David Storey - Saville

‘It seems you’ll be in the team,’ Colin said.

‘Do you think so?’ He’d already forgotten about the game: he was looking down at his jacket, checking the buttons, feeling in his pockets. He carried a neat canvas hold-all in his other hand.

‘If Harrison’s the captain, and you’re playing on his side.’

‘He’s a bit of a lump. Did you see the way he moved around?’

He walked on quickly, as if anxious to get away from the field.

‘I thought of getting a letter.’

Colin looked across.

‘From a doctor.’ They came out from the ginnel. ‘If you get a letter saying you’re not supposed to be playing games you get two afternoons off free. What do you think? We could spend them at the pictures.’

‘I couldn’t get a letter,’ he said.

‘I can get one for you. No bother at all.’ They were passing by the school. Stafford paid it no attention. At one point, glancing in a shop window lower down the street, he took out a comb and, pausing, combed his hair.

Colin waited.

‘You don’t enjoy all that, then, do you?’ Stafford said.

‘All what?’

Stafford shrugged.

‘Running round that field. And having that big fat lump jump on top of you.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Tell me your christian name and I’ll get a letter. If two of us do it, it looks better than one.’

‘It’s Colin.’

‘Okay, Col. Leave it to me.’

He went off down the narrow opening leading to the station.

Colin watched him: he didn’t look back.

He never saw the letter. He never discovered whether Stafford had even got one; despite his mentioning it on one occasion Stafford never referred to it again. He avoided walking with him whenever he could; Colin would see his friend hurrying to the ginnel with the other boys, or, if he himself were already in front, walking behind slowly, waiting for someone else to catch him up. In school itself they scarcely met; he could be seen occasionally lounging against the wall at the end of the field, or against the fence, his hands in his pockets, his back rounded as he slowly kicked the grass, laughing, calling to other boys who invariably came up and whom, characteristically, he never approached.

Once, on a Tuesday afternoon, Colin caught him up.

‘You played well this afternoon,’ he said.

Stafford glanced up. He’d been walking by himself, along the ginnel, his canvas bag beneath his arm.

‘Oh, that. Platt seems pleased enough. I’ve been picked for the team next Saturday. At least, that’s what Hepworth says.’

‘What position are you playing?’

‘Stand-off half.’

Stafford kicked the ground, slowly, as he walked along.

‘They’ve made me vice-captain as well it seems.’

‘Who told you?’

‘Platty told me.’

When they reached the turning to the station Stafford glanced across.

‘How do you get to school?’ he said.

‘By bus.’

‘Don’t you ever come by train?’

‘No,’ Colin said.

‘Where do you come from?’ Stafford said.

‘Saxton.’

‘The train I come on comes through there. It goes back that way as well. It’s twice as quick as coming by bus.’

‘It costs more on the train,’ Colin said.

‘You could easily cough it up.’

‘I shouldn’t think so.’ He shook his head.

‘Hasn’t your father enough money even for that?’

‘He prefers to use it on other things,’ he said.

Stafford looked at him slowly; his eyes had lightened.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then,’ he said.

He went off whistling, his bag now dangling from his hand.

He was made a reserve the following week; he struggled with Latin. Between waking and sleeping was a continual movement: rising, running for the bus, the hour-long journey through the villages, the approach to the city, the walk to school, assembly, lessons, break-time, lunch. After lunch came the smell of cooking from the cloisters below, the distant droning of the master’s voice, a brief interlude of tiredness, a slow lethargy induced by the under-ventilated room. Only after the middle of the afternoon had passed did a lightness return; the briskness of the final lesson, the hasty collecting of books, the walk through the narrow streets of the town to the stop immediately below the walls of the black cathedral.

In the evening he sometimes played in the field at the back of the house; the rest of the time he spent on homework. The village involved him less and less; it was more of an inconvenience, its distance and remoteness. He seldom saw his father: sometimes he would have left on a morning before his father came home from work, or, if he were working afternoons, he’d be in bed by the time his father got back; only when he worked a morning shift would they be at home together, in the evening – occasions now that he’d learnt to dread, the examination of his books, the marks.

‘Nay, they aren’t so good, then, are they? C minus. What’s C stand for?’

‘Gamma,’ he said.

‘And what’s Gamma when it’s at home?’ his father said. He explained the system of marking.

‘Nay, that’s one out of ten.’ He looked at him with a sudden fury, the familiar whiteness spreading round his eyes.

‘There’s Delta,’ he said. ‘They give that too.’

‘Do they? And what’s Delta when it’s at home?’ he said.

‘Less than Gamma minus.’

‘Nay, Delta must be nought,’ he said. ‘I can’t understand why they don’t put it into English. Ten out of ten, one out of ten. I can’t see the point of all these words.’

He’d go through each of the books quite slowly, examining the marks, the ticks, the crosses, the smallest correction.

‘Sithee, even I could do that. Thy’s not been paying attention.’

‘Oh, let him be when he’s at home,’ his mother said.

‘Let him be what? Slovenly and lazy? Content to do things he knows with a bit of effort, he can do much better?’

‘Let him have a pit of peace when he comes back home,’ she’d tell him.

‘Just look at the stuff,’ he’d say. He’d push the book beneath her face. ‘“Conclusion”: he could spell that three years ago.’

‘Well how do you spell conclusion, then?’ she’d say.

‘Nay, damn it all, he’s the one at school,’ he’d tell her. ‘I’m the ignorant one round here.’

Colin could hear his parents from his room at night, either arguing in the kitchen, where, he knew from the way his books had been disturbed, they went through his work together; or, later, if his father was working mornings or afternoons, from their bedroom at the front.

‘All right. He isn’t good at physics. Then he can get good at physics. Same with Latin. They’re not that difficult. If six hundred other children can do them, I can’t see why he should be an exception.’

He would start going through the work with Colin at night; by the time the first term was almost over his father had learnt how to conjugate Latin verbs; he’d learnt how to construct a simple Latin phrase; how to work out algebraic equations, how to distinguish between compounds and oxides, alkalis and acids, how to tell the difference on maps between deciduous and coniferous vegetation. During those weeks when his father worked nights or afternoons, he would find notes left for him, the correction of some work he’d done the previous evening, or some revised account of work his father had come across in one of his books, elaborating, usually in a clumsy manner, suggestions in the margins by dissatisfied teachers.

One Saturday afternoon he was chosen to play in the football team against another school. His father came to watch.

There were two games being played, a second-team match, and the junior match; his father, unfamiliar with the field, had wandered over to the senior pitch. He was still standing there when the junior game began, and only came over after fifteen minutes. Small, wearing an overcoat against the briskness of the late autumn weather, he was the only other adult there apart from Platt and Hepworth. His shouts had filled the field. ‘Go on! Go on! Run with it! Grab him!’ while Platt and Hepworth, glancing across at him, called more quietly, ‘Feet, school, feet’, and, ‘Back up your captain, Edward’s.’