David Storey - Saville

Mrs Bletchley was small too and was always smiling. Her main dealings were with a Mrs McCormack who lived the other side. Mrs McCormack would stand with her broad arms folded, nodding her head whenever Mrs Bletchley called from her step, unable to resist the attentions of the other woman, for whenever Mrs Bletchley failed to come out, on a morning or in the evening, she would go and knock on her door and stand there, still as silent as ever, listening to Mrs Bletchley speak.

The Bletchleys’ son was called Ian. He was fat; his mother made all his clothes. His trousers were of grey flannel and ended just below his knees, which popped out beneath them as he walked. He had little interest in anything and would stand in the back door sucking his thumb and staring out at the children in the field.

In addition to his fat body he had a very large head, his features were gathered together in a straight line down the centre of his face, folds of fat drawing out the contours disproportionately on either side. His legs too were fat, they were flat at the back and flat at the front, the sides vaguely curved. The skin on the inside of his knees was inflamed: it was at this point that his legs rubbed together and each morning, before he went to school, Mrs Bletchley would rub them with cream.

On alternate Saturday mornings, if the weather were fine, she would set out a wooden chair in the yard and Mr Bletchley would sit on the step while his son sat on the chair and Mrs Bletchley cut his hair, snipping behind his ears with a comb and scissors. He often cried. Colin would hear him crying on a morning, and in the evening, and when he had his hair cut he would often scream, rising in his chair and attempting, unsuccessfully, to kick his mother. ‘You’ve cut me, you’ve cut me,’ he would shout.

‘No, dear,’ Mrs Bletchley would tell him. ‘I don’t think I have.’

‘You have. I can feel it.’

‘I don’t think so, dear. Let me have a look.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I can’t cut it unless I see it.’

‘I’m not letting you cut me any more.’

He would run off into the house, his knees already reddened from their chafing on the chair, Mr Bletchley standing up to let him by and occasionally going to the chair himself.

‘Oh, we’ll give him a minute, dear,’ his wife would say and stand waiting, occasionally sweeping up the bits she had cut into a pile.

‘If he was my lad,’ Colin’s father would say, watching from the step or the window, ‘I’d boot his backside.’

‘Well, you’re not his father,’ his mother said.

‘I would. From morning till night.’

Once, when his father was working in the garden, he had called out to Mrs Bletchley, ‘You’re as daft as a boat-hoss, missis.’

‘What?’ Mrs Bletchley had asked him.

‘You want to clout his backside.’

Mr Bletchley himself had looked away.

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to be patient.’

‘Aye,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But not for long.’

It was his mother’s idea that he should go to church with Bletchley. She had seen him several Sunday afternoons setting off for church, his legs creamed, dressed in a grey-flannel suit and a red-striped tie, and in the evening she had said, ‘Well, whatever you say about Ian, he’s always tidy.’

‘So’s a pig-sty,’ his father said, ‘if it’s never put to use.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘going to church won’t do you any harm.’

‘Who?’ his father said. ‘Him or me?’

‘Colin,’ she said.

They had both glanced at him. Then, just as quickly, they looked away.

‘I don’t want to go,’ he said.

‘No,’ his father said. ‘I suppose not. But then, you don’t want to do a lot of things.’

‘It’ll do you a lot of good,’ his mother said. ‘You could go with Ian. I’ll ask his mother.’

Two Sundays later he set off with Bletchley, in his own best suit, which he had scarcely worn since the birth of Steven.

Bletchley was silent for most of the way. There was the soft rubbing of his legs as he walked, the faint drag of one trouser leg against the other. He breathed heavily the whole time, occasionally snorting down his nose as if it were blocked and walking a little distance ahead as if reluctant to be seen with anyone else. In much the same way he walked in the street with his parents.

When, prior to setting off, Colin had appeared on the doorstep, Bletchley had regarded him with a great deal of surprise, his eyes, buried in folds of fat, gazing out at him with a surly distaste. Only as they neared the church, having passed the colliery and started up the slope, past the Park, towards the upper part of the village, did he turn round and say, panting slightly, ‘You believe in God?’

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding his head.

‘What’s He look like?’ Bletchley said, stopping and gazing at him.

In the Park, little more than a field stretching down at the side of the road, Batty was swinging on one of the swings in the recreation ground, pushing himself to and fro with one foot, and kicking Stringer, who was sitting in the next swing, with the other.

‘Like an old man,’ he said.

Bletchley examined him for a moment and said, ‘Have you seen Him?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘If you don’t believe in God they won’t let you in the door.’

‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘Well, I’ll tell them I do.’

‘They send you to see the vicar and he gets it out of you.’

Bletchley watched him a moment longer, then turned and, in much the same silence, continued up the slope.

From the swings Stringer had shouted, ‘Where’re you going?’

‘Church,’ he called.

Stringer nodded, glancing at Batty, but added nothing further.

The Sunday School was split into two groups. The Crusaders, who were eleven and over, sat in the church itself behind a row of banners clipped to the end of the pews, each bearing the emblem of a saint or an apostle: a bird for St Francis and a pair of fish with large eye-balls for St Peter. The Juniors met in the Church Hall, a small stone structure to the rear of the church, which at one time had been a barn. The floor was of bare wood and the walls were unplastered. A large fire at one end kept the place heated and throughout the meeting a small woman with red eyes would shovel on pieces of coke, sending up little puffs of smoke, wiping her eyes then her nose on her handkerchief as if she were crying.

The children sat on small wooden chairs arranged in circles. Each circle was supervised by a teacher, a young man or woman, they themselves overlooked by the vicar’s wife, a small, fat woman, in shape not unlike Bletchley himself, her eyes hidden behind a pair of thick glasses. Their own teacher was a man called Mr Morrison. He was tall and thin, with a long thin neck and a long thin face. On either cheek was a clump of bright red spots. He had a prayer book and a Bible which Bletchley, sitting on his right, held for him, handing them to him whenever they were required, his own face serious and extremely grave. They sang a hymn first under the supervision of the vicar’s wife, then they put their hands together and said several prayers, some of which the children knew by heart. They sang another hymn, then they sat down and Mr Morrison told them a story about a man who went fishing.

The teachers in the other groups were telling stories too, some of the children looking across at Colin, others sitting on their hands, gazing at the walls or ceiling.

In the roof were visible the timbers of the barn, old and gnarled as if they’d beer taken straight off a tree, and here and there pieces of string hung down as if at one time they had held decorations. Periodically one or two of the children went out to the lavatory, coming back to sit down again, folding their arms and staring at the roof. Everyone had on their best suit or dress, and clean shoes.