David Storey - Saville

‘Couldn’t I see you on your own?’ he said.

‘I am on my own,’ she said.

The blonde-haired girl glanced over at him, cautiously, from Sheila’s other side.

‘Are you free on Wednesday night?’ he said, hoping by the quietness of his voice to insinuate something of their former intimacy.

‘I’m going to Geraldine’s on Wednesday night.’

‘How about Thursday?’ He ran through the nights of the week. At each one she shook her head, or laughed, or answered, ‘I thought I’d told you once before. My mother works most evenings.’

Finally, seeing his task was hopeless, he dropped behind with Bletchley, who, having left the other youths, was now following him as a chaperon, smiling, taking his arm as he caught him up and saying, ‘I should leave her alone, old man,’ and, ‘I’d call it a day, if I were you.’

‘I’ll hang on for a bit,’ he said.

Bletchley shrugged. He thrust one hand in his blazer pocket, restrung his satchel across his shoulder and turned back to the village.

After a few minutes Colin set off down the street, glancing at the doors and windows, finally identifying her home from his one previous visit to the street when, late one night, after leaving her, he had followed her, half-curious, to see actually which door she entered, even pausing and putting his ear against it, hearing nothing but silence, however, from the other side. Now when he reached it, the late afternoon light still bright in the street, he noticed the dark, scuffed marks around the loose, ill-fitting wooden handle; it was only a moment’s gesture to take the handle, knock, open the door, and step through to the room inside, nodding casually to its occupants as if he had been a visitor many times before. The window beside the door, covered in fine dust and flecked with rain-marks, was shaded by a single curtain, a piece of red cloth, irregularly fastened at the top and bleached, perhaps by the light itself, to a faint whiteness at the centre. No sound emerged from the house as he passed, and he went on walking along the pitted pavement, pausing farther on, and gazing back for a while the way he’d come. Several small children ran from door to door followed by a barking dog; he went round the end of the terrace and walked along the narrow backs trying to work out which of the doors might be her own, gazing hopefully at several.

Apart from a woman emerging at one point and shaking a piece of cloth, there was no sign of life in the yards at all. He examined the windows: odd faces and figures were visible inside. He waited a little longer, then, with his hands in his pockets, conscious of the stares from several people in the yards of the houses on the other side, he went on to the road at the opposite end, returned to the street once more, glanced along it, then, his hands still in his pockets, walked slowly, with a half-lingering hope that even now he might be overtaken, back towards the village and the turning to his home.

‘The grey seeds of autumn wound my heart with a languor unknown. I lie down in grasses grey with grief, and clutch their soft texture to my face, my sorrow fed with bewilderment and rage, the earth bowed down by tears. I yearned for touches sure as death, yet all she gave were wounds that mortified my flesh and drew what she had hoped for now I see, a cry of anguish from my breast.’

He crossed out ‘languor’ and wrote ‘an intensity’, crossed out ‘an intensity’ and put ‘languor’ back again. He read it through, half murmuring the words, stooping in the faint light, lifting the pad from his knee and holding it before him to relieve the pressure on his back. Finally, when he could think of nothing else to add, he put the pencil in his jacket pocket and the pad inside the jacket itself, stood up, unbolted the door, pulled the chain and stepped out to the yard.

He closed the door behind him and went over to the house.

‘I don’t know what you do in there,’ his mother said. ‘I’ve been waiting to go for half an hour. Didn’t you hear me come to the door?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Are you constipated, then?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Well, I don’t know what he does,’ she said to his father, stepping out then to the yard, her feet sounding briskly across the ashes.

‘Are you reading books in there?’ his father said. ‘If you’re reading books you can read them just as well in here.’

‘I didn’t know she wanted to go,’ he said.

‘You must have done. Do you think she tries the door for fun?’

‘I just forgot she’d been,’ he said.

‘Forgot?’ he said. ‘Do you think it’s a palace, or summat, in theer? It’s t’on’y lavatory, tha knows, we’ve got.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. He went to the stairs.

‘And where are you going now?’ his father said.

‘It’s some homework I have to finish,’ he said.

‘Well, finish it and be quick,’ his father said. ‘It’s getting to be like a monastery this house. You can’t go to the lavatory without finding someone theer who has to study.’

He closed the door to his room, eased his way between his and Steven’s bed, and sank down on the single wooden chair, which, a year previously, his father had made from the dug-out bits of timber from the air-raid shelter. He took out the pad and examined the writing. He read it through again, then, in capital letters, printed ‘AUTUMN’ at the top. Hearing Steven’s voice in the kitchen below he stooped beneath the bed, pulled out a wooden box and slid the pad beneath a pile of books and was apparently glancing through these when, a few minutes later, Steven, fair-haired, blue-eyed, opened the door and said, ‘What’re you doing, our Colin? Have you finished? I’ve got to go to bed.’

The road bent away to his left. Some distance ahead he could see two cyclists, but by the time he reached the curve of the bend himself they’d disappeared. Reagan was out of sight now, some way behind. He suspected, even, that he might have turned back but, after sinking down on the verge and waiting, leaning on his arm, chewing grass, the tall, awkwardly proportioned figure finally came into view, walking slowly in the centre of the road, his hands in his pockets, looking up when he saw him waiting, evidently with little interest, and saying nothing when eventually he caught him up, merely sinking down on the verge and sighing.

Reagan flung out his legs across the grass, his large head thrust back, his long dark hair lying in loose strands across his face.

‘We can wait for a bus at the next stop if you want to,’ Colin said.

‘No. I’m all right.’ Reagan closed his eyes. He blew upwards, across his face, disturbing the strands of hair. His thin features glowed with a reddish hue, his nostrils distended, a faint bluish patch throbbing at his temple.

For a while, lulled by the quietness, the heat, and the singing of the birds, neither of them spoke. From across the fields came the rattle of a tractor, and Reagan raised himself slightly, thinking he’d heard a vehicle on the road.

Nothing, however, disturbed the vista of fields and woodland.

‘I think we ought to be going,’ Colin said. ‘It’ll be dark in a couple of hours, and to be frank’, he added, ‘I’m not sure where we are.’

‘Oh, what does it matter?’ Reagan said, sinking back again. ‘If we get back late we get back late.’ He closed his eyes, projecting his lower lip and blowing up once more across his face. ‘What’re you going to do when you leave school?’ he said a moment later.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I might go to college.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to do National Service,’ Reagan said.

‘Won’t you go to college or university?’ Colin said.