David Storey - Saville

‘I have no pretensions. It’s merely therapy for me,’ Callow said wearily, yet glancing too at Colin as he reached for his drink.

‘Do you teach, too?’ Colin asked the woman.

‘Never.’ She shook her head. Inside the pub she’d removed the scarf; her head was swept back from a prominent brow: there was something composed, assured and imperturbable about her expression. ‘I’m an independent lady,’ she said with an affected accent and looked at him directly as if to challenge him to make of this whatever he could.

Callow, moodily withdrawn now from the woman’s banter, had added nothing further, drinking lengthily from his glass, then, at the woman’s suggestion, getting up to order another.

He met the woman again a few days later. It was a Saturday morning: crowds of shoppers flooded the town. Seeing her outside a shop he had, familiarly, caught her arm: he felt her flinch at the touch.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said and he had the distinct impression that she’d already recognized him: that she’d seen him from a distance and had stopped, as if unconsciously, to wait.

‘Are you doing anything special?’ he said.

‘Nothing’, she said, ‘that couldn’t be delayed.’

They went into a restaurant in an adjoining alley; it was the same alleyway, he reflected, as they waited at a table, that he had gone up with his mother years before on his first visit to the school.

‘So you’re familiar with the place as well?’ she said when he made some remark describing this.

‘I was educated here,’ he said.

‘Educated,’ she said, looking at him slyly.

Her hair was greying at the temples; she watched him with the same companionable expression which characterized her relationship with Callow.

‘Don’t you lay much store by it?’ he said.

‘More than most,’ she said, ‘and less than some.’

‘Why do you always make fun of Callow?’

‘Do I?’ Neither his tone nor accusation had surprised her at all. ‘He’s such a stuffy old bird,’ she added, and leant across the table to touch his arm. ‘So are you, but a little bit younger.’

She smiled; her eyes were shielded by dark lashes, her eyelids, narrow, almost invisible beneath her brow.

‘Are you married?’ he asked directly.

‘I am,’ she said. She wore no ring.

‘Is your husband here?’ He gestured behind him, towards the town.

‘I hardly think so. Yet nevertheless’, she added, smiling at him still, ‘you could never be sure.’

She wore a dark-green coat; it had a fur collar. The brownness of the collar gave her face, with its broad cheek-bones and narrow jaw, a peculiar intensity.

‘What does your husband do?’

‘He doesn’t do anything at present.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Is it important?’ she said. ‘I’d have thought, on the whole, it was impertinent to ask.’

There was a certain daintiness about her; her hands were small, her fingers delicate and thin. He watched her pick up her cup: her knuckles were crested white; the veins stood out on the back of her wrist.

‘He worked in a company run by his father,’ she added. ‘Then he broke away, intending to stand on his own two feet. Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed. He’ll go back to the firm, I imagine, and take it over when his father dies. We’re not living together, you see, at present.’

‘Are you divorced?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, casually. ‘He wants me back.’

She watched him for a moment over her cup.

‘You’re very greedy,’ she added.

‘Am I?’

‘Very.’

She glanced away: her daintiness, her sudden bouts of petulance, simulated it seemed and in response to some imagined pattern of behaviour, had made him smile. He was smiling still when she glanced towards him.

‘Is anything the matter?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Philip’, she said, ‘is quite impressed,’ and after a moment added, ‘Callow.’

‘What by?’

‘Your rapport with the students.’

‘I’d hardly call them students,’ he said.

‘He does.’

‘They’re really children.’

‘Isn’t that patronizing?’ she said watching him once more through hooded eyes.

‘I suppose it is.’ He smiled again. ‘I’m not much more than a child myself.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I believe you’re not.’

‘Does your husband live locally?’ he said.

‘Fairly locally.’ She paused. ‘I use my maiden name.’ She flushed, then added, ‘Elizabeth Bennett.’

It was as if the name should have had some significance for him. She watched him for a moment then said, ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Who were you waiting for?’ he said.

‘No one. I saw you coming. I thought I’d wait for you,’ she said. There was some declaration of feeling here he thought he couldn’t avoid: a moment later when she added, ‘Do you want another coffee?’ he got up from the table and held her chair.

As she proceeded him out of the café he took her arm: outside in the street he didn’t release it.

‘Where are you going now?’ he said.

‘I’ll be going home,’ she said.

‘Is it far?’

‘Just out of town. I have a room at my sister’s. I usually walk back for the exercise.’

‘Do you have a job?’ he said.

‘I work at a chemist’s.’

‘At a shop?’

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Why aren’t you working today?’ he said.

‘It’s run by my father. I go in’, she said, ‘whenever I please.’

Bennett’s, a chemist’s, stood conspicuously at a corner of the road leading up to the school.

‘I’ll walk back with you if you like,’ he said.

‘I usually walk through the Park,’ she said. ‘It’s longer, but it brings me out by my sister’s house.’

‘What does your sister do?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said as he led her across the road. ‘She’s married. She and her husband have no children. They frequently travel.’ After a moment she added, ‘They’re away at present.’

‘You haven’t any children?’

‘No,’ she said.

The road led down towards the river; on the flat land immediately at the foot of the city’s central hill a smaller hill stood up from a surrounding mass of trees: the roof of a large old house was visible beyond.

Paths led off through the grounds; a lake glistened amongst the trees. Birds flew up; the day was windy. As if in fear of the wind she held her coat to her, clasped across her chest.

‘And you? What do you intend to do?’ she said.

‘Oh.’ He gestured round. The trees obscured the view of the town. ‘I’ll teach.’

‘Forever?’

‘For a while.’ Then, bitterly, he added, ‘What alternative is there? It’s all ordained.’

‘Is it? You don’t strike me as a fatalist.’

Other figures moved off beneath the trees. To their right, as they proceeded in the direction of the river, the ruins of the old house were finally enveloped by the profile of the hill.

‘Philip said he’d seen some of your poems.’

‘Yes.’

‘In a magazine.’

‘I don’t think anyone reads it,’ he said.

‘Apparently they were reviewed in the national press.’

‘Three lines at the end of a paragraph,’ he said.

‘Were your family pleased?’

‘Yes,’ he said, though in fact his father’s response had been non-committal. Only his mother had read them with any interest, raising her glasses to gaze at the page. The print was small. She had studied them for quite some time and finally had looked up, flush-faced, as if, in her pleasure, suddenly embarrassed, and said, ‘Yes,’ quaintly, strangely, in half a whisper.

‘Are you and Callow close friends?’ he said.