David Storey - Saville

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Saville: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Awards
The Man Booker Prize
Set in South Yorkshire, this is the story of Colin's struggle to come to terms with his family – his mercurial, ambitious father, his deep-feeling, long-suffering mother – and to escape the stifling heritage of the raw mining community into which he was born. This book won the 1976 Booker Prize.

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He turned on the gramophone.

The class was silent: a faint murmur of voices came from adjoining rooms.

The children gazed, abstracted, towards the front of the room as the music began.

A few moments later the door opened and Corcoran came in.

‘What’s this?’ he said.

‘English,’ he said.

‘It sounds more like music to me.’ The headmaster indicated the gramophone placed on the desk. ‘And what sort of music is it?’ he added.

‘Jazz.’

‘Jazz? What’s jazz? What’s jazz’, he said, ‘got to do with music?’

‘They’re writing down’, he said, ‘their various feelings appertaining to the music.’

‘What feelings?’ the headmaster said. His stocky figure swelled with indignation; his eyes protruded; a redness crept up from his neck across his cheeks; as Colin watched the colour deepened: veins stood out on the top of his head.

‘I don’t know what feelings they are until they express them,’ he said. ‘Neither do they, I assume,’ he added.

The headmaster turned his head to the blackboard so that his voice couldn’t be heard by the children, who were gazing at him now in fascination. ‘I’m not having this in my school: this is a place of education, of enlightenment, not an institution dedicated to the propagation of half-baked drivel.’

‘Perhaps you’d like to see their essays,’ he said.

‘I’d like to see nothing from this room until that noise has stopped,’ the headmaster said.

‘I’m not turning it off,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘If you want it off you’ll have to turn it off yourself. I want the children to see you do it.’

The headmaster’s eyes were dark; the pupils were entirely surrounded by white; light patches showed on either cheek: it was as if the blood had abandoned his face. He gazed at Colin with a sudden, malevolent fascination.

‘I’d like to see you in my room at the end of the lesson.’

‘All right,’ he said, ‘if I can fit it in.’

‘You’ll fit it in, all right,’ he said. ‘I’ll send Mr Dewsbury to take your lesson.’

‘I believe he’s otherwise occupied.’

‘Is he? Then I’ll send a prefect.’

‘They can’t keep control of a class, I’m afraid,’ he added.

‘Come to my room at break,’ the headmaster said.

‘All right,’ he said.

‘And I want that music off.’

‘You’ll have to turn it off.’

‘I want it off.’ The headmaster went directly to the door and closed it behind him.

Some time later the squat, broad-shouldered, bald-headed figure returned along the corridor; Colin turned the music a little louder.

He glimpsed the reddening of the already empurpled headmaster’s face, saw the brief falter outside the classroom door then the sudden upsurge of energy as, with a stumble, he hurried on.

When he went into Corcoran’s study later in the day the headmaster was seated behind his desk, intent seemingly on a pile of papers.

Colin sat down in a chair and waited.

‘Did I ask you to sit down?’ the headmaster said without raising his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But since you’re rude enough not to acknowledge me I’ll be rude enough to go on sitting.’

‘See here,’ the headmaster said, rising to his feet and coming round the desk. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Saville, but this sort of behaviour won’t do you or your future any good.’

‘You’ll have to leave me to be the judge of that,’ he said.

‘I’ll do no such bloody thing,’ the headmaster said. ‘ I ’ll be the judge of that. It’s me who runs this school, not you.’

‘And it’s me who teaches in it, unfortunately,’ he added. ‘I object to you or anyone else coming into my lesson, without permission, and attempting to disrupt it.’

‘I can come and go when and wherever I please,’ the headmaster said.

‘Not in my lesson, you can’t,’ he said. ‘Nor in anyone else’s, if you had any respect for the staff.’

‘What staff?’

‘Your staff.’

‘You call this a staff? Half of them couldn’t teach a bag of toffee. Half of them’, he added, ‘couldn’t cobble my shoes .’

‘With you standing over them I’m surprised they would even try,’ he said.

‘See here,’ the headmaster said again but stood gazing down at him in some perplexity. ‘I’m in charge round here,’ he added after several seconds.

‘If you’ve any comments to make on how I teach you’ve plenty of opportunity to make them away from the lesson. What authority do I have with the children if you come waltzing in whenever you please?’

‘I didn’t waltz in. I walked.’

‘I thought, on the whole,’ he said, ‘you came in more or less in time to the music.’

‘See here,’ the headmaster said again, and stood gazing at him once more in consternation.

‘There’s nothing wrong in playing music. I prefer to approach them from all directions.’

‘There’s only one direction to approach them from. I know : I’ve taught here for over thirty years.’ He swung out the toe of his laced-up boot. ‘On the end of that: that’s the direction I approach these rough-necks from.’

‘I disagree.’

‘Nay, tha’s not above giving them a wallop: I’ve seen you do it myself,’ he added.

Colin waited.

‘What would the Inspector say if he came in a classroom and found you playing that?’

‘I’m not particularly interested in what he would say.’

‘I can tell you what he would say,’ he said. ‘And what he would say to me,’ he added.

‘Are you frightened of him?’ he said.

‘I’m frightened of nobody,’ the headmaster said and returned swiftly to his desk. ‘N-o-b-o-d-y: nobody.’ He picked up a pen and gazed down, disconcerted, at the pile of papers.

‘I intend to go on using music,’ he said. ‘Of any kind. If you don’t wish to support me you’ll have to fire me.’

‘See here, Saville.’ He gazed at him once more across the desk. Then he added, ‘Have you had your coffee?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Even that’s not very good round here. I’ve been in schools where the girls brewed a coffee which made a playtime well worth having. Our girls, I don’t think, could cook an egg.’

‘Maybe you should leave and I should take over here,’ he said. ‘I’m not that concerned about the coffee.’

‘And neither am I,’ the headmaster said. ‘What I’m concerned with is running a practical and efficient educational institution, and all this airy-fairy nonsense, all this dissolute and promiscuous-making music, has got no part in it at all, either for me, or anyone else,’ he added.

He waited once again; he crossed his legs.

‘See here, it’s my opinion you’re a very good teacher,’ the headmaster said. ‘You’re arrogant and rude, but that’s your youth: a few years of what I’ve been through and you’ll have those edges knocked off. I can tell you that for nothing. A few more years, like some of us have been through, you’ll toe the line and allow experience to speak instead of ignorance and good intentions. We all had good intentions: I had good intentions; Mr Dewsbury and Mrs Wallsake had good intentions; unfortunately good intentions don’t butter parsnips, they don’t redden beetroots and they don’t sweeten swedes; the only things that do are practical measures to ensure that they know what four and four add up to and what happens to the water when they boil a kettle. After all,’ he added, ‘where are most of these children off to? When they leave here the majority’ll go into factories that don’t go down the pit: they’ll work on the roads, they’ll dig holes and clear out ditches; the girls’ll do nought but work in a mill, get married and have children: children we ’ll be expected to do summat with. So where’s the music come into that? They can listen to music when they get home at night: that’s about all they do do, some of them. All thy wants to teach them is how to read a rent book, add up the week’s wages, and write a letter of application if they want a job. Apart from that, they’ll not thank you, neither will their parents, for teaching them something that doesn’t come through on the bread-and-butter line. The bread-and-butter line is the only line of advancement these people understand.’

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