David Storey - Saville

He felt a peculiar detachment: some part of his mind had been displaced, fragmented, cast away. He walked out of the cemetery towards the village. The cloud from the pit, with the colliery’s clankings and groanings, its peculiar gaspings, followed him: it was as if he were being ejected from the earth himself, disgorged. He glanced back to the cemetery where, unknown, his brother was buried and felt, prompted by that child, a sense of mission, a new containment, a vulnerability which numbed him to the bone.

It affected his relationship with Steven first. There was a peculiar assurance in his younger brother; he questioned nothing: the quietness of his childhood had given way to a robust, undemanding confidence. He played football, but without any intentness; he worked with little concentration. His voice, in the field at the back, would dominate the houses, refusing to be commanded or advised by anyone. ‘What’s up, our kid?’ he would say, slumping down in the settee beside him. ‘Ar’t feeling bad?’ his shoulder crushing against Colin’s almost like an older brother’s would. ‘Has’t flighted any sense out of ought, then?’ he would add whenever he saw him writing, or marking school books at the table. ‘Wheer’st the genius in that?’ peering mysteriously over his shoulder as if to find in the work some key to Colin’s nature which otherwise eluded him. He had grown in build, proportionately, even larger than Colin; his muscles were prematurely developed. There were very few boys in the village who threatened him; and yet, when they did, Steven never fought; rather, he would take their arm and turn them with him. ‘Nay, wheer’st that gonna’ get you?’ he would say amicably as if, in fighting, they had more to lose than they could imagine. It was as if his nature had been absolved, cleansed, washed through.

‘Why don’t you do more with your work?’ Colin would ask him.

‘Why should I?’ Steven would say.

‘Well, I’ve had to.’

‘Why?’

‘To help you,’ Colin would tell him.

‘Why help me?’

‘To give you a chance.’

‘To do what?’

‘To get through.’

‘Nay, I’ve got through.’ He would laugh. ‘What is there to get through, Colin?’

‘Don’t you feel you ought to get on?’ he said.

‘Get on wheer?’

‘Out of this.’

His brother would look round him at the kitchen, he would look at the window and then outside.

‘Well, it’s not much to look at,’ he would add. ‘But we don’t have to stay here for good, though, do we?’

‘Don’t we? The way you’re going I think we shall.’

‘Nay, tha mu’n leave whenever tha wants.’

‘And leave you and Richard? You should have a chance.’

‘Nay, I’ve got a chance. All t’chance I’ll need.’

His brother’s imperturbability disturbed him; it disturbed him as much as his mother’s acquiescence to it.

‘Don’t you want our Steven to get on?’ he’d ask her.

‘But he’s not as bright as you. At least, not as bright in that way.’

‘But he shows no aptitude, no determination, no need to do anything. He’ll just go on like he’s always done.’

‘But he’s got an equable nature,’ his mother said.

‘Has he?’ The word alone suggested that his mother had thought about this herself. ‘Acquiescent I should think’s more like it.’

‘Acquiescent to what?’

‘To this.’

He would gesture hopelessly around him: the pit, the darkness, the perpetual smell of sulphur, the dankness, the soot; it flattened his spirits more than anything; there was no escape.

‘Doesn’t he want to change it? Is he going to live here all his life?’

‘Well, we ’ve lived here,’ his mother said.

‘But then we’ve got a chance to change it. We’ve got a chance of getting out.’

‘Of leaving.’

‘Not physically. Spiritually. It does Steven no good to be buried here.’

‘But why are you so concerned?’ she said. ‘If he’s content why should you insist on him being different?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’d just want something better for him.’

‘But why change his nature when he’s always so happy.’

‘Is he happy?’

‘I think so.’

‘Like a dog is happy. It’s bovine. He has no will.’

His mother, at these attacks, would draw away: there was a peculiar ambivalence in them. His brother antagonized him; yet there was no enmity, no animosity or resentment in his brother at all. If anything, Steven admired him: when he was younger he would listen to Colin’s accounts of school and later of college with fascination. On one occasion, while still at college, Steven had visited him: he had shown him round the buildings, introduced him to the staff and to the students and his brother had admired it all, entranced, without any equivocation. He accepted everything that came before him.

‘Why do you get on at Steven?’ his father would ask.

‘He doesn’t do anything,’ he would tell him.

‘He’s being himself.’

‘I can’t believe it.’ He would watch Steven playing in the field with the same irritation: his good nature was apparent from a distance, the lack of guile, of anything considered; his goodness was dishonest.

‘He doesn’t do anything,’ he would add.

‘Does he have to do something?’ his father would ask.

‘But you insisted that I do something,’ he said.

‘How did I insist?’

‘Everything. There’s always an insistence. I suppose you’ll be content for him to go in the pit.’

‘I suppose I shall. If he’s happy doing it,’ he added.

‘But why should I have had to do things I wasn’t happy doing?’ he said.

‘What weren’t you happy doing?’ his father said.

‘All this.’ He would gesture at the backs.

‘I thought it was something you wanted. It was something you were good at,’ his father said.

‘Was it something I wanted? Or something you wanted for me? Like you wanted something for Andrew, too.’

‘What did we want for Andrew?’

‘To make him good. To make him like me.’

‘Nay,’ his father said, and looked away. It was as if he’d wounded him too deeply. ‘Nay,’ he said again. He shook his head.

‘Isn’t it true?’

‘No. It’s not true. And if you said that to your mother I think it would kill her.’

‘Perhaps it’s better that she should know, then.’

‘You’ll say nothing to her,’ his father said, strangely, turning to him then and standing there as if physically he stood before his mother.

‘And what am I supposed to do?’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t I have the freedom that Steven has? Not selfishly, but for your good as well?’

‘What good? What good? Is there any good in saying this?’ his father said. Despite his tiredness he would have beaten him then.

‘But why should I have to take the blame?’

‘What blame?’

‘Why should I be moulded? Why weren’t you content with me?’ he said. ‘Why shouldn’t I have been allowed to grow like Steve?’ It was as if some evil in him had been held in abeyance, while in Steven it had been allowed to flow out, appeased.

‘Didn’t you want to go that school?’ his father said, yet lightly, anxious to distract him. ‘When you came home to tell us you’d passed I’d never seen you look so glad.’

‘It’s what I thought you wanted,’ he said.

‘It was.’

‘Yet why do you want nothing for Steve?’

‘I do want something for Steve. But I wouldn’t force him to it, not against his nature.’

‘But why force me ?’

‘I haven’t forced you.’

‘You have.’

‘I haven’t forced you to anything.’