David Storey - Saville

There were two parts to the village. The older part stood on a ridge a little to the north. It was made up of several old stone houses, still inhabited, an old manor house, deserted and falling into ruin, and the stone church which had once belonged to the manor. Two or three old farms stood here, back to back, their fields stretching out on every side, a system of mud lanes joining them together.

The more recent part of the village fell away on the lower ground to the south. At its centre stood the colliery with its twin headgears and its dykes and pyramids of slag, the terraced streets built for the miners strewn out on three sides like the spokes of a wheel: on the fourth side the slag ran off towards the country, the grey mounds of ash and rubble tumbling down finally at the edges of the nearest wood, one arm running off at the side of a little wagon track before it petered out amongst the fields.

The streets were numbered from one to five: they started with First Avenue, which stood in the shadow of the colliery, and ran round through ninety degrees to Fifth Avenue; here the streets had been named after trees, Beech, Holly, Laburnum, Willow. Once he had collected all the names and numbers in a book, along with the numbers of several cars which he had seen passing through the village on their way to the town, and the numbers of several railway engines he had seen passing through the station on the road to the south. Between the village and the station were strung out the various amenities of the village itself, the shops, a prefabricated Catholic Church, a Wesleyan Chapel, a greyhound track and, in a dip in the road, a small gas-works and a string of sewage beds. They stood amidst marshes and pools of stagnant water and the place was known locally as the Dell.

The surrounding countryside was given over entirely to farms, their hedged fields strewn out to the near, hilly horizon where, beyond a frieze of woodland or the silhouette of the fields themselves, a cloud of smoke or the tip of a slag heap would betray the presence of the other collieries stretching all around.

Shortly after the bombing began his mother went away to hospital and he went to sleep at Mrs Shaw’s house next door. She had no children and her husband worked in the colliery in the village. The house was cleaner and neater than their own, and his bedroom had linoleum on the floor. On all the walls, on the stairs as well as in the rooms, were hung pieces of brass, small reliefs and plates, and medallions with figures. Almost every day Mrs Shaw cleaned them with a rag, breathing on them, or rubbing on a white liquid from a tin, the brasses laid out around her, on a table, in neat rows. At lunch-time he stayed at school for dinner and at tea-time he would go back to see his father, who had usually just got out of bed. He would be getting ready to go and see his mother on his way to work, getting his things together, the fire unlit, the place itself untidy, the sink full of plates and pans he had never washed, the curtains in most of the rooms still drawn. ‘I’ll be glad when she’s back,’ his father would say. ‘How are you liking Mrs Shaw’s?’

‘Can’t I stay here?’ he asked him.

‘Nay,’ his father said. ‘You can’t sleep in the house by yourself.’

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

His father looked down at him then with a half-smile. His face was grey, his eyes reddened.

‘You’re better off where you are, Colin,’ he said. ‘Your mother’ll be back home before long, then we’ll be all right.’

He would dress for work then and wheel his bike out into the yard.

‘Come on, then, out you come,’ he would say. ‘I mu’n lock the door.’

Sometimes Colin stood in the yard holding the bike while his father locked the door, turning the key then stooping down to fasten on his cycle clips, folding his trousers round the tops of his boots. Sometimes too, as he waited, he pumped up the air in the tyres, his father waiting then, groaning, and saying, ‘Come on. Come on. I’ll be here all night. You need a drop of meat in that arm.’

Usually he went out into the street to watch him cycle off. His father wore a long overcoat, his flat cap pulled well down over his eyes. In the pannier behind the seat he would put the parcel he had made up to take to his mother, some fruit or a change of clothes which he’d carefully washed and ironed himself. ‘You be a good lad, now,’ he would say. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

‘Good night, Dad,’ he would tell him.

‘Good night, lad,’ his father would say and push off his bike with one foot, riding on the pedal then, as it gained momentum, lifting his leg over the seat.

Mrs Shaw was a tall, thin woman. She had a large jaw and large, staring eyes, dark and full of liquid. Her cheek-bones stuck out sharply on either side. She had little to do with the other neighbours. Often she would stand with her arms folded beneath her apron staring out into the street.

Her husband was a small man with light, gingerish hair and a freckled face. He went to work early in the morning and came back home while Colin was still at school. At night he would come into his room, sometimes with a book, and tell him a story, his wife listening to the radio downstairs. Often, however, as he listened to Mr Shaw reading Colin would begin to cry, covering his face with his hands.

‘Why, what is it?’ Mr Shaw would say. ‘What’s the matter?’

He would shake his head.

‘Your mother will soon be back,’ Mr Shaw would say. ‘And what will your dad say when I tell him you’ve been roaring?’

‘I don’t know,’ he’d say and shake his head.

‘“Why,” he’ll say. “Not my lad, surely?”’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Well, then,’ Mr Shaw would say, and add, ‘Shall I fetch you up a chocolate?’

Sometimes he would accept one and, after Mr Shaw had gone, kissing him good night, he would lie sucking it in the darkness, the taste of the sweet and of the salt from his crying inextricably mixed up inside his mouth.

Before he went to school each morning Mrs Shaw would brush his hair. She would look in his ears in much the same fashion as his father would look at his bike when he couldn’t find what was wrong with it. Sometimes she would take him back to the sink in the kitchen and wash his ears again, pushing his head forward and rubbing round the back of his neck. ‘You’ll never get clean,’ she said. ‘You’d think you worked down a pit yourself.’

At the end of the week, on the Friday evening, she set out a bath in front of the fire. Around it she lay down sheets of newspaper to collect the drips.

‘I don’t think he wants to get in it,’ Mr Shaw said the first time it appeared.

‘I’ve changed the sheets,’ she said. ‘He’ll have to.’

‘I want to get bathed at home,’ he said.

‘Nay, this is your home,’ she said. ‘And your dad’s gone to work in any case and locked the door.’

‘I’ll get bathed tomorrow night, then,’ he said.

‘You can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve changed the sheets and I’m not getting the old ones out of the wash.’

Her eyes expanded, her cheek bones flushing.

‘Now don’t be such a silly,’ she said.

In the end he got undressed and got into the bath. Mr Shaw had gone into the other room.

He sat perfectly still in the water, his toes curled up against the zinc bottom.

‘Well, then,’ Mrs Shaw said. ‘You better stand up. You’ll never get washed cramped up like that.’

She’d already washed his face and neck, his back and his shoulders.

‘I can wash myself,’ he said.

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve seen it. Black ring left everywhere you’ve been.’ She put her hand under his arm. ‘Now, then. Up you get.’