David Storey - Saville

‘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.