David Storey - Saville

‘Hello, Aunty,’ Colin said.

‘Aunty. I’ll give you Aunty,’ the woman said, laughing, her look fading a moment later as, with a hand to her cheek, she added, ‘That’s not our Ellen’s eldest, is it? It’s not Colin, is it, love?’ laughing again when he leant across to shake her hand, the crowd milling round on either side. ‘Well, he was so high when I last saw him,’ she added to Reagan, measuring off a height level with the table. ‘And as proud and as protective of his mother as any man. Our Reg, you know, will hardly believe it. Wait till I tell our David. You might see them here: they come in sometimes, later. After they’ve had one or two in the boozer, you know.’

They finally moved away from the table, his aunt’s gaze still fixed on him over the heads of the crowd, smiling, nodding, her attention scarcely on the glasses she was selling. ‘Would you believe it? That’s my nephew over there,’ he could hear her saying. ‘It’s years since I ever set eyes on him. I hope Reg and David come in before he goes.’

‘It’s very hot in here. Don’t you find it hot, Michael?’ Bletchley said, easing his finger inside his collar.

‘They keep the windows shut until they’ve sold enough refreshments,’ Reagan said. ‘Though if you’d like them open, Ian, you’ve only got to say.’

‘Oh, no. Don’t let me interfere with your normal way of running business,’ Bletchley said.

‘Perhaps you’d like a dance,’ Reagan said. ‘There’s a couple of our regular ladies who come unattended,’ he added. ‘I could introduce you to them. They usually sit on chairs just underneath the orchestra.’

The two women were in their late twenties; they wore flared dresses, identical in shape, with a narrow waist, and heavy makeup. One of them wore glasses which, before dancing with Bletchley, she removed. One was named Martha, and the other, Bletchley’s partner, Joyce. They danced with a professional remoteness, evidently reconciled to and yet at the same time displeased with the incompetence of their respective partners. They circled the room at a steady pace, came under the beaming gaze of Reagan, and passed on with the heavy, swirling crowd.

Coloured lights rotated slowly beneath the ceiling; a window had finally been opened at one end of the room, through which came, along with the roar of the Saturday night traffic outside, a cooling stream of air.

Bletchley, plainly, was having trouble with his feet. He drew his partner’s attention to them from time to time, the two of them gazing down, she short-sightedly and apparently seeing nothing, he with a look of irritation as if they’d taken up some independent activity of their own. The huge, bull-shaped head, glistening across its massive brow and cheeks, would be lowered in the direction of the floor, the rouged and powdered face beside it, then, as if some fresh adjustment had been made invisibly to those ponderous shoes, they would set off with a fresh uncertainty, together.

A gentlemen’s excuse-me was announced, Reagan’s voice enunciating the words carefully through the microphone as if he were placing each one in by hand, Bletchley coming across and bowing slightly to Martha, who, as if it were immaterial to her whom she danced with, immediately took his hand while Colin went over to the short-sighted Joyce, who, having found herself deserted, was gazing around her in consternation. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d wandered off.’

They left an hour later. It had grown dark outside. All the windows of the room were open. As they went to the door Reagan, who was playing a violin accompaniment in front of the microphone, had gazed over the heads of the dancers in their direction, questioningly, almost plaintively, nodding with a smile, still playing, when Colin indicated they were going down to the street below.

His aunt came over as they reached the door.

‘You’re not going yet?’ she said. ‘Our Reg and David haven’t come up. They’ll be so disappointed, you know, if they find you’ve gone.’

‘We’ll probably be up next Saturday,’ he said. ‘We could see them then.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said, laughing, then seizing his hand. ‘And how is your mother? I heard she’d had an operation a year or two ago.’

‘Oh, it’s more than that,’ he said. ‘She’s fine. She’s keeping well.’

‘With a son like you I’m not surprised. I hear you’ve been to college and that. Not like our Reg and David: they’ve hardly learned to read.’

‘There might be a virtue in that,’ he said.

‘Well, they’re earning more than their father,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think it makes much difference. Money doesn’t make you happy. That’s why I come here: to see a bit of life.’

A crowd of young men were coming up the stairs when they went outside; for all he knew his two cousins might have been amongst them. He followed Bletchley’s perspiring figure down to the door. A great burst of cheering and laughter came from the room above their heads.

Once in the street the music welled out from the open windows.

‘How does Reagan get home afterwards?’ Bletchley asked, mopping his face.

‘He goes on the train, I think. There’s one just after twelve,’ he said.

‘Are you waiting till then?’ Bletchley said. ‘I think I’ll go on the bus.’

‘Oh, I think I’ll come as well,’ he said.

‘If you ask me,’ Bletchley said, as they went down to the stop, ‘I think Michael’s heading for trouble.’

‘He seems to think he’s doing well.’

‘I was talking to that girl we were dancing with.’ Bletchley ran his handkerchief round beneath his collar. ‘Apparently he hardly makes anything out of it at all.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, there’s the regular dance hall, the Emporium. They’ve got a bar there, and it’s twice as big. He only gets people here because he hardly charges them to go in. It’s just like Michael. Full of fantasies, you know. He’s no idea. Once he’s paid for the hire of the hall, and the staff, and he’s paid the band, he’s lucky if he makes more than two or three pounds a week. And all that talk of going on the radio. He even mentioned films to me.’

When the bus finally drew in a tall, wiry, red-haired figure got off, followed by a smaller, stockier, black-haired one. Batty paused as he came along the queue, turning to Stringer, then saying directly to Bletchley, ‘How do, Belcher. How you been?’

‘I’ve been very well,’ Bletchley said. ‘And you?’

‘Where’re you going at this time of night, then, Belcher?’ Stringer said.

‘I’m going home, as a matter of fact,’ Bletchley said.

‘We’re going to hear the Reagan Orchestra,’ Batty said. He glanced at Colin. ‘Fancy coming up for a fling, then, Tonge?’

‘We’ve just been up for one,’ he said.

The rest of the queue had moved on towards the bus.

‘Mic Reagan there, then, is he?’ Stringer said. He had recently, to match his hair and eyes, grown a black moustache. It formed a rectangular patch beneath his nose. Both of their faces, in the street light, had the freshness of colliers’ faces that had recently been scrubbed.

‘Michael’s there. He’s playing very well, for all that anyone will notice,’ Bletchley said.

‘Oh, we’ll notice it, Belcher,’ Batty said and, digging his elbow against Stringer, laughed.

‘Yeh, we’ll notice it,’ Stringer said.

‘See you sometime, Tongey,’ Batty said, waiting for this to be confirmed before he set off up the street after Stringer’s departing figure.

They sat upstairs on the bus. Bletchley got out his pipe.

‘I don’t think those two will ever come to much good,’ he said.