David Storey - Saville

‘Why should I come to the house?’ she said.

‘They’re just anxious to see you,’ he said, trying unsuccessfully to take her hand.

‘Anxious since when? We’ve been going out for weeks,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s since your father saw you.’

‘It’s partly to do with that,’ he said. Yet he was proud of her and would have wished his parents now to see her.

‘You’ll have to give them my apologies,’ she said. ‘It’s inconvenient at the weekends. And most weekdays, I’m afraid, are already spoken for. They’ll have to do their inspecting another time.’

‘They’re interested in meeting you, that’s all,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Do they think we might get married?’ Her petulance brought a redness to her cheeks, almost child-like, vulnerable, her eyes darkening.

‘It’s because I spend so much time with you, and because I’m so interested in you that they thought you might like to meet them,’ he said. He added, ‘I mean, I’d like to meet your mother if you’d care to invite me.’

She began to laugh, harshly, her eyes narrowing. ‘I can just imagine you meeting her,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You wouldn’t mind. But I would mind. And so would she. As far as I know she’s not even aware of your existence.’

‘Why isn’t she?’ He gazed boldly down the street as if he intended going down to the house and knocking on the door himself.

‘Because she’d beat the living daylights out of me if she knew I spent so much time with anybody. With a boy, I mean. I tell her I’m going out with Geraldine Parker. I’m lucky so far,’ she added. ‘She’s never checked up.’

‘What if she saw you now?’ he said, still gazing down the street.

‘I’d say I was walking back from the bus.’

‘And if she saw you some other time?’

‘I’ll meet that when it comes.’

Already she was moving off, removing her beret as if anxious to be recognized in the street not as a schoolgirl but simply as another woman.

‘When will I meet you again?’ he said, following her to the first of the doors.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘And don’t come down the street. I go to enough trouble, as it is, to see you.’

‘Perhaps you better not see me at all,’ he said, pausing now by the first of the houses.

‘That’s up to you,’ she said. ‘You can take it or leave it,’ turning then with some fresh apprehension as she recognized a voice calling from one of the farthest doors. She started running and, more for her sake than his own, he walked to the corner, glancing round at the last moment to find she’d already disappeared.

‘So she’s not coming, then. I could have told you that afore,’ his father said.

‘I suppose she’s heard about you and didn’t want to come,’ his mother said, yet betraying by her expression that she was secretly dismayed herself.

‘Oh, and I remember one or two things about you home’, his father said, ‘that’d’ve kept anybody away, let alone somebody coming courting.’

‘Well, there was one person it didn’t keep away,’ his mother said.

‘Aye, and he lived to regret it,’ his father said turning away then as he saw the colour rising to her cheeks.

She lifted her glasses and slowly wiped her eyes.

‘Nay, damn it all: we all say things we regret,’ he said. ‘But one thing I’ve never regretted, love,’ he added, ‘that’s marrying you.’

‘It’s at moments like this the truth comes out,’ she said, drawing up the corner of her apron to dry her eyes.

‘Nay, it’s this girl, and his going off so often, that’s at the root of it,’ his father said. ‘If he behaved like any other lad, like Ian next door, we’d have none of this trouble.’

‘You’re always disparaging Ian,’ his mother said.

‘Nay. He’s good for some things, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Well, let Sleeping dogs lie,’ his mother said.

‘There’s no smoke without fire,’ his father added.

‘And the way you’re going about it you’ll have it like a furnace when there’s really nothing there at all,’ his mother said, finally, hitting her fist against the table so that his father turned, sulkily, drawing on his slippers, and went slowly from the room.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Ellen,’ he said, stressing her name as if to exclude Colin now entirely. ‘Don’t come to me when you find you’ve trouble on your back,’ closing the door behind him and refusing any answer.

‘Would she come here? I mean, ever?’ his mother said as his father’s feet sounded roughly on the stairs above their heads.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’d want her. Perhaps I put it badly, making her feel she was to come.’

‘Perhaps you needn’t see her quite so often. And not be out so late,’ she added. ‘It’s that really that affects your father.’

‘Maybe I won’t see her at all,’ he said, shrugging, and when she pressed him further he said, ‘It’s really nothing. I think the best thing, Mother, is to leave us both alone.’

He avoided those places where he might have met her. He took a later bus home from school. One evening he stood with Stafford outside the hotel in the city centre talking to a group of girls amongst whom were Marion and Audrey. ‘And how’s the farm-labourer, darling?’ Marion said. ‘Still pushing turnips?’ at which Stafford had turned, vehemently, and said, ‘Just cut out all that slangy crap.’

‘Oh, my darling,’ Marion said, ‘just listen to the boy. Just because some girls take precautions and aren’t prepared to be mauled like cats.’

‘Some cats throw stones in glass houses too often for their own comfort,’ Stafford said, drawing out the sentence word by word so that its effect might be admired by virtually everyone around.

‘If I didn’t think he was such a cad I would have slapped him in the face for that,’ Marion said, adding, ‘Are you coming?’ to Audrey, yet making no effort to move herself.

Audrey had grown, if anything, over the previous two years a little thinner, her neck longer, her features more attenuated, still susceptible to fits of blushing for as Colin approached her a faint, familiar redness spread slowly up her neck and cheeks.

A third girl, slim-featured, tall, pale-eyed, was standing behind their animated group, watching their argument with something of a smile.

Audrey hadn’t answered, and the tall, slim-featured girl, having watched Marion’s final outburst, had touched her arm and though the gesture itself was disregarded had said, ‘I’ll have to be going, Marion. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ glancing at Audrey then at Colin, and turning, a satchel slung across her shoulder, and setting off across the road to an adjoining street.

‘Who’s that?’ Colin said, glancing after her.

Audrey looked up, apparently surprised.

‘That’s Margaret. She goes on the bus,’ glancing over once more to Marion and adding, ‘I suppose really I should leave myself.’

Yet much later, when he went down to the bus, she and Marion and Stafford were still there, Stafford leaning up casually against the side of the hotel entrance, his hands now in his pockets, his heel tucked up against the stonework, calling, ‘See you, Col,’ waving with the same casualness, as if they stood there, or had stood there, each evening of the week.

He’d seen the other girl then standing at an adjoining stop, still waiting there, aloof, tall, with porcelain-like features, when his own bus drew away.

‘You’ve spent long enough avoiding me. How was I to know you were hoping to see me?’ Sheila said as, with Bletchley walking behind, along with several other youths, he followed her from the stop. ‘ I thought you were avoiding me. So did Geraldine,’ she added, indicating a blonde-haired girl, with round cherubic features, whom he hadn’t noticed before and who, as if summoned by some invisible signal, emerged from the group of chanting, laughing youths behind.