David Storey - Saville

Around three walls of the room were arranged curtained cubicles, large enough to take a table or a bed. Several of the youths from the last group were standing around the entrance to one of the cubicles, most of them undressed, two draped with towels. They went in one by one and as each came out they went on to the adjoining cubicle. In the centre of the fourth wall stood a wooden desk, behind it a uniformed officer and two soldiers.

A third soldier showed him into the first of the cubicles. He was instructed to strip off. Then, naked, he was taken into the second cubicle, was given a glass jar and told to urinate into that and a metal bucket, already full to overflowing. He handed the jar to the soldier when he finally emerged and it was taken off smartly across the room where it was given a label and lined up on a wooden table with several others.

In the third cubicle a white-gowned figure with grey hair and spectacles was reading a book. He looked up in surprise when he came round the curtain.

‘I thought they’d all gone through,’ he said.

‘I think I’m the last,’ he said.

‘Sit in the chair and let’s have a look in your ears,’ the man had said.

The canvas on the chair was cold. The man looked in one ear and then the other, shining in a tiny light. Finally he tilted his head to one side, ran liquid inside his ears and plugged them up with cotton wool.

‘Come back here when you’ve finished your eye-sight test,’ he said, calling now, his mouth close to his head.

His throat and teeth were examined in the adjoining booth. Beyond that his body and legs were examined, finally his chest, the elderly doctor stooping over with a stethoscope. In the booth beyond that he sat in a chair opposite a wall of coloured charts. He read off numbers and figures, had the cotton wool removed from one ear while the doctor, partially deaf himself, called instructions, then returned to the first booth to have his ears re-examined.

‘Is anything the matter?’ he said.

‘It’s just dirt, I’m afraid,’ the doctor said.

‘Dirt?’

‘You bohemians are all the same,’ the doctor said, indicating Colin’s longish hair.

When he was dressed there was no one left in the room but the group of white-gowned figures, grown larger now, around the stove, and the officer with the two soldiers sitting at the desk.

‘Could you tell me my grading?’ he asked the officer as he reached the door.

‘You’ll be informed in due course,’ the officer said.

‘There’s no chance of finding out now?’ he said. ‘I asked for an early medical, you see.’

‘Why did you ask for an early medical?’ the officer said.

‘So I could go straight in when I leave college at the end of the term,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’ll be hanging around for months.’

‘I’m afraid there’s no way I can tell you,’ the officer said. ‘You’ll have to wait like the rest, and you’ll be informed’, he added again, ‘in due course.’

As he came down the corridor, several youths, some still dressing in coats and shirts, others pulling on shoes, were gathered round a desk on the landing. Behind the desk sat a soldier with his hat threaded through the lapel on his jacket, calling out names and numbers, and giving out cards.

Colin waited. After several minutes his name was called.

‘Grade three,’ the soldier said, waving the card above his head. He took it from the soldier without the soldier looking up. The knot of youths had almost dispersed. The last cards were given out and he stepped up to the desk.

‘I think there’s been a mistake,’ he said.

‘What’s your name?’ the soldier said.

He showed him the card. ‘The name’s correct, and the number, but I think the grade must be wrong.’

‘Grade three,’ the soldier said, checking against a sheet before him. ‘Flat feet. Have you got flat feet?’ he said.

‘I hadn’t noticed them,’ he said.

‘A lot have things they haven’t noticed until they come here,’ the soldier said.

‘Does that mean I won’t be taken?’ he said.

‘That’s quite correct.’ The soldier snapped to a file before him. ‘You’ve a blighty ticket. No grade threes are taken at present.’

Outside he caught a tram which took him to the college. He sat on a wooden bench at the front. He examined the card, his name written out in full and the grade given beside it in roman numerals. The tram rattled on; it screeched at the bends, the wheels grinding at the track, the glass vibrating in the wooden frames, the reversible wooden benches clattering against the metal brackets. He stared down at the street, at the smooth bands of tarmac inset with the shiny rails, the terraces and concertinaed roofs, the vast furnaces set far beyond in metal coffers, the overhanging pall of smoke, lit by flame, and saw, finally, beyond the farthest roofs, the outlines of the hills to the south beyond which lay the town where he’d gone to school and beyond which, in turn, some twelve miles farther on, lay the village. The tram dipped down; the road ran between high walls and narrow buildings: he glanced at the card and then to the ribbed, ticket-strewn floor between his feet.

‘I’ll be going in October, I suppose,’ she said.

She gazed out at him from beneath the brim of the hat, a large, sweeping, straw-coloured shape, fastened round with a pinkish ribbon.

Beyond her, down the track, was visible the crescent of smoke which heralded the train beyond the cutting. Since leaving school that summer she’d taken to travelling on the train, rather than the bus. It had been another cause of tension between them: the cost of things on which they might have saved.

It was Sunday evening. Other groups that had been in the church were now wandering through the fields below the village, the sun’s magnified shape, a bulbous, burning red, sinking down in a mist above the pit.

‘I suppose I’ll see less of you’, he said, ‘if I take this job at Rawcliffe. I can only get away at weekends.’

‘You could, if you wanted, get a job near the university,’ she said.

‘But then I couldn’t help out at home.’

‘I can’t see why not.’

‘There wouldn’t be much left after paying rent. Whereas if I pay rent at home my mother gets it.’

‘Yes,’ she said, turning to watch the train herself. Only its sound, however, penetrated to the station. The wedge-shaped mound of smoke slowly grew above the cutting.

‘In any case, I don’t think much to hanging around: that’s what it would amount to,’ he said. ‘You’ll have your own life to lead.’

Already, largely because of this, he’d decided against their getting married.

‘Are you going to live for the next three years at home?’ she said.

‘I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Anything might happen.’

‘Not if you stay there,’ she said.

The train came into sight, a black, cylindrical shape moving through the shadow of the cutting. Its smoke and a white cloud of steam welled up between the grass slopes on either side. A whistle blew as it came beneath the bridge, the smoke ballooning beneath the arch.

The platform shuddered as the engine passed.

‘We might find after a year we’ve no alternative: but to get married, I mean,’ he said. ‘We may find, in the end, it’s the best solution.’

‘Yes.’

Her eyes followed the engine as it coasted along the track, the carriages jolting as it came to a halt.

A door opened at the opposite end and Reagan got out. He was carrying his violin case and was dressed in a dark suit, a white handkerchief protruding from the breast pocket. He ducked his head but didn’t speak as he hurried past, flushing slightly as he glanced at Margaret, then hurrying to the flight of steps. His tall, angular figure was visible a moment later as he crossed the bridge to the station yard.