David Storey - Saville

‘I’ll be off now. Tha mu’n not sleep in.’

Half-woken, he would gaze up blearily at his father’s face.

‘Sithee, then, I’m off. Mrs Shaw’ll look after Steve. Don’t be late for the bus,’ he’d add.

He’d hear his father’s feet go down through the house, the back door close, the key turned in the lock then slipped back through the letter box. Scarcely would he have fallen asleep it seemed than the alarm clock went. One morning he’d slept on to be woken by Mrs Shaw banging on the door downstairs.

He was more tired now than at any time since he’d started at the school; coming home in the bus each evening, watching the fields and villages pass, the colliery heaps, the distant glimpses of ponds and lakes he felt, at the thought of his father in the house, a kind of dread: grey-faced, red-eyed, washing dishes or turning, wearily, to cook the food, it was as if he and Steven and himself had been left behind.

He’d even, one Sunday morning, gone into Mrs Shaw’s to clean her brasses; other memories of his mother flooded back. Neither he nor Steven could go and visit her; he would watch his father wheel out his bike each evening, the saddle-bag bulging with a parcel, clean clothes or fruit, sometimes a book he’d borrowed from work, and be waiting for him, two hours later when, with an exhausted eagerness and anxiety, he came cycling back.

‘Sithee, aren’t you in bed then, yet?’

He’d be fingering his homework, or reading a book by the light of the fire.

‘Tha mu’n go to bed,’ his father would add, ‘I’ve got a key,’ yet glad, beneath his anxiety, that he hadn’t gone yet.

They’d sit by the fire while his father brewed some tea.

‘She’s champion. She’s looking well,’ he’d tell him. ‘She won’t be long in theer, don’t worry.’

He’d talk to him, then, about his work, the pit, about Fernley, Roberts, Hopkirk and Marshall, new names and old names, about accidents at the face itself, a roof collapsing, a machine being stuck, about a man being caught beneath a rock.

His father had no one else to talk to now. It would be two hours or more after his bed-time frequently before Colin went to bed; his father would follow him. ‘Now you get to sleep. I’ll put out the light. I’ll set thy alarm for seven o’clock.’

It was always half-past six when the alarm clock went; at the last minute, as if loath to let him sleep in, he’d set it earlier. ‘Think on. As soon as it rings, get up. If Mrs Shaw sleeps in tha’ll be in trouble.’

He often had the feeling that his father wanted him to get up as well, to see him off to work; he would often cough in the kitchen below as he got on his clothes, or trim his lamp in the yard outside, flashing a light against the window. Later, when Colin got up, he would have to waken his brother, pull back his covers, get him dressed; he was four years old, yet, with the absence of his mother, he would often cry.

‘Mam?’ he would call, anxious, listening, as if overnight she’d come back to her room.

‘She won’t be long,’ he’d tell him.

‘Mam?’ his brother would call.

He would pull on his clothes, which Steven could do himself but always resisted now. Sometimes he would lie in bed, moaning, his head to the pillow, and he himself would sit on the edge, his energy gone, waiting. Only the clock and the thought of being late would finally drag him back to his brother and the bed.

‘Steve? She’ll have us breakfast ready.’

‘Mam? I want my Mam.’

‘Don’t you want any breakfast, then?’ he’d ask him.

‘I want me Mam. Mam? ’ he would call again.

Sometimes, still crying, he left him at Mrs Shaw’s.

‘Oh, he’ll be all right with me. I’ll have him clean my brasses. And I take him to the swings in the afternoon.’

She would sit him on her knee, her gaunt figure upright, Steven, pale-faced, leaning apprehensively against her.

‘Don’t worry. He’ll be all right. You get off to school. Don’t fret. His father’ll be home in two or three hours. “Not my Steve? Not our Steve?” he’ll say. “He’s never worried !”’

There was a coldness about the school; he felt nothing from the moment he walked between the gates to the moment he came out. Only on the bus would the nagging return, a slow tugging, as if he were being brought down inside.

His mother gave birth to a son. His father was waiting for him when he came home one day, smiling, dressed in his suit. He’d just come back from seeing her.

‘He’s a beauty, lad. As big as a tree. What do you think we mu’n call it? Your mother’s thought of Richard, then.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Do you like it, then?’

‘Yes.’

Steven came in.

‘Now, then,’ his father said. He picked him up. ‘What dost think to a brother, then?’ He held out his arm. ‘Sithee, his leg’s no thicker than that.’ He wiggled his finger. ‘By God, but I’m feeling glad.’

His mother came home. His father and Steven had gone to fetch her. ‘Can’t I have a day off school?’ he said. ‘You could write a letter.’

‘Nay, they’d never let you off for that. She mu’n be here when thy comes back home, tha knows.’ He laughed at his dismay and rubbed his head. ‘Just think on: thy’ll have two brothers waiting for you, then, at tea.’

He’d felt the excitement then all day. While his mother had been away she’d written him letters: he’d taken them with him in his bag to school. For days he waited for some meaning to emerge, reading them again, uncertain of what the phrases meant. ‘How much I miss you.’ ‘I hope, Colin, you’re looking after Steve.’ ‘I hope your work is going well.’ ‘Don’t forget to get up on time.’ ‘All my love.’ There’d been a row of kisses at the foot of each: his mother seldom if ever kissed him in any case.

In the end he’d left the letters on the kitchen table.

‘Have you finished with these?’ his father said and when he nodded his head he dropped them in the fire.

Now, coming back on the bus from school, he sat at the front as if he expected his mother to materialize in the road ahead.

When he reached the village he ran to the house.

There was no one in.

He ran upstairs: he looked in his parents’ room, he looked in his own and then in Steve’s.

He went back down; he glanced out at the yard. He went through to the room at the front and looked in there.

The house was silent.

He went through to the kitchen, stood at the door; he gazed along the terrace. Already, with the early evening, it was growing dark. A vast cloud of steam whirled up from the colliery yard.

He went down the terrace to Mrs Shaw’s. He could hear his mother’s voice inside: he heard her laughter, then Mr Shaw’s.

His knock at first had gone unheard. He knocked again.

A moment later he heard his father call.

‘Sithee, then, there’s someone at the door.’

He heard his mother’s laughter, high, shrill, then the latch was lifted and the door pulled back.

‘It’s thy Colin, then. Come in, lad.’ Mr Shaw, still laughing, had stepped aside. ‘Come in, then, Colin, and see your brother.’

His mother was standing directly beneath the electric light in the middle of the kitchen: one side of her was lit up by the light from the fire. In her arms, wrapped in a white shawl, she was holding a baby; she’d just taken it from Mrs Shaw, who was leaning across, one finger extended, to stroke its cheek.

‘Why, Colin, love,’ she said. ‘You’ve got back quick.’

His father stood by the fire; he held a glass in his hand. Steven, eating a biscuit, was sitting at the table.

‘Why, how are you, love?’ his mother said. She leaned down, with one free hand; she pressed her lips against his cheek.