Saville

17

‘“And in the summer,”’ Mr Platt read aloud, ‘“when bees haunt flowers, and birds the hedges; when scents and blossoms have been distilled into one heady draught for the reeling senses; then doth my heart shake off the winter’s tale of woe and drudgery, and broken pledges, and take on the summer’s glow of health and smiles.”’

He put the examination paper down, looking up over the top of his glasses. His eyes moved slowly along the desks until they came to Stephens’s, then, with a sullen rage, they moved to Colin’s.

‘And what is an examiner supposed to make of this, then, Saville? “Discuss the imagery of the poem below”, and all I can find on your paper is a turgid, unrhythmical and, if I may say so, singularly inept poem of your own construction, entitled…’, he glanced quickly at the sheet again, ‘“Composed in 4uB classroom while gazing out of the window during the Easter examination.”’ He looked round him slowly at the rest of the class. ‘I can see no sign of any discussion, nor can I trace any reference to the poem in question, unless I take your own creation to be a crude and, in this context, I might add, insulting parody of its finer points. Wordsworth wrote poetry, and if he, in some idle moment, and on the margin of his examination paper, had given me his rendering of “I wandered lonely as a cloud”, I wouldn’t, I venture to suggest, have been altogether displeased. Providing he had kept it to the margin; and providing that he’d answered the question put to him in full. People with a minor talent, or, in this instance, no talent whatsoever, would do better to admire their betters, simply, straightforwardly, and without equivocation, rather than attempt to imitate their creations by constructing verses of an unspeakable banality of their own.’ He looked at the sheet again. ‘“C. Saville”. You might as well have written W. Shakespeare for all the good it’s going to do you.’ A murmur of laughter ran faintly round the room. ‘Dost think, Bard Colin, that membership of the rugger team entitlest thou to indulgences of this sort?’

The class broke into laughter.

‘Dost answer, Master Saville? Hearest thou the question, lad?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said and nodded his head.

‘The eloquent fluctions of his heart are stilled. Sno’ed o’er by the pale cast of thought. Dost think it’s a masterpiece, then, young Saville?’

‘No sir,’ he said. He shook his head.

‘May’st we, thy humble admirers, scattered round, take this, thy creation, as a suitable text on which to vent our appreciation, then?’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said. He nodded his head.

‘“And in the summer,”’ he read again, ‘“when bees haunt flowers.” Do bees haunt flowers in summer, Walker?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Walker said, then added, ‘No, sir.’

‘They might invade flowers. They might pollinate flowers, Walker. They might enter flowers, Stephens. They might visit flowers. They might hover over flowers or descend towards them; I sincerely doubt that bees could be said, in all their stinging reality, actually to haunt.’ He replaced his glasses, glanced at the paper, and, reading once again, added, ‘“When scents and blossoms have been distilled into one heady draught for the reeling senses.” My goodness, Bard Colin, you’ll have the breweries after thee if they hear on this. Whence brew’st thou this heady concoction, lad, and more important, hast thou a licence?’

The boys leaned back in their desks to laugh; several at the front turned round; those adjacent to him glanced across, while the expressions of those behind he could readily imagine.

The windows of the room were open; the feet of figures passing in the drive had paused and, from the top of the stone retaining wall, small, inverted heads peered down.

‘“The winter’s tale of woe and drudgery, and broken pledges.” Dare’st we assume, Bard Colin, a broken heart? Dare’st we assume some dalliance with the opposite sex from which thou emergest a little wiser?’ He glanced round at the class again, adjusted his glasses and, peering down at the sheet, he added, ‘“A summer’s glow of health and smiles.” Indeed, now, we’ve something here to look forward to. That dark and rather sombre expression, habitually worn by our deep-feeling friend, is, if I read his promise rightly, going to be lightened over the summer months by a brighter complexion and even, he actually threatens us, with a smile.’

The laughter, suddenly, had broken out again; other, larger heads peered down from the top of the window; one or two boys had banged their desks.

Mr Platt put down the paper.

‘As you see, Saville, when I give the papers out, your mark is considerably lower than it might have been had you answered the question with a reasonable degree of modesty and care, not to mention’, he added, ‘with some intelligence.’

He began to give the papers out. They were passed from hand to hand across the desks, or, if the boys were sufficiently near, handed impatiently across a ducking row of heads.

‘Patterson, Jackson, Swale, Bembridge, Berresford, Clarke… Saville.’

The paper was handed back along the row of desks; at each one it was glanced at, briefly examined, then, with a ducking motion, handed on.

‘Rothery, Gill, Fenchurch, Madely, Kent.’

A faint murmur had erupted round the room; the papers were examined, turned over, examined again. He saw his own mark, the red line drawn down the page at the side of the poem, the corrections made to the other questions, then he put the paper down and folded his arms.

Mr Platt had waited for several seconds; the last of the papers gone he sat down behind the desk, tapping his teeth, thoughtfully, with a piece of chalk. ‘Some of us may be bad poets, but even more of you’, he added, ‘are chronic spellers.’

Colin pressed his arms in against his chest; other phrases were read out from other papers, figures standing uncertainly then sinking down; words were scrawled across the blackboard.

‘Coming back to you,’ Platt said, and added, calling, ‘Art ’ware I’m talking to thee, lad?’

A burst of laughter rose quickly from the class.

‘How spellst thou comprehensive, Bard?’

He stood up, mechanically, to a second burst of laughter; he heard the question repeated and began to spell it slowly, getting lost finally in the middle of the word, and sitting down when Platt had called, ‘Gill Gill, as a mere mathematician, can you spell it for him?’

The letters came down, quickly, from the back of the class.

‘Dost yon muse visit thee, then, Bard; in class, I mean, as well as out?’

He got up slowly from his seat again.

‘For homework, Bard, wouldst thou answer the question thou refrainest from answering in the examination, and bring it to me for marking tomorrow morn. Hast thou that clear within thine head?’

‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘Sir.’

‘Not in rhymed couplets, blank verse, or any variation of the same, I would ask thee, Bard. But in simple English prose for which thou wast requested in the first place, lad.’

‘Yes,’ he said again and, after waiting to see if any other demand were forthcoming, sank down in his seat again.

‘Methinks I hear the bell, summoning me to my morning cup of coffee, lads.’ Platt raised a small, thick hand to one of his ears as the bell clanged out, distantly, in the corridor above. ‘Methinks it summoneth thee to break, and Saville in particular to some clandestine meeting with his muse, perchance in the cloisters, lads, or, verily, in the field itself. Dost hear, then, Bard? Or has the light of common day, the everyday demands of English Lit., driven it to some dark and dingy hole from which thou and thou alone willst rescueth it?’

Colin got up from his desk as the other boys rose. The laughter, which had died down earlier, had risen again.

‘Inclineth thine ear to what thy masters tell thee, lad,’ Platt said as, his books beneath his arm, he moved over to the door. ‘Remembereth they liveth many more years than thou, and no doubt strove mightily in their youth to emulate the Bard. Nevertheless, they end up, twenty years later, behind a classroom desk which, Fate being all-provident, they might have arrived at quicker if they hadn’t have wasted their time writing imitations the like of which we have heard today. Verily, verily…’ He held up his hand, stopping the crowd of boys inside the door. ‘Thy master hath spoken, lads: pin back thy lug-holes, then, and hear.’

Colin wandered out to the cloisters, got his bottle of milk, and stood against the wall; masters passed through, either singly or in groups, to the dining-room where they had their coffee. Gannen went past, his gown pulled tightly round his waist, Miss Woodson, short-sighted, tugging at her glasses, Hodges, stroking down his hair which stood up in two white fangs at the back.

‘They always pick on somebody,’ Stephens said. His back stooping more pronouncedly as he drank from his bottle, he came to stand beside him at the wall.

‘I suppose if they don’t, there’s not much left to teach,’ he said, finishing his milk and moving to the crates. ‘I suppose it makes it entertaining.’

‘Entertaining for some,’ Stephens said and left his milk unfinished. He followed him out to the field. Figures ran past and for a moment dragged Stephens with them. ‘I thought it sounded pretty good, in any case,’ he added as he caught him up. ‘Better than anything Platt could do.’

‘Yes,’ he said, standing at the edge of one of the spaces cleared for a football match. Figures in shirt-sleeves darted to and fro between the piled-up jackets.

‘Have you written any more, then?’ Stephens said.

‘No,’ he said and shook his head.

‘I suppose he gave you a low mark as well,’ he added.

‘Pretty low,’ he said.

‘Would you like to buy a fountain-pen? I can let you have one cheap, then,’ Stephens said.

He drew open his jacket and showed him the tops of several pens clipped to his inside pocket.

‘They’re worth two or three pounds in a shop,’ he said.

‘Where did you get them from?’ he said.

‘In town,’ Stephens said. ‘I’ll let you have this big ’un, if you like,’ he added. ‘You can write any number of poems with that.’

‘I’ve already got a pen,’ he said.

‘It won’t hold as much as this. And it won’t have as good a nib, either.’ Stephens shielded the row of pens inside his coat, drawing the large one out, then unscrewing the cap.

‘I’ll make do with the one I’ve got,’ he said.

He turned back slowly towards the school.

‘I can let you have it for five bob. Four bob. Three and sixpence,’ Stephens said.

‘I’ve no money, in any case,’ he said.

‘You could pay a bit each week. It’ll soon add up, don’t worry,’ Stephens said, and added, ‘If you come with me, we could start nicking them together. It’s easier with two than it is with one.’

Walker ran past, then Gill: a tall, thin boy with spectacles, his legs were thrust out at an angle on either side as he ran, in a manner reminiscent of Batty.

‘Two are more easily caught than one,’ he said, watching Stephens now as he put the pen back inside his jacket.

‘Not the way I do it,’ Stephens said, glancing up, sideways, and beginning to smile. Tiny, wedge-shaped teeth showed between his lips. ‘Come down at dinner-time and I can easily show you.’

‘Nay, I’ll leave it all to you,’ he said, and laughed, moving back towards the cloisters.

‘Any time you want ought special, just let me know, then,’ Stephens said. ‘But don’t let on to any of the others. I’m only doing it as a favour.’

He crossed the yard, re-entered the cloisters, walked down their ill-lit interior and entered the classroom. The fire which heated the room was going out; he put on more coke and sat at his desk, took his paper out again and began to read it. ‘And in the summer, when bees haunt flowers, and birds the hedges; when scents and blossoms have been distilled into one heady draught for the reeling senses; then doth my heart shake off the winter’s tale of woe and drudgery, and broken pledges, and take on the summer’s glow of health and smiles.’

He crossed out ‘doth’ and wrote in ‘does’, and began to read it through again more slowly.

Stafford swung his bag beneath his arm, leaning up against the window in which his figure and those of the two girls he was talking to were clearly reflected. Traffic passed slowly across the city centre, building up towards the evening rush. Other groups stood around outside the shops and across the front of the large hotel: boys in blazers and the familiar caps, girls with the dark-blue coats, ending just above their ankles, and the small, dark-blue berets.

‘You know Audrey, don’t you?’ Stafford said. ‘She saw you at the farm where you worked last summer.’ He indicated the taller of the two girls, slim, fair-haired, her red-cheeked face familiar now that Stafford had pointed her out. ‘It’s her old man’s farm,’ he added, and began to laugh, turning to the other girl, who, dark haired, with dark eyes and a high-bridged nose, had, after glancing at Colin, begun to laugh as well. ‘This is Marion,’ Stafford added, leaning up more securely now against the window, and burying both hands inside his pockets.

‘He said he worked well,’ the tall girl said, easing the strap of her satchel across her shoulder. ‘He worked as hard as a man,’ she added, at which, his head bowed, Stafford laughed again.

‘He is a man,’ he said to the other girl and all three of them began to laugh, more quickly, half-nervous, glancing at Colin to laugh as well.

‘Is Jack still there?’ he said. ‘And the man with the bow-legs?’

‘Oh, Gordon’s still there,’ she said. ‘He’s been there for years. And Tom’s still there. But the other one’s gone. He went down the pit, I think,’ she added.

‘Oh, Colin knows something about that, too,’ Stafford said. ‘He’s a great one for work, and knowing all about it.’

‘Has the football season finished, then?’ the dark-haired girl said, swinging away reflectively, to glance at the other groups along the pavement.

‘Over and done with,’ Stafford said, kicking against the stone covering beneath the window. ‘We’d been expecting you up to watch, but we never had any fair admirers. If we’d had there’s no knowing what we might have done,’ he added.

‘We only watch the First Team,’ the dark-haired girl said, beginning to giggle and glancing once again, speculatively, towards the other groups. ‘I think Swallow’s got terrific hair,’ she added. ‘And Audrey’s really keen on Smith.’

‘Major or Minor?’ Stafford said.

‘Major, of course.’ The dark-haired girl laughed, nudging Audrey, who, flushing deeper, began to laugh as well.

‘I’ll have to be going,’ Colin said. ‘The bus goes in a few minutes and there isn’t another for nearly an hour.’

‘Do you go home on the bus?’ the dark-haired girl said. ‘It’s so much quicker by train. You don’t have to wait in all those queues.’

‘And we have good fun in the carriages. There aren’t any corridors,’ Stafford said. ‘Once in, you see, they can’t get out.’

The dark-haired girl laughed again.

‘They’ll be reporting Stafford, one day. Just you mark my words,’ she said, swinging back her satchel.

‘There’re any amount of tunnels, and you can take out all the light-bulbs,’ Stafford said.

The light-haired girl had flushed. She glanced at Colin then, vacantly, gazed off across the road.

‘Brenda was going to report you, in any case,’ the dark-haired girl said. ‘Her skirt was torn when she got to school, and Miss Wilkinson sent her from the room to sew it up.’ She pushed back her hair, taking her beret off and flicking her head, the dark hair swaying out behind. ‘I wish Swallow travelled on our train. We’d have a super time,’ she added.

‘You’re too young for Swallow,’ Stafford said.

‘I’m not too young for anybody, darling,’ the girl said and glanced back up the road with another smile.

‘Why don’t you come through on Saturday, Colin?’ Stafford said. ‘There’s a train through your place at one o’clock. Ask for Swinnerton Junction: I can meet you there.’

‘All right,’ he said. He bowed his head, hitched up his satchel, and started off across the road.

‘Goodbye, handsome,’ the dark-haired girl said and, as he reached the other side, he saw that all three of them were laughing, the fair-haired girl still gazing across, the shorter, dark-haired girl reaching up to grasp Stafford’s shoulder and talking earnestly, half-smiling, into his seemingly indifferent face.

Hedged fields gave way to woodland, then a cutting, with large, orange-coloured rocks jutting down towards the carriage.

A moment later the train drew into a station, a single wooden hut with seats, standing in the centre of a wooden platform.

Colin got down; a woman with a baby, who’d been sitting in the wooden hut, got into the carriage and closed the door. A man with a barrow, weeding a garden at the side of the station, took his ticket.

He set off up a track leading to a fenced-off road that skirted the top of a hill. An old cart stood propped up on wooden boxes in the station yard; a dismembered lorry, wheelless, its engine removed as well as its bonnet, stood mouldering amidst a bed of weeds. From somewhere along the line came the sound of a whistle and immediately ahead, at the top of the track, a man on horseback appeared, riding along the edge of the road. A wooden gate, leaning from its hinges, its bars intertwined with grass and weeds, divided the track from the road itself.

A figure on a bike was pedalling slowly up the hill, its head bowed, its shoulders stooped. Only as it reached the crest of the hill did it begin to straighten, and seeing him standing there beside the gate, it raised its hand and waved. ‘Hi,’ Stafford said and pedalled up towards him. ‘How long have you been waiting, then?’

He pointed to the train: having left the station it was now visible across the fields. A plume of dark smoke drifted back towards the cutting.

‘We go this way,’ Stafford said. He pointed back the way he’d come. The roofs of several houses were visible. ‘Jump on.’

Colin climbed on. Stafford turned the bike.

He pushed off with his foot.

The bike lurched; then, as it gathered speed, it straightened. They careered down the hill towards the houses. ‘Hold on,’ Stafford said. As the speed increased he started shrieking; he dragged his feet against the road. ‘There’s a turning at the bottom. Hold on. The brakes aren’t working.’ The bike swung aside; it ran off the road, across a pavement and on to an ashy track the other side. The brakes jarred; they shuddered, locked against the wheels, and, before the bike itself had stopped, Stafford fell. He put out his foot, the bike sliding round, and Colin clung to his arms, to the handlebars, then found himself finally pinned with Stafford against a wall.

‘I say, that was pretty good. We’ve come the wrong way, though,’ Stafford said. He began to pull Colin upright, laughing. The track led off between tall, clipped hedges: gates opened out on either side. ‘Do you want to ride it?’ Stafford said. ‘Though if you sit on the cross-bar we’ll get there much quicker.’ He wheeled the bike back towards the road.

Finally, having sat on the cross-bar and finding Stafford couldn’t pedal, Colin sat on the seat, holding to Stafford’s shoulders while Stafford half-crouched on the pedals in front.

They passed the arched entrance to a church; a large stone house stood back beneath a cliff of overhanging trees: small terraces of stone-built houses appeared on either side of the narrow road.

Stafford pedalled slowly; his head moved up and down stiffly, his back straightening as he kept his balance: when they came to a rise in the road he stopped.

‘It’s not much farther.’ He pointed up the road.

Colin dropped off.

To one side, as the road levelled out, appeared a large brick house: it was set well back from the road at the end of a narrow, unkempt garden. A pond, surrounded by bare, muddy earth was visible immediately behind the house and, beyond that, a roofless brick-built structure from inside the door of which, as they approached the house, appeared a pig and a flock of geese.

A driveway, rutted and submerged here and there in pools of water, ran off from the road towards the house; alternative tracks wound through the overgrown vegetation on either side, coming together abruptly in front of the pillared door.

Stafford had got off his bike; he led the way along one of the more circuitous tracks, skirting the pools of water and following a narrow, stone-flagged path which led to a door at the side. He leant the bike against the wall, removing his clips, then, without wiping his feet or attempting to get rid of the mud that clogged his shoes he stepped through the already open door and called, ‘Mother? Are you back?’ beckoning to Colin to follow without waiting for an answer.

A kitchen looked out to the back of the house. The floor was bare. A table, laden with plates containing sandwiches and cakes, stood against the wall. A sink with a single tap and a hot-water geyser was fastened beneath the window. Two doors led off, presumably, to the rest of the house.

‘Grab one of these,’ Stafford said, standing by the table and lifting the tops of the sandwiches, choosing two finally and handing one of them to Colin. ‘We might as well take one of these as well,’ he added, picking up a tart from one of the plates and a piece of cake from another. ‘We’ll go out to the back. Or do you want to have a look in here?’ He ate the sandwich quickly then picked up another. ‘We better go out to the back,’ he said. ‘There’ll be somebody here if we wait too long.’

Stone flags led down to an overgrown lawn. Beyond it, where the grass petered out and was replaced by a flattened stretch of mud, stood the pond; the flock of geese were wandering along one side and, by the roofless, brick-built structure, the pig was rooting at the turned-up ground.

The geese honked as Stafford approached; he appeared, to Colin, neither to hear them nor see them, walking round the pond, still eating, glancing uncertainly towards the house, beckoning him to follow to where a fence divided the end of the garden from a clump of trees.

The fence had been broken down at several points, tentatively repaired, and broken down again. Amongst the closely spaced trees, some distance beyond the fence, stood a wooden hut; it was little more than shoulder height and made up from disproportionate bits of timber across the top of which had been thrown a strip of corrugated metal.

Stafford, having climbed the fence, made his way towards it, stooping beneath the branches, hurrying, half-bowed, scarcely glancing back before ducking down inside.

The entrance was shielded by a piece of sacking; a piece of damp carpet covered the floor.

‘This is where I come at night,’ Stafford said. ‘I get stuff to eat and come out here.’ Yet he lay back as if disowning it, his head propped on one hand. ‘It’s not much good. I built it about a year ago,’ he added. ‘My brother came in once and broke it down.’

The dampness, increasing, seeped slowly through Colin’s clothes; he could, crouching in the narrow space, see only the vague outline of Stafford’s face, the lightness of his hair, and the slow motion of his hand as he ate the cake. Then, when the cake had gone, he lay quite still, the face expressionless, the eyes concealed, a vague darkness around his nose and lips.

‘It’s not as good as yours,’ he said, and added, ‘Lolly’s.’

‘No,’ he said and shook his head.

‘’Course,’ Stafford said, ‘I built it by myself. There’s no one round here, you know, to help me much.’

He spoke in a whisper now as if, unseen, there were others lurking in the trees outside.

‘I get one or two to come up. But we don’t have much to do’, he added, ‘with people in the village.’

Renewed honking from the geese came waveringly from beyond the fence. A dog had barked.

Stafford pulled back the sacking and looked outside.

Beyond the barrier of the trees the house was visible, the lawn rising up towards it from the muddied pond; a woman’s figure had emerged from the door at the side, glancing down towards the pond, then towards the shed, then, shielding its eyes, towards the trees. After a moment’s hesitation it went inside.

‘I sometimes come here at night. When the others are asleep. And bring grub in, you know. I have a candle.’

A match flared up in Colin’s face, but the candle, standing on a punctured tin, was too wet for the match to light: the flame spluttered out and once again they were plunged in darkness. Stafford had let the sacking fall back down.

‘That cake was good. What was that tart like?’ Stafford said.

‘All right,’ he said.

‘What was in your sandwich?’

‘Meat paste.’

‘She makes crab-paste ones, but they’re not much good.’

The faint murmur of a car engine came from the direction of the drive; Stafford lifted the sack again. A car was approaching the front of the house, bouncing in the ruts and sending up at each bounce a shower of water. It disappeared towards the door.

Stafford let the sacking fall.

‘We could go up to my room, if you like,’ he said. ‘I’ve one or two things.’

He made no move for a moment, kicking his feet against the wooden wall, the corrugated metal roof rattling ominously above their heads.

‘Or there’s the farm we could go to. At the back of these trees. Or we could cycle over, if you like, to Audrey Smith’s. Marion Rayner lives only a mile beyond. There’s a path that takes you there across the fields. They’ve got some horses. We could have a ride.’

Yet he continued to lie back with his head propped on his hand, only reaching forward finally when he heard the sound of a second car. He lifted the sacking again, his head stooping, gazing out. Rain had begun to fall: the surface of the pond had been broken up; there was a splatter of drops across the roof.

‘I suppose we had better go in,’ he said. ‘I thought it might rain but I hoped it wouldn’t.’ He got up slowly, easing himself feet first through the narrow entrance; Colin followed. Rain spattered through the branches overhead, and drummed on the corrugated iron roof. The surface of the pond was ruffled; the geese, however, were swimming up and down.

‘We can make a dash for it. We’ll go in by the kitchen,’ Stafford said. He ran ahead, along the edge of the pond, up the paving stones, hesitating slightly as he reached the door, glancing in before he stepped inside. A third car was coming up the drive; pale faces gazed out from behind the windows. A door had opened at the front of the house: a voice called out.

The sandwiches and cakes had gone from the kitchen; Stafford, after glancing at the empty table, had opened a cupboard door; he opened a second door: inside was a narrow pantry, lit by a single window.

‘Nothing doing,’ he said. ‘We’d better go up.’

He smoothed down his hair, straightened his jacket, then opened one of the doors leading from the room. The sound of several voices came from the other side.

‘If anybody sees you, just nod your head.’

They entered a broad hallway. Bare walls led up to a banistered landing. The front door of the house was standing open: a woman in a blue dress was standing on the steps outside, shielded by the porch, calling to the people who were descending from the car. Through a door leading off the hall came a murmur of voices followed, suddenly, by a burst of laughter. ‘Irene, for God’s sake,’ someone called.

‘That’s mother. She’s having one or two of her women in.’ Stafford mounted the stairs in urgent strides, pausing only as he reached the landing and leaning over the banister, gazing down as the woman in the blue dress came back inside the hall, her voice deep, almost like a man’s, directing the women who’d just arrived. ‘We go along here,’ he added. ‘My bedroom’s at the back.’

They passed an open door through which Colin glimpsed two single beds set side by side. At the end of a narrow passage stood a red-painted door to which a notice had been fastened. Stafford, as he reached the door, had felt inside his pocket and a moment later took out a key. ‘Private. Keep Out’, the notice read, with the initials N. K. S. printed underneath.

Having unlocked the door Stafford stepped inside. The room was narrow and lit by two windows on adjoining walls. The floor, like the floor of the hall below, was bare, the walls unpapered. A single bed stood behind the door; adjacent to it stood a chest of drawers, a cupboard and a desk. The floor in the centre of the room was occupied by several cardboard boxes which, the moment they were inside the room and the door closed and locked again, Stafford began to clear away. ‘Just one or two things,’ he said, pushing some of the boxes beneath the bed and balancing others on top of the drawers, on the cupboard and the desk. A single dark-blue curtain covered each of the windows, one window looking out to the pond and the roofless shelter, the other to the fields adjoining the side of the house.

‘Sit on the bed if you like. Though usually’, Stafford said, ‘I sit on the floor.’

The light pattering of the rain came from the guttering overhead. The sound of voices in the hall had faded. From the driveway, faintly, came the sound of another car.

‘What sort of meetings does your mother have?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ Stafford said. ‘They’re always women. They sometimes go on for hours.’ He lay on the floor, reaching out beneath the bed. He stood up a moment later, red-faced from his exertions, an airgun in his hand. ‘We can have pot-shots, with that, if you like. We’ll try the geese. They’re just the distance.’

From a drawer in the desk he took out a box of pellets. He loaded the gun, opened the window, and took careful aim towards the pond. There was a soft phut as he fired the gun but the white, stiff-necked birds continued to swim uninterruptedly up and down.

‘Aim high to allow for distance,’ Stafford said. He loaded the gun for him, then handed it across.

Colin aimed vaguely for the flock of birds, where the cluster of shapes was thickest; the rifle kicked against his cheek and one of the geese stood, suddenly, and flapped its wings.

‘Oh, good shot,’ Stafford said. He re-loaded the gun. ‘Let’s try for Snuffler,’ he added. ‘You can just see him inside the shed.’

The rear of the pig was visible inside the open door of the shelter. Stafford, his arm propped on the window, took careful aim, his hair falling across his brow, his left eye closed; he stood poised against the window for several seconds, motionless, then squeezed the trigger.

‘I say, good shot,’ he said as the rear of the pig disappeared inside the hut to be replaced a moment later by its head. ‘It likes being shot at. It’s like having a tickle.’ He loaded the gun again. ‘Let’s try the geese again,’ he said and, having snapped the barrel to, aimed it once more in the direction of the pond.

A man in a trilby hat appeared a little later on the lawn below; he had evidently dismounted from a bike, for his trousers were clipped at his ankles above a pair of enormous boots. He was tall, with broad shoulders, slightly stooped, with a fringe of grey hair showing beneath the brim of the hat. He wore a sports coat with leather patches on the sleeves, and as he reached the edge of the pond he glanced up suddenly towards the house.

Stafford, who’d been loading the gun, only saw him as he held it to the window, gazing down for a moment surprised to find anyone there at all, lowering the gun and hiding it beneath the sill.

‘Have you been firing that thing, Neville?’ the man called, his voice echoing in the space behind the house.

‘We’ve been firing at the pond, Father,’ Stafford said.

He leaned out of the window to shout his answer.

‘You’ve not been firing at the birds?’ the man had called.

‘No,’ Stafford said, and shook his head.

The man gazed back for a moment at the pond; evidently he’d brought something for the geese to eat for they paddled out of the water and on to the bank. He put his hand down amongst them and examined their feathers.

‘If I find you have I’ll have that gun off you,’ the man had called, staring back finally towards the house.

He went on past the pond, calling for the pig; as he neared the shelter the animal suddenly emerged and ran towards him.

‘That’s the old man,’ Stafford said. ‘He really wanted to be a farmer, you know. If we’d had more money I suppose he would have been.’

He put the gun away beneath the bed, pulling out one of the smaller cardboard boxes and saying, ‘Have you seen this? I’ll take your picture.’

He took out a camera with a concertina-shaped front, holding it to his eye and laughing.

‘There’s not enough light in here. We could go downstairs. You take mine and I’ll take yours.’ He ducked to a mirror fastened to the cupboard and from his jacket pocket took out a comb; he smoothed down his hair, ducking to the mirror once again, then taking out his key and unlocking the door.

The woman in the blue dress was standing in the hall as they came downstairs, talking to several women who were about to leave.

‘Have you seen your father, Neville?’ the woman said and added, ‘This is my son,’ to one of the women at which Stafford bowed his head. ‘My youngest son, I ought to say,’ she said, the woman laughing as she turned to the door. ‘Have you seen him, Neville?’ she asked again.

‘He’s out at the back, Mother,’ Stafford said, raising his voice as if he were speaking to the other woman as well as his mother.

‘Oh well, I’ll catch him when he comes back in,’ Mrs Stafford said, glancing at Colin then and smiling. ‘Is this the friend who was coming?’

‘We were just going out to take a photograph,’ Stafford said already moving off towards the kitchen.

‘Try and keep out of the mud,’ his mother said. ‘There might be some tea for you when you come back in.’ She’d already moved out to the porch and called back over her shoulder, Stafford himself already in the kitchen. The table, as before, was bare.

Outside, a larger bike than Stafford’s had been leant against the wall, its rear wheel half-enclosed by a canvas hood, a large black canvas bag hanging down behind the saddle.

The rain had stopped. A faint wind was blowing. Stafford, after glancing towards the brick-built shelter, moved off across the back of the house.

‘We can go on this side,’ he said. ‘There’ll be more light.’

They passed a pair of windows that opened to the lawn; inside a tiny, square-shaped room a man in a dark suit was reading a paper. He glanced up at the sound of their steps, saw Stafford, and immediately looked back to his paper again.

Several bushes had been planted on the opposite side of the house. A wooden fence, against which a hedge had recently been planted, divided the garden from a field of corn: a green haze showed up across the furrows.

Stafford handed him the camera; he showed him the eye-piece and the small chromium lever he had to press.

‘Get it in the middle,’ Stafford said.

He leant against the fence, half-smiling, smoothing down his hair at one point and calling, ‘Haven’t you got it? Come on, I can’t keep smiling here for ever.’

He smiled again, his head, with its almost delicate features, angled to one side. Beyond him, in one of the side windows of the house, several women were gazing out. A car was parked outside the door.

Colin pressed the lever and handed back the camera.

‘I’ll take one of you, then,’ Stafford said.

‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I’m not really bothered.’

‘No, I’ll take one,’ Stafford said. ‘Perhaps somebody’ll come out and take us both together.’

He looked round vaguely for a suitable spot.

‘I’ll try and get you with the house,’ he said.

He gazed into the camera for several seconds, swinging it round.

‘To your left,’ he called, and then, ‘More this way. Come a bit nearer,’ and then, finally, ‘Try to smile. Honestly, you look like murder.’

The camera clicked and Stafford lowered it, examining it for a while then winding on the film.

‘How about taking old Porky? We could get the old man as well,’ he said.

Several women had come out to the porch; the figure of Mrs Stafford appeared beyond them. She was a tall, angular woman, with something of the same proportions as her husband, grey-haired, her features thin, the nose pronounced. She glanced across absent-mindedly as they reached the drive, then turned to the women as they stepped down to the car.

At the back of the house Mr Stafford was carrying a clump of hay on a fork, disappearing into the roofless structure where the hay was still visible above the wall.

The geese had gone back to the pond, some idling in the water, others feeding along the bank. Their heads erect, they moved off as Stafford passed them, his father re-appearing, gazing across, the fork in his hand, the trilby hat pushed to the back of his head.

‘What are you up to?’ he said, staring at the camera then turning away to a shed at the back of the pen before Stafford could answer.

‘We wondered if you’d take our photograph,’ Stafford said, smoothing down his hair and glancing over at Colin.

‘Oh, I’m busy,’ Mr Stafford said, disappearing inside the shed then re-emerging a moment later with another clump of straw. ‘If you want something to do you can clean out the sty.’

‘You only have to click it,’ Stafford said, following him across and showing him the camera.

‘Has your mother finished her party yet?’ he said, glancing up towards the house.

‘They’re just leaving,’ Stafford said, and held out the camera.

‘Don’t come pestering. Do something useful or keep out of the way,’ Mr Stafford said. He hoisted the straw above his head, walking briskly over to the roofless building.

His features were large, his nose long, his eyes pale blue and shielded by heavy brows. His mouth, as he glanced across, was drawn back in irritation.

‘Isn’t Douglas in? Or John?’ he added. ‘Ask one of them. They’ve nothing else to do.’

Stafford, with a shrug, had turned aside.

‘Perhaps my mother’ll do it,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t matter. Shall we see if there’s anything to eat?’ he added.

They went back to the house.

‘His brothers have all the money. From the mills, I mean. I suppose if he had more of it we’d have a farm.’ He shrugged again. ‘Though I suppose we have enough,’ he added.

A tall, thick-chested man was stooping over the table when they went back in the kitchen. Fair-haired, with heavy features, he glanced round as he heard them in the door, then turned back to the table where he was buttering a piece of bread. He was perhaps in his early twenties; a book, opened, was pressed up beneath his arm.

‘Is there anything left for us, Dougie?’ Stafford said and the man had shaken his head, putting the bread between his teeth, then catching hold of the book and a pot of tea and crossing to the door. He murmured impatiently around the bread, nodding at the door, wildly, and Stafford stepped across and opened it.

‘That’s Douglas, one of my brothers,’ Stafford said. ‘He’s home from college. John’s here, too. He’s home on leave.’

‘How many brothers do you have?’ he said.

‘Four,’ he said. ‘I’m the youngest, you see, by about eight years.’

He pulled back the door to the pantry, looked inside, then crossed over to the door through which the other figure had disappeared.

‘Mother? Is there anything in to eat?’ he called, waiting for an answer then shaking his head. ‘She’s probably gone out. She often does at this time if she can get a life’ He called again, waited, then came back in the kitchen. ‘We could boil an egg. Are you keen on eggs?’ Yet he stood indecisively by the window, gazing out to the back of the house where his father had once again re-appeared from the shed, a clump of hay above his head, walking over to the roofless pen.

‘How many pigs do you have?’ Colin said.

‘There’s Porky,’ Stafford said. ‘And there’s a sow with six or seven young ones. I’ve never counted them. It might be more.’

The figure Colin had glimpsed earlier, through a rear window of the house, came in and seeing only Stafford and himself immediately went back out.

‘That’s John,’ Stafford said, fingering the table moodily, then suddenly looking up and adding, ‘I say, come on up. I’ve something in my room.’ He picked up the camera he’d left on the table and stepped out to the hall.

The house was silent. The door to the room where the women had been was standing open; the figure with the book was sitting there, in front of the fire, eating the piece of bread and drinking from the pot ‘Can you close the door?’ he called as they crossed the hall.

Stafford pulled it to. The front door opened as they reached the stairs and another tall, awkwardly built figure appeared taking off a peaked Air Force hat and hanging it on a peg, laughing, then calling to the drive from where a moment later came a shout, followed immediately by a burst of women’s laughter.

‘Is mother in, Nev?’ the figure called, shouting briefly to the drive again, then glancing over half-heartedly towards the stairs. The man was dressed in an Air Force uniform, belted at the waist; a pair of wings was fastened to the breast pocket of the jacket.

‘I think she’s out,’ Stafford said, and added, ‘I say, are you home on leave or what?’

Two women and a second man appeared in the door behind and, without answering, the uniformed figure led them off into the room across the hall; the door was closed. A second burst of laughter followed by someone calling a single name came a moment later from the other side.

‘That’s Geoff,’ Stafford said, gazing at the door as if half-tempted to step inside. ‘I bet the old man doesn’t know he’s back. Though he might have sent a telegram,’ he added.

They went on up the stairs. Stafford took out his key. He unlocked the door and they went inside. From below, faintly, came another shout then, suddenly, the blaring of a dance tune. After a further shout the tune had faded, followed by a faint murmur from the head of the stairs.

Stafford closed the door; he stood the camera on the desk and from one of its drawers took out a piece of wood to which were fastened several instruments and wires, and attached to the edge of which were a pair of earphones.

‘I’ll tune it,’ he said. ‘You can have a listen.’

Stafford manoeuvred a piece of wire against a glass-like piece of rock, scratching its surface with the end of the wire and adjusting the earphones on Colin’s head.

A faint voice came through the phones, crackling, fading away then coming louder. It was replaced finally by a piece of music.

Stafford sat by the window, gazing out, picking up the earphones whenever he had his turn and holding only one of them against his ear, his eyes fixed below him on the brick-built pen. ‘I’ll get you one made up, if you like,’ he said. ‘You can keep it under your bed and listen to it at night. When the crystal wears out you can get another.’

At one point he got up and went to the door, listening to the sounds that came from the stairs, glancing back at the room and adding, ‘I bet they don’t know that Geoffrey’s back. He keeps coming home on leave and not telling them where he’s stationed,’ leaning by the door, one hand clasped to it, a leg thrust out, as if waiting for some call to join them. ‘Let’s see if I can tune it to anything else,’ he said finally, leaving the door wide open and sitting at the window gazing out, dreamily, towards the garden.

Later, when the sounds of laughter and shouting came more loudly from the stairs, Stafford had got up and gone to the landing. He’d hung over the banister, gazing down, regarding the figures now who’d gathered in the hall, two men in uniform, three women in coats and headscarves, and the two other brothers, the one with the book, the other with the paper: they were pulling on coats and caps, only the brother with the newspaper evidently remaining, standing in the door and waving as the sound of a car engine revving came from the drive outside.

Finally Stafford came back in the room; he sat on the bed.

‘Do you want this?’ he said, examining the set. ‘I can easily get another.’

‘I can build one of my own,’ he said.

‘It takes ages to build. Why not have this one?’ Stafford said. ‘I’ll put it in a box. You can take it home.’

He hunted in the cupboard, then beneath the bed. Finally he emptied a cardboard box on to the floor and slotted the piece of wood containing the crystal set inside. The earphones he folded in on top.

‘I’d much rather you kept it,’ Colin said.

‘I hardly use it,’ Stafford said. ‘I’ll be getting a real one, in any case, at Christmas. Then I won’t need this’, he added, ‘at all.’

He left the house at seven o’clock. A meal was being laid in the room across the hall, a smell of roast meat and vegetables coming from the kitchen. The brothers, the two men in uniform and the three women had now returned. A bottle of wine was standing on the table, while from an adjoining room across the hall, where Mr and Mrs Stafford, the brother in uniform and several of the other figures were now gathered, came the sound of a cork being drawn from a bottle, of glasses clinking, and, as Stafford followed him out to the porch, a burst of laughter was ended abruptly by his mother calling from the door.

‘You’re not going out again, young man?’ she said, the faces in the room peering out from beyond her shoulder.

‘It’s young Neville,’ someone said and laughed.

‘I was going to the station,’ Stafford said.

‘It’s dinner in a few minutes,’ Mrs Stafford said. ‘There’s no rushing out to stations.’

Stafford shrugged. He glanced at Colin.

‘You know the way to the station, I take it?’ Mrs Stafford said, glancing at Colin across the hall.

‘Yes,’ he said. He nodded.

‘It’s better that Neville doesn’t rush off, otherwise it’ll be hours before we get him back. He’s such a terrible wanderer,’ she said. ‘Think on,’ she added to Stafford and disappeared.

Stafford shrugged again. He stood in the porch, his hands in his pockets. The sound of a dance tune came, brokenly, from inside the house. A car was parked in the drive outside and, as Colin set off towards the gate, a second one turned in from the road and splashed its way through the pools of water.

‘See you,’ Stafford said, and raised his arm.

‘See you,’ he called and, the box beneath his arm, went on towards the road.

A different porter was on the platform when he arrived at the station; the train when it drew in was almost empty. He sat in a carriage by himself, gazing out at the darkening fields, glancing finally at the box itself and running his finger over the smooth black boss of Stafford’s earphones. At one point he lifted them out and put them on, scratching the crystal with the wire inside the box, turned the dial, heard nothing but a crackling and, seeing a station approaching and figures on the platform, took them off. He sat nursing the box on his knee until he reached the village, then ran all the way to the house. His father was out when he arrived, his mother at the sink, scarcely glancing round as he came in the door. He went up to his room, where Steven was sleeping, and in the darkness, as if listening to another world, or to some glimmer of the one he’d left, tinkered with the crystal, searching for a sound.

18

They sat upstairs in a small, moon-shaped circle from the back of which you could see into the stalls. Boys in front threw down pieces of paper and occasionally matches, usherettes coming between the seats to flash a torch or call out ineffectually along the rows.

Audrey and Marion sat together, with Stafford on one side and Colin on the other. At one point, near the beginning of the picture, Stafford had leant his arm around the back of Marion’s seat and, a little later, placed his hand beneath her arm. Audrey sat rigidly beside Colin. His elbow, which he’d left on the arm of the seat, was touching hers; his knee, which he’d turned towards her, had caught against hers, briefly, before one of them, his or hers, he couldn’t be sure, had been drawn away.

The picture droned on, flanked by curtains. At the end the lights came on and Stafford withdrawing his arm, brought out a cigarette case from his inside pocket.

‘Do you fancy a smoke?’ he said casually, leaning across and offering one to Colin.

‘No thanks,’ he said and shook his head.

‘Marion, darling?’ Stafford said.

‘Thank you, darling,’ Marion said.

‘Audrey, darling?’

‘No thank you, Neville.’

They sat in silence for a while. People went in and out to the sweet stall in the foyer. Faintly, through an open door, came the sound of traffic; a glimmer of daylight showed beneath a tasselled curtain.

Stafford lit Marion’s cigarette with a lighter and then lit his own. They blew out clouds of smoke past Audrey’s face. Their cigarettes alight, Stafford replaced his arm on the back of Marion’s seat.

‘I don’t think much of the picture,’ Marion said.

‘Same here,’ Stafford said. He stroked Marion’s hair casually, almost absent-minded, gazing down to the heads below.

‘What’s the second one called?’ Marion said.

‘I don’t know,’ Stafford said. He shook his head, the cigarette slipped in between his lips. Marion held hers between her fingers stiffly, her hand held up against her face, her lips pouting, her head erect.

‘Fancy anything to eat, Smithers?’ Stafford said.

‘No thanks,’ Audrey said and shook her head. Her elbow, now the lights were on, had been lowered slowly against her side.

‘Can I get you anything?’ Colin said.

‘No thanks,’ she said again.

‘Get you anything, Colin?’ Stafford said.

‘No thanks,’ he said.

Stafford looked round at the other couples; there were one or two other boys from the school, and one or two girls from the girls’ school sitting in pairs. Most of them Colin scarcely knew; he sat gazing steadily at the folds of the heavy curtain, and the heads, mainly of children, visible in the stalls below.

Stafford had called out to several boys in the rows in front, and one of them came back to lean over the adjoining seats and to take a cigarette.

‘Hello, darling,’ Marion said.

‘Hello, Marion,’ the boy had said, stooping to Stafford’s lighter then puffing out, briskly, a massive cloud of smoke.

‘Isn’t Shirley with you today?’ she said.

‘I’m with Eileen today, my dear,’ he said, winking at Stafford who immediately laughed.

‘I’d be careful with her, my darling,’ Marion said, puffing slowly at her cigarette. She held it to her mouth as if she were kissing the palm of her hand. As the two boys laughed she crossed her legs and Stafford, who was glancing down, placed his hand across her knee. ‘None of that, my dear,’ she added and leaving the cigarette between her lips carefully withdrew it.

The lights went out. The second film began: Marion sank lower in her seat. When Colin glanced across he saw their heads seemingly locked together, their cigarettes glowing as they held them out.

He moved his arm against Audrey’s but otherwise gazed vacantly before him at the screen.

Later, outside, Stafford said, ‘Fancy a walk, or a cup of tea?’

‘Can you get tea at this time?’ Marion said.

‘There’s a place in the market I sometimes go to,’ Stafford said. He put his arm around Marion’s waist, but as she straightened her coat she lifted it away.

‘Honestly, if we’re seen in the streets, we’ll never hear the end of it. Not from Miss Wilkinson, at least,’ she said. ‘There’s going to be a school rule that we can’t even talk to boys in school uniform. Isn’t that true?’ She turned to Audrey.

They walked in pairs, Stafford and Marion in front, the dark-haired girl frequently turning round to pass some comment. They talked mainly about girls at the school, and boys they’d heard about in conversations.

‘They take a groundsheet and go out to Bratley Woods. Honestly, if anyone saw them, they’d be expelled.’

‘I’ve got a groundsheet,’ Stafford said.

‘You’re not getting me to share it,’ Marion said. ‘Honestly, give them half an inch and they want a mile.’

They reached the market; numerous canvas-covered stalls were set out in rows in front of an ancient, brick-built market-hall. Arched entrances led to the gas-illuminated stalls inside. At each corner of the square stood a tiny shop, the windows of which had been drawn up: at one of them women were serving tea. One or two buns were for sale inside.

‘What’s it to be, then, ladies?’ Stafford said, and added, ‘No, no, on me, old man,’ when Colin began feeling in his pockets. He had no more money anyway, only the torn half of his return ticket.

They stood by the stall, drinking the tea and eating buns.

‘How’re we fixed for next Saturday, ladies?’ Stafford said. He stood in the centre of the footpath to drink his tea so that people passing had to step into the road.

‘We’re fixed very well, aren’t we, Audrey?’ Marion said. ‘I don’t know about you and Colin, though,’ she added, laughing then, her cup standing in its saucer on the counter.

‘Heart-breakers, these two, Colin,’ Stafford said.

‘We just don’t choose anyone to go out with, do we, Audrey?’ Marion said.

Audrey shook her head. She had on a light-coloured coat with a fur collar. The cuffs were also trimmed with fur. Her hair, which normally hung straight down, had been curled up around the edges. Marion wore a jacket with slanted pockets. She’d folded a silk scarf around her hair.

‘You don’t know what other invitations we might have had, do they, Audrey?’ Marion said.

Audrey scarcely drank her tea; the bun which Stafford had bought her she’d left untouched. Colin thought of eating it himself, asking her finally as they turned to leave.

‘I’m not feeling very hungry. You have it,’ she said, pleased that he’d thought to ask.

He ate it as they walked along. They passed through the crowds at the edge of the market, the two girls walking arm in arm, Colin on one side, when the crowds permitted, and Stafford on the other.

‘Fancy a stroll in the Park, my darling?’ Stafford said.

‘We know why you want to stroll in the Park. Don’t we, Audrey?’Marion said.

Audrey glanced at Colin and began to smile.

‘He’s only one thought in his mind, has that young man,’ Marion added.

Audrey laughed and shook her head. She flung out the hair around her collar. Vast crowds were now moving through the town, flooding the pavements and spreading to the road.

‘We could observe the trees, not to mention the ducks and the other appurtenances of the natural life,’ Stafford said.

‘Just listen to his language,’ Marion said. ‘That’s what comes from studying Latin.’

‘Don’t you study Latin?’ Stafford said.

‘Audrey studies Latin. I study modern languages,’ Marion said.

They passed through the city centre and turned down a steep, cobbled alleyway leading to the station. The two girls now had walked ahead, the pavement, after the confusion of the street, comparatively deserted.

‘We’re just watching your legs, Marion,’ Stafford said as they walked behind.

Marion was wearing stockings with a seam; Audrey wore small white ankle socks.

‘I’ll ask you to keep your eyes elsewhere,’ Marion said, only her ankles and the lower half of her calves visible beneath the hem of her skirt.

‘Where else would you like me to keep them?’ Stafford said.

‘If you were a gentleman I’m sure you wouldn’t have to ask, my darling,’ Marion said, walking with something of a swagger.

‘I could look a little higher, but then your back’s turned to us, darling,’ Stafford said.

‘We’ve nothing to reveal to you, my darling,’ Marion said, fastening her arm securely now in Audrey’s. ‘Have we, Audrey, dear?’ she added.

Ahead of them, at the top of a flight of steps, appeared the station yard.

‘In any case, we’re expected home for tea. Aren’t we, darling?’ Marion turned towards the steps. She and Audrey ran up together.

‘I say, you ought to go up more discreetly,’ Stafford said. ‘You can’t imagine how revealing it is to those who follow on behind.’

The two girls, however, had started laughing, their arms if anything bound closer, running now across the yard to the black, stone profile of the station. Low, with a steeply angled roof and a tall stone tower surmounted by a clock, the yard was partly covered by a metal canopy. The two girls, darting between the taxis, disappeared inside.

‘What time is the train due?’ Colin said.

‘Usually we get the five o’clock. Though I suppose it’s going to be crowded,’ Stafford said. ‘If you get the four o’clock it’s often empty, and you can get a compartment to yourself.’ He looked across. ‘Aren’t you coming on the train?’

‘I’ve got no money. Just the return for the bus,’ he said.

‘I’ll lend you it. I’m loaded,’ Stafford said. ‘You can pay us back whenever you like.’ He took his arm. ‘They’ll be expecting you to be on the train,’ he added.

He let Stafford buy the ticket. They went through the wooden barrier and on to the platform. The two girls were waiting at the opposite end. They were standing on a trolley, looking over a railing to the street below. Double-decker buses passed through a tunnel beneath the station.

Beyond the end of the platform the lines curved off towards the river; in the farthest distance a broad vista of wooded hill-land, broken here and there by colliery slag-heaps, stretched away from the fringes of the town.

‘See what you can hit, then,’ Stafford said and gave several copper coins to each of the girls.

‘I don’t want them,’ Audrey said. She handed them to Colin.

Marion was already leaning through the railings; she let a coin drop and they watched it bounce then roll, briefly, on the cobbled road below. Stafford dropped his: it bounced on the roof of a bus and then to the road. The girls laughed, quickly, drawing back their heads.

‘Honestly, they’ll be coming up if you keep on doing that, my darling,’ Marion said. She dropped another coin herself, laughing then as the crowd, hearing the tinkle of the coin, looked up.

‘If it hits anybody’s head it’s bound to hurt them,’ Audrey said.

‘Oh, we only drop them lightly, don’t we, darling?’ Stafford said.

The train came in. The engine, slowing, lumbered to the bridge.

Two people got out of the first compartment and Stafford climbed inside. He pulled down the blinds on the windows, then when they’d climbed in, he fastened the door.

‘Sit by the windows, girls,’ he said. ‘And make it seem we’re full inside.’

He lowered the window and peered outside.

‘Nobody comes in if you lean out looking anxious. They always think it’s full,’ he said, gazing mournfully along the platform. Other doors were slammed. A whistle blew.

The train lurched forward, slowed, then, swaying, crossed the bridge. The pounding of the engine came through the carriage wall.

‘Isn’t it dark? Who’s this, then?’ Stafford said. Having raised the window and lowered the blind he groped along the bench-like seat.

The girls had screamed.

‘Hey, Colin. Come and help me, then,’ he said.

The girls had screamed again.

‘Whose is this arm, then?’ Stafford said. ‘Hey,’ he added. ‘I’ve found a leg.’

Marion screamed.

Colin found Audrey between his arms. He drew her to him, pressed his lips against her, found her cheek, then, when he pressed his lips against her once again he kissed her hair.

He heard her laugh.

She tried to move away. He held her tightly. Briefly, then, their lips had met.

The pounding of the train grew louder, the track enclosed between high walls.

The sound had faded.

‘Honestly,’ Marion said across the carriage. ‘I can’t have that.’

A blind went up.

A flood of daylight filled the carriage.

‘Honestly, he’s terrible,’ Marion said. She was pressed up now against the wall, Stafford lying full length along the bench.

Colin, releasing Audrey, drew back against the seat, glancing briefly at her face and then at Stafford.

‘I’ll sit beside you, Audrey,’ Marion said, easing herself round Stafford’s outstretched arm and sinking down on the seat beside her. ‘Honestly, aren’t they terrible?’ she said.

Stafford, kneeling, reached over to the blind.

‘See what we can find this time, then,’ he said.

The blind pulled down and fastened, Marion then Audrey screamed again. Colin felt the shape pressed down towards him and put out his arm to hold Audrey once again.

He felt her arm and then her waist. He leant his head towards her, found her lips and for a moment they clung together, jarred by the lurching of Marion on the other side.

‘Honestly,’ Marion said, ‘he’s awful,’ and gave yet another scream, much louder than the rest.

‘Feel there. Honestly, I never knew she wore them,’ Stafford said.

A blind went up.

‘Honestly,’ Marion said. Her face was red. She tugged down her skirt then fastened her coat. She released another blind and then, stepping quickly across the carriage, released the rest.

Stafford sank back against the bench. He brushed back his hair and began to whistle, gazing out, abstracted, to the fields passing now below the track.

They crossed the river: a dark expanse of water coiled off between low, half-flooded banks.

‘Honestly, he’s so awful,’ Marion said. She’d taken a comb from her jacket pocket and standing to look into one of the framed pictures on the compartment wall she combed her hair.

Audrey, her hands clasped in her lap, sat by Colin; she gazed past him to the opposite window where the profile of the town stood up, outlined, like a wall of rock.

‘Are you getting off at Saxton?’ Stafford said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose I shall.’

‘I might get off as well, then,’ Stafford said.

‘Listen to him. Sulking,’ Marion said. ‘He’s got miles to walk if he gets off there.’

‘Where do you get off, Audrey?’ Colin said.

‘I get off at Drayton,’ she said, naming a village some distance farther on.

‘I suppose I’ll have to go home with glad-hands,’ Marion said. ‘Unless he gets off at Saxton with his bosom-friend.’

‘I might get off. I might not, then,’ Stafford said.

‘Honestly, he’s so awful. You never feel safe when he’s near you,’ Marion said.

She sat down now on the other side.

‘Don’t come near me,’ she added when Stafford went across.

He sat beside her for a while, his arms folded, gazing at Audrey and then at Colin.

‘Honestly, I haven’t done a thing. What’s she going on about?’ he said.

‘Not in daylight,’ Marion said.

‘Why not try the blinds down. The light’s too strong for me,’ he said.

‘Over my dead body, darling,’ Marion said.

They sat in silence for a while. The train drew into a station. Doors were slammed. A whistle blew.

Smoke billowed down beside the carriage.

The engine lurched. They moved off again between hedged fields.

‘Honestly,’ Marion said again when Stafford raised one arm and, cautiously, put it round her waist. He kissed her cheek.

‘There then, my darling. I never meant no harm.’

‘That’s not what it felt like, my darling,’ Marion said.

‘But what’s this feel like, my darling,’ Stafford said and, more slowly, kissed her cheek again.

Marion had turned her head towards him. They kissed silently for a while, their arms finally entwined together.

Colin put his arm round Audrey. He held her lightly, afraid to see her face or glance towards her. As if absorbed by the passing fields and hedges, they gazed out through the window, swaying slightly, jarring, to the movement of the carriage.

Another station came. Stafford, alarmed, leapt up to the door. He leant out of the window until the whistle blew, then fell back in the seat, his arms once again, outstretched, enclosing Marion. They kissed each other silently as the train began to move.

More fields passed; a colliery yard. The train clattered through a cutting, the rock walls hidden by clouds of steam.

Finally the fields around Saxton appeared on either side. Beyond the summit of a hill he could see the colliery mound.

‘I’ll get out here,’ he said and waited then while Stafford found the ticket. He got up to the door as the train pulled into the narrow cutting. ‘I’ll see you, then,’ he said and nodded, flushing, Stafford, his arm round Marion, having scarcely raised his head.

‘You’re getting off here, darling?’ Marion said as if suddenly aware, then, of him standing by the door, lowering the window and reaching the handle. ‘Aren’t you kissing Audrey goodbye?’

He leaned down briefly and brushed her cheek.

‘I’ll see you, then,’ he said and stepped down to the platform. He closed the door and glanced inside.

Audrey hadn’t moved; red-cheeked, her hair disarranged, she gazed out at him from across the carriage. He glanced back along the platform, wondering when the train might move.

A porter came past and tested the door, then went back along the platform shutting others.

Finally a flag was waved; the engine whistled. The platform trembled as it drew away.

‘What’re you doing here?’ she said.

‘I thought I’d come across,’ he said.

She leant against the gate, glancing back along the track, towards the farm.

‘My mother saw you first,’ she said. ‘“Who’s that young man?”’ she asked me. ‘“Cycling up and down.”’

‘I thought I’d just come past,’ he said.

‘Whose bike is it, in any case?’ she said.

‘A neighbour’s.’ He added, ‘He lends me it. He lives next door.’

The road came over a stretch of heathland on the opposite side of which stood several houses set out like stone blocks across the slope. The farm stood some way back, beneath a clump of trees. A field of rhubarb separated it from the road itself, the hedged track leading to it rutted, and lined here and there with pools of water.

‘Do you want to go for a ride?’ He waited.

‘Where to?’

‘Anywhere. I can’t go far. I’ve got to get back in about an hour.’ He waited once again. ‘I could leave the bike here. We could go for a walk.’

‘I don’t fancy walking much,’ she said.

She’d stepped up now on to the rung of the gate, and swung it to and fro against the post. Over her blouse she wore a coat, her hair fastened back to make a tail above her neck.

A bus came across the heath and stopped at the houses. One or two people got off; she glanced across.

‘Have you seen Marion?’ he said.

‘We went riding yesterday.’ She gestured back vaguely towards the house. ‘She came here for tea as well,’ she added.

A man, wearing jodhpurs, had crossed over the road from the direction of the bus stop and had now approached the gate. Colin recognized her brother.

‘Hello, our Audrey,’ he said, glancing at her but not at Colin, and pushing back the gate. ‘Not getting into any trouble are you?’

‘None that you need mind,’ she said.

‘I shouldn’t let the old ’un catch you, then,’ he said, gesturing off towards the house. He set off up the track towards the farm. Indifferent to where he walked, he splashed slowly through the puddles.

‘Jonathan,’ she said, and gestured back. ‘He’s been riding as well,’ she added.

‘Don’t you fancy getting your bike?’ he said.

‘How do you know I’ve got one?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I thought you might.’

‘I could meet you tonight,’ she said, slowly, stooping to the gate.

‘Where’s that?’

‘I go to church,’ she said. ‘So does Marion. I could see you after.’

‘What church is it?’

‘St Olaf’s.’

‘How do you get there?’

‘It’s over at Brierley. I go by bus.’

The church, he calculated, was seven miles away. It would mean an hour on the bike, at least.

‘What time does it finish?’ he said.

‘About half-past seven to eight,’ she said.

‘I might see you there,’ he said, and turned away.

‘I’ll walk to the end of the road,’ she called, suddenly, stepping from the gate. She glanced back, awkwardly, towards the farm. ‘They’ll be watching from the house,’ she added.

She walked beside him, swinging her coat. He pushed the bike beside him, at the edge of the road.

Finally, when they reached the bus stop, she glanced back once more towards the farm.

‘I better go back, I suppose,’ she said. Her cheeks were flushed; she glanced towards the houses on the opposite slope as if reluctant to be seen talking by anyone she knew.

‘I might see you at the church,’ he said.

‘I’ll ring Marion,’ she said. ‘She might ring Stafford.’

He turned to the bike.

‘See you,’ she added and waved her arm, yet scarcely glancing as he pedalled off. He looked back from the crest of the hill: she’d already reached the gate and, running, had turned up the track towards the farm.

I’ve looked all over the place,’ his father said, ‘for nearly an hour.’

‘I went to Stafford’s,’ he said.

‘Tha what?’

‘To fetch a book.’ He’d taken it with him, inside his coat; he brought it out now and dropped it on the table. ‘I needed it for my holiday work,’ he said.

His father gazed at the book for several seconds.

‘And thy’s been right over theer?’ he said.

‘I came back’, he said. ‘as fast as I could.’

His father shook his head. He pointed to the door. ‘Thy brother’s been roaring his head off. He sets some store by thy being with him, tha knows.’

‘I went as quick as I could,’ he said.

‘There’s more important things than books.’ He added, ‘Mrs Shaw’s more than enough, you know, with Richard.’

His mother was ill; on the second day of her illness she’d been taken off to hospital. Colin was alone in the house with Steven and Richard when his father was at work. On this occasion, however, cycling over to Audrey’s, he’d left Richard with Mrs Shaw and Steven playing in the field; the kitchen itself was already tidy: he’d washed up the pots before he’d left. The floor, too, he’d swept, and had made the beds; he hadn’t intended being away for longer than an hour.

‘I told Mr Shaw’, he said, ‘when I borrowed his bike.’

‘Well, Mr Shaw isn’t in at present,’ his father said. He stooped to the fire with a lighted match; Steven, who’d been crying on the doorstep, had come inside, sitting on a chair and rubbing his eyes. Richard’s cries, loud and prolonged, came from Mrs Shaw’s next door.

Colin picked up the book; his own name, he realized, was inside the cover. ‘I said, if I was free, I might go over tonight.’

‘Wheer?’ his father said. He swivelled round.

‘Stafford’s.’

‘And what’s so important about Stafford, then?’

‘I said I might go over, if you didn’t need me here,’ he said.

‘I need you here. Don’t you think I need you here?’ his father said.

‘I just though you might be in tonight. It’s some work I wanted to check,’ he said.

‘Well, you can check your work in here,’ he said. He gestured round him at the kitchen; then, attracted by the roaring of the fire, he covered it, briefly, with a sheet of paper.

He stood over it for a while.

‘We don’t ask much of you, any road,’ he added.

‘I’ve helped you in the past,’ he said.

‘Aye,’ he said. ‘After how much asking?’

He took the paper away; the fire roared up.

‘We don’t need all that coal on. Not in summer time,’ he added.

His father went to work that night, Colin saw him off at the door.

‘Think on,’ he told him before he left. ‘Thy’s two young ’uns to look to now. No gallivanting off.’

His father took the front-door key, locking it before he went.

When he’d gone he cooked Steven some supper and put him to bed. Richard was already asleep, fastened in his cot.

He tucked Steven up, read him a story, then waited while he fell asleep. It was nearly eight o’clock.

He went next door to Mrs Shaw’s.

‘I wondered if you could keep an eye on them,’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go over to a friend’s to get a book.’

‘You’ve a lot of books to see to suddenly,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘Could I borrow Mr Shaw’s bike again?’ he added.

‘Nay, you better ask him, love,’ she said.

‘I’ll be charging thee mileage on them tyres,’ Mr Shaw had said, calling then from inside the kitchen. ‘First yon farm, and now thy books. Mind how tha go on it,’ he added.

‘Does your father know you’re going?’ Mrs Shaw had said as she followed him to the yard.

‘I said I might be going. I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ he said.

He set off down the yard, Mrs Shaw, the key in her hand, watching him from the step.

It took him nearly an hour to reach the church. It stood at a crossroads, some distance from Brierley village. A large manor house, occupied by soldiers, stood immediately behind it, the church itself and the house enclosed by a low stone wall.

Several soldiers were sitting on the wall. The sun had begun to set. Long shadows spread out from the trees beside the road itself. The church was closed. There was no sign of anyone he knew.

He set off up the road, following the bus route back towards the farm. A car came past him and roared off, leaving a cloud of dust. It was long after nine when he crested the hill above the farm. He freewheeled down the heath and cycled slowly past the gate. There was no sign of movement either in the yard or along the track: the wooden gate itself was closed.

He cycled back, dismounted, and gazed up for a while towards the house.

A bus came over the hill and pulled up at the stop. Two or three people got off, laughing, and set off, waving to the bus, across the heath. The bus came past; pale faces gazed out of the darkening windows.

He leant on the gate, sitting now astride the bike and gazing up directly to the house.

It was growing dark; the sun disappeared beyond a line of hills.

He waited by the gate a little longer then, turning on the battery lights, set off slowly up the rise. He waited at the top again, gazing back towards the farm; then, freewheeling, he set off down the slope the other side.

He thought he saw them, briefly, walking up the road; when he pedalled nearer, however, their three figures turned out to be a man and a woman walking with a child. He set off back, pedalling slowly, drained of all strength as well as feeling.

‘So you went out after all,’ his father said. He’d come into the bedroom to wake him up: Steven’s bed, he saw, was empty; he’d meant to get up early, cook his father’s breakfast, forestalling any inquiry about the night before.

‘I went out for a bit,’ he said.

‘It was nearly three hours from what Mrs Shaw’s just said.’ His eyes were black from where he’d roughly washed; he still had on his pit clothes, his long coat, his cap pushed in his pocket: there was a red line from its neb above his eyes. ‘I find Steven lakin’ with the fire, and Richard crying in his cot. What sort of looking-after is that supposed to be? I can’t turn me back without you slipping off. If you weren’t supposed to be grown up I’d give you a damn good hiding. Your mother ill and me at work, and you go gallivanting off, after you’ve been told you’re needed here.’

‘I have to see about this work,’ he said.

‘Work? What work? You can see about schoolwork some other time,’ he said. ‘There’s another six weeks of holiday yet. Lying on your back i’ bed.’

‘I’d thought of getting a job,’ he said.

‘There’s a job here at present, lad. Looking after thy two brothers. I’m off to the hospital as soon as I’m dressed. And what am I going to think when I’m going, then? That you haven’t two minutes to help us out.’

‘I’ll help you out,’ he said.

‘Aye, help us into a worse hole than we’re already in,’ his father said.

When he went down his father was washing at the sink; Steven was sitting in a chair, watching him then as he began to get ready: his father pulled on his suit trousers, then his waistcoat. Fluffs of soap from his shaving still clung to his ear.

‘You see: he wants to come with me,’ his father said, indicating Steven. ‘I’ve told him children aren’t allowed.’

‘I can wait outside, Dad,’ Steven said.

‘And how shall I know what you’re up to?’ his father said. ‘If you’re like you brother, it might be ought.’

‘I’ll wait,’ Steven said and went to his coat. ‘I’ll wait where you tell me,’ he added, coming back. He tried to pull on his coat, his head thrust down.

‘Nay, tha mu’n stay with Colin,’ his father said. ‘I’ve enough to be worrying about without having something else.’

Steven, pale-faced, staring at his father, began to cry.

‘Nay, tha mu’n cry all tha wants,’ his father said. ‘I’m off on my own. They don’t make rules for nothing,’ he added.

Yet, at the door, he’d glanced back at Steven. Richard had already gone next door.

‘Sithee, I won’t be long,’ he said as he watched Steven bury his head against a chair. ‘I might bring summat back with me, if tha behaves thasen,’ he added. He looked at Colin. ‘That’s both of you I mean. No gallivanting off. Thy get his dinner, and Richard’s. Don’t leave it all to Mrs Shaw. You’ll find it in the cupboard.’

In fact, when his father had gone, he found the potatoes already peeled, standing in a pan. The cabbage had been left, already washed, in a metal colander. Four sausages had been left in the cupboard, with a note pinned on top, ‘For Sunday Dinner’. His father must have got back even earlier than he thought.

He sat with Steven for a while; then he took him out. He called for Richard, sat him in his push-chair, and set off for the Park.

‘Your father was cross,’ Mrs Shaw said. ‘About last night. You don’t want to go off leaving them,’ she added.

‘Yes,’ he said and set off down the yard.

‘Are you all right for your dinner, love?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Nay, if there’s anything I can do,’ she said as she watched them go.

The Park was almost empty; he sat Richard on a swing and pushed him to and fro. The day was bright; the sun came down directly on to the slope of the hill; a faint haze showed here and there across the fields, low down, obscuring at one point the embankment of the railway line running like a rampart towards the distant woods. Corn in one of the nearer fields had recently been cut; men were working at the sheaves and, from farther off, came the dull, grating chatter of a tractor. A huge, ball-shaped cloud of steam rose over the village from the direction of the pit.

There were only children in the Park, except on the upper slope where a man with a scythe was cutting grass. Lorries rattled to and fro on the road beyond; from the colliery itself came the dull panting of the engine and across the foot of the slope he could see the headgear, the spoked wheels invisible, spinning round.

Steven had run off across the slope. Colin sat on the swings for a while. He pushed himself slowly with the toe of his foot. He imagined, briefly, what it might be like with his mother dead, with his father at work, or, worse, away from home. He watched Richard on the swing with his tiny fisted hands, his lightish hair, his strangely self-absorbed expression as the swing, still swaying, swung up and down.

A train crossed the embankment, travelling slowly beneath a banner of blackish smoke; in the distance other clouds of smoke rose from the faintly visible heaps and chimneys. At the foot of the slope, where it flattened out towards the railway, a group of boys were playing football. Several girls, at the edge of the fishpond, were playing round a pram.

He pushed Richard on the swing, then, for a while, he held him on the rocking-horse. The man with the scythe worked rhythmically across the slope, occasionally calling out as the children disturbed the raked-up piles – or standing, sharpening his scythe and gazing off, abstracted, towards the distant woods.

Three figures had appeared at the top of the hill. Two of them were sat on bikes, the third leaning up against a bike; an arm was raised and, faintly, he heard his name being called.

Stafford, still waving, re-mounted his bike; a moment later he came coasting down the hill, sitting sideways on the cross-bar, his elbows out.

‘We’ve just been down to your house,’ he said, dismounting at the foot of the slope. ‘The woman next door said you might be here.’

Steven had come over; he held his hand.

‘What happened to you last night, then?’ Stafford said.

‘I couldn’t get out,’ he said, and shook his head.

‘We waited at St Olaf’s. Then went on to Marion’s,’ Stafford said. ‘Her father drove us home,’ he added. He gestured behind him to the top of the hill. ‘They’re both here now. We wondered if you could get a bike.’

‘I’ve to look after my brothers today,’ he said.

‘Can’t you dump them somewhere?’ Stafford said.

‘I’ve to cook their dinner as well,’ he said.

‘We’ve got some sandwiches. We thought we’d have a picnic. We could go over to Brierley Woods. We could really have some fun there,’ Stafford said.

‘Colin,’ Steven said and pulled at his arm.

‘I’ve got to look after them though,’ he said.

Behind him Richard, suddenly aware that he was alone, had begun to cry.

‘They’ve come over specially,’ Stafford said, gesturing once more to the slope behind. ‘And Audrey’s pretty keen. It was her idea to come,’ he added.

He glanced back up the slope. Marion was calling: she’d begun to wave her arm.

He went back to the rocking-horse and lifted Richard off. He set him in the pram.

‘Honestly; do you have to look after them?’ Stafford said.

‘My mother’s in hospital,’ he said.

‘What’s matter with her?’ Stafford said, looking at his bike, then pulling strands of straw from between the spokes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You could leave them with this woman,’ Stafford said. ‘Couldn’t she look after them for a day?’

He shook his head. He glanced over at the slope again. He could hear his name being called. Marion’s arm was raised again; Audrey, her slim figure stooping to her bike, stood some distance farther back, almost at the gate.

He pushed the pram towards the slope. Stafford cycled back along the path, standing finally to force the pedals.

The keeper, sitting in his wooden hut, had whistled, waving a stick, wildly, up and down. Stafford got off; he waited for Colin to catch him up.

‘She’s really keen for you to come. It’ll not be much fun with just the three of us,’ he added.

Stephen held on to the pram as he pushed it up. Audrey, as if dismayed, had already turned her bike towards the gate.

‘Honestly, who’s playing Daddies today, then?’ Marion said when he reached the top. She looked at Richard’s tear-streaked face and then at Steven: he too, as if sensing danger, had begun to cry.

‘I can’t get out today,’ he said, holding now to the handle of the pram.

‘Are both of them yours, then?’ Marion said, laughing now and bowing her head. Her dark hair was fastened back beneath a ribbon. Audrey, as if reluctant to be seen at all, had wheeled her bike out between the gates.

‘I have to look after my brothers,’ he said and stood for a moment, shaking his head, uncertain whether to follow Audrey.

‘Honestly, we’ll wait for you,’ Stafford said. ‘Haven’t you got a relative, or something, you could leave them with?’

‘No,’ he said. He shook his head.

‘I suppose we better go back, then,’ Stafford said. ‘It was Audrey’s idea,’ he added again.

Marion turned her bike.

‘Honestly, you ought to speak to her, at least,’ she said.

Colin pushed the pram towards the gate. Audrey was at the kerb, getting ready to mount her bike.

‘I can’t come today,’ he said. He added, ‘I came last night. To St Olaf’s, but I got there late. I went over to your place. Stafford said you went to Marion’s.’

‘We went there for a bit,’ she said.

She glanced at Steven; there were holes in his pullover, and the sleeves of the pullover had begun to fray. His stockings had slipped down around his ankles; his nose, with his crying, had begun to run. Only Richard had any neatness; yet he was crying now and shaking the pram.

‘I’ve to look after my brothers today,’ he said, and Stafford called out, ‘We better get going then, my dear.’

‘We don’t want our sandwiches getting cold, then, do we?’ Marion said.

‘I’ll try and come over one evening,’ he said.

‘My mother doesn’t like you coming to the house,’ she said.

She mounted the bike. Stafford and Marion, freewheeling, had started down the hill.

‘She doesn’t think it looks very nice,’ she said.

‘Shall I come to the door?’ he said.

She shook her head.

‘We’ll try some other time,’ she said and, pushing from the kerb, pedalled slowly off, freewheeling finally as she reached the hill.

‘I can’t make you out,’ his father said when he came back in. ‘Here’s your mother ill and you don’t want to help. Anybody would think you don’t want to live here any more.’

He stood silently across the room and didn’t answer.

‘Haven’t you got a tongue in your head?’ his father added.

‘What can I say, in any case?’ he said.

‘Tha can say I’m wrong in feeling what I do. Tha can say any number of things,’ his father said. ‘Here I am: I haven’t had a sleep, and I’m off back to work already. You might say summat about that, for a start.’

‘There’s nothing I can say about it.’ He shrugged.

‘There’s nowt thy wants to say about it,’ his father said. ‘For it’s true.’

His mother was away for three weeks. When she came back, at her own insistence, she could scarcely stand. She’d made his father sign her out. ‘I’m better doing nothing here than doing nothing there,’ she said. ‘Just lying on my back, I might as well be home.’

Yet it was some other person now who’d come to the house. Both of her parents had died the previous Easter. Ever since the funeral she had begun to fade: finally, one morning, while he was at school, she had collapsed in the kitchen; his father had taken her to the hospital the following day. Now, returning, she sat silently about the house all day, and at night, sleeplessly, tossed to and fro on the double bed. He did nearly all the housework now: on Mondays he did the washing, under her supervision, standing aside occasionally, as, groaning, she got up from her chair to show him how to wash a particular shirt or blouse; on Wednesdays he cleaned the house upstairs, washing the bedroom floors, on Fridays the front room, the kitchen and the outside toilet. On Saturdays he did the shopping. While she was still in hospital he’d found an opportunity to cycle over to the farm on three occasions; on none had he seen Audrey, though on the last he’d called at the house. A farm dog, barking at the end of a chain, had greeted his arrival, and the door had been opened by a tall, fair-haired woman with bright red cheeks who’d answered his inquiry as to whether Audrey was in with a shake of her head, calling him back as he turned away and saying, ‘I think she’s too young to have boys calling for her. I’d appreciate it very much if you didn’t cycle up and down in front of the gate.’

He’d thought of writing her a letter; he’d looked up her number in a telephone directory, and had set out on two occasions to ring her up, faltering each time when he reached the phone.

Stafford had called one day when he was out shopping, but hadn’t waited until he got back.

‘We seem to go from one thing to another, and each one worse than the one afore,’ his father said one evening, before he set off for work. ‘If it hadn’t have been for this you could have had a job. That’s ten or fifteen pounds we might have had. As it is, you’re fastened up here and you end up earning nought.’

‘I offered to get a job,’ he said.

‘I know you offered,’ his father said. ‘What’s the use of offering if you can’t go out and do it? Steven can offer. Richard can offer. But that doesn’t add up to much, then, does it?’

‘What if I went and got a job?’ he said. ‘What would my mother do on her own in the house?’

‘That’s what I’m saying. However hard we work we end up where we were afore. There’s no point in doing ought. Whatever we do, whatever we say, we end exactly where we wa’ before. I can’t see any point in it. I can’t. Not any more.’

He kicked the table leg. There was something in his father now that was changed from what he’d known before. It was as if some part of him had died: he seemed pinned down; he no longer talked of moving, or changing house. His job was a habit, a kind of bond. He came home on leave like a soldier from a war: his real life, his real worries, were somewhere else, underground, away from them, invisible, even incommunicable. He would talk frustratedly now in front of Colin while his mother, as if sensing herself the cause of it, would get up from her chair, attempt some household task from which, a moment later, he would rescue her, saying, ‘Leave that to Colin, or we’ll have you back inside. You know what the doctor warned. I was a damn fool to let you out.’

‘How can I sit here’, she’d ask him, ‘and listen to this? If I wasn’t poorly none of this would happen.’

‘If it wasn’t you,’ he’d say condemningly, ‘it’d be something else. There’s been a blight on this family, there always has. We’ve tried to build up something. And see now where we end.’ He’d gesture round. ‘We’ve got nought, and no hope as I can see of anything better.’

His mother would cry; she would hold her apron against her eyes, for she wore her apron though she didn’t work, marking out her intention if nothing else. Long after his father had gone to work, or had gone upstairs to sleep, if the argument had broken out in the morning, she would sit in her chair, moaning, sometimes burying her head against her arm, or take Richard to her, and hide her face against his cheek.

She did more work now, however, when his father was out; she would come over to where he was cleaning, or washing-up, and take whatever he was using from him, a scrubbing-brush or a piece of cloth, and say, ‘You can leave that. I can do that now,’ almost bitterly, as if the sight of him working was more than she could stand. ‘You can get the coal,’ she’d tell him, or, ‘Wash the windows,’ or, ‘Get in the washing,’ tasks which, despite this, she’d decided with herself she wouldn’t do. Each afternoon, after lunch, she went to bed, and whenever his father was around she would sink back in her chair as if determined he should see how placidly she was resting.

Yet, the more determined she appeared in getting better, the more frustrated his father grew. He came home each morning now exhausted, his cheeks drawn, his eyes dark, shadowed, his mouth drawn tight; he would plunge into whatever jobs he could find himself, even digging the garden, mending the fence, washing the windows when, perhaps that week, they’d been washed already. He’d given up his allotment; when he couldn’t find anything else to do he’d sink down in a chair himself, sleeping in his clothes, his mouth wide open, snoring, Steven regarding him nervously from across the room, Richard being quietened in case he woke and yet, even when they shook him and told him the time, that he’d only so many hours left to go to bed, he’d refuse to stir, half-opening his eyes, reddened, bleary, and half-snarling with an anger they’d scarcely seen before, ‘Leave me alone. Get off. I can sleep down here,’ his mother calling, ‘Leave him, then, for goodness’ sake. He knows when he’s resting,’ his father, his eyes half-closed, turning his head blindly towards the room, then sinking back, his face blank, like a piece of stone, seemingly half-conscious, watching them despite his snoring. His eyes would gleam beneath his half-shut lids.

One morning, after his father had gone to bed and his mother, silently, had begun some cleaning, sweeping the kitchen, she’d suddenly collapsed. She’d sunk down on a chair, holding her chest, half-reclining at the table, and Colin, startled, had stood there for a while, unable to tell how serious it was, unable to decide what he ought to do. His mother had struggled for a while, as if trying to stand or even, perhaps, intending to continue with her job. Calling to her, he’d stood by the table, waiting for some instruction. Her eyes, distorted, rolled slowly in her head.

‘Dad,’ he’d called. ‘Dad.’

His father was upstairs in bed.

He went to the foot of the stairs and called again; then he heard his mother calling out, almost calmly, ‘Get me a chair, then, Colin,’ and then, more clearly, ‘In the front room, Colin.’

His mother lay with her head against the table, one arm sprawled out, unable to move. For a moment it seemed to him like an affectation; as if, had she so wished it, she could get up quite easily herself. He hadn’t touched her now for years, and could scarcely remember a time when she’d even embraced him.

He took her arm; he tried to lift her. He pulled her to her feet and, her legs dragging, her arms limp, tried to carry her through to the other room. As he turned to the door he saw his father standing there, in his shirt and his underpants, gazing in, bleary-eyed, startled, unable to make sense of what he saw. He thought for a moment he might have leapt across: a look of bewilderment crossed his face; then, as if wakening, with a death-like voice, subdued, he came into the kitchen, calling, ‘Whatever is it, lad? What’s wrong?’

‘Harry,’ his mother said, and called, ‘Harry.’

‘I’m here, my love,’ his father said, taking her then, almost fiercely, roughly, holding her to him.

‘She wanted to go to the other room,’ he said. ‘To lie down on the sofa.’

‘Hold on to me, Ellen,’ his father said, ‘hold on to me, then, my love,’ and, trying to lift her, half-carried her through.

He laid her on the sofa.

‘Light the fire, then, lad,’ he said, and added, as he knelt at the grate, ‘Get a blanket, then, I mu’n get her covered,’ almost to himself, half-calling.

He went upstairs, saw where his father had been sleeping, and took a blanket.

His father was rubbing her feet when he went back down; his mother was lying stiffly the length of the sofa; her legs had begun to tremble and, as he watched, her arms had begun to shake as well. Her jaw vibrated. Her body was gripped in a huge vibration.

‘Sithee, fetch the doctor. Tha mu’n call for him. Tell him it’s urgent,’ his father said. He tucked the blanket round her as if about to go himself. ‘Go on. Take my bike,’ he said. His legs were bare, his shirt unbuttoned; Richard, who’d been playing in the kitchen, had come into the room, standing, leaning up against the door. ‘Mam?’ he began to say, ‘Mam?’ his voice trailing off into a sudden wail.

‘Go on. Don’t wait,’ his father said.

He rode to the doctor’s at the end of the village.

His father was dressed when he got back in: he was in the kitchen, drinking tea. Astonished to see him there at all, he said, ‘How is she, then? Is my mother all right?’

‘Aye. She’ll be all right. Is the doctor coming?’ his father said.

‘They said he’d come as soon as he can,’ he said.

‘And how soon’s that going to be? By God, when you want them doctors they’re never there.’

He went through to the other room. His mother was moaning quietly to herself; her glasses had been taken off; her legs were vibrating beneath the blanket. His father came in with his tea. ‘Don’t touch her, then,’ he said. He put the pot down. His hands were trembling. He sat on the arm of the sofa, half-crouching, and began, slowly, to rub his mother’s feet; then, as she began to moan more loudly, he took out her arms from beneath the blanket and rubbed her hands, half-moaning now it seemed himself, his voice harsh, half-startled. ‘Nay, you’ll be all right, then, love. The doctor’s coming. Nay, you’ll be all right, then, love. We’ll just hang on.’

The doctor came an hour later. Colin sat in the kitchen with Richard. He could hear the doctor’s voice with its Scottish accent, then his father’s murmur, then a fainter, inaudible murmur from his mother.

Finally the doctor came out, briskly, screwing back the top of a fountain-pen and clipping it inside his pocket. He went through to the front door, his father following.

The sound of his car, a moment later, came echoing from the street outside.

‘You can fetch that from the chemist,’ his father said, coming in then with a slip of paper.

His mother was in bed when he got back in.

‘I’ve told her she shouldn’t do any work,’ his father said. ‘She’s to do no lifting, and she’s not to come downstairs again, except for the toilet until the doctor’s seen her. You see what happens when you don’t follow instructions.’

Her illness frightened his father: it gave him strength; he buckled to the housework now himself, and came home from work with an eye anxious for any job that hadn’t been done, ironing his own clothes, washing, scrubbing the floor and washing the windows, but with none of his earlier resentment. Now she was fastened upstairs, with the doctor coming every day, and with the threat of the hospital hanging over them once again, an older, more familiar momentum returned to the place: his father knew what he ought to do, and did it, cooking his mother’s meals and carrying them upstairs, sleeping on the sofa now, whistling to himself as he worked in the kitchen, going upstairs to kiss his mother goodbye each evening before he set off for work.

‘You take good care of her,’ he’d tell Colin, coming down, before he left. ‘Ought she wants you get it. And keep Richard quiet when he goes to bed.’

Colin would go in to see her himself before he went to bed; she would be lying back against the pillow, sometimes reading a paper, other times dozing, glancing up, casually, saying, ‘Have you washed, then, love?’ or, ‘Have you locked the doors? Your father’s got his key, then, hasn’t he?’ half-dazed, almost as if he were some other person, leaning forward suddenly to touch his hair, to push back his fringe, inquiringly, as if unsure for a moment who he was.

In the mornings, if his father wasn’t back, he’d take her in a cup of tea, quietly setting it on the chair beside her bed, listening to her breathing, not wakening her or touching the curtains. Then, having got Steven up and Richard, he would tiptoe down the stairs. Sometimes, waking drowsily, she would call to the stairs, ‘Is that you, Colin? What time is it?’ waiting then for him to come back in and adding, ‘Can you draw the curtains, love?’ or, ‘If you’ll hand me the coat I’ll have to go downstairs.’ She crossed the yard on her own to the toilet, white, thin-faced, not glancing up when anyone called so that often Mrs Shaw or Mrs Bletchley watched her from their doors, not speaking, their arms folded. ‘How’s your mother, Colin?’ Mrs Shaw would say and shake her head before he answered. ‘She’s not looking well. She ought to be in hospital,’ she’d tell him.

One Sunday evening, when his father changed shifts, he borrowed his bike and cycled out to St Olaf’s. The service was still on; the soldiers in the old mansion were sitting on the steps below the porch: one or two were playing with a ball between the trees. From several of the ancient, mullioned windows soldiers’ heads were hanging out, their voices calling, echoing in the yard beyond the church.

He rode up and down the road opposite the church until he saw a verger hook back the doors. He waited then beneath a tree; several girls and youths came out, the older people standing in groups around the gate. He saw Audrey and Marion with several other girls he recognized; they stood by the stone wall for a while, in a circle, laughing, glancing over at the groups of boys. Finally one or two boys moved off, slowly; some of the girls began to follow.

Colin waited for a while beneath the tree; then, as the group of youths rounded the corner towards the village he started after them, cycling slowly. Audrey glanced across, then Marion; perhaps they’d expected Stafford as well for they glanced behind him, but seeing the road empty but for the following line of boys, they continued talking to the girls on either side. Colin paused, not knowing any one of them to speak to, then cycled slowly on until the first of the houses came into sight. He got off the bike, took off his cycle clips, and waited for the youths to pass.

Neither Audrey nor Marion paid him any attention; there was a brief glance across from the dark-haired girl, but it was more a gesture directed at the world in general, half-smirking, the eyes narrowed, the eyebrows raised, the mouth pulled wide in the beginning of a smile.

He got on the bike again after the line of pursuing boys had passed, and cycled slowly in their wake. Finally, when they reached a bus stop in the centre of the village they stood in a large group around a wooden seat, still talking and laughing. Occasionally one figure would chase another, a pursuit egged on by the others and ending in screams – a girl pushed back against a hedge, a boy hanging over her, pinning her arms, helpless suddenly, and grinning.

At one point a boy and girl moved off, along a hedged lane adjoining the stop: two or three of the boys called out and, between the slowly shifting figures, he caught a glimpse of Audrey, sitting on the bench, smiling suddenly and shaking her head.

Some time later the group parted and Marion appeared: she was wearing a reddish hat. She wore high heels. She came over to the hedge where he was leaning on the bike and, glancing back at the boys, who, in turn, were gazing across in her direction, said, ‘Audrey’s given me a message. She doesn’t want to see you again. I didn’t want to tell you, but there it is.’ Some comment was made amongst the boys around the stop and a moment later the girls as well as the boys had laughed. Marion, aware of the audience at her back, had shaken her shoulders and tossed her head. ‘Is there anything you want to tell her, then?’

‘I’d like to talk to her,’ he said. ‘If she can drag herself away from those grinning idiots.’

‘Those grinning idiots, as you put it,’ Marion said, ‘are some of my friends.’

‘If she can drag herself away from some of your friends,’ he said, suddenly gratified by the eloquence his feelings had given him.

‘I’m sure she doesn’t want to. But I’ll ask her all the same,’ she said.

She walked back to the watching group. His message was passed loudly through the wall of figures to Audrey sitting on the bench.

Audrey, in a slightly subdued voice, had given an answer back.

Marion, her face pale beneath her bell-shaped hat, called over, ‘She doesn’t want to speak to you, my dear. I said she wouldn’t.’

He picked up a blade of grass from the verge and set it slowly in the corner of his mouth. His hand, he saw, had begun to tremble. His whole body began to shake.

A moment later some of the boys and two of the girls moved off; they disappeared up a road between the houses. A bus appeared at a bend in the road. It rattled down towards the stop.

A man got off; Marion and Audrey, followed by the boys, got on.

He could see them at the rear windows as the bus went past, a hand waving, and behind, a brief glimpse of Audrey’s face, half-smiling. The bus disappeared in a cloud of dust.

He mounted the bike and cycled after it for a while, re-passing the church where soldiers now were sitting along the wall, and turning down the road which, from the amount of dust in the air, he assumed the bus had taken.

After half an hour’s cycling, and passing several stops, he turned in the road, idly, and, freewheeling, started back, re-passing the church once more, the wall outside deserted, and continuing on towards the village; it was almost dark by the time he got back home.

‘And what did Stafford have to say?’ his father said when he went in the kitchen. ‘Not borrowed another book again?’

‘I didn’t go,’ he said, and shook his head. It was the notion of cycling to Stafford’s that he had used to borrow his father’s bike.

‘So where have you been till this time? It’s long past the time tha mu’n be in bed.’

‘I just cycled around,’ he said. ‘I thought I might go to church.’

‘Church?’ his father said.

‘I got there too late,’ he said, and shook his head.

‘And what’s thy doing at church?’ his father said, as if he connected it in some way with his mother.

‘I thought I might go. On Sunday evenings. Instead of the afternoon,’ he said. ‘I’m getting a bit old for Sunday School,’ he added.

‘Nay, tha mu’n do what thy want about church,’ his father said. ‘Tha’s not punctured the bike or ought?’ he added.

‘No,’ he said, and added, ‘I’ll get up and get you some breakfast if you like.’

‘Nay, I don’t eat ought, when I get up,’ his father said. He looked at him uneasily as he crossed over to the stairs. ‘Think on about coming in late,’ he added.

Later, from his room, he heard his father say, ‘I think our Colin’s been courting. He’s come in with as daft a look as I’ve seen on his face,’ the door closing then, his mother’s voice murmuring from the other side.

He heard a faint laugh from his parents’ room, the creaking of their bed; he slowly succumbed to his tiredness, worn out more by cycling than anything else.

19

He started going to church on Sunday evenings with Bletchley and Reagan. Mrs Bletchley and Mrs Reagan, with their respective sons, but without their respective husbands, attended church also on Sunday mornings. In the evenings, however, he and Bletchley and Reagan sat at the back of the north aisle, on the opposite side to the pulpit, and behind a row of girls from Bletchley’s school. They passed messages to and fro, fastened in the pages of a prayer-book, and Bletchley, during the prayers, when the girls knelt forward from the wooden chairs, would frequently take a glove, passing it to Reagan, who, with his eyes closed, red-faced, would put it in his pocket.

Reagan had grown into a pale-cheeked, narrow-faced youth; he had a prominent brow, a long nose, slightly upturned, which dominated his face. His attempt to conceal the extraordinary rearward bulge of his head by allowing his hair to hang down to the nape of his neck was a source of constant irritation to his father. Frequently on an evening, above the strains of the now somewhat larger violin on which Reagan practised, could be heard the shouts echoing across the yards: ‘You think it’s beautiful: I think it makes him look like a cissy. You think he can play a violin: I think it’s like a cat on hot bricks. You think he looks distinguished: I think he looks like a bloody woman,’ or, later, as he came out to the yard, ‘Don’t leave him alone in that house or I’ll have it off him,’ stalking then across the backs to sit with his father in the porch, or moving with an abstracted air towards the foot of his garden where, standing at the fence, he would call to the miners playing cricket in the field, ‘Hit it! Hit it harder,’ his face reddening, his neck on the point of bursting from his collar. ‘Harder, for God’s sake. You’ll never get anywhere with that.’

With Bletchley, Reagan preserved a respectful silence; it was one of Bletchley’s mannerisms, when walking, to pause at some relevant point of his conversation waiting for Reagan to turn his head, to pause and, finally, however much in a hurry he was, to incline his body in his direction, even stepping back a pace or two; Reagan’s face would be set with a wearied look, contemplating not Bletchley but the space above his head. If, as not infrequently happened, Reagan went on walking, unaware of Bletchley’s pause, Bletchley would stand waiting with a patronizing sneer set on his lips until, suddenly aware that he was no longer walking in the company of his friend, Reagan with the same wearied air would walk back down the road to where, with raised eyebrows now, and anxious to continue his narrative, his friend was standing. No word of any sort, during these encounters, passed Reagan’s lips; merely his presence and the expression of studied expectancy were sufficient to fire Bletchley into prolonged descriptions of his life at school, of his father’s exploits in the war, of the achievements of distant relatives, or into an analysis of recent political events.

The war had ended earlier that year. A party had been held in the field at the back of the house; tables of every description had been lifted over the fences and set with variously coloured cloths and miscellaneous plates of food. A gramophone, wound by hand, had been placed on a wooden chair and after the meal was over couples danced in the grass, stumbling over mounds of bricks and bottles, the sounds of their voices echoing between the houses with the dull, almost mournful rhythm of the tune. Children ran wildly between the tables, snatching at the food, gathering in groups to watch the couples, occasionally imitating the dancers’ movements, the miners clearing a space finally beyond the tables where they organized races, wives wheeling husbands in garden barrows, or running three-legged, stumbling, to screams and shouts, hopping, husbands carrying wives and wives, later in the day, attempting to carry husbands. Walking slowly amongst all these rushing bodies, his thumbs hooked in his waistcoat pockets, a fresh white handkerchief projecting from the breast-pocket of his suit, his bowler hat on this occasion missing, was Mr Reagan. Occasionally he would step out from the crowd and producing a second white handkerchief from his trouser pocket insist on starting one of the races, examining each of the contestants first as to their positions on the starting line, the legality of their posture, drawing one back, or thrusting another forward, giving a noticeable advantage to those he judged less likely to show up well, and starting them off, to screams and shouts, with something of a gesture. ‘When I drop the handkerchief so – before which I shall say, “Are you ready? Get to your marks,”’ waving the handkerchief with a slow, almost derisory gesture above his head, and withholding the signal until that moment when the cries of complaint had risen to a crescendo. Finally, when he had made sure there was nothing left to eat and that the small supply of liquid refreshment had been consumed, he took over this task completely, even following the competitors across the field, calling advice, or running, if the race were one which allowed only intermittent progress, to the finishing-line and indicating to those he favoured most how they might gain advantage over their nearest rivals, getting in the way, if only accidentally, of those whom he judged to have taken an unfair advantage or those whom he thought were too well endowed in any case.

Flags had been draped from several of the houses, and strings of small, triangular flags had been hung across the streets. On some of the houses placards had been mounted, welcoming home a member of the family from service in the forces, and several figures in uniform, khaki, blue and navy-blue, wandered in a desultory fashion about the field, one soldier, his sleeves rolled, tunic-less, competing in several of the races but finally lying in the grass by one of the fences, his mouth open, apparently asleep.

In the evening small groups of miners sat about the field, chewing grass, or collected in dark knots about the doorways, one or two lifting back the tables across the fences, the women standing in the yards, arms folded, or sorting plates and cups and saucers. An air of lethargy had settled on the place, Mrs Shaw alone, after spending most of her time serving at the tables, stalking from door to door, offering her services for washing-up. Batty and his brothers, who had lingered on the fringe of the activities during the afternoon, now occupied the centre of the field, where, with Stringer’s father and two other men, they tossed coins in a half-hearted fashion, their occasional cries echoing back to the open doors. ‘Nay, Geoff,’ and, ‘Toss again,’ and, ‘I’ve won, I’ve won,’ while several of the smaller children gathered round.

‘They won’t have that again for a long time,’ his father said when he’d finally returned the kitchen table and with Colin’s help lifted it inside the room. ‘That’s exhausted neighbourly hospitality for a year or two, you can be sure of that. Did you see Mrs McCormack complaining that her plates were smashed? And that woman who ate that fruit cake doesn’t even live in the street, you know.’

‘I think they should have it more often,’ his mother said. ‘Not wait for a war to end before people get together. It just shows what you can do when you set your mind to it.’

‘Aye,’ his father said, sinking down beside the table. ‘Why, there’s half of yon colliers too drunk to go to work.’

‘Oh, he’s exaggerating as usual,’ his mother said, turning to Colin. ‘He’s enjoyed himself for once, so he’s anxious not to show it.’

His father, in fact, had taken as prominent a part in the afternoon’s activities as Mr Reagan, only he had done it as a competitor, racing down the field at one point with Mrs Bletchley, their legs strapped together, on another with Mrs Shaw, who, screaming, had bundled his father along as a wheelbarrow, while clutching at his legs. It was perhaps his pleasure at these achievements that he was anxious to disown, for his mother had spent most of the afternoon standing at the tables, serving food, or going to and fro between the kitchens collecting sandwiches and attempting to supervise the children who removed the cakes from the plates as fast as they were laid. Now she stood at the sink, flushed, stacking the wet plates beside her and adding, ‘If you’ve nothing else to do but grumble you could easily dry these up.’

His father took the cloth; he gazed out of the window, wiped a plate, saw someone he recognized in the yard outside and saying, ‘Hold on, I won’t be a minute,’ dropped the cloth and disappeared through the open door.

Some time later they could hear his laughter across the backs, his voice calling out in protest, followed by Mrs McCormack’s, then Mrs Bletchley’s, then by a screech which they finally identified as Mrs Shaw’s.

‘He hasn’t enjoyed himself, it’s easy to see that,’ his mother said. She handed Colin the cloth. ‘One war over and another begun as far as he’s concerned, and someone else to clear the mess.’

His mother had a faded air; ever since he’d known her there’d been some steady diminution of her spirit, first with Steven’s birth, then with Richard’s, now with this, a slow extraction, leaving her, after each interval of illness, weaker, more disenchanted, half-bemused. It was as if her life had flooded out, secretly, without their knowledge, and she some helpless agent, watching this dissolution with a hidden rage, half-apologetic, half-disowning. ‘You didn’t celebrate much, in any case,’ she said. ‘I saw Batty’s lad and that Stringer tucking in. They didn’t lose much opportunity in taking out more than any of them put in.’

‘Oh,’ he said, shrugging. ‘I mainly stayed in here.’

‘You and Ian and Michael Reagan, I expect, are above it all,’ she said.

Yet Bletchley and Reagan had, though taking no part in the activities in the field, played a conspicuous part in the disposal of the food, bringing whole plates back to Bletchley’s kitchen, where, since Mrs Bletchley was busy in the field, they had consumed it unmolested.

‘Do you feel above it all?’ she said.

He shook his head. ‘I suppose I feel apart.’

‘Is that the grammar school’, she said, ‘we shall have to thank for that?’

‘You wanted me to go,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, love. I’m not complaining.’

‘I don’t feel I’m part of anything there, either,’ he said, ‘if it comes to that.’

He took another plate and dried it. His mother, still bowed to the sink, took the kettle from beside her and warmed the water. She ran her hand round the pile of plates still there. Then, raising her head, she washed each one and lifted them out.

‘I suppose that’s a phase you go through.’ She glanced across at him and smiled. ‘Aren’t there other boys like you?’

‘I suppose there are.’

‘Don’t they feel out of it?’

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘You’ll find you’ll get no more out of life than what you put into it,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’s true.’

‘Couldn’t you have joined in today?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. He shook his head. ‘I suppose I could. As it was’, he gestured round, ‘I stayed in here.’

His father came back a little later, flushed, bright-eyed, rubbing his hands. ‘Well, that was a day to remember,’ he said as if, by the buoyancy of his spirit, he could make some secret of his activities outside. ‘When you’ve been through something together it makes a party like that seem well worth while,’ gazing in surprise then at the pots piled on the table and adding, ‘What’s this, then, love? Have you gone and dried?’

His life had been fragmented into a third and final part. First there’d been his life in the village, then his life at the school; now there was a more formidable portion of his existence which he’d never, consciously, been aware of before, a self-absorption which took him away from the other two. At school he had begun to sense what it might be like to be in the upper forms, the privileges, the association with that part of the hierarchy which enjoyed all the benefits and suffered few of the abuses. His progress through the school had been echoed by his progress through the age-group football teams. He would be taking his first external examinations the following summer, and after that came, if he survived, the Sixth Form. He saw little of Stafford; absorbed into the Classics stream and protected now on sports occasions by a covey of admirers, their brief exchanges were marked more by hostility than any awareness of the companionship they had shared before. Colin spent much of his time at the school on his own, working during the summer on a number of farms, though never as far afield as the first. He saw Audrey on several occasions in the town, and Marion, talking to groups of boys in the city centre; apart from a distant acknowledgment, more evident in Marion than Audrey, they too, like Stafford, gave no sign of their past acquaintanceship at all. For a while he went about with the red-nosed Walker, who seemed good at nothing but avoiding work, then with a boy called Berresford who introduced him to his sister, slightly older than himself, with whom occasionally Colin walked down to the bus stop, a little distance from his own, discussing books he had never read and various aspects of the world situation. She was a dark-haired girl with a large Roman nose, and it was, if anything, her lack of any pretensions as to her appearance which drew him to her. One week-end they had arranged to meet in the town and, after going to the pictures, walked for some time in the local Park. For some reason this encounter brought an end to their acquaintance, as if by mutual agreement, and he even found himself drifting away from Berresford, and once again, but for odd encounters with boys like Connors, whom he saw on the bus as well as in school, he found himself left very much to his own devices.

One evening he had been coming home from the local picture-house with Bletchley when they had seen a girl walking ahead of them, dressed in a dark coat and wearing a dark beret who, as they approached, turned and, seeing Bletchley, said, ‘Hello, Ian. What’re you doing around these parts?’

‘I live here, Sheila,’ Bletchley said, apparently disconcerted by this inquiry, for he added in a belligerent, almost leering tone, ‘What’re you doing round here in any case yourself?’

‘Oh, I live round here as well,’ the girl said simply, removing her beret and suddenly shaking out her hair. On the front of the beret was the single stork motif of Bletchley’s school.

Bletchley was smoking; his father had returned home earlier that year from the army, and, as if as a result of his re-appearance, Bletchley had suddenly acquired a number of adult mannerisms. As well as smoking he’d begun, tentatively, since he scarcely shaved, to grow a moustache. The effect, when viewed from the house next door, was that of two men vying for the attention of one woman, and Mrs Bletchley, far from wilting beneath the weight of these unprecedented demands, had taken on a new life and vigour. She had, as if in acknowledgment, begun to smoke herself. Bletchley, on this occasion, produced the cigarette from the palm of his hand, setting it conspicuously between his lips. He blew out a cloud of smoke and examined her with greater circumspection through it.

‘I thought you lived in Shafton,’ he said.

‘We did,’ she said. ‘We moved here about a week ago. I’m just coming home from Geraldine Parker’s. That’s why I’m late.’ She tossed back her hair. ‘Where have you been to in any case?’ she added.

‘We’ve been to the flicks,’ Bletchley said, allowing another cloud of smoke to escape, the cigarette propped loosely in the corner of his mouth. He gestured back the way they’d come. The picture-house, built only a few months before the war, stood at the edge of a piece of waste ground opposite the Miners’ Institute. It was from that direction that the girl herself was coming.

She had dark eyes; her hair, to which she wished to draw their attention, was dark too, her face pale, almost startlingly white, emphasizing the redness of her lips and a certain gravity, almost gauntness of expression. She had the staidness of an older woman, walking along at Bletchley’s side as if they had been together throughout the evening.

‘This is Colin,’ Bletchley said when she finally glanced across and the girl had added, ‘Not from King Edward’s?’

‘Why, do you know him?’ Bletchley said, removing the cigarette and glancing at Colin himself as if he suspected the casualness of this encounter wasn’t all it seemed.

‘I’ve heard about him,’ the girl had said.

‘Sheila’s in our form at school,’ Bletchley said, his tone suggesting that, as a consequence of this, anything she might say could, on his authority, be discounted. ‘She got a transfer from a county school.’

‘Oh, we’ve lived all over,’ the girl said, nodding her head and indicating a near-by street. ‘We live down there as a matter of fact. I’ll be seeing you around, I suppose. What night do you normally go to the pictures?’

‘You never can tell,’ Bletchley said, the pictures being but one of a host of activities occupying his attention throughout the week.

‘Well, I suppose I’ll be seeing you on the bus,’ the girl had said and nodding to Colin called good night, turning as she reached the corner, and waving, Bletchley raising his cigarette and moving it, airily, in the region of his ear.

‘What’s her second name?’ he said.

‘Richmond,’ Bletchley said. ‘She came last year and she and this Geraldine Parker spend most of their time together.’

He added little else until they reached their respective doors, then said, pausing on the step to light another cigarette, ‘I think she took a fancy to you. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t notice.’

‘I ought to warn you, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Her mother’s divorced. Some of the boys she goes out with have had her once or twice. Though I suppose it gets exaggerated,’ he added, ‘things like that.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I suppose I better get inside.’

He kicked the door open with the toe of his shoe, pushed it with his shoulder and, his hands in his pockets, stepped inside.

A few moments later through the kitchen wall came the sound of Mr Bletchley’s voice, renewed, if not renovated entirely by his absence during the war. ‘Will you remove that cigarette or do you want me to remove it for you?’

‘You’ll remove nothing of mine,’ came Bletchley’s shout, if anything one or two decibels lower.

‘I’ll remove anything I like. I’ll remove one or two other things besides.’ The words were followed a moment later by something of a cry. ‘How many more have you got inside that pocket?’

‘Mind your own business.’

There was the sound of shuffling feet followed, a moment later, by another cry.

‘Stop it. Stop it, Arthur,’ came Mrs Bletchley’s voice.

‘I’ll stop it. I’ll stop him one in the mouth if he answers me back again,’ came Mr Bletchley’s shout.

‘At least, the war’s done him some good,’ his father said, looking up from where he was reading by the fire. ‘If it hasn’t done much for Ian or his mother.’

‘Live and let live,’ his mother said, standing at the sink.

‘Don’t worry: I’ve waited long enough to see it as I’m not likely to want to stop it now,’ his father added, folding up his paper and going to the wall himself. ‘Go on, go on. Give him another, Arthur,’ he called in a voice reminiscent of Mr Reagan’s, his shout however, after a brief moment, followed by total silence on the other side.

He saw her stepping off the bus and, by jumping the wall of the pub yard, he came out a few paces ahead of her as she turned down the street towards the village.

‘Are you going far?’ he said.

She glanced up, casually, as she had on the previous occasion, as if she’d been aware of his presence for some considerable time; as if even, only moments before, they might have been talking on the bus, removing her beret and shaking out her hair in that instinctive, half-engaging manner, then glancing past him to the row of shops standing opposite the pub in the village street. ‘I was just calling at Benson’s,’ she said. ‘Then going home.’

‘Oh, I’ll go that way as well,’ he said.

‘I shan’t be long,’ she said. ‘I’ve only some medicine to pick up. It’s already made.’

She went inside the shop and stood, a strangely independent figure, behind several others, calling out finally to one of the assistants, stepping to the counter and, after a moment’s conversation, pulling out a purse and setting down some money.

Her face was gaunter than before, the cheeks drawn in. It was like intercepting someone on a journey; as she watched his expression she began to smile herself.

‘Aren’t you keen on school?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I suppose. Not really.’

‘Why do you go on with it?’ she said.

‘I suppose I have to.’

‘No one has to do anything, as far as I’m aware,’ she said. She smiled again, casually, looking off along the street to where, at its farthest end, the road divided, one arm leading to the Dell, the other to the station. ‘Where do you live in any case?’ she added as if to distract him from this notion altogether.

‘Next door to Bletchley. Or, conversely,’ he added, ‘Bletchley lives next door to me.’

She nodded, walking along then for a while in silence, laughing as if the thought of this had caught her fancy, then saying, ‘I think people make too much fun of Ian. Just because he’s large. He’s much brighter, you know, than people think.’ She drew her brows together, the eyes narrowing as if she had some specific instance of Bletchley’s unlooked-for qualities in mind.

‘He gets by, I suppose, by being thick-skinned,’ he said, more to provoke her than anything else.

‘Thick skins aren’t very much use when it comes down to it,’ she added.

She added nothing further. They passed the shops with their faintly illuminated panes, the forecourt of a garage, and crossed in front of a row of houses. To their left was the tiny Catholic church with its rectory and, beside it, the converted stone-built house that was occupied by the Conservative and Unionist Club.

‘What do you do in the evenings?’ he said.

‘I usually stay in,’ she said. ‘I’ve a younger sister, and my mother works most evenings. Once or twice a week I go over to a friend at Baildon. Well, my uncle, really. It’s where we used to live.’

‘What does your mother do?’ he said.

‘She works at a pub. The Stavington Arms. Do you know it?’

He shook his head. It was like one woman talking about another.

‘Are you free this evening?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose I could be. I could ask the woman next door. She’s looked in once or twice when I’ve had to go out.’ A sudden concern now had taken possession of her features, the eye drawn down, the frown, an almost habitual expression, suddenly returning, the mouth tightening. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘We could go to the pictures.’

‘I don’t think I’ve got long enough to go there,’ she said.

‘We could go for a walk.’

‘Where do you go for walks round here?’ She glanced across.

‘Wherever you like.’

‘I don’t know round here at all,’ she said.

‘I could show you one or two places, then,’ he said.

‘I shouldn’t come to the house,’ she added. ‘I’ll meet you at the corner. Will seven o’clock, do you think, be any good?’

He watched her walk off down the narrow street: it was comprised of tiny brick terraces whose front doors opened directly on to the pavement. She didn’t look back. At a door half-way down the street she took out a key, pushed against the door then went inside.

She was already waiting at the corner when he arrived. She’d brushed back her hair and fastened it with a ribbon. She wore a dark-green coat which, he suspected, might have been handed down to her by her mother. It ended half-way down her calves, her ankles enclosed by white socks, folded over, and the flat-heeled shoes he thought she’d worn before.

‘I suppose we better not walk back through the village’, she said, ‘in case someone sees me who knows my mother. She’s out, you see. So I can’t be away for long.’

They turned and, their hands in their pockets, walked down to the junction to the south of the village and, after some indecision on his part, turned up towards the Dell.

They passed the gas-lit windows of the Miners’ Institute, the front of the Plaza picture-house, and beyond the last houses started down the slope towards the brooding, mist-shrouded hollow round the gasworks and the sewage pens.

‘Not very nice air round here,’ she said and laughed.

‘Do you have a bike? We could have gone for a ride,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. She shook her head.

‘I borrow my father’s usually,’ he said. ‘Though he’s not very keen. He uses it for work.’

‘What’s his job?’ she said, casually, looking off now towards the fields the other side.

‘He’s down the pit.’

At the mention of his father her interest had drifted off.

‘Where’s this road lead to, then?’ she said when they reached the foot of the slope and had started up the hill the other side.

‘It goes on for miles,’ he said. ‘Stokeley. Brierley. Monckton.’ He gestured to the slopes of the overgrown colliery to their left. ‘We could go in there if you like,’ he added.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m not keen on walking on roads, if it comes to that.’

He found a gap in the hedge and held back the branches. He caught a glimpse of her calf, the turn of the white stocking, and the frayed edge at the bottom of her coat.

He led the way between the darkening mounds.

‘Is it wet?’ she said, stooping, feeling the grass.

‘You can sit on my coat.’ He took off his jacket and put it down, standing in his shirt-sleeves, shivering then at the dampness in the air.

The slope faced back towards the village: below them, partly obscured by trees, were the outlines of the sewage pens, the swamp, and beyond the dark profile of the gas container. The lights of the village spread backwards to the final mound of the colliery with its twin head-gears and its faint, whitish stream of smoke. The hill behind it, with the church and manor, was picked out now by a vague, irregular pattern of lights.

He sat beside her.

‘I used to play down there.’ He gestured below. ‘Years ago. We had a hut and kept food and things, and used to build traps for people who attacked us.’

‘And who were they?’ she said. ‘The ones who attacked.’

‘They never came.’

She laughed, leaning back. She unfastened her coat. Underneath she wore a blouse and skirt.

‘We ought to sit on this,’ she said. ‘It’s bigger than yours, and you’ll get less cold.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I feel all right.’

Yet she stood up and took it off, laying it on the ground between them.

‘What’s school like?’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’ll leave in a year. I’ll have to get a job. My mother’s divorced, you see, and my father pays her hardly any money.’

She sat with her knees pulled up, her arms folded, her head nodding forward, abstracted, gazing to the mist and shadows in the Dell below.

‘What happened to your hut?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. He gazed down now to the Dell himself. ‘Fell to pieces.’

She straightened, leaning back, supported by one elbow, glancing up. Her face was shadowed, the eyes dark, almost hidden, the mouth drawn in. It was like some other person, unrelated to the one he’d seen before.

He leant down beside her and she, withdrawing her elbow, sank back on the coat.

He felt the thinness of her blouse.

She thrust up her head. Their mouths held soundlessly together.

‘Have you been out with many girls?’ she said, finally, when he drew away.

‘Not really, I suppose,’ he said.

She smiled, her face turned up beneath his arm, only the eyes now, in the darkness, faintly luminous.

‘What makes you ask?’

‘Oh, the way you do things, I suppose,’ she said.

She closed her eyes again and, drawn down by the gesture, her face thrust up to his, he kissed her on the mouth.

Her tongue crept out between his lips.

‘Does that have any effect?’ she said, and added, cautiously, drawing back her head, ‘Down there, I mean.’

Her hand fumbled for a moment by his waist then, coldly, he felt it thrust between his legs.

‘Would you?’ she said, and added, ‘Put your hand on me.’

He felt the smoothness of her thigh, the softness, then the sudden roughness underneath.

He lay transfixed, as if impaled, her tongue thrust fully now between his lips, moaning quietly in her throat, her body rolled gently from side to side.

Some movements in the bushes above them a moment later made her stiffen. She drew back her head.

‘I think there’s someone watching us,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can just lie here, I suppose.’

They lay apart then, gazing up. The movements in the shrubs had stopped.

‘I suppose I ought to go,’ she said. ‘I ought to be getting back in any case,’ she added. ‘I only had an hour, you see.’

‘Shall I see you again?’ he said.

‘Whenever you like. Wednesday’s usually my best night, and Thursdays. That’s usually when I go over to my friend’s.’

‘I could meet you from the bus on the other days,’ he said.

‘Well,’ she said, and added without much enthusiasm, ‘I suppose you could.’

They picked up their coats. She leant back for a moment against his arm. ‘We could always find somewhere else,’ she said and closed her eyes, thrusting up her face to his, moving off finally along the paths that led between the overgrown mounds to the road. A faint shape passed across the slope above them. ‘I suppose you’ll always find someone here,’ she said. ‘It’s so close to the village.’

They reached the road; until they neared the first houses they walked with their arms around each other’s waist, she releasing his as they neared the first of the lights, glancing up then, frowning, as they stepped from the darkness and saying, ‘What do I look like? Do I look all right?’ She’d buttoned her coat and straightened her socks. She waited, smiling, while he turned her round. ‘One or two marks on the back,’ he said.

‘Grass,’ she said.

‘Mud,’ he said.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘it’ll soon brush off.’

She loosened her hair, taking off her ribbon. They passed, blinking, through the light of the cinema entrance, listened to the call from the miners in the Institute door, and reached the corner of her street without, apparently, having been recognized by anyone she knew.

She leant up quickly, kissed his cheek and without adding anything further set off down the street. He waited, watching her pass through the pools of gaslight until, disappearing into a patch of shadow, he finally heard the click as she closed her door.

They went out sometimes twice a week, traversing the fields and copses beyond the manor, lying in the darkness beneath hedges or in some shrub-enclosed alcove in a wood. On some occasions she would remove her skirt, unfastening her blouse, drawing out her arms then gazing up at him, a vague anonymous whiteness against the darkness of the ground, her hands held out, her head thrust up, releasing her breasts, drawing down his head. ‘No, no further,’ she would say when he moved against her, drawing out her legs, sometimes crying then and turning away, and saying, ‘I’ve seen enough of where that leads to. Honestly, don’t you think I want to?’ running her hands against him, sinking her lips towards him, drawing him to her mouth with moans and sighs.

One evening, coming back with her through the centre of the village, he met his father setting off for work. He’d already passed them in the road, cycling slowly, his father pausing in the darkness, calling, ‘Colin is that you?’ drawing his bike against the kerb, waiting for his answer, looking back towards the girl. ‘Your mother’s wondering where you’ve got to. Do you realize it’s nearly ten o’clock?’ His voice was muted, as if oppressed, like someone calling from beneath a stone.

‘I’m just going back,’ he said and added, ‘I’m just seeing Sheila home.’

‘Well be quick about it,’ his father said, turning to the bike, setting the pedal. ‘It’s too late for somebody your age to be out like this.’

And the following evening, when he got back from school, his father was waiting in the kitchen, Steven and Richard removed, playing in the other room: his mother’s voice came from beyond the door.

‘Well, who is she, then?’ his father said. ‘What’s her name and Where’s she from?’

‘She lives in the village. She’s called Sheila.’ He went to the cupboard in the corner to look for food.

‘And what’s her second name?’ he said.

‘Richmond.’

‘I’ve heard of no Richmond. What street does she live in, then?’ His father sat upright at the table, his hands clenched tightly on his knees.

‘They’ve just arrived here,’ he said and when he mentioned the street his father added, ‘Not down theer? That’s one of the worst districts in the village. Theer’s some right people live down there.’

‘She can’t help where she lives,’ he said.

‘Well, somebody can,’ he said. ‘What’s her father do, in any case?’ he added.

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

‘And that’s where you’ve been all these nights when you said you’d been out with Ian and Michael Reagan?’

‘Not every night. Some nights I’ve been out with them,’ he said.

‘Aye. About one from what I can make out,’ he said. ‘What’s her mother say to her going off at that time of night?’ he added.

‘I’ve no idea.’

‘They must say summat. They can’t all be as daft as we are,’ his father said.

‘Her parents are divorced, and her mother works, so she’s to spend a lot of the time looking after the house herself.’

‘Good God.’ His father banged his head. ‘Does she work this girl, then, or is she still at school?’

‘Ian knows her,’ he said. ‘She goes to the Manor.’

‘Aye, I bet Ian knows her,’ his father said. ‘If she’s left on her own like that you can bet quite a few people know her.’

‘Well, I’m not discussing it any more,’ he said. ‘You don’t know her, and if you did I doubt if you’d feel it necessary to say things like that.’

‘And where do you go in the evenings?’ his father said as if he hadn’t heard this last remark. ‘Where do you go at that time of night?’

‘We go to the Plaza. We go for walks. We sometimes go to the Park,’ he said.

The door from the passage opened and his mother appeared. His brothers’ voices came from the room at the front.

‘And what’re you going to say to this, then?’ his father said. ‘Did you know he was out nearly every night with a girl?’

‘I had a good idea of it,’ his mother said, blinking now behind her glasses.

‘Then you kept it a damn good secret,’ his father said.

His mother closed the door behind her. ‘There’s no need to swear,’ she said, her eyes if anything growing larger.

‘I’m not swearing. Did I say a swear word there?’ his father said. He got up from the table; he crossed to the fire, stood there for a moment, then came back to the table. ‘By God, I could swear, I can tell you that. Where do you think they go, and what do they get up to at that time of the night? Aren’t you going to ask him?’ He banged the table with his hand, banged it once again then, having sat down, glanced up helplessly towards his mother.

‘Why don’t you invite her round? Would she mind coming round?’ his mother said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think she’d like it.’

‘There, then. That’s settled,’ his mother said, and added, turning to his father, ‘Are you satisfied? You’ll be able to meet her and see what sort of girl she is.’

‘A lot that’s going to do,’ his father said, turning once more towards the fire as if there were a great deal he couldn’t tell her.

‘I think he’s forgotten that he was young once,’ his mother said.

‘Nay, I haven’t forgotten,’ his father said. He gazed resolutely towards the flames.

‘Oh, well, one man’s bitterness mustn’t feed another’s,’ his mother said. She picked up Richard as he came into the room, holding his face against her chest.

‘I’m not bitter,’ his father said. ‘I just know more about the world than some.’

‘Some things you know about,’ his mother said. ‘But about other things, I’m afraid you know very little.’

‘Aye. I knew and I know nought about ought,’ his father said, crossing to the hearth and taking up his woollen socks, his shirt and his faded trousers, and turning to the stairs, since it was nearly work-time, to put them on.

She was strangely disconcerted at being asked. He’d met her from her school bus one evening and had walked with her through the village to the corner of her street.

‘Why should I come to the house?’ she said.

‘They’re just anxious to see you,’ he said, trying unsuccessfully to take her hand.

‘Anxious since when? We’ve been going out for weeks,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s since your father saw you.’

‘It’s partly to do with that,’ he said. Yet he was proud of her and would have wished his parents now to see her.

‘You’ll have to give them my apologies,’ she said. ‘It’s inconvenient at the weekends. And most weekdays, I’m afraid, are already spoken for. They’ll have to do their inspecting another time.’

‘They’re interested in meeting you, that’s all,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Do they think we might get married?’ Her petulance brought a redness to her cheeks, almost child-like, vulnerable, her eyes darkening.

‘It’s because I spend so much time with you, and because I’m so interested in you that they thought you might like to meet them,’ he said. He added, ‘I mean, I’d like to meet your mother if you’d care to invite me.’

She began to laugh, harshly, her eyes narrowing. ‘I can just imagine you meeting her,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You wouldn’t mind. But I would mind. And so would she. As far as I know she’s not even aware of your existence.’

‘Why isn’t she?’ He gazed boldly down the street as if he intended going down to the house and knocking on the door himself.

‘Because she’d beat the living daylights out of me if she knew I spent so much time with anybody. With a boy, I mean. I tell her I’m going out with Geraldine Parker. I’m lucky so far,’ she added. ‘She’s never checked up.’

‘What if she saw you now?’ he said, still gazing down the street.

‘I’d say I was walking back from the bus.’

‘And if she saw you some other time?’

‘I’ll meet that when it comes.’

Already she was moving off, removing her beret as if anxious to be recognized in the street not as a schoolgirl but simply as another woman.

‘When will I meet you again?’ he said, following her to the first of the doors.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘And don’t come down the street. I go to enough trouble, as it is, to see you.’

‘Perhaps you better not see me at all,’ he said, pausing now by the first of the houses.

‘That’s up to you,’ she said. ‘You can take it or leave it,’ turning then with some fresh apprehension as she recognized a voice calling from one of the farthest doors. She started running and, more for her sake than his own, he walked to the corner, glancing round at the last moment to find she’d already disappeared.

‘So she’s not coming, then. I could have told you that afore,’ his father said.

‘I suppose she’s heard about you and didn’t want to come,’ his mother said, yet betraying by her expression that she was secretly dismayed herself.

‘Oh, and I remember one or two things about you home’, his father said, ‘that’d’ve kept anybody away, let alone somebody coming courting.’

‘Well, there was one person it didn’t keep away,’ his mother said.

‘Aye, and he lived to regret it,’ his father said turning away then as he saw the colour rising to her cheeks.

She lifted her glasses and slowly wiped her eyes.

‘Nay, damn it all: we all say things we regret,’ he said. ‘But one thing I’ve never regretted, love,’ he added, ‘that’s marrying you.’

‘It’s at moments like this the truth comes out,’ she said, drawing up the corner of her apron to dry her eyes.

‘Nay, it’s this girl, and his going off so often, that’s at the root of it,’ his father said. ‘If he behaved like any other lad, like Ian next door, we’d have none of this trouble.’

‘You’re always disparaging Ian,’ his mother said.

‘Nay. He’s good for some things, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Well, let Sleeping dogs lie,’ his mother said.

‘There’s no smoke without fire,’ his father added.

‘And the way you’re going about it you’ll have it like a furnace when there’s really nothing there at all,’ his mother said, finally, hitting her fist against the table so that his father turned, sulkily, drawing on his slippers, and went slowly from the room.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Ellen,’ he said, stressing her name as if to exclude Colin now entirely. ‘Don’t come to me when you find you’ve trouble on your back,’ closing the door behind him and refusing any answer.

‘Would she come here? I mean, ever?’ his mother said as his father’s feet sounded roughly on the stairs above their heads.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’d want her. Perhaps I put it badly, making her feel she was to come.’

‘Perhaps you needn’t see her quite so often. And not be out so late,’ she added. ‘It’s that really that affects your father.’

‘Maybe I won’t see her at all,’ he said, shrugging, and when she pressed him further he said, ‘It’s really nothing. I think the best thing, Mother, is to leave us both alone.’

He avoided those places where he might have met her. He took a later bus home from school. One evening he stood with Stafford outside the hotel in the city centre talking to a group of girls amongst whom were Marion and Audrey. ‘And how’s the farm-labourer, darling?’ Marion said. ‘Still pushing turnips?’ at which Stafford had turned, vehemently, and said, ‘Just cut out all that slangy crap.’

‘Oh, my darling,’ Marion said, ‘just listen to the boy. Just because some girls take precautions and aren’t prepared to be mauled like cats.’

‘Some cats throw stones in glass houses too often for their own comfort,’ Stafford said, drawing out the sentence word by word so that its effect might be admired by virtually everyone around.

‘If I didn’t think he was such a cad I would have slapped him in the face for that,’ Marion said, adding, ‘Are you coming?’ to Audrey, yet making no effort to move herself.

Audrey had grown, if anything, over the previous two years a little thinner, her neck longer, her features more attenuated, still susceptible to fits of blushing for as Colin approached her a faint, familiar redness spread slowly up her neck and cheeks.

A third girl, slim-featured, tall, pale-eyed, was standing behind their animated group, watching their argument with something of a smile.

Audrey hadn’t answered, and the tall, slim-featured girl, having watched Marion’s final outburst, had touched her arm and though the gesture itself was disregarded had said, ‘I’ll have to be going, Marion. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ glancing at Audrey then at Colin, and turning, a satchel slung across her shoulder, and setting off across the road to an adjoining street.

‘Who’s that?’ Colin said, glancing after her.

Audrey looked up, apparently surprised.

‘That’s Margaret. She goes on the bus,’ glancing over once more to Marion and adding, ‘I suppose really I should leave myself.’

Yet much later, when he went down to the bus, she and Marion and Stafford were still there, Stafford leaning up casually against the side of the hotel entrance, his hands now in his pockets, his heel tucked up against the stonework, calling, ‘See you, Col,’ waving with the same casualness, as if they stood there, or had stood there, each evening of the week.

He’d seen the other girl then standing at an adjoining stop, still waiting there, aloof, tall, with porcelain-like features, when his own bus drew away.

‘You’ve spent long enough avoiding me. How was I to know you were hoping to see me?’ Sheila said as, with Bletchley walking behind, along with several other youths, he followed her from the stop. ‘I thought you were avoiding me. So did Geraldine,’ she added, indicating a blonde-haired girl, with round cherubic features, whom he hadn’t noticed before and who, as if summoned by some invisible signal, emerged from the group of chanting, laughing youths behind.

‘Couldn’t I see you on your own?’ he said.

‘I am on my own,’ she said.

The blonde-haired girl glanced over at him, cautiously, from Sheila’s other side.

‘Are you free on Wednesday night?’ he said, hoping by the quietness of his voice to insinuate something of their former intimacy.

‘I’m going to Geraldine’s on Wednesday night.’

‘How about Thursday?’ He ran through the nights of the week. At each one she shook her head, or laughed, or answered, ‘I thought I’d told you once before. My mother works most evenings.’

Finally, seeing his task was hopeless, he dropped behind with Bletchley, who, having left the other youths, was now following him as a chaperon, smiling, taking his arm as he caught him up and saying, ‘I should leave her alone, old man,’ and, ‘I’d call it a day, if I were you.’

‘I’ll hang on for a bit,’ he said.

Bletchley shrugged. He thrust one hand in his blazer pocket, restrung his satchel across his shoulder and turned back to the village.

After a few minutes Colin set off down the street, glancing at the doors and windows, finally identifying her home from his one previous visit to the street when, late one night, after leaving her, he had followed her, half-curious, to see actually which door she entered, even pausing and putting his ear against it, hearing nothing but silence, however, from the other side. Now when he reached it, the late afternoon light still bright in the street, he noticed the dark, scuffed marks around the loose, ill-fitting wooden handle; it was only a moment’s gesture to take the handle, knock, open the door, and step through to the room inside, nodding casually to its occupants as if he had been a visitor many times before. The window beside the door, covered in fine dust and flecked with rain-marks, was shaded by a single curtain, a piece of red cloth, irregularly fastened at the top and bleached, perhaps by the light itself, to a faint whiteness at the centre. No sound emerged from the house as he passed, and he went on walking along the pitted pavement, pausing farther on, and gazing back for a while the way he’d come. Several small children ran from door to door followed by a barking dog; he went round the end of the terrace and walked along the narrow backs trying to work out which of the doors might be her own, gazing hopefully at several.

Apart from a woman emerging at one point and shaking a piece of cloth, there was no sign of life in the yards at all. He examined the windows: odd faces and figures were visible inside. He waited a little longer, then, with his hands in his pockets, conscious of the stares from several people in the yards of the houses on the other side, he went on to the road at the opposite end, returned to the street once more, glanced along it, then, his hands still in his pockets, walked slowly, with a half-lingering hope that even now he might be overtaken, back towards the village and the turning to his home.

‘The grey seeds of autumn wound my heart with a languor unknown. I lie down in grasses grey with grief, and clutch their soft texture to my face, my sorrow fed with bewilderment and rage, the earth bowed down by tears. I yearned for touches sure as death, yet all she gave were wounds that mortified my flesh and drew what she had hoped for now I see, a cry of anguish from my breast.’

He crossed out ‘languor’ and wrote ‘an intensity’, crossed out ‘an intensity’ and put ‘languor’ back again. He read it through, half murmuring the words, stooping in the faint light, lifting the pad from his knee and holding it before him to relieve the pressure on his back. Finally, when he could think of nothing else to add, he put the pencil in his jacket pocket and the pad inside the jacket itself, stood up, unbolted the door, pulled the chain and stepped out to the yard.

He closed the door behind him and went over to the house.

‘I don’t know what you do in there,’ his mother said. ‘I’ve been waiting to go for half an hour. Didn’t you hear me come to the door?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Are you constipated, then?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Well, I don’t know what he does,’ she said to his father, stepping out then to the yard, her feet sounding briskly across the ashes.

‘Are you reading books in there?’ his father said. ‘If you’re reading books you can read them just as well in here.’

‘I didn’t know she wanted to go,’ he said.

‘You must have done. Do you think she tries the door for fun?’

‘I just forgot she’d been,’ he said.

‘Forgot?’ he said. ‘Do you think it’s a palace, or summat, in theer? It’s t’on’y lavatory, tha knows, we’ve got.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He went to the stairs.

‘And where are you going now?’ his father said.

‘It’s some homework I have to finish,’ he said.

‘Well, finish it and be quick,’ his father said. ‘It’s getting to be like a monastery this house. You can’t go to the lavatory without finding someone theer who has to study.’

He closed the door to his room, eased his way between his and Steven’s bed, and sank down on the single wooden chair, which, a year previously, his father had made from the dug-out bits of timber from the air-raid shelter. He took out the pad and examined the writing. He read it through again, then, in capital letters, printed ‘AUTUMN’ at the top. Hearing Steven’s voice in the kitchen below he stooped beneath the bed, pulled out a wooden box and slid the pad beneath a pile of books and was apparently glancing through these when, a few minutes later, Steven, fair-haired, blue-eyed, opened the door and said, ‘What’re you doing, our Colin? Have you finished? I’ve got to go to bed.’

20

The road bent away to his left. Some distance ahead he could see two cyclists, but by the time he reached the curve of the bend himself they’d disappeared. Reagan was out of sight now, some way behind. He suspected, even, that he might have turned back but, after sinking down on the verge and waiting, leaning on his arm, chewing grass, the tall, awkwardly proportioned figure finally came into view, walking slowly in the centre of the road, his hands in his pockets, looking up when he saw him waiting, evidently with little interest, and saying nothing when eventually he caught him up, merely sinking down on the verge and sighing.

Reagan flung out his legs across the grass, his large head thrust back, his long dark hair lying in loose strands across his face.

‘We can wait for a bus at the next stop if you want to,’ Colin said.

‘No. I’m all right.’ Reagan closed his eyes. He blew upwards, across his face, disturbing the strands of hair. His thin features glowed with a reddish hue, his nostrils distended, a faint bluish patch throbbing at his temple.

For a while, lulled by the quietness, the heat, and the singing of the birds, neither of them spoke. From across the fields came the rattle of a tractor, and Reagan raised himself slightly, thinking he’d heard a vehicle on the road.

Nothing, however, disturbed the vista of fields and woodland.

‘I think we ought to be going,’ Colin said. ‘It’ll be dark in a couple of hours, and to be frank’, he added, ‘I’m not sure where we are.’

‘Oh, what does it matter?’ Reagan said, sinking back again. ‘If we get back late we get back late.’ He closed his eyes, projecting his lower lip and blowing up once more across his face. ‘What’re you going to do when you leave school?’ he said a moment later.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I might go to college.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to do National Service,’ Reagan said.

‘Won’t you go to college or university?’ Colin said.

‘How?’ He opened his eyes, gazing at the leaves above his head. ‘I’ll not even get School Certificate,’ he said. ‘In any case, I don’t really mind. I might not even get in the army. I’m supposed to be anaemic.’

‘What sort of school is St Dominic’s?’ he said. Occasionally he’d seen Reagan in town, wearing the dark cap with the red insignia of his private school, and the red-rimmed blazer, but, away from the village, Reagan had always shown a reluctance to be acknowledged.

‘Oh, they work you, if you want to work,’ he said. ‘If you don’t, they never even bother. In any case,’ he slowly straightened, ‘I might join a dance band. Or even form one of my own. I’d rather do that than go to college.’

‘Where would you have it?’ he said.

‘In the village. Or at Brierley, or Shafton. Anywhere.’ He waved his hand, his long, thin-boned fingers thrust stiffly out. ‘I haven’t mentioned it at home. My mother wants me to go to a music college. But I don’t think I’d get far there. My Dad thinks I ought to go into the County Hall, or work in accountancy, or something.’

Colin stood up.

‘I suppose we ought to be going,’ he said.

‘You’ll be going into the army, in any case,’ Reagan said. ‘So will Bletchley. Though I reckon you’ll get deferment first. That’s one reason, really, why my mother wants me to go on with music. If I’m a student long enough she thinks in a year or two I might miss conscription.’

‘Will it be over by then?’ he said.

‘Oh, it’s bound to be,’ Reagan said.

They’d been walking all morning; during the afternoon they’d sat by a lake in which one or two boats were being rowed, then, searching for a quicker route home, they’d set off in a fresh direction They’d been walking now for over two hours and nothing familiar had appeared to guide them, Reagan himself curiously indifferent as to whether they found their way or not.

‘There aren’t many dance-halls, you see. And you could give lessons. Or start a club.’ His long hair thrust back, his feet, which were small and dainty, tapping lightly at the road beneath him, he indicated something of a step. ‘I’ve picked it up, you see, from a book. It’s pretty easy once you get the rhythm. It’s just a question really of one foot following the other.’ Refreshed by these speculations about his future, if not by the rest at the side of the road, Reagan now walked slightly ahead, his arms held out before him, his eyes half-closed, and, in a fit of unprecedented boldness, danced lightly to and fro, murmuring a rhythm, glancing finally at Colin and adding, ‘One, two, three. One, two, three,’ inviting him to join in.

Colin laughed; he had seldom seen Reagan carried away by anything at all, and a moment later, his arms held out in an identical fashion, he danced beside him, his head stooped as he followed Reagan’s steps until, with a blaring of a horn, a car disturbed them and they stepped aside to see a pair of curious faces flying past.

‘You see, everyone’s interested when it comes down to it,’ Reagan said, waving through the cloud of dust at the departing vehicle and taking up his stance once more in the centre of the road. ‘What say thou Lothario? Shall we dance?’ laughing then as Colin followed, repeating the steps to Reagan’s instructions, Reagan leaning up finally against a post and adding, ‘Nay, lad, tha s’ll be some folk as’ll never learn, you can be sure of that,’ his skeletal figure with its massive, rearward-bulging head stooped over, his long arms flung down, his face flushing, as he tried with much groaning and coughing to restrain his pleasure. ‘You’ll be my first customer, I’m hoping. If there are many more like you I’ll make a fortune,’ his habitual shyness returning as he smoothed back his hair and they set off once more along the road.

The idea of spending the day with Reagan had come from his father. Perhaps, in this way, he had been hoping to ingratiate himself with Mr Reagan, who reputedly now carried, since the nationalization of the coal-mines, greater weight than ever in the local colliery office. His father, since the ending of the war, had grown increasingly restless. Bread had been rationed for a period. Clothes and food were short. He had tried once again, as he had three years earlier, to get a job in the local pit, applying on this occasion for a job as a deputy, but having, so far as Colin knew, not had an answer. It was on this basis – at least, as a result of his father’s prompting – that he’d invited Reagan out for the day. They had wandered initially in the direction of the lake, drawn there by Reagan’s information that there was a café on the way whose owner was known to his father and who, on being acquainted with Reagan’s identity, would let them have a meal for nothing: information which, in the event, had proved to be if not untrue at least misleading. A café they had come across, set in a green-painted wooden hut at the side of the road: its proprietor, however, on inquiry had turned out to be a swarthy, frizzy-haired woman who, on Reagan’s name being mentioned, had looked at Reagan himself over the bridge of her nose and pointed venomously at the blackboard beside her on which were clearly chalked the prices of the food she had to offer. They had come away in the end without purchasing anything at all.

The same aimlessness with which they’d started re-asserted itself as the day wore on: a minimum of food they had purchased at a hut by the lake and the notion of finding a shorter way back to the village had been one of expediency more than anything else – to bring the day to an end as quickly as possible, Colin forging ahead as Reagan tired, hoping to identify some familiar landmark before sinking back, disappointed, to wait for him at the side of the road.

Now they walked along quite freshly, Reagan whistling a dance tune, murmuring to himself at odd moments as if anxious to communicate something of which, as yet, he was still uncertain, glancing finally at Colin and saying, ‘What’re your parents hoping you’ll turn into, then?’

‘They’ve mentioned teaching. I don’t suppose there’s anything else.’

‘They wouldn’t want you to go into an office?’ Reagan said.

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

‘What would you teach, do you think?’ he said.

‘English. Perhaps geography. They’re the best two subjects on the whole,’ he said.

‘I’ve no best subject, really,’ Reagan said. ‘They’re all about as bad as one another.’

They breasted a rise.

Below them stretched an area of plain and woodland, scattered here and there with colliery heaps. To their right, in the farthest distance, appeared the familiar profile of the village pit.

‘I think I know where we are,’ he said.

‘And I do,’ Reagan said, his eyes narrowing as he gazed off in the same direction. ‘We’re miles out of the way. It’ll be hours before we get back now.’

Yet, a few minutes later, a lorry came down the road behind them and, stopping, the driver offered them a lift. ‘Oh, Reagan. Bryan Reagan. I know Bryan,’ he said when, after asking them where they were going, he’d demanded their names. ‘I know one or two things about your father,’ he added to Reagan, ‘which it’d be wise of me not to mention. Just say Jack Hopcroft gave you a lift and watch his expression.’ He dropped them half an hour later in a lane leading to the village, sounding his horn as he drove away.

‘Well, it’s been a good day,’ Reagan said as they walked into the village, his awkwardness returning with almost every stride. ‘I hope you won’t mention what I told you: about the dancing and the band, and that.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘It was just a thought,’ he said. ‘If my dad got to hear that’d be the end of it.’

The lights had come on: faint yellowish pools of gaslight illuminated the pavement and the walls of the houses. A mist had risen in the hollows round the colliery, and had drifted out now across the nearest streets. Their feet echoed in the gathering darkness. At Reagan’s door a stream of light illuminated the figure of his mother, as angular though not as tall as Reagan himself. Michael almost stopped altogether the moment he saw her, and might even, if she hadn’t called, have crossed over the street.

‘Is that you?’

‘We got lost, Mother,’ he said, stepping into the light, his manner, the whole droop of his figure, reminding Colin of the night during the war when they had come home from sitting the exam.

‘That’s all right,’ his mother said, adding, ‘Is that you Colin, love?’ stepping down from the door itself and feeling Reagan’s clothes. ‘You haven’t got damp, then, have you?’

‘No,’ Reagan said. ‘We’ve been walking nearly all the time.’

‘Would you like to come in, Colin?’ Mrs Reagan said. ‘I’ve something in the oven ready for Michael, but we could easily split it up. I don’t like him eating too much late at night.’

‘Is that that cat-gut scraper?’ a voice roared suddenly from inside the house, a vast shadow for a moment darkening the doorway before the figure of Mr Reagan himself appeared. Recognizing Colin, however, his tone and manner changed abruptly. ‘You two lads got back from your adventures, have you? His mother’s been wondering where he’s got to, cooking and uncooking, trying to keep his supper hot. We haven’t been able to eat till he got back. We never knew he’d be this long.’

‘Oh, we’ve had a good day,’ Reagan said allowing a certain sense of relief to show. ‘We got lost coming back. That’s why we took so long. We got a lift, you know, in a lorry.’

‘A lorry?’ his mother said, clutching his sleeve again.

‘A man called Jack Hopcroft asked us to remember him to you,’ Reagan said.

‘Hopcroft? Hopcroft?’ Mr Reagan said, stroking his chin and glancing at his wife then Reagan as if to see how relevant this might be. ‘Hopcroft.’ Evidently no sign of recognition was visible in son or mother and Mr Reagan added, ‘Well, we can get in now and have our supper,’ Colin moving on towards his door.

‘And how did it go?’ his father said, looking up as he entered as if he had only gone out a moment before.

‘All right,’ he said. ‘We came back in the end in the cab of a lorry.’

‘Oh, Bryan’ll appreciate it,’ his father said, as if he hadn’t heard this piece of news at all.

The results of the examination came in the post. He’d done neither worse nor better than had been expected; though his relatively low mark for English surprised his mother. ‘I thought that was your best subject, love.’

‘Easiest, I suppose,’ he said.

‘That’s all the grounding I gave him,’ his father said. ‘Though why he can’t come out with it in an examination I’ve no idea.’

‘I never feel like it. It all seems pointless when you’re examined,’ he said. ‘“Give examples of the use of nature in Wordsworth’s poetry”,’ he added. ‘Is that what you read poems for, to give examples?’

‘When you can see a damn good job at the end of it you’d be surprised’, his father said, ‘at the number of examples I could give. And I’ve never read a book,’ he added. ‘If you were wukking down a pit you’d soon think up summat, don’t you worry.’

‘Well, he’s not working down a pit,’ his mother said.

‘He’s not at the moment,’ his father said. ‘But at the rate he’s going he very soon will.’

‘Well, I don’t think there’s much truth in that,’ she said.

‘Well there’s truth in that there’s somebody working down yon pit, and to keep him in luxury while he does learn one or two examples. That’s the point of it all,’ he added to Colin.

It was arranged he would stay on and go into the Sixth Form. He worked on a farm again that summer, rising early, arriving back each evening late, harvesting the fields where he’d worked before, with the two prisoners of war, earning enough money finally to buy a bike, cycling out to Stafford’s one evening, but not finding him at home. He was bronzed and fit by the time he returned to school the following September.

His grandfather had fallen ill that winter. Unknown to his father he had been living in a home run by a local council in a town some distance away. He went with his father one weekend to see him. They travelled there by train, across the unfamiliar flat-land to the east, towards the coast. The town stood at the mouth of an estuary: cranes, and the indications of docks and a port were visible above the roofs of the plain brick houses. They travelled to the home by bus; it stood on the outskirts of the town, a grey brick structure of some antiquity to which several prefabricated huts had been added. His grandfather’s dormitory was at the top of the building, a bare, barrack-like interior lined on either side with metal beds. His grandfather and one other man were the sole occupants, though a few moments after they’d entered, following a nurse, several other men came in and sat on the ends of their beds, bowed, smoking, talking aimlessly amongst themselves.

His grandfather appeared to be asleep, much aged now since Colin had last seen him. His large, hooked nose stood up like a bony armature from the cavernous hollows around his eyes, his cheeks drawn in, his mouth toothless. Colin felt the shock go through his father.

‘Dad?’ he said and the nurse who had come in with them had added, ‘Mr Saville? There’s someone here to see you, love,’ his grandfather’s light eyes slowly opening, gazing up steadily for a while before him then slowly turning to look at the nurse and, with increasing confusion, at his father and Colin himself.

‘Dad?’his father said. ‘How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m all right,’ his grandfather said as if his father had been in the room with him for some considerable time, then adding, ‘Harry, is it you?’

‘We came to see you’, his father said, ‘as soon as we heard.’

‘Who’s this, then?’ he said, looking up confusedly at Colin.

‘It’s thy grandson. Dost remember him?’ his father said.

‘Colin,’ his grandfather said, yet with no certainty, looking back towards the nurse.

‘Why didn’t you tell us where you were living?’ his father said.

‘Nay, I didn’t want to trouble anybody.’

‘Nay, Dad, we’d have looked after you,’ his father said.

‘Oh, I’m looked after well enough in here.’

‘You’d be looked after better, you know, at home.’

‘Oh, I’m well enough here, don’t worry,’ his grandfather said and added, ‘And where’s our Jack, then? Is he with you?’

‘Oh, he’ll be coming in a day or two,’ his father said.

‘I thought he might have been with you.’ His grandfather closed his eyes.

‘I shouldn’t tire him too much, Mr Saville,’ the nurse had said and, calling to one or two of the other men in the room, went out.

His father found a chair. For a while Colin stood by the bed, gazing down, his father sitting, staring at his grandfather’s head. The bag of food he’d brought for him he’d left, on the nurse’s instructions, at the desk downstairs.

‘Well, he doesn’t look too good,’ his father said and his grandfather, as if prompted by the voice, opened his eyes again.

‘Are you still here?’ he said.

Colin found another chair. He sat for a while on the opposite side, then his father, his face strained, his eyes reddened, looked up and said, ‘You can wait outside, if you like, Colin. It’s not much fun, you know, in here.’

He went out to the stone-flagged corridor, then past several barred windows to the concrete stairs. He waited in the hall for a while, the bag of food his father had brought still on the receptionist’s desk. Finally he went out to the street and walked up and down, glancing at the windows at the top of the building, trying to work out behind which one his grandfather was lying.

After something like twenty minutes his father appeared.

He had evidently been weeping and appeared, for a moment, as he came down the steps to the street, like some quaint facsimile of the figure lying on the bed, nodding his head briefly, absently, in his direction, then turning towards the stop.

‘He doesn’t want to come out,’ his father said when he caught him up. ‘And they seem to think he’ll be better in there than living at home.’

They walked through the intervening streets in silence. The place had a closed-in atmosphere: in the distance they could hear the hooting of ships and, somewhere close at hand, the dull, drumming rhythm of a band.

His father wiped his nose. He wiped his eyes. By the time they’d reached the stop he was more composed.

‘Well, it’s sad.’ He looked about him. ‘To think of the life he’s had. I can’t stop thinking of him when he was younger. We worked on the same farm, you know. I got him a job when he was out of work, and we used to go in together. I can remember him now. As clear as a bell.’

These thoughts, when the bus came, silenced him again. Even later, on the train, he scarcely spoke, and when, some two hours later, they reached the house he sat at the kitchen table shaking his head and saying to his mother’s inquiries, ‘I can’t get over it,’ his eyes reddened, his cheeks and his forehead still inflamed.

A telegram arrived two weeks later. His father came home late from the afternoon shift and stood in the kitchen, dark-eyed, when his mother said, ‘There’s a telegram come for you,’ his father perhaps unprepared for what it might reveal, or perhaps too tired from his work to think, opening it carelessly, reading it slowly, then, with a child-like cry, turning, as if he would fall, leaning up against the kitchen wall, opposite the door, shielding his face beneath his hand.

‘Oh, Harry,’ his mother said, taking the telegram and reading it herself, his father turning casually aside, going to a chair, taking off his boots, then going to the sink to wash his face. Then, as his mother set out his meal, his father had gone to the door and with the same casualness had gone to the stairs. They heard the boards creak in the room at the front. His mother began to busy herself about the kitchen as if nothing had occurred, saying, ‘Come on, then, Colin, haven’t you something you should do? Haven’t you finished your homework? There’s time, if you look sharp about it, to clean a few shoes,’ scarcely pausing when a moment later they heard, with a slow chilling, the sound of his father’s grief above their heads.

The winter passed. At Easter a party from the school went away on holiday. They stayed in a guest-house at the foot of a mountain. One evening he and Stafford went out to a near-by village. A hump-backed bridge looked out over a lake. From a row of small houses behind them came the sound of singing.

Stafford paused.

Three or four men and women were singing what sounded, from this distance, like a wordless song. No other sound came from the village; columns of smoke drifted up against the lightness of the sky, the dark shapes of the houses strewn out like boulders at the foot of the mountain. At the peak of the mountain, overlooking the village and the bright expanse of lake beyond, snow glistened in the moonlight.

Stafford leant against the parapet of the bridge. He’d lit a cigarette on the way down from the hotel and now, his head back, his arms crooked on the stone parapet behind, he blew out a stream of smoke, half-smiling.

‘What do you think?’ he said. ‘They’ve put me down for Oxford.’

‘Who?’ he said.

‘Gannen. I’m going to have special coaching in Latin. They’ve put me down for an Exhibition.’

‘Don’t you think it’s worth it?’ he said.

Stafford shook his head. ‘What do you do with life, do you think?’

Perhaps he hadn’t heard the singing, for he stubbed out the cigarette, leaning over the parapet and dropping it into the darkness of the stream below: odd, almost luminescent crests of foam shone up, here and there, from the deepest shadows. Stafford kicked the toe of his shoe against the stone.

‘It seems worth going for, I suppose,’ he said.

Stafford shrugged. He looked up at the cold, cloudless depth of sky, glanced, almost with a look of irritation, towards the moon, and added, ‘I don’t think, really, it’s worth all that effort. What really is? Have you any idea?’

‘No.’

‘If you did, in any case, you’d never tell me. You’re such an eager beaver. I suppose, with you, getting a job, a house, a car, a wife, and all that sort of stuff, is all that matters.’

‘No,’ he said and turned away.

Perhaps Stafford, aware of the singing, had assumed it to come from a wireless. With the same look of irritation he’d given the moon, he glanced up now towards the houses. A door had opened somewhere followed immediately by the barking of a dog.

‘What a dead and alive hole this really is. I don’t suppose there’s a pub or anything,’ he said, moving slowly from the wall, still kicking his toe and, his hands in his pockets, setting off towards the village. ‘I mean, what are we when it comes down to it?’ he added. ‘A piece of something whirling through nothing and getting,’ he went on, ‘as far as I can see, nowhere at all.’ He waited for Colin to catch him up. ‘In a thousand million years the sun’ll burn up the earth, and all that everybody’s ever done or thought or felt’ll go up in a cloud of smoke.’ He laughed. ‘Not that we’ll be here to see it. Yet metaphorically one sees it. I feel it all the time as a matter of fact.’ He walked on in the darkness of the road, still kicking his toe, the sound echoing from the walls of the houses on either side. ‘Everything’s so easy for you,’ he added. ‘You’ve come from nowhere: they’ve put the carrot of education in front of you and you go at it like a maddened bull. I couldn’t do half the work you put into it, you know. I can see’, he went on more slowly, ‘what lies the other side.’

‘What does lie the other side?’ Colin said, walking beside him now, his hands in his pockets.

‘Nothing, old boy,’ Stafford said, and laughed. ‘Take away the carrot, and there really isn’t anything at all. It’s only someone like you, crawling out of the mud, that really believes in it. Once you’ve got it, you’ll see. You’ll sit down and begin to wonder: “Is that really all it is?”’ He laughed again, glancing across at him from the darkness.

They’d come out from between the houses and emerged on a stone embankment which, for a few yards, ran along the edge of the lake.

‘I mean, what does Hepworth tell us about these mountains? This lake, you know, and this U-shaped valley. They were formed by ice ten thousand years ago. Here’s a few houses put down at the side: a few people live in them, go through God knows what privations, misery, exaltations, and in another ten thousand years another sheet of ice comes down and wipes it all away. That, or an atom bomb. So what’s the point of suffering or enduring anything at all?’

Colin waited. Beneath them, with a dull, almost leaden sound, the lake lapped against the stone. It washed up in little waves over a bed of pebbles, the white foam glistening in the light.

‘I suppose you believe in a Divine Presence and all the rest of the propaganda,’ Stafford said. He stooped to gaze down at the water as if, for a moment, he’d suddenly forgotten anyone else was there.

‘I don’t know what I believe in,’ Colin said.

‘Material progress, backed by a modicum of religious superstition. I can read it in your features,’ Stafford said. ‘You even play football as if you meant it. And if there’s anything more futile than playing sport I’ve yet to see it. Honestly, at times I just want to lie down and laugh.’

‘I suppose it’s more touching than anything else.’

‘Touching?’ Stafford glanced across at him and shook his head.

‘If everything is meaningless, that, nevertheless, we still ascribe some meaning to it.’

Stafford laughed. He flung back his head. His hair, caught by the moon, glistened suddenly in a halo of light. ‘Touching? I call it pathetic.’

He took out another cigarette, lit it, tossed the flaming match into the lake, glanced round him with a shiver and added, ‘We better get back. There’s nowhere to go. That’s symptomatic, in a curious way, of everything I’ve said.’ Yet later, lying in his bed, Hopkins snoring and Walker half-whining in sleep in their beds across the room, he had added, ‘Do you see some purpose in it at all, then, Colin?’

He could see Stafford lying on his back, his head couched in his hands. The moonlight penetrated in a faint, cold glow through the thin material of the curtains.

‘I’ve never really looked for one,’ he said.

‘You’re an unthinking animal are you?’ Stafford half-turned his head, yet more to hear the answer than to look across.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Are you frightened of admitting you believe in a Divine Presence?’ Stafford said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘You do admit it, then?’

Colin paused. He gazed over at Stafford whose head, though not turned fully towards him, was still inclined in his direction.

‘It’s only when everything has lost its meaning that its meaning finally becomes clear,’ he said.

‘Does it?’ Stafford gazed across at him now quite fiercely.

‘For instance, I enjoy coming here,’ he said.

‘Oh, I enjoy coming here,’ Stafford said. ‘I suppose I enjoy coming here. I haven’t really thought about it. Not to the degree that you have.’ He waited. ‘If there isn’t a Divine Presence don’t you think it’s all a really terrible joke? I mean, if the world’s going to end as all worlds do, as an exploding mass of sunburnt dust, what’s the purpose in anything at all? It’s like a man taking infinite pains over his own funeral. I can’t see the point of it. I mean, if God’s going to allow the world to vanish, as all worlds do, what’s the point of putting us in it in the first place? To give him a clap, do you think? I mean do you think, really, He’s looking for applause? Or that He isn’t actually there at all; at least, not in any form that could be defined outside the realms of a chemical reaction?’

Hopkins groaned in his sleep; Walker whined freshly through his congested nose.

‘Just look at Hoppy. Just listen to him. Do you think there’s a divine purpose then in that?’

Yet, perhaps because of the freshness of the walk, of the air outside, or because of the vague, persuasive murmur of Stafford’s voice, he felt himself being drawn downwards into sleep: he opened his eyes briefly, saw Stafford, silent now, with his head couched once more in his hands, gazing with wide eyes towards the ceiling, then remembered nothing more until he heard the calls of Hopkins and Walker across the room, and the sound of a gong from the hall downstairs.

Below them, when they reached the snow-line, lay a vast area of undulating heath and coniferous woodland, interspersed with the cold, metallic sheen of several narrow lakes: a waterfall tumbled immediately below them to the village, and it was here, on the way up, that Stafford had paused and looking round at Colin, still casual, half-smiling, had said, ‘Do you ascribe to it a divine purpose, or are we ants, mechanistic functions, crawling on an arbitrarily eroded piece of rock?’ not waiting for an answer but glancing up, past the head of the corrie lake to where the flattened, cone-shaped peak of the mountain faded away into a mass of swiftly moving cloud. Gannen, booted, plus-foured, with a walking-stick and a small haversack on his back, had glanced behind him. ‘Do I hear a sceptic amongst the ranks?’

Several boys at the front had turned.

‘Was that your comment, Stafford,’ he added, ‘on the scene below?’

‘It was merely a speculation, prompted by the view, sir,’ Stafford said.

‘Far be it from me to ascribe a divine purpose to anything, particularly when I examine the sea of disingenuous faces I see below me at the present,’ Gannen said. ‘Nevertheless, examining the terrain beyond, even I, historian that I am, and acquainted with all the more perfidious traits of man, would confess to a feeling of uplift, of exhilaration, and might even ascribe to it an extra-terrestrial significance. After all, we are the end products, as Mr Macready, a biologist, will tell us, of several million years of evolution, and who is to say, standing at the threshold of human existence, what significance we might ascribe to it? In years to come humanity might stretch out its tentacles to the moon, or, conceivably, beyond the sun, to other galaxies perhaps. We stand today near the summit of a mountain: who can say where a man might stand in, for the sake of argument, another thousand years? God, as the philosopher might say, Stafford, is a state of becoming, and we, as the psychologists might say, are the elements of his consciousness.’

Stafford smiled; he looked past Gannen and the boys strung out below him on the path to where the small, grey-haired figure of Hepworth was climbing up the slope towards them with the slower group.

‘Stafford, of course, would have no time either for the philosopher or the psychologist,’ Gannen said. ‘He is one of the modern school, the sceptics, who see humanity as merely the fortuitous outcome of biological determinism. Like ants, I believe was the phrase, crawling on an arbitrarily eroded piece of rock. Hopkins, of course doesn’t care what we are, nor, no doubt, does Walker, as long as he can get his bottom at the earliest opportunity to the seat of a chair and hands and feet warmed up in front of a fire.’

Macready had taken a small bottle from his haversack and was tasting its contents. He tossed back his head, closed his eyes, then, replacing the bottle, glanced up with blank incomprehension at the peak before them.

It was late in the afternoon by the time they got back to the hotel. Rain was falling. Platt was standing in the doorway with the other boys who had stayed below, waving to Gannen as he appeared in the drive and calling, ‘We were just thinking of coming to look for you.’

‘Oh, just a routine climb, Platty,’ Gannen said, removing his haversack and looking round at the exhausted boys. ‘Apart from nearly going over the edge on one occasion, the afternoon you might say has passed without incident. Though’, he added, ‘we had to call on Stafford to invoke a divine blessing on our behalf. The fact of the matter was, for half an hour after we left the summit – from which, incidentally, we saw nothing at all – Mac and I were lost. If the sun hadn’t have come out, very briefly, in what Stafford might call a fit of arbitrary intervention, I don’t think we’d be back at all.’

And later, when the corridors of the hotel were full of steam from the baths, Stafford, flushed with the heat of the water, and with a towel around him, had come into the room and said, ‘I never thought Gannen was a sentimentalist until today. I don’t think I’ll get through history. It takes credibility from anything he says,’ lying on the bed, feeling in his jacket for his cigarettes, then adding, ‘Honestly, with a man like that, what chance have I got of an Exhibition?’

21

His father, finally, with Reagan’s help, had got a job at the local pit. The move, however, wasn’t a happy one. Now that he found himself working amongst the village men he began to feel uneasy, exposed. Promoted to a deputy, and responsible for an entire face during each of his shifts, he was earning less now than he had, with overtime, as a miner, less even than the men he superintended. He came home from each shift more exhausted than when he’d had a six-mile cycle ride at the end of his work. He would lie in the kitchen, his head sunk down in the corner of a chair, his arms splayed out, his mouth open, his eyes still dark with dust, groaning in his sleep, his mother afraid to disturb him, Steven and Richard creeping cautiously about the house, his mother calling, with a peculiar despair, whenever they made a sound.

The house, too, in some way suffered. It was as if the substance of the pit were brought home each day: some part of it was emptied out, the dust, the darkness, a blackness descending on the house, his father’s exhausted figure slumped there as its pivot, his mother and his brothers and himself moving furtively around. There was little communication between them now, the silences broken by his mother’s calls, his father’s exhausted breathing, deepening finally to a snore, by the odd whisper of his brothers, as, solemnly, their eyes wide, they crept cautiously to the stairs or through the door, their voices, in sudden relief, calling in the yard outside.

‘Nay, what do I care what he does?’ his father said when, later that year, they discussed his prospects of taking a scholarship. ‘He’s to stay on another year if he wants to go to college.’

‘He can go to college next year,’ his mother said. ‘To train as a teacher. It’s for the university that he has to stay on another year,’ she added.

‘Whichever’s quickest road to get him working,’ his father said. ‘As long as he doesn’t go near that pit.’

Gannen came one evening to see his parents. He offered to go down to the bus stop to meet him, having worked out the probable time of the master’s arrival, but his father had added, ‘It’s not royalty we’re expecting. Just let him come like anybody else.’

‘Nobody ever does come,’ his mother had said. ‘If people did come more often perhaps it wouldn’t seem such a terrible mess.’

‘Mess? What mess?’ his father said, looking round at the bare floor, the chairs from which the springs protruded, the faded cloth on the table, the soot-stained walls. ‘He’s not coming to inspect us, you know. He’s coming to give advice.’

Yet, when Gannen came, it was his mother who had answered the door, his father standing in the kitchen, his head inclined to catch his introduction, going out finally to the front room where Gannen had been installed. The room, if anything, was barer than the kitchen. After sitting in its draughts and relative coldness for several minutes it was Gannen himself who had suggested they might move through to the kitchen. ‘Oh, let’s sit in the living-room,’ he said, bestowing on it a title which reassured his mother, for she quickly led the way, holding back the door. ‘Oh, you needn’t turf those out for me,’ Gannen said when she began to usher Steven and Richard into the room they’d just vacated.

Gannen sat down heavily, his large figure seemingly pinioned in the chair, his arms spread out over the protruding springs. ‘I didn’t know there were two other Savilles at home,’ he said. ‘More recruits for the First Team,’ he added, glancing at Colin.

‘Oh, they’ve plenty of muscle on, if nothing else,’ his father said, flushing now and sitting on an upright chair beside the table.

His mother made some tea. It was only as Gannen was leaving, however, an hour later, that his father had said, ‘Well, then, Mr Gannen. What do you really think?’

‘I think Colin should go to university,’ the master said. He stood in the doorway leading to the street, gazing back into the lighted passage.

‘Aye,’ his father said, his look abstracted, as if in fact the master himself weren’t there at all and he was listening to some voice in another room.

‘If there’s anything I can do’, Gannen said, ‘just let me know.’ He leant back in the passage to shake his mother’s then his father’s hand.

‘I’ll walk down to the stop with you, if you like. I’ll show him the way,’ Colin added to his father.

‘If it’s no trouble,’ Gannen said, pausing now on the step outside, and evidently pleased at the thought of having some company. ‘It took me quite a while to find, in any case,’ he added.

It was already dark. A yellow moon hung over the colliery, outlining the heap against a bank of cloud. They walked in silence for a while. The air was misty. Their feet echoed between the houses.

‘Do you think they’ll let you go, then?’ Gannen said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve no idea.’

‘I realize the difficulties, of course,’ the master said as if, already, he sensed he’d failed. ‘They’ve done well getting you as far as they have,’ he added.

Other figures, shrouded against the sharpness of the air, passed by them beneath the lamps.

‘Ideally, what would you like to be?’ the master said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. He added, ‘A poet.’

Gannen smiled. A moment later he looked across. ‘And have you written any poetry?’

‘Not much.’

‘But some.’

‘A little.’

‘You don’t look like a poet,’ he said, something of his classroom manner returning. ‘Poets I always thought were rather delicate chaps. At least, the poets I knew always were. I never had much time for them myself.’ Then, as if he suspected he might have been too hard, he added, ‘It seemed to me, and invariably proved to be the case, that it was a stage they went through. Most of them were decent chaps. They soon settled down to teaching, in one form or another, like everyone else.’ He laughed. His voice rang out clearly in the village street. ‘In any case, there’s not much money attached to that. It’s scarcely a profession. What would you do to earn an income?’

‘In the end I’d teach,’ he said.

‘Do you compose poetry in the rugger scrum?’ he said, pleased with this confession.

‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s not much time for that.’

‘I’ve noticed a certain dilatoriness at times, I must confess,’ the master said, looking up and adding, ‘Oh, this is the stop is it? I wouldn’t have known,’ pointing down the street the way they’d come. ‘I got off down there before, I think.’

When the bus finally came Gannen put out his hand. ‘I hope you’ll point out the advantages to your parents,’ he said, ‘without mentioning the poetry. I’d just stick to the professional aspects, if I were you,’ not looking back as he stepped aboard the bus, making his way to the front downstairs and sitting in his seat as if he had forgotten about his visit already.

He played regularly in the First Fifteen that year, represented the school at athletics, and forwent his Easter on the farm to study for the June examinations. It was one of the happiest periods of his life. Even the football he found absorbing, encouraged by the girls who came to watch, Audrey and Marion, and the quiet-faced Margaret, who invariably stood at the edge of their noisy crowd. Even the two afternoons of training he’d begun to enjoy, Gannen instructing the forwards, and Carter, the physical training master, the backs. The forwards played amongst themselves, scrumming with the Second Fifteen, breaking, practising rushes, line-outs, pushing for what seemed hours against the metal scrum-machine, Gannen calling, ‘Lower, lower: back straight: thrusting upwards,’ pushing his muscular arm between the bodies, pressing heads, lifting kicking feet into correct positions, while, from across the field, would come Carter’s cries, Stafford distributing the ball or, later, with one other boy, practising place kicks against the distant posts.

In the end it had been decided he would try for college. Gannen had never referred to his visit or his talk with his parents again. When he told him his decision he’d nodded, standing on this occasion at his desk and said, ‘I’m glad you’re not giving it up altogether,’ collecting his books and adding, ‘If there’s anything I can do just let me know.’

He went for an interview. The college was located in a neighbouring town. He travelled there by bus. Miles of furnaces and factories, mills and warehouses, terrace streets and blank walls and advertising signs gave way eventually to a tiny park. At the end of an asphalt drive stood the college buildings, built of brick, a sportsfield stretching away on either side.

The man who gave the interview seemed surprised he was applying. Small, with black hair combed smoothly back, with dark eyebrows and dark eyes, he sat mask-like behind his desk and said, ‘Frankly, I think you’ll be doing yourself no service coming here. I should stay on another year. Take a degree. We’d welcome you here, but I think in all fairness the work is well below the standard you’re capable of.’ He added, ‘On top of which, of course, there’s National Service. In the end, you know, you’ll only save two years.’

‘I’d still like to apply,’ he said.

‘I won’t say we’ll not be glad to have you. It’s your own interests, really, I’m thinking of,’ the man had added, writing quickly on the sheet before him.

Stafford, his head tilted back, allowed the smoke to drain out of his nostrils: his laughter, light, careless, echoed beneath the trees. He wore evening dress, the black bow knotted immaculately beneath his chin, his fair hair almost luminous against the shadows.

Sitting alone at one of the tables was Margaret. She had on a light-blue dress, her hair fastened beneath a ribbon, and was drinking from a glass which someone had evidently just brought her for a figure was slipping away as he arrived, making directly for Stafford’s group.

‘Anyone sitting here?’ Colin said.

‘No,’ she said. She had light-coloured hair, thin, the ribbon securing it in a horse-tail at the nape of her neck. Her dress, relieved by a large white collar, was secured at the waist with a belt. Her arms were bare. They both sat for a moment gazing to the animated group across the lawn from which, a moment later, came Marion’s loud peel of laughter.

‘Do you come here often?’ he said.

She smiled. ‘No. Never.’

‘What’s tonight’s occasion for?’ he said.

‘I was invited,’ she said, ‘like you.’

‘Are you leaving this year as well?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m only in the First Year Sixth. Or was. I’ll be in the Second, I suppose, when we start next term.’ She added, ‘You’re leaving, of course. Marion’s told me all about it.’

She had light, greyish eyes. Her cheeks were thin, slender, the nose upturned, the face itself so delicate he imagined it, in the fading light, to have been moulded from ice: there was a lightness about her that he’d noticed before, when he’d first glimpsed her in the city centre then later waiting in the queue. Apart from one occasion, at a First Team party the previous Christmas, when he’d danced with her, they’d scarcely exchanged a word.

‘And where are you going to now you’ve left?’ she said.

‘College.’ He shrugged.

‘You’re not going in the army first?’

‘I’ve got deferment.’

‘Stafford’s staying on another year.’

‘Yes.’ He waited. ‘Would you like another drink?’

‘I’ve enough with this, I think,’ she said.

They sat in silence for a while. Odd couples danced slowly, awkwardly, beneath the trees; a fresh tune started on the gramophone. The house stood on the outskirts of the town, looking out across a valley: a tall, brick-built mansion with gabled roofs into which Marion’s parents, who had arranged the party, had recently moved. A lawn at the side of the house and the trees surrounding it had been decked out with lights: Chinese lanterns hung in long rows beneath the branches, swaying in the breeze, white, metal-work tables having been set around the edge of the lawn itself. Marion, wearing an off-the-shoulder gown for the occasion, had greeted him with a kiss when he arrived, affecting surprise that he should have brought a present, although there was a large, unattended pile of them behind, and leaving him quickly, with a quick grasping of his arm, the moment Stafford appeared.

The sun was setting behind the trees, the light scarcely stronger than the glow from the lanterns.

‘Do you want to dance?’ he said.

‘I don’t mind.’

She got up from the table, stooping, and stepped on to the grass, waiting, her arms raised.

He held her lightly.

They danced slowly round the edge of the lawn. Fresh peals of laughter came through from Stafford’s group, the smoke from their cigarettes drifting through the pools of light which glowed, almost luminous, against the redness of the setting sun.

They walked round the garden. A path led down beneath the trees to a smaller lawn, a low stone wall and a terrace flanked by roses. Below them were the lights of the town. The sun now had set completely: the light hung high in the sky to the west. Opposite, silhouetted to the north, was the profile of the town, its domes and towers, and the single steeple. He took her hand and then, when she offered no resistance, rested his arm against her waist.

From behind them, muted by the garden and by the darkness, came the voices of the others, and the slow, almost mournful rhythm of a dance tune.

‘Do you live in the town?’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘Well, almost in it. About a mile away.’ She gestured off, vaguely, in the direction of the valley. ‘My father’s a doctor. So we tend to go where the work is.’

‘I suppose that’s true of everyone,’ he said.

‘Is it?’

She glanced across.

‘I suppose it is. Though you’re not always aware of it,’ she added.

They stood awkwardly for a moment, gazing out across the garden. Close by, beyond the gardens of several other houses, stood the mound of a castle; some distance below it, silhouetted against the sky, was a line of ruins, and a single vast window set in a jagged wall of stone.

‘Do you ever go out at all?’ he said. ‘I mean, does anyone ever take you out?’

‘Sometimes,’ she said. She laughed. ‘What a question. What if I said no?’

He shook his head.

‘Do you know what they call you at the High School?’

‘No.’

He shook his head again.

‘Brooder.’

She laughed, flinging back her head.

‘I can’t see why.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’

Hopkins’s voice came from behind them.

‘This is where you are. I say, what a super view.’ He gazed out blankly across the valley.

‘Do you want to dance again?’ Colin asked her.

‘If you like,’ she said, and added, ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ turning from his arm and stepping back towards the lawn.

Stafford had come in a car. It was a vehicle he had learned to drive the previous year, his mother’s. He’d come to school in it. As Colin was leaving, later, he called across, ‘Would you like me to drive you home, old man?’ standing with his arm round Marion at the side of the lawn where, with her parents’ reappearance, she was wishing her guests good night.

‘Oh, you’re not going so soon, Nev?’ Marion said.

Colin looked to Margaret.

‘I was seeing Margaret to the bus,’ he said.

Marion laughed.

‘Aren’t you seeing her to the door, Savvers?’ Stafford said, glancing at the dark, stocky couple at Marion’s side as if to point out the vagaries of this peculiar stranger.

‘Our stops are side by side,’ he said. ‘If I go now I’ve just time to get the last bus.’

‘Oh, we’ll drive Colin home as well, won’t we?’ Stafford said. He bowed to Marion directly.

It was almost dark. The lights in the windows of the house itself flooded out across the lawn, mingling with those suspended beneath the trees.

One or two couples still danced on the grass.

When the car drew up at the front of the house Marion had come out wearing a fur stole. Her parents, after an argument carried out discreetly at the top of the stairs, had been left to dispose of the last of the guests.

Stafford came over to where Margaret and Colin were waiting on the lawn.

‘It seems strange we’ll never meet here again,’ he said. From the gate came the voices of the last guests, and the occasional call. Couples and small groups walked off along the road. ‘All going different ways and that. In twenty years we’ll look back at tonight and wonder where all the different people went. The girls married, with children of their own: almost the same age, perhaps. The boys gone off, as Gannen, or is it Platt, so often says, to the four corners of the earth. It’s very odd.’ He smoked a cigarette quietly, looking off across the empty lawn. ‘It’ll seem then, in a way, that we were never here at all.’

Marion’s voice called from the front of the house.

‘I suppose we better get you home, then, Maggie,’ Stafford said.

The house was located in a small village of old stone houses which had been encroached upon and finally surrounded by the housing estates of the town. Little of the building was to be seen from the road: a gate in a wall, and a path leading off up a narrow garden to a lighted window.

He got out of the car and walked with her to the gate.

‘How would I get in touch again?’ he said.

‘You could telephone,’ she said. ‘The name’s Dorman. We’re in the book.’

‘Will you be free in the next week or two?’ he said.

‘We’re going away.’ She stood, her face concealed, in the shadow of the wall. On a post at the side of the gate he could see, faintly, in white, ‘Dr R. D. Dorman, M.D.’, on a wooden plaque. ‘For a month. I’ll be staying with a friend.’

‘Where’s that?’ he said.

‘In France.’

He waited, kicking his foot against the gate.

‘Well, I better say goodnight,’ he said.

‘I could still write to you, if you liked,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘If you write to me here you could send me your address. They’ll send the letter on.’

‘All right,’ he said.

Stafford hooted in the car behind.

‘Thank you for the evening, then,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said and added, her hand on the gate, ‘I enjoyed the evening. I hope you’ll write,’ and set off up the path towards the house.

When he got back in the car Stafford was sitting with his arm round Marion.

‘Where to, old boy?’ he said.

‘You could drop me at the bus,’ he said. ‘It could still be there.’

‘Oh, we’ll drive the warrior home. We might never see him again, might we, darling?’ Releasing Marion, he started the car.

The street was in darkness when they arrived. Colin got out of the back seat and stood for a moment by Stafford’s open window. Marion’s pale face stooped over from the other side.

‘Is this really where he lives?’ she said.

‘Darling, don’t be so offensive,’ Stafford said.

‘I’m not being offensive. I’m just being curious,’ Marion said. ‘Last time we came you made me wait at the end of the street.’

‘Ignore her. That’s what I do,’ Stafford said, looking up from the darkness of the car. His hand appeared after a moment at the window. ‘Pip, pip, old man.’

‘Yes,’ he said. He grasped Stafford’s hand and slowly shook it.

‘Look in some time.’ He revved the engine.

‘Oh, do get started, my darling,’ Marion said.

‘Good night, Marion,’ Colin said.

‘Good night, my darling,’ Marion said.

The car moved off; it faltered at the corner, then turned, quickly accelerating towards the village.

Reagan left school and got a job in an accountant’s office. Of the other boys Colin had known earlier, Batty, after working as a grocer’s assistant, and pedalling a bicycle about the village, delivering orders, had gone down the pit like his brothers before him. Stringer had gone there directly after leaving school.

Connors, too, had gone down the pit, to be trained, according to his father, as a manager. Mr Morrison had taken over the Sunday School. Sheila he had seen often in the village; a year after he knew her she’d married a miner and had had two children by the time she was nineteen.

Of all the people that he’d known before, Reagan was the one he saw most often. His job was in the same city, some eighteen miles away, where Colin was at college: he travelled there and back each day by train, and they frequently met each other at the station.

Over the previous two years Reagan had grown even taller. He was now over six feet, wore suits which were specially made for him by a tailor, and shirts sewn up for him by his mother. On Saturday nights, wearing evening dress, he played in a dance orchestra in town, and on odd evenings gave music lessons to children in the village. Invariably on the train he would sit opposite Colin, his legs crossed, a white handkerchief protruding from his top pocket, and, if he wasn’t memorizing a musical score, or reading an accountant’s journal, would describe to Colin his plans for the immediate as opposed to the distant future. The names of leading celebrities of the entertainment world were mentioned with increasing frequency: one had almost dropped into the Music Saloon Ballroom where he played; another had written to say he intended to do so in the not too distant future; a third had invited him to an audition which, but for last-minute commitments in the office, he would have attended. A bandleader in a distant town, who had connections with the radio, had said he would see what he could do for him, though the fact that he played the violin, and not a trumpet or a saxophone, ‘or even a clarinet’, he had added nostalgically, invariably limited his scope of operation. His eyes, bright when he described these speculations, invariably darkened when the drab streets of the village came into view.

‘I heard from Prendergast’, he’d said one day, looking up from a sheet of music, ‘that your friend Stafford’s going into the family business.’

‘I thought he was going to Oxford,’ he said.

‘After he’s been to Oxford,’ Reagan said. ‘He has an Exhibition.’

‘In music?’

‘Good Lord, no,’ Reagan said, affecting something of an accent that he thought might suit the occasion. ‘His other subject.’

‘History.’

‘Or is it economics?’ Reagan said, his interest fading as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Apparently, you know, he could hardly play the piano.’

Over that first summer he’d written to Margaret in France, and had received strange, almost empty letters back, and had been more alarmed by their bad spelling and lack of syntax than anything else. One letter he’d actually sent back with red-ink corrections and for quite some while she hadn’t answered. Then came a formal note, every word of which, a footnote stated, had been checked with a dictionary. He wrote back immediately a letter in broad dialect, without punctuation, and the flow of letters as badly spelt and as badly put together, had recommenced. In his last letter he arranged to meet her the week-end after her return, in town.

He saw her some distance away, waiting outside a shop close to the cathedral. She wore a short, light-coloured coat, her hair brushed back beneath a ribbon. Her skin was tanned. Beneath the coat she wore a light-blue dress. She carried a bag over her arm and wore high-heeled shoes. Only when she turned and he saw the look of recognition did he realize he might, initially, have mistaken her for a woman.

They’d walked about the town, gone to the pictures, where they’d sat rigidly apart, and finally, before catching their respective buses, had walked down to the Chantry Bridge where, leaning against the parapet, they’d watched the dull brown river. He’d taken her hand as they walked; and then, at the bridge, he stood with his arm around her, loosely, uncertain, gazing down at the water without speaking.

Finally he’d turned to her and clumsily kissed her cheek. A moment later she turned to him and he kissed her on the mouth, slowly, still uncertain. Then, not wanting to kiss her again, or have his uncertainty revealed, he turned back to the river.

‘Shall I see you again?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, and added, ‘If you like.’

‘I could see you at the week-end.’

‘All right,’ she said, smiling, as if he were making of this more of a decision than he might.

They walked back to the stop. Her bus came. She climbed inside: he saw her stooping beneath the light, waving, then taking her seat as the vehicle moved away.

He saw her most week-ends. There was a casualness about their encounters. At their third meeting she’d asked him if he’d like to meet her parents. ‘They’d like to meet you,’ she added, ‘if you didn’t mind. They keep wondering where I’m off to.’

‘Don’t you tell them you’re going with me?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, surprised. ‘That’s why they’d like you to come.’

He arranged to go to the house the following week.

The light was fading when he arrived. The garden, which he’d glimpsed only once before, from the gate, was broader than he had imagined. The house was set on a slight rise to one side of the original village: beyond it, dipping down to the valley, were the brick houses of the council estates, whilst on the other side, higher up the slope, were the older structures of stone and grey-coloured slate. The house itself was built of brick, with small casement windows and, on the first floor, imitation timber and plaster work. There was an air of spaciousness about it, the front garden, the central feature of which was a sloping lawn, surrounded by thick beds of flowers. Roses, now fading, grew on trellises set against the walls of the house, overhanging the green-painted porch, and along timber-framed walks on either side. The tall stone walls of the older part of the village cut off the edges of the garden beyond.

Before he’d reached the front door it was pulled open and Margaret appeared. She wore a light, greenish dress, her hair, as usual, fastened in a ribbon.

‘You made it, then.’

‘I haven’t come too early?’ he said.

‘Dad’s just come in from surgery.’

She took his raincoat, which was folded on his arm, and he stepped inside the hall. It was broad and wood-panelled, and ran through to a door at the back of the house. A room opened off on either side, and stairs ran up to the floor above.

She showed him into a lighted room, the door of which was already open. A light-haired woman with a fresh-coloured face was sitting at a table, sewing. She removed a pair of spectacles, putting down the sewing and coming round the table to shake his hand. ‘So this is Colin: I’m so glad you could come,’ she said glancing shyly at his face. ‘Margaret’s father will be down in a minute,’ turning aside then to indicate a chair.

A fire burnt in a square, metal stove set out from the wall. He sat down in a leather-backed chair beside it.

‘Would you like a cup of tea or anything?’ Mrs Dorman said.

‘Oh, we’re going out in a few minutes,’ Margaret said.

‘Colin might want a cup of tea. He’s come a long way,’ the mother said. ‘Don’t rush him out before he’s arrived.’

‘Do you want a cup of tea, then?’ Margaret said.

‘I don’t mind,’ he said, looking at the mother.

‘Now you put the kettle on, Margaret,’ Mrs Dorman said. ‘And make it for all four of us. I’m sure your father will want one in any case,’ she added.

Margaret glanced across at him, shook her head, turned her gaze upwards, then went quickly to the door.

‘You live quite a long way away, Colin,’ Mrs Dorman said. She came over to the fire herself, sitting in a settee directly opposite. She was a small, neat-featured woman, with greyish eyes: it was from her that Margaret took much of her appearance.

‘Saxton,’ he said, describing the village.

‘You’re starting at college.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Will you live in a hostel, then, or at home?’

‘In a hostel,’ he said. ‘I think they prefer it.’

‘It does young people good to get away from home for a while; after a certain age, I think,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Does you father work in the village, or does he have a job outside?’ she said.

‘He works in the village.’

‘Ah, yes,’ she said.

‘He works down the mine.’

‘Oh, then we have something in common,’ she said. ‘My husband’s father worked in a mine. Though that’s some years ago now,’ she added.

Margaret came back in. She stood by the table, her hands clenched loosely before her.

‘Honestly, you’re not grilling him?’ she said.

‘I’m afraid Margaret’s very much on edge with you coming, Colin,’ Mrs Dorman said.

‘I’m not on edge at all,’ Margaret said, sitting at the table and beginning, slowly, to pick at the sewing.

‘And where are you going tonight?’ the mother said.

‘I thought we might walk round. Or we could go to the pictures. We’ve got one down the road,’ she added directly to Colin.

‘Make sure it’s not too late,’ Mrs Dorman said.

‘Honestly, now who’s on edge?’ her daughter said.

The door opened a few moments later and the father came in. He was a tall, soldierly man, from whom Margaret evidently got much of her height. He had, like the mother, a red-cheeked face, the eyebrows bushy, beneath them light-blue eyes. His hair was auburn, almost reddish, and brushed down in a fringe across his brow. His skin gleamed, as if he had just washed.

‘Oh, there you are, Colin,’ he said, as if they’d met already, and crossed the room with outstretched hand. ‘I thought I might have missed you. I’m never quite sure, you see, what time I’ll finish,’ turning to his wife and then Margaret and adding, ‘Any tea going, is there? Or am I too late for that?’

‘You’re never too late for tea in this house,’ Margaret said, going to the door. ‘I won’t be a minute. I’ll bring it in.’

‘Sit down, son. Make yourself at home,’ the father said, waving Colin back to the chair from which he’d just risen. He sat down at the table, taking out a pipe. ‘You don’t mind if I smoke?’ he added.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Not smoke yourself?’ The father laughed.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Wise man. Save yourself thousands.’ He glanced at his wife. ‘You don’t mind if I smoke, my dear?’

‘Not if Colin doesn’t mind,’ she said.

Margaret came in with a wooden tray. She set it on the table, sorting out the cups, pouring one for her father and saying, ‘One for you, I suppose, since you’ve just been working.’

‘Oh, give Colin his first, since he’s your guest,’ the father said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. ‘I come last in any reckoning in this household,’ he added directly to Colin, winking slowly over the top of his pipe.

‘In that case, Colin shall have it,’ Margaret said, coming over to him and handing the cup to him with scarcely a glance.

‘Oh, don’t look at me,’ the mother said, as if some look had passed between the father and her. ‘She’s very much a madam at times. I suppose you’ll find that out in due course,’ she added to Colin.

Later, as they were leaving the house, the mother had come to the door.

‘You’re not going without a coat?’ she called into the darkness.

‘It’s so hot,’ Margaret said. ‘And we’re not going far.’

‘Won’t you take a cardigan?’ the mother said, stepping back inside the hall and re-appearing with one a moment later. The father too appeared, stepping down to the path, pulling on a hat and carrying a small black case.

‘Have a good time. Take care,’ he called, waving and turning along the path at the side of the house. A moment later came the sound of a car, and lights appeared at the end of the garden.

Margaret went back, taking the cardigan. When they reached the gate she put her arm in his.

‘Well, that wasn’t so bad, I hope,’ she said.

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘Let’s go for a walk. I’d love some fresh air,’ she added.

She drew on the cardigan as they walked, returning her arm to his.

The road, which led past the estate and the stone houses, came out on a ridge overlooking the valley: lights were strewn out in vague clusters below. A breeze was blowing. From somewhere farther up the valley, where the faint outline of the hills began, came the soft, exhausted panting of an engine.

‘There’s a golf-course here,’ she said. ‘We could walk on that.’

They searched in the darkness to find the path. A gate opened out on to an area of darkness, vaguely shrouded by trees and the slope of a hill.

As they reached the nearest tree she paused.

‘I’m glad you came,’ she said. ‘I think they quite liked you. It’s the first time I’ve brought anyone home, you see.’

He put his arm about her.

‘I’ll come up to your home if you like,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘It’s a little bit different.’

‘In what way?’

‘A bit poorer,’ he said.

‘What does that matter?’ she said.

‘Well, not at all,’ he said, and shook his head.

The path led across the golf-course and came out by the river. The outline of a dyke was visible against the comparative lightness of the sky. They lay down in the grass.

‘I’ve never been down here before,’ she said.

‘Never?’

‘Not that I can remember. Though we’ve only lived in the house about seven years.’

‘Where were you before that?’ he said.

‘Oh, all over the place. Though I think we’ve settled now,’ she added.

They lay side by side.

He started to name the stars above their heads. Part of the sky was blotted out by the shape of a tree.

‘Have you written any more poems?’ she said.

Something about his poetry he’d mentioned in a letter.

‘Off and on,’ he said.

‘Would you ever show me some?’

‘I don’t know. It may not be any good,’ he said.

‘I could see if I liked it. And even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t ever say so.’ She laughed.

‘In that case, I don’t think I shall.’

‘Honestly, I’ll tell you what I think,’ she said.

They got up after a while. Briefly, before they’d risen, he’d caught her hand. Then, as they started walking, he took it again. They walked in silence. When they reached the road again she added, ‘Shall I come into town and see you off? I can easily get a bus back.’

‘I’d prefer to leave you here,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she said and laughed again.

‘It completes things, I suppose,’ he said. ‘In any case, your mother’ll think you’ve been out long enough.’

‘Oh, what does that matter?’ she said.

‘It matters quite a lot,’ he said.

‘Honestly, I didn’t think you were like that at all,’ she said.

They stood at the gate. A car came past and turned up a drive at the side of the house. He could see the hatted figure of her father silhouetted behind the wheel, then the lights faded off beyond a wall.

‘Shall I see you next week?’ he said.

‘If you don’t think my mother will mind,’ she said.

As before, when he’d left her, he kissed her clumsily on the mouth. She held to him a moment, uncertain, then, when he released her, she added, ‘We could meet after lunch. And take a picnic. We could go off somewhere, you know. Outside the town.’

‘Yes, all right,’ he said. He stated a time.

‘You bring something, too,’ she said.

She stayed at the gate, waving, faintly illuminated by a lamp in the road outside. When he reached the corner he stepped under a lamp himself, waved, and went on towards the stop.

22

They walked in the woodland to the south. A stream ran through a tiny valley and ended in a lake. Rhododendron bushes enclosed the lake on one side; on the other willow trees overhung the water and giant beech trees ran up the slope behind. At the head of the valley the stream wandered through small clearings in the wood.

They walked on towards the open land beyond. A large plain stretched out below them: to their left stood a sharp ridge where the edge of the wood began. Its summit was covered in trees and its lower slope with shrubs. They sat down and opened the two bags.

For a while they ate in silence.

Then, almost idly, she talked about the school. She was starting again the following week.

‘Most of the girls don’t care what they do,’ she said. ‘I mean, when they leave. Whether they go on to something else or not. If it’s not teaching, then it’s nursing. There doesn’t seem to be much else.’ She ran her hand against the grass, leaning back in the shade of a bush. ‘All they’re really concerned about is getting married.’

‘I suppose that’s got its benefits,’ he said.

‘Has it?’ The grey eyes had darkened. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘There should be more to a woman’s life than getting married.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘But what?’

‘Any amount of things. She should be a woman herself, before she even thinks of it.’

‘But what can a woman do?’ he said, lying on his stomach and looking up.

‘Why not be a doctor?’

‘Do you want to be that?’

‘I might. I might do languages. I haven’t decided.’

‘But surely you’ll have to decide by this week,’ he said and laughed.

‘Don’t you take me seriously?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course I do.’

‘Yet it’s really patronizing, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think so.’

She waited.

‘But what can a woman do?’ he said. ‘There’ve been no great women in so many areas of life that it can’t simply be explained by a lack of opportunity. Think of the life of leisure so many women led, with time to paint, to play music, to write, to think, to contemplate any number of things. But nothing extraordinary has ever come out of it.’

‘Because nothing extraordinary was ever expected to come out of it,’ she said. ‘You talk like Marion and Audrey. All they think of is a woman’s role. Men, men and more men, which in the end comes down to Hopkins or Stafford. It’s pathetic.’

‘Is that why you came out with me?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Because I insist on being one thing, it doesn’t mean I’ve to deny being another.’

He laughed again. A bird had come down from a near-by tree and after some hesitation hopped on to the grass. It pecked at the crumbs.

‘I think you are complacent,’ she said. ‘And I thought you might have been something different.’

‘But no,’ he said gravely. ‘I’d like to understand.’

‘Well, would you like to be a woman?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But that’s not a fair question. I know I never shall.’

‘Yet so many women I know would like to be men. And it’s purely frustration. Not because they want to deny themselves as women, but because they’re always treated as women.’

‘How else should they be treated?’ he said.

‘As people.’ She called out the words and the bird, alarmed, flew back with an agitated cry into the near-by tree. ‘You’ve really got one of those cloth-cap mentalities,’ she added.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t think I had.’

‘I suppose you’re used to your mother always being at home, and waiting on you. And on your father.’

‘Well, I’m not sure she waits. But she doesn’t work, except in the home,’ he said.

She lay back in the grass, her head propped on her hand.

‘I was probably being too arrogant,’ she said.

‘Is it just conditioning that there have been no great women poets, or composers, or religious leaders, or painters, or philosophers?’he said.

‘What else could it have been?’ she said. ‘You can change anything in a person by changing the conditions, the attitudes they live by. It’s a conscious act of will at first. I’m glad I’m a woman. The whole consciousness of a woman lies before her.’

He looked away. The figure of a man with a gun appeared at the top of the ridge: he stood there for a moment, looking out across the plain from where, in the distance, came the faint panting of an engine. Then, with a slow gesture, he pulled at the peak of his cap and turned away.

‘Yet you could say that someone like Van Gogh, or John Clare, for instance, had more active discouragement from being what they were, or became, than, say, many thousands of emancipated women who were not only supported financially by wealthy husbands, but also had the time and the opportunity to be thinkers or painters or poets.’

‘I’m afraid you’re too set in your ways to understand what I’ve been saying,’ she said. ‘It’s the unconscious element in a woman that inhibits or prevents her from doing these things, that organically restrains her.’

‘Yes,’ he said and with a sigh of something like frustration rolled away.

‘Where are you going?’ she said.

‘Let’s go to the top of the slope’, he said, ‘and see the view.’ He added, calling behind him, ‘There was a man up there a moment ago. He had a gun,’ and a moment later, from beyond the ridge, came the sound of a shot.

When he reached the top of the ridge he waited, reaching down to take her hand and draw her up the last few feet of rock. Beyond the ridge itself lay a narrow field then, beyond that, the stretch of wood leading down towards the lake. All that was visible, however, were the summits of the trees, and the deep, v-shaped incision made by the valley. In the farthest distance, like a smear of blue against the lightness of the sky, stood the profile of the city.

‘It’s like one of those Italian landscapes,’ he said, indicating the remarkable clarity of the air. Even the woodland faded away in lightening degrees of blue. ‘The town must be five miles away at least.’

They stood for a while at the summit of the ridge, gazing back the way they’d come. The man with the gun was visible below them, walking along the edge of the field, gazing at the trees.

‘Wood pigeons. That’s probably what he’s shooting.’

A puff of smoke came from the pointed gun, and seconds later the crack of the shot.

‘That’s something else that men do, I suppose,’ he added.

‘What’s that? ‘She glanced across.

‘Shoot things. And go to war,’ he said. ‘Is that conditioning, too?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Of course it is.’

The faint sound of an axe came floating from the wood below. Behind them, from the foot of the ridge, stretched the undulating plain, broken up by collieries and woodland. It too had acquired a patina of blue, as if they were looking into the bed of a lake.

‘In that sense it must be difficult,’ he said. ‘I mean dividing the world in that way.’ he added.

‘How must it be difficult?’ she said, her eyes brightening.

‘Even looking at this,’ he said, indicating the view below. ‘Fields shaped by men, by economies thought up by men, the work very largely done by men. Hedges cut by men, railways designed and built by men, for machines invented by men. Collieries staffed by men, providing fuel for industries supervised by men. There seems no end of it once you divide it into two.’

‘And how else should you look at it?’ she said. ‘Should a woman just stand in attendance on all this?’

‘She doesn’t stand in attendance,’ he said. ‘She helps create it.’

Margaret laughed.

‘It’s amazing how deep these prejudices go.’ She started back to the path that led to the patch of grass below.

He followed her down. When he reached the tiny clearing she was folding the bits of paper away, re-packing the bags. She’d brought a thermos of orange juice which she poured into a cup for him to finish.

‘It’s so peculiar,’ he said, half-laughing.

‘What’s peculiar?’ A tone, almost of threat, warning him, had come into her voice.

‘Turning the world upside down. It’s like seeing people’s legs and feet instead of their heads. Surely if women organically had any of the qualities, the other qualities you say they have, they would have shown some indication of it before now.’

‘Of course they’ve shown some indication of it,’ she said. ‘They’ve never had the economic or moral liberty to do anything about it.’

‘I can’t see why they haven’t.’ He shook his head. ‘In a way, you, and people like Marion and Audrey, have more liberty than I have.’

‘To do what?’

‘To be yourselves.’

‘I can’t see that.’

‘Ever since I’ve known anything I’ve been fulfilling other people’s obligations. I’ve been educated to fulfil certain obligations; I’ve worked at manual jobs to fulfil obligations. I’ve never actually once sat down, or been able to sit down, to decide what I actually want to do. I’ve been set off like a clockwork mouse, and whenever the spring runs down a parent or someone in authority comes along to wind it up again.’

‘Perhaps you are oppressed,’ she said. ‘But in a different way.’

‘But I wouldn’t belly-ache about it. Not like you. I wouldn’t draw a blanket over everything.’ He gestured vaguely in the air, still holding the cup she had given him. ‘It’s like seeing life out of one eye only. And condemning anyone who sees it out of two. You and girls like you have got much more liberty than I ever had.’

She laughed, shaking her head, startled by what she’d roused in him.

‘Liberty to be what’s already determined for us. Certainly not for anything different. An illusory liberty. Whereas with you: you could be anything you like. You’ve even got the freedom to work.’

‘I don’t see any freedom in that.’

‘You would do if work of that nature had been denied you.’

‘Anyway, I can’t see anyone changing it,’ he said.

‘Because you don’t want to see anyone changing it,’ she said. ‘You’re so comfortable with things the way they are.’

‘Am I comfortable?’ he said.

She laughed.

‘People are always comfortable. They resist change. It poses too many threats. Even you, if you were honest, would have to admit it.’

‘Admit what?’ he said, frowning.

‘What I’ve just said: it makes you feel frightened.’

‘I don’t mind feeling frightened,’ he said. He stood up, boldly, to indicate his mood.

‘Oh, I don’t mean frightened of challenges, of facing the unknown. But of having your view of yourself, as a man, presented to you in a way you can’t grasp or understand. You see yourself so much as a man, doing manly things, coming from a manly background; it’s what schools and homes like ours instil in us.’

‘I don’t feel manly at all,’ he said. ‘In most ways I feel set against what I’ve been told to become, or felt I ought to become.’

‘Well, that’s the end of one picnic at least,’ she said, suddenly frightened herself of what she had revealed. She handed him the bag, a small haversack which he took on his shoulder. His own food he’d brought in a paper carrier; she folded it up now and slid it beneath the flap. ‘Do you want to go on?’ she added. ‘Or shall we go back?’

‘I suppose we better go back,’ he said. The sun was moving down towards the plain. It threw heavy shadows across the slope behind.

They set off slowly around the foot of the ridge. Where the path became clearer and they could walk abreast, he took her hand.

‘It’s strange. I feel in a way it’s come between us.’

‘What has? ‘She swung his hand slowly, to and fro.

‘All this.’ He gestured round. ‘Even the wood at some time belonged to a man’s estate.’

‘It needn’t cloud the future, though,’ she said. ‘Things could be clearer between men and women. They could be equals, couldn’t they, and still be together.’

‘Equal in all things?’ he said. ‘It doesn’t seem real. Even when women have got freedom they don’t do much with it.’

‘Why go on with it?’ she said, as if perniciously she’d pushed some thorn against his flesh, regretting it now, almost wishing to draw it out.

‘It doesn’t seem real, that’s all,’ he said.

‘What’s real?’ she suddenly said, and laughed. ‘Real’s only what you’re used to. Would what you feel, for instance,’ she added, ‘be real to your father? Would what he feels be real to you? Are you denying that change mightn’t come with children? If they were brought up to accept nothing else but equality they’d look back on your attitudes as we look back, say, on Viking customs, or some other social paraphernalia that’s never stood the test of time.’

The path had broadened; it ran through the centre of the wood. A rider on horseback appeared beneath the trees, a figure with a dark bowler hat and jodhpurs who, as the horse galloped past, nodded down in their direction.

‘Man or woman?’ he said.

‘A woman.’ She laughed. They turned to watch the dark clods of earth flung up by the horse’s hoofs.

‘There are other inequalities,’ he said.

‘You can draw a line through all of them. They’re like a common point on a graph,’ she said. ‘All lines of inequality intersect.’

The path came out at the side of the lake. A man with a fishing-rod sat beneath the trees. He glanced up as they passed, opened a basket beside him and took out a sandwich. The float rested motionless on the surface of the lake.

‘Stafford is a fatalist,’ he said. ‘He believes, in the end, it comes to nothing. I feel tempted at times into sharing his view. I sometimes wonder, really, what’s the use? You put up a struggle, but what do you struggle for? It’s arrogance to assume that things can change, or that you personally can or should be instrumental in effecting them. At times, even to see a wood like this I find exhausting. Any kind of life in a way makes death all the more appalling.’

‘Or more exhilarating,’she said. ‘It’s an invariable sign of an egotism that’s been deflated for it to lapse into self-pity. What’s Stafford got to be fatalistic about? I’ve never seen him fatalistic when any of his interests are threatened. It’s just that he’s had some things too easy. And other things, I suppose,’ she added, ‘he’s never had at all.’

‘I sometimes think he’s had it harder. Not that it matters, in any case,’ he said, watching her smile then releasing her hand.

They walked on past the end of the lake and came out finally on a narrow road. Some distance farther down they came to a bus stop, and sat down on a wall to wait.

A boy on a bike cycled slowly past.

‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’ she said.

‘Two brothers. Younger than me. One’s eight,’ he added. ‘The other’s five.’ He paused. ‘I had an older brother though who died.’

‘What of?’

He shrugged.

‘Pneumonia.’

‘When was that?’

‘Before I was born.’

‘How long before you were born?’

‘Six months.’ He waited.

‘Is that what makes you so conservative and gloomy?’

‘Oh, no,’ he said, and laughed. ‘Its effect’, he added uneasily, ‘is quite the reverse.’

When the bus came they sat at the front upstairs, with the window wound down. The wind rushed through their hair. The rest of the bus was empty. It rattled into town. Small buildings in the farthest distance were outlined clearly by the now almost horizontal rays of the sun.

He sat with his arm around her. With the wind in their faces they scarcely spoke, calling out as the bus descended a hill, rushing at the slope, laughing finally when the conductor came upstairs to take their fares. ‘Where do you think you’re at? A fair?’ He stood in the gangway a moment, stooping to the air himself, laughing at its force, bracing himself against the swaying of the bus, then, still laughing, going back to the stairs, holding to the seats on either side. ‘Any more for any more?’ he called to them as they got off in the town.

He waited at her stop. ‘I won’t see you for a couple of weeks,’ she said.

‘Why’s that?’ he asked her.

‘My parents think I ought to give school a couple of weeks’ attention, without any distractions.’

‘I suppose, really, it’s only sensible,’ he said.

‘Do you think so?’ she said.

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘Still, today’s been worth it. Despite the argument,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

The bus drew up.

‘Will you give me a ring?’ she said. ‘We could go out a fortnight today, if you like.’

‘It hardly fits in, this sudden compliance, with all your arguments,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I’m really looking to my own interests,’ she said. ‘After all, education, or certain aspects of it, are a way out of the trap. If you can see the trap waiting, of course,’ she added.

He watched her mount the bus. Only after it began to move did he remember her bag and, running along the pavement, handed it to her as she leaned from the door. She called and waved. He stood at the corner, by the cathedral, and watched the bus and her silhouetted figure disappear.

They met once, sometimes twice a week if he came over specially from the college to see her. After the first interval of a fortnight something of a regular pattern was set in their meetings. Perhaps her parents resisted it; he was scarcely aware of it. Most weekends he would go up to her house on the outskirts of the town, talk with her mother as he waited for Margaret to get ready, seldom with her father, who, if he wasn’t engaged with a patient, was out on the golf-course at the back of the house where, occasionally, on some of their walks they would see him, in plus-fours, sweeping at the ball or standing, smoking a pipe, talking to other men beneath the trees. He would look up casually and wave, his concentration on the game or the conversation scarcely interrupted.

‘And isn’t your mother emancipated?’ he would ask her. She’d been one of the first women to go up to Oxford after the First World War. On some occasions, in order to inveigle herself into a meeting or some club activity, she’d dressed as a man. Margaret would listen with a spellbound look when her mother described these incidents, not looking at Mrs Dorman directly, merely adding once she’d left the room, ‘And what did she do with it all, I wonder?’

‘Oh, she’s emancipated,’ she said. ‘Like all women of her generation. And gave it up at the first opportunity to get married and have children. It’s all part of her romantic past. That’s why she goes on about it. It’s all like puberty: growing up. A pang you go through at a certain age. Now she puts it all into women’s meetings: the Women’s Guild, the Voluntary Service, like trying to doctor a sick patient when what’s needed is radical surgery.’

It was a pose, her militancy, a belief at times she couldn’t maintain: at other moments, if he referred to it, she would say, ‘Oh, don’t go on about it, Colin. I have enough to last a lifetime,’ sucking her finger if they were alone, the knuckle of her forefinger, clenching it between her teeth.

On other occasions her brother would be at home. He’d been away to college and was doing his military service: he’d recently passed a selection board and was now an officer cadet, standing to attention in front of the fire, wearing his uniform with its white flash against the collar, beaming down at Margaret if any of her arguments exploded inside the house. ‘And what’s this? What’s this? She was a terrible tyrant when she was a girl. Before, that is, she became a woman. Turned on the waterworks the first sign of trouble. And didn’t the boys who played with her get it in the neck? Many a hiding I’ve had because Margaret flooded at the appropriate moment. If you think you’ve seen a woman cry you’ve seen nothing’, he would add, ‘until you’ve seen our Mag.’

Her brother was a short, compact figure, not unlike the mother. He would stand beside his sister as if her height and slimness were somehow a reproach to his more robust proportions. ‘Oh, fine and dainty,’ he would say savagely to some conclusive argument of hers, taken up, for the sake of peace, by her mother. ‘Oh, fine and dainty: two women in the house,’ stepping briskly to the door from where, a moment later, would come his final remark: ‘It’s the wrong sex they’ve scheduled for conscription, you’ve got my word on that.’

Her father, if he were present, took no part in the arguments. He would sit reading a journal or a newspaper, smoking his pipe, pumping clouds of smoke into the room until Margaret would call out in exasperation, wafting away with either hand, ‘Do you have to smoke that beastly stuff? What if women poured out all that filth?’

‘Women pour out the equivalent in words,’ her brother would say, invariably defeated by his younger sister. ‘Smoke is infinitely preferable if one has a choice,’ taking out a pipe himself and puffing it vigorously in her direction.

One week-end Margaret came home to meet his parents. He’d arranged to meet her at the bus, but whether deliberately or otherwise she came earlier and knocked at the front door before he’d set off. His mother, mystified, had gone to answer it. He heard Margaret’s voice, then, inside the passage: ‘I have got the right house? I’m afraid I got here sooner than I thought.’

His mother came into the kitchen holding a bunch of flowers.

‘Look what Margaret’s brought,’ she said, flushed, holding them out.

Colin got up. He’d been about to put on his shoes, and stood there for a moment in his stockinged feet. His two brothers, who’d been roughly prepared for the occasion, got up from the floor where they were playing.

‘See here, Ellen,’ his father’s voice came from the stairs, ‘have you got a shirt?’

Still holding the flowers, perhaps as a signal, his mother went through to the passage.

‘Harry? Margaret’s here. You’ll find your shirt in one of the drawers,’ her voice followed by a significant pause then, as if some further message had been passed between them, his father answered, ‘All right, then. One of the drawers,’ his feet sounding on the floor above their heads.

‘I got here sooner than I thought,’ Margaret said again, looking across then, and adding, ‘Are these your brothers?’

‘This is Steve,’ he said, indicating the taller of the two. ‘And this is Richard.’

‘Hello, Steven,’ she said. ‘Hello, Richard.’

‘Hello, Miss,’ Steven said, confused.

‘Oh, you needn’t call me anything,’ she said, laughing. ‘Unless you want to call me Margaret.’

His mother came in and started looking for a glass. In the end she found a jug, filled it with water, and put the flowers in that.

‘You’ve met Colin’s brothers, then,’ she said, as if this were a privilege which, but for her acquaintanceship with Colin, Margaret might easily have been denied, calling to Steven then to clear a chair. ‘Make room, then, love, for Margaret to sit down.’

Colin sat down himself. He pulled on his shoes. Margaret was wearing a light-coloured coat which she’d already taken off as she came in the door and now laid on a chair at the back of the room. She sat by the fire, which was heavily stoked.

His father came in a moment later, his face red and freshly shaved; his collar was opened and he wore no tie. He advanced shyly into the room, shaking Margaret’s hand as she was introduced, ducking his head, then saying, ‘I’ve lost my tie. I wonder if it’s down here, Ellen,’ his mother drawing the tie out finally from the chair where Margaret was sitting. ‘He leaves everything where he drops it,’ she said, flushing deeper, then adding, ‘Harry, for goodness’ sake, put your tie on outside the room.’

‘Nay, you don’t mind me putting my tie on, do you, Margaret?’ his father said, glancing directly at her then ducking his head to the fractured glass above the sink. Yet the darkness scarcely left his face, an uncertainty at having someone like this inside the room.

‘Would you like some tea, love?’ his mother said. ‘I was going to get a proper tea ready a little later,’ standing with her hands clasped, gazing at Margaret through her glasses, the lenses of which, reflecting the light, obscured her expression.

‘Oh, I’d love a cup of tea,’ Margaret said and added, ‘I’ll get it, if you like,’ going to the kettle at the sink where, startled, his father stood back from straightening his tie. She ran the tap, looked round for a stove, saw none, and went directly to the fire. She set the kettle against the flames.

‘We’re having a gas stove put in shortly,’ his mother said, more alarmed by this gesture than by anything that had occurred inside that room for some considerable time, standing by the fire, anxious now to re-set the kettle.

‘Do you do all your cooking on the fire, Mrs Saville?’ Margaret said.

‘I have done, till now. And that’s how many years, then, Harry?’ his mother said.

‘Oh we’ve been here some time,’ his father said, refusing to count, gazing in amazement at the bright figure of the girl.

‘Twenty years it must be, over,’ his mother added. She glanced at Colin: he had half-risen from his chair at the incident with the kettle, but now sat back with a resigned air, moving his feet for his brothers who, distracted by Margaret’s arrival, had begun to play once again on the floor.

‘Aye. Nearly a quarter of a century,’ his father said. ‘It seems just like yesterday when we first arrived. We hadn’t got much, I can tell you that. We lived down the street, you know. They knocked it down a few year after and built another row.’

‘Oh, we haven’t done so bad,’ his mother said, sitting down at the table as if to distract his father. ‘There’s plenty worse off, I can tell you that.’

‘Oh, plenty,’ his father said.

‘And where do you live, Margaret?’ his mother added. ‘In town, or out of it?’

‘Just on its edge, Mrs Saville,’ Margaret said, glancing at Colin.

‘I suppose in the outskirts, yes,’ he said.

‘And you’re at the High School?’ his father said.

‘Yes,’ she said, and added, ‘For what it’s worth.’

‘Oh, it’s worth quite a lot,’ his father said. ‘Without an education where could you go,’ he added, ‘and what could you do? You’ve come to the right person to tell you that.’

‘Oh, now, Harry,’ his mother said. ‘You’ve done quite well. You know you have.’

‘Aye. But with the chances of an education there’s no telling where I might have gone,’ his father said. ‘That’s where people like you and Colin are very lucky.’

His father now was almost fifty; his hair was greying. He’d long since removed his moustache. His skin was heavily lined, his figure small, almost shrivelled, his look gaunt; even now, with the liveliness induced in him by the presence of the girl, there was a heaviness in his movements, a slowness in his voice, as if at the back of his mind were some dark dream or vision he couldn’t displace.

‘Aye, we’ve all done very well,’ he added as if, finally, to dispel this mood.

They went out walking a little later while his mother prepared the tea. Margaret had offered to help with this as well, but his mother had insisted they should go. ‘Now, I don’t want you prying into all my secrets, do I?’ she said primly, feeling threatened by the girl.

They walked in silence for a while. Colin turned up the hill towards the Park. There was an air of desolation about the village, the pit silent but for the faint hum of the dynamo. It was autumn and most of the greenery about the place had gone.

‘We could look at the church,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing of any interest.’

He turned up the lane leading to the dark, stone building. Mounds of dead leaves had drifted up against the hedge. The door to the building, however, was locked.

‘Do you still go to church?’ she said.

‘Occasionally.’ He shrugged.

They went up the overgrown track to the manor. The caretaker, since the end of the war, had left. The place more than ever now was falling into ruin. Great blocks of stone had fallen into the drive itself. They looked in through the empty windows.

‘It’s strange: but I can’t imagine you living here,’ she said. She gestured to the village below. A faint trail of yellowish fumes drifted off from the colliery heap. The houses, but for odd strands of smoke, were lifeless. The air was still.

‘Why not?’ He’d climbed up the steps at the front of the manor, suggesting she might look in the now unshuttered windows.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and shook her head. She’d gone on walking around the side of the building; he followed her after a moment. She was standing in the overgrown yard at the back. Vague areas of cobbles and flagstones showed beneath the weeds and grass.

‘My father used to drill in the Home Guard here,’ he said, indicating the now roofless outbuilding where the desk and the chairs and the various pieces of equipment had been stored. A strand of the rope which had fastened the bayoneting targets to the trees was still dangling from a branch. The stairs, however, which had led up to the centre of the main building, from the back, had now collapsed. ‘I used to come here with Steven in a pram. I’d set him under the trees, then climb up through the building.’

‘Haven’t you ever thought of moving from that house?’ she said.

‘Often,’ he said. ‘We’re on the list. They’re going to build a new estate, outside the village. They haven’t started yet,’ he added. ‘In any case, compared to some people, we’ve more than enough.’

They set off back towards the road. He described to her some of the games they’d played, pointing out the Dell across the village. They came out finally opposite the Park. The bare trees stood out starkly across the slope, the apparatus in the playground at the bottom now eroded and, in one or two instances, collapsed entirely.

‘Don’t you mind it being so poor?’ she said.

‘I’ve always minded it,’ he said. ‘But living in it, for most of the time you never notice.’ He added, ‘We’ve been better off than most. It’s that I’ve been aware of more than anything else.’

They sat on a bench for a while at the top of the slope, disinclined to go any farther. The bare fields stretched away below the Park, in one of which a tractor, ploughing, chugged slowly up and down. A railway engine came coasting along the straight length of track and disappeared into the cutting before the junction.

‘I suppose you were lucky even to get out of it,’ she said. ‘I mean, into town and to school, and away from this.’

‘I think I’ll get away for good, in any case,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to hold me here, you see. Well, not really.’

She glanced across.

‘I ought really to help out at home, when I start working, you see,’ he said. ‘While Steven and Richard get through. There’s still quite a bit to go,’ he added, helplessly now, and looked away.

‘One tyranny’, she said, ‘is replaced by another.’

‘Is it?’ he said. ‘Is it as easy as that?’

‘Like teaching a bird to fly, then insisting that it shouldn’t.’ After a moment she added, ‘Don’t you ever want to change it?’

‘How?’ he said.

‘So people like you don’t have to live like this.’

‘I won’t have to live like this.’

‘Won’t you?’ she said and added, ‘Somebody will.’

‘Yes,’ he said, looking to the trees below. ‘But things improve.’

‘Do they?’ The irony of their previous conversation had suddenly returned.

‘Why do you always lecture me?’ he said.

‘Because you’re so complacent,’ she said. ‘So still.’

‘I wouldn’t have thought complacent,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. She laughed. ‘It’s complacency, I suppose, that makes you think so.’ And after a moment she added, ‘Don’t you feel any responsibility towards your class?’

‘What class?’ he said.

‘This.’ She gestured round.

‘None.’

She was silent for a while.

‘Should I?’ he said.

‘There’s no should,’ she said. ‘Or ought.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But you hoped there might be.’ After a moment he said, ‘The responsibility I feel I couldn’t describe,’ and a little later, having added nothing further, they got up from the bench and moved away.

As they came down through the village Bletchley, dressed in a pair of shorts and a blazer, cycled slowly past them in the road. He was waiting at the front of the house when they arrived, adjusting something on the bike itself. They still, on Sunday evenings, occasionally went to church together, more out of habit than anything else.

Bletchley’s red knees gleamed as he stooped to the bike, his face flushed, bright-eyed, as he looked across. ‘I thought it was you,’ he said, glancing at Margaret, sternly, as if her entry to the house would somehow be denied unless it had been sanctioned by an introduction.

‘This is Margaret Dorman,’ Colin said.

Bletchley nodded, saying nothing.

‘And this is Ian Bletchley,’ he added. ‘He lives next door.’

Bletchley nodded again, his flush deepening as if he suspected it were really him she had come to see.

‘We’re just going in for tea,’ Colin said and Bletchley had finally said, ‘I hope you enjoy it,’ as if his long-held view regarding the Saville household would be vindicated by what they found inside. He rammed his bike against the wall and, his vast figure glowing from his recent exertions, his legs almost luminous beneath the bottom of his shorts, he banged open his own front door and went inside.

His mother had changed her dress. Perhaps this was what had discomposed her from the beginning, that she hadn’t had time to prepare herself. She had only two dresses in any case, a brown, faintly speckled one which she wore now, and a dark-grey one which, alternating with a skirt and jumper, she wore about the house.

The jug of flowers had been set in the centre of the table. Around it were arranged the various plates, with one large plate containing meat paste sandwiches immediately beside it. A tin of fruit had been opened by the sink.

His two brothers were already waiting by the table, Steven uncertain where to put himself, while Richard, who had recently been crying, was wiping his face with a flannel. His mother, who was finishing the arranging of the table, looked up, smiling, as they entered. A few moments later his father appeared, smoking, from the yard outside. ‘So this is where we are,’ he said, clapping his hands and rubbing them as if some argument had taken place during their absence and he were now energetically trying to remove its atmosphere. ‘Did you get far round our beautiful village?’

‘Far enough, Mr Saville,’ Margaret said, her spirits reviving slightly at the sight of his father. ‘Is there anything I can do, Mrs Saville?’ she added.

‘It’s all ready, love,’ she said. ‘If you’d like to wash your hands, that is.’

‘Oh, we’d better wash our hands,’ his father said, going to the sink directly and rolling up his sleeves. He began to sing, cheerily, as he ran the tap.

Colin waited for Margaret to go before him. Then, when he’d washed his own hands and dried them, he held her chair and they sat down at the table. There were only four chairs, so the two younger boys stood at the side, gazing at the sandwiches, waiting impatiently while the plate was handed first to Margaret, then to their mother, their father then handing it to Colin. ‘No wolfing, now,’ his father said. ‘Eat slowly. Give good food’, he added, glancing pleasantly at Margaret, ‘time to digest.’

When the sandwiches were consumed and his mother had asked Margaret if she would like any more, the tinned fruit was brought over to the table. His mother served it out, stooping short-sightedly to the bowls, balancing the variety of fruits, lifting one cherry from one bowl, replacing it with a piece of pear, then asking Margaret, ‘Would you like some cream, love?’ which his father also brought over to the table, a small, round tin with two punctured holes. ‘Oh, do put it in a jug, Harry,’ she said.

‘Nay, it’s cream in a tin, and it’s cream in a jug,’ his father said. ‘So what’s the difference?’

‘Still, it looks better in a jug,’ she said severely, flushing, his father going to the cupboard and waiting patiently beside the upturned tin while its contents trickled out. ‘Or you could have the top of the milk. I’ve still got a bottle untouched,’ his mother said.

‘Oh, the cream will do fine, Mrs Saville,’ Margaret said, watching his father’s expression now with fascination and taking the jug from him finally with a smile.

When the last of the fruit had gone, and his two brothers had assiduously cleaned round their plates, Richard standing on tiptoe, his elbow raised, to finish off completely, slowly licking his spoon and looking over at Margaret as if she herself were responsible for the provision of all this food, a sponge cake was brought out from the cupboard in the wall.

‘And where has this been hiding?’ his father said. ‘We’ve had no news of this, then, have we?’ picking up a knife to cut it himself.

‘And if you had’, his mother said, glancing at Margaret, ‘there’d be none of it left for tea.’

‘That’s true. That’s perfectly correct,’ his father said, handing the first piece to Margaret on the blade of the knife, his mother adding, ‘Oh, now, can’t you pass it properly? You bring the plate to you, not pass it over.’

‘Oh, we never have much time for etiquette down a coal-mine,’ his father said, again to Margaret.

‘You’re not down a coal-mine now, though,’ his mother said. She added to Margaret, ‘Though at times, going by their manners, you’d begin to think they were.’

‘Aye, well,’ his father said, in a tone of self-pity. ‘Some of us aren’t as well trained as others. I suppose I’ve to show up my ignorance now and again. I’m sure Margaret will forgive me.’

‘It’s not a question of forgiving, it’s just a question of practicality and common sense,’ his mother said, flushing, her expression invisible behind her glasses.

‘Practicality: that’s another of those words,’ his father said. ‘You can’t sit down to a meal in this house without a dictionary ready,’ returning perhaps to some vestige of the argument they’d had while they were walking round the village.

‘Would you like some more tea, love?’ his mother said, holding out her hand for Margaret’s cup and drawing the episode firmly to a close.

There was a further argument later over the washing-up. ‘You sit down, love. I’ll do it,’ his mother had said when, the moment the meal was over, Margaret began to clear the table.

‘Oh, I can do something for my keep, Mrs Saville,’ Margaret said, taking a pile of plates to the sink. The moment she was there, seeing there was no hot-water tap, she filled the kettle and took it to the fire.

‘Oh, guests don’t have to do housework,’ his mother said cheerily, taking the kettle from her and setting it quickly in the flames herself.

‘Nay, we’ll all do it,’ his father said, removing his jacket and rolling up his sleeves. ‘I’m damned if I’m going to sit there and watch you wash up, Mother. Steve, go to the yard and fill the bucket,’ then running the tap noisily to rinse the plates.

‘Nay, love, I can do it when Margaret’s gone,’ his mother said fiercely. ‘There’s no reason to make such a fuss of it.’

‘Fuss? What fuss?’ his father said, glancing at Margaret. ‘We’re not going to sit over them mucky pots, now, are we? We’ll have us a clean room to sit in.’

‘Nay, you take Margaret through to the front room,’ his mother said to Colin. ‘Your father and I will do the pots.’

In the end they went through, sitting in silence in the tiny interior, gazing out to the street, the sounds of his parents’ voices coming through the wall, followed a little later by a wail from Steven.

Colin went through to the door.

‘You can let him go out and play: he doesn’t have to stay in for Margaret,’ he said.

‘Nay, love: they’re not going out when we have a guest,’ his mother said, his brother sitting sulkily by the door, Richard already back on the floor, playing beneath the table.

‘Oh, what a commotion. Why does she have to be a martyr to it all?’ Margaret said when he went back in the room. She stood by the window, her arms folded, gazing out. Bletchley, as if aware of the commotion, perhaps having even listened to the flood of voices through the wall, was cycling slowly up and down, in loose circles, in front of the house, his large red face intermittently turned towards the door, no doubt aware of Margaret behind the curtains and offering, so his expression and attitude seemed to say, his own presence and personality as a suitable alternative.

‘It’s just nerves,’ he said. ‘She wanted to make a good impression. You’re the first girl I’ve brought back to the house,’ he added. He waited. She didn’t turn from the window. ‘Her ambitions for the house are so much greater than the things she’s got to work with. She really sees this as a sitting-room.’ He gestured round at the dilapidated furniture and the piece of ill-fitting linoleum on the floor.

‘It’s so awful. It’s so sickening. It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for her,’ she said. ‘I do. But to be driven to live like this.’

‘Oh, she’ll begin to relax,’ he said, ‘when you’ve been here one or two times. She might even be glad for you to do the washing-up,’ he added.

‘And do you think that would be an improvement, a step in the right direction?’ she said, turning finally from the window.

‘It depends what you want to make of it,’ he said.

He was silent for a while. She returned her gaze to the street outside. Almost like a metronome, Bletchley appeared and disappeared, first in one direction then the other, beyond the window.

‘What’s his name again?’ she said.

‘Ian.’

‘Have you known him long?’

‘Almost all my life. Well, certainly all my life,’ he said. ‘Though I didn’t get to know him really until I went to school.’

‘Is he still at school?’ she said.

‘He’s another year. Then he goes on to university,’ he said.

‘Well, at least one more will have escaped,’ she said. ‘Are there any more like you in the village?’

‘One or two,’ he said. ‘Though in the end they seem to come back to it. Not the village so much as the industry,’ he added, indicating now a cloud of smoke that was drifting over the street from the direction of the pit.

When the washing-up had been resolved, and his parents had come into the room to sit for a while, they all finally went back to the kitchen to play cards. Richard, at an early hour, was put to bed, and Steven allowed to go out, after a further argument. His voice finally came to them from the field at the back. A further cup of tea was made, the game of cards was played a little longer, his father shuffling and calling out his bid in a loud, raucous voice, his fits of laughter ending in coughing, playing so carelessly that Margaret invariably won her hand. ‘Oh, she’s dazzling me. Intelligence: you can see it at a glance.’

‘I’m not sure you’re really trying, Mr Saville,’ Margaret said.

‘Trying? I’m trying. But what chance have I got against an intelligence like that?’

Colin, later, in the darkness, walked her to the bus. She took his hand as they neared the stop.

‘Are you glad you came?’ he said.

‘Of course I’m glad. It’s you I’m interested in, not your mother and father.’

‘They’re part of it,’ he said.

‘Not the whole of it,’ she said. ‘Now the week after next I shall come again. We’ll see if there’s some improvement.’

In the end, she fitted into the house more easily than he’d expected. His mother, even, began to expect certain things from her; not only the regular bunch of flowers and the washing-up, but small services like shopping, ironing, even cleaning-out the kitchen one Saturday afternoon. Colin, arriving home from college, found her there, working alone, a scarf for a dust-cap on her head, sweeping the floor. Steven and Richard were playing down the backs: there was no one, as far as he was aware, in the house at all.

‘Your mother’s shopping, and your father’s in bed,’ she said. ‘And Richard and Steven are out somewhere. I haven’t seen them for an hour.’

He helped her to finish the room and put the furniture back in place.

‘How long have you been here?’ he said.

‘Since this morning,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d come over, you see, for lunch. We had some meat at home that no one could eat.’

‘We’re not that poor here,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I thought it might help. You don’t begrudge it, after all?’ she added.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I hope you’re not letting yourself be used.’

‘And if I am being used, what does it matter? I wouldn’t come unless I wanted.’

‘But I thought you were against all this,’ he said.

‘I am,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t substitute one tyranny for another: the tyranny of not doing it’, she added, ‘for the obligation that I should.’

They were out walking when his mother came back. It was part of the pattern now of their encounters: long, hauling walks, alternating with visits to the pictures, either to the small cinema in the village, or to one of the three in town. They seldom saw anyone at all. He introduced her to Reagan when they met in the street, to Mrs Shaw when she came in the kitchen one afternoon, to Mrs Bletchley in the yard outside. Apart from that their walks were conducted in silence, a strange, almost solemn companionship which he looked forward to all week in college, their arguments, whenever they occurred, ending in some embrace beneath a tree or in the depths of some unfrequented wood, their conversations, usually as they waited at stops for buses, or as they rested on some tedious stretch of road, about their respective activities at school and college. Little intruded on them at all.

At the end of that year she applied for and was granted, conditionally on the results of her final examination, a place at a university in a town some forty miles away. He applied for an early medical for his National Service; they talked loosely now of what they would do in the future, of marriage before she went to university. One evening, when he arrived at her house, her father asked him if he’d like to talk about their plans. ‘Why don’t we go over to the surgery?’ he said. ‘There’ll be no one there,’ opening the door for him which led through from the rear of the house into a passage which, when the light was turned on, he found led into the back of the doctor’s room. He sat in the patient’s chair, immediately in front of the desk, the doctor sitting behind it, smoking his pipe, tapping out the ash at one point, leaning forward, his conversation still about the weather, about certain activities in the sporting world. Glass cabinets flanked them on either side, and in one corner, on a white, metal-covered tray stood a row of empty medicine bottles. A weighing machine with a vertical ruler stood immediately beside the door.

‘Margaret tells me’, the doctor said, ‘that you’re thinking of getting married.’

‘We had talked about it, yes,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to impose a heavy hand.’ Dr Dorman smiled. ‘I’d just like to talk about it, loosely. As just a general principle in Margaret’s life.’ He took out his pipe again and re-filled it slowly with tobacco. ‘She’ll be nineteen, you see, when she goes up to the varsity,’ he added, stressing the word as if, for him, it were a place of some significance. ‘Your prospects, well, for two years, will be worth very little indeed. I’m looking, you see, on the practical side.’ He took out a box of matches, struck one boldly, and applied the flame vigorously to the pipe. A cloud of smoke was blown out steadily across the room. ‘If, for instance, Margaret gave up the varsity, which, if she had a baby, she would be obliged to, she’d have no qualifications of any note to fall back on later in life. As you get older your mind loses the resilience for learning, with the result that, if she did try to pick up where she’d left off, she’d find it very difficult, if not impossible. At the moment, there are no facilities for that sort of thing. And one child might easily lead to another. She’d find herself in middle life suited for what?’ He waited, watching him reflectively through the cloud of smoke. ‘Working in a shop.’

‘That hardly fits in’, Colin said, ‘with Margaret as she is. I think she’s determined, in any case, to qualify for what she wants. If we did get married,’ he added, more earnestly now and leaning forward in the chair, ‘we wouldn’t have a family for several years. Not, at least, until she’d settled, and I’d finished with the army.’

‘Of that you can’t be sure,’ the doctor said. ‘And I’m speaking as a professional man as well as a father,’ he added, smiling. ‘It would be absurd to put the whole question beyond the realms of human experience. After all, what’s the future for? To plan towards, to prepare oneself for. After she has her degree, and once you’ve got your job settled, as far as I can see there’s nothing to stop either you or she getting married. You may, even, by that time, have each found someone else. The human heart is very fickle, and at the age you’re both at, as well as over the next few years, you may find it coming up with a few surprises.’

Colin waited. Not only was he unprepared for the argument, but it had, he felt, committed him in ways which, if he considered them beforehand, he would have rejected. The whole idea now of working towards some given objective was not only obnoxious in the assumptions it made both about himself as well as Margaret, but, in his own bewildered state, virtually meaningless. He watched the doctor’s face for a while, as if he sensed that, given one or two more objections to their getting married, he would get up and go and do it the following day.

‘These are just one or two thoughts that came into my head,’ the doctor said. ‘Maybe you’d like to think about them. Talk them over with Margaret and we could, perhaps all three of us, have a talk again. Her mother and I, you see, are quite convinced that life at the varsity will be quite tough enough as it is. Without the demands and pressures of marriage. You see my point?’

Colin looked at the empty bottles. There was a chart on the wall beyond the doctor’s head, of the human body, a maze of coloured lines and muscles. In a large, thin-necked glass jar a moth or some other insect had begun to flutter.

‘After all, how long does a marriage last? Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years. What are three years waiting, and useful study, at the beginning? If you’ve both got something to work towards it’s an added incentive. You’re both sensible. It’s not as if I were talking to someone who could only see things, for instance, in terms of immediate gain.’

Colin got up. He felt stiff in the chair.

‘I’ll talk to Margaret about it,’ he said. ‘Though we hadn’t really thought it out in practice.’

‘No, I’m sure in practice people at your age seldom do. It’s the job of old codgers like us’, the doctor added, ‘to do what we can in that direction.’

He got up himself and went over to the door, holding it open as he might for a patient, pausing only to glance round before he put out the light.

When they returned to the house Margaret was sitting in a chair by the fire, sewing, her mother beside her, preparing a sheet of paper, a placard or an announcement, for a meeting she was going to later that evening. ‘Tea?’ Mrs Dorman said, looking up at her husband’s face to see what the outcome of their conversation might have been.

‘Oh, tea for me. How about you, Colin?’ the doctor said, laughing, puffing out a final cloud of smoke before leaning down casually and knocking his pipe out against the square-shaped stove.

Margaret glanced across at Colin. He gave no sign. The feeling of domesticity in the room was heightened by the quietness of the two women, and the relaxed geniality of the man. As if nothing whatsoever had occurred the doctor picked up a newspaper and sank down in a chair. ‘Any chance of a biscuit with it?’ he called to his wife as she went over to the door. He looked over the top of the paper a moment later at Margaret and added, ‘You two off out this evening, or staying in?’

‘Oh, I suppose we’ll go for a walk,’ Margaret said. She glanced at Colin once again. ‘Is that all right?’

They went after her mother had brought in the tea.

They walked in the darkness of the golf-course. It was his habit now, whenever they walked, to hold her hand. After a while he took off his coat and they lay down on the grass. He’d told her already of what her father had said.

‘I don’t mind leaving school and getting married now,’ she said. ‘I don’t feel obliged to do what they want. Though naturally, of course,’ she added, ‘I’d listen.’

‘Even then, it’s better that you do qualify for something,’ he said. She had already, the previous year, decided against medicine, against following her father, and had allotted, largely because it was a shorter course, to go in for languages. Even over that there’d been some disagreement. Now she moved away from him, kneeling in the darkness. ‘Doesn’t it go against everything you’ve always said? That you ought to be independent? That you should have a separate way of life? Why should you give that up now? What’s so different between now and a year ago?’ he added.

‘I can’t see why I can’t do both things. If we married in a year I could still take a degree. I can’t see marriage being a hindrance. If anything, it would be a settled background to work against.’

‘What if we did have a child?’ he said.

‘Couldn’t we plan a family?’ she said.

‘I suppose we could.’ He waited.

‘What’s to hold us back?’ she said.

‘It’s all so planned and deliberate,’ he said. ‘Like buying a suit, or a house. I’ve always looked for something spontaneous. It’s as if we’re laying down our lives, like rolling out a carpet. We know where we’ll go before it’s begun.’

He got up. They moved on after a moment. She took his hand.

‘You talk of all this independence,’ he said. ‘But you never live it through. You said your mother was like that, but you were different. I don’t want you married to me, as a matter of fact. Not on these terms. I’d rather get up and do it tomorrow. Or never do it at all. I’d rather we go on as we are, and let them speculate about the future.’

‘Then we’ll go on as we are,’ she said.

She came to the stop to see him off. After he’d mounted the bus and it drew away he turned and saw her figure beneath the lamp, poised at the edge of the road, and he almost leapt off the bus and hurried back, she seemed something so slender and vulnerable, scarcely there at all, with her impassioned desire to be something which, in the end, she would never become.

He felt her absence through the night, coiled in his bed. On the Monday morning, instead of returning to the college, he waited outside the school. He saw her figure some distance away, unfamiliar now in the uniform of the school. She looked up in surprise, with a kind of dread, when she saw him standing by the gate and despite the other girls’ curiosity came quickly across.

‘Is anything the matter?’ she said.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I just wanted to see you, that’s all,’ he said.

Yet even then she gazed at him with dread, her eyes dark, her hand grasped to the leather case which held her books.

‘I thought something must be wrong,’ she said, watching his face to see if, in the end, she might be right.

‘Not that I’m aware of. No,’ he said. He added, ‘And how are you? Are you all right?’

‘Oh, I’m all right,’ she said, vaguely, looking round then at the yard, at the other girls, and at a mistress who, with a querulous look, passed them in the gate. ‘They don’t like us talking in the vicinity of the school,’ she added.

‘We could move away,’ he said.

‘I haven’t time.’ A bell rang somewhere inside the building. The figures in the yard moved quickly towards the doors. There were screams and shouts. Someone called her name. ‘They asked me what we’d decided, of course,’ she said, and added, ‘I told them we’d go on as before. Unless something happened. I think they’re frightened more than anything else.’

‘Or concerned.’

‘You see, you vacillate’, she said, ‘as much as me. First on their side and then on ours.’

‘I’m glad I’ve seen you, at least,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have got through the week without.’

‘Me neither. I was going to ring you at college tonight.’

‘What about?’ he said, and smiled.

‘Oh, just to talk,’ she said, and shrugged. ‘I’ll have to go. I’ll call in any case,’ she added and, after glancing quickly to the yard, kissed him on the mouth.

23

The building was a large, square structure, like a mill or a warehouse built originally of brick, but covered now with a uniform yellowish plaster, darkening and stained with soot, its multitudinous rows of windows framed by peeling greenish paint: the whole edifice appeared to have been roasted inside an oven, seemingly lifeless until he entered the plain, green-painted door at the top of a flight of concrete steps and a man in an Army uniform stepped forward.

He gave him his name, showed him the letter he’d been sent, and was directed to a room on the second floor. Here, at the end of a concrete corridor, thirty or forty youths were sitting on benches facing a wooden partition in the centre of which was a small glass panel. This was pulled aside the moment he entered and a man with close-cropped hair thrust his head towards the room and called, ‘Up to J26 on the third floor, and quick about it.’

The youths stood up; some were smoking, some remained standing by their benches, talking, glancing indifferently towards the open door.

A soldier with slightly longer hair and smoking a cigarette came from behind the wooden partition and read off names in a nasal voice.

Colin listened for his own. The last of the youths, with some prompting from the soldier, slowly drifted out. ‘J26, and quick about it,’ he called, echoing the words of the man behind the panel. He stood in the corridor outside, still calling, gesturing wildly and adding, ‘No, no, up the stairs, not down,’ coming finally into the room, allowing the door to crash to behind, and calling directly to the first of the soldiers who, Colin could now see, as he too came round the partition, was wearing sergeant’s stripes: ‘The bloody fools.’

He showed the sergeant the letter he’d been sent and was directed to one of the wooden benches. He waited for twenty minutes. Other youths drifted in, looking round, going to the glass panel, showing slips of paper, coming over to the benches, sitting down, yawning, one or two smoking. Two sooted windows looked out on an empty sky.

After a while, when the benches were full, the soldier with longer hair appeared once more from behind the partition. He read off a list of names and, but for Colin, the youths drifted out.

A third group came in, assembled on the benches, then, after a phone message received by the sergeant, were directed to the room upstairs.

The sergeant came out from the partition and, with the second soldier, sat down on the benches. He took out a cigarette, offered one to the soldier, and for a while stretched there, his head in his hands. The phone rang after a while and he got up, slowly, and went to answer it. His square, bullet-shaped head was visible beyond the glass panel, reddening, nodding up and down. Eventually he came back to the benches, replaced his cigarette in his mouth, and once again lay down.

‘What’re you doing here?’ the soldier with longer hair said, seeing Colin still waiting in the room.

He showed him the letter. His name was checked on a list.

‘You should have gone up three batches ago,’ the soldier said. He showed the list to the sergeant.

‘I was told to wait in here,’ he said.

‘Who told you to wait in here?’ the sergeant said.

‘You did,’ he said.

‘You couldn’t have listened. Half the people that come in here are deaf,’ he added to the soldier. ‘Up to J26. That’s what I said. You better get up now.’

He went out to the corridor. A burst of laughter came from the room behind, cut short a moment later by the ringing of the phone.

He climbed up the steps to the third floor, and walked slowly along the concrete corridor looking at the numerous identically painted doors. Finally he came to a room lettered J29, the six apparently having spun upside down. He knocked on the door loudly, heard no answer from the other side, and pushed it open.

Rows of small wooden desks and chairs were set out inside. At a larger desk, facing the rows, sat a soldier with two stripes on his arm. He was unwrapping a packet of sandwiches, which were held together by a rubber band. As Colin entered he looked up in surprise.

‘What is it?’ he said. A large thermos flask stood on the desk beside him.

‘I’ve been sent up’, he said, ‘from the room below.’

‘There must be some mistake. I’ve just had the last batch through,’ he said.

He showed him the letter with his name and number and the time of his appointment.

‘I was just going to have my lunch,’ the soldier said. He began to replace the rubber band around his sandwiches. ‘How many more are there?’ he added.

‘Just me,’ he said.

‘Just one, is it?’ He leant down by the desk, picked up a briefcase and put the sandwiches then the thermos inside and fastened the top. He replaced the case beside the desk. ‘I can’t see why you couldn’t have waited. I was just going to have my lunch,’ he said again.

He handed Colin a printed card.

‘Don’t look at it’, he said, ‘until I tell you,’ pointing at the desks and adding, ‘I should just sit farther back. Not near the front. Have you got a pencil? You’ll find one on the desk.’

He chose one of the desks, finally, in the centre of the room, looking up to see if the soldier had any objection, saw that he’d returned once more to his brief-case, stooping down, and sitting at the desk set the card down on the top before him.

‘Are you ready?’ the soldier said. He’d produced a watch from his brief-case and gazed across at him with it held significantly in his hand. ‘When I tell you to go you’ve got ten minutes to answer the questions on the card before you. I can’t answer any inquiries: if you can’t understand them just leave a blank.’

He pressed the watch down with a significant gesture and nodded his head.

‘That means’, he added, calling across in irritation, ‘you may begin.’

Colin picked up the pencil on the desk before him, saw that the first question involved a juxtaposition of figures and numbers in sequence, not unlike those he had answered years before in his grammar-school examination, and, deciding it would take a little thought to work it out, moved on to the second. He answered the second question, then the third, writing the brief answers down in a box at the side. When he’d reached the final question at the foot of the card he found that he had still one box empty.

Looking back up the column of answers he saw, as he reached the top, that inadvertently he’d placed the answer to the second question in the box provided for the answer to the first. Similarly the answer to the third question was in the box provided for the answer to the second, the answers, in effect, to all the thirty-two questions, with the sole exception of the first, which had no answer at all, being in boxes once removed from their proper place.

He had just begun, laboriously, to draw an arrow in the margin to indicate the error, when the corporal at the desk called out, ‘Pencils down. No looking at the card or reading it from now on.’

‘I was putting in a correction to the placing of the answers,’ he began to say when the corporal called, ‘No comments, please. If you wish to make inquiries you may raise your hand.’

He lifted his hand. The corporal appeared to take no notice of it for several seconds, his attention on a red pencil which he was sharpening with a knife.

‘Yes, what is it?’ he said, finally looking up.

‘I was about to point out an error I’ve made in the positioning of the answers,’ he said.

‘No comment may be made upon the examination. Please bring it out.’

He got up from the desk and took the card down to the soldier.

‘You’ve left the pencil behind, I take it?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘If you don’t watch them the whole roomful can go inside a morning. Please go up to room S27 on the floor above.’

‘I thought I’d just like to point out’, he said, indicating the card over which the red pencil was now sharply poised, ‘that the positioning of the answers isn’t correct. That the answer in effect to number one…’

The soldier turned slowly to look at his face.

‘Why don’t you piss off?’ he said.

When he glanced back from the door he could see the soldier placing a neat column of red crosses down the side of the card, checking the answers automatically with a sheet before him, marking a further cross and looking up at him in some surprise before he finally stepped out into the corridor beyond.

S27 was a large room, somewhere near the top of the building. In the centre of it were two or three elderly men in white coats standing by a metal stove. Its metal chimney went up through a large, ill-fashioned hole in the ceiling.

Around three walls of the room were arranged curtained cubicles, large enough to take a table or a bed. Several of the youths from the last group were standing around the entrance to one of the cubicles, most of them undressed, two draped with towels. They went in one by one and as each came out they went on to the adjoining cubicle. In the centre of the fourth wall stood a wooden desk, behind it a uniformed officer and two soldiers.

A third soldier showed him into the first of the cubicles. He was instructed to strip off. Then, naked, he was taken into the second cubicle, was given a glass jar and told to urinate into that and a metal bucket, already full to overflowing. He handed the jar to the soldier when he finally emerged and it was taken off smartly across the room where it was given a label and lined up on a wooden table with several others.

In the third cubicle a white-gowned figure with grey hair and spectacles was reading a book. He looked up in surprise when he came round the curtain.

‘I thought they’d all gone through,’ he said.

‘I think I’m the last,’ he said.

‘Sit in the chair and let’s have a look in your ears,’ the man had said.

The canvas on the chair was cold. The man looked in one ear and then the other, shining in a tiny light. Finally he tilted his head to one side, ran liquid inside his ears and plugged them up with cotton wool.

‘Come back here when you’ve finished your eye-sight test,’ he said, calling now, his mouth close to his head.

His throat and teeth were examined in the adjoining booth. Beyond that his body and legs were examined, finally his chest, the elderly doctor stooping over with a stethoscope. In the booth beyond that he sat in a chair opposite a wall of coloured charts. He read off numbers and figures, had the cotton wool removed from one ear while the doctor, partially deaf himself, called instructions, then returned to the first booth to have his ears re-examined.

‘Is anything the matter?’ he said.

‘It’s just dirt, I’m afraid,’ the doctor said.

‘Dirt?’

‘You bohemians are all the same,’ the doctor said, indicating Colin’s longish hair.

When he was dressed there was no one left in the room but the group of white-gowned figures, grown larger now, around the stove, and the officer with the two soldiers sitting at the desk.

‘Could you tell me my grading?’ he asked the officer as he reached the door.

‘You’ll be informed in due course,’ the officer said.

‘There’s no chance of finding out now?’ he said. ‘I asked for an early medical, you see.’

‘Why did you ask for an early medical?’ the officer said.

‘So I could go straight in when I leave college at the end of the term,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’ll be hanging around for months.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no way I can tell you,’ the officer said. ‘You’ll have to wait like the rest, and you’ll be informed’, he added again, ‘in due course.’

As he came down the corridor, several youths, some still dressing in coats and shirts, others pulling on shoes, were gathered round a desk on the landing. Behind the desk sat a soldier with his hat threaded through the lapel on his jacket, calling out names and numbers, and giving out cards.

Colin waited. After several minutes his name was called.

‘Grade three,’ the soldier said, waving the card above his head. He took it from the soldier without the soldier looking up. The knot of youths had almost dispersed. The last cards were given out and he stepped up to the desk.

‘I think there’s been a mistake,’ he said.

‘What’s your name?’ the soldier said.

He showed him the card. ‘The name’s correct, and the number, but I think the grade must be wrong.’

‘Grade three,’ the soldier said, checking against a sheet before him. ‘Flat feet. Have you got flat feet?’ he said.

‘I hadn’t noticed them,’ he said.

‘A lot have things they haven’t noticed until they come here,’ the soldier said.

‘Does that mean I won’t be taken?’ he said.

‘That’s quite correct.’ The soldier snapped to a file before him. ‘You’ve a blighty ticket. No grade threes are taken at present.’

Outside he caught a tram which took him to the college. He sat on a wooden bench at the front. He examined the card, his name written out in full and the grade given beside it in roman numerals. The tram rattled on; it screeched at the bends, the wheels grinding at the track, the glass vibrating in the wooden frames, the reversible wooden benches clattering against the metal brackets. He stared down at the street, at the smooth bands of tarmac inset with the shiny rails, the terraces and concertinaed roofs, the vast furnaces set far beyond in metal coffers, the overhanging pall of smoke, lit by flame, and saw, finally, beyond the farthest roofs, the outlines of the hills to the south beyond which lay the town where he’d gone to school and beyond which, in turn, some twelve miles farther on, lay the village. The tram dipped down; the road ran between high walls and narrow buildings: he glanced at the card and then to the ribbed, ticket-strewn floor between his feet.

‘I’ll be going in October, I suppose,’ she said.

She gazed out at him from beneath the brim of the hat, a large, sweeping, straw-coloured shape, fastened round with a pinkish ribbon.

Beyond her, down the track, was visible the crescent of smoke which heralded the train beyond the cutting. Since leaving school that summer she’d taken to travelling on the train, rather than the bus. It had been another cause of tension between them: the cost of things on which they might have saved.

It was Sunday evening. Other groups that had been in the church were now wandering through the fields below the village, the sun’s magnified shape, a bulbous, burning red, sinking down in a mist above the pit.

‘I suppose I’ll see less of you’, he said, ‘if I take this job at Rawcliffe. I can only get away at weekends.’

‘You could, if you wanted, get a job near the university,’ she said.

‘But then I couldn’t help out at home.’

‘I can’t see why not.’

‘There wouldn’t be much left after paying rent. Whereas if I pay rent at home my mother gets it.’

‘Yes,’ she said, turning to watch the train herself. Only its sound, however, penetrated to the station. The wedge-shaped mound of smoke slowly grew above the cutting.

‘In any case, I don’t think much to hanging around: that’s what it would amount to,’ he said. ‘You’ll have your own life to lead.’

Already, largely because of this, he’d decided against their getting married.

‘Are you going to live for the next three years at home?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Anything might happen.’

‘Not if you stay there,’ she said.

The train came into sight, a black, cylindrical shape moving through the shadow of the cutting. Its smoke and a white cloud of steam welled up between the grass slopes on either side. A whistle blew as it came beneath the bridge, the smoke ballooning beneath the arch.

The platform shuddered as the engine passed.

‘We might find after a year we’ve no alternative: but to get married, I mean,’ he said. ‘We may find, in the end, it’s the best solution.’

‘Yes.’

Her eyes followed the engine as it coasted along the track, the carriages jolting as it came to a halt.

A door opened at the opposite end and Reagan got out. He was carrying his violin case and was dressed in a dark suit, a white handkerchief protruding from the breast pocket. He ducked his head but didn’t speak as he hurried past, flushing slightly as he glanced at Margaret, then hurrying to the flight of steps. His tall, angular figure was visible a moment later as he crossed the bridge to the station yard.

Margaret got into an empty carriage. She lowered the window, carefully removed her hat, laid it on the seat, then leant out, gazing along the platform.

‘That’s all we can do, then,’ she said. ‘See how it goes.’ She glanced at him, briefly, then looked down the platform the other way. Her thin, high-boned cheeks had flushed. A white patch showed at either temple.

Other doors were slammed; a porter came along, testing the handles.

‘I’ll see you next week-end, then,’ he said.

She leant to him quickly.

He kissed her mouth.

‘Take care,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you a ring.’

A whistle had blown. The train lurched, shuddering; a harsh panting came from the front as the engine moved to the track.

The carriages glided out of the station. Margaret’s hand waved, and continued waving until the end of the platform and the signal box had passed.

Reagan was waiting by the bridge when he came out of the station; the smoke and the steam from the train was still visible down the track.

‘I thought I’d wait and walk up with you,’ he said, running his hand slowly across his hair then stooping to pick up the violin case between his feet.

They set off up the slope towards the village. The sun had sunk down behind the shoulder of the hill. Reagan walked with a long, loping stride, his head thrust back as if in some way, unconsciously, he were trying to restrain his body.

‘Where have you been this evening?’ Colin said.

‘Oh, rehearsing.’ Reagan named a neighbouring village. ‘They’re forming a dance band there. I thought I could play there midweek and in town at week-ends. I give a lesson there as well.’ He added, ‘As a matter of fact, actually this evening, I’ve been playing in a church.’

‘A church?’

Reagan changed the violin case to his other hand.

‘The vicar invited me. It’s the saint’s day, for the building I mean. There were three other people there. We made a quartet.’

They walked in silence for a while. The air was still. The voices of people in the distant fields came clearly to them: a voice calling a name, then a burst of laughter, then several people talking at once. Beyond it all, rising and falling, then finally growing more faint, came the persistent panting of the engine.

‘I hear you’ve failed your medical,’ Reagan said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘ Flat feet.’

‘I failed too. Weak chest.’ He tapped it lightly with his hand. ‘And anaemia apparently. It’s probably just as well. It’s a terrible waste of time if you’ve got something you want to do.’

A car came down the road, and rattled on, accelerating, towards the station. It covered them for a moment in a cloud of dust.

Reagan brushed down his suit with his one free hand.

‘Are you getting married to your fiancée soon?’ he said.

‘We’re not engaged,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I thought you were. My mother mentioned something about it.’ He scratched his head.

‘She goes off to university in a couple of months. For three years.’

‘I say, that’s hard cheese,’ he said, affecting, momentarily, something of an accent.

The car, which had passed them on the hill, had turned and was now mounting back up the slope towards the village. As it drew abreast the horn was sounded and a moment later a head appeared.

‘Hello, old man,’ someone called, and, as the car pulled up, the head had turned, backwards. ‘Hello, there, Savvers.’

A moment later a figure in an officer’s uniform got out.

It wasn’t until it came close to him, its hands extended, that he recognized the sun-burnt features of Stafford half-hidden beneath the neb of the hat.

‘I’ll be going on, then,’ Reagan said after they’d shaken hands. ‘Leave you two to chin-wag about old times.’ His accent once again was heightened, and without waiting for an acknowledgment he set off up the road.

‘Jump in, for God’s sake,’ Stafford called. ‘I’ll drive you up.’ He added to Colin, ‘I’ve just called at your house. Your mother said you were on your way to the station. With old Maggie Dorman, after all this time.’

‘She’s just gone on the train,’ he said.

‘Don’t you see her home, then?’ Stafford said, holding the door of the car now and beckoning Reagan inside. He took his violin case from him and set it in the back. ‘In the front, old man. I hate people sitting behind.’

They sat abreast, squashed up against the gears, and coasted slowly towards the village.

‘I was just passing through,’ Stafford said. ‘And thought I’d call. I haven’t seen you for how long is it?’ not waiting for an answer but blowing his horn vigorously at children playing between the first of the houses.

‘Two years,’ Colin said. ‘At least.’

‘How’s old Prendergast?’ Stafford said, turning to Reagan.

‘He’s still alive. He hands me on some of his pupils,’ Reagan said. ‘We have an understanding in that respect. I do violin and he does piano.’

‘Poor old Prenny,’ Stafford said. He added, ‘Do you mean to say Maggie’s gone off on that train alone?’ He accelerated quickly now along the street. ‘What say to nipping into town and meeting her at the station? We could get there, if we hurry before the train arrives.’

‘I wouldn’t put you to all that trouble,’ he said.

‘No trouble to me, old man,’ he said. ‘Did you hear that Marion’s gone off nursing? Not available except during bank holidays and that.’

Reagan was dropped off at the corner of the street. He ducked his head to the window after taking out his violin from the seat behind.

‘That’s been very kind of you to give me the lift,’ he said as if the purpose of Stafford’s visit to the village had been this alone. ‘I’ll see you some time. If you’re ever near the Assembly Rooms on Saturday drop in for a dance.’ He nodded quickly and stepped back as the car shot forward, Stafford calling, ‘See you, Mic, old man. Look out.’

They turned out of the village and past the colliery, the car roaring, Stafford leaning casually back, whistling lightly between his teeth, his eyes scarcely visible beneath the brim of the hat.

‘How long have you been in the army?’ Colin said.

‘A year, old man. I thought I’d get it over with. I go up to Oxford a year from now. Get it all cleared up before I go.’ He glanced across, spinning the wheel wildly when, a moment later, he glanced back at the road.

They turned along the road towards the town.

‘Your old lady said you’d got exemption. That was a stroke of luck,’ he said. ‘I tried it, you know, but it didn’t work. Got a doctor’s note about a dicky heart. Couldn’t find anything when it came to the medical.’

‘Is there something the matter with your heart?’ he said.

‘I shouldn’t think so, old man.’ He whistled once more between his teeth. ‘I thought I might try it and give it a whirl.’

Every vehicle that came into sight on the same side of the road Stafford overtook: within a matter of minutes they were passing through the town. The sun had set. Its light still hung above the valley. When they turned into the station yard a row of gas lamps were being lit beneath the canopy above the station entrance. Stafford, leaving the engine running, ran off quickly up the steps, re-appearing moments later as Colin too got out and calling, ‘It’s all right, old man. We’ve got ten minutes. I told you we’d make it with time to spare.’

He leant in the car, turned off the engine, put his hat on the seat behind, then, running his hand across his fair, almost blondish hair, looked round freshly at the yard.

‘My God: do you remember coming here? That day we went to the flicks with Marion and Audrey?’ From somewhere, perhaps the rear of the car itself, he produced a small baton. As they moved to the steps he set it neatly beneath his arm, clenching his gloved hands behind his back.

A soldier, waiting in the station entrance, briskly saluted as they sauntered past.

Stafford flicked up his hand without moving his head.

‘Here it comes, old man. What will she say when she sees you again?’

Yet the train rattled through the station and disappeared down the line the other side. A gust of wind swept through the station.

‘Must be the express.’ Stafford snapped up his wrist, examined a silver-coloured watch fastened there, then added, ‘Another two minutes, I think, old boy.’

They went through to the platform. The small knots of people gathered there watched Stafford intently as he paced slowly to and fro: there was an unfamiliar erectness about his figure, the hair cut short, emphasizing the clarity of his features, an almost boyish candour which, strangely, he’d scarcely ever possessed as a youth.

‘We’re going abroad in a couple of weeks’ time,’ he said, gazing attentively now along the track. ‘Kenya. Though I don’t suppose I’ll be there for very long.’

‘Where else are you likely to go?’ he said.

‘It could be Malaya. Rumour has it, of course. Though I can’t be sure. I’ve applied for a home posting, in any case. I don’t think much to all this travel. I’m representing the Army, at rugger, you see, which is one little lever I’ve got. Apply it in the right place and I’ve a feeling, you know, it might do the trick.’

The dark cylinder of the engine had appeared suddenly down the track. The people on the platform stirred. Stafford began to smile, tapping his stick against his leg.

‘I’ve forgotten, almost, what old Maggie looked like. Does she still go on about women’s rights?’ He glanced over at Colin and began to laugh. ‘You weren’t in on that, at the time. My God. Some of the ideas she had were out of this world.’

When Margaret descended from the train she stared at Colin with such a look of incredulity, pausing by the carriage door as if for a moment she might get back inside, that he began to laugh, going forward to take her hand.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she said, her eyes wide, glancing back at the train itself. ‘Did you come in another carriage?’

‘Stafford brought me,’ he said, indicating the uniformed figure who, with mock bravura, saluted with his wooden baton and came forward, bowing slightly, to shake her hand.

‘My compliments, ma’am. May we escort you to your home?’ he said, then added, ‘Remember me?’

‘Good lord.’ She stepped back a moment and examined his figure. ‘You’ve been commissioned as well?’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ Stafford said and added, ‘As well as what?’

‘Oh, my brother’s commissioned. He’s in the Tank Corps, as a matter of fact.’

‘Ah.’ Stafford paused, his gaze drifting off to the view of the town beyond the station. ‘Not like us infantry wallahs, I can tell you that.’ He crooked his arm. ‘May we escort you to the car?’ he added.

Margaret laughed. She placed her arm in Stafford’s and, glancing at Colin, started off to the station entrance.

Colin walked along on the other side.

She gave in her ticket and they went through to the yard. Stafford opened the door.

‘I don’t think, with a lady,’ he said, ‘we can squash in, Col, as we did before. Do you mind handing out my hat before you get in the back?’

They drove slowly through the town. The light had faded. The car’s headlamps flooded out on the road ahead. Stafford described some of his activities over the previous year.

‘Hopkins, by the way, was in my squad at O.C.T.U.,’ he said. ‘Went into the Rifle Brigade. Now he is in Malaya, as a matter of fact. I heard Walker went in too, but failed to pass. He’s a sergeant in the Education Corps. Who else is there?’ He went through several more names of boys from the school he’d come across. ‘You don’t know how lucky you’ve been, old man,’ he added to Colin. ‘It’s a terrible fag. I mean, all we’re fighting at the moment are communists and wogs. Two years out of your life and nothing to show.’

They reached the house. Stafford looked over at the green-painted door in the garden wall.

‘Remember last time, my dear,’ he said, ‘Colin gallantly saw you home?’ He added, ‘I say, you know, I admire that hat.’

‘Why don’t you come in. Say hello to my parents now you’re here?’ she said.

‘Well, that’s very kind. I don’t think we’ve any other pressing engagement, have we, Col?’

He stepped down from the car and held the door. On Stafford’s arm, Margaret went before him up the path to the house. She knocked on the door, waiting for someone to answer it inside, calling to Colin, ‘Stay back to one side. See what they say,’ standing straight-faced, leaning on Stafford’s arm, when the door was finally drawn back and her mother appeared.

‘What on earth,’ her mother said, in much the same fashion as Margaret herself at the station.

Stafford saluted smartly.

‘Is this your daughter, ma’am?’ he said. ‘We found her wandering in the vicinity of the city railway station. She gave this as her address, though of course we quite anticipate this to be yet one more nefarious tale, a whole bevy of which she regaled us with on our compromising journey here.’

‘This is Neville Stafford, Mother,’ Margaret said. ‘He was a friend of Colin’s from school.’

‘Oh, there you are, Colin,’ Mrs Dorman said, gazing out to the darkness of the garden. She stepped aside to let Margaret and Stafford enter, shaking the latter’s hand and adding, ‘Go through to the room, Margaret. Your father’s there.’

Colin followed them inside. The doctor stood up from his chair by the fire, shaking Stafford’s hand, smiling, gazing at him with a look of wonder. ‘Oh, you’re one of these conscripts, are you?’ he said, gesturing at the uniform. ‘Sit down. Sit down. Would you like a drink?’

They stayed an hour. Stafford described to them freshly some of the incidents of his training, the tests he had passed before being accepted as an officer, a football match he had played in against the Royal Air Force, a night spent with fellow officers when he and several other platoons, on a training exercise, had got lost on a moor. The sound of traffic faded from the road below the house. A clock chimed slowly on a near-by church. ‘My God, just look at the time,’ Stafford said, bringing his watch up smartly. ‘We mustn’t keep these good people from their beauty sleep much longer. Maggie especially: it’d be a great pity to see those features fading because Stafford insisted in keeping her from her bed.’ He turned to Mrs Dorman. ‘I was commenting on her hat at the station. She really has the most wonderful clothes. I scarcely recognized her from the girl I knew two years ago. She really has’, he added, turning now to glance at Margaret directly, ‘come on a treat.’

Margaret laughed. Flushed already from Stafford’s accounts of his life in the army, the redness deepened. ‘Honestly, you make me sound dreadful. I couldn’t have been that bad, could I, Col?’

‘Oh, Colin never sees much of what’s going on. He’s too preoccupied with his thoughts is Colin,’ Stafford said. ‘The outward world and all its manifestations he passes by with scarcely a glance.’

Margaret’s mother, too, had begun to laugh. Almost another half hour, however, had passed before they finally went to the door.

‘I must really make a note of this address,’ Stafford said. ‘I’ve rarely spent such a delightful evening. If I’d known it was going to be as pleasant as this, I can assure you,’ he added with a bow to the mother, ‘I would have come much sooner. I really think Colin is a secretive fellow, keeping Margaret to himself. Why no one tells me these things’, he went on at the door, ‘I shall never discover. I go from one boring episode to another, while all the really interesting things happen to other people.’

The lights were switched on in the drive to see them to the road. The Dormans and Margaret stood in the porch until they’d reached the gate, Stafford calling, waiting for an answer, before he finally stepped through to the car outside.

‘I say, you really are a lucky dog,’ he said as they drove off in the direction of the town. ‘Talk about the chrysalis. I think it’s very sly of you, Savvers, of all the girls available, to have picked out Mag. She really has blossomed, while all the others, if Marion’s anything to go by, have begun to fade. They’ve got “hausfrau” stamped all over them.’

The streets of the town were now deserted. They turned out along the road towards the village. A last bus, its lights blazing, rattled past them in the opposite direction.

‘Are you and she engaged, or anything?’ Stafford said.

‘Not officially.’ He shook his head.

‘Well, unofficially, then?’ Stafford glanced quickly from the road ahead.

‘I’m not sure what it means,’ he said. ‘We’ve talked of getting married. She’s to do three years at university yet. If we haven’t married by that time, I suppose we’ll marry then.’

‘You don’t sound too sure,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m sure about marrying her,’ he said.

‘Well, then?’ Stafford said.

‘It’s all that goes with it. The planning, the predetermined life. I thought we might go abroad together.’

‘What does Margaret think of that?’

‘I haven’t mentioned it,’ he said. ‘But I thought I might teach abroad. There’d be more freedom, and fewer demands.’ He paused.

‘Do you still write poetry?’ Stafford said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Have you had any published?’

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘Well: good luck to you both, in any case,’ Stafford said.

When they got to the village and had pulled up in front of the house the light went on in his parents’ bedroom. The curtain was pulled aside and a moment later the light went on in the passage and the front door was unlocked. His mother, her nightdress covered by a coat, came on to the step.

‘Would you like to come in, Neville? Have a cup of tea or anything?’ she said.

‘That’s very kind, Mrs Saville,’ Stafford said. He’d got out of the car with Colin and was standing by the bonnet, kicking loosely at the wheel as he talked. ‘I was just saying good night to Colin. I better be getting back.’

‘Well, I’ve kept a kettle on in case you wanted one,’ she said. ‘I thought, since he didn’t come back, you must have had a night out together.’

‘Oh, we’ve had that, Mrs Saville,’ he said and laughed.

His mother glanced up, briefly, at the sky. Odd stars were visible through the thinning mist.

‘It’s quite a lovely night,’ his mother said.

‘Oh, it’s a grand night,’ Stafford said, looking up too, his fair hair glinting, almost luminous in the light from the door. ‘Yes, it’s a grand night,’ he said again, more slowly.

‘Well, there’s some tea waiting, if you want some,’ his mother said and holding her coat more closely to her stepped inside.

‘It’s been quite an eventful evening, after all, then,’ Stafford said, still kicking loosely at the wheel. ‘I won’t come in for the tea. You’ll thank your mother for me.’

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘I’ll say goodbye for now, then,’ Stafford added, and quickly put out his hand. ‘See you soon. I’ll drop you a line. Africa. The Far East. If you’ve got the odd word, you know, it’ll help fill in the time. There’s an awful lot of bumf in the army. Damn boring, really. I suppose Oxford’ll be the same. I’m not looking forward much to that. Still. Ours not to reason. Ours but to do and try.’

He got back in the car. The engine started. The tanned face was visible for a moment in the light from the dashboard, a hand was raised, then the car slid forward.

Colin watched it out of sight, then turned to the house.

Bletchley had stayed on at school a further year, won a scholarship, and had gone to university to study chemical engineering. He could be seen occasionally at week-ends or on holiday walking down the street in a university blazer, a large university scarf around his neck, smoking a pipe, a pile of books beneath his arm.

On several evenings that summer, while Margaret was away on holiday, Colin went with his friend to the Assembly Rooms in town. The ballroom occupied the entire first floor of the building, a long stone-built structure with tall windows and a pillared entrance, a broad, curving staircase sweeping up to the glass -panelled doors of the room itself. Here, in a small alcove at the side, a man sold tickets.

Reagan, it appeared, had taken over the running of the band. His tall figure, attired in evening dress and holding a baton, was posed in an attitude of studied nonchalance on the edge of a small dais at one end of the room. In front of each of the musicians stood a painted board with the initials MR painted in a single, scroll-like shape from top to bottom. He nodded casually over the heads of the dancers, as they entered, as if there were nothing unusual in their arrival at all, taking up a violin a little later and, stepping forward from the orchestra, playing directly into the microphone.

Bletchley, after some hesitation about coming in his university blazer, had put on his suit. His face was red and beaming, preparing himself before their entry to be amused by if not scornful of what they would find inside, pausing however once they were at the door and gazing with a blank, flushed look of incredulity at the bony elegance of his friend across the room.

Partly discomposed by Reagan’s appearance, and partly by the fact that none of the girls they could see in the immediate vicinity of the door were to his liking, Bletchley stood, his hands in his pockets, gazing with an aggrieved expression across the heads of the swaying dancers, turning finally to Colin and saying, ‘What a terrible lot. He really pulls in the dregs, as we might have imagined if we’d given it a little thought,’ a sweat already forming on his massive features, his thick red neck protruding in heavy rolls above his collar. As a last concession to his university identity, he’d put on a striped and crested university tie. ‘I should think most of the people here are colliers. As for the girls, I should think they’ve brought them in from the mill. Have I told you about the varsity dances? They go on sometimes till one in the morning and some of the girls don’t mind where they go on to after that.’

Reagan came over during an interval between the tunes, his large head, with its long hair greased carefully back to disguise the protrusion at the rear, bobbing disjointedly above those of the now separated dancers, a small, official smile igniting his pallid features, nodding slightly to Bletchley and saying, ‘It was good of you to come, Ian. I’m glad you could make it,’ gesturing off across the room and adding, ‘Come over to the bar and have a drink.’

‘Only orange juice?’ Bletchley said following Reagan over and examining the glasses of those coming from a table at the opposite end of the room.

‘We haven’t got a licence yet,’ Reagan said. ‘In any case, in my experience, drink and dancing seldom mix. There’s bound to be trouble if we started selling beer, for instance,’ calling then across the heads before him to a woman in a dark dress and white apron. ‘Three oranges, Madge.’

Colin recognized his aunt, now grey-haired and much fatter than when he had last seen her in his grandparents’ one-roomed bungalow, years before. He wondered for a moment whether she might acknowledge him, for she handed him his glass without a second look, passing one to Bletchley and saying to Reagan, ‘Nothing to put in it today, then, Michael?’

‘Hello, Aunty,’ Colin said.

‘Aunty. I’ll give you Aunty,’ the woman said, laughing, her look fading a moment later as, with a hand to her cheek, she added, ‘That’s not our Ellen’s eldest, is it? It’s not Colin, is it, love?’ laughing again when he leant across to shake her hand, the crowd milling round on either side. ‘Well, he was so high when I last saw him,’ she added to Reagan, measuring off a height level with the table. ‘And as proud and as protective of his mother as any man. Our Reg, you know, will hardly believe it. Wait till I tell our David. You might see them here: they come in sometimes, later. After they’ve had one or two in the boozer, you know.’

They finally moved away from the table, his aunt’s gaze still fixed on him over the heads of the crowd, smiling, nodding, her attention scarcely on the glasses she was selling. ‘Would you believe it? That’s my nephew over there,’ he could hear her saying. ‘It’s years since I ever set eyes on him. I hope Reg and David come in before he goes.’

‘It’s very hot in here. Don’t you find it hot, Michael?’ Bletchley said, easing his finger inside his collar.

‘They keep the windows shut until they’ve sold enough refreshments,’ Reagan said. ‘Though if you’d like them open, Ian, you’ve only got to say.’

‘Oh, no. Don’t let me interfere with your normal way of running business,’ Bletchley said.

‘Perhaps you’d like a dance,’ Reagan said. ‘There’s a couple of our regular ladies who come unattended,’ he added. ‘I could introduce you to them. They usually sit on chairs just underneath the orchestra.’

The two women were in their late twenties; they wore flared dresses, identical in shape, with a narrow waist, and heavy makeup. One of them wore glasses which, before dancing with Bletchley, she removed. One was named Martha, and the other, Bletchley’s partner, Joyce. They danced with a professional remoteness, evidently reconciled to and yet at the same time displeased with the incompetence of their respective partners. They circled the room at a steady pace, came under the beaming gaze of Reagan, and passed on with the heavy, swirling crowd.

Coloured lights rotated slowly beneath the ceiling; a window had finally been opened at one end of the room, through which came, along with the roar of the Saturday night traffic outside, a cooling stream of air.

Bletchley, plainly, was having trouble with his feet. He drew his partner’s attention to them from time to time, the two of them gazing down, she short-sightedly and apparently seeing nothing, he with a look of irritation as if they’d taken up some independent activity of their own. The huge, bull-shaped head, glistening across its massive brow and cheeks, would be lowered in the direction of the floor, the rouged and powdered face beside it, then, as if some fresh adjustment had been made invisibly to those ponderous shoes, they would set off with a fresh uncertainty, together.

A gentlemen’s excuse-me was announced, Reagan’s voice enunciating the words carefully through the microphone as if he were placing each one in by hand, Bletchley coming across and bowing slightly to Martha, who, as if it were immaterial to her whom she danced with, immediately took his hand while Colin went over to the short-sighted Joyce, who, having found herself deserted, was gazing around her in consternation. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d wandered off.’

They left an hour later. It had grown dark outside. All the windows of the room were open. As they went to the door Reagan, who was playing a violin accompaniment in front of the microphone, had gazed over the heads of the dancers in their direction, questioningly, almost plaintively, nodding with a smile, still playing, when Colin indicated they were going down to the street below.

His aunt came over as they reached the door.

‘You’re not going yet?’ she said. ‘Our Reg and David haven’t come up. They’ll be so disappointed, you know, if they find you’ve gone.’

‘We’ll probably be up next Saturday,’ he said. ‘We could see them then.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said, laughing, then seizing his hand. ‘And how is your mother? I heard she’d had an operation a year or two ago.’

‘Oh, it’s more than that,’ he said. ‘She’s fine. She’s keeping well.’

‘With a son like you I’m not surprised. I hear you’ve been to college and that. Not like our Reg and David: they’ve hardly learned to read.’

‘There might be a virtue in that,’ he said.

‘Well, they’re earning more than their father,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think it makes much difference. Money doesn’t make you happy. That’s why I come here: to see a bit of life.’

A crowd of young men were coming up the stairs when they went outside; for all he knew his two cousins might have been amongst them. He followed Bletchley’s perspiring figure down to the door. A great burst of cheering and laughter came from the room above their heads.

Once in the street the music welled out from the open windows.

‘How does Reagan get home afterwards?’ Bletchley asked, mopping his face.

‘He goes on the train, I think. There’s one just after twelve,’ he said.

‘Are you waiting till then?’ Bletchley said. ‘I think I’ll go on the bus.’

‘Oh, I think I’ll come as well,’ he said.

‘If you ask me,’ Bletchley said, as they went down to the stop, ‘I think Michael’s heading for trouble.’

‘He seems to think he’s doing well.’

‘I was talking to that girl we were dancing with.’ Bletchley ran his handkerchief round beneath his collar. ‘Apparently he hardly makes anything out of it at all.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, there’s the regular dance hall, the Emporium. They’ve got a bar there, and it’s twice as big. He only gets people here because he hardly charges them to go in. It’s just like Michael. Full of fantasies, you know. He’s no idea. Once he’s paid for the hire of the hall, and the staff, and he’s paid the band, he’s lucky if he makes more than two or three pounds a week. And all that talk of going on the radio. He even mentioned films to me.’

When the bus finally drew in a tall, wiry, red-haired figure got off, followed by a smaller, stockier, black-haired one. Batty paused as he came along the queue, turning to Stringer, then saying directly to Bletchley, ‘How do, Belcher. How you been?’

‘I’ve been very well,’ Bletchley said. ‘And you?’

‘Where’re you going at this time of night, then, Belcher?’ Stringer said.

‘I’m going home, as a matter of fact,’ Bletchley said.

‘We’re going to hear the Reagan Orchestra,’ Batty said. He glanced at Colin. ‘Fancy coming up for a fling, then, Tonge?’

‘We’ve just been up for one,’ he said.

The rest of the queue had moved on towards the bus.

‘Mic Reagan there, then, is he?’ Stringer said. He had recently, to match his hair and eyes, grown a black moustache. It formed a rectangular patch beneath his nose. Both of their faces, in the street light, had the freshness of colliers’ faces that had recently been scrubbed.

‘Michael’s there. He’s playing very well, for all that anyone will notice,’ Bletchley said.

‘Oh, we’ll notice it, Belcher,’ Batty said and, digging his elbow against Stringer, laughed.

‘Yeh, we’ll notice it,’ Stringer said.

‘See you sometime, Tongey,’ Batty said, waiting for this to be confirmed before he set off up the street after Stringer’s departing figure.

They sat upstairs on the bus. Bletchley got out his pipe.

‘I don’t think those two will ever come to much good,’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘They’re different.’

‘Factory fodder. I don’t see what hope they have in their lives. I mean,’ he added, ‘what prospect do they have before them? A dance hall and a bottle of beer.’ He blew out a cloud of smoke. Something about the gesture reminded Colin of Dr Dorman. It was on this same bus, and at the same time on a Saturday evening, that he would ride back to the village after seeing Margaret. He gazed out of the window for a while. ‘I mean, it’s an animal existence when you come down to it. What do you think?’

‘Perhaps it’s all an animal existence,’ he said. He had to raise his voice above the rattle of the bus. Below them passed the dark waters of the river.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t think it’s all an animal existence,’ Bletchley said as if calling now to the rest of the bus. ‘What’s science for, after all? Some men grow out of their environment. Whereas others just seem to sink into it. They make no effort at all, as far as I can see. Take Batty and Stringer. They’re prime examples.’ Another cloud of smoke drifted away from his seat across the rest of the bus. ‘I mean, they’re going to be stuck round here, aren’t they, for the rest of their lives.’

The bus careered on through the darkness. Odd lights showed up from the darkened fields, from isolated farms or rows of terraces set down arbitrarily on the brow of a hill. Groups of people came into the lights below, waiting at the stops, others drifting off from the bus and disappearing in the dark. Farther off, the sky glowed with the lights of distant villages and, behind them, the dull, sombre redness of the town.

‘It’s like Darwin’s origin of the species,’ Bletchley said, sweating freshly in the heat of the bus. ‘Some of the species adapt, others don’t. In effect, when coal is acquired by wholly mechanical means or perhaps isn’t even needed at all, people like Batty and his brothers, and Stringer, won’t have a function. And when the function ceases so does the species, or those parts of it that can’t recognize or create a further function.’

Soon the rattling of the bus grew too loud for Bletchley to make himself heard; he contented himself with digging Colin with his arm at some particular man or woman as they appeared at the top of the stairs or disappeared to the platform, each one evidently some illustration of his thesis, his head nodding significantly as he glanced across.

The darkness finally gave way to the lights of the village; they descended towards it with increasing speed, Bletchley rising and making his way, swaying, to the stairs, where he waited, clutching the rail on either side while the bus negotiated the final corner. He was waiting on the pavement, tapping out his pipe against his heel, by the time Colin came down himself.

They walked through the streets in silence, Bletchley’s shadow flung bulkily before them as they passed beneath the lights. Mr Bletchley at one point came cycling past on an upright bike, with a pannier behind the saddle. Since his demobilization he’d taken a job in a shunting yard adjoining a neighbouring village and frequently worked the same shifts as Colin’s father. Even though Colin nodded to him on this occasion Bletchley himself gave no sign at all, his father cycling on as if he expected none in any case, dismounting slowly when he reached the terrace and, without a backward look, disappearing down the alley at the side.

‘Wasn’t that your father?’ Colin said.

‘He’s working afternoons,’ Bletchley said refusing him even now any acknowledgment at all. ‘He’s doing overtime. I run up one or two bills at the varsity,’ he added. ‘He’s trying to pay them off.’

‘Aren’t you taking a job over the summer?’ Colin said.

‘I thought I might. The trouble is, I’ve got so much work to get through, I don’t think I’ll have the time to take a job. After all,’ he added, ‘there’s nothing else the old man can do. He can’t do my work for me, can he? And I don’t feel I’m particularly cut out for doing his. It gives him a goal to work towards, a motive, you see, beyond himself.’

He’d re-filled his pipe by the time they reached the house. They stood for a moment by their respective doors, Bletchley lighting his pipe and puffing out, reflectively, several clouds of smoke.

‘Poor old Michael,’ he said, gazing down the street towards Reagan’s door. ‘I think all his troubles you could trace back to that time when he failed his eleven-plus. Do you remember that? He wrote an essay about being a nurse.’ He laughed, his heavy figure shaking as he leant up against the wall. ‘How are things with you, in any case?’ he added, the first time he’d inquired at all about Colin’s activities over the previous two years. ‘Is it a worthwhile undertaking, do you think? I thought of teaching, you know, for a while. But you know what they say about teachers? A man amongst children and a child amongst men.’ He still gazed down, however, towards Reagan’s door. Mr Reagan had appeared beneath a distant lamp, lurching unsteadily from side to side, holding on to the lamp and then, a moment later, to a near-by wall, standing, bowed, his shoulders stooped, then with a final, almost convulsive gesture, moving on towards his door. ‘I better be getting in. I might get another hour’s swotting,’ Bletchley said, his mother a moment later appearing beside him in the door.

‘There you are, Ian,’ she said, smiling at Colin. ‘Have you had a nice evening, love?’

‘We’ve been to Michael’s dance-hall,’ Bletchley said, puffing a cloud of smoke directly in her face. ‘There’s his father out here now, staggering home, it seems, from another. Either that or the Miners’ Institute. I’m sure he wouldn’t know if you could be bothered to ask him.’ He walked into the open door and called inside from the passage, ‘Anything for supper, Mum?’

He could hear her voice and Bletchley’s, followed by the father’s, inside the house after the door had closed.

Down the street itself the Reagans’ door had opened and Mrs Reagan’s thin, almost emaciated figure had appeared. ‘Is that you, Bryan?’ she called to the figure standing stooped above the gutter, and, a few moments later, having received no reply but a groan, went down the pavement, took his arm beneath her own and guided him in.

‘Reagan?’ Colin’s father said when he mentioned having seen him in the street outside. ‘There’s a wasted talent if ever there was one. He could have got anywhere with a mind like his. He had a sense of style, and taste. And now what is he? Stumbling from one bar to the next. He’ll be lucky if he keeps that job. Despite the years he’s put in, you know. He’s trouble with the pay now almost every week, and he’s been at it, you know, for over thirty years.’

His father went along the backs a little later; they could hear him tapping at the Reagans’ door, then his voice, tentative, light, almost cheery: ‘Anything I can do, then, missis?’ and some fainter, answering voice inside. He came back, frowning in the light. ‘Nay, they want nowt from us,’ he added. ‘He was stretched out there on the kitchen floor, and she bent over him, going through his pockets. I reckon there’s nobody could help them now. That’s what comes, you know, from marriage. Marriage to the wrong person, I’m talking about,’ he went on quickly when his mother looked up. ‘Marry the wrong one and your life is finished. Marry the right one and your life is made.’

24

He saw her some distance away and didn’t recognize Stafford at first; accustomed perhaps to seeing him in a uniform, he thought it might have been her brother. Then he recognized the build and the fairness of the hair. Stafford was wearing a dark-coloured blazer and flannels: a white handkerchief protruded from his breast pocket.

‘I thought you were still on holiday,’ he said to her when he’d caught them up; aware of his steps they’d both turned, glanced away, aimlessly, then waited for him to draw abreast.

‘I’ve just got back today,’ she said. ‘Neville was in London and drove me up.’

Her face was dark, tanned around the cheeks and brow.

‘I’ve got a forty-eight hour pass,’ Stafford said. ‘I thought I’d do the girl a favour. I was coming up in any case,’ he added. He gestured to the car which was parked across the road. The whirl of traffic around the city centre hid it a moment later from their view.

It was late evening; lights were coming on across the street. The spire of the cathedral loomed up against the sky.

‘I was hoping you’d ring this evening,’ Margaret said. ‘I was coming through tomorrow. Did you get the card I sent?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘The post is terrible,’ Stafford said. ‘It takes days just to send a letter across town, never mind from France to England. As for the south of England to the north.’ He waved his hand.

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

‘Why not come out to the house?’ she said. ‘We just dropped in for a drink.’ She gestured now to the hotel behind. ‘Or Neville could take on the luggage and we could go on the bus.’

‘For goodness’ sake, just jump in the car. We’ll be there in no time,’ Stafford said. He took her arm and began to guide her through the traffic.

When Colin had crossed to the car himself Stafford had already started the engine. He glanced in at them through the open window.

‘I’ll give you a call tomorrow,’ he said. There was a curious similarity between their two figures, the same delicacy of features, the same light eyes.

‘Just leap in the back, Savvers,’ Stafford said. ‘We’ll be there in a jiffy,’ leaning across to release the catch on the door itself.

‘I’m on my way home,’ he said. ‘But I’ll call you tomorrow,’ he added to Margaret. ‘I’m glad you’re back.’

She turned to gaze woodenly through the windscreen.

‘If you’re sure you don’t want a lift, Savvers,’ Stafford said. ‘I might pop through the village tomorrow. Give the odd knock and see if you’re home.’

The car started forward; Margaret, startled, glanced out at him sharply, wildly, as if, for a moment, she might have cried out.

Then the car swept away in the evening traffic; he could see their two figures silhouetted briefly, then the profile of the car and the other traffic cut them out.

He rang the following morning but Margaret was out. Neither she nor Stafford appeared at the house.

He rang again in the evening. Her father answered the call.

‘Oh, it’s you, Colin,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid Margaret’s out. And so’s her mother. I haven’t seen them today, as a matter of fact. I’ve been standing in, you know, for a friend and I’m only just back. I’ll tell her you called as soon as she’s in.’

He walked back through the village from the telephone booth; it stood, a red-painted box, at the village centre, where the two roads crossed, occupying one corner of the pub yard. Mr Reagan was coming down the street, setting out for his evening’s drinking. He walked slowly, raising his bowler hat with one hand, and saluting him with his cane with the other.

‘And how’s the intellectual?’ he said. ‘My good lady informs me you’re destined for scholastic pursuits. That already there is an institute of a pedagogical nature opening its portals to the enlightened influence of Harry Saville’s eldest son. I shall await the outcome, I might tell you, with the greatest expectations. The greatest expectations,’ he added, his eyes moving on now, past Colin, to the doors of the pub. ‘Don’t forget, now, the ones who formed you when you reach your golden age – the ones who’ve been swept beneath the carpet, emptied in the trash cans of the world; the waste that has gone to produce the flower of your intellectual emancipation.’ He replaced his bowler slowly, almost like a runner preparing for a race, judging time and distance, finally waving his stick beside his face and stepping off briskly towards the yard. He gave no further acknowledgment that he’d noticed him at all.

‘Why don’t you go and see her?’ his mother said when he got back home.

‘I suppose I shall,’ he said. In two days’ time he was due to start at the school.

‘When does she start at the university, in any case?’ she said.

‘Not for another three weeks.’ He added, ‘She said she might come through today. There’s still time, I suppose.’ He glanced at the clock.

It was already growing dark outside.

His mother was ironing. She heated the iron by the fire, stooping to the flames, her glasses reflecting the glow. Her face itself was reddened.

She held the iron with a cloth, dampening her finger on her tongue.

She went back to the table.

The wood creaked. He went to the front door after a while and waited. Perhaps she and Stafford might come in the car.

He walked slowly to the end of the street. A car went by, its engine moaning a moment later as it ascended the hill to the Park.

He stood on the kerb, his hands in his pockets, his feet tapping at the gutter. A dog crossed the road and disappeared between the houses. Bletchley’s father cycled past, dismounted, his head bowed, and went down the alleyway to the backs.

In the distance came the sound of a train drawing out of the station. He went back to the house. She didn’t come.

He rang the following morning. Mrs Dorman answered the phone.

‘Oh, it’s you, Colin,’ she said in much the same manner as her husband had done the previous evening. ‘Margaret’s out at the moment. Would you like me to give her a message?’

‘I just wondered if she were coming through,’ he said. ‘Or whether I should come through to you.’

‘I don’t know her plans, I’m afraid,’ she said very much as if she were answering some inquiry about her husband. ‘She didn’t say she was going through. Would you like to ring again this evening?’

‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll call again.’

‘She’ll be sorry that she’s missed you. She went into the town to do some shopping. She’s got hardly any of her university things together. And only a few days ago, it seemed, she could hardly think of anything else.’

‘I’ll tell you your trouble,’ his father said when he got back in the house. ‘Nothing to occupy you. And when you do get started you’ll find you’ve hardly anything to do. Teaching, you know,’ he added to his mother, ‘he can do it out of the back of his hand.’

‘It’s you who wanted me to go in for it,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t want you doing my job,’ his father said. Small and faded, dressed in his underpants and shirt, he sat smoking, half-crouched on his chair, in front of the fire.

‘Why dismiss it, if it’s something you wanted me to do?’ he said.

‘Nay, it is something I wanted you to do,’ his father said again. ‘But it can’t stop me, can it, from saying it’s easy.’

‘But what am I supposed to make of that?’ he said, looking to his mother. She was standing at the sink, stooped, her hands slowly plying in the water, washing pots. ‘The job I end up with you say you despise.’

‘Nay, I don’t despise it,’ his father said, slowly, looking round. ‘There’s only muck attached to my job,’ he added. ‘Muck, and more muck, and sweat, and cursing, the like of which you never heard. We educated you for your job. We got you out of this.’

‘Why dismiss it?’ he said again. ‘What pride can I have in it if it’s something you despise?’

‘Nay, I don’t despise it. I’ve said I don’t despise it,’ his father said, getting to his feet and clearing some small, wooden, block-like toys from in front of the fire. ‘I can’t despise anybody who gets out of that colliery, I can tell you that.’

They were silent for a while. His mother washed the pots slowly in the corner, setting them on the board to dry. Colin took the cloth.

‘I mean, I can’t have anything against it, can I?’ his father suddenly added, speaking directly to his mother. He was standing over the fire, looking for an ash-tray to stub out his cigarette. Finally he flicked the ash into the fire and put the stub on the mantelpiece. ‘He’ll be earning as much as I do. And that’s after thirty years or longer, working down a pit.’

His mother didn’t answer. Her back bowed, she remained working at the sink.

‘I mean, if there’s one man that can appreciate a job like that, with two months’ holidays or longer, no shifts, no nights, no muck, no sweating out your guts when you’re over fifty, a nice pension when it’s over, writing poetry at week-ends or on an evening, and earning as much as a coal-miner does before he’s even started, then I reckon that man, you know, is me. If they want anybody to recommend school-teaching as a life, they’ve only to come to me: I’ll have them all school-teachers before you can say Jack Robin. By God, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt in life it’s that only a bloody fool would do the sort of work that I do. Only somebody who’s mentally deficient.’

His mother turned from the sink.

‘I think I’ll go and lie down,’ she said.

‘What?’ His father turned from the fire; he’d just come down from the bed himself.

‘I think I’ll go up,’ she said.

Her face was ashen, her eyes dark, shadowed beneath the glasses.

‘Is anything the matter?’ his father said.

‘No. Nothing.’ She shook her head.

She walked past Colin to the stairs.

‘Nay, if there’s something the matter,’ his father said, ‘we can send Stevie for the doctor.’

‘There’s nothing,’ his mother said and a moment later came the sound of her feet as she mounted slowly to the landing. A few seconds after that the bed creaked; his father glanced across.

‘I don’t know why you’ve got to get her worked up,’ he said.

‘I thought you started it,’ Colin said.

‘Bringing these arguments into the house,’ his father said. ‘And going round with a face as long as this. If Margaret’s gone off with Stafford you’ve only yourself to blame.’

‘How am I to blame?’ he said.

‘Stuck here. Stuck writing. He gets out and does things. He doesn’t sit still.’

‘I don’t sit still,’ he said.

‘Don’t you?’ his father said, almost sulkily now. ‘What do you call this?’

‘I stay here because I have to support you.’

‘Support me?’

‘Support us,’ he said. ‘Support the family.’

‘Why support us?’

‘Because you can’t manage’, he said, ‘without.’

His father glanced away.

‘In any case, do you really think Margaret’s like that? From what you know of her?’ he added.

‘Nay, a woman takes no reckoning,’ his father said, yet quietly now. He looked up slowly towards the ceiling. ‘I better go up and see how she is.’

He heard their voices a little later from the room at the front. When his father came down he’d put on his trousers; he stood fidgeting by the fire for a moment, looking for a cigarette. Finally he picked up the stub he’d left on the mantelshelf. He stooped to the fire for a coal to light it, wincing then as he held it to his face.

‘She’s going to rest up there,’ he said. ‘I think she’ll be all right. She takes too much on herself, you know. If you could just do one or two things about the house. Though she’s a difficult woman to help, I can tell you that.’

His father went to work in the afternoon. After Colin had washed up the dinner pots he took his mother up a cup of tea. She was still sleeping, her round face turned from the curtained window, couched to the pillow, the blankets mounded round her head.

He put the cup down and went to the door; as he pulled it to, however, he heard her stir and a moment later her voice had called.

‘Is that you, then, love?’

He put his head back round the door.

‘I’ve just brought up some tea,’ he said. ‘Would you like some dinner as well?’

She eased herself slowly from the blanket. ‘Has your father gone to work?’ she said.

‘Half an hour ago,’ he said.

‘Did he have some dinner?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I had some meat for him. I hope he got it.’

‘Yes.’

He stood waiting by the bed. His mother hadn’t touched the tea.

‘Is there anything else you want?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll be all right.’

She came down later, when he was clearing the kitchen.

She began looking around the room, about to set to work, going to the sink as if to go back to the washing-up.

‘I’ve cleared everything away,’ he said.

‘There’s your dad’s pit clothes I’ve got to wash for tomorrow,’ she said.

‘I’ll do them,’ he said.

‘And where’s Steven and Richard?’ she said, going to the window.

‘They’re out,’ he said.

‘Did they have their dinner?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

She took the clothes from him.

‘I’ll wash them. I’ll wash them in the sink,’ she said, setting a pan against the fire. ‘They need doing thoroughly, otherwise the dirt just clogs. And what you leave in’, she added, ‘you can never get put.’

He stood by the fireplace himself, watching her work.

‘Has Margaret been at all?’ she said.

He shook his head.

‘Nay, love, no one’s worth suffering over. Not at your age. Not at this time of your life,’ she said. She looked up slowly from the sink. She was rinsing the clothes in cold water from the tap. ‘All that your father said you mustn’t take to heart. He’s just had a hard life, that’s all. He’s doing work that a young man of thirty should be doing. He’s bound to feel embittered.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘He’s just grieved that he never had the same chance himself. He doesn’t mean to take anything from what you’ve done.’

‘I know,’ he said.

‘Ever since you were a baby you’ve kept things to yourself.’

She waited, her hands poised in the bowl, her head bowed to the sink.

‘I never thought I’d been secretive,’ he said.

‘Not secretive.’ She tried to smile, her face shadowed in the corner of the room. ‘I mean the things you feel you can never express. People can take advantage of that at times.’

‘Oh, I’ve never been aware of it.’

‘No,’ she said slowly, and looked back to the sink. ‘It means you’ll have to take hard knocks and never be able to show to other people what you feel.’

‘Oh, I’m not sure of that,’ he said and added lightly, ‘Here, let me wash the shirts. You sit down for a bit. You can easily tell me if I’m not doing them right.’

She sat at the table. It reminded him of the time they had visited her parents, the same air of exhaustion, some senseless defeat by life, like flies dying in a corner.

‘Margaret’s still very young, you know. She doesn’t know her own mind yet. It’s not really fair’, she added, ‘to force her.’

‘Oh, I haven’t forced her to anything, Mother,’ he said.

‘No, but you’ve been very close to her,’ she said. ‘She’s never had a chance to look at anyone else. You’ve made big demands on her in a way she’s not aware. She’s bound to resist it. And with someone like Neville. Well, he has a lot of glamour, for one thing, I suppose.’

‘Oh, I don’t think things are as black as that,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I suppose they aren’t. Not really.’

She came to the house that afternoon. At first he thought she must have come on the bus, then he realized that none could have come to the village from the direction of the town for at least the past half hour, and imagined then she must have been dropped off at the end of the street by Stafford.

His mother, after offering to make a cup of tea, went out of the kitchen, closing the door.

Margaret sat at the table, the bunch of flowers she’d brought before her, her coat folded on a chair. Colin finally took the kettle from the fire, assuming his mother wasn’t coming back, and made some tea.

She scarcely drank it, the cup before her, talking lightly now about her holiday, the French coast, the crossing to Dieppe, the friend’s house she’d stayed at.

He found a jug for the flowers and put them in.

‘Is Stafford still about?’ he said as he set the flowers back on the table.

‘I think he went back yesterday,’ she said.

‘How did you get here?’ he said.

‘I came on the bus.’ She glanced across, fingering the cup. ‘I walked around for a bit as a matter of fact.’

‘In the village?’

‘I went up near the church.’

He stood at the table, gazing down at her slight figure, the thin features tanned with the sun, the delicate hands as they traced a pattern now on the edge of the cup.

‘Would you like to go for a walk?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ll get my coat.’

He went through to the passage. His mother was sitting in the room at the front, upright, her shoulders straight, gazing out to the street, the light reflecting from her glasses.

‘We’re just going out for a walk,’ he said.

‘All right,’ she said, distantly now, suddenly remote.

‘I’ve made some tea.’

‘All right,’ she said again.

‘Will you be all right on your own for a bit?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You go out, love.’

Margaret was waiting in the door. They walked across the backs.

‘People really are poor here, aren’t they?’ she said, looking in the open doors.

Only when seeing it with her eyes did he notice the broken doors, the blackened inside walls, the smears of grease and dirt around the switches, the latches, the bare tracts of earth and ash, the crumbling brickwork, the rusted drains and pipes. Periodically, in the past, attempts had been made to renovate the houses, areas of new brick had been inserted, new mortar, a concrete path laid down; in a matter of weeks the soot and smoke had absorbed them within the texture of the old.

‘It’s good of you to be able to come at all,’ he said. He took her hand; they went down the alleyway to the street outside.

They walked in silence then, turning along the road that led past the Dell, past the deserted colliery on the slope the other side, then crossing the railway in its cutting. The station was visible at its farthest end.

Behind them, smoke swirled down from the colliery, filtering out in a broad, thin cloud across the fields. The day was grey, the sky heavy.

They turned along a path that led from the road to a tract of woodland. It stretched away to their right, the ground slowly rising, the foot of the slope marked by a broad declivity in the bed of which lay a shallow lake. Odd pine trees grew from the sandy shore, one end of the lake blocked by a stone parapet, its other petering out into marsh and swamp. Cattle stood knee deep along the edge of the water.

They walked along the stone parapet which formed a wall. Shoals of tiny fish weaved amongst the strands of weed and debris floating on the surface. Beyond, the path led up towards the wood.

A fire was burning in a clearing. A thin trail of blue smoke drifted off from a pile of blackened wood. A log, half-hollowed out by an axe, lay beside it.

Colin crouched by the fire. He blew the embers. Soon flames licked up amongst the pieces of wood.

Margaret sat on the log. She gazed off, vacantly, between the trees. The thin, light-grey patch of water showed up between the branches. From some way off, in the cutting, came the panting of an engine and somewhere, closer, at the top of the wood, the barking of a dog.

‘Will you be seeing Stafford again?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said. She still gazed off towards the lake.

He put fresh pieces of wood on the fire.

‘Is he still going overseas?’ he said.

‘He doesn’t think so now.’

‘Even then, I suppose it’ll be difficult seeing him,’ he said.

‘I suppose it might be.’ She waited, looking down towards the fire. ‘He might get a posting near to the university.’

‘I suppose that would solve the problem, then.’

‘Yes,’ she said, gazing now directly at the flames. They flicked up around the pieces of wood, fresh smoke trailing off amongst the trees.

He got up slowly and for a moment stood gazing down at the fire himself.

‘I’m sorry it’s happened like this,’ she said.

‘You can’t help these things happening,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, and added, ‘I wouldn’t have believed it though, before.’

‘If you go back now you’ll be in time for the bus,’ he said.

She got up from the log.

They walked separately between the trees.

‘Did you write to Stafford while you were away?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said, then added, ‘first of all he wrote to me.’

‘I suppose I ought to write to him as well,’ he said.

‘I don’t think’, she said, ‘there’s any need.’ She added, ‘He didn’t even want me to come today.’

‘Why not?’ he said.

They’d come to the edge of the wood; the path stretched away, past the lake, to the tall hedges lining the road leading to the village.

‘He thought I might change my mind. Seeing you again, I mean.’

‘He doesn’t know you very well,’ he said.

‘No. Perhaps he doesn’t.’

‘Do your parents know about it, then?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In a way I suppose they do. They said for you to come out, to the house, I mean. If you ever felt like it. They’d like to see you.’

He walked ahead. He held back the branches when they reached the road so she could climb the fence.

‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have come,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you did.’

They walked back slowly through the village.

‘It’ll all seem strange, now you won’t be coming again.’ He gestured round. ‘As if the heart’s been taken out of it.’

‘I think I should have written, after all,’ she said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t have borne it if you hadn’t come.’

He waited with her for the bus. She watched his face. When the bus finally came he saw her on to it then walked away, turning finally at the last moment to see it leave. He wasn’t sure which was her face at the windows, but he waved, slowly, as it drew out of the village, and went on waiting after it had disappeared, anticipating seeing her coming back, along the road, having got off at the stop beyond.

No one came down the road, however, and after waiting by the pub yard for some time he set off back towards the house.

His mother was in the kitchen with his two brothers when he got back in. Some tea was being set out on the table, the flowers still there in the jug, the plates and the cups arranged around it. A place had been set for Margaret and himself.

He went up to his room.

His mother came up after a little while. She held a cup in a saucer, very much like the one he had brought up to her earlier in the afternoon.

She stood in the doorway of the narrow room, gazing down, blindly, to where he lay on the bed.

‘Is she not coming again?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Nay, love,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t cry.’

‘I love her though,’ he said.

‘Nay, love, there are plenty more in the sea,’ she said. ‘There’s not just one person you can love and nobody else.’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, and added, ‘With me, though, I think there is. Just one that I shall ever love,’ he said.

‘Nay, love,’ she said, setting the cup on the floor and sitting on the bed.

His brothers, a moment later, could be heard quarrelling in the room below.

‘You’ll be all right in a couple of days,’ his mother said. ‘Just think of the future, and hold to that.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘You’ll find time heals all wounds, love,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said again and covered his eyes.

‘Is there anything else I can get?’ she said.

‘No.’ He turned aside.

‘Well, then. I’ll go and sort those two out,’ she said.

She got up from the bed. The door was closed.

He lay with his head to the wall, curled up in the narrow space, his arms folded.

His mother’s voice came through the floor from the room below.