David Storey - Saville

‘It wouldn’t do it any harm to fold it over a chair,’ Colin could hear her say through the wall.

‘Nay, I’ve had that over twenty year, Ellen.’

‘You bought it two years ago,’ she would tell him.

‘No, no,’ he would say. ‘It was longer than that.’

He had a special regard, perhaps because of the suit, for Mr Reagan, and Mr Reagan had a similar regard for him. ‘A good suit is a good suit,’ Mr Reagan would say. ‘And there’s nothing in this world quite with which to compare it.’ And when his grandfather had asked Mr Reagan to inspect his teeth, smiling for him or even, on some occasions, taking them out, Mr Reagan would say, ‘I always say a good set of teeth make up for any deficiency of face. And that, mind you,’ he would add, ‘I’m saying to someone whose face, if you’ll pardon the expression, doesn’t come into that category at all.’ On other occasions, when they had been out for a walk together, to the Institute or down to the allotment to see Colin and his father digging, he would say, ‘There’s many a restraint I’ve to put on the women, Harry, now that your father’s walking through the place.’ And when his father laughed he would add, ‘Oh, now. He’ll be coming back from his walk one of these days a married man.’

His grandmother had died long before Colin was born and his grandfather had been a widower for many years. ‘He always says twenty years about everything,’ his mother told him, ‘because that’s when his wife died.’

‘Aye,’ his grandfather would say. ‘She was a fine woman. They don’t make them like that any more.’

He saw too, occasionally, at this time his mother’s father and mother. They lived in the next village, four miles away, and on some Saturdays he would go with his mother and Steven on a bus to visit them. They lived in a row of little houses built specially for old people. Each house consisted of a single room from which an alcove opened out on one side, and in which, behind a curtain, stood a metal double bed, and on the other a small alcove which was used as a pantry. A door led directly into the house from a footpath at the front, and at the back a porch led to a lavatory and a tiny walled-in opening in which they kept coal. Sometimes at week-ends his father filled a sack of coal and having roped it to his bike, laying it across the pedals, he and Colin between them would push it the four miles to the next village and tip the coal into the little opening. ‘I get it at reduced rates,’ his father would say. ‘It’s cheaper than them buying it,’ or when they got back, riding on the bike, Colin sitting sideways on the cross-bar between his father’s arms, his father would say, ‘Has your mother told you what her father was when I met her?’

‘He was a farmer,’ his mother would say.

‘A small-holder, a small-holder,’ his father would tell him, almost shouting. ‘He kept pigs. He was a pig-breeder. You had to be in love, I can tell you, to step inside that house.’

His father would sit laughing in his chair while his mother complained, then he would add, ‘Ah, lass, you know I love you. I married you all the same.’

‘We kept other things as well,’ his mother would tell him, ignoring his father, her face flushing, her eyes large.

‘Aye, but pigs is all you smelled!’ His father would lie back in his chair laughing and slapping his knee with his hand or, if he were smoking, sit choking on his cigarette. ‘Pat us me back, pat us me back,’ he would say. ‘I forgive you.’

His mother’s father and mother were perhaps even older than his grandfather. They were called Swanson; the name was embroidered on a piece of cloth which was framed and hanging over the high mantelpiece of their room: ‘To Edith and Thomas Swanson on their Golden Wedding’, beneath which was the date and, in smaller lettering, ‘From the Old People’s Guild’, the writing itself surrounded by a border of pink flowers and small blue-birds swooping in between.

Grandfather Swanson would either be sitting by the fire, which was set in a high range on the wall at the level of his knees, or lying on a couch at the back of the room. He very seldom moved when they were there, only his head rising occasionally when they came in, after knocking, and his grandmother had said, ‘Ellen’s come to see us, Tom,’ his dark eyes turning slowly in their direction before his head sank back on the couch or the chair. His grandmother had a small, very round face as if, all the time, she were puffing out her cheeks. They were always bright red, particularly in winter, and her eyes which were greyish were very narrow so that when she smiled they almost disappeared. She often got Colin’s name mixed up with Steven’s and with the name of some other grandson he had never met, so that she would often say, ‘Would you like a sweet, Barry, or an apple?’ then look up when he didn’t answer. ‘Now,’ she would say, the grey eyes shining, ‘I don’t know which one it is.’

Sometimes his mother came away from his grandmother’s crying. Some time after they had arrived his grandmother would say, ‘You’d think you’d get more help from your own daughters as you grow older,’ and his mother would say, ‘I do help you, Mother. Harry brings you coal, and I come over and do your washing.’ Sometimes, too, his mother would do the cleaning. While his grandfather and his grandmother sat by the fire she would put on an apron she’d brought with her, fill a bucket at the sink in the corner, then scrub the floor. Outside she would scrub the front step and the paving stone below it and scone it with a yellow stone so that when it had dried it glowed a dull yellow. She would do the same with the back door and then make the big double bed with its brass rails and brass head-piece, and clean the small, heavily curtained windows, borrowing a pair of steps from a woman next door. The washing she did in a shed built at the back of the houses. Colin never went there, for his mother, ashamed to be seen working in these conditions, with pumped water and where the washing was beaten against a stone, refused to let him inside. He would play on a piece of bare ground between the shed and the houses while he waited, or sit with his grandmother by the fire. When his mother came in from hanging the clothes up she would say. ‘You can ask Mrs Turner to get them in, Mother, when they’re dry.’

‘Oh, we’ll be all right,’ his grandmother would say.

‘I’ve to get back for Harry’s supper. He’ll be off to work,’ his mother would add.

‘Don’t worry,’ his grandmother said. ‘We’ll manage somehow.’

And when they got back home and his father could see that she had been crying he said, ‘Take no notice. They’re like that. Just do as you see fit.’

‘I never get any thanks. Ever,’ she said.

‘Then don’t go expecting any,’ he told her.

‘If I did nothing at all she’d have some right to complain.’

‘Aye. She’d be in a right mess all right.’ His father would look away, uncomfortable when she cried.

Sometimes on the bus back the conductor said, ‘Are you all right, love?’ leaning over her, his hand on the back of the seat.

She would wipe her eyes then blow her nose and try to see the money in her purse.

‘People are like that when they grow old,’ she said, and other times she would say, ‘Never expect anything of people then you’ll never get hurt.’

However, at Christmas or on their birthdays she would take over a present or even a special cake that she had baked herself. ‘There’s a time for forgiving,’ she would say whenever his father complained and he would turn away saying, ‘Let them find out what it’s like on their own. They’ll soon come begging.’ On their birthdays, or sometimes on the Saturdays when she went over, she would cook them a meal, grandfather Swanson lying on the couch gazing at the ceiling, his white hair falling in thin wisps over his cheeks, his grandmother sitting in a rocking chair by the fire saying, ‘Two potatoes will be enough,’ or, ‘If you use all that cabbage, Ellen, we’ll be without for the rest of the week.’