David Storey - Saville

‘He gets by, I suppose, by being thick-skinned,’ he said, more to provoke her than anything else.

‘Thick skins aren’t very much use when it comes down to it,’ she added.

She added nothing further. They passed the shops with their faintly illuminated panes, the forecourt of a garage, and crossed in front of a row of houses. To their left was the tiny Catholic church with its rectory and, beside it, the converted stone-built house that was occupied by the Conservative and Unionist Club.

‘What do you do in the evenings?’ he said.

‘I usually stay in,’ she said. ‘I’ve a younger sister, and my mother works most evenings. Once or twice a week I go over to a friend at Baildon. Well, my uncle, really. It’s where we used to live.’

‘What does your mother do?’ he said.

‘She works at a pub. The Stavington Arms. Do you know it?’

He shook his head. It was like one woman talking about another.

‘Are you free this evening?’ he said.

‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I suppose I could be. I could ask the woman next door. She’s looked in once or twice when I’ve had to go out.’ A sudden concern now had taken possession of her features, the eye drawn down, the frown, an almost habitual expression, suddenly returning, the mouth tightening. ‘Where do you want to go?’

‘We could go to the pictures.’

‘I don’t think I’ve got long enough to go there,’ she said.

‘We could go for a walk.’

‘Where do you go for walks round here?’ She glanced across.

‘Wherever you like.’

‘I don’t know round here at all,’ she said.

‘I could show you one or two places, then,’ he said.

‘I shouldn’t come to the house,’ she added. ‘I’ll meet you at the corner. Will seven o’clock, do you think, be any good?’

He watched her walk off down the narrow street: it was comprised of tiny brick terraces whose front doors opened directly on to the pavement. She didn’t look back. At a door half-way down the street she took out a key, pushed against the door then went inside.

She was already waiting at the corner when he arrived. She’d brushed back her hair and fastened it with a ribbon. She wore a dark-green coat which, he suspected, might have been handed down to her by her mother. It ended half-way down her calves, her ankles enclosed by white socks, folded over, and the flat-heeled shoes he thought she’d worn before.

‘I suppose we better not walk back through the village’, she said, ‘in case someone sees me who knows my mother. She’s out, you see. So I can’t be away for long.’

They turned and, their hands in their pockets, walked down to the junction to the south of the village and, after some indecision on his part, turned up towards the Dell.

They passed the gas-lit windows of the Miners’ Institute, the front of the Plaza picture-house, and beyond the last houses started down the slope towards the brooding, mist-shrouded hollow round the gasworks and the sewage pens.

‘Not very nice air round here,’ she said and laughed.

‘Do you have a bike? We could have gone for a ride,’ he said.

‘No,’ she said. She shook her head.

‘I borrow my father’s usually,’ he said. ‘Though he’s not very keen. He uses it for work.’

‘What’s his job?’ she said, casually, looking off now towards the fields the other side.

‘He’s down the pit.’

At the mention of his father her interest had drifted off.

‘Where’s this road lead to, then?’ she said when they reached the foot of the slope and had started up the hill the other side.

‘It goes on for miles,’ he said. ‘Stokeley. Brierley. Monckton.’ He gestured to the slopes of the overgrown colliery to their left. ‘We could go in there if you like,’ he added.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m not keen on walking on roads, if it comes to that.’

He found a gap in the hedge and held back the branches. He caught a glimpse of her calf, the turn of the white stocking, and the frayed edge at the bottom of her coat.

He led the way between the darkening mounds.

‘Is it wet?’ she said, stooping, feeling the grass.

‘You can sit on my coat.’ He took off his jacket and put it down, standing in his shirt-sleeves, shivering then at the dampness in the air.

The slope faced back towards the village: below them, partly obscured by trees, were the outlines of the sewage pens, the swamp, and beyond the dark profile of the gas container. The lights of the village spread backwards to the final mound of the colliery with its twin head-gears and its faint, whitish stream of smoke. The hill behind it, with the church and manor, was picked out now by a vague, irregular pattern of lights.

He sat beside her.

‘I used to play down there.’ He gestured below. ‘Years ago. We had a hut and kept food and things, and used to build traps for people who attacked us.’

‘And who were they?’ she said. ‘The ones who attacked.’

‘They never came.’

She laughed, leaning back. She unfastened her coat. Underneath she wore a blouse and skirt.

‘We ought to sit on this,’ she said. ‘It’s bigger than yours, and you’ll get less cold.’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I feel all right.’

Yet she stood up and took it off, laying it on the ground between them.

‘What’s school like?’ he said.

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’ll leave in a year. I’ll have to get a job. My mother’s divorced, you see, and my father pays her hardly any money.’

She sat with her knees pulled up, her arms folded, her head nodding forward, abstracted, gazing to the mist and shadows in the Dell below.

‘What happened to your hut?’ she said.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. He gazed down now to the Dell himself. ‘Fell to pieces.’

She straightened, leaning back, supported by one elbow, glancing up. Her face was shadowed, the eyes dark, almost hidden, the mouth drawn in. It was like some other person, unrelated to the one he’d seen before.

He leant down beside her and she, withdrawing her elbow, sank back on the coat.

He felt the thinness of her blouse.

She thrust up her head. Their mouths held soundlessly together.

‘Have you been out with many girls?’ she said, finally, when he drew away.

‘Not really, I suppose,’ he said.

She smiled, her face turned up beneath his arm, only the eyes now, in the darkness, faintly luminous.

‘What makes you ask?’

‘Oh, the way you do things, I suppose,’ she said.

She closed her eyes again and, drawn down by the gesture, her face thrust up to his, he kissed her on the mouth.

Her tongue crept out between his lips.

‘Does that have any effect?’ she said, and added, cautiously, drawing back her head, ‘Down there, I mean.’

Her hand fumbled for a moment by his waist then, coldly, he felt it thrust between his legs.

‘Would you?’ she said, and added, ‘Put your hand on me.’

He felt the smoothness of her thigh, the softness, then the sudden roughness underneath.

He lay transfixed, as if impaled, her tongue thrust fully now between his lips, moaning quietly in her throat, her body rolled gently from side to side.

Some movements in the bushes above them a moment later made her stiffen. She drew back her head.

‘I think there’s someone watching us,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can just lie here, I suppose.’

They lay apart then, gazing up. The movements in the shrubs had stopped.

‘I suppose I ought to go,’ she said. ‘I ought to be getting back in any case,’ she added. ‘I only had an hour, you see.’

‘Shall I see you again?’ he said.

‘Whenever you like. Wednesday’s usually my best night, and Thursdays. That’s usually when I go over to my friend’s.’