shillings and threepence, bringing his wage for the day to over eight shillings. Even without overtime he’d calculated he could earn thirty-three shillings in a single week; it gave him a fresh energy the more he worked it out. He felt now he could work until it grew dark; once the mid-afternoon was passed the rest of the day had seemed downhill.

They worked till seven. It had taken them six hours of the afternoon and three hours of the morning to open up the field. He could hardly mount the bike when he got back to the sheds.

‘Eight o’clock tomorrow,’ the foreman said.

‘Don’t come too early, now,’ the bow-legged man had said. He and the bony man had laughed. They stood talking by the sheds while the foreman locked the door. Finally the older of the two set off across the fields and the other rode off on his bike towards the track.

Colin cycled after him. As he reached the wooden gate which opened to the road the foreman went past on his motor-bike: he waved to the bony man and set off towards the distant houses.

At each of the hills Colin got off to walk. It was well after eight when he got back home. He’d been away from the house for over thirteen hours. He leant the bike against the wall and staggered in.

Steven, in his pyjamas, was standing by the fire; his mother, with a pair of scissors, was cutting his nails.

‘Wherever have you been?’ she said, her mouth opening then as she saw his state.

He caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror above the sink, red, almost crimson, streaked with sweat; his hair and eyebrows were white with dust.

‘I’ll be all right when I’ve had a wash,’ he said.

‘But where have you been?’

‘We worked overtime,’ he said.

The touch of the water against his hands began to fade. He rubbed the soap against his arms; he rubbed his face; he rinsed his head beneath the tap.

‘Your meal’s been waiting for hours,’ his mother said.

‘Just put it on the table, then,’ he said.

‘Well,’ his mother said. ‘Are you going to be home at this time every night?’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘Once I’ve worked in I’ll easily manage.’

They cut the field the following day. The foreman drove the tractor, Gordon, the bow-legged man, sitting on the binder with its tall metal lever, watching the cutting of the blade, the binding of the sheaves, their slow, rhythmical ejection from the side of the machine. Colin and the tall, bony man stooked behind. They covered six rows of sheaves between them, carrying them in pairs and setting them in the stooks, eight pairs to each, angled slightly inwards to prevent them falling.

‘Do you know what I’d do if I was in charge of this war?’ the bony man had said. ‘I’d get a lot of animals, infect them with cholera, rabies, dysentery, beriberi, and drop them all over Germany every night. You wouldn’t have to drop bombs, or anything, or have a thousand planes. You could go through the entire country in a week dropping down rats and mice on parachutes. Drop them near large towns, near rivers, and near farms, tha knows, at harvest-time.’

He gazed round him as if imagining some such incident taking place in the surrounding fields.

‘You could overrun the country inside a week. Tha’d have no opposition, tha knows, at all. They’d all be in hospital, or at home in bed. Hitler. There’d not be one of them fit to stand.’

Later, when they reached the corner of the field, he lit a cigarette.

‘Another thing I’d do, with these submarines. I’d drop an electric cable round their harbours at night, fastened up to the electricity, tha knows, with electric wires. And whenever one of them came out, or touched it, I’d switch it on. You’d see the buggers jump; they’d come up like freshboiled fish, tha knows: alive.’

The bony man worked slowly. Frequently he would pause, gazing round, looking over to the tractor and binder as it cut against the wall of corn, stooping casually, despite his height, to hoist the sheaves, bending and straightening, the movement scarcely perceptible.

‘You don’t want to work too hard, tha knows. They’ll still have to pay us if we’re here at ten tonight.’

They reached the bottom of the field: he could see into the copse. A pool of water lay in the shadow of the wind-blown trees; branches curled down beneath its surface. A dry dust rose from the sharp, cut-off stalks as they trudged between the rows of sheaves. A single row of stooks ran, parallel with the hedge, down one long side of the field.

They turned at the bottom. The tractor puffed slowly up the slope above them, stopping occasionally while the bow-legged man got down, cleared some obstruction from the teeth of the cutters, or rooted out some unfastened sheaf. Sometimes when the binder stopped all they could hear was the distant barking of a dog or the calling of some voice in the large house beyond the trees. It was usually at these moments that the bony man sat down in the shade of the hedge, lighting a cigarette, appearing for a moment to fall asleep, the cigarette smoking in his mouth, Colin working on, stooking the man’s sheaves as well his own, the bony man rising as the tractor started or reappeared over the crest of the slope.

A broad swathe now had been cut round the contour of the field. ‘How long to dinner, dost think?’ the bony man said. He had no watch; he’d brought his carrier bag to the field and intermittently, after they’d advanced some distance, he’d go back to retrieve it from beneath the hedge and place it some little distance farther on. ‘I make it thirty-five minutes’, he added, ‘by the sun. And I bet I’m correct within one or two minutes.’ He was continually watching the tractor now; each time it paused he raised his head, a sheaf in his hand, seeing whether the foreman was breaking off for lunch.

‘He’ll work through till one o’clock, will Tom. He doesn’t much care for time, tha knows. I hope old Gordon reminds him, or we’ll be stuck down here for hours.’

And yet, only moments later, the tractor stopped. The clatter subsided: the puffs of blue smoke had disappeared.

The bow-legged man was already moving off across the field; the foreman himself was stooping to the binder.

‘That’s it! That’s dinner!’ the bony man said.

He retrieved his carrier bag and, half-running, half-walking, started off towards the track.

Colin, more slowly, followed on behind. By the time he reached the yard the bow-legged man and the bony man were already stretched out beneath the tree. It was some twenty minutes later before the foreman appeared along the track, going into the shed, with a spanner in his hand, comparing it with several others, coming out, his canvas bag across his shoulder, setting himself down in the open door, the shape of his motorbike gleaming in the dark behind.

‘I think I’ve fixed it now, then, Jack.’

‘I told you them nuts were on too tight.’

They called across the yard for a little while.

‘And how’s your stooking going, kipper, then?’

‘All right,’ Colin said.

‘Not going too fast for yon loafer, then?’

‘Who’s a loafer?’ the bony man had said.

‘Don’t set him up, Jack,’ the foreman said, ‘with any bad ideas.’

‘Nay, Jack doesn’t have any ideas, Tom,’ the bow-legged man had said.

‘I might get one or two from yon college-boy,’ the bony man had said.

They laughed.

At the end of the hour they went back to the field.

The day was hotter than the one before. They worked uphill now, stooping to the slope. At one point the tractor halted and for an hour or more the foreman and the bow-legged man stooked the sheaves themselves.

‘They won’t be doing that for long,’ the bony man had said. ‘Get sat on that tractor and they don’t like shifting off again.’

The tractor re-started after a little while.

‘Sithee: what did I tell thee?’ The bony man sat determinedly in the bottom of the hedge while Colin worked on alone.

The farmer appeared in the middle of the afternoon. There were two other figures with him, a girl and a man in jodhpurs who carried a gun. The man with the gun and the girl strolled round the diminishing area of uncut wheat, following the binder.

‘After rabbits,’ the bony man had said. ‘They’ll come out like flies when they get down to the last bit o’ corn. I was hoping for one or two, tha knows, mesen.’

The farmer, as he waited for the binder to come round, checked on some of the stooks himself, re-setting sheaves, lifting one or two up and adding them on.

‘It’s a good place to work, is this,’ the bony man said. ‘He’s got two or three farms and he never stops for long. We’re t’farthest away from t’farm itself. That’s why he relies so much on Tom.’

The gun went off; a puff of smoke rose up.

‘He couldn’t hit a rabbit if it sat on t’end on his barrel. That’s Smithy’s son. And that’s his daughter. There might be summat theer for you.’ He laughed across. ‘Bit of all right, tha knows, is yon.’

A little later when the two figures of the jodhpured man and the girl came closer Colin glanced across; he saw a fresh, red-cheeked face and fairish, auburn hair, and turned back to the sheaves, not looking up again until they’d passed.

After a little while the farmer left, the car with its three occupants bouncing off along the rutted track.

The day grew hotter.

They stooked a single row now, half-way up the slope: a side and a half and they would have circuited the field. They met the unfinished row the foreman and the bow-legged man had started, and went to work then across the top of the field.

‘It’s be too much to reckon that he’d bring summat for us all to drink,’ the bony man had said. ‘Last farm I worked at the farmer’s wife wa’re out all day: glasses of ale, and ginger pop. It was a pleasure to work, I can tell you that.’

The indications of a tennis court were visible amongst the distant gardens: white-clad figures moved to and fro; the faint noise of a ball being hit came floating to the field.

Several aircraft passed overhead; they were too high in the sky to see. A vapour trail had formed, and then another: a thin striation of white marks, like veins, faded against the blueness overhead.

He worked with a regular rhythm now; the lightness he’d felt in the morning had already gone, replaced by a cautious calculation of how many hours of the day were left. They worked without speaking, the bony man taking fewer rests, crouching, when he did so, in the shade of a stook, or lying sprawled out in the shade of the hedge, calling out then, half-mockingly, if Colin paused.

‘Nay, don’t let him see you resting, lad. I’m the gaffer, tha knows, down here.’

The farmer came back: the three figures got out of the car. It was growing late.

The tractor paused on the upward slope and the foreman got down from the seat, the three figures then standing by the binder.

‘He’ll not keep us on overtime,’ the bony man said. ‘He’ll just keep Tom and Gordon back. He’ll send us two off packing.’

And a little later, with the band of uncut corn now like a narrow path down the centre of the field, the farmer, waving, had signalled them across.

‘That’s us done for. We could have had two hours, at least.’

At the far end of the field the younger man with the gun had given a shout.

A rabbit, its legs kicking, was bowled over as it ran.

A second rabbit broke away: a small bundle of fur darting away across the low-cut stalks.

The young man fired again: the ball of fur flew up, kicking, then, with a sudden convulsion, fell over on its side.

‘You two can get off now. It’s just after five,’ the farmer said. ‘We’ll finish cutting tonight and start stooking first thing tomorrow morning. There’ll be too much dew to start cutting then.’

He was holding the rabbit by its ears; a stream of blood ran from its mouth.

‘And how’re you making out, young man? Got the hang of it, have you, or is Jack here having to do it all for you?’

‘Oh, he does one or two bits and pieces, Mr Smith,’ the bony man had said.

The girl, her face reddened by the sun, had glanced across; she was standing half-way to the car, looking down the field towards her brother.

She pulled back the hair from her eyes, calling, and pointing down to the uncut corn.

The younger man had fired again.

‘We mu’n have us a good bag today,’ the farmer said.

Jack, his carrier beneath his arm, had gone ahead. He’d already reached the track and was dusting off his clothes as he walked along. He lit a cigarette as he reached the trees, cupping his hand; a breeze, light, blowing in faint gusts, had suddenly sprung up.

The young man, sighting the gun, had fired again; the bow-legged man on the binder was pointing to the corn. A dog in the back of the car had begun to bark.

The girl, hearing it, turned back.

‘Don’t let it out, Audrey,’ the farmer said. ‘We mu’n keep it till we’re down to the last few yards.’

Colin reached the track. The girl, flushed by the heat, was standing by the car, holding the door and talking to the dog.

She glanced up as he passed.

‘What kind of dog is it, then?’ he said.

‘A collie.’

She glanced up again, quickly, then called sharply to the dog.

She had a thin rash around her neck: it showed on her arms below the short-cut sleeve of her blouse.

‘Is he good for rabbiting?’ he said.

‘Not really. No.’

She opened the car door and caught the dog’s collar as it tried to rush out.

Half-stooping, still holding the dog, she walked back across the field.

Colin turned to the track. He could see into the car: cartridges, a flask, several metal mugs and a white cloth wrapped round what looked like sandwiches.

He went on, dusting down his clothes, towards the sheds.

The field had been cut when they got back the following day, the sheaves strewn in rows across the contour of the hill. Colin worked with the foreman at the bottom of the field. The stooks stood up like little houses, the tyre-marks of the tractor leaving silver-coloured streaks across the stubble.

‘How many rabbits did you get last night?’ he said.

‘Four.’ The foreman laughed. ‘Though going by the commotion you’d have thought it wa’ nearer twenty.’

‘How many hours’ overtime did you get?’ he said.

‘And what’s that to do with you?’ The foreman laughed again. ‘Eager for more work, then, are you?’

Yet later, as they walked back to the sheds, he added, ‘As it is, we could have done with you staying on last night. We’ve another field, tha knows, to cut tomorrow. We mu’n stay behind and oppen out.’

Yet after lunch Colin and the bony man were working in the field alone: the foreman and Gordon had set off to the second field. Relieved of supervision, the bony man spent longer spells beneath the hedge, stepping out of its shade at intervals, quickening the pace when he saw the comparatively few that, working alone, Colin himself had done.

‘They’ll expect us, you know, to get more on than this.’

The intervals of moving up and down the field got shorter; more than half of it was stooked. The heat, in the centre, was greater than it was on the track or working round the edge, the ground dustier, the scent of the straw more overpowering. His clothes were sodden now with sweat. After their first hardening, his hands had begun to bleed again.

A group of boys had come to play in the copse at the foot of the hill. He’d seen them earlier, coming down the track from the direction of the house beyond the trees; they were carrying a dinghy which, after they’d raised it over the hedge at the bottom of the field, they lowered on to the pond. For an hour he heard their cries, seeing the flashing of the water: splashed columns of it were sprayed up at intervals beneath the trees. Finally, when he and the bony man had reached the hedge, he glanced across.

A small island stood in the centre of the pond: it was overgrown with brambles. A large nest was built near the water’s edge. There was a smell of decay from the copse itself.

The boys were paddling the dinghy towards the island; there were three of them, two in costumes, one of whom, as Colin watched, plunged into the water and, to the shouts of the other two, began to push the dinghy vigorously before him, spraying the two still in the boat.

One of them, in shirt sleeves and shorts, he recognized as Stafford; he was standing in the middle of the dinghy directing the other boy who, bare-chested, was fanning the oar ineffectually at the water.

‘To your left. Left,’ Stafford called to the boy, who was spraying them with his feet behind.

They scrambled ashore as the dinghy reached the bank, Stafford leaning up to grasp a branch. He held the boat while the other boy climbed out. The third figure, still in the water, was slowly clambering to his feet: black mud stains marked his shoulders.

Stafford, releasing the branch and taking the paddle, pushed off the dinghy into the middle of the pond.

‘Ay! Neville,’ the other two had said. ‘Ay, Neville,’ they called, ‘come back.’

Stafford leaned on the oar, still standing. His laughter echoed beneath the branches of the copse.

‘Ay! You rotter,’ the two boys called.

The whiteness of their legs and bodies showed up against the darkness of the trees behind.

‘Ay, Neville. Bring it back.’

Stafford pushed the oar into the pond, found the bottom, and pushed the dinghy on.

‘Ay, Neville.’

The boat rocked with the momentum of Stafford’s laughter. The two boys began flinging spray across.

‘Ay, Nev. Bring it back.’

Stafford shook his head, kneeling in the boat, still laughing…

‘It’s too muddy to get back,’ the boys had said.

‘Swim, then,’ Stafford said.

‘It’s too shallow,’ one of the boys had said.

Stafford got up; he wiped his eyes.

‘Go on, you rotter: bring it back.’

‘Come and fetch it.’

‘Go on, Nev: be a sport,’ they said.

‘How much is it worth?’ he said.

‘How much do you want?’

‘How much have you got?’

‘Go on: we’ve got nothing.’ They gestured at their trunks.

Stafford, having reached the bank, had sat down by the boat.

‘Go on, Nev. Be a sport.’

Perhaps Colin had moved, or one of the two boys on the island had glanced across.

Stafford turned; for a moment he gazed up, confused. He shielded his eyes.

‘Hi,’ Colin said. He nodded his head.

Still confused, Stafford got up; the two boys on the island had called again.

‘Who is it, Nev? Come on, then, bring it back.’

‘Oh, it’s you, then,’ Stafford said, his voice quiet now and suddenly flat. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he added.

‘I’m working,’ he said. He gestured to the field behind.

‘What at?’

He gestured to the field again.

‘Stooking,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘Money.’

Stafford turned to the boat; he scarcely glanced at the field at all.

‘Are you working, then?’

He nodded his head.

‘I’ll see you, then.’ He climbed into the boat. He pushed it off.

From the field, the bony man had called: the car, in a cloud of dust, was bouncing along the track from the direction of the sheds.

He went back across the field and was already stooking, stooping to the sheaves, by the time the car pulled up and the farmer, with the foreman and the bow-legged man, climbed out.

They worked into the evening; the farmer stooked as well. At six o’clock he went to the car and got out a flask of tea. They sat in the shade of the hedge, drinking the tea from metal mugs and eating sandwiches which he’d also brought.

Earlier, shortly after the arrival of the car, Stafford and the two boys had emerged from the edge of the copse, carrying the boat between them. They’d glanced over to where he and the four men worked, Stafford walking some distance ahead, the two boys gazing over, Stafford scarcely glancing once he’d reached the track. He disappeared beneath the trees in the direction of the house, the two boys, white-skinned against the shadows, labouring to lift the boat across the fence. ‘Nev? Nev,’ he heard them call.

It was growing dark by the time he got back home. The bike had no lamp; he cycled in the coolness, his eyes half-closed. A new momentum had taken over his life. All he could think of now were the lines of stooks, the glimpse he’d had, in the half-darkness, of the field they would work the following day, the stooking of the first field now completed; having washed off the sweat and dust, he went to bed, brushing aside his mother’s complaints, his father’s questions.

He sank down in a daze and fell asleep.

He worked for seven weeks at the farm; eight fields were opened up, cut, stooked: men from another farm came with a red-painted thresher driven by a tractor with a fly-wheel as large as the rear wheels themselves. Once he saw the two boys who’d been wearing costumes cycling along the track that led from the large house past the sheds to the near-by road; they gave no sign; both had auburn hair and whistled cheerfully to one another as they pedalled past. On other days occasionally, he could hear their shouts coming from beyond the trees that surrounded the house.

The corn was threshed; at the end of the seventh week, late on Saturday after working overtime, the farmer told him he wouldn’t be needed again.

‘Not that I couldn’t use you, mind. But I’ve no more fields to cut round here.’

He gave him his money as he left the field.

The following day he set off on the bike again; he visited the farms he’d been to before. He found new ones farther afield, but late that evening, cycling home, he’d passed a field only a few miles from the village where a tractor and binder were working with no one stooking, and he had gone to the farm building a few hundred yards away and got a job to start the following day.

The farm stood at the foot of a hill; a stream ran past its door; a foot-bridge led across the stream to the farmhouse itself: the farmer’s name was also Smith.

‘Tha mu’n be on thy own,’ he said, ‘unless I can get som’body in by tomorrow. I’ve two fields cutting and nob’dy to stook,’ and yet, the next morning, when he started work, two men in dark brown uniforms were standing by the gate: one was tall and thin, with long, black hair, the other small and broad-shouldered, with blond hair cut short, and colourless eyes.

‘This is Fritz,’ the farmer said, indicating the shorter of the two, ‘and this is Luigi,’ he added. He indicated the other man, who stooped down and shook his hand. ‘They’re prisoners of war, so if they try to escape you’ll let me know.’ The farmer laughed, the two strangely contrasted prisoners laughing with him. ‘They’ve to be back in camp, tha knows, by six, so if there’s any hanky-panky tha mu’n march ’em to the gate.’ He turned with a wink, thickening his accent. ‘They’re all right,’ he added. ‘I’ve had ’em afore: but tek no notice of the way they wuk.’

He spent the next two weeks working with the Italian and the German. The former had been a soldier, captured in the desert, the other a pilot shot down in southern England. They spoke, in his presence, a made-up language of signs and gestures, but whenever he was alone with either one they spoke English fluently with a slight, half-mocking, thickened accent.

His father had cycled past the field one day. Colin saw him leaning by the hedge, his bike propped up against the gate.

He went across, slowly, wiping his face.

‘This is where you work, then, is it?’

The field was up the road from the farm, on the lower slope of an adjoining hill. In the farthest distance, on a clear day, were visible the buildings of the town, the cathedral spire, the wedge-shaped tower of the town-hall. Now, with the day overcast, all that was visible was the broad sweep of the field itself.

‘That’s thy two prisoners, is it?’ His father gazed down the field, between the stooks, to where the tall Italian and the stocky German were lifting sheaves, arguing, flinging them down. Sometimes they’d dismantle a stook in fear that one of their own sheaves had been incorporated by the other; they always worked separately, but never far apart.

Even as his father watched they had begun to quarrel.

‘You no good.’

‘You no good.’

‘You bad.’

‘You bad.’

‘Schweinhund.’

‘Bastard.’

They started fighting, their gestures as stylized as their conversation.

His father laughed; he watched them with a slow amazement, the tall, boneless figure of the Italian coiling and uncoiling around the squat, muscular outline of the fair-haired German. ‘Sithee, then.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘It’s a wonder they do any work at all,’ he said.

‘I do nearly all of it,’ Colin said. It was really the stooks he wanted his father to see, the straightness of the rows, the way they ran down the profile of the field. His father smiled.

‘I can see they’ve got their heads screwed on,’ he said.

The two figures now were rolling on the ground: they disappeared behind the sheaves, re-appeared for a moment, the German on top, then, a moment later, the Italian.

‘Don’t they ever have a guard?’ his father said.

‘I’ve never seen one,’ Colin said.

‘They mu’n escape, tha knows, if they don’t watch out.’

‘I don’t think they want to,’ he said, and shook his head.

The prisoners’ camp was a mile up the road. He’d cycled past it one evening, on his way to Saxton: rows of wooden huts ran back from the road, surrounded by barbed wire and overgrown hedges. Only one soldier was visible, stooping down by a car, in his shirt-sleeves, examining its engine.

‘Do they spend all day doing that?’ his father said.

‘They work sometimes, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose they have any need to, though,’ he added.

‘Nay, they’ve been caught fighting this country, lad. I hope thy’s not forgotten it,’ his father said.

The two men now were standing up; one was dusting down the other’s clothes; then, as a final gesture, ceremoniously bowing to one another, they both shook hands.

‘They might be all right on a stage, but this is a war-effort they’re supposed to be helping.’ His father gestured to the fields around. ‘Every bit done here leaves space in a ship.’

He gripped the gate between his hands.

‘If they mu’n not help the ones who’re looking after them they mu’n lock ’em up: that’s my view,’ his father said. A sudden smile, nervous, half-expectant, crossed his face as the two men, seeing him by the gate, called to Colin and came across.

‘This is my father,’ Colin said, and added, almost as a provocation, ‘He’s come to see you work.’

‘Work?’ The broad, tanned face of the German turned to gaze up at the long, mournful face of the Italian beside him.

‘Work?’ the Italian said, imitating the German’s accent.

‘We leave all the work to Colin, Mr Saville,’ the German said, his accent now so casual that his father looked at him in some alarm, almost as if, mentally, he’d stood to attention and begun to salute.

‘Aye, he works very hard,’ his father said, glancing at the field. On numerous occasions since his first week of work, his father had said, ‘They’re paying you a boy’s wages for a man’s work: I know what bargains these farmers get.’ Now he added, ‘The only trouble is people take advantage of how hard he works,’ and repeated ‘advantage’ as if uncertain that the German had understood his meaning.

‘Oh, we help him all we can,’ the German said, and added, ‘We help Colin all we can, Luigi. Help.’

‘Help,’ the Italian said, bowing slowly to his father, his dark eyes examining him now in some confusion.

‘Back to work, Luigi,’ the German said, and added, ‘Work.’

The Italian bowed; he examined his father a moment longer then turned back slowly towards the field.

‘I suppose you have to make allowances,’ his father said. ‘If we were prisoners on the other side I don’t suppose we’d work too hard. They do summat, I suppose,’ he added.

He turned to the bike.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said.

Colin watched his father ride off along the lane; he could see him some time later, riding along the road that led off across the fields, his small figure stooping to the bike, unaware perhaps that he was still visible from the field for he never looked back.

‘Your father is a farmer, too?’ the German said when he went back to the sheaves.

‘A miner.’

‘A miner?’ He added, ‘He’s not a farmer, Luigi. He works underneath the ground.’ He made a shovelling motion with his hand, pointing down, then fanning his hands out slowly either side.

‘Ah,’ the tall man said. He spoke in Italian for several seconds.

‘Luigi says: does he dig for gold?’

‘For coal,’ he said.

‘Coal,’ the German said. He added, ‘Carbon.’

‘Ah,’ the Italian said again and with a mournful gesture shook his head.

‘And when you grow older, will you become a miner, too?’ the German said.

‘No.’

‘What will you become?’ His light-blue eyes gazed steadily at him.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said.

‘A farmer?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘A soldier?’

He shook his head.

‘Will you leave your beautiful land? Will you travel the world?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Never go to Italy. Italy bad,’ the German said.

‘Germany bad,’ the Italian said.

‘Go to the Mediterranean,’ the German said. ‘Blue seas, blue skies.’ He gestured around. ‘Nothing at all like you have it here. Go to Africa. Go to Greece. But not to Italy. Italy bad.’

‘Germany bad,’ the Italian said and, as Colin stooped to the sheaves, the two men fought again.

He worked at the second farm until two days before he started school. He called at the farmhouse in the evening to collect his wage. The door to the kitchen had been standing open; the farmer’s wife was baking at a stove inside.

She was a small, stoutish woman, her face inflamed from the heat of the fire. On some evenings, when they were working overtime, she’d come to the field with tea and scones, bringing the tea in a metal jug, already sweetened and mixed with milk. Now she came across with a large round cake.

‘I’ve baked this for you, love. Just something to remember us by.’

‘He lives on fresh air, this lad,’ the farmer said. ‘Just look at his muscles. He’s grown a foot with us at least.’

The cake was slipped into a paper bag. He put it in his own bag, along with the wage.

‘And he’s kept a guard on them prisoners an’ all,’ the farmer added.

‘Has he?’ The farmer’s wife came to the door to see him off.

‘He’s been a right good officer,’ the farmer called, half-hidden in the shadow of the kitchen.

From the footbridge he glanced back at the farm: the farmer himself had appeared at the door.

‘If thy ever wants a job you must come back here again,’ and still stood there, waving, when he reached the road.

15

‘How much did they pay you?’ Stafford said.

He told him about the farm, and then the prisoners.

‘I don’t do much work during the holidays,’ Stafford said. He added, ‘I was over there, you know, for the day. I know the Thorntons. They live in that house beyond the trees.’

He walked beside him, his canvas bag hitched up beneath his arm. He whistled for a moment between his teeth.

‘Are you playing football this term?’ Colin asked him.

‘I’ve been injured this week.’ Stafford shook his head. ‘I’ll probably come in later. It hasn’t been arranged.’

When they reached the turning to the station, Stafford had added, ‘I’ll come down to the bus stop, if you like. I’ll be catching the later train tonight.’

They walked through the narrow alley and into the town-centre. Crowds of boys were moving down from the direction of the school, joined by groups of uniformed schoolgirls.

Stafford had called across at one point; two girls, on the opposite side of the street, had waved. One girl had called out, pointing back in the direction of the station.

Stafford smiled and shook his head.

‘Look at that,’ he said. He indicated a shop window, catching Colin’s arm. ‘What do you think?’

A wooden plaque of the school’s coat-of-arms was set in the centre of the window, beside it a tray of coloured scarves.

‘Some of those look pretty nifty.’ Stafford leaned to the window, gazing in, his head against the glass.

He moved to the door, holding it open.

An elderly shopkeeper inside had already looked up; he appeared to recognize Stafford for he came out quickly from behind the counter.

‘And what can I do for you?’ he said as Colin followed Stafford in.

‘We’d like to look at the scarves,’ Stafford said. ‘The ones in the window.’ And when the shopkeeper brought them over, sliding the glass panel at the back of the window and lifting them out, Stafford had added, ‘Not the school’s, Mr Wainwright: those civilian ones,’ laughing then at his own expression.

‘The civilian ones,’ the shopkeeper said, beginning to smile himself.

They were made of silk; he spread them on the counter.

‘And have you got your coupons, sir?’ he said.

‘Do you need coupons for one of these, then?’ Stafford said.

‘I’m afraid so.’ The shopkeeper shook his head.

‘What have you got without coupons?’ Stafford said.

‘Well, any number of things,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘Tie-clips, for instance. Do you fancy those? I take it’, he added, ‘it’s for a present.’

‘Yes,’ Stafford said, and glanced across.

A tray of tie-pins was laid before him.

‘What do you think to that one?’ Stafford said.

He picked it out.

It was a silver-coloured tie-pin shaped like a feather. Its image, Colin saw, was that of a quill. A tiny nib was fashioned one end.

‘Do you like it?’

‘Yes,’ he said, impatient now to get to the stop.

‘I’ll take that one, Wainwright,’ Stafford said and from his inside pocket drew out a wallet.

‘That’s rather an expensive one,’ the shopkeeper said.

‘I thought it might be,’ Stafford said.

He laid out the money.

‘Could you wrap it up?’ he said. ‘Decently, I mean. In a sort of box.’

Outside the shop Stafford glanced at his watch and added, ‘Are we late for your bus? What time does it leave?’

‘If I hurry,’ he said.

‘We’ll run for it in that case,’ Stafford said.

They ran through the centre; at one point, for a while, they ran on the road, Stafford dodging the traffic and keeping abreast.

‘Keep running: I’ll keep up,’ he said.

The bus was waiting when they reached the stop.

Stafford stood beside Colin as the queue climbed on.

Then, close to the door, he said, ‘Here you are, then. I hope you can use it.’

He thrust the parcel into Colin’s hand.

‘Go on. Take it. You’ll never get on.’

And when he hesitated he thrust it to his hand again.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Stafford called, already moving off along the pavement.

He saw Stafford’s head, its fair hair conspicuous amongst the crowd, moving swiftly up the hill, back towards the city centre: he watched a moment longer then, as the crowd moved on, the fair-haired figure disappeared.

He opened the parcel when he got back home.

‘That’s beautiful. Wherever did you get that?’ his mother said.

‘It was a present,’ he said, and added, ‘From a friend at school.’

‘It isn’t your birthday yet,’ she said.

‘I know,’ he said. He shook his head.

‘Do they give presents to you, then, like that?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose they do.’

‘Have you bought him one, in that case, then?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose I shall.’

‘Well, love,’ she’d added, ‘make sure you do.’

He didn’t see Stafford at school the following day; he went to his classroom at the afternoon bell: everyone had left. He walked down to the station: there was no sign of Stafford on the platform.

On the Monday he only saw Stafford briefly, from a distance, leaving the field at the end of break; he didn’t run after him or call across. The next time they met was on the Tuesday afternoon: Stafford was coming out of the pavilion, already changed. He waved across, calling, and trotted casually across the field.

He never mentioned the present again. Colin scarcely wore it; he clipped it on to his tie occasionally on Sundays; he went to the Crusaders now in the afternoon, still with Bletchley, and less frequently with Reagan, who, since his failure in the exam, had been often ill.

Bletchley wore a suit on Sundays; over the previous year he had worn his school uniform to church but as it faded it had been replaced by a suit of dark-grey cloth with long trousers and a double-breasted jacket. Both he and Bletchley as well as Reagan were in the same Crusader group; a banner with the device of a fish was clipped to the end of their pew. The vicar took the service: small, portly, with thick-lensed glasses, he spoke with his head inclined towards the ceiling, waiting for each word to echo before he called the next: ‘I… I – shall… shall – wait… wait – here… here – for… for – si… si – lence… lence.’ He sang loudly, standing by the pulpit, sometimes disappearing behind the varnished pews to the organ, where, through an angled mirror, he could watch the groups below.

With no Mr Morrison to talk to Bletchley would frequently fall asleep; he would prop his arm on the end of the pew, immediately beneath the banner, and with his head against his hand, his face shielded, he would assume an attitude of rapt attention; in the shadows of the church, and beneath the extended shield of his hand, it was impossible to tell that he wasn’t listening; even when the vicar called for the answer to some question he would put up his hand, slowly, instinctively, half-dazed, having to be roused, cautiously, if he was asked specifically to answer.

Reagan had grown taller over the previous year; he too, in response to Bletchley’s challenge, had taken to wearing long trousers; they emphasized his now almost skeletal figure with its massive, bulbous head. Occasionally he could be seen walking across the backs, his hands in his pockets, glancing in windows and open doors and recoiling abruptly whenever someone called. He had been moved to a private school in the city, and each morning his mother took him to the station to catch the train, waiting for him on the platform of the village station each evening and walking back up to the village with him, hand in hand.

‘They mu’n be getting married soon,’ his father said whenever he saw them pass the window. ‘Reagan’s not got a look-in where yon lad’s concerned.’

‘It’s because he’s sensitive,’ his mother said. ‘He’s always been sensitive, even as a baby. She’s always had to look after him,’ she added.

‘He’d be less sensitive if he’d had a boot up his backside,’ his father said. ‘I’d de-sensitize him inside a week if I had him in this house.’

‘Oh, we know how sensitive you are,’ his mother would add.

‘Sensitive? I’m sensitive,’ his father said. ‘I’m more sensitive than yon streak o’ whitewash.’

‘Yes: and we know that, Colin, don’t we, love? We know how sensitive your father is,’ she’d tell him.

‘I’m sensitive enough to work in that pit,’ he’d add.

‘Are you?’

‘And give you a decent living.’

‘Do you?’

‘And you can’t get more sensitive’, he’d say, ‘than that.’

Steven had started school. He spent a lot of his time now out of the house, coming in at meal-times. But for the fact that they slept together Colin would scarcely have seen him. His brother had a pale, feather-like existence: built broadly like himself, he floated from one interest to another, running constantly from one demand to another, from one group of boys to another, his laughter frequently, whenever he was excited, filling the backs, a loud, harsh, almost hen-like cackle.

The baby he scarcely noticed. It was almost standing, prematurely, straight-backed, its tiny legs thrust out, its eyes light blue; it had a ferocious, almost obsessive energy; if it wasn’t watched it would crawl out to the yard, and once in the yard would disappear, finding its way to the street, on some occasions to the Battys’ kitchen, on others across the field to the street the other side. His mother would endlessly be endeavouring to restrain it, her cries of vexation ringing round the house while Colin in his room would be trying to do his work, calling down to her in the end, ‘Mother, I can’t work if you go on shouting.’

‘And what am I supposed to do? Talk to it in sign language?’ she’d call from the stairs.

‘I just can’t work with all that noise.’

‘Richard, come here!’ she’d shout, distracted immediately by the child again.

He took it for walks occasionally on Sunday mornings. Sometimes, if he had nothing better to do, Bletchley came with him; they would go to the Park.

‘The Park and nothing else,’ his mother would say. ‘I might be walking out that way and I’ll be popping in to have a look.’

‘You could take him in that case, then,’ he’d say.

‘Harry,’ his mother would call, ‘can you hear the way he talks?’

‘Just hold your tongue when you talk to your mother,’ his father would add.

‘It’s that I feel silly pushing out the pram,’ he said.

‘And you’d feel silly doing some of the things I’ve had to do,’ his father would call, invariably, during these incidents, preoccupied in some other room of the house.

‘Why can’t we just leave him in the yard?’ he would ask his mother.

‘Because he never stays in the yard,’ his mother said. ‘In any case, I would have thought you’d have been proud to take your brother out.’

‘Well, I’m not,’ he said, yet beneath his breath, afraid of the retribution this sentiment might bring.

‘I don’t know why you have to bring him,’ Bletchley would add, kicking the wheels of the pram as they walked along.

Yet, despite his resentment, he and Bletchley and Richard, and sometimes even Steven, continued to go to the Park on Sunday mornings. Groups of other children would be wandering there, girls from Bletchley’s school with whom Bletchley himself exchanged insults and occasionally, whenever he could get near them, blows. It was the prospect of seeing the girls from the school which took them there and which, later, sustained them during the tedious hour and a half of Sunday School; afterwards, freed of the pram, they would wander round the paths of the Park, and occasionally along the tracks that led across the fields beyond, following diminutive, skirted figures who, to Bletchley’s taunts and jeers, would frequently, turning, call insults of their own: ‘Fatty,’ and ‘Belcher,’ and ‘Who’s your friend, then, Belch? Hasn’t he got his pram?’

Bletchley gave him glowing accounts of his life at school, of episodes in the bushes which surrounded the building, a converted manor, and of even more lurid incidents which took place in the actual rooms. It was a long way from King Edward Grammar, and even farther from the impression he got of Bletchley himself, who, by reputation, was as actively despised at school as he was in the village; he felt a strange loyalty to his friend, his portly figure, and felt drawn to defend him whenever, in Bletchley’s presence, he was ridiculed or attacked.

‘Belcher’s all right,’ he would say to Batty who whenever he saw the gargantuan figure, would immediately run after him shouting, ‘Show us your knee-caps, Belch,’ or, ‘Lend us half your suit.’

‘He’s all right: he’s all right as an advertisement for plum-puddings,’ Batty would tell him, adding on one occasion, ‘Do you want a fight or something? If I want to shout after Belch I bloody shall.’

They’d fought then for half an hour; the fight had drifted from the street: they fought in the yard of a house and then the field. He fought Batty as if he had been preparing for it now for years; he felt calm, preoccupied, self-possessed, hitting Batty strongly, refusing to be bound up in his looping arms. Blood came out on Batty’s face; he was aware of Batty’s brothers coming to the field, and of other figures standing in the yard and along the fences. Reagan’s voice called out: ‘Hit him, hit him harder,’ his waist-coated figure collarless, red-faced, standing by the fence.

Batty finally had pinned him to the floor, beating him about his eyes and mouth: he flung his fists up at the reddened figure but Batty knelt casually above him, out of reach.

‘Go on, go on, our kid,’ his brothers called.

Batty got up. Aware of his brothers’ shouts he paused. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

‘Go on, bash him,’ his brothers called.

Batty turned aside; he glanced back at Colin briefly as he got to his feet, then went on towards his house.

‘Go on, our kid,’ his brothers called.

‘Nay, he mu’n have fought him fair.’ His father had come out from the house and stood by the fence.

Reagan had already turned towards his door.

‘He fought fair: you can’t say better than that,’ his father called.

Farther along the terrace he saw Batty climbing the fence.

‘Thy ought to have beaten him,’ his father said. ‘Go under his guard, not try to stand outside. With fellers like that you’ve to go beneath.’

‘I suppose you’re satisfied,’ his mother said, standing at the door as they reached the house. ‘And what was it all about?’ she added.

‘Nothing,’ he said.

‘It looks like nothing. Just look at your eyes: they’re almost closed.’

‘Nay, they’ll come up like two beauties,’ his father said.

‘And look at his mouth,’ his mother cried.

‘He’ll not be speaking tomorrow either.’ His father laughed. ‘See nowt, and say nowt: we mu’n have a bit o’ peace at last.’

Yet later he’d added, before he went to work, stooping to his boots to pull them on, ‘You must go under his guard when you’ve somebody big. Take my word for it, I ought to know. Hitting up you can hit much stronger.’

He got up in his work clothes and, despite his pit boots, began to dance around. ‘Left, left, then right. One, two, then bring it over. If you’d have taken a bit more notice you’d have been all right.’

He was still talking about the fight when he went to work, pedalling off slowly across the yard.

‘All wind,’ his mother said. ‘Don’t take any notice of your father in your fights.’

He heard his father’s voice then his mother’s, then Steven’s feet as he ran through the passage. A moment later, as if antagonized by the commotion, the baby began to cry.

He went through to his parents’ bedroom and looked down at the street. A red-painted bicycle with white mudguards was propped against the fence; it had a dynamo and electric lights, its handlebars curved down with rubber grips.

He heard his father’s strange, half-strangled tone in the passage below, then his mother’s almost formal accompanying tone, then, in response to some remark or gesture on their visitor’s part, a sudden burst of laughter.

‘Come in. Come in, lad,’ his father said and almost at the same moment he had added, calling, ‘Colin. There’s someone here to see you, then.’

When he went downstairs his father was standing awkwardly in front of the fire, smiling, his mother by the table, her hands clenched together, Steven by a chair uncertain now whether he might sit down; the baby was crawling across the floor, pacified for the moment by a piece of bread.

Stafford appeared to be unaware that anything unusual had occurred; he lay stretched out in a chair, pulling off a pair of gloves then, casually, raising one leg and removing a cycle clip that held his trousers.

‘It was farther than I thought,’ he said. ‘I missed the bus so I came on the bike. I looked up the trains: there’s not one through till after tea, and not one back until late tonight.’ He showed no curiosity in the room, or its inhabitants; it might have been a place he’d been coming into regularly for several years. Having removed his clips he dropped them on the table, his gloves beside them, and began to unfasten the buttons of his jacket. ‘You’ve some terrible hills round here,’ he added. ‘If I hadn’t a three-speed I couldn’t have managed.’

‘Oh, you need a bit of muscle to live round here,’ his father said. ‘None of your three-speed namby-pambies in a place like this.’

‘I can see that. I s’ll have to get into training,’ Stafford said, thickening his accent then and smiling.

The baby, suddenly conscious of his strangeness, stood up by a chair and began to cry.

‘Now, then. Now, then,’ his mother said, lifting it quickly. ‘It’s only a young man who’s come to see you. We don’t need any more of that, then, do we?’

‘And this is Steven, Colin’s brother,’ his father said.

Stafford nodded; he scarcely glanced in Steven’s direction, loosening his jacket then smoothing down his hair.

‘Would you like a cup o’ tea, or summat?’ his father said.

‘I wouldn’t mind. Or just a drink of water,’ Stafford said.

He looked up at Colin for the first time since he’d come into the room.

‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’ve got here, then.’

‘Oh, it’ll be tea, don’t worry,’ his father said. ‘You’re not coming here to sup us watter.’

‘Water,’ his mother said.

‘Water. Watter,’ his father said. ‘Dost think when you’re thirsty it makes any difference?’

They went out a little later to show Stafford round the village. ‘He won’t have seen a place like this afore,’ his father said. ‘You know, where people work.’

‘Oh, it’s not all that different from where I live,’ Stafford said. At his father’s insistence he’d got up to wheel his bike through to the yard behind.

‘And where’s that, then?’ his father said.

‘It’s over at Spennymoor,’ Stafford said.

‘Oh, I know that well.’ His father laughed. ‘They have that big mill theer. What’s its name?’

‘Stafford’s. My family own it,’ Stafford said.

His father’s face had paled. He looked as if, at that moment, he might have fallen down.

‘Oh, thy’s that Stafford,’ his father said, glancing quickly at his mother.

Now, as they moved away from the house, Stafford had clapped his hands.

‘That gave your father a shock,’ he said. ‘Didn’t he know, do you think, or did he put it on?’

‘I shouldn’t think he knew,’ he said and shook his head.

‘People are funny about things like that. Money, I mean. As if it matters.’

‘I suppose if they haven’t got any’, he said, ‘it probably does.’

‘What difference does money make?’ Stafford said. He gazed over for a moment then shook his head. They were walking along the backs, Colin’s habitual path to get to the street outside. When he didn’t answer Stafford glanced about him, freshly; he gazed in at the open doors, at the dark, fire-lit kitchens. ‘If you have less money you have fewer worries,’ he added, as if quoting something he’d heard before.

They came to the street.

‘What would you like to see?’ he said.

‘What do you usually do on Sundays?’ Stafford said.

‘Go to Sunday School.’ He gestured off, vaguely, in the direction of the church.

‘No, honestly?’ Stafford said. He gazed off, with fresh curiosity, along the street. ‘I suppose it’s too late to go,’ he added.

‘We could go to the Park, if you like,’ he said.

Stafford looked round him at the houses. ‘Have you always lived here, or did you live somewhere else?’ he said.

‘I’ve always lived here,’ he said.

‘I come through the station on my way to school, but you can’t see up to the village,’ he said as if he’d wondered at the curiosity of this on his journeys through.

They reached the centre of the village and turned up the hill towards the Park.

Stringer and Batty were coming down the road, Batty with a stick which he flicked in the bushes on either side. When he saw Colin approaching he called to Stringer, who, without his gun, picked up a stone which he weighed, reflectively, in either hand.

‘Who’s your friend, Tongey?’ Batty said.

‘He’s from our school,’ he said, and added, ‘This is Lolly, and that’s Stringer,’ Stafford, his hands in his pockets, nodding, about to go on up the road.

‘Who says tha mu’n go up theer, then?’ Stringer said.

‘Up where?’ Stafford said and shook his head.

‘Up theer,’ Stringer said, suddenly dismayed by Stafford’s accent.

‘I don’t see that anyone mu’n say I have to go up theer or not, then,’ Stafford said, imitating Stringer’s accent.

‘Thy mu’n want thy nose knocking in, then?’ Stringer said. He put up his fist in Stafford’s face.

‘I’ mu’n not want anything knocking in, then,’ Stafford said, his voice faltering for a moment as he regarded Stringer’s fist.

‘Tha mu’n feel this, then,’ Stringer said, ‘if thy goes up theer. Nobody goes up theer without permission.’

‘Have we got permission, Colin?’ Stafford said. He looked half-alarmed at Batty, then, almost reluctantly, glanced at Colin.

Stringer, turning his attention now to Colin, raised his fist again, waving it to and fro in front of his face.

Assuming Batty wouldn’t do anything, he hit Stringer as hard as he could on the end of his nose.

Stringer stepped back and covered his face.

‘Watch it. Watch it, Tongey,’ Batty said.

He came over with the stick, tapping the end of it now in his other hand.

‘Watch it,’ he said. He tapped the stick more slowly, glancing at Stringer and then at Stafford, not sure, of the two of them, which to go to first.

‘We’ll go on up, then,’ Colin said. It was as if then, for a moment, nothing had happened; as he turned from Stringer Colin saw him swing his arm. Stringer lunged at him with his boot and then his fist and before he could give an answer ran off calling to the foot of the hill.

Batty, deserted, stood gazing up the hill, his legs astride, the stick still in his hand.

‘Thy mu’n cop it when thy comes back down,’ he said. ‘I s’ll fetch our kid.’

He walked backwards, then turned, still tapping the stick against his hand.

‘Thy look out, then, when you come back down.’

‘Aye: thy look out,’ Stringer called from the foot of the hill.

‘Who are those two?’ Stafford said.

‘I suppose they own the village,’ Colin said. Yet he felt a strange resentment now, as if Stafford had forced him to something he hadn’t wished.

‘All bluster I suppose, then,’ Stafford said.

‘Something like that,’ he said and turned off the hill to the gates of the Park, which, like the railings to the school playground, had been removed.

Odd couples were walking along the paths inside, groups of children playing on the metal roundabout and swings.

The afternoon was overcast; grey clouds mounded over the horizon beyond the pit: a light wind blew in from across the fields.

‘That looks good fun, then,’ Stafford said and with a sudden lightness ran down the hill, clambering on the box-like rocking-horse and calling out.

Colin went down slowly; Stafford was standing on the side of the rocking-horse, swinging it violently up and down.

‘I say, get on the end,’ he said.

Colin clambered up the other side.

Another boy climbed on and Stafford laughed; he flung the rocking-horse from side to side, the metal arms knocking underneath, the boy who’d climbed on last holding to a handle, calling out.

‘Come on: rock it, Colin,’ Stafford said.

Almost mechanically now he followed Stafford’s movements; the head of the rocking-horse, hard, with beady eyes and flaring, metal nostrils, flew up and down by Stafford’s head.

A strange carelessness had come into Stafford’s movements; his coat flew up behind him, his face reddening, his eyes starting with a strange intentness.

‘Keep it going, Col,’ he said.

The boy sitting on the rocking-horse half stood up.

‘Keep it going,’ Stafford said.

The boy got off; the rocking-horse slowed.

Before its swinging motion had finally stopped Stafford had sprung down and run across to the roundabout. Several children already were swinging it round: they dropped off quickly as they felt his weight.

‘Come and give it a push,’ he called.

Another, larger boy got on. He ran at the side of the platform, pushing it round then, his legs swinging, he clambered on.

Colin watched. Stafford climbed up the metal rigging, standing spread-eagled with his feet on a spar.

‘Shove it. Shove it faster,’ he called to the boy.

The boy swung off; large, heavy, with studded boots and a torn jacket he pounded round the concrete track, the metal cusp of the roundabout clanging as it cracked against the top of the metal pole.

‘Sithee: ’od on tight,’ he said.

Stafford called out, his figure flattened against the metal spars. The roundabout clanged to and fro, swaying, the metal framework spinning round.

‘Jump on. Jump on, Col,’ Stafford called, laughing now, his head bowed, his hair flung out. His jacket billowed up behind.

Yet only moments later he was climbing down, the roundabout slowing, the boy pounding at the concrete track again.

Stafford leapt off, the roundabout swaying up.

‘Why didn’t you jump on, then, Col?’ he said. Without waiting for an answer he moved over to the swings.

Figures rose slowly, swaying on the chairs.

Colin sat on the concrete seat beside the playground; Stafford, as the swing swept out from the metal stanchions, laughed and, tugging at the chains, called out.

‘Come on. Grab one, Col. It’s going free.’

Stafford’s hair flew up as the swing swept back.

He was rising higher, crouching at the back of the swing then hanging poised, his head thrust back.

‘Col!’

He thought, then, he might have fallen, the chains falling slack, the wood seat swaying sideways, Stafford, unsure of his balance, crouching there before, with a half-nervous gesture, he carefully sat down.

He let the swing rise and fall, his legs swaying to its slow momentum, then, as the swing slowed further, finally jumped down.

‘I say, aren’t you going to have a go?’ He slumped down on the seat. He tapped his chest, sighing, and glanced around.

A group of girls, familiar to Colin from his walks in the Park with Bletchley, came slowly past. One of them called.

‘Where’s Belcher today?’ she said.

‘Who’s that, then?’ Stafford said. He ran his hand across his head, leaning forward. He smoothed his hair.

‘They’re from the Manor,’ Colin said.

Stafford got up from the bench.

‘Come on. We might as well go this way, then,’ he said.

He set off along the side of the path, kicking at the grass edges as he walked along. As he reached the girls he called across. Colin heard them laugh, one of them shrieking, tossing back her head.

Stafford, shrugging, laughed himself.

When Colin reached him he was walking in front of the girls, turning then and walking backward, still laughing and then adding, ‘Do you know a girl called Berenice, then?’

‘Not Berenice Hartley?’

‘I believe that is her name,’ he said.

The girls had laughed again, as intrigued by Stafford’s accent as they were by this inquiry.

‘Your name isn’t Henderson?’ one of them said.

‘Jones,’ Stafford said and began to laugh.

‘Jones the butcher, or Jones the baker?’

‘Jones the lover,’ Stafford said.

‘Oh, listen to him. Honestly,’ another of the girls said.

‘Honestly, do you know Berenice Hartley?’ another said.

‘As well as I know anyone, my darling,’ Stafford said.

‘Honestly, just listen to him.’

‘I think he’s deeply in love,’ another girl had said.

‘I’m deeply in love with two or three girls at the moment,’ Stafford said.

‘Honestly, just listen to him,’ another of the girls had said.

‘I think all the girls at that school are pretty attractive,’ Stafford said.

‘And what school do you go to, glamour-britches?’ one of the girls had said.

They laughed, linking arms and leaning their heads against each other.

‘I’ve left school. We don’t go there any longer, do we, Colin?’ Stafford said.

‘Tongey goes to school. Don’t you, Tarzan?’ one of the girls had said.

‘Why do you call him Tarzan?’ Stafford said.

‘That’s Belcher’s name for him. Isn’t it, Tarzan?’ one of the girls had said.

‘He says he’s so strong, does Belcher,’ another girl had said.

They laughed.

‘You’re too young not to be at school, in any case,’ they added.

‘Well, I may drop in odd days, of course, my darling,’ Stafford said. ‘When the mood is on me, so to speak.’

‘Honestly, just listen to him, then,’ they said.

‘Isn’t there any room in there for me, then?’ Stafford said, indicating that a space might be made somewhere in the middle.

‘We wouldn’t let you walk with us, then, would we?’ one of the girls had said.

‘Not somebody who knows Berenice Hartley,’ another girl had said.

They wandered on.

Stafford, smoothing down his hair, had let them past.

‘They’re a load of scrubbers. I don’t think much of those,’ he said. He began to whistle, his hands in his pockets, looking round idly and kicking the grass.

‘Are there any shops open in the village? We could get a bite to eat. I’m feeling pretty ravenous,’ he said.

‘We could go back’, Colin said, ‘and get some tea.’

‘I don’t want to put your people out. I mean, they’ve enough to do, I suppose,’ he said.

‘They’re expecting you to stay, in any case,’ he said.

‘I suppose we could go back,’ he said. He looked up the hill; figures were drifting down from the direction of the church: odd groups of girls in brightly coloured coats and boys who, walking behind them, climbed along the walls.

Bletchley was walking along with Reagan in the middle of the road; whereas Bletchley was broad and fat, fitting with some difficulty into his long-trousered suit, Reagan, tall and thin, appeared scarcely to inhabit his clothes at all, his dark, long-trousered suit exaggerating the extraordinary movements of his gangly body.

‘I shouldn’t let Mr Trubshaw see you,’ Bletchley said, referring to the vicar. ‘He asked where you were this afternoon and I told him you were sick.’ He glanced uneasily at Stafford.

Reagan was wearing a bright red tie; he had a long brass tie-pin clipped to it, beneath which hung a thin, brass-coloured chain. His eyes were large and staring, his long thin features, since he had grown much taller, more pronounced, the massive swelling of his head at the back disguised now by longish hair which he allowed to hang down towards his collar. He fingered his tie nervously as he glanced at Stafford.

Colin introduced him; Bletchley nodded. ‘Weren’t you at the scholarship exams?’ he said.

‘Which ones were those?’ Stafford said.

‘The ones where you sit for the scholarship,’ Bletchley said.

‘I can remember going to something of that sort,’ Stafford said.

‘Which school are you at, then?’ Bletchley said.

‘Oh, I don’t go to school very often,’ Stafford said. He stood with his hands in his pockets, looking round. He glanced at Reagan. ‘Which school do you go to, then?’ he added.

‘He goes to St Dominic’s,’ Bletchley said. ‘You have to pay fees. He didn’t pass the scholarship,’ he added.

‘Oh, those are the best schools,’ Stafford said. ‘I wish I’d gone there now myself.’

Bletchley’s neck reddened.

Mr Morrison walked past, with the woman with the red eyes who played the piano. Bletchley touched his school cap and gave a smile as he gestured at Colin. ‘He’ll tell Trubshaw and you’ll catch it, I suppose,’ he said. He called out to two girls passing in the road. ‘Where’s your boy-friends today?’ he shouted.

‘What’s it to do with you, then, Belch?’ they said.

Bletchley laughed; he pulled down at the peak of his cap and glanced at Stafford.

Reagan, nervously, had begun to kick his feet against the road.

‘You’ll be late for your violin class,’ Bletchley said.

‘I don’t have it on Sunday afternoons, now,’ Reagan said.

‘Mic plays the violin. He’s a virtuoso,’ Bletchley said. He laughed again, slowly, still watching Stafford. ‘You should hear him play. It’s like a cat being cut in two.’

‘Who do you have lessons with?’ Stafford said.

‘I go to somebody in town. You won’t have heard of them, I reckon,’ Reagan said. His face had darkened. Faint white marks, like smears of paint, showed at his temples.

Bletchley’s neck had begun to swell; the red flush spread slowly upwards towards his cheeks.

‘Not Mr Prendergast?’ Stafford said.

‘Do you know him?’ Reagan said.

‘I go there twice a week myself.’

‘Honestly? Not the violin?’ he said.

‘I do the piano,’ Stafford said.

‘Honestly,’ Reagan said, gazing at Stafford in admiration.

‘I did violin about two years ago. I go on Wednesdays and Fridays, after school.’

‘I go Tuesdays,’ Reagan said.

‘I had piano lessons, and violin lessons, but I go to elocution now, though,’ Bletchley said. ‘“The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” “Tea for two is good for you.” “How soon will you be finished with your spoon?”’

He quoted the phrases carefully to Stafford.

‘Weren’t we going to your place?’ Stafford said, looking up at Colin. He glanced down sharply then towards the village.

‘We’re going in the Park,’ Bletchley said, indicating Reagan. He glanced over once again at Stafford. ‘Why don’t you come? There are one or two tarts I know from school.’

‘We’ve just been down,’ Stafford said. He turned towards the hill. ‘Are you coming?’ he added to Colin.

Bletchley turned to the Park, holding Reagan’s arm as if afraid for a moment that Reagan might be inclined to follow.

‘See you, Tarzan,’ he said.

‘They look like Laurel and Hardy,’ Stafford said. ‘Just look at them,’ he added, glancing back.

The two figures, the one inflated like a large balloon, the other tall and willowy, like some misshapen stick, were moving slowly along the path towards the slope leading to the recreation ground. Bletchley was already calling out, waving to a line of girls who, as they passed, had all glanced back, their laughter floating up across the hill.

‘Belcher,’ he could hear them calling out, the sound echoing a moment later beneath the trees. Perhaps they’d called to Bletchley a second time; though still holding to Reagan’s arm he appeared for a moment as if he might run across, the girls screaming then and moving off. They ran separately across the grass, coming together slowly, laughing, some distance down the hill.

‘A village Romeo,’ Stafford said and for the first time that afternoon laughed, lightly, without any intention of provoking Colin.

There was no sign of Batty or Stringer at the foot of the hill; the miners were sitting in rows outside the pub, crouching in the gutter and along the walls, calling out suddenly to Stafford as he passed, attracted by the fairness of his hair, and the strange freshness of his manner.

‘Dost fancy yon, then, Jack?’ they said. ‘Wheerst tha come from, lad? Ar’t’a sure he’s not a lass?’

The laughter from the crouched rows and the odd, isolated figures standing in the road followed them down towards the house.

‘What’s the matter with them?’ Stafford said. ‘Haven’t they seen somebody dressed decently before?’

‘They’re always like that’, he said, ‘with strangers. Suspicious of anything or anyone they haven’t seen before.’

‘I’m surprised anyone comes here, in any case,’ Stafford said. ‘I mean, the place hasn’t got many attractions at the best of times,’ he added.

‘I never knew you played the piano,’ Colin said.

‘Oh, I don’t do it much. Sometimes I skip the lessons as a matter of fact. Prendergast, who takes me, doesn’t mind. If he makes a fuss I’ll be taken away, and he’d lose whatever fees he gets.’

He began whistling slowly to himself, walking along with his hands in his pockets, kicking at the kerb.

‘You ought to come to our place,’ he said, as they reached the house. ‘We could have some fun. It’s different to this.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Well, not much different, I suppose,’ he added.

The table was already laid when they went into the kitchen. Walking along the backs Stafford had glanced with the same intentness as before into the open doors and windows; now, standing in the door of the house itself, he appeared dismayed by the sight of the table, as if the identity of the room itself had changed, or he’d come into the wrong room entirely; then, seeing Saville sitting in a chair beside the fire, the Sunday paper open awkwardly on his knee, he stepped inside, ducking his head slightly then smoothing down his hair.

‘You’ve seen all we have to see, then?’ his father said, folding the paper and standing up. ‘There mu’n not be much around here, I suppose,’ he added.

‘We went to the Park, Mr Saville,’ Stafford said, sinking into the chair opposite his father, and mentioning the Park now as if it were a place of some significance.

‘Aye, well: it’s a bit of a dump, is yon,’ his father said. He put the paper down. ‘There’s not much to see up there, tha knows. Though there’s one or two nice walks around the village.’

‘Don’t let him take you down to the Dell, at least,’ his mother said. ‘That’s been his favourite haunt these last few years.’

‘Where’s that, then?’ Stafford asked him, looking up.

‘Down by the sewage works,’ his father said.

‘And the gas-works,’ his mother added.

‘Thy hasn’t to breathe too deeply when thy passes there.’ His father laughed.

The baby, attracted by Stafford’s presence, had pulled itself up against a chair. Stafford put out his hands.

‘Sithee, yon’s too shy for ought, unless it’s asking to be fed,’ his father said. ‘We’ve just stuffed him up to keep him quiet.’

‘Now, you know that’s not true, not true at all,’ his mother said.

She was opening a tin of fruit on the draining-board beside the sink; glancing at Stafford she brought it over in a bowl to the table, standing there a moment uncertain whether, before the meal, she ought to serve it out.

‘Do you like fruit, then, Neville?’ she said, hesitating slightly as she mentioned Stafford’s name.

‘Any amount of it, Mrs Saville,’ Stafford said, turning in the chair.

‘It’s tinned fruit,’ she said, still holding to the bowl.

‘Tinned fruit all the better,’ Stafford said, turning once more to face the baby.

‘We alus have tinned fruit, tha knows, on Sundays,’ his father said, then added, ‘Well, some Sundays, tha knows, when visitors are here.’

The baby got down from the chair and crawled across the floor; it stood up finally by the door, which Stafford had left open, and began to stumble out.

‘And where’s thy off to?’ his father said, his movements stiff now, his voice uncertain. Something about Stafford’s presence had affected him immensely; he seemed uncertain where to put himself, picking up the baby, then putting it down, closing the door behind him, then standing once more beside the table, straightening the plates and spoons, and pulling out a chair.

A kettle was simmering on the fire.

‘Well, I think it’s ready,’ his mother said.

They sat at the table. His mother served the fruit. No one was sure whether to eat it first, or the bread and jam which stood – the thinly buttered slices on one plate, the jam in a bowl beside it – in the centre of the table. Finally they took their lead from Stafford, who started on the fruit, his mother offering him a slice of bread and asking him if he’d like to eat it with it.

‘That’s very kind. Thank you,’ Stafford said, evidently unused to eating tinned fruit and bread together.

‘When we have a meal in this house we have one. Don’t you worry,’ his father said.

Steven came in. His face was marked with grease, his knees were cut.

‘Wherever have you been? And on Sunday, Steven,’ his mother said.

She got up from the table and took him to the sink. There was a moment’s pause at the table; his father, with a loud sucking noise, began to drink his tea.

The tap ran in the sink; Steven’s face was bent towards it; his hands were scrubbed, his knees were washed. Red-faced from stooping, his mother led him to the table.

‘Start on your fruit,’ she said when Steven reached across to take the jam.

‘Why have we got it in a bowl?’ he said. ‘What’s happened to the jar?’

‘We don’t always have it in a jar,’ his mother said, glancing uneasily at Stafford.

‘I’ve never seen it in a bowl afore, then,’ Steven said.

‘Before, not afore,’ his mother said.

Steven had already finished his fruit; he looked expectantly around the table.

‘Can I take your dish, then, Neville?’ his mother said.

She got up from her place, leaning across to take Stafford’s bowl. Her own fruit, as yet, she’d scarcely touched.

‘Shall I pour your tea out now?’ she added.

Stafford held out his cup; his father watched with an air of concern, nodding his head, half-smiling, encouraging Stafford now to take something else.

‘How about some jam?’ he said.

‘I’d love some jam, Mr Saville,’ Stafford said.

When the fruit was finished, and the bread had been consumed, the plates were removed and a plate of jam tarts and a sandwich roll were placed on the table.

‘By go, where’ve we been saving this, then?’ his father said.

‘Now don’t go embarrassing us, Father,’ his mother said. ‘Neville’ll think we don’t always have this,’ she added.

‘We don’t!’ his father said, and laughed, crumbs spraying from his mouth. ‘By go,’ he said, stooping to the table. ‘Thy mu’n come every week at this rate, Nev.’

The plates were handed round; his mother, red-faced, stooped to the table, short-sightedly, and cut the roll into even slices.

Stafford ate a piece; he ate a tart.

‘Have one more,’ his mother had said, offering him the plate. There was one tart for each person, and one piece of roll.

‘I’ll never get home if I have any more, Mrs Saville,’ Stafford said. ‘That’s the best tea I’ve had, you know, for a very long time. We don’t often have it, you see, at home.’

‘Not have tea?’ his mother said as if she suspected some deprivation now in Stafford’s background.

‘We usually have dinner, you see, at about seven o’clock. And if I have a big tea I don’t have the appetite at seven,’ Stafford said.

‘Oh. Dinner. I see,’ his mother said. She looked away. ‘Won’t you get into trouble, then? Eating all this at this time, then?’

‘Oh, we have dinner later on Sundays,’ Stafford said. ‘We usually have visitors in the evening and nobody likes to eat until after eight.’

‘Oh, you should be all right, then,’ his mother said, distantly, as if this absolved her of all blame for Stafford’s condition.

‘Well, if nobody wants it, I’ll have the extra tart,’ his father said.

‘Well, it was my tart, actually,’ his mother said.

‘Oh, I didn’t know that, my dear,’ his father said.

‘I didn’t mind, if Neville would have liked another,’ his mother said.

‘No, no, you go ahead, love,’ his father said. ‘It’s yours by right.’ He looked fiercely at Steven, who had shown signs of laying claims on it himself.

His mother ate it in silence. The baby, fastened to a chair by a scarf, having spent most of the meal consuming a biscuit, began to moan quietly, making signs that it wanted a drink.

Colin leaned across and held the handleless cup it drank from against its lips; it bit against the edge, swallowing, its arms waving to and fro on either side.

‘Well, that was a meal to be proud of,’ his father said, sighing now and finishing his tea. ‘I don’t care who they are, or where they come from, they couldn’t have a better tea than that, tha knows.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ his mother said. ‘If it wasn’t for rationing it might be better.’

‘Rationing or no rationing,’ his father said. ‘You couldn’t make much improvement, I’m telling you.’ He got out a cigarette and struck a match.

‘You don’t mind if Mr Saville smokes?’ his mother said.

‘No. No. That’ll all right, Mrs Saville,’ Stafford said. His father, hastily, had blown out his match.

‘You can get up from the table if you like,’ his mother said.

‘Aye, we mu’n give you a hand with the washing-up, Mother,’ his father said.

‘Nay, I’d much prefer to do it on my own,’ she said, and added, ‘You could take Neville into the front room, Colin, if you like.’

‘Aye. I’ve lit a fire in theer,’ his father said.

Colin glanced at Stafford; having got up from the table he seemed uncertain where to turn; he’d grasped his chair as if to remove it from the table but, after glancing round, could see no other place to set it.

‘We’ll clear up in here,’ his father added. ‘It’s not the visitor’s job, tha knows, isn’t that.’

They went through to the other room. Despite the fire the air was cold. There was a smell of dampness in the room. Stafford glanced out to the street at the front.

‘I suppose, really,’ he said, ‘I ought to go. It’ll take me an hour to cycle back.’

He held the curtain, stooping to the glass, then, releasing the curtain, glanced round quickly at the room itself. Because of the curtains and the size of the window, and with no outer door to supplement the light, it was darker than the kitchen.

‘Where’s this place your mother mentioned?’

‘It’s not far away,’ he said. ‘It’s where those two hang out. The two that stopped us in the road.’

‘I don’t mind meeting them again.’ Stafford raised his head, gazing across, his eyes quite bright. ‘Shall we go down on the bike, or walk?’ he added.

‘We could walk down. There’s nowhere’, he added, ‘to leave the bike.’

He called out to his mother in the kitchen.

‘Don’t leave it too late for Neville getting back,’ she said, coming into the passage as he opened the door.

The cloud had thinned since the afternoon; a desultory light shone through the gaps. In the Dell the gas-works chimney was filtering out a stream of smoke, the cylinder of the storage tank sunk down, within its metal supports, almost to the ground.

Stafford had fashioned a stick from the hedge; he whipped it at the grass and the weeds at the side of the road, glancing round, his gestures those of someone who’d been to the place already: he was scarcely interested in where they were going.

The path wound off between the brick-built pens: it faded out amongst the swampland the other side.

Colin led the way between the reeds; on the site of the disused colliery figures were running to and fro between the trees, a dog barking, and from the direction of the road itself came the sound of a car engine as it started at the hill.

Birds flew off from the shrubs; the smell of the mud from the brackish pools replaced the smell of gas. Stafford walked along with a half-expectant air, startled, gazing at the banks of reeds, at the strange pools that opened out intermittently on either side. He grew self-absorbed, his shoulders hunched, Colin waiting for him at each of the difficult stretches. Finally, at the edge of the clearing, its chimney smoking, appeared Batty’s hut.

Stringer was standing at the door, his gun raised, aiming it vaguely in their direction.

‘I heard you, Tongey. Don’t come closer, then,’ he said.

‘Is that one of them, Colin?’ Stafford said.

‘It’s the one I hit on the nose,’ he said.

A smear of blood could be seen on Stringer’s face.

‘Is he likely to fire it?’ Stafford said.

Something ripped through the leaves above their heads.

Immediately, stooping, Stringer snapped the gun; he fumbled with the barrel, loaded it, straightened, then raised it quickly in their direction. He fired again.

‘We better get under cover,’ Stafford said.

He’d half-raised his arm to cover his face.

Stringer, re-loading the gun, had backed inside the hut. The shutters on the window closed. A moment later an arm reached out and the door, at the end of a piece of string, was pulled quickly to.

Stafford stood at the edge of the clearing uncertain whether to cross.

‘Is Lolly there, then?’ Colin called.

‘There’s a lot of us in here, Tongey,’ Stringer said. His voice came faintly from inside the door.

Colin crossed over to the wall of the hut. The gun, from inside the window, was fired again.

He waited for a moment in the shelter of the door; Stafford, across the clearing, was waving his arm.

‘Are you in there, Lolly?’ Colin said.

‘We’re all in here, Tongey,’ Stringer said.

He could hear the table being moved against the door; a chain began to rattle the other side. When he pressed against the door it yielded.

‘If you come in, Tongey,’ Stringer said, ‘I’ll fire.’

‘We only want to look,’ he said.

‘I mu’n fire if you come any farther,’ Stringer said.

Colin opened the door and glanced inside. The stove was lit. A candle burnt against the wall.

Stringer stood with his head stooped to the barrel of the gun.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Tonge,’ he said.

‘We only want to look,’ he said again, and added, ‘Lolly isn’t here. I thought he was.’

‘He’s coming. He’ll be coming any time. He’s bringing their kid down with him,’ Stringer said.

‘I should put the gun down,’ he said, and stepped inside.

He stood with his back to Stringer and felt the stove.

‘If Lolly’s coming,’ he said, ‘I’ll wait.’

He went to the door and waved to Stafford.

‘You can come in,’ he said. ‘It’s only Stringer.’

Stafford crossed slowly from the trees and looked inside.

‘I say, what a super place.’ He glanced at Stringer then quickly at the hut. ‘Is this where you cook stuff, then?’ He bent to the stove.

‘Lolly’ll be on to you,’ Stringer said. ‘If I let you go thy mu’n have a chance.’

Stafford, having examined the stove, glanced uneasily at the table behind the door, at the wooden chairs and cupboard, and finally once more at Stringer.

‘Do you want to stay, then?’ Colin said.

‘I don’t mind,’ Stafford said. He looked round him at the hut again.

‘He’s fetching their kid down, is Lolly,’ Stringer said.

He moved towards the door.

‘Let’s have a go with your gun, then,’ Stafford said.

‘You mu’n have a go: but it’ll be me who’s firing it,’ Stringer said. He raised it slowly to Stafford’s head.

Stafford stooped to the stove; he felt it with his hand.

‘You want to put more wood on,’ Colin said.

‘You mu’n not touch that wood, then,’ Stringer said.

Stafford lifted up a piece; he lifted the lid of the stove and dropped it in.

‘Tha mu’n not touch it,’ Stringer said.

Stafford crossed over to the cupboard door; it was secured by a lock and a metal bar: he pulled back the shutter on the window, gazing out.

‘I could bring a gun as well,’ he said. He gestured at Stringer. ‘It’s newer than that.’

‘Tha mu’n not come here again, then,’ Stringer said and turned quickly at a sound outside.

Batty was standing at the door; he had the stick in his hand that he’d had before.

‘Here, quick, Lolly, fetch thy kid, then,’ Stringer said. ‘Tongey’s here and that mate of his.’

Batty gazed in for a moment, then stepped inside.

‘Who gave you permission to come in here?’ He glanced at Colin and then, less certainly, at Stafford.

‘He forced his way in, Loll,’ Stringer said.

Colin sat down on one of the chairs.

‘We just came in to have a look,’ he said.

‘Tha mu’n have a look and go, then,’ Batty said.

He stood by the stove himself now, gazing round.

‘Tha mu’n go. Go on. Or I’ll chuck you out.’

Stafford went to the door; he passed Stringer, stooped to the doorway slightly, and stepped outside.

‘Go on,’ Batty said. ‘And thee an’ all.’

Colin got up from the chair.

‘And don’t come again. I’ve telled you now.’

Stringer laughed; he lifted the gun again and aimed it vaguely at Colin’s head.

He went outside; Stafford, the switch in his hand, was flicking at the mud around the hut; he glanced up at its roof, its metal chimney, and called to Batty, ‘It’s quite a good place you’ve got, you know.’

‘We mu’n keep it that way an’ all, then,’ Batty said. He stood in the doorway of the hut, the barrel of the air-gun poking out behind.

‘It’s a bit of a dump really,’ Stafford said as they came away. ‘What a terrible pong.’ He held out his arms, throwing the stick away, to keep his balance as they crossed the swamp. ‘I don’t know how they stand it. What a dump.’

Something clipped through the leaves above Colin’s head.

‘I suppose you don’t notice it after you’ve been here a while. I suppose you get used to it,’ he said. He led the way, holding back the bushes until Stafford caught him up.

They reached the road.

Stafford glanced up towards the village.

‘I ought to be getting back,’ he said. He scraped off the mud at the side of the road. ‘Honestly, what a pong.’

‘I suppose it’s a good place to build a den, though,’ Colin said.

Stafford shrugged.

‘When you come to our place I’ll show you mine. You don’t have to wade through all that mud.’

They walked up the road towards the village. The light, showing in odd patches of the sky, had begun to fade. Far away, across the plain, rain had begun to fall, a vague blurring in the sky that sloped at an angle towards the fields.

‘What time have you to be back home, then?’ Colin said.

‘Depends. They don’t usually mind if I’m late, though,’ Stafford said.

He scraped his shoes against the road, occasionally crossing to the verges and wiping the mud off against the grass.

‘Honestly, it really sticks on. You can’t get rid of it,’ he added.

A thin shower of rain began to fall; they began to run. Bletchley was standing at the door of Reagan’s house.

‘Hey, where’ve you been? You should have stayed with us,’ he said. Reagan, in his shirt-sleeves, was standing in the door. ‘We’re off back later, you know, tonight.’

‘Where?’ Stafford said. He raised his head.

Bletchley flicked his head as if he didn’t care to say the word. He glanced behind him at the passage, past Reagan’s figure, to the kitchen at the other end.

‘The Park. Do you want to come?’ He called out louder, ‘We might go up to church as well.’

Colin waited; Stafford had paused, uncertain; then, slowly, he came to the door.

‘I better be getting back, I suppose,’ he said.

The kitchen had been cleared when they went inside; his father was listening to the wireless. Stafford’s bike had been wheeled inside: it leant with his father’s against the sideboard. Steven was playing on the floor in front of the fire.

‘We brought your bike in. We thought it looked like rain,’ his father said.

‘Oh, there’s no need for that, Mr Saville,’ Stafford said. ‘It’s quite used, you know, to getting wet.’

He took out his clips, stooped down, and put them on.

‘You’re off now, then, Neville?’ his father said.

‘I think I’d better, Mr Saville,’ Stafford said.

He looked for his gloves which he’d left behind.

‘Gloves, gloves,’ his father said, opening a drawer and taking them out. ‘I put them in here, you see, in case one of this lot picked them up. You can’t keep ought in this house, tha knows, for long.’

He went to the stairs.

‘Ellen! Ellen. Neville’s leaving, then,’ he said.

‘I won’t be a minute,’ his mother called, faintly, half-whispering, from overhead.

‘She’s putting the baby to bed,’ his father said.

He took the bike from Stafford and wheeled it out.

‘Out of the front today,’ he said when Stafford, initially, had turned it to the yard.

He wheeled it down the passage, opened the front door, stooping, then half-carried it to the street beyond.

Stafford, his jacket fastened, his collar up, with one glove on and the other in his hand, followed him down the passage, turning then, his hand out, as his mother appeared at the foot of the stairs.

‘Goodbye, Mrs Saville. And thank you so much for giving me tea,’ he said.

‘It’s been a pleasure having you. I hope you’ll come again,’ his mother said.

‘Next time I might try the train, then,’ Stafford said.

‘A Saturday might be better,’ his mother said.

Steven followed them out to the street. Stafford mounted his bike. The thin rain now had strengthened.

‘Sithee: you’ll need your lights on soon,’ his father said.

Bletchley, still standing in Reagan’s door, had waved. Reagan appeared beside him after a moment, their two strangely contrasted figures pressed together.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ Stafford said and, stooping to the low handlebars, pushed off from the kerb.

Steven ran after him, waving, pausing finally some distance down the street and watching Stafford as he pedalled out of sight.

His mother had turned back inside the door; his father waited while Steven came back in.

‘Did yon enjoy himself?’ he said.

‘I think so,’ Colin said. ‘I can’t see why he shouldn’t.’

‘He’ll not be used, I suppose, to the likes of us.’

‘I can’t see why not,’ he said and shook his head.

‘I never knew he was a Stafford, then.’

‘Are they that more important, then?’ he said.

‘Nay, they’re the biggest family, tha knows, round here. You can ask your mother: her father worked for them. Years ago: afore we married.’

‘Oh, they’re an important family all right,’ his mother said. ‘Though I don’t suppose he’ll want to come down here again.’

‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.

‘Nay, lad: thy’s a lot to learn,’ his father said. ‘Though I like him well enough, mysen.’

He got his books and went upstairs.

He could hear them talking, as he worked, in the room below, his father’s voice half-wearied, slow, getting on his clothes for work, his mother’s querulous, half-complaining. He only went down, finally, when Steven came up to go to bed.

16

Miss Woodson sharpened her pencil slowly. The wastepaper basket into which she fed the shavings stood immediately by the fire, itself now a mass of smoking coke. No one in the classroom stirred; they watched the small, sharp blade of the penknife, which she’d removed moments before from her large black handbag, cut into the now sharply pointed piece of wood and waited while the last thin shaving had floated down into the large straw orifice below.

‘Two-thirds, expressed as a decimal, is what?’

Stephens, the boy with the misshapen back, had raised his hand. It was a speculative gesture: Miss Woodson, inevitably, would ask one of those whose hands were lowered.

‘Two-thirds expressed as a decimal.’

The large black eyes came up; the black, bushy eyebrows were slowly raised. The spectacles were hitched up, slowly, on to the broad, projecting platform of Miss Woodson’s nose.

Walker’s hand went up; the hands of almost the entire class, in a communal gesture, were raised as well.

‘I’m glad to see so many hands.’

The small, silvery-coloured blade was folded; the ivory-handled penknife was returned to the large black bag.

‘Two-thirds.’

The bag, having been placed on the desk top, was lowered on to the floor beside it. Miss Woodson’s figure, small, compact, surmounted by a crest of jet-black hair, sank down into the round-backed chair behind the desk itself.

‘Two-thirds.’

‘Miss, Miss!’ one or two had said.

‘Two-thirds.’

Her large eyes moved slowly along one side of the room, across the back, then returned along the opposite side until they came to rest on Stephens.

His eyes, fixed on hers, huge, startled, were suddenly lowered.

‘Stephens.’

‘Point…’ Stephens said, his hand still raised, almost pinned there, as if fastened to the wall itself.

‘Nought point, Stephens,’ she said, and paused.

‘Nought point,’ Stephens said, then added, ‘Six.’

‘Six.’ She glanced around, briefly; her gaze, finally, came back to Stephens. ‘Any advance on six?’

‘Miss, Miss!’ several of the boys had said.

‘Two-thirds expressed as a decimal, is what?’

She waited.

‘Walker?’

Walker’s hand, judiciously, had been lowered to a less conspicuous place behind his desk; nevertheless, his red nose, if nothing else, had caught Miss Woodson’s attention.

‘I don’t know, Miss,’ he said and shook his head.

‘Walker doesn’t know. I wonder,’ she added, ‘if the same is true…’, she paused, ‘of everyone else.’

‘Miss, Miss!’ nearly all the boys had said.

‘Saville.’

‘Nought point six, six’, he said, ‘recurring.’

‘Now, then,’ she said. ‘I hope we all heard that.’ The thick-framed glasses were slowly lowered. ‘Walker?’

‘Nought point six, six recurring,’ Walker said.

The arms were lowered.

‘And what would one-third be, expressed as a decimal, Walker?’

‘Point three, three recurring,’ Walker said.

‘And if I asked you to give me two-thirds of one pound, Walker, how much would you give me?’

‘Two-thirds, Miss?’ he said. His eyes expanded; the redness around his nose had deepened. A sudden agitated movement took place beneath his desk.

‘Two-thirds, Walker,’ Miss Woodson said.

‘Two-thirds of one pound would be…’ Walker said, his fingers entwined, working frantically together. ‘Two-thirds…’

‘Stephens.’

‘Yes, Miss?’

‘Don’t “Yes, Miss” me. Two-thirds of one pound, Stephens, in shillings and pence.’

Stephens’s head had begun to shake; a look of terror lit his features; even his hair had begun to tremble, his habitual stoop suddenly pronounced as if he intended to hide beneath the desk.

‘Miss, Miss,’ two or three boys had said.

Again, with a communal, self-protective gesture, nearly every hand in the class was raised.

‘Two-thirds of one pound, Stephens.’

Stephens’s eyes wandered slowly from Miss Woodson’s gaze to the door behind; from there they drifted helplessly across the wall until, half-way down the side of the class they came to the low, rectangular-shaped window which looked out to the basement wall of the drive. All that was visible, beyond the wire-netting shielding the window, was the ancient, eroded stonework of the wall itself.

‘Twelve shillings, roughly, Miss,’ he said.

‘Twelve shillings roughly, Stephens,’ Miss Woodson said. Her lips slid back; two rows of large, uneven teeth were suddenly revealed. ‘If twelve shillings represent two-thirds of a pound, what does the remainder represent?’ she said.

‘Miss, Miss,’ several boys had said.

‘Eight shillings, Miss Woodson,’ Stephens said.

His lips, too, had begun to tremble. Tears welled up around his eyes.

‘Represents, Stephens. Represents. If twelve shillings represents two-thirds, what does the remainder represent?’

‘One-third, Miss.’

‘And one-third, by your reckoning, is equivalent to eight shillings, Stephens. And that being so, what would three-thirds represent?’

‘Miss I’ several boys had said.

‘Twenty-four shillings,’ Stephens said.

‘And how many shillings are there in one pound, Stephens?’

‘Twenty shillings, Miss,’ he said.

‘How many shillings and pence are represented by two-thirds of a pound, then, Walker?’

‘Me, Miss?’ Walker said.

‘Don’t “Me, Miss?” me, Walker. Am I talking to the wall?’ she said. ‘Out with an answer before I thrash you.’

She got up slowly from the desk; she came down the aisle between the desks, gazing towards the window at the end of the room; it opened out directly to the field; a small, black dog crossed between the brick-built shelters.

‘I don’t know, Miss,’ Walker said.

‘Out to the front, Walker,’ Miss Woodson said.

Walker got up; his head held slightly to one side, he stepped carefully between Miss Woodson and his desk.

‘Stand facing the blackboard, Walker,’ Miss Woodson said.

He stood with his hands behind him, his legs astride.

‘Pick up the piece of chalk before you.’

Walker picked up the chalk from a wooden tray beneath the board.

‘Write down one pound on the blackboard, Walker.’

Walker wrote one pound, reaching over.

‘Now divide one pound, Walker,’ Miss Woodson said, ‘by three. Do it clearly. We all want to see your ignorance,’ she added.

‘Three into one won’t go, Miss,’ Walker said. He stood with his hand half-poised, the stick of white chalk clenched tightly in it.

‘Oh, dear. And what shall we do now, then, Walker?’ Miss Woodson said.

She’d taken up a position at the back of the room, gazing down to Walker and the blackboard at the opposite end.

‘Change it into shillings, Miss Woodson,’ Walker said.

‘Let’s see the machinations of your brilliant logic, Walker. Twenty shillings divided into three,’ she said.

‘Threes into twenty go six,’ Walker said. ‘With two left over.’

‘Two what, Walker? Legs, arms, feet?’

‘Shillings, Miss.’

‘And what do we divide those by, Walker?’ Miss Woodson said.

‘Change them into pence and divide by three, Miss,’ Walker said.

‘And the answer, according to this mathematical genius, then, is what?’

‘Eightpence, Miss.’

‘So, one-third of one pound is how much, Walker?’

‘Six shillings and eightpence, Miss Woodson,’ Walker said.

‘Go back to your desk, genius,’ Miss Woodson said.

She came slowly down the room again.

‘I want to see no hand down when I ask you this. Two-thirds of one pound is what, then, class?’

Everyone’s hand except Stephens went quickly up.

‘Two-thirds of one pound is what, then, Stephens?’

He was writing quickly, with his finger, on the top of the desk.

‘Are you washing that desk, Stephens?’ Miss Woodson said. ‘Or endeavouring in some way to improve its surface?’

‘No, Miss,’ Stephens said and shook his head.

Several boys had quickly laughed.

‘I shan’t give you another second, Stephens. Two-thirds of one pound: answer quick.’

‘Sixteen shillings and eightpence, Miss.’

Miss Woodson took off her glasses. With a sudden, uncharacteristic violence, she struck the desk with the flat of her hand. ‘What was that answer, Stephens?’ she said, gazing now into Stephens’s eyes.

The dark-haired boy had shaken his head. It was as if the two figures were preoccupied in some private conversation, stooped together, Stephens bowed, Miss Woodson bending, scarcely inches now between them.

‘Two-thirds of one pound is what, then, Stephens?’

‘I don’t know, Miss,’ Stephens said and once again he shook his head. His voice had faded off into a moan; he buried his head between his hands, banging it down against the desk.

For a moment Miss Woodson gazed down on to Stephens’s hair; then, with something of a groan herself, an ecstatic, choking wail, she slowly straightened.

‘What boy in this room does not know what two-thirds of one pound is?’ she said.

Every hand was raised.

‘Two-thirds of one pound,’ she said again, almost chanting out the phrase.

‘Miss! Miss!’ nearly everyone had said.

‘Well, Walker?’

‘Thirteen shillings and fourpence, Miss,’ he said.

‘Thirteen and fourpence,’ Miss Woodson said. ‘And what decimal of a pound is that?’

‘Nought point six, six recurring, Miss,’ he said.

‘And what decimal is six shillings and eightpence, then?’

‘Nought point three, three recurring,’ Walker said.

‘What is it, now, class, all together?’

‘Nought point three, three recurring,’ the class had said.

‘And what fraction of a pound is nought point three, three recurring, then?’

‘One-third of a pound, Miss Woodson,’ the class had said.

She sank down in her chair again. Stephens, his head between his hands, moaned quietly against his desk, his back, misshapen, thrust up, reproachtully, towards the class.

‘Does anyone know of an opening as a kitchen maid?’ Miss Woodson said.

‘Left, left. Left,’ Carter said. ‘Left, boy. Left. Left. Right up then, boy, against your cheek. You’re leaving yourself wide open.’

He crossed over with his right into Colin’s face.

‘Higher, higher. Up against your chin, boy,’ Carter said.

Having raised his glove to his chin he felt an even harder blow against his ribs; though not much taller than himself, Carter appeared, suddenly, to have acquired a longer reach: he felt a left from Carter against his face, another right beneath his ribs, and the next moment his back was against the rope and the room, or that aspect of it which he could see from a horizontal position, was revolving slowly above his head.

‘On your feet, Saville,’ Carter said. ‘You’re not hurt yet.’

Cold water was splashed down on to the top of his head; other figures, farther off, were dancing up and down, white-vested, with the large, brown-coloured, bulbous gloves at the ends of their arms. The gym-master half-lifted him beneath the rope then called over another boy and ducked back into the ring.

He sat on a bench at the side of the ring and waited for his turn again.

Carter wore the red trousers of a track-suit; on top he wore a vest. He was a small, almost daintily featured man, with doll-like eyes and a tiny nose; his hair was long and brushed smoothly back across his head, the end flapping up each time he swung a blow.

He was boxing with one of the senior boys, his left hand held straight out.

‘Don’t wait when you come in, Thompson,’ Carter said. ‘Come in with your left and, if you’re going to do nothing else, step out. Don’t hang around to see what’s going to happen.’

He demonstrated Thompson’s move again.

‘Let’s have young Saville in again,’ he said. ‘He can show you how not to do it, if nothing else.’

Colin climbed in beneath the rope.

He kneaded each glove against his palm. The master, having called the senior boys across, wiped his neck and arms on a towel; he wiped his face and chest. Finally he hung the towel across the rope: it ran round, a single strand, along the tops of the padded posts.

‘Watch my counter, Saville. It might come up; it might go down – I might counter with my left if it comes to that. Don’t do what Thompson does: bang one in then hang around.’

Colin took up his guard. Carter crouched down; he raised his head each time he intended to throw an instructional blow, but now, his forehead furrowed, he gazed keenly at him across his gloves: it was like fighting an ape, or a grizzled monkey, the thin face thrust menacingly down.

Colin struck out with his left hand and moved away; he struck out with his left again, both times failing even to make contact with Carter’s bobbing head. Each time he put out his hand that tiny head had slipped away; he put out his right, missed, then once again, measuring the distance, put out the left: something of a smile crossed Carter’s face.

Colin moved forward; he had some vague notion of keeping so close that, no matter how quickly Carter moved, he could muffle the blow. From one corner of the ring he drove him to another; from there he drove him to the next; he threw his left out continuously now, feeling it at one point crack comfortably against the master’s face, saw, briefly, his look of consternation, then, his own head bowed, his right hand tucked up against his cheek, bore in with his shoulder, releasing his right as he came in close. With his left he banged at Carter’s head. He stepped back, measured the distance to the master’s chin, pulled back his right and felt, almost simultaneously, a sharp, needle-like pain in the middle of his chest. A flicker of colour shot across his eyes; for a moment he wasn’t aware of anything at all, a vague redness, then a blueness, and a moment later he was gazing up at the metal, rivet-studded beams that crossed the ceiling.

‘The first rule of boxing’, Carter said, ‘is never to lose your head.’

Voices echoed from across the gym; there was the familiar rattle of the punch-bag against a metal frame. One or two figures outside the ring were leaping up and down. Perhaps, after all, they thought he’d slipped.

He got slowly to his feet. He felt a towel thrust into his hand, smelt its odour of dust and sweat and, when he finally looked up, saw Carter in the ring with one of the senior boys, parrying blows, calling, then parrying again.

‘You can get changed, then, Saville,’ the master said, casually, calling across his shoulder almost at the same moment as he spoke to the other boy.

He hung the towel on the rope, crossed the gym, and went into the changing-room beyond. A single light, shielded by wire-netting, shone down on the dusty floor.

Carter came in as he finished changing. The towel now he’d hung around his neck, his jet-black hair brushed freshly back: it lay like a textureless lacquer across the top of his head.

‘There’s no point in trying to get one over on me,’ he said. ‘I’m here to teach. I’m not paid to be, and I’ve no intention of becoming, a punch-bag. Do I make my meaning clear?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘Sir.’

‘You can brawl all you want in the field outside; you can brawl all you want, if it comes to that, at home. When you step inside that ring it’s with the purpose of learning something, not much, but a little bit about boxing. Do I make my meaning clear?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘If you fancy coming again I’d be glad to see you. If not, no hard feelings.’ He put out his hand.

After a moment’s hesitation Colin took it.

As he was leaving he glanced through the sliding doors into the interior of the gym; sunlight, diffused by the frosted glass, fell in a broad panel across the floor. Dancing in and out of the shadows were the white-vested figures of the senior boys, ducking, weaving, their breathing staccato, irregular, following him out to the gymnasium door.

It was early evening. The first offices had begun to empty, a thin trickle of figures moving down the narrow streets towards the city centre; there were odd groups of girls in the winter uniform of dark-blue skirts and white blouses, the dark-blue coats hanging almost to their ankles: now, instead of the straw hats, they wore berets. Groups of older boys from the school had joined them; they stood on the pavements around the city centre, in front of the windows of the large hotel, leaning against the walls, one leg hitched up, or feet astride, hands in pockets, their caps pushed carelessly to the backs of their heads.

The bus was full. He sat upstairs. The windows, all closed, had begun to steam up. Fields flew past; figures rose; others came up the narrow stairs beside him. When he reached the village he could scarcely stand.

The air was cold. The sun had gone. He walked through the narrow streets with a strange feeling of physical suspension.

‘The war’ll be over before another year is out. Don’t have any doubts of that,’ his father said.

He sat with Mr Reagan in the porch, their backs to the kitchen, the afternoon shadows spread out before them.

They’d sat there for an hour, Mr Reagan’s voice drifting in, faintly, to where Colin sat at the kitchen table; occasionally Mr Reagan glanced back to make some remark, half-laughing, nodding his head: ‘There’s an object lesson to us all: there’s a boy who’s not going to be fastened up for long. There’s a boy with prospects, Harry,’ his father laughing and glancing in, half-serious, to watch him at his work. ‘Go in the front room if you want to concentrate,’ he told him and Colin, glancing up, had shaken his head, reluctant at times like this, when his mother was out, as on this occasion, visiting her parents, to lock himself up in some room of the house.

‘Once it is over you’ll see things change,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘There’ll be none of this living like paupers, fastened up beneath a stone, scratting a living like a rat in a hole.’

‘Nay, I suppose things won’t change much,’ his father said, glancing into the kitchen once again, at the worn coverings on the floor, at the dilapidated furniture. ‘Things were hard enough afore the war, I don’t think they’ll get much easier after.’

A certain quietness had come over his father during the previous year; he no longer read the newspapers as avidly as before, nor silenced the family so vehemently to hear each bulletin on the wireless. It was as if some issue with which he was passionately concerned had been decided, and he was now looking round for other things to fight; as if the emotions which engaged him when he read a paper, or listened on the wireless to the account of a battle, of miles advanced, of enemy equipment taken, were looking for some other exploit, some other turmoil, to focus on. His main part-time duty now was that of warden; the house was the principal fire-point for the street: a pump, brass-coloured and with a wooden handle, was stored with a length of narrow hosepipe in the cupboard beneath the stairs. A large, decaying house, adjacent to the colliery yard, had been taken over as an air-raid post, two rooms made habitable, and groups of men worked shifts, making tea, sleeping there, or leaning up against the walls outside, smoking and gazing vacantly to the colliery yard, keeping a lookout whenever the sirens went. There were few raids now on the surrounding towns; one night two planes had bombed the town and Colin on his way to school the following morning had seen from the bus window a house with its outside walls peeled off standing amidst a pile of rubble.

‘There’ll be no more unemployment,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘It’ll not be like the last time. Officers selling laces: no jobs to go to, and no homes to go to, too.’

His braces showed whenever he leaned forward; he’d come without his jacket but on top of his waistcoat had put on a knitted cardigan. Small loops were attached to each end of the braces, the tops of his underpants showing underneath.

‘I can’t see as there’ll be much difference,’ his father said. ‘Those that had the money afore have still got it, and those that haven’t it are still without.’

‘Oh, there’ll be a big shake-up when this is over,’ Mr Reagan said. He was smoking a pipe, a recent acquisition, and the smell of it drifted into the back of the room. The films of smoke, like gossamer, hung in the air outside the door. ‘There’s been too many killed, and too many countries affected for it to be the same as it was before.’

‘Aye, I suppose we’ll see one or two improvements,’ his father said, sighing, and with no conviction in his voice at all.

There were steps across the yard.

Mrs Shaw came into view.

‘And what problems of the world have you been straightening out?’ she said. ‘What shape is it in now, after your cogitations?’

‘Oh, we’ve rounded it up, Mrs Shaw,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Taken off the edges.’

‘Nay, well, I didn’t know we had any,’ Mrs Shaw said.

‘You can be sure it’s in better shape, any road,’ his father said. ‘Two words from Reagan over any problem and you mu’n wonder where it wa’ afore he came.’

‘Oh, now, I don’t claim any great philosophical virtues, Harry,’ Mr Reagan said, standing to Mrs Shaw at first with something of a bow. The ends of his braces with their little white tapes had re-appeared. ‘I have but the general view of things, namely that things themselves are getting better.’

‘Well, they couldn’t get worse,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘Oh, now, what a doleful yard we have this evening,’ Mr Reagan said. Having offered his seat in the porch to Mrs Shaw, and having seen it gracefully refused, he sat down again, hitching up the knees of his pin-stripe trousers. ‘Spring on its way, if I’m not mistaken, when a young man’s fancy turns to love. And a young woman’s, too, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘I don’t notice any young men round here. Nor young women come to that,’ Mrs Shaw had said. She gave a scream which broke into a laugh. ‘And what do you think, Mrs Bletchley?’ she’d called across.

Mrs Bletchley’s voice came floating back.

‘Oh, I’d keep my distance from those two romancers, Mrs Shaw. Especially when they gang together.’

‘Now, would we gang together, ladies?’ Mr Reagan said. He’d risen from the step again, this time presumably to bow to Mrs Bletchley, who remained hidden beyond the angle of the door. ‘In the presence of two such charming members of the opposite sex would a man like myself, or a man like Mr Saville, think, even if we were overwhelmed entirely, of ganging up? Each man for himself in this world, Mrs Bletchley.’

‘Oh, now, just listen to him,’ Mrs Bletchley said, her voice, like Mrs Shaw’s, breaking into a scream and then, less violently, a laugh. ‘He’s got a tongue like a spoon of sugar. All sorts of things go past before you’ve even noticed. It’s a good job he lives two doors away, and not next door,’ she added, ‘or I think we’d have some trouble.’

‘Would I let a brick wall, let alone a window or a door, come between me and the ones that I admire, Mrs Bletchley?’ Mr Reagan said.

Both women had laughed again; a high-pitched wail came beseechingly from either side of the open door.

‘Just listen to the man,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘Oh, beauty can be admired from a distance, over any number of years, Mrs Bletchley,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘The most carefree of us have passions that it might astonish the closest of our friends to hear. Isn’t that so, Harry?’ Reagan added.

‘Nay, he mu’n have summat he never confesses to,’ his father said, glancing uneasily behind, as if this aspect of Mr Reagan’s neighbourly existence wasn’t one he was particularly anxious for Colin to hear.

‘Ah, what secrets the most inconspicuous of us harbour in our bosoms, Mrs Bletchley,’ Mr Reagan added, his large head turning casually from one side to the other, his thin neck reddening as if in measure of the feelings that the sight of these two women had suddenly inspired. ‘Might each one go about his labour, but he doesn’t at some point lift his head and glimpse in some distant door or window a head, a face, a pretty hand or ear, that catches a secret fancy, Mrs Bletchley. Who’s to say, now, whose pretty hand or whose pretty ear, whose face or figure, etcetera, is not the one to inspire him; and who’s to say who the person is who keeps such longings wrapped secretly up inside his bosom?’

‘More sugar, more sugar,’ Mrs Bletchley said, breaking into a laugh, if anything, even wilder.

‘If I were a few years younger I might very well be leaping yon wooden fence and giving your heart a little flutter,’ Mr Reagan said, half-rising from the steps.

‘Mr Reagan,’ Mrs Bletchley said, ‘it’s a good job Mr Shaw isn’t here or Mr Bletchley, now,’ she added.

‘Who’s to say what he might get up to if there wasn’t someone to keep an eye on him,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

The two women’s laughter came once more, alternately screeching, from either side of the open door.

‘If Mr Bletchley were here,’ Mr Reagan said, ‘wouldn’t I be the one to remind him of what a treasure he’s left behind. While he fights for King and Country, would I, now, be the one to make demands upon his wife.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you might do, if I gave you even half a chance,’ Mrs Bletchley said, her voice raised higher now beyond the door and fading off into another laugh.

‘Is that an invitation or merely a speculation, Mrs Bletchley?’ Mr Reagan asked. He stood up on the step, his arms poised as if he’d leap the fence from where he was standing.

‘Oh,’ Mrs Bletchley said and gave a screech, which was immediately echoed from the other side.

‘Restrain me, Harry. Restrain me,’ Mr Reagan said, putting his hand down now to his father’s shoulder. ‘But the woman’s a provocation, I haven’t a doubt.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Bletchley said again, her voice sounding farther from the door.

‘And would you barricade your door, now, Mrs Bletchley, with a handsome feller like meself without?’ Mr Reagan said, raising one leg in addition to one arm as if he were flying across the fence already.

Another screech of laughter came from the adjoining door, then the sound of Mrs McCormack’s voice calling from the other side.

‘It’s Mr Reagan up to his tricks, Mrs McCormack,’ Mrs Bletchley said. ‘Saying I won’t be safe,’ she added, ‘not even inside the house.’

Several words of advice were called from the other side and Mr Reagan, as if pacified, lowered his leg, lowered his arm and, though still leaning on his father, sat slowly down.

‘Outnumbered, three to one. Who am I to deny that women have the best of everything?’ he said.

A communal screech came up from across the yard.

‘And since when has a woman had the best of anything, Mr Reagan?’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘The best of anything?’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Why, there’s not one thing she doesn’t have the best of, Mrs Shaw,’ he added. ‘The best of us’, he tapped his chest, ‘in the prime of life. The best of our wages on a Friday night. The best part of the day entirely to themselves, feet up on a cushion, a box of chocolates by their side. What woman would you find, now, down a mine? And what woman would you find up at the front line, defending her country?’

‘You’re a one to talk,’ Mrs Bletchley said. ‘A fine office to go to every morning, with a coal fire burning in the hearth, and the nearest line you’ve ever been near is the one where Mrs Reagan hangs her washing.’

‘To God, but did a man ever get the better of a woman?’ Mr Reagan said. His hand still clutched to his father’s shoulder he glanced into the kitchen behind. ‘Take notice of these Valkyries, boy,’ he added. ‘Witches. Every one.’

‘Oh, we’ll witch you all right, don’t worry,’ Mrs Bletchley said. ‘With his airs and graces, and his carnation buttonhole.’

‘To God, but they’re at me every side,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘We better retire to the kitchen,’ he added. ‘But a man can’t find a drop of peace once he steps outside his house.’

‘Nor a lady, either, once she finds you and that other gigolo around,’ Mrs Bletchley said, screeching with laughter.

‘To God, Harry, but they’re after you too,’ Mr Reagan said, getting up quickly as if, suddenly, it had begun to rain. He rarely, if ever, came inside the house, and now, instead of stepping into the door, he pulled down his waistcoat and woollen cardigan more securely and, with a discreet bow, first in the direction of Mrs Bletchley, then Mrs Shaw, retreated, still bowing, across the yard.

‘He’s a great gabbler, is Reagan,’ his father said, getting up slowly and coming inside the door. ‘If he could work half as hard as he talked he’d be a rich man now, not sitting on a doorstep and filling in his time.’

He went to the fire and put on the kettle. His face was still flushed, however, from the conversation on the step outside. He folded a piece of paper and reached into the fire, drawing his head away quickly then lighting a cigarette.

‘Though Mrs Bletchley when she has a mind can match him. It’s best not to listen to half the things they say,’ he added.

It was as if in some way he’d been put out by the flow of Mr Reagan’s conversation, secretly elated yet anxious not to show it.

‘Your mother hasn’t much time for it,’ he added. ‘I can tell you that,’ as if the conversation might, if he wasn’t careful, be reported back. ‘They’ve a tongue at times where their brain belongs.’

He stood aimlessly for a moment beside the table, gazing at the books. He turned to the fire.

‘Dost set much store by living here?’ he said. He stood with one hand raised to the mantelpiece, glancing round when he didn’t answer. The kettle, set against the flames, had begun to simmer.

‘Living in this house?’ he said.

‘This house. This village. I thought we might move out,’ he said.

‘Where would we move to?’ he said.

‘Nay, I’ve no idea.’ He shook his head. It was as if the conversation at the door had roused him to the thought. ‘Away from here, at any road,’ he said.

‘We couldn’t move far, in any case,’ he said. ‘You’d have your work to go to still.’

‘Nay, I mu’n give that up, an’ all.’

‘What sort of job could you get?’ he said.

‘Nay, not much, I suppose.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m only good for shovelling. That’s the sum total of my life,’ he added.

He went to the sink, emptied the tea-pot, rinsed it beneath the tap, then took it to the kettle.

‘We mu’n move into town, or summat like that. You’d be nearer school, for a start.’ He crouched by the fire, poured water from the kettle into the pot, took it to the sink and rinsed it out.

He put in the tea. He waited then for the kettle to boil.

‘Just think on it, any road,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do ought if you mu’n think it wrong. I’ve mentioned it to your mother, but she’s no idea. She’s one for sticking in a place,’ and a few moments later, as if summoned to the room by his father’s thought, his mother’s step came from the yard outside.

‘Well,’ she said, looking in, pale-faced, the baby in her arms, Steven dragging at her coat, ‘what have you two been up to, then?’

They lay, like two stone effigies, on either side of the double bed. The bed itself, with its metal bars at either end and its large brass-coloured balls on each of the bedposts, stood in the curtained-off alcove in the corner of the room. The curtain itself, on its wooden rail, had been drawn aside; a slow, stentorian breathing, like the gasping of an engine, filled the room.

Their heads were small, shrunken against the bulk of the single pillow; he remembered seeing them before, his grandmother’s red, cherubic face, her small, short-fingered hands and stubby nails, and his grandfather’s long, angular frame, with its dark, melancholic eyes and seemingly disjointed limbs. Nothing joined them now but the single bolster beneath their heads, and the patchwork cover which gave scarcely any indication of their figures underneath; their skin was yellow their mouths open, their eyelids bulbous, their cheeks drawn in.

‘They’re sleeping now,’ his mother said, standing at the foot of the bed, as if some long-drawn-out battle had been fought before his arrival. He’d come down directly to the place from school, travelling on unfamiliar buses, in response to some wish of his mother’s that he should see his grandparents before they died. He hardly connected them with anything living; there was something vague, inanimate, past recognition in their faces now: almost ghostly, the colour of their skin glowed eerily, like paper, from the shadows of the room. He saw the strange stoop of his mother’s shoulders, a weariness verging on regret, nearer bewilderment he would have guessed; she gazed at the two heads as she might have examined some mysterious object inside a box, puzzling, uncertain, prompting her to some memory she couldn’t recall. ‘At least it’s something’, she added, ‘that they’ll go together. My sister’s coming in an hour, then we can both go home.’

A bucket of water stood by the hearth; in the top of it floated a wooden scrubbing-brush. The carpet had been rolled up in front of the fire and the stone floor between there and the door opening to the yard scrubbed clean. There was a smell of soap in the room, overlain by the musty, almost stifling odour which came from the bed. One of the curtains had been drawn across leaving a faint strip of light to fall through the remaining single pane on to the chair where his grandmother in the past had usually sat and on to the sofa with its leaking horsehair at the back of the room where silently, smoking his pipe, his grandfather normally reclined.

‘They haven’t eaten anything all day,’ his mother said, still gazing at the figures as if some huge puzzle in her life were suddenly complete, all the pieces drawn together, yet leaving her more confused than ever. Her hands were red from scrubbing, her arms bare, the sleeves of her dress, which came down to just above her elbow, damp. She wore an apron which she’d brought, strangely unfamiliar in these surroundings. There was a certain helplessness about her which he’d never seen before: even as he watched she began to weep, drawing a handkerchief from the pocket of her apron. She wiped her eyes, lifting her glasses. ‘They’ve had a terrible life, they have. They’ve never had anything,’ she added. ‘And I’ve brought them nothing else but worry.’

She waited for some comment of his own; he gazed back to the bed. Nothing but horror filled him now, the strange, seemingly identical heads, like the two heads of a single body, united by the bolster, by the strange, waving symmetry of the patchwork quilt.

‘They’d have liked to have seen so much more of you, Colin,’ she said, speaking now on their behalf; while all he remembered were the strange, half-querulous looks. ‘They were so proud of the scholarship,’ she added, gazing at the heads as though at any moment one of them might rise, confirm it, peeling back those bulbous lids, peer at him a moment and then, with a cry of approval or acclamation, sink back down to that slow, irregular, stentorian breathing. It was as if there were some blockage in their throats; as if, beneath the patchwork cover, some hand invisibly had gripped their bodies and were pressing out their life.

‘Poor mother,’ his mother said, and he, thinking it so strange to hear his mother refer to some mother of her own, had glanced at her again.

A red flush, slowly, had spread across her face; her eyes, distended, glistened with tears, glancing down in turn at him almost as if, now, she were expecting him to protect her from the figures on the bed.

‘Well, then, we can’t go on like this,’ she said. She wiped her eyes on her handkerchief again. ‘Would you like something to eat?’ she added, almost casually, as if he’d just come into the room at home. She turned to the gas ring beside the fire.

‘No,’ he said. He shook his head.

‘Have you had something to eat?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said again.

It was some aspect of his mother’s life he no longer wished to see. He watched her then as she finished the scrubbing, the torn stockings, the torn dress, and the inflamed, seemingly blistered arms, the hands covered in soap, the slow, angular motion of the brush across the floor.

‘Shall I finish it, Mother?’ he said.

‘Nay,’ she said. ‘You’ve got your school-clothes on.’

He sat on an upright chair beside the door. His mother drew the curtain in the corner: only a faint, muffled panting now was audible behind it. The ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece began once again to dominate the room.

For a while his mother forgot him; he watched her back, its round, amorphous shape, her stooped head, and saw, as she knelt across the room, that the soles of her shoes were worn through to the welts beneath. In the middle of each hole he could see the darkness where the hole went through to the foot.

A fresh weariness, then, had flooded through the room; his one thought now was to get up and leave, to take his mother with him, and never come back. Beyond the curtain, that breathing would go on for ever, an element of the room as integral as the ticking of the clock, the crackle of the fire, the slow swirling of the brush as it spread the white suds across the floor.

‘Shall I go for a walk?’ he said.

‘What, love?’ His mother glanced back, startled, as if surprised to find him there.

‘I thought I’d go for a walk,’ he said.

‘Nay, love, you’ve only just come.’ He could see the appeal in her face, whether he’d only just come or not, not to leave her in the room alone.

‘I just wondered if you wanted me out. I mean, while you were washing the floor,’ he added.

‘Nay, love, I’ve washed that part of it,’ she said. She turned back to the scrubbing, then, a moment later, glanced back at him again. It was like someone gazing down a road; there was even the look of a girl about her, reluctant, half-ashamed. ‘They’ve had a hard life,’ she added, her eyes flooding once again with tears. ‘You can’t imagine how hard life could be in those days.’

He glanced down from the tear-streaked face to his mother’s worn-out shoes, her torn stockings, the frayed edges of her dress. It was like some child now, a sister, making some last appeal, some desperate demand before it disappeared.

‘He was out of work for nearly three years. We had hardly anything to live on. He could have done so much if he’d had a chance. As it was, it never came. It’s not like nowadays, love,’ she added. ‘If you have anything about you now there’ll always be someone who’ll be glad to take you. In those days nobody wanted you, no matter how hard you were prepared to work.’

She turned away; he could hear her sobbing: her grief echoed the dull breathing from the alcove, and the sharp ticking of the clock.

He gazed beyond her head to the tall rectangular pictures on the wall above the horsehair sofa: cows standing knee-deep at the edge of a river with purplish mountains, topped with snow; a cottage with a thatched roof standing amidst a sea of flowers, the branches of an oak flung out in a bulbous angularity above.

She went back to the scrubbing; it was like some childhood task, the slow drawing of the brush across the floor, the dull moaning, half-resentful, sobbing, a grief he’d never heard before, melancholic, resigned, prompted by some discontent that could never be appeased. It was a strange, unknown figure now that knelt before him, someone in a passage, anonymous, caught up in a task he couldn’t understand.

His aunt came later. He scarcely knew her; he’d visited her home on one occasion, years before, a tiny terrace house in some back street of a town, and had met her with his mother in this same room when his grandparents were, seemingly, both well. She was built more stoutly than his mother, her hair already grey, her face chubbier, the features more pronounced: unaffected by the two figures lying on the bed, she pulled back the curtain, gazing in like someone who had been called in to clean the house; she set a shopping-bag down on the narrow table, put a kettle on the fire and began generally to tidy up the room, straightening the furniture and the carpet which his mother had disturbed.

‘And how’s your school? Are they teaching you to be a professor or what?’ she said. ‘Just look at his cap. And sithee, Ellen, just look at his blazer. Anybody would think he was at a university already.’ She scarcely glanced in his direction, taking note of his appearance out of the corner of her eye, disappearing at one point into the alcove, where he could hear the cover of the bed drawn back, a faint sigh, and a certain grunting and groaning before she re-emerged, a sheet beneath her arm. ‘Are those his books? Just look at his satchel. If our Eric or Gordon were here they’d be green with envy. They hardly see a book from what I can make out from one day to the next.’ She went on talking from the yard outside, taking out the sheet, re-appearing, a bucket in her hand. ‘You’ve scrubbed the floor, then? That’ll save some trouble. I was wondering when I’d get to that. Though they’ll both be left, of course, next year. Be factory fodder for a year then in the forces. You can’t expect much, I suppose. They’ve never put their backs into anything,’ she added.

His mother sat on a chair. At his aunt’s appearance inside the door she’d picked up her coat, about to leave, looking for her bag, then finally sitting down, the bag by her feet, her coat pulled on but still unbuttoned, gazing abstractedly through the uncurtained half of the tiny window. His aunt, unaware of the atmosphere, had pulled back the half-drawn curtain and let in something of the evening light.

‘We better go for the bus,’ his mother said, yet continuing to sit, round-shouldered, on the straight-backed chair. She was turned sideways to the table, her face in profile, one arm on the table, gazing, now the curtain had been drawn, at the fireplace and the fire.

‘Won’t you have some tea before you go, then, Ellen?’ his aunt had said. She didn’t wait for an answer; she didn’t even glance up to ask the question, her broad figure disappearing once again inside the alcove from where a moment later came another, deeper sigh and a further series of grunts and groans.

His mother, startled, had suddenly turned round.

‘Here, I’ll help you, love,’ she said.

She disappeared beyond the curtain, drawing it to behind her. The springs creaked on the double bed and briefly it seemed the bed itself was moved; he could hear the heavy breathing from his aunt, his mother’s fainter gasps, and the interrupted, slower breathing of the two figures on the bed.

‘There, then,’ his aunt said, re-appearing. ‘Though the sooner they take them off the better. Nobody can nurse them properly in a house like this.’

‘Will you be all right on your own?’ his mother said, faintly, coming out from behind the curtain. ‘Would you like us to stay a little longer?’

‘Oh, our Reg and David’ll be dropping in later,’ his aunt had said. ‘You get off now, while you have the chance.’

His mother picked up her bag again; she buttoned up her coat. She looked round, helplessly, at the tiny room, thought of going to the alcove once again, then said, ‘Well, I’ll get off, Madge, if that’s all right’

‘You get off,’ his aunt had said. ‘They’ll be all right. Tough as old boots, you know, are yon.’

His mother nodded; she bowed her head briefly as she reached the door, wiped her eyes with her handkerchief, blew her nose, then, thrusting her handkerchief in her pocket, took Colin’s hand.

‘Well, then, are you ready, love?’ she said.

His aunt appeared to be unaware, however, that either of them were leaving: she was stooping to the fire, still talking, poking hot cinders around the kettle, gasping at the heat, then straightening, looking round. ‘Oh, you’re off, then?’ she said as she saw them at the door. ‘You’ll be calling in when, then, Ellen?’ she added.

‘I’ll come in tomorrow,’ his mother said. ‘It’ll be the morning, when Steven’s gone to school.’

‘And how is Steven?’ his aunt had said as if anxious now to waylay his mother, coming out to the step, wiping her hands on her apron and calling, ‘If you could bring in some tea, love, it’d be a help,’ merely nodding her head at his mother’s answer.

‘She’s so upset, but determined not to show it,’ his mother said, her eyes glistening again as they left the house. ‘She’s always looked after them, you know, and given them money when they were both without. And she’s never had much herself,’ she added.

They walked through the other rows of houses to catch the bus, his mother still talking, not listening to the answers to any of her questions, her hand, however, clenched tightly round his own, and still gripping it when finally, some time later, they reached the bus.

It was growing dark; they sat downstairs. Fields faded off into the shadows either side; once clear of his grandparents’ village; however, his mother grew silent. She sat with her bag on her knee, gazing out, past the driver’s figure, to the faint outline of the road ahead. Only when the village came into sight did she suddenly say, ‘Well, then, I don’t think you’ll ever see them again,’ and added, ‘And neither will I, much more, if God is kind,’ taking his hand again as they left the bus and not releasing it, nor even slackening her grip, until they reached the house.