David Storey - Saville

His father was very attracted by Mr Reagan. He was the only man in the street who didn’t work shifts, who had regular hours, who dressed like a gentleman and who never seemed to care about his wife. On a Saturday night he would go to the Institute dressed in his suit, with his bowler hat and gloves, and stand at the bar never showing, despite the quantities of liquor he consumed, the least discomfort. The miners at the pit stood a little in awe of him: he made up their wages, was responsible for explaining their stoppages, and knew what every man in the village earned. In addition, he would fight any man by whom, for one reason or another, he felt he’d been abused.

His father would describe Mr Reagan’s fights in some detail, and they frequently followed the same pattern. In most instances they took place at the bar of the Institute, and invariably began with some comment on Mr Reagan’s appearance, on the hat he never took off, except at the office, or as he entered his front door, on the yellow gloves which, similarly, he never removed, or on the rolled umbrella which he never opened, even when it rained.

Mr Reagan himself, in fact, would give no indication to begin with that anything untoward had occurred. He would continue whatever it was he was doing, talking, smiling, gazing benevolently around until, at a point determined entirely by himself, he would put his glass down, resting it a moment on the counter as if he suspected very much that, out of his grasp, it might disappear for good, then, with the same gravity, remove first his hat which he would lay beside his glass, then his right glove which he would lay on the hat, then his left which he would lay on the right; then, finally, he would hoist up his cuffs.

‘Would it be you’, he would say, turning slowly to the person in question, ‘who passed a comment upon my appearance a moment ago?’

The man, quite frequently, would look round puzzled, the moment for him, at least, having passed.

‘If so,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘you’re on the very point of having your teeth pushed down your throat.’

Occasionally the man would deny all knowledge of having made any comment on Mr Reagan’s appearance, or indeed on anything at all.

Other times, however, he might nod his head, smiling, and say, ‘Oh, and who’s going to do that for you?’

‘Why,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘I have the feller here just ready for the job.’

According to his father, who watched over Mr Reagan’s fights with an almost evangelical passion, Mr Reagan seldom hit his opponents more than once, so fast and so hard was his initial blow. If more were required he provided them, if not he turned with the same casual momentum to the bar, pulled down his cuffs, replaced his gloves, then his hat, tilting it to the angle he favoured best, and picked up his glass. Raising it, he would empty its contents at a single swallow.

His father, when he felt strong enough to go outside, spent much of his time now with Mr Reagan. He would stand at the window at tea-time and wait for him to come down the road from the colliery office, then he would come into the kitchen, wait impatiently for fifteen minutes while Mr Reagan had time to consume his tea and glance at the paper, then go out along the backs, rocking on his rings and swaying on his walking stick, and tap on Mr Reagan’s back window calling, ‘Are you in there, Bryan? Don’t tell me they’ve let you out already?’

Sometimes Mr Reagan would return along the backs with him and putting down a folded newspaper sit on the doorstep, his collar and waistcoat undone, his braces showing at the back when he leaned forward.

His father would argue with him about his work. ‘If I worked the hours you did, and did nought but lick envelopes and fill in forms and count out other people’s money, I’d fall asleep before ever I started.’

‘Ah, well,’ Mr Reagan would say. ‘I know the feeling well. But then, any silly fellow can heave a pick and shovel. It takes a man with brains to sit on his backside all day and get paid for it.’

His father would nod and laugh, looking in at Colin and his mother inside the kitchen as if this were just the answer he wanted them to hear.

‘In any case,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘you don’t do so much yourself. Two pot legs and a pot arm: it’s a wonder there aren’t more at it.’

‘Aye,’ his father would say, sadly. ‘I’m lying around like any old woman.’

‘Oh, now,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘I wouldn’t say it was as bad as that.’

Whenever his mother protested Mr Reagan would add, his accent thickening, and bowing his head, ‘Oh, now, Mrs Saville, not counting yourself.’ And then, tipping his head in the direction of his own house he would add, ‘But there are some, you know, who go round flicking dusters all day till you can’t put your foot down without breaking your neck, who dress their lads up like lasses and have them scraping cat-gut all evening till you don’t know where you are from one minute to the next.’

Yet Mr Reagan himself seemed either too indifferent or too lazy to do anything about it. He would sit on the step, or stand by the fence, shouting at the cricketers, the colour of his face slowly thickening, but in the end, his arms swinging loosely, he would turn back to the house. Occasionally he would come out into the yard with a violin and chop it into pieces. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do with it,’ he would shout. ‘And I’ll tell you what I’ll do with him too in a minute.’ Sometimes he would do the same with his son’s clothes, which his wife made specially for him, little suits and bright blouses, standing in the yard ripping them up and stamping on the pieces, his face so red it seemed it would burst.

‘And yet why do I do it?’ he would say to his father. ‘I have to pay for all the damned things in the end.’

Whenever his father asked Mr Reagan about working at the pit he would look up, surprised, and say, ‘Why, you’re better off where you are, Harry. If I told you some of the things that went on there you’d never walk past the place.’

‘Oh,’ his father said. ‘One pit’s much the same as another.’

‘Aye,’ Mr Reagan would say. ‘That’s why I’d stick with what I’d got.’

Perhaps Mr Reagan did put in a word with the management. Yet when his father went to see them, shortly after the pots on his arm and legs had been removed, he came back looking pale and discouraged. Colin saw him walk up the street, his legs straddled slightly as he tried to walk without the stick, and go into the house without as much as glancing in his direction. When he went in his father was sitting at the table, his arms laid out before him, his back stooped.

‘They want you where you are,’ his mother was saying. ‘They know how valuable you are.’

‘Valuable? I’m not valuable. I could be killed tomorrow and there’d be somebody to take my place.’

‘It’s not what you always say,’ she told him.

‘Say?’ he said. ‘What do I say?’

‘How valuable you are. Where you work at the moment.’

‘Aye.’ He nodded his head, not looking up from the table. ‘I have to say that. If I don’t, what am I? Just another piece of muck.’

In the end he went back to his old pit. Even when he could walk without the stick, and had long lost his limp, there was a slowness in his movements as if some part of his life had been arrested.

He started Sunday School. He went with a boy called Bletchley who lived in the house next door.

His mother until then had had little relationship with Mrs Bletchley: she was not unlike Mrs Shaw, who lived the other side. Though no brasses hung on her walls, her floors were covered in rugs and carpets, lace curtains hung in the windows, and in the front window stood a plant with flat, green leaves that never flowered or seemed to grow. Mr Bletchley was one of the few men in the terrace who didn’t work at the colliery. He was employed at the station and occasionally when Colin went there he would catch sight of Mr Bletchley carrying a large pole and supervising the shunting of the trucks in the siding, or walking to and fro across the lines. He was a small man, with sallow cheeks, and seldom spoke to anyone at all.