David Storey - Saville

‘Oh, but I’d better go,’ she said. She had a refined voice: she came from a better home.

‘I suppose you realize what you’re doing,’ Colin said.

‘Doing?’ His brother watched him with a smile.

Yet it was to the girl directly that Colin spoke.

‘I suppose you realize this would kill my mother.’

‘Kill her?’ Steven said.

‘I suppose’, he said, ‘you’ve put her up to it.’

‘You’re mad. Whatever’s got into you,’ his brother said.

Colin stood over the girl; he saw her now through a haze of blood.

‘Do you know what his mother would think if she came in now?’

‘What would she think?’ The girl trembled; her face, plaintive, wide-eyed, looked up at his.

‘She’d think you were trying to destroy her,’ he said.

‘Destroy her?’ His brother’s voice came from behind his back; then, urgently, he heard his brother say, ‘Take no notice of him, love,’ and thought then for a moment his brother’s shadow fell upon him.

‘It’d destroy her to see Steven here like this.’

‘But whatever’s the matter?’ the girl had said, gazing past him, appealing to Steven behind his back.

‘You’d better go. You’re trying to kill her. I know you’re killing her,’ he said.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ the girl had said again, appealing once more to his brother.

‘Nay, we’re going,’ Steven said. He’d already pulled on a coat; his face was flushed. ‘Nay, we’re going,’ he said again, taking the girl’s arm. ‘And I s’ll not come back.’

‘You will come back,’ he said.

‘I shall not,’ Steven said and, drawing the girl out with him, closed the door.

He could hear their steps across the yard.

He stood for a moment inside the door; finally he opened it.

The air was fresh: it was as if he’d come out from inside a furnace; even the smell of the pit revived him; he stood there for a while, his legs trembling, gazing at the field.

It was only when Richard came in from playing that he felt any different: he stood at the table and got his tea.

‘What is it?’ she said.

He’d recoiled, broken, rising from the bed.

‘Why, what is it?’ she said again.

Her breasts were thrust up above the sheet.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I should be going.’

Yet the thing that had driven him back had been her face; as he stooped towards her he saw lying there not the face of another woman but that of his mother, so clear and unmistakable, her features so deeply set, lit then by her smile, that he drew away, pushed back. Only slowly did the broadness of Elizabeth’s features re-appear.

‘Why? What is it?’ She drew herself up. ‘You needn’t go for hours.’

‘I ought to go,’ he said.

‘But the bus doesn’t go for ages yet.’

He stood by the bed, gazing to the curtained window. A bus went by in the road outside.

‘Is it the bed?’

He shook his head.

‘We can go to mine, if you like,’ she added.

‘No,’ he said.

‘They won’t be coming in for hours.’

‘Won’t they know you’ve slept in it?’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, yet as if she were familiar with using her sister’s bed and had done it frequently before. ‘Let’s go to my room, then,’ she added. ‘It’s bound to be different.’

He began to get dressed; she watched him now without speaking at all.

Finally, she said, ‘Has anything happened?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘I feel something has happened Colin,’ she said. ‘I wish you’d tell me.’ After a moment, she added, ‘Is it Phil?’

‘Why Phil?’

‘That you feel you’ve compromised yourself with him.’

‘Perhaps you feel that,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said, and added, ‘You’re the first person I’ve slept with since my husband.’

She began to cry. She turned her face against the pillow.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I think it’s, me.’ He sat on the bed. He might then at that moment have lain beside her.

‘You shouldn’t have come to me in this way,’ she said.

Her voice was buried against the pillow.

‘It’s too much,’ she added. ‘I want you to go.’

Yet he stood by her, helplessly, gazing down.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ he said.

‘I want you go to.’ Her voice moaned up at him; he was afraid to touch her. ‘What is it? Why have I done this?’ he thought.

‘Please go.’ She lay quite still, her head turned from him. There was nothing he could do at all.

He closed the door; as he went down the stairs he anticipated her calling him back; yet he knew he had inflicted a defeat, so carelessly, that the thought of what had occurred bemused him entirely.

Outside, in the drive, he looked up at the bedroom window: the curtains were still, there was no sign of life at all.

He walked through the Park; when he reached the town he rang her number. There was no reply.

He got on the bus and went back home.

‘I never accused her of anything,’ he said.

His brother gazed at him astounded.

The previous night he had brought Steven back. Having heard he was staying at a friend’s house across the village, he had waited in the road and had seen Steven in the distance talking to the girl then, later, as he approached his friend’s door had caught his arm.

‘You’re coming back home,’ he told him. ‘My mother’s come back and she’s out of her mind that you’re not at home.’

Yet, strangely, his mother had been careless of the fact that Steven was staying at a friend’s. Now she stood gazing at Steven in the door: he had come in suddenly and said, as his father got ready for work, ‘I left home, Mother, because of Colin.’

‘Why because of Colin?’ His mother had gazed at him half-smiling, unconcerned.

‘He threatened the girl I brought.’

‘What girl?’

‘Claire,’he said.

‘How did he threaten her?’

‘He accused her of wanting to kill you, Mother.’

His mother glanced at him in some surprise: her face had flushed. His father looked up, intensely, from fastening his boots.

‘I don’t understand,’ his mother said.

‘It’s a lie,’ Colin said. ‘I never accused her of anything.’

Steven gazed at him in disbelief; his sturdy, open face had darkened.

‘Why, he did,’ he said. ‘You can ask her mother. I had to take her home, she was so upset.’

‘But why on earth should he say she wanted to kill me?’ his mother said.

‘I never said such a thing at all,’ he said.

‘But this is wrong, Mother,’ Steven said. ‘He said it here. I heard him. It’s why I haven’t been home these last two nights.’

‘I thought you’d been staying with Jimmy,’ his mother said.

‘I have,’he said.

‘Well.’ His mother gazed at Colin in disbelief; her face was reddened from the sun: it had an openness, a sudden candour. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘What’s going on. It can’t be true. He’d never say that.’

There were tears now in Steven’s eyes.

‘But it is true, Mother,’ he said. ‘Ask him. Ask him to be honest.’

‘I am being honest. I never said such a thing,’ he said.

‘But he’s lying , Mother,’ Steven said. ‘He’s lying now as he lied to the girl.’

His mother looked at him in terror; there was some conflict between them she couldn’t recognize.

His father had risen.

‘Why did you bring her here?’ his father said to Steven.

‘Why shouldn’t I bring her here?’ he said.

‘You’re too young to bring girls into the house,’ he said. ‘Particularly on your own.’

‘ Were you on your own?’ his mother said.