Alan Sillitoe - Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

Jack’s face relaxed. Not swearing himself, it didn’t put him out to hear it from other people. ‘No,’ he said, ‘they wouldn’t go that far. I suppose I could get Brenda to make me a flask up in the mornings, but I don’t want to put her to the trouble.’

‘It’s no trouble,’ Arthur said, snapping a piece out of his sandwich.

‘It might be, with two kids to look after. Young Jacky’s a bogger. He fell down the stairs yesterday afternoon.’

More quickly than was necessary, Arthur asked: ‘Did he do hisself any damage?’

‘A few bruises and screaming for two hours. But he’s all right. He’s like iron, if you ask me.’

Time to change the subject. Like treading on a haystack, he told himself, you dirty sinner. Will this be a quick enough change?

‘How did you go on at the races?’

‘All right. I won five quid.’

It was. ‘Lucky bastard,’ he swore. ‘I put ten bob each way on the three-thirty at Redcar on Sat’day and I didn’t get a penny back. I’ll smash that bookie one of these days.’

‘Why smash the bookie?’ reasonable Jack asked. ‘You’re too superstitious. You either win or you don’t. I don’t believe in luck.’

Arthur screwed his sandwich paper into a ball and threw it across the gangway into somebody’s work-box. ‘Spot-on,’ he cried. ‘See that, Jack? Couldn’t a done better if I’d ‘ave aimed.’

‘I don’t think luck ever did anybody any good, in the end,’ Jack went on.

‘I do,’ Arthur affirmed. ‘Mostly I’m lucky and all. But sometimes I get a smack between the eyes. Not often though. So I’m superstitious and I believe in luck.’

‘You was only telling me you believed in communism the other week,’ Jack said reproachfully, ‘and now you talk about luck and superstition. The comrades wouldn’t like that,’ he ended with a dry laugh.

‘Well,’ Arthur said, his mouth full of second sandwich and tea, ‘if they don’t like it, they can lump it.’

‘That’s because you’ve got nowt to do wi’ ‘em.’

‘I said I was as good as anybody else in the world, din’t I.’ Arthur demanded. ‘And I mean it. Do you think if I won the football pools I’d gi’ yo’ a penny on it? Or gi’ anybody else owt? Not likely. I’d keep it all mysen, except for seeing my family right. I’d buy ‘em a house and set ‘em up for life, but anybody else could whistle for it. I’ve ‘eard that blokes as win football pools get thousands o’ beggin’ letters, but yer know what I’d do if I got ‘em? I’ll tell yer what I’d do: I’d mek a bonfire of ‘em. Because I don’t believe in share and share alike, Jack. Tek them blokes as spout on boxes outside the factory sometimes. I like to hear ‘em talk about Russia, about farms and power-stations they’ve got, because it’s interestin’, but when they say that when they get in government everybody’s got to share and share alike, then that’s another thing. I ain’t a communist, I tell you. I like ‘em though, because they’re different from these big fat Tory bastards in parliament. And them Labour bleeders too. They rob our wage packets every week with insurance and income tax and try to tell us it’s all for our own good. I know what I’d like to do with the government. I’d like ter go round every factory in England with books and books of little numbers and raffle off the ‘Ouses o’ Parliament. “Sixpence a time, lads,” I’d say. “A nice big ‘ouse for the winner” — and then when I’d made a big packet I’d settle down somewhere with fifteen women and fifteen cars, that I would.

‘But did I tell yer, Jack, I voted communist at the last election? I did it because I thought the poor bloke wouldn’t get any votes. I allus like to ‘elp the losin’ side. You see, I shouldn’t have voted either, because I was under twenty-one, but I used Dad’s vote because he was in bed wi’ a bad back. I took ‘is votin’ card out of ‘is coat pocket wi’out ‘im knowin’, and at the booth I towd the copper outside and the bloke at the desk inside that I was ‘Arold Seaton and they didn’t even bother to look at the card, and I went in and voted. Just like that. I didn’t believe it mysen till I was outside again. I’d do owt like that though, I would.’

‘You’d have got ten years in clink if they’d caught you,’ Jack said. ‘It’s a serious thing. You were lucky.’

Arthur was triumphant. ‘I told yer I was. But that’s what all these looney laws are for, yer know: to be broken by blokes like me.’

‘Don’t be too cocky though,’ Jack rebuked him. ‘You might cop it, one day.’

‘’What for? Like gettin’ married, you mean? I’m not that daft.’

Jack defended where Arthur had made him feel vulnerable: ‘I’m not saying you are. Neither was I daft when I got married. I wanted to do it, that’s all. I went into it wi’ my eyes open. I like it, and all. I like Brenda, and Brenda likes me, and we get on well together. If you’re good to each other, married life is all right.’

‘I’ll believe you then. Thousands wouldn’t, though.’

Who would believe anyway that I was carrying on with his missis? One day he’ll know, I suppose, but don’t be too cocky, you cocky bastard. If you’re too cocky your luck changes, so be careful. The worst of it is that I like Jack. Jack is a good bloke, one of the best. It’s a pity it’s such a cruel world. But he’s one up on me because he sleeps with Brenda every night. I suppose I should keep on hoping he gets knocked down by a double-decker bus so that I can marry Brenda and sleep with her every night, but somehow I don’t want him to get knocked down by a bus.

‘I haven’t told you this, have I?’ Jack said gravely after a long pause of munching, as though something big and heavy had suddenly climbed up to his conscience.

Arthur wondered. Has he? Was it possible? His face looked thoughtful. What was it? No one could have told Jack about his carrying-ons. Or could they, the nosy gossiping spies? Not much they couldn’t. He does seem a bit funny this morning.

‘What about, Jack?’ he asked, screwing the top back on his flask.

‘Nothing much. Only Robboe came up to me the other day and told me that I was to start on nights next week in the Press Shop. They’re short-handed there and want another tool-setter. A week on nights and a week on days.’

‘That’s a bastard,’ Arthur commiserated, thinking he was saying the right thing under the circumstances. ‘I’m sorry, Jack.’

Then he saw his mistake. Jack was really happy at his transfer. ‘I don’t know about that. It’ll mean a bit more money. Brenda’s been on about a television set lately, and I might be able to get her one like that.’

He accepted a cigarette from Arthur, who said: ‘All the same, who am I going to talk to in tea-break?’

Jack laughed, a curious laugh, since the frown managed somehow to stay on his face. ‘You’ll be all right,’ and slapped him — not very hard — on the shoulder, saying:

‘I’ll see you again.’

The light flashed: tea-break over.

I’m just too lucky for this world, Arthur told himself as he set his lathe going, too lucky by half, so I’d better enjoy it while I can. I don’t suppose Jack’s told Brenda yet about going on nights, but I’ll bet she’ll die laughing at the good news when he does. I might not see her at weekends, but I’ll get there every night, which is even better. Turn to chamfer, then to drill, then blade-chamfer. Done. Take out and fix in a new piece, checking now and again for size because I’d hate to do a thousand and get them slung back at me by the viewers. Forty-five bob don’t grow on trees. Turn to chamfer and drill, then blade-chamfer, swing the turret until my arms are heavy and dead. Quick as lightning. Take out and fix in, shout for the trolley to take it away and bring more on, jotting down another hundred, not noticing the sud smells any more or belts over my head that gave me the screaming abdabs when I first came in the factory at fifteen, slapping and twisting and thumping and changing direction like Robboe the foreman’s mind. It’s a hard life if you don’t weaken, so you grab like owt to earn a few quid, to take Brenda boozing and back to bed, or to the footpaths and woods up Strelley, passing the big council estate where Margaret my sister has a house and three kids from her useless husband, taking Brenda by all that to a broken-down shepherd’s cottage that I’ve known since I was a kid and laying her on the straw and both of us so loving to each other that we can hardly wait. Only less of this or there’ll be another handle on the lathe that I won’t know what to do with and another gallon of suds that will jam the works. Time flies and no mistake, and it’s about time it did because I’ve done another two hundred and I’m ready to go home and get some snap and read the Daily Mirror or look at what’s left of the bathing tarts in the Weekend Mail. But Brenda, I can’t wait to get at her. It serves you right, ducks, for being so lush and loving. And now this chamfer-blade wants sharpening, so I’ll give it to Jack this afternoon. And it’s too bad about him, but he’ll be going on nights soon which is too bad as well, for him, because Brenda and me’ll play merry hell in all the beds and nooks we can find. Bloomers flying, and legs waving in Strelley Woods, no matter how cold it gets.