David Storey - Saville

‘This is Fritz,’ the farmer said, indicating the shorter of the two, ‘and this is Luigi,’ he added. He indicated the other man, who stooped down and shook his hand. ‘They’re prisoners of war, so if they try to escape you’ll let me know.’ The farmer laughed, the two strangely contrasted prisoners laughing with him. ‘They’ve to be back in camp, tha knows, by six, so if there’s any hanky-panky tha mu’n march ’em to the gate.’ He turned with a wink, thickening his accent. ‘They’re all right,’ he added. ‘I’ve had ’em afore: but tek no notice of the way they wuk.’

He spent the next two weeks working with the Italian and the German. The former had been a soldier, captured in the desert, the other a pilot shot down in southern England. They spoke, in his presence, a made-up language of signs and gestures, but whenever he was alone with either one they spoke English fluently with a slight, half-mocking, thickened accent.

His father had cycled past the field one day. Colin saw him leaning by the hedge, his bike propped up against the gate.

He went across, slowly, wiping his face.

‘This is where you work, then, is it?’

The field was up the road from the farm, on the lower slope of an adjoining hill. In the farthest distance, on a clear day, were visible the buildings of the town, the cathedral spire, the wedge-shaped tower of the town-hall. Now, with the day overcast, all that was visible was the broad sweep of the field itself.

‘That’s thy two prisoners, is it?’ His father gazed down the field, between the stooks, to where the tall Italian and the stocky German were lifting sheaves, arguing, flinging them down. Sometimes they’d dismantle a stook in fear that one of their own sheaves had been incorporated by the other; they always worked separately, but never far apart.

Even as his father watched they had begun to quarrel.

‘You no good.’

‘ You no good.’

‘You bad.’

‘ You bad.’

‘ Schweinhund .’

‘ Bastard .’

They started fighting, their gestures as stylized as their conversation.

His father laughed; he watched them with a slow amazement, the tall, boneless figure of the Italian coiling and uncoiling around the squat, muscular outline of the fair-haired German. ‘Sithee, then.’ He wiped his eyes. ‘It’s a wonder they do any work at all,’ he said.

‘I do nearly all of it,’ Colin said. It was really the stooks he wanted his father to see, the straightness of the rows, the way they ran down the profile of the field. His father smiled.

‘I can see they’ve got their heads screwed on,’ he said.

The two figures now were rolling on the ground: they disappeared behind the sheaves, re-appeared for a moment, the German on top, then, a moment later, the Italian.

‘Don’t they ever have a guard?’ his father said.

‘I’ve never seen one,’ Colin said.

‘They mu’n escape, tha knows, if they don’t watch out.’

‘I don’t think they want to,’ he said, and shook his head.

The prisoners’ camp was a mile up the road. He’d cycled past it one evening, on his way to Saxton: rows of wooden huts ran back from the road, surrounded by barbed wire and overgrown hedges. Only one soldier was visible, stooping down by a car, in his shirt-sleeves, examining its engine.

‘Do they spend all day doing that?’ his father said.

‘They work sometimes, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose they have any need to, though,’ he added.

‘Nay, they’ve been caught fighting this country, lad. I hope thy’s not forgotten it,’ his father said.

The two men now were standing up; one was dusting down the other’s clothes; then, as a final gesture, ceremoniously bowing to one another, they both shook hands.

‘They might be all right on a stage, but this is a war-effort they’re supposed to be helping.’ His father gestured to the fields around. ‘Every bit done here leaves space in a ship.’

He gripped the gate between his hands.

‘If they mu’n not help the ones who’re looking after them they mu’n lock ’em up: that’s my view,’ his father said. A sudden smile, nervous, half-expectant, crossed his face as the two men, seeing him by the gate, called to Colin and came across.

‘This is my father,’ Colin said, and added, almost as a provocation, ‘He’s come to see you work.’

‘Work?’ The broad, tanned face of the German turned to gaze up at the long, mournful face of the Italian beside him.

‘Work?’ the Italian said, imitating the German’s accent.

‘We leave all the work to Colin, Mr Saville,’ the German said, his accent now so casual that his father looked at him in some alarm, almost as if, mentally, he’d stood to attention and begun to salute.

‘Aye, he works very hard,’ his father said, glancing at the field. On numerous occasions since his first week of work, his father had said, ‘They’re paying you a boy’s wages for a man’s work: I know what bargains these farmers get.’ Now he added, ‘The only trouble is people take advantage of how hard he works,’ and repeated ‘advantage’ as if uncertain that the German had understood his meaning.

‘Oh, we help him all we can,’ the German said, and added, ‘We help Colin all we can, Luigi. Help.’

‘Help,’ the Italian said, bowing slowly to his father, his dark eyes examining him now in some confusion.

‘Back to work, Luigi,’ the German said, and added, ‘Work.’

The Italian bowed; he examined his father a moment longer then turned back slowly towards the field.

‘I suppose you have to make allowances,’ his father said. ‘If we were prisoners on the other side I don’t suppose we’d work too hard. They do summat, I suppose,’ he added.

He turned to the bike.

‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ he said.

Colin watched his father ride off along the lane; he could see him some time later, riding along the road that led off across the fields, his small figure stooping to the bike, unaware perhaps that he was still visible from the field for he never looked back.

‘Your father is a farmer, too?’ the German said when he went back to the sheaves.

‘A miner.’

‘A miner?’ He added, ‘He’s not a farmer, Luigi. He works underneath the ground.’ He made a shovelling motion with his hand, pointing down, then fanning his hands out slowly either side.

‘Ah,’ the tall man said. He spoke in Italian for several seconds.

‘Luigi says: does he dig for gold?’

‘For coal,’ he said.

‘Coal,’ the German said. He added, ‘Carbon.’

‘Ah,’ the Italian said again and with a mournful gesture shook his head.

‘And when you grow older, will you become a miner, too?’ the German said.

‘No.’

‘What will you become?’ His light-blue eyes gazed steadily at him.

‘I haven’t decided yet,’ he said.

‘A farmer?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘A soldier?’

He shook his head.

‘Will you leave your beautiful land? Will you travel the world?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘Never go to Italy. Italy bad,’ the German said.

‘Germany bad,’ the Italian said.

‘Go to the Mediterranean,’ the German said. ‘Blue seas, blue skies.’ He gestured around. ‘Nothing at all like you have it here. Go to Africa. Go to Greece . But not to Italy. Italy bad.’

‘Germany bad,’ the Italian said and, as Colin stooped to the sheaves, the two men fought again.

He worked at the second farm until two days before he started school. He called at the farmhouse in the evening to collect his wage. The door to the kitchen had been standing open; the farmer’s wife was baking at a stove inside.