David Storey - Saville

‘His bare hands,’ Stringer would say. ‘It’d take half an army to kill as many as that.’

‘Not with a machine gun,’ Batty would tell him, rushing strangely to Bletchley’s defence whenever his figures and exploits were questioned.

Some Sundays they went walking, usually for about an hour before tea. They spent some time getting ready. His father would clean his own shoes and his mother’s, rubbing at them with a brush and then with a duster as if he wished to rub them away, Colin cleaning his own shoes and Steven’s. Then they got washed and while his mother dressed Steven in a pair of grey shorts and a jacket Colin would put on his suit, his father coming down in his own, his face red and glistening, stooping over him while he inspected his ears and neck and then his hands. There would be several minutes waiting then while his mother went upstairs to get dressed, his father standing in the kitchen in front of the mirror, spreading cream in his hands from a small white bottle then rubbing it on his hair, combing it down with a parting at one side, the fringe neatly turned back on top, calling out over his shoulder, ‘Now, look. Stand still. Keep clean. Don’t move.’

When finally his mother came down in her best coat, dark brown and hanging almost to her ankles, she would bolt and lock the back door on the inside and put the key in his father’s pocket saying, ‘Have you got your handkerchief? Have you got any money?’ never troubling to look at herself in the mirror at which, although he had repeatedly combed his hair, his father still cast frequent glances. They would then all go through the front door.

It was the only time the front door was used to come in and go out of and his father, conscious of the windows across the street, would lock it carefully behind him, test it, then put the key in his pocket with the other one. ‘I never know why we lock it,’ he would tell her. ‘What have we to pinch?’

‘It’s surprising what people find once they get inside,’ his mother said and, looking up at the windows to make sure that they too were secure, they would set off down the street.

Colin always walked in front, holding Steven’s hand, his mother following behind with her arm linked in his father’s. Occasionally they would call out, ‘Pick your feet up. Don’t drag them. Take your hands out of your pockets. Your hair needs cutting. No wonder those shoes are worn out,’ or, if they were trying to walk with some care, ‘Come on, now. Walk a bit faster. We’re going to be treading on your heels.’

Invariably they walked through the village to the Park, his father, whenever they passed someone they recognized, whether he knew them or not, calling out, ‘Afternoon, Jack. Afternoon, Mick,’ the men often glancing across uncertain, nodding their heads. ‘They had that chap up last week for carrying matches,’ he would tell his mother and she would say, ‘That one? I don’t think it can be him. He drives a lorry.’

‘No, no,’ he would say. ‘He’s down the pit. I know him well,’ glancing back to make sure but seldom arguing further.

In the Park they would walk slowly round the paths that took them by the swings and the ornamental pool. Other families, often pushing prams, would be walking up and down or, if the day were dry, sitting on the grass, the men lying back asleep, the women sitting upright, knitting, talking across to one another, the children playing on the swings. ‘No going on swings on Sunday,’ his father said whenever Steven showed signs of wandering in that direction ‘keep to the path and keep your shoes clean.’

Usually on the way back Steven would ask to be carried, and though he often cried, tugging at his father’s hand and saying, ‘Dad, I want to,’ his father would say, ‘You’re walking. How can you get any exercise if you’re being carried about? And in any case, if I was going to carry you I wouldn’t have put on my suit,’ sometimes taking his hand however so that Steven could swing between him and his mother, Colin himself walking on ahead or, if he were feeling tired, following behind, his father occasionally turning and calling, ‘Come on. Don’t lag,’ and adding to his mother, ‘It’s like trying to drag a horse.’

Finally, when they reached the house, his father would unlock the door, his mother would go inside before him and, picking up the kettle, would set it on the fire before she removed her coat, his father mending the dying ashes with pieces of coal before he too removed his coat, and turning to the table – which was set already with cups and saucers – he would help to get the tea.

The air-raids began again the following winter and his grandfather came to live with them. He was a small, slight man with a straight back and thick white hair which, like his father’s, was still cut in a boyish fringe. His eyes too were light blue and the skin around them creased up in a half-smile. ‘This is a big lad you’ve got here, Harry,’ he would say, grasping Colin’s arm, standing him between his knees, feeling his biceps, or, when he had lifted Steven up, he would sing in a light voice, ‘Follow my leader, follow me do: I’ve got a penny here for you.’

‘Which pocket is it in?’ Steven would say, feeling round him.

‘Nay, Steve,’ he would say. ‘You’re as quick as your dad.’

He had been living with his father’s brother for some time but now the brother had been called up and he had come to live with them. He had only two teeth, one at the top and one at the bottom, and shortly after he arrived Colin’s mother took him to the dentist.

‘Last time I went they near tore my mouth to pieces,’ he said. When he came back he had no teeth at all. ‘They’ll be ready in a fortnight,’ he told Colin’s father. ‘What have I to do till then?’

‘You’ll be all right, Dad,’ his father said. ‘We’ll fill you up with beer.’

‘Beer,’ he said. ‘Beer did no good to any man. I’ve lived long enough to tell you that.’

Whenever the air-raid sirens sounded he sat under the table, smoking his pipe. The shelter had been dug up in the back garden and replaced by a metal one, of corrugated iron: each of the houses had one but many of them were full of water and refuse and none of them were used. ‘They’ll not frighten me,’ he said whenever his father tried to coax him out into the cupboard beneath the stairs. ‘I’m not frightened of any bombs.’

He would sit under the table with his legs stretched out, smoking his pipe, his head stooped forward. Or sometimes, if Colin’s father and his mother tried to coax him out together, he would crouch on all fours or lie on his side with his hands wrapped round one of the legs. ‘You get in,’ he would tell them. ‘I’ll be safe enough here. It’s not me they’re after.’ And later, when he had got his new teeth, he would crouch under the table with his pipe clenched between them as if they had been fixed, perpetually, in a grin.

The teeth were large and very white and he often sat in the doorway so that he could see Mr Shaw or Mrs Shaw or Mrs Bletchley, smiling whenever they appeared so that they would say, ‘Why, you look twenty years younger, Mr Saville.’

‘I don’t know about younger,’ he would say, sitting there again the next day, and the next.

In the evenings he would take the teeth out and brush them under the tap, then drop them into a jar full of water, taking them up to his room and standing them on a chair facing him by the bed. He slept in the same room that the soldier had slept in and on the same bed, and Steven, who had had the room for a little while, moved in with Colin.

His grandfather always wore his suit, which was dark blue and slightly too large for him, the sleeves hanging over his hands, the trousers drooping over his ankles. Each evening he hung it up on a coat-hanger, the trousers underneath and the coat on top, sometimes calling to his mother as he got into bed, ‘Ellen. Ellen. Come and hang up my suit,’ standing about impatiently until she had come and hung it up on a hook on the wall.