David Storey - Saville

The air was cold. The sun had gone. He walked through the narrow streets with a strange feeling of physical suspension.

‘The war’ll be over before another year is out. Don’t have any doubts of that,’ his father said.

He sat with Mr Reagan in the porch, their backs to the kitchen, the afternoon shadows spread out before them.

They’d sat there for an hour, Mr Reagan’s voice drifting in, faintly, to where Colin sat at the kitchen table; occasionally Mr Reagan glanced back to make some remark, half-laughing, nodding his head: ‘There’s an object lesson to us all: there’s a boy who’s not going to be fastened up for long. There’s a boy with prospects, Harry,’ his father laughing and glancing in, half-serious, to watch him at his work. ‘Go in the front room if you want to concentrate,’ he told him and Colin, glancing up, had shaken his head, reluctant at times like this, when his mother was out, as on this occasion, visiting her parents, to lock himself up in some room of the house.

‘Once it is over you’ll see things change,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘There’ll be none of this living like paupers, fastened up beneath a stone, scratting a living like a rat in a hole.’

‘Nay, I suppose things won’t change much,’ his father said, glancing into the kitchen once again, at the worn coverings on the floor, at the dilapidated furniture. ‘Things were hard enough afore the war, I don’t think they’ll get much easier after.’

A certain quietness had come over his father during the previous year; he no longer read the newspapers as avidly as before, nor silenced the family so vehemently to hear each bulletin on the wireless. It was as if some issue with which he was passionately concerned had been decided, and he was now looking round for other things to fight; as if the emotions which engaged him when he read a paper, or listened on the wireless to the account of a battle, of miles advanced, of enemy equipment taken, were looking for some other exploit, some other turmoil, to focus on. His main part-time duty now was that of warden; the house was the principal fire-point for the street: a pump, brass-coloured and with a wooden handle, was stored with a length of narrow hosepipe in the cupboard beneath the stairs. A large, decaying house, adjacent to the colliery yard, had been taken over as an air-raid post, two rooms made habitable, and groups of men worked shifts, making tea, sleeping there, or leaning up against the walls outside, smoking and gazing vacantly to the colliery yard, keeping a lookout whenever the sirens went. There were few raids now on the surrounding towns; one night two planes had bombed the town and Colin on his way to school the following morning had seen from the bus window a house with its outside walls peeled off standing amidst a pile of rubble.

‘There’ll be no more unemployment,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘It’ll not be like the last time. Officers selling laces: no jobs to go to, and no homes to go to, too.’

His braces showed whenever he leaned forward; he’d come without his jacket but on top of his waistcoat had put on a knitted cardigan. Small loops were attached to each end of the braces, the tops of his underpants showing underneath.

‘I can’t see as there’ll be much difference,’ his father said. ‘Those that had the money afore have still got it, and those that haven’t it are still without.’

‘Oh, there’ll be a big shake-up when this is over,’ Mr Reagan said. He was smoking a pipe, a recent acquisition, and the smell of it drifted into the back of the room. The films of smoke, like gossamer, hung in the air outside the door. ‘There’s been too many killed, and too many countries affected for it to be the same as it was before.’

‘Aye, I suppose we’ll see one or two improvements,’ his father said, sighing, and with no conviction in his voice at all.

There were steps across the yard.

Mrs Shaw came into view.

‘And what problems of the world have you been straightening out?’ she said. ‘What shape is it in now, after your cogitations?’

‘Oh, we’ve rounded it up, Mrs Shaw,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Taken off the edges.’

‘Nay, well, I didn’t know we had any,’ Mrs Shaw said.

‘You can be sure it’s in better shape, any road,’ his father said. ‘Two words from Reagan over any problem and you mu’n wonder where it wa’ afore he came.’

‘Oh, now, I don’t claim any great philosophical virtues, Harry,’ Mr Reagan said, standing to Mrs Shaw at first with something of a bow. The ends of his braces with their little white tapes had re-appeared. ‘I have but the general view of things, namely that things themselves are getting better.’

‘Well, they couldn’t get worse,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘Oh, now, what a doleful yard we have this evening,’ Mr Reagan said. Having offered his seat in the porch to Mrs Shaw, and having seen it gracefully refused, he sat down again, hitching up the knees of his pin-stripe trousers. ‘Spring on its way, if I’m not mistaken, when a young man’s fancy turns to love. And a young woman’s, too, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘I don’t notice any young men round here. Nor young women come to that,’ Mrs Shaw had said. She gave a scream which broke into a laugh. ‘And what do you think, Mrs Bletchley?’ she’d called across.

Mrs Bletchley’s voice came floating back.

‘Oh, I’d keep my distance from those two romancers, Mrs Shaw. Especially when they gang together.’

‘Now, would we gang together, ladies?’ Mr Reagan said. He’d risen from the step again, this time presumably to bow to Mrs Bletchley, who remained hidden beyond the angle of the door. ‘In the presence of two such charming members of the opposite sex would a man like myself, or a man like Mr Saville, think, even if we were overwhelmed entirely, of ganging up? Each man for himself in this world, Mrs Bletchley.’

‘Oh, now, just listen to him,’ Mrs Bletchley said, her voice, like Mrs Shaw’s, breaking into a scream and then, less violently, a laugh. ‘He’s got a tongue like a spoon of sugar. All sorts of things go past before you’ve even noticed. It’s a good job he lives two doors away, and not next door,’ she added, ‘or I think we’d have some trouble.’

‘Would I let a brick wall, let alone a window or a door, come between me and the ones that I admire, Mrs Bletchley?’ Mr Reagan said.

Both women had laughed again; a high-pitched wail came beseechingly from either side of the open door.

‘Just listen to the man,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘Oh, beauty can be admired from a distance, over any number of years, Mrs Bletchley,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘The most carefree of us have passions that it might astonish the closest of our friends to hear. Isn’t that so, Harry?’ Reagan added.

‘Nay, he mu’n have summat he never confesses to,’ his father said, glancing uneasily behind, as if this aspect of Mr Reagan’s neighbourly existence wasn’t one he was particularly anxious for Colin to hear.

‘Ah, what secrets the most inconspicuous of us harbour in our bosoms, Mrs Bletchley,’ Mr Reagan added, his large head turning casually from one side to the other, his thin neck reddening as if in measure of the feelings that the sight of these two women had suddenly inspired. ‘Might each one go about his labour, but he doesn’t at some point lift his head and glimpse in some distant door or window a head, a face, a pretty hand or ear, that catches a secret fancy, Mrs Bletchley. Who’s to say, now, whose pretty hand or whose pretty ear, whose face or figure, etcetera, is not the one to inspire him; and who’s to say who the person is who keeps such longings wrapped secretly up inside his bosom?’

‘More sugar, more sugar,’ Mrs Bletchley said, breaking into a laugh, if anything, even wilder.