Alan Sillitoe - A Man of his Time

He disliked being denied. ‘Such as what?’

‘I must write to let my parents know how I am. And then I have to see to my clothes.’

‘If that’s the way it is.’ Men at his elbow were calling for ale. ‘Pump me another before you go back to your work.’

He ignored her for a few weeks, though noticed her look in his direction when he asked Ada the other barmaid to fill his tankard. He could have had her for tuppence. Her mouth always open, he called her the Flycatcher, not that he had ever seen a fly go in, and she wasn’t bad-looking, but would have been prettier if she closed her mouth. Mrs Lewin the landlady told her about it once, but it didn’t get through. Even when she smiled her lips barely met but, gormless or not, she’d have done all right under a bush, though to try and get her there would have spoiled his chances with Mary Ann.

Hard to keep his glance from whatever part of the bar she was in, and enjoy the modest way she served, wondering how she could favour anybody more than him as she went quietly about her work. When not at the bar it was because Mrs Lewin had her attending to household matters in the back, or busy on a millinery job. She’d be a useful wife, though he wouldn’t tackle wedlock yet, there being so many willing girls in Nottingham.

He had gone home a few weeks ago with a woman called Leah who worked in a lace factory, her husband doing shifts as a railway shunter, and had the sort of time that showed no need to marry for what he wanted. A lovely robust woman ten years older, he seasoned her till she was greedy for all he could give, asking him to call any time he liked, as long as nobody else was in the house.

The only way of getting Mary Ann into bed, and he wouldn’t think anything of her otherwise, was with a marriage certificate pinned on the wall behind. So maybe he should ask her hand before anybody else did, though if she turned him down there were plenty of others to keep him busy.

He smiled when his name was called, on realizing it was that of the place they were stopping at, a smell of beer and hops wafting in from the breweries. The train went puffing its way by foundries and forges, workshops and coalpits, wholesome beer fumes replaced by a sulphurous stink. Laden drays trundled up to their axles in mud along lanes and tracks, but even if he got off here he would find work as a trained blacksmith, though he couldn’t because George was expecting him in Wales, and George didn’t wait for any man, brother or not.

It was George who had tutored him in the basics of the trade from the day he could swing bellows, shoulder pieces of iron, hump bags of coke to the fire, or hold a hammer with a firm hand, and any mishap on the uptake, or slowness in obedience, he got a blow across the shoulder with a bar of iron. George had a temper when it came to doing your work properly.

Filling the unfamiliar idleness Ernest recalled George’s fury after setting him to polish a pile of horse brasses. At eleven Ernest hadn’t brought out a sufficient shine so George held him against the wall and banged his head until stars prettier than any from the anvil followed him into blackness.

A few moments later Ernest ran into the street, George shouting him back, but Ernest was ashamed at having failed in his work, though knew he hadn’t deserved such a knocking-about either.

Thinking it better to do himself in rather than go back, he walked and ran through the streets and across fields, bitterness and anger holding the pain down, no one wondering why he moved with such speed and purpose. Beyond Old Engine Cottages and into the scrubland of the Cherry Orchard, he slowed down but kept on.

In Robin’s Wood he pushed through the undergrowth and stopped on seeing an older boy on his belly drinking from the brook. Ernest drew some into his stomach as well, splashed his head to cool the pain.

‘What’s up, surry?’ He was a farm youth, smart in his smock and leggings.

‘Nothing.’

‘Somebody been knocking you about, have they? Lost your tongue, eh? Well, next time somebody hits you, hit the devil back.’

The wood was peaceful, but he couldn’t stay, walked on, along a bridlepath to the canal, not much caring where he was going, ran across the lock gates for fear he would fall if he went too slowly. Maybe someone on the puffballs of cloud looked down at him running in his working clothes, exhausted, scruffy, his heart breaking.

Darkness chased him home, everyone gathering for supper. George was washed, and smoking his pipe, silent on their mother asking Ernest how he had got his bruises. He said nothing, so was told to wash himself and sit at the table to eat. It wouldn’t happen again. But it did, often enough, till he was fourteen when, as tall as George, he picked up a hammer and told him to do no more.

Now he could more than hold his own with George, who had turned him into as hard a man as himself, which was something to thank him for. George could still be surly and distant, but believed you had to help one another in the same family, it was human nature, if you didn’t you went under, like many who trod the smooth cobbles to the workhouse with their wives and children, too downhearted to look back.

Passengers getting on and off looked as if they had clinker sandwiches for their dinners every day. Dirty cottages, as dreary as he’d ever seen, squatted between heaps of slag and refuse, and if this was what people called the Black Country, he thought, they could shove it up their backsides; he was glad when the last of Birmingham went, and green fields turned up again.

A middle-aged grey-bearded titchbum of a chap came on board with two workmen in their aprons. Titchbum, who wore a pepper- and-salt suit, waistcoat, cravat, and watch chain with two sovereigns dangling, stabbed the air with opinionated snuff-stained fingers, pontificating thick and fast to the others about some poor bloke called Disraeli, for reasons Ernest couldn’t fathom. Then he went on about the price he could get for a bag of nails at his workshop, the other two men nodding like a couple of donkeys at the Goose Fair.

Titchbum ran out of topics, and turned to Ernest. ‘Where are you going, then?’

Ernest waited till asked again, Titchbum adding ‘sir’ as politeness called for, hardly a gold-plated sir, but Ernest told him: ‘Wales,’ and resumed his looking out of the window.

‘I expect you heard the first time.’ Titchbum’s finger came towards him. ‘Some people don’t know their place,’ he said to his companions. ‘Not like when I was young. And why might you be going to Wales?’

A word not spoken was a word saved, which might later be used with more effect on somebody else, if you were in the mood to let it. One of the few luxuries in life was the right to be silent, and you couldn’t let anybody take it away.

Titchbum’s friends looked at Ernest as if, since they had to truckle to their gaffer, so ought he. ‘I suppose he’s lost his tongue.’ Titchbum had a dry annoying I’m-the-cock-of-the-walk laugh. ‘Like a lot of young men who don’t have one to lose.’

Titchbum’s finger came too close. Words could be stopped from invading the mind, but the finger in his direction was different. Titchbum, as a ‘self-made man’ too much like Ernest’s father to tolerate for long, made him wonder why the fool had taken against him.

‘He must be a country bumpkin.’ Titchbum couldn’t leave well alone, as if he’d got worms, or a canker was eating his stomach. Maybe he’d drunk too much whisky with his breakfast, in which case Ernest would have understood, and ignored him.

‘I’d be quiet, if I was you.’ One of his men had caught Ernest’s stare. ‘He doesn’t work at our place.’

‘Neither will you, for much longer, if you don’t keep your opinion to yourself. Somebody like him doesn’t know when one of his betters is talking to him. I only asked a civil question.’