David Storey - Saville

‘We’d have bought you summat, don’t worry,’ his father said. ‘If it hadn’t have been the expense. What with that and a new brother or sister on the way, we’ve not much left.’

There was talk now of sending him to his uncle, his father’s younger brother, who lived in the town.

‘Nay, we mu’n keep you at home if we can. Both of you,’ his father said. ‘I hope to get on days when the baby’s due, then we can all of us sleep at home together.’

He played in the street, watched Bletchley on his bike, played cricket with Stringer and Batty, and several of Batty’s brothers. He watched the others go back to school. The grammar school didn’t start until two weeks later; he wandered through the village on his own. Occasionally he caught sight of Connors on a bike, and of one of the other boys who’d passed to the grammar school: apart from the long holiday they had nothing in common. He practised holding his head under water for longer spells.

When the day came his mother offered to go with him to the stop. It was barely seven o’clock; the streets of the village were still deserted. He stood at the door, conspicuous in his uniform, while his mother pulled on her coat.

‘I want to go on my own,’ he said.

‘What if Connors isn’t there?’ she said.

‘I’ll still catch the bus.’

‘And what happens at the other end?’

‘I can always ask the way.’

She stood in the door with her coat unbuttoned and watched him walk off along the street. When he reached the corner he didn’t wave; he glanced back, sharply, then went on towards the stop.

He was twenty minutes early. The stop was opposite a public house in the centre of the village. There was no one else about. He carried his raincoat over his arm, his satchel, an old one, over his shoulder. There was nothing in it. He’d thought of taking the football shirt and the pair of worn-down rugby-boots, but, despite his mother’s insistence, had decided finally he wouldn’t.

A lorry went past. Through the windows of the pub he could see the vague shape of a clock set up against the wall. He couldn’t see its face.

A miner came down from the direction of the colliery and sat down in the gutter. He sat with his hands between his legs. Another came down; one or two other men appeared. Their voices came in a quiet murmur as he himself stood farther down the road against the window of a shop.

Finally, from the direction of the nearest houses, Connors and another boy appeared. Connors didn’t wear his cap; apart from a worn satchel which he carried beneath his arm, there was no indication that he was going to school at all. He wore long trousers; his school blazer, if he wore one, was concealed beneath a greyish raincoat.

He scarcely glanced up as he reached the stop; he nodded his head then went on talking to the other boy. They stood against the wall of the pub, between the miners, Connors kicking the wall behind him with his heel.

The other boy was older; he carried a small suitcase, dented and fastened by a leather strap. The cap of some other school was screwed up and set inside his jacket pocket.

Colin waited. One or two of the miners had looked across: they glanced at the brightness of the jacket, at the gold ribbon, which glistened in the sun, at the cap, at the new raincoat folded on his arm. One of them nodded to the others; there was a burst of laughter.

He glanced the other way. The stop was opposite the junction of the two roads that met at the centre of the village. The principal road swept through from east to west; the road from the south, and the station, crossed it, between halt signs, and continued past the Park and the manor, northwards, narrowing slightly as it crested the hill.

It was from this direction, careering downwards, that the bus would come. Twice he heard the roar of an engine, and twice a lorry appeared, rattling down the hill in a cloud of dust.

He heard a second burst of laughter; he glanced in the window of the shop behind – he could see his reflection, the high-peaked profile of his cap, the neat outline of the blazer. The shop was full of clothes – skirts, blouses, stockings, and women’s underwear. He studied the houses opposite, where the slope dipped down from the shop-lined crossing. He thought of his mother at home, and Steve.

The bus appeared: it ran rattling down the hill, its windows glinting in the sun. It paused at the corner; the miners crouching against the wall stood up.

He waited for Connors. He and the other boy, still talking, leant against the wall.

Colin got on. He sat downstairs.

One or two other people appeared, a man in a raincoat, a woman with a basket. Their feet shuffled on the roof above his head; then, but for the murmur of the miners and the occasional slur of a match, the bus was silent.

Connors had taken out a book and was turning the pages; the other boy took the book from him and pushed back against the wall. The conductor came round. The driver got in. The engine started. Only when the conductor pressed the bell did Connors make a move: he closed the book in the other boy’s hand, put it in his satchel, made some remark to the boy, then, waving, stepped up on the platform. As the bus gathered speed he glanced over at Colin, nodded, and without making any remark went quickly up the stairs.

There were only two other people sitting downstairs, both miners, both black-faced and laughing as the conductor called out to them in recognition. He saw the redness of their lips, the white eyes and teeth, and smelled the dust from their clothes as the draught came back from the door.

He waited; there was no sound of Connors coming down again.

The conductor took his fare. He sat with his satchel across his knees, his raincoat laid on top.

They passed the end of the lane leading to the pit; he could see the roof of the school across the yard and nearer the plume of smoke and steam from the colliery engine. A miner was running down the lane; he waved his arm, but the bus passed on.

From where he was sitting, leaning backwards, he could see the last houses of the village as they disappeared. Soon all that was visible behind were the hedged fields, the top of the pit chimney, and the outline of the colliery stack.

Another boy, wearing a new uniform like himself, got on; he was accompanied by his mother.

They passed a large stone mansion, set back beyond a line of trees; the bus swept over a hump-backed bridge; he glimpsed a lily-padded lake. Beyond, the road rose steeply to a row of houses; a group of girls got on. They wore light-blue dresses and yellow straw hats: he could hear Connors’s voice as they climbed upstairs. The bus was full: at the crest of a rise he caught a distant glimpse of the town, a silhouette of towers and the single steeple.

They emerged finally beside the river: barges were moored above a concrete weir. The single spire and the towers of the town were visible once more above stone-slabbed roofs. A hill appeared: the bus shuddered slowly to its summit.

‘All off. All change,’ the conductor called.

The walls of the cathedral were visible across the road.

Colin caught a glimpse of Connors as he came off the bus – talking to the girls in the yellow straw hats, he set off in the direction of the city centre.

There were other groups descending from the crowded buses at the top of the slope. He followed the largest group, which made its way through the narrow, cobbled alley into the thoroughfare of shops beyond.

It was half-past eight. Other groups joined those emerging from the alley: a mass of dark-blue figures moved slowly along each pavement.

The doors to the school itself were closed. A flight of stone steps led down to a field. Blazered figures walked to and fro. Immediately behind the building itself a wooden fence divided the field from a pebbled yard.