David Storey - Saville

A soldier, waiting in the station entrance, briskly saluted as they sauntered past.

Stafford flicked up his hand without moving his head.

‘Here it comes, old man. What will she say when she sees you again?’

Yet the train rattled through the station and disappeared down the line the other side. A gust of wind swept through the station.

‘Must be the express.’ Stafford snapped up his wrist, examined a silver-coloured watch fastened there, then added, ‘Another two minutes, I think, old boy.’

They went through to the platform. The small knots of people gathered there watched Stafford intently as he paced slowly to and fro: there was an unfamiliar erectness about his figure, the hair cut short, emphasizing the clarity of his features, an almost boyish candour which, strangely, he’d scarcely ever possessed as a youth.

‘We’re going abroad in a couple of weeks’ time,’ he said, gazing attentively now along the track. ‘Kenya. Though I don’t suppose I’ll be there for very long.’

‘Where else are you likely to go?’ he said.

‘It could be Malaya. Rumour has it, of course. Though I can’t be sure. I’ve applied for a home posting, in any case. I don’t think much to all this travel. I’m representing the Army, at rugger, you see, which is one little lever I’ve got. Apply it in the right place and I’ve a feeling, you know, it might do the trick.’

The dark cylinder of the engine had appeared suddenly down the track. The people on the platform stirred. Stafford began to smile, tapping his stick against his leg.

‘I’ve forgotten, almost, what old Maggie looked like. Does she still go on about women’s rights?’ He glanced over at Colin and began to laugh. ‘You weren’t in on that, at the time. My God. Some of the ideas she had were out of this world.’

When Margaret descended from the train she stared at Colin with such a look of incredulity, pausing by the carriage door as if for a moment she might get back inside, that he began to laugh, going forward to take her hand.

‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she said, her eyes wide, glancing back at the train itself. ‘Did you come in another carriage?’

‘Stafford brought me,’ he said, indicating the uniformed figure who, with mock bravura, saluted with his wooden baton and came forward, bowing slightly, to shake her hand.

‘My compliments, ma’am. May we escort you to your home?’ he said, then added, ‘Remember me?’

‘Good lord.’ She stepped back a moment and examined his figure. ‘You’ve been commissioned as well?’ she said.

‘That’s right,’ Stafford said and added, ‘As well as what?’

‘Oh, my brother’s commissioned. He’s in the Tank Corps, as a matter of fact.’

‘Ah.’ Stafford paused, his gaze drifting off to the view of the town beyond the station. ‘Not like us infantry wallahs, I can tell you that.’ He crooked his arm. ‘May we escort you to the car?’ he added.

Margaret laughed. She placed her arm in Stafford’s and, glancing at Colin, started off to the station entrance.

Colin walked along on the other side.

She gave in her ticket and they went through to the yard. Stafford opened the door.

‘I don’t think, with a lady,’ he said, ‘we can squash in, Col, as we did before. Do you mind handing out my hat before you get in the back?’

They drove slowly through the town. The light had faded. The car’s headlamps flooded out on the road ahead. Stafford described some of his activities over the previous year.

‘Hopkins, by the way, was in my squad at O.C.T.U.,’ he said. ‘Went into the Rifle Brigade. Now he is in Malaya, as a matter of fact. I heard Walker went in too, but failed to pass. He’s a sergeant in the Education Corps. Who else is there?’ He went through several more names of boys from the school he’d come across. ‘You don’t know how lucky you’ve been, old man,’ he added to Colin. ‘It’s a terrible fag. I mean, all we’re fighting at the moment are communists and wogs. Two years out of your life and nothing to show.’

They reached the house. Stafford looked over at the green-painted door in the garden wall.

‘Remember last time, my dear,’ he said, ‘Colin gallantly saw you home?’ He added, ‘I say, you know, I admire that hat.’

‘Why don’t you come in. Say hello to my parents now you’re here?’ she said.

‘Well, that’s very kind. I don’t think we’ve any other pressing engagement, have we, Col?’

He stepped down from the car and held the door. On Stafford’s arm, Margaret went before him up the path to the house. She knocked on the door, waiting for someone to answer it inside, calling to Colin, ‘Stay back to one side. See what they say,’ standing straight-faced, leaning on Stafford’s arm, when the door was finally drawn back and her mother appeared.

‘What on earth,’ her mother said, in much the same fashion as Margaret herself at the station.

Stafford saluted smartly.

‘Is this your daughter, ma’am?’ he said. ‘We found her wandering in the vicinity of the city railway station. She gave this as her address, though of course we quite anticipate this to be yet one more nefarious tale, a whole bevy of which she regaled us with on our compromising journey here.’

‘This is Neville Stafford, Mother,’ Margaret said. ‘He was a friend of Colin’s from school.’

‘Oh, there you are, Colin,’ Mrs Dorman said, gazing out to the darkness of the garden. She stepped aside to let Margaret and Stafford enter, shaking the latter’s hand and adding, ‘Go through to the room, Margaret. Your father’s there.’

Colin followed them inside. The doctor stood up from his chair by the fire, shaking Stafford’s hand, smiling, gazing at him with a look of wonder. ‘Oh, you’re one of these conscripts, are you?’ he said, gesturing at the uniform. ‘Sit down. Sit down. Would you like a drink?’

They stayed an hour. Stafford described to them freshly some of the incidents of his training, the tests he had passed before being accepted as an officer, a football match he had played in against the Royal Air Force, a night spent with fellow officers when he and several other platoons, on a training exercise, had got lost on a moor. The sound of traffic faded from the road below the house. A clock chimed slowly on a near-by church. ‘My God, just look at the time,’ Stafford said, bringing his watch up smartly. ‘We mustn’t keep these good people from their beauty sleep much longer. Maggie especially: it’d be a great pity to see those features fading because Stafford insisted in keeping her from her bed.’ He turned to Mrs Dorman. ‘I was commenting on her hat at the station. She really has the most wonderful clothes. I scarcely recognized her from the girl I knew two years ago. She really has’, he added, turning now to glance at Margaret directly, ‘come on a treat.’

Margaret laughed. Flushed already from Stafford’s accounts of his life in the army, the redness deepened. ‘Honestly, you make me sound dreadful. I couldn’t have been that bad, could I, Col?’

‘Oh, Colin never sees much of what’s going on. He’s too preoccupied with his thoughts is Colin,’ Stafford said. ‘The outward world and all its manifestations he passes by with scarcely a glance.’

Margaret’s mother, too, had begun to laugh. Almost another half hour, however, had passed before they finally went to the door.

‘I must really make a note of this address,’ Stafford said. ‘I’ve rarely spent such a delightful evening. If I’d known it was going to be as pleasant as this, I can assure you,’ he added with a bow to the mother, ‘I would have come much sooner. I really think Colin is a secretive fellow, keeping Margaret to himself. Why no one tells me these things’, he went on at the door, ‘I shall never discover. I go from one boring episode to another, while all the really interesting things happen to other people.’