David Storey - Saville

When his father came in he was always serious, saying, ‘How are you, Jack?’ shaking his hand before sitting down at the table and perhaps adding, ‘Have they given you a cup of tea?’

‘It’s on the boil, Harry,’ he’d tell him, clapping his hands again and looking over at his mother. ‘I wish I was a miner and that’s for sure. Fighting on the Home Front. There’s nothing to beat it.’

‘Oh, I’ll swop you any time,’ his father told him. ‘Riding around in a lorry. You never risk ought but a bloody puncture.’

‘Don’t worry. The Jerries are over our station every night,’ his uncle said.

‘He doesn’t look as though he’s worried, does he, Dad?’ his father said and his grandfather shook his head and added, ‘Have you brought us ought, Jack? What’s in the back of your lorry?’

They walked down sometimes and looked inside and sometimes his uncle would say, ‘Come on, Colin. Jump up inside,’ and they would sit together in the large seat, smelling of oil and petrol, Steven sitting between Colin’s legs, while his mother would say, ‘Don’t take them far, Jack, I want them back for dinner.’

‘Just round the town,’ his uncle would shout over the roar of the engine, which he revved up for some time before they began, attracting the attention of the people in the other houses.

He drove, always, very fast. They started with a jerk, the tyres squealing, and ended with one. Because he was a small man his uncle’s head was scarcely visible from outside and he would sit on a cushion, occasionally half-standing to see ahead, pulling himself up on the wheel and saying, ‘Now, then, what happens here?’ whenever they came to a bend. If someone got in the way he would shout out, ‘Just look at that. They don’t know how to use a road let alone a vehicle.’

‘Mad Jack they used to call him,’ his father said when they got back. ‘And Mad Jack he still is.’

‘Mad as a hatter, me,’ his uncle said and if his father had come down from his afternoon sleep before going off on the night shift he would say, ‘Don’t you keep proper hours in this house? I keep coming here hoping to find you at work and my lovely sister-in-law on her own.’

‘It’s a good job I do work nights,’ his father would say, sitting down at the table and looking up, blinking his eyes, at his brother.

For several weeks before the examination Colin had returned to doing his nightly essays and his nightly sums while his father sat across the table correcting them, occasionally, if he had to go to work, leaving them on the sideboard to correct when he came home in the morning. ‘What’s the decimal for three-tenths?’ he said when he came down on a morning. ‘They won’t give you any longer than that. How do you spell hippopotamus?’

The day before the exams he and the other children who were taking them were given a new pen, a new pencil and a new ruler at school to bring home with them. In the evening Colin had gone to bed early, his mother coming up to tuck in the blankets and his father coming up before he got ready for work. ‘Think of something nice,’ he said, ‘like your holidays, and you’ll soon be asleep. An extra hour’s sleep before midnight is as good as half a dozen next morning.’ And after he had gone out his grandfather came in and said, ‘Are you asleep, lad? Spend this on ought you like,’ putting a coin in his hand. When the door had closed he put on the light and saw that it was half-a-crown.

He seemed to be awake all night. He heard his father go to work, wheeling his bike out into the yard, calling out to Mrs Shaw as she came out of her door to get some coal. Then, only a few minutes later it seemed, he heard his grandfather climbing into bed and singing as he often did now, ‘Rock of Ages, cleft for me,’ his voice trailing off into a vague murmuring and moaning. Then, later, he heard his mother raking the fire and bolting the back door, coming up the stairs to her room, saying something to Steven, who for that night was sleeping with her, then going back down to bring him a drink. All night he lay awake turning fifths into decimals, decimals of a pound into shillings and pence, spelling circumference, ostrich and those words that his father had made him learn by heart. He was still struggling to convert a fraction of a yard into feet and inches when he felt his mother holding his shoulder and saying, ‘It’s time to get up, Colin. I’ll warm some water for your wash.’ When he went down his clothes were lying over the arm of the chair by the fire, his trousers pressed, his socks just mended, his shoes freshly polished in the hearth. His mother had been up early to iron his shirt and it was stretched on a clothes horse in front of the fire. ‘I cleaned your shoes then you won’t get polish on your hands,’ she said. The bowl of water stood steaming in the sink.

A little later his father came back from work, wheeling in his bike, the shoulders of his overcoat and the top of his flat cap wet, the wheels of the bike leaving a wet track on the floor. ‘It’s just started,’ he said. ‘Cold enough to snow,’ shaking his coat as he took it off. ‘Have you got a bit of spare paper’, he added, ‘to put in your pocket? It’s just what you’ll need for working things out.’ He washed his hands at the sink, then tore a sheet from the colliery pad and folded it up ready for him to take. ‘Is his ruler and his pen out?’ he asked his mother, and took them down off the mantelpiece to examine the nib, saying, ‘This isn’t very strong. One good bit of writing and it’ll break in two. Haven’t we got one he can take with him, Ellen?’

‘They’ll have all that there,’ she said. ‘I should just leave him to get on.’

‘Aye, he’ll be all right,’ his father said, standing by the table, rubbing his hand along the back of the chair, gazing down at him, then at his mother, then staring helplessly about the room. ‘Remember what I’ve told you,’ he said. ‘Before you write ought down think. They’ll not go much by somebody who’s always crossing out.’

When Steven came down his father lifted him up and said, ‘Now, then. Are we going to have another scholar in the house?’ Steven struggling to get down to the table where his bowl of porridge was waiting. ‘If he does his sums as well as he eats we’ll be all right,’ his father added. ‘We’ll none of us have to worry.’

When his grandfather came down still in his pyjamas he said, ‘Where’s my tea? Nobody brought me up my tea this morning, missis,’ and when his mother said, ‘Oh, we’ve got more important things to think about,’ he looked down at the table and said, ‘Porridge, now that’s going to fill out his brains.’

‘Aren’t you going to eat it, Colin?’ his mother asked him.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t feel hungry.’

‘You want something. You’ll do nothing with an empty stomach,’ she said.

‘It’s nerves,’ his father said. ‘I get the same feeling when I’m going down at night.’

‘He can take an apple,’ his mother said, gazing down at him, her hands clasped together. ‘He’ll soon fill up when it’s over.’

When he was ready he picked up the ruler and the pen and pencil and put the piece of paper in his pocket with the apple his mother gave him in the other. He pulled on his black gabardine raincoat and his cap, and his mother said, ‘Nay, not out of the back. You can go out of the front today.’

She’d already gone to fetch her coat, saying, ‘I’ll come down to the bus stop with you,’ and he’d said, ‘No, I’d better go on my own.’

‘Well, if you’re sure,’ she said.

She held the door open, holding Steven in her arms and saying, ‘Are you going to kiss him for luck, then, Steve?’

Steven shook his head, kicking his legs against her and turning away, and his father said, ‘Well, good luck, lad. And remember what I’ve told you.’