David Storey - Saville

Saville had worked two weeks’ overtime for his two weeks’ holiday; instead of an eight-hour shift each day he’d worked sixteen hours, coming home exhausted to snatch a few hours’ sleep. He still felt the tiredness now, an emptiness, as if his limbs and his mind had been hollowed out: it was a hulk that he took down to the beach each morning; it was a hulk that was slowly filled with the smell of the sea, with the smell of the fish on the harbour quay, of the sand. Even the sun, once they’d got there, had begun to shine. He felt a new life opening out before him, full of change; it was inconceivable to him now that he’d ever work beneath the ground again.

He watched the boy; he would sit with his wife, in deck-chairs, the boy digging at their feet, immersed in the sand, wading in the sea, bringing his bucket back, afraid at times of the waves which, away from the protection of the harbour, crashed up against the beach.

There were donkeys on the sand; a man came round each morning and gave a Punch and Judy Show; there was a roundabout cranked by hand. They went on one of the pleasure-boats; it was like setting out to sea, clearing the headland, turning along the coast – the town now, with its castle, little more than a cluster of rocks at the water’s edge, the tall cliffs beyond like the shallow bank at the edge of a lake.

There was an orchestra aboard; a man in a sailor’s hat sang songs. The boy watched it all with wonder. There was a sudden alertness about him: when he got up on a morning Saville always found him waiting, sitting in the narrow hall downstairs where, beneath a hat-stand, his bucket and spade were kept – gazing through to the dining-room, anxious for his breakfast, or already at the door, the spade in his hand, ready to be off.

‘Nay, you mu’n hold on for some of us old ’uns,’ he told him. They would go down to the harbour before his wife was up; the trawlers would come in, unloading fish, seagulls drifting over in vast clouds above their decks, screeching, swooping to the water. The boy, in watching, would grow quite still: it was like some cupboard door that had suddenly been opened, a curtain drawn aside to reveal things he’d never encountered or ever imagined could exist before. On the beach, the first morning, the boy had gazed at the sea, abstracted, half in fear, reluctant to go near it, watching it fold over in waves against the shore, the white spume, the suction of the water against the sand; and had finally gone down with Saville, holding tightly to his hand, gasping as he felt his bare foot against the cold, stepping back, laughing, half-amazed, as he saw the children splashing through the waves. Its vastness had amazed him, the lightness, the buoyancy of the boats, the hugeness of the cliffs that towered above it.

Then, almost overnight, the mystery had vanished; he would dig at the sand with scarcely a look towards the sea, gouging out a hole, building a castle wall, building turrets, Saville stooping to the hole beside him, the boy running off to the water’s edge, collecting water in his bucket, running back undisturbed, the waves pounding beyond him.

Yet, as though within himself, Saville sensed a new life spreading through the boy, slow, half-thoughtful, confusing, drawing him to the vastness of the sea, as if, in some strange way, their life in the past had been cancelled out, the smallness, the tiny house, the tower of the colliery belching out its smoke and steam. Now there was nothing to contain them: they could grow as large and be as unpredictable as they liked, eat what they wanted, sleep only when they were tired, stand in the sea, dig the beach, ride on donkeys, sail on the water. There was nothing now to hold them back: they were free at last.

His wife too, he noticed, had something of the boy’s nature; he’d never seen her out of the context of the home before. Now, seeing them together in a fresh place, without any associations, he saw how alike they were, the slowness, the heaviness, the strange, scarcely imagined inner life they both possessed, so that at times it was as if, casually, they shared the same expression, the same mood, the same slow look, the same transformation from a dull, brooding, almost melancholic awareness to a lighter, brighter, more accessible, scarcely conscious expectancy and alertness. He would see her laughing along the beach, running with the boy, or holding his hand as they stepped across the waves, running back from the larger ones, screaming, the boy and she joined in a way he knew he could never share himself. His own approaches to the boy were always sharp and heavy, sideways, almost ponderous, speculative, afraid that the boy himself might not react; he entrusted his loneliness to the boy, looking to him to give him something of a link beyond himself. The blackness of the mine had always brought him back; now, with the sea, he felt them all advancing, in lightness, almost gentle.

His wife had bought a hat; it had a broad brim, bevelled, sweeping down across her eyes. It was made of straw; a broad pink ribbon was fastened round the crown, its ends fluttering out across the brim. She would walk in the sea with the wind tugging at the ribbon, holding one end of her light-coloured dress, her other hand holding the boy’s, walking to and fro in front of the spot where they had their deckchairs. She was like a girl, or a woman just grown, light, uncaring; he scarcely recognized her from a distance. The other men, he noticed, watched her too; it was as if she were taller, slimmer, unconscious now of the things that lay behind them, careless, untouched. He couldn’t relate her in any way to the woman that he knew.

A war was imminent. There were men in uniform lying on the beach, or walking on the promenade above. One of them he recognized one morning, a man from the village. He had a sergeant’s stripes and had called out to them as they went to the beach, coming over, nodding, leaning on the rail, the boy and his wife going on down to the beach below.

‘Why don’t you join up?’ the man had said. He had a broad figure, and since he’d last seen him as a miner in the village, he’d grown a short moustache. ‘If you join now you’ll get preferment. I could get you your stripes within a month.’

‘Will we join in the war do you think?’ he said. Until then, glimpsed vaguely in the papers, he’d scarcely any notion of what the war might mean.

‘We’ll be in it, in the thick of it in no time,’ the miner said. ‘If you join up now you’ll have a choice, of what you do and where you’re sent. If you wait till you’re called up they’ll send you wherever they want to. Join up now and the world’s your ticket.’ He slapped his back.

Saville gazed down at the figure of his wife; she was stooping to a chair, unfolding its legs, propping it against the sand. The boy was helping her with another; they seemed contained, one unit, bound up in themselves, with no need of anyone else. The soldier’s offer sent a dull surge along his arms and legs; he felt a slow heat inside his chest: it was a glimpse of a horizon like the one before him, open, fathomless, full of light.

He saw his wife look up; uncertain for a moment where he was, she scanned the row of figures leaning on the rail, her gaze finally pausing as she came to his. He saw her wave, the face lit-up, smiling.

‘Nay, I mu’n stay where I am,’ he said. He looked at the soldier. ‘They’ll be needing miners. To dig coal. They can’t fight wars without,’ he added.

‘Take it or leave it,’ the soldier said. ‘But if you decided now I could fix it up.’

Saville glanced back towards his wife; she was sitting in the chair, opening a paper. He could see the word ‘War’ emblazoned in the headline; she turned it over and read inside.

‘Nay, I better stay.’ He gestured to the sands. ‘I’ve got a lad.’