David Storey - Saville

He reached across for it by the door, pulled back the bolt and showed him how to slip in the bullets. ‘There now,’ he said. ‘You can shoot anybody you want.’

He laughed, watching Colin hold it, unaccustomed to the weight.

‘Nay, don’t point it at me,’ he said. ‘I’m your friend.’

When he went down his mother stood back across the kitchen, one hand raised to her cheek frowning.

‘You’ve never given him that?’ she said.

‘I have,’ the soldier said. ‘Why not? I don’t want it.’

‘Well,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see when his father comes.’

And his father too, when he came, looked at it and, in much the same manner, said, ‘You can’t give it away, can you?’ the soldier laughing and nodding his head.

‘I’ve lost it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’

‘Well,’ his father said. ‘I’ll put it away. It’s no good for Colin.’ Yet, although he locked it in the wardrobe in their bedroom, on an evening he would take it out, after the soldier had gone, and ram the bolt to and fro, put in and take out the bullets, and sight it at various objects outside the window. In the end, however, he gave it to the police and said that he had found it under a hedge.

‘Don’t you want to fight?’ he would ask the soldier, frowning.

‘I have been fighting,’ the soldier said.

‘But to fight again,’ his father said.

‘What for?’ the soldier asked him. He would lie back easily in a chair or stand in his stockinged feet in front of the fire, smiling down at his father and nodding his head.

‘To defend your country,’ his father said. ‘To defend freedom. To keep your wife and children from being captured.’

‘Nay, it’ll not make much difference,’ the soldier said. ‘Whoever’s here we’ll live much the same, one way or another. There’ll be the rich and the poor, and one or two lucky ones’, he went on, ‘between.’

‘Nay, I can’t make any sense of it,’ his father would say, rubbing his head, shy in the face of the soldier, suddenly uncertain. ‘Don’t you believe in anything?’

‘Not you could put your finger on,’ the soldier would say, smiling and lighting – if he hadn’t got one lit already – another cigarette.

‘He was nearly drowned. In the sea,’ his father said when the soldier had gone. ‘They picked him up in a small boat as he was going under for the third time,’ he added.

‘For the third tin, more likely,’ his mother said. ‘With all that sugar it’s a wonder he came up at all.’

‘Still, he’s given it all away,’ his father said.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m not surprised. Nearly everything he’s got is stolen.’

Yet long after the soldier had gone they continued to use the sugar, to sweeten tea and finally to make some jam.

When he left, marching off to the station in a long column, his father went with him, walking along the side of the road, across the fields. When he came back he sat by the fire, looking up at the buttons and the medals the soldier had left on the shelf. Then, after a while, he went up to the soldier’s room and tidied up the bed.

One evening, a short while later, Colin woke to the sound of the sirens and lay for a moment listening for the roar of planes and the crashing of bombs. But beyond the wailing there was no other noise at all.

Then he heard his father’s feet pounding on the stairs.

‘Come on, lad,’ his father said. ‘We’re all ready.’

‘Are they the sirens?’ he said.

‘They are.’

‘Have they started bombing?’

‘Nay, if we wait to see we’ll never get there at all,’ his father said.

His mother was already wrapped in her coat and had his own coat ready.

‘Come on. Come on.’ His father danced at the door. He’d already switched off the light and, in the silence as the sirens faded, other voices could be heard along the terrace.

‘Nay, we’ll wrap up warm,’ his mother said. ‘They’ll give us a minute, surely, before they start.’

‘A minute?’ His father had lit the lamp at the door, shielding one side with his hand. ‘They don’t give any minutes. Don’t worry. It’ll be down on our heads before we can start.’

They went out across the garden in single file, his father waiting impatiently while his mother locked the door. ‘We’d look well sitting there,’ she said, ‘and the entire house burgled.’

‘Burgled?’ his father said. ‘You think they’ll have time for that?’

‘I can’t hear any planes.’

‘You won’t hear them. Don’t worry. Not till they’re overhead.’ Grumbling, he led the way across the yard, the lamp lighting up the ground around his feet. ‘They’ll all be coming in now,’ he said. ‘Now they see what it’s all about.’

A voice had called across the backs and he’d paused, holding up the lamp.

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘Can you take our lads?’ a man had said.

‘Aye,’ his father said. ‘They’ll be safe with me.’

A small knot of figures emerged from the darkness, stumbling over the fences that separated the yards. They were four brothers, older than Colin, from a family farther down the terrace. Behind them came the figure of their father.

‘How many have you got room for, Harry?’ the man had said.

‘Oh,’ his father said. ‘We’ll squash a few in.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘We better be getting in,’ he added.

‘Can you take the missus?’ the man had said.

‘Oh, you’ll be all right with us,’ Saville said. ‘There’s room for you as well.’

They collected, then, around the steps, Saville fumbling in his pocket then stooping to the lamp and taking out his key.

Across the yard other figures had begun to converge on the shelter: Colin could make them out, vaguely, silhouetted against the sky, climbing fences, calling out in low voices towards the houses.

‘Mind the steps,’ his father said. ‘I’ll just unlock it.’

‘Which way will they come?’ someone said and the heads turned up towards the sky.

‘They could come any way,’ Saville said. He was at the bottom of the steps, below them, his figure stooped to the door, the lamp lighting up his face. The lock clicked, then the bolt was drawn back. ‘I’ll go in first,’ he added, ‘and light the other lamp.’

He opened the door, paused, then stepped inside.

‘Women and children first,’ a man had called behind.

From below them came a splash. It was followed a moment later by Saville’s shout, then the light inside the shelter was suddenly extinguished.

‘God damn and blast,’ the father said.

The splashing continued a little longer then, as someone switched on a torch, Saville re-appeared at the door below, his hair matted to his skull, his clothes clinging to his body.

‘The place is flooded,’ he said. In his hand he still held the miner’s lamp.

‘What’s that, Harry?’ someone said.

‘The shelter,’ he said.

‘You’re flooded out?’ he said.

‘It’s all that rain we’ve had,’ he said. ‘I should have watched it.’

‘Well, then,’ the mother said. ‘We better get back to the house.’

‘It’s catch us death of cold in theer, or a bomb under t’kitchen table,’ someone said and somewhere, at the back of the crowd, someone else had laughed.

Colin followed his father back to the house. ‘I can’t understand it,’ Saville said. ‘It shouldn’t have been flooded.’ He stood shivering, his teeth chattering, as he waited for his mother to unlock the door. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said. ‘Can’t you open it any faster?’

‘I can’t see,’ she said.

‘Where’s the lamp?’ he said, then realized he was holding it, sodden, in his hand.