David Storey - Saville

‘I’ve already got a pen,’ he said.

‘It won’t hold as much as this. And it won’t have as good a nib, either.’ Stephens shielded the row of pens inside his coat, drawing the large one out, then unscrewing the cap.

‘I’ll make do with the one I’ve got,’ he said.

He turned back slowly towards the school.

‘I can let you have it for five bob. Four bob. Three and sixpence,’ Stephens said.

‘I’ve no money, in any case,’ he said.

‘You could pay a bit each week. It’ll soon add up, don’t worry,’ Stephens said, and added, ‘If you come with me, we could start nicking them together. It’s easier with two than it is with one.’

Walker ran past, then Gill: a tall, thin boy with spectacles, his legs were thrust out at an angle on either side as he ran, in a manner reminiscent of Batty.

‘Two are more easily caught than one,’ he said, watching Stephens now as he put the pen back inside his jacket.

‘Not the way I do it,’ Stephens said, glancing up, sideways, and beginning to smile. Tiny, wedge-shaped teeth showed between his lips. ‘Come down at dinner-time and I can easily show you.’

‘Nay, I’ll leave it all to you,’ he said, and laughed, moving back towards the cloisters.

‘Any time you want ought special, just let me know, then,’ Stephens said. ‘But don’t let on to any of the others. I’m only doing it as a favour.’

He crossed the yard, re-entered the cloisters, walked down their ill-lit interior and entered the classroom. The fire which heated the room was going out; he put on more coke and sat at his desk, took his paper out again and began to read it. ‘And in the summer, when bees haunt flowers, and birds the hedges; when scents and blossoms have been distilled into one heady draught for the reeling senses; then doth my heart shake off the winter’s tale of woe and drudgery, and broken pledges, and take on the summer’s glow of health and smiles.’

He crossed out ‘doth’ and wrote in ‘does’, and began to read it through again more slowly.

Stafford swung his bag beneath his arm, leaning up against the window in which his figure and those of the two girls he was talking to were clearly reflected. Traffic passed slowly across the city centre, building up towards the evening rush. Other groups stood around outside the shops and across the front of the large hotel: boys in blazers and the familiar caps, girls with the dark-blue coats, ending just above their ankles, and the small, dark-blue berets.

‘You know Audrey, don’t you?’ Stafford said. ‘She saw you at the farm where you worked last summer.’ He indicated the taller of the two girls, slim, fair-haired, her red-cheeked face familiar now that Stafford had pointed her out. ‘It’s her old man’s farm,’ he added, and began to laugh, turning to the other girl, who, dark haired, with dark eyes and a high-bridged nose, had, after glancing at Colin, begun to laugh as well. ‘This is Marion,’ Stafford added, leaning up more securely now against the window, and burying both hands inside his pockets.

‘He said he worked well,’ the tall girl said, easing the strap of her satchel across her shoulder. ‘He worked as hard as a man,’ she added, at which, his head bowed, Stafford laughed again.

‘He is a man,’ he said to the other girl and all three of them began to laugh, more quickly, half-nervous, glancing at Colin to laugh as well.

‘Is Jack still there?’ he said. ‘And the man with the bow-legs?’

‘Oh, Gordon’s still there,’ she said. ‘He’s been there for years. And Tom’s still there. But the other one’s gone. He went down the pit, I think,’ she added.

‘Oh, Colin knows something about that, too,’ Stafford said. ‘He’s a great one for work, and knowing all about it.’

‘Has the football season finished, then?’ the dark-haired girl said, swinging away reflectively, to glance at the other groups along the pavement.

‘Over and done with,’ Stafford said, kicking against the stone covering beneath the window. ‘We’d been expecting you up to watch, but we never had any fair admirers. If we’d had there’s no knowing what we might have done,’ he added.

‘We only watch the First Team,’ the dark-haired girl said, beginning to giggle and glancing once again, speculatively, towards the other groups. ‘I think Swallow’s got terrific hair,’ she added. ‘And Audrey’s really keen on Smith.’

‘Major or Minor?’ Stafford said.

‘Major, of course.’ The dark-haired girl laughed, nudging Audrey, who, flushing deeper, began to laugh as well.

‘I’ll have to be going,’ Colin said. ‘The bus goes in a few minutes and there isn’t another for nearly an hour.’

‘Do you go home on the bus?’ the dark-haired girl said. ‘It’s so much quicker by train. You don’t have to wait in all those queues.’

‘And we have good fun in the carriages. There aren’t any corridors,’ Stafford said. ‘Once in, you see, they can’t get out.’

The dark-haired girl laughed again.

‘They’ll be reporting Stafford, one day. Just you mark my words,’ she said, swinging back her satchel.

‘There’re any amount of tunnels, and you can take out all the light-bulbs,’ Stafford said.

The light-haired girl had flushed. She glanced at Colin then, vacantly, gazed off across the road.

‘Brenda was going to report you, in any case,’ the dark-haired girl said. ‘Her skirt was torn when she got to school, and Miss Wilkinson sent her from the room to sew it up.’ She pushed back her hair, taking her beret off and flicking her head, the dark hair swaying out behind. ‘I wish Swallow travelled on our train. We’d have a super time,’ she added.

‘You’re too young for Swallow,’ Stafford said.

‘I’m not too young for anybody, darling,’ the girl said and glanced back up the road with another smile.

‘Why don’t you come through on Saturday, Colin?’ Stafford said. ‘There’s a train through your place at one o’clock. Ask for Swinnerton Junction: I can meet you there.’

‘All right,’ he said. He bowed his head, hitched up his satchel, and started off across the road.

‘Goodbye, handsome,’ the dark-haired girl said and, as he reached the other side, he saw that all three of them were laughing, the fair-haired girl still gazing across, the shorter, dark-haired girl reaching up to grasp Stafford’s shoulder and talking earnestly, half-smiling, into his seemingly indifferent face.

Hedged fields gave way to woodland, then a cutting, with large, orange-coloured rocks jutting down towards the carriage.

A moment later the train drew into a station, a single wooden hut with seats, standing in the centre of a wooden platform.

Colin got down; a woman with a baby, who’d been sitting in the wooden hut, got into the carriage and closed the door. A man with a barrow, weeding a garden at the side of the station, took his ticket.

He set off up a track leading to a fenced-off road that skirted the top of a hill. An old cart stood propped up on wooden boxes in the station yard; a dismembered lorry, wheelless, its engine removed as well as its bonnet, stood mouldering amidst a bed of weeds. From somewhere along the line came the sound of a whistle and immediately ahead, at the top of the track, a man on horseback appeared, riding along the edge of the road. A wooden gate, leaning from its hinges, its bars intertwined with grass and weeds, divided the track from the road itself.

A figure on a bike was pedalling slowly up the hill, its head bowed, its shoulders stooped. Only as it reached the crest of the hill did it begin to straighten, and seeing him standing there beside the gate, it raised its hand and waved. ‘Hi,’ Stafford said and pedalled up towards him. ‘How long have you been waiting, then?’