David Storey - Saville

He opened a cupboard and lifted out a bottle.

He set two cups on the floor and proceeded to fill them.

‘You’ve never been in here before?’ he said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Your father came one night. It was kind of him to bother. Mrs Bletchley came as well. She’s been two or three times. She was fond of my mother. She’s even been to see her, though my mother didn’t recognize her. She’s got something matter with her leg as well.’

‘What?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It might be cancer. None of them give her much chance.’ He added, after drinking from the cup, ‘I’ve never heard of cancer in the leg before.’

From outside came the quiet panting of the pit. The light was dim, there was no shade around the bulb.

‘Do you want to sit on the chair?’ Colin said.

‘No, no,’ Michael said, and sat on the floor. ‘I don’t light a fire,’ he added. ‘I’m not often in.’

‘When do you propose to go to London?’ he said.

‘Oh, I’ve one or two opportunities I want to look at first,’ he said. ‘The whole style of music, you see, has changed. The one I was brought up in has gone for ever. The story of my life.’ He finished the cup and half-filled it once again.

Colin, less quickly, drank from his.

‘Have you noticed how there are no young people living here,’ he added. ‘There are hardly any young ones at the pit. They don’t even play cricket in the field any more: Batty, Stringer, your father, Shaw – they’re all too old. And there’s no one, as far as I can see, has taken their place. They’re even talking of shutting up the pit.’

‘Yes,’ he said, for his father had mentioned this some time before.

‘It’s too old-fashioned, and its resources are too limited,’ Michael said. ‘Just think: my father worked there all his life. And Shaw. And your father’s worked there a year or two himself.’ He raised his head. ‘Do you remember that time we walked to Brierley, and a man gave us a lift in the cab of a lorry? Oh, how I’d like to go back to then. Everything seemed certain and safe, though I don’t suppose it was, or didn’t seem so at the time. I never did know what relevance that name was supposed to have: the one the man told me to mention to my father. I suppose now we’ll never know,’ he added.

He began to moan to himself a little later: his head dropped. He hadn’t taken off his coat; his hat, which he’d hung on a hook, had dropped to the floor.

Finally, when Colin called to him, he shook his head: he’d been drinking heavily, he’d assumed, throughout the evening. As Colin stood up, Michael slumped to the floor.

He lifted him, astonished at his lightness; with considerable difficulty because of the length of his body he carried him upstairs.

The main bedroom at the front was empty; so was the second bedroom at the back.

In the tiny remaining bedroom was a single bed.

Colin laid Michael down and took off his coat.

‘Is that you, Maurice?’ he said and put up his arms, speculatively, reaching out.

‘It’s Colin,’ he said. ‘I’ll cover you up.’

‘Oh, Colin,’ Michael said, as if he had trouble remembering who he was.

He took off the raincoat, removed Reagan’s shoes and drew the blanket over him. His socks were in holes; his feet stuck out at the end of the bed; the shirt, too, he noticed, was black at the collar.

He turned off the light.

Michael made no sound.

Colin took out the key from the lock downstairs, let himself out of the front door, then posted the key back through the letter-box.

Then, his hands in his pockets, he went up the street towards his home.

‘What do you think to it?’ she said. The room looked down into a tiny yard. From the open window at the opposite end came the bustle of traffic in the street outside.

‘Do you mind living here?’ he asked.

‘Mind?’ She watched him with a smile. She seemed content.

‘You’ve always had a house before. Even your sister’s house,’ he said.

‘Haven’t you ever lived on your own?’ she said.

‘No,’ he told her.

‘You ought to try.’

She moved across the room; there was a faded carpet on the floor; the furniture was old. The wallpaper was faintly marked: it sprawled in a dull pattern of sepia flowers across the walls.

‘I’ve never been able to afford it,’ he said.

‘Oh, you always go on about money.’

‘It’s all there is to go on about,’ he said, ‘or very nearly.’

‘Where you come from,’ she said. ‘But not where I come from.’

Yet she was disconcerted by his dislike of the room; it might have been the first time she’d lived on her own herself. The flat was in no way like the stolid elegance of her sister’s house, with its polished floors, thick rugs, and heavy, chintz-covered chairs and mahogany furniture.

‘Where did you live with your husband?’ he said.

‘We had a house. Near one of the shops. His family bought it. It stood in a little park, a stone affair, with an asphalt drive. It had eight bedrooms.’

‘Did you sleep in separate rooms?’ he said.

‘No.’ She laughed; the inquiry, suddenly, lightened her mood. ‘We had a nephew staying with us. He was going to one of the local schools.’

She was small and serious; some reflection on the past, or her home, brought back a darkening of her expression. She glanced away towards the window: perhaps the desolation of living in a flat, alone, with no connections, had suddenly occurred to her. He was surprised she’d chosen such a neglected place: the house, one of a row of old Victorian terraces, occupied a street opening off the city centre; many times he’d walked past it on his way to school.

‘What was your husband like?’ he said.

‘I believe I told you.’

She stood now with her back to him; it was as if he’d cast her off entirely.

‘I prefer a small place, actually,’ she said. ‘For one thing, I never liked the Snainton house. It was dark and huge and damp and cold and there never seemed to be anyone in it.’

‘Were you in it alone all day?’

‘I worked at the shop.’

‘What sort of work?’

‘I supervised the office. We manufactured carpets, and sold them retail, you see, as well.’

He grasped her arm, she was very light and slim: he could almost have lifted her in one hand. Yet, in other moods, she seemed heavy and unwieldy, as if she wouldn’t be moved, physically, by anything at all. He had never known anyone whose physique, seemingly, changed with every feeling; even the texture of her skin varied from soft to hard – it appeared to be something over which she had no control herself.

She’d turned now and looked up at him directly.

‘Why won’t you commit yourself?’ she said.

‘To what?’

‘Anything.’

She released herself and moved away.

‘In any case, I shouldn’t ask. I’ve nothing to reproach you for.’

Once, when they were walking round the town, she had shown him her parents’ house. It stood in a tree-lined road beyond the grammar school, a large, detached, brick-built house in the garden of which a man not unlike his father was working, overailed, stooped with age, grey-haired.

He could never understand why she hadn’t gone back there to live.

‘What do your parents think?’ he said now, gesturing at the room.

‘About this?’ she said. ‘They haven’t seen it,’ and, a moment later, half-amused, she’d added, ‘Why do you relate everything to parents? Are you so inextricably bound up with yours?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s economics.’

‘Is it?’ she said, and added, still smiling, ‘I’m beginning to wonder.’ And a moment later, still watching him, she went on freshly, ‘In any case they haven’t seen it. Nor, I’m glad to say, are they likely to.’