David Storey - Saville

‘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.’