David Storey - Saville

‘If I were a few years younger I might very well be leaping yon wooden fence and giving your heart a little flutter,’ Mr Reagan said, half-rising from the steps.

‘Mr Reagan,’ Mrs Bletchley said, ‘it’s a good job Mr Shaw isn’t here or Mr Bletchley, now,’ she added.

‘Who’s to say what he might get up to if there wasn’t someone to keep an eye on him,’ Mrs Shaw had said.

The two women’s laughter came once more, alternately screeching, from either side of the open door.

‘If Mr Bletchley were here,’ Mr Reagan said, ‘wouldn’t I be the one to remind him of what a treasure he’s left behind. While he fights for King and Country, would I, now, be the one to make demands upon his wife.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know what you might do, if I gave you even half a chance,’ Mrs Bletchley said, her voice raised higher now beyond the door and fading off into another laugh.

‘Is that an invitation or merely a speculation, Mrs Bletchley?’ Mr Reagan asked. He stood up on the step, his arms poised as if he’d leap the fence from where he was standing.

‘Oh,’ Mrs Bletchley said and gave a screech, which was immediately echoed from the other side.

‘Restrain me, Harry. Restrain me,’ Mr Reagan said, putting his hand down now to his father’s shoulder. ‘But the woman’s a provocation, I haven’t a doubt.’

‘Oh,’ Mrs Bletchley said again, her voice sounding farther from the door.

‘And would you barricade your door, now, Mrs Bletchley, with a handsome feller like meself without?’ Mr Reagan said, raising one leg in addition to one arm as if he were flying across the fence already.

Another screech of laughter came from the adjoining door, then the sound of Mrs McCormack’s voice calling from the other side.

‘It’s Mr Reagan up to his tricks, Mrs McCormack,’ Mrs Bletchley said. ‘Saying I won’t be safe,’ she added, ‘not even inside the house.’

Several words of advice were called from the other side and Mr Reagan, as if pacified, lowered his leg, lowered his arm and, though still leaning on his father, sat slowly down.

‘Outnumbered, three to one. Who am I to deny that women have the best of everything?’ he said.

A communal screech came up from across the yard.

‘And since when has a woman had the best of anything, Mr Reagan?’ Mrs Shaw had said.

‘The best of anything?’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Why, there’s not one thing she doesn’t have the best of, Mrs Shaw,’ he added. ‘The best of us’, he tapped his chest, ‘in the prime of life. The best of our wages on a Friday night. The best part of the day entirely to themselves, feet up on a cushion, a box of chocolates by their side. What woman would you find, now, down a mine? And what woman would you find up at the front line, defending her country?’

‘You’re a one to talk,’ Mrs Bletchley said. ‘A fine office to go to every morning, with a coal fire burning in the hearth, and the nearest line you’ve ever been near is the one where Mrs Reagan hangs her washing.’

‘To God, but did a man ever get the better of a woman?’ Mr Reagan said. His hand still clutched to his father’s shoulder he glanced into the kitchen behind. ‘Take notice of these Valkyries, boy,’ he added. ‘Witches. Every one.’

‘Oh, we’ll witch you all right, don’t worry,’ Mrs Bletchley said. ‘With his airs and graces, and his carnation buttonhole.’

‘To God, but they’re at me every side,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘We better retire to the kitchen,’ he added. ‘But a man can’t find a drop of peace once he steps outside his house.’

‘Nor a lady, either, once she finds you and that other gigolo around,’ Mrs Bletchley said, screeching with laughter.

‘To God, Harry, but they’re after you too,’ Mr Reagan said, getting up quickly as if, suddenly, it had begun to rain. He rarely, if ever, came inside the house, and now, instead of stepping into the door, he pulled down his waistcoat and woollen cardigan more securely and, with a discreet bow, first in the direction of Mrs Bletchley, then Mrs Shaw, retreated, still bowing, across the yard.

‘He’s a great gabbler, is Reagan,’ his father said, getting up slowly and coming inside the door. ‘If he could work half as hard as he talked he’d be a rich man now, not sitting on a doorstep and filling in his time.’

He went to the fire and put on the kettle. His face was still flushed, however, from the conversation on the step outside. He folded a piece of paper and reached into the fire, drawing his head away quickly then lighting a cigarette.

‘Though Mrs Bletchley when she has a mind can match him. It’s best not to listen to half the things they say,’ he added.

It was as if in some way he’d been put out by the flow of Mr Reagan’s conversation, secretly elated yet anxious not to show it.

‘Your mother hasn’t much time for it,’ he added. ‘I can tell you that,’ as if the conversation might, if he wasn’t careful, be reported back. ‘They’ve a tongue at times where their brain belongs.’

He stood aimlessly for a moment beside the table, gazing at the books. He turned to the fire.

‘Dost set much store by living here?’ he said. He stood with one hand raised to the mantelpiece, glancing round when he didn’t answer. The kettle, set against the flames, had begun to simmer.

‘Living in this house?’ he said.

‘This house. This village. I thought we might move out,’ he said.

‘Where would we move to?’ he said.

‘Nay, I’ve no idea.’ He shook his head. It was as if the conversation at the door had roused him to the thought. ‘Away from here, at any road,’ he said.

‘We couldn’t move far, in any case,’ he said. ‘You’d have your work to go to still.’

‘Nay, I mu’n give that up, an’ all.’

‘What sort of job could you get?’ he said.

‘Nay, not much, I suppose.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m only good for shovelling. That’s the sum total of my life,’ he added.

He went to the sink, emptied the tea-pot, rinsed it beneath the tap, then took it to the kettle.

‘We mu’n move into town, or summat like that. You’d be nearer school, for a start.’ He crouched by the fire, poured water from the kettle into the pot, took it to the sink and rinsed it out.

He put in the tea. He waited then for the kettle to boil.

‘Just think on it, any road,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do ought if you mu’n think it wrong. I’ve mentioned it to your mother, but she’s no idea. She’s one for sticking in a place,’ and a few moments later, as if summoned to the room by his father’s thought, his mother’s step came from the yard outside.

‘Well,’ she said, looking in, pale-faced, the baby in her arms, Steven dragging at her coat, ‘what have you two been up to, then?’

They lay, like two stone effigies, on either side of the double bed. The bed itself, with its metal bars at either end and its large brass-coloured balls on each of the bedposts, stood in the curtained-off alcove in the corner of the room. The curtain itself, on its wooden rail, had been drawn aside; a slow, stentorian breathing, like the gasping of an engine, filled the room.

Their heads were small, shrunken against the bulk of the single pillow; he remembered seeing them before, his grandmother’s red, cherubic face, her small, short-fingered hands and stubby nails, and his grandfather’s long, angular frame, with its dark, melancholic eyes and seemingly disjointed limbs. Nothing joined them now but the single bolster beneath their heads, and the patchwork cover which gave scarcely any indication of their figures underneath; their skin was yellow their mouths open, their eyelids bulbous, their cheeks drawn in.