David Storey - Saville

‘In that case, you’re just confirming them in their roles,’ he said.

‘What rolls? Bread rolls?’

‘Encouraging them to submit to a situation which you, if you were in their place, wouldn’t tolerate at all.’

‘Nay, I wasn’t a duffer,’ the headmaster said. ‘Not that I’ve ought against duffers, but it’s no good teaching them the significance of higher mathematics or the beauties of Shakespeare if they can’t even spell margarine,’ he added.

‘What are the beauties of Shakespeare?’ he said.

‘Nay,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had the time. Unlike you, I’ve been concerned with practicalities.’ He paused. ‘You’ll be saying next I’ve done no good.’

‘I’d like to think you’d done some good,’ he said.

‘Half the children I have here are the children of parents I’ve taught myself. More than half, three-quarters,’ he said.

‘It doesn’t mean you’ve done them any good,’ he said.

‘Ask them. You ask them. Would they send their children here if it wasn’t any good?’

‘But they’ve nowhere else to send them,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t say their incomes quite rose to the level of a private education.’

‘Tha’s too clever for your britches,’ the headmaster said. He got up from his desk once more: he went to the window and gazed out at the flowerless flower-beds. ‘You’ll give me no choice if tha goes on playing the music,’ he added.

‘I think I’ll get a longer wire and play it in the corridor,’ he said.

‘What are you, Saville? A communist?’ He turned from the window and advanced quickly across the room. He stood directly over him so that Colin, as if threatened, slowly got up.

‘Yes,’ he said.

Corcoran gazed at him in disbelief: the redness of his face had faded to a deathly pallor. ‘Communists don’t play music. They’re utilitarians like me,’ he said. ‘Only, with renegades like you, they put you up against a wall. If you were a communist,’ he added, ‘you wouldn’t be teaching here.’

‘Where would I be teaching?’ he said.

‘Nay, thy’d be in some crack-pot school. Not stuck in a mining village, not stuck in a place where, if they knew you were a communist, they’d kick you up the arse to the village limits.’

‘There’s a communist on the local miners’ union,’ he said.

‘Miners’ union? Nobody belongs to a union here. There’s not one miner you could tell me who’s been to a union meeting in twenty-five years. They leave it to all these maniacs like you, communists who think they’ve got a bit of power without realizing that that conservative, apathetic body of supporters are using them : they use people like you, the working classes, to do their canvassing and haranguing for them. Colliery-workers are the most conservative body of people thy can possibly imagine. I ought to know, I’ve lived here fifty year: my father was a pit-man, and my brother is one, too. I’d have been down there meself, if I hadn’t have had the brains, and so would you. I’ll tell you: all they’re interested in isn’t changing society, but getting more money, and they’ll use a communist trade-union official, or King Kong if they want to, if they think he’ll do it for them.’

Colin stood back across the room: the headmaster, thumping one fist against his hand, paced up and down: it was as if, for a moment, he’d been forgotten.

‘Tha’s idealistic, like all of us were. Thy wants to change the world when the world itself doesn’t want a change: all it wants is bread and butter, preferably before anybody else, but with anybody else so long as it gets it. Lower the wages round here and you’d see a difference: put them up a bit each year and you’ll keep everything as it is. It’s why these communists never cotton on; if they kept the miners’ claims lower they’d have a chance: you’d see a revolution tomorrow morning. As it is, the silly buggers are sentimentalists like you, think because they’re working-men they live in the same conditions as they do in Russia. Why, a tramp is better off here than he is in any other country you mu’n care to mention. We’ve freedom here, tha knows. Freedom to do nought about ought if nobody wants to, and, if you want to know the truth, thank God that most of them don’t.’

‘You’re one of them,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you?’

‘No.’

‘You’re above it, then?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I know it could be different.’

‘Different to what?’

‘That people could be different. That the children could be different.’

‘Nay, they’ll still have to work down a pit,’ he said. ‘They’ll still have to work in a mill: they’ll still have to get married because they can’t control theirse’ns. They’ll still have to make do with nearly nought: what difference will music make, or poetry, or these books you’re alus on about? Tha’ll have ’em so refined they won’t want to work in a pit at all.’

‘Maybe that’s all to the good,’ he said.

‘Aye. Thy ’d say that stuck in front of an empty fire, or teaching in a frozen school. I’ve seen all thy idealists, you know, before: put a bit of hardship in the way and they’re up top screaming before anybody else.’

‘I think things can be changed,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should all take it in turn to work down a pit.’

‘In turn?’

‘Three months down a year wouldn’t do you any harm. It wouldn’t do anybody any harm, if it comes to that. It’d probably do us all a lot of good.’

‘I can see thy daftness growing every minute: you’ll have us out theer sweeping the bloody street up next.’

‘Why not?’

‘Why not? Because I’m trained and qualified to do something better. These skills don’t come out of the air, tha knows.’

‘It’s not difficult, teaching,’ he said. ‘You’d probably even do it better after three months sweeping the street.’ He looked out of the window now himself. ‘It could do with sweeping, in any case,’ he added.

‘I haven’t got the time, even if you have, to hold a philosophical discussion,’ the headmaster said returning briskly to his desk.

‘If you can’t hold it in a school where can you hold it?’ he said. ‘And if you can’t hold it with the head of a pedagogical institution, whom can you hold it with?’ he added.

‘Does that music go, or you?’

‘That’s for you to decide,’ he said.

‘Then you go, I’m afraid,’ he added. ‘Not that I’m not sorry. The football team’s improved by leaps and bounds since you came to the school. Unfortunately, life isn’t made up of bloody football. You’ll have two months’ notice from today and leave at the end of the term. I’ll notify the divisional office.’

‘What about a testimonial?’ he said.

‘For what?’

‘For another job.’

‘Art thy intending on remaining in teaching, then?’ He gazed up at him directly.

‘That’s all I’ve been trained to do,’ he said.

‘Nay, thy’ll not get a job with thy ideas,’ he said. ‘I’m a liberal headmaster. Wait till thy comes across one with a few ideas of his own. Thy gramophone and record’ll be out of the window.’ He tapped his teeth with the end of a pen. ‘I’ll write you a testimonial,’ he added. ‘I’ll put “independence of ideas not normally encountered in our profession” and they can make on that whatever they want.’

‘I’ll be sorry to leave on the whole,’ he said.

‘I’ll put it around and they can buy you a present.’

‘Oh, I don’t really want a present,’ he said.

‘Nay, I don’t hold any enmity,’ the headmaster said. ‘It’s just that I’ve got a job to do. I’ve done it, one road or another, for forty years. Nobody’s complained, as far as I reckon. Based on that experience, I’d say you were wrong.’