David Storey - Saville

He stood gazing down at the fire as she washed him. It was full of pieces of coal that had already caught alight.

‘Well, then. That wasn’t so bad,’ she said when she’d finished.

She knelt back on her heels by the bath, the apron damp between her knees.

‘You can get out now’, she said, ‘and dry yourself.’

‘Stand on the paper,’ she added, and gave him the towel.

He rubbed himself up and down, turned to the fire.

‘Now then. You see, that’s not dry,’ she said.

She took the towel from him and rubbed him, his body shaking at the force. She held him with one hand and rubbed him with the other.

‘Getting into dry pyjamas you want to be dry all over.’

Mr Shaw came in and picked up the bath. He opened the back door and carried it outside, emptying it down the grate.

Then he came in and picked up the damp sheets of paper, putting the bath away beneath the sink.

‘Now then, he looks as bright as a new pin,’ his wife said.

Mr Shaw nodded, gazing down at him.

‘Would you like a chocolate?’ he said.

He went up to bed and lay down in the clean sheets. They were like strips of ice. No matter how tightly he curled they burned him all over.

Sometimes at night, when he couldn’t sleep, he got out of bed and looked down into the garden next door, at the shelter, its black square mound at the end of the garden, at the rows of vegetables covered now, since his father’s absence, in weeds. It was all changed, as if it had been set down in a different place entirely. In the early mornings he could hear Mr Shaw get up and plod his way through the house, sometimes one of the brasses jangling as he caught it with his arm, his boots finally beating out across the yard and fading with the sound of other boots towards the colliery.

Each morning his father came in the kitchen, just back from work, ducking his head awkwardly in the doorway and smiling, Mrs Shaw sometimes offering him a cup of tea which he always refused. ‘Nay, you’re doing enough for me,’ he’d say. ‘I don’t want to put you to any more trouble.’

‘Ah, yes,’ she’d say as if she understood.

‘And how is he, then?’ he would ask, standing still in the doorway, his cap in his hand.

‘Oh, he’s no trouble at all,’ she said.

‘Is he eating, then?’

‘More than enough.’

‘See, Colin,’ his father would add. ‘I’ve fetched thee some chocolate.’ He would step in and lay it on the table, stepping back to the door.

‘Well, then,’ Mrs Shaw would say. ‘Aren’t you going to say thank you?’

‘Yes,’ he’d say and looking up he would see his father smiling, nodding his head.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ his father would add, flushing.

He preferred in the end not to see his father at all, or to go into the house next door when he knew he could see him alone. Yet, whenever he looked in the house before going to school, he would find his father already asleep, lying in a chair, the fire unlit, full of dead ashes, the curtains drawn, the pots from the meals still unwashed on the table.

It was as if everything had moved away. At school he found himself suddenly cut off.

One day he had begun to cry, covering his face with his hand.

‘Why, Colin. What is it?’ the teacher asked him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Now then,’ she said. ‘It can’t be that bad, surely.’

‘No,’ he said.

She held his head a moment against her smock.

He smelled the chalk there, and the dust from the cloth she used to clean the board.

‘Well then,’ she said. ‘Are you feeling better?’

‘Yes,’ he said, afraid to look up and see the other children.

Finally she took him to the teachers’ room. He sat there on a chair by the window, the book she had given him open on his knee.

He stared out at the colliery which backed on to the school across a lane. A column of white steam, thicker than a cloud, coiled slowly in the air. A little engine pulled a line of trucks in and out of the yard.

Every now and then another teacher came in, collected a book, glancing at him, smiling, then going out and closing the door. He sat quite still, watching the engine, looking up, flushing, whenever anyone came in to find him there.

Eventually the teacher came back and filled up a kettle, setting it on a gas ring by the door. ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

‘Yes.’ He nodded his head.

‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘You better run along. In five minutes it’ll be time for play.’

One morning he saw his father standing by the school railings, gripping the spikes and gazing over at the children.

The yard was full, everyone waiting to go in. When he ran over he saw his eyes lighten, their blueness suddenly blazing then, just as quickly, fading away.

He seemed shy to find him there, like picking out a stranger.

‘I came looking for you,’ he said. ‘I might not see you tonight when I get back. I’m going to see your mother early.’

‘Can I come?’ he said.

‘They won’t let children in the hospital,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you could. Don’t worry.’

‘When shall I see you?’ he said.

‘I’ll look in tomorrow morning. You’ll be all right.’

‘All right,’ he said.

His father gazed over the railings a little longer.

‘Shall I give you a kiss?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ he said, and put up his face, holding the railings.

His father leaned down, stooping over.

‘You’ll be all right, then, won’t you?’ he said.

‘Yes.’ He nodded.

Though his father had washed, the coal-dust was still imprinted round his eyes.

‘Well, then,’ his father said. ‘I’ll be off.’

He turned away and walked down the road to where his cycle was propped up at the kerb. At the corner, where it turned off between the school and the pit yard, he waved, his hand touching the neb of his flat cap before his bike swung away.

When he came home at tea-time Mrs Shaw was standing in the door, her arms folded beneath her apron, gazing down the street. His tea was already on the table. There was a piece of cake beside his plate.

‘Now, then,’ she said. ‘I bet you’re hungry.’

He ate all the tea she put before him. Some of it was sandwiches with meat inside. It was like setting out on a journey: he felt he might as well get all he could inside.

‘Would you like another piece of cake?’ she said and brought the tin out from the pantry, lifting the cake out on to a plate and cutting off another slice, and raking all the crumbs together with the knife.

As he ate it Mr Shaw came down. He had just got out of bed: his braces hung round his trousers and he hadn’t tucked in the tail of his shirt. His hair stood up around his head like grass.

‘Well, then, he’s eaten all that, has he?’ he said. ‘When we take them off we’ll find his boots are full of bread.’

Mrs Shaw came in later to tuck him into bed. ‘Well, then, sleep tight,’ she said and kissed him. It was the first time she had tried and he saw her eyes close as she stooped towards him. ‘Well, then,’ she said, tucking in the sheets.

For some time he lay awake, listening for sounds of his father next door. But, as on every other night, it was silent. Vague voices came through the wall from the house the other side.

In the morning he heard Mr Shaw going to work, the kettle being filled in the kitchen below as he made some tea.

He heard his boots finally clack out across the yard and some time later the pit hooter. It would be another two hours or more before his father came home from work. He imagined him coming out of the cage, blackened, crossing the yard to give in his lamp, going to the locker, washing, putting on his coat, getting his bike from the rack; then he tried to imagine the ride back through the lightening countryside, the hills, up some of which his father pushed the bike, the bends, the level-crossing which occurred at some point on the route, the bridge across a railway.