David Storey - Saville

One evening he had been coming home from the local picture-house with Bletchley when they had seen a girl walking ahead of them, dressed in a dark coat and wearing a dark beret who, as they approached, turned and, seeing Bletchley, said, ‘Hello, Ian. What’re you doing around these parts?’

‘I live here, Sheila,’ Bletchley said, apparently disconcerted by this inquiry, for he added in a belligerent, almost leering tone, ‘What’re you doing round here in any case yourself?’

‘Oh, I live round here as well,’ the girl said simply, removing her beret and suddenly shaking out her hair. On the front of the beret was the single stork motif of Bletchley’s school.

Bletchley was smoking; his father had returned home earlier that year from the army, and, as if as a result of his re-appearance, Bletchley had suddenly acquired a number of adult mannerisms. As well as smoking he’d begun, tentatively, since he scarcely shaved, to grow a moustache. The effect, when viewed from the house next door, was that of two men vying for the attention of one woman, and Mrs Bletchley, far from wilting beneath the weight of these unprecedented demands, had taken on a new life and vigour. She had, as if in acknowledgment, begun to smoke herself. Bletchley, on this occasion, produced the cigarette from the palm of his hand, setting it conspicuously between his lips. He blew out a cloud of smoke and examined her with greater circumspection through it.

‘I thought you lived in Shafton,’ he said.

‘We did,’ she said. ‘We moved here about a week ago. I’m just coming home from Geraldine Parker’s. That’s why I’m late.’ She tossed back her hair. ‘Where have you been to in any case?’ she added.

‘We’ve been to the flicks,’ Bletchley said, allowing another cloud of smoke to escape, the cigarette propped loosely in the corner of his mouth. He gestured back the way they’d come. The picture-house, built only a few months before the war, stood at the edge of a piece of waste ground opposite the Miners’ Institute. It was from that direction that the girl herself was coming.

She had dark eyes; her hair, to which she wished to draw their attention, was dark too, her face pale, almost startlingly white, emphasizing the redness of her lips and a certain gravity, almost gauntness of expression. She had the staidness of an older woman, walking along at Bletchley’s side as if they had been together throughout the evening.

‘This is Colin,’ Bletchley said when she finally glanced across and the girl had added, ‘Not from King Edward’s?’

‘Why, do you know him?’ Bletchley said, removing the cigarette and glancing at Colin himself as if he suspected the casualness of this encounter wasn’t all it seemed.

‘I’ve heard about him,’ the girl had said.

‘Sheila’s in our form at school,’ Bletchley said, his tone suggesting that, as a consequence of this, anything she might say could, on his authority, be discounted. ‘She got a transfer from a county school.’

‘Oh, we’ve lived all over,’ the girl said, nodding her head and indicating a near-by street. ‘We live down there as a matter of fact. I’ll be seeing you around, I suppose. What night do you normally go to the pictures?’

‘You never can tell,’ Bletchley said, the pictures being but one of a host of activities occupying his attention throughout the week.

‘Well, I suppose I’ll be seeing you on the bus,’ the girl had said and nodding to Colin called good night, turning as she reached the corner, and waving, Bletchley raising his cigarette and moving it, airily, in the region of his ear.

‘What’s her second name?’ he said.

‘Richmond,’ Bletchley said. ‘She came last year and she and this Geraldine Parker spend most of their time together.’

He added little else until they reached their respective doors, then said, pausing on the step to light another cigarette, ‘I think she took a fancy to you. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I didn’t notice.’

‘I ought to warn you, I suppose,’ he said. ‘Her mother’s divorced. Some of the boys she goes out with have had her once or twice. Though I suppose it gets exaggerated,’ he added, ‘things like that.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I suppose I better get inside.’

He kicked the door open with the toe of his shoe, pushed it with his shoulder and, his hands in his pockets, stepped inside.

A few moments later through the kitchen wall came the sound of Mr Bletchley’s voice, renewed, if not renovated entirely by his absence during the war. ‘Will you remove that cigarette or do you want me to remove it for you?’

‘You’ll remove nothing of mine,’ came Bletchley’s shout, if anything one or two decibels lower.

‘I’ll remove anything I like. I’ll remove one or two other things besides.’ The words were followed a moment later by something of a cry. ‘How many more have you got inside that pocket?’

‘Mind your own business.’

There was the sound of shuffling feet followed, a moment later, by another cry.

‘Stop it. Stop it, Arthur,’ came Mrs Bletchley’s voice.

‘I’ll stop it. I’ll stop him one in the mouth if he answers me back again,’ came Mr Bletchley’s shout.

‘At least, the war’s done him some good,’ his father said, looking up from where he was reading by the fire. ‘If it hasn’t done much for Ian or his mother.’

‘Live and let live,’ his mother said, standing at the sink.

‘Don’t worry: I’ve waited long enough to see it as I’m not likely to want to stop it now,’ his father added, folding up his paper and going to the wall himself. ‘Go on, go on. Give him another, Arthur,’ he called in a voice reminiscent of Mr Reagan’s, his shout however, after a brief moment, followed by total silence on the other side.

He saw her stepping off the bus and, by jumping the wall of the pub yard, he came out a few paces ahead of her as she turned down the street towards the village.

‘Are you going far?’ he said.

She glanced up, casually, as she had on the previous occasion, as if she’d been aware of his presence for some considerable time; as if even, only moments before, they might have been talking on the bus, removing her beret and shaking out her hair in that instinctive, half-engaging manner, then glancing past him to the row of shops standing opposite the pub in the village street. ‘I was just calling at Benson’s,’ she said. ‘Then going home.’

‘Oh, I’ll go that way as well,’ he said.

‘I shan’t be long,’ she said. ‘I’ve only some medicine to pick up. It’s already made.’

She went inside the shop and stood, a strangely independent figure, behind several others, calling out finally to one of the assistants, stepping to the counter and, after a moment’s conversation, pulling out a purse and setting down some money.

Her face was gaunter than before, the cheeks drawn in. It was like intercepting someone on a journey; as she watched his expression she began to smile herself.

‘Aren’t you keen on school?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said, ‘I suppose. Not really.’

‘Why do you go on with it?’ she said.

‘I suppose I have to.’

‘No one has to do anything, as far as I’m aware,’ she said. She smiled again, casually, looking off along the street to where, at its farthest end, the road divided, one arm leading to the Dell, the other to the station. ‘Where do you live in any case?’ she added as if to distract him from this notion altogether.

‘Next door to Bletchley. Or, conversely,’ he added, ‘Bletchley lives next door to me.’

She nodded, walking along then for a while in silence, laughing as if the thought of this had caught her fancy, then saying, ‘I think people make too much fun of Ian. Just because he’s large. He’s much brighter, you know, than people think.’ She drew her brows together, the eyes narrowing as if she had some specific instance of Bletchley’s unlooked-for qualities in mind.