David Storey - Saville

‘I’ll buy you some more, Mother,’ his mother would say, ‘before I go.’

‘If you have the money you can always manage.’

Sometimes she stood over the pans with her eyes full of tears, wiping them away on the back of her hand, his grandmother taking no notice.

‘I’ve no patience with you, I haven’t,’ his father said when she got back, enraged himself and banging the table with his hand. Yet he would add, ‘No, no, sit down. I’ll make you a pot of tea before I go to work.’

Grandfather Saville had fought in the First World War. He would sit looking at the newspaper through a pair of heavy black-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose, his head held back, studying the pictures but never the text. ‘Look at this, Colin,’ he would tell him, holding the paper up so that he could see the picture of a burnt-out building or a tank with its turret broken open or slumped down in a hole without its tracks. ‘They don’t fight wars now like they used to. In those days it was man to man. Now they think nothing of bombing women and children, or shelling people miles away they never see.’

In the evenings when Colin was ready for bed and had changed into his pyjamas, and his mother had looked in his ears and at his neck, his grandfather would say, ‘Sit down, lad, for five minutes,’ and when his mother complained, saying, ‘He hasn’t even said his prayers yet, he’s going to be late into bed,’ he would answer, ‘What I have to tell him, Ellen, won’t take more than a nod of your head.’

Or when he was already in bed and had put out the light his grandfather would come in and say, ‘Are you awake, lad? They’ve sent me up to bed as well. Sitting down there listening to the wireless. They’ll listen to ought, people nowadays. In one ear, out the next.’

His grandfather had been to Russia. He would sometimes call to Mr Reagan in the street or in the backs saying, ‘Come in, come in. The missis will make us a cup of tea,’ and when Mr Reagan had come in and, carefully easing up his trousers, taken a seat at the table, he would say, ‘Did I tell you the time I was in Russia?’ and when Mr Reagan had answered, ‘Yes, I believe you did,’ he would say. ‘We went in to save the Czar. Would you believe it? A socialist all my life and when they call me up they send me to shoot the workers.’

‘War’s an unpleasant thing,’ Mr Reagan said, ‘even at the best of times.’ He was himself only a year ahead of the latest drafting and would sit at the table when his grandfather had finished, saying, ‘A colliery official like myself is as important to the pit as any miner, perhaps more so. Yet do I get deferment? I do not. Why, only the other day one of the owners came up to me and said, “We shall have to get someone out of retirement to take your place, Reagan, or one of the women out of the offices.” Why, it’s taken years of training to get where I am.’

‘Have you ever seen snow?’ his grandfather would ask him.

‘Snow?’ Mr Reagan said.

‘Marching for days with it up to here.’

‘Oh, a biscuit would go very well with it,’ Mr Reagan said whenever his mother put down his cup of tea. ‘That’s very kind of you indeed. Ah, ginger. A favourite.’

‘Moscow,’ his grandfather said. ‘Landed at Sebastopol in the Crimea and marched four hundred miles and all the way back again. Wolves? We fought everything. We even fought women.’

‘Women?’ Mr Reagan said, sipping his tea.

‘They come in at night when you’re asleep, with sticks and shovels, and try and take your food,’ his grandfather said. ‘Why, one woman could take ten men apart in a matter of seconds.’

‘I can well believe it,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘If they left wars to women they’d be over in half the time. Perhaps even sooner.’

‘When we left we were shelled.’

Mr Reagan nodded and bit his biscuit.

‘Came down on you from every side. The Heights of Sebastopol,’ his grandfather said. ‘We threw everything off the ship that we could and filled the hold full of women and children. Aristocrats. Hundreds of them. When we reached Istanbul they wouldn’t let them out until we’d de-loused them.’

‘Istanbul? Now, isn’t that in Turkey?’ Mr Reagan said.

‘Filled the holds with disinfectant and they had to swim around for hours. When I came ashore a woman offered me a gold necklace to marry her so that she could come back to England.’

‘That sounds a very tempting offer,’ Mr Reagan said, re-crossing his legs.

‘They were all at it. You could have anything you wanted,’ his grandfather said. ‘There was nowt they wouldn’t do, given half the chance.’

‘Here, Colin,’ his mother would say. ‘Will you take the bucket and fill it up with coal?’

‘It won’t do the lad any harm, missis,’ his grandfather said, ‘to hear where his forebears came from.’

‘The Irish Revolution’, Mr Reagan said, ‘was very much the same.’

‘You fought there, then, Mr Reagan?’ his grandfather said.

‘No, no. But I had an uncle who was killed in Belfast.’

‘The Black and Tans,’ his grandfather said.

‘Ah, yes,’ Mr Reagan said, and shook his head.

If his father came in and found them talking he would say to Mr Reagan, ‘Has my dad told you about the harem in Constantinople?’ and when Mr Reagan said, ‘No, no, I don’t believe he has, Harry, that’s the one thing he hasn’t mentioned,’ and winked at his father, he would add, ‘Show us your leg, Dad,’ and his grandfather would pull up his trouser to reveal a long white scar running the length of his calf. ‘There,’ his father said. ‘The guards caught him one as he was nipping over the wall.’

‘On the way out,’ his grandfather said, smiling with his new teeth.

‘On his way out, Mr Reagan,’ his father said.

‘It’s a miracle I’ve still got a leg at all,’ his grandfather said, laughing, his father getting up then as he choked to tap his back.

At night he said two prayers that his mother had taught him since starting Sunday School, kneeling by the bed, his head pressed against his hands. ‘God bless Mother, Father and little Steve, and make Colin a good boy. Amen’, and, ‘Lord keep us safe this night, secure from all our fears, may angels guard us while we sleep, till morning light appears.’ Then he said, ‘Please God, let me pass the examination. Amen’, and pressing his head against the blankets repeated it three times before climbing into bed.

His uncle called at the house. He was small like his father, with the same light-coloured hair and blue eyes and even the same moustache, though he was younger, and would come into the house without knocking, saying, ‘Ellen, and how’s our favourite lass?’

His mother’s temples reddened and she would turn away to the fire, to the kettle, and put on a pot of tea as if his appearance caused her no surprise at all, saying, ‘Don’t you knock before you come in?’ and he would say, ‘Not when I’m visiting my favourite sister.’

‘Sister-in-law,’ she would tell him and he would answer, ‘Well, then, aren’t I going to have a kiss?’

He had been called up into the Air Force and usually came in his uniform, his cap tucked into the lapel on his shoulder, parking a blue-painted lorry with an R.A.F. insignia on its cabin on a piece of waste ground at the end of the road. When he had kissed his mother on the cheek and hugged her a moment he would stand with his back to the fire clapping his hands together and saying, ‘Well, then, who wants a round?’ shadow-boxing for a while then adding, if no one responded, ‘Aren’t we going to have a cup of tea?’ and then, ‘Here you are, Steven. Here you are, Colin. See what I have in my pocket.’

He usually brought a bar of chocolate or, failing that, would bring out a coin and press it into their hands saying, ‘Don’t tell your mother where you got it or she’ll want it back’, and adding in a louder voice still, ‘Now, then, make sure she doesn’t hear.’