David Storey - Saville

‘How?’ He opened his eyes, gazing at the leaves above his head. ‘I’ll not even get School Certificate,’ he said. ‘In any case, I don’t really mind. I might not even get in the army. I’m supposed to be anaemic.’

‘What sort of school is St Dominic’s?’ he said. Occasionally he’d seen Reagan in town, wearing the dark cap with the red insignia of his private school, and the red-rimmed blazer, but, away from the village, Reagan had always shown a reluctance to be acknowledged.

‘Oh, they work you, if you want to work,’ he said. ‘If you don’t, they never even bother. In any case,’ he slowly straightened, ‘I might join a dance band. Or even form one of my own. I’d rather do that than go to college.’

‘Where would you have it?’ he said.

‘In the village. Or at Brierley, or Shafton. Anywhere.’ He waved his hand, his long, thin-boned fingers thrust stiffly out. ‘I haven’t mentioned it at home. My mother wants me to go to a music college. But I don’t think I’d get far there. My Dad thinks I ought to go into the County Hall, or work in accountancy, or something.’

Colin stood up.

‘I suppose we ought to be going,’ he said.

‘You’ll be going into the army, in any case,’ Reagan said. ‘So will Bletchley. Though I reckon you’ll get deferment first. That’s one reason, really, why my mother wants me to go on with music. If I’m a student long enough she thinks in a year or two I might miss conscription.’

‘Will it be over by then?’ he said.

‘Oh, it’s bound to be,’ Reagan said.

They’d been walking all morning; during the afternoon they’d sat by a lake in which one or two boats were being rowed, then, searching for a quicker route home, they’d set off in a fresh direction They’d been walking now for over two hours and nothing familiar had appeared to guide them, Reagan himself curiously indifferent as to whether they found their way or not.

‘There aren’t many dance-halls, you see. And you could give lessons. Or start a club.’ His long hair thrust back, his feet, which were small and dainty, tapping lightly at the road beneath him, he indicated something of a step. ‘I’ve picked it up, you see, from a book. It’s pretty easy once you get the rhythm. It’s just a question really of one foot following the other.’ Refreshed by these speculations about his future, if not by the rest at the side of the road, Reagan now walked slightly ahead, his arms held out before him, his eyes half-closed, and, in a fit of unprecedented boldness, danced lightly to and fro, murmuring a rhythm, glancing finally at Colin and adding, ‘ One , two, three. One , two, three,’ inviting him to join in.

Colin laughed; he had seldom seen Reagan carried away by anything at all, and a moment later, his arms held out in an identical fashion, he danced beside him, his head stooped as he followed Reagan’s steps until, with a blaring of a horn, a car disturbed them and they stepped aside to see a pair of curious faces flying past.

‘You see, everyone’s interested when it comes down to it,’ Reagan said, waving through the cloud of dust at the departing vehicle and taking up his stance once more in the centre of the road. ‘What say thou Lothario? Shall we dance?’ laughing then as Colin followed, repeating the steps to Reagan’s instructions, Reagan leaning up finally against a post and adding, ‘Nay, lad, tha s’ll be some folk as’ll never learn, you can be sure of that,’ his skeletal figure with its massive, rearward-bulging head stooped over, his long arms flung down, his face flushing, as he tried with much groaning and coughing to restrain his pleasure. ‘You’ll be my first customer, I’m hoping. If there are many more like you I’ll make a fortune,’ his habitual shyness returning as he smoothed back his hair and they set off once more along the road.

The idea of spending the day with Reagan had come from his father. Perhaps, in this way, he had been hoping to ingratiate himself with Mr Reagan, who reputedly now carried, since the nationalization of the coal-mines, greater weight than ever in the local colliery office. His father, since the ending of the war, had grown increasingly restless. Bread had been rationed for a period. Clothes and food were short. He had tried once again, as he had three years earlier, to get a job in the local pit, applying on this occasion for a job as a deputy, but having, so far as Colin knew, not had an answer. It was on this basis – at least, as a result of his father’s prompting – that he’d invited Reagan out for the day. They had wandered initially in the direction of the lake, drawn there by Reagan’s information that there was a café on the way whose owner was known to his father and who, on being acquainted with Reagan’s identity, would let them have a meal for nothing: information which, in the event, had proved to be if not untrue at least misleading. A café they had come across, set in a green-painted wooden hut at the side of the road: its proprietor, however, on inquiry had turned out to be a swarthy, frizzy-haired woman who, on Reagan’s name being mentioned, had looked at Reagan himself over the bridge of her nose and pointed venomously at the blackboard beside her on which were clearly chalked the prices of the food she had to offer. They had come away in the end without purchasing anything at all.

The same aimlessness with which they’d started re-asserted itself as the day wore on: a minimum of food they had purchased at a hut by the lake and the notion of finding a shorter way back to the village had been one of expediency more than anything else – to bring the day to an end as quickly as possible, Colin forging ahead as Reagan tired, hoping to identify some familiar landmark before sinking back, disappointed, to wait for him at the side of the road.

Now they walked along quite freshly, Reagan whistling a dance tune, murmuring to himself at odd moments as if anxious to communicate something of which, as yet, he was still uncertain, glancing finally at Colin and saying, ‘What’re your parents hoping you’ll turn into, then?’

‘They’ve mentioned teaching. I don’t suppose there’s anything else.’

‘They wouldn’t want you to go into an office?’ Reagan said.

‘I shouldn’t think so.’ He shook his head.

‘What would you teach, do you think?’ he said.

‘English. Perhaps geography. They’re the best two subjects on the whole,’ he said.

‘I’ve no best subject, really,’ Reagan said. ‘They’re all about as bad as one another.’

They breasted a rise.

Below them stretched an area of plain and woodland, scattered here and there with colliery heaps. To their right, in the farthest distance, appeared the familiar profile of the village pit.

‘I think I know where we are,’ he said.

‘And I do,’ Reagan said, his eyes narrowing as he gazed off in the same direction. ‘We’re miles out of the way. It’ll be hours before we get back now.’

Yet, a few minutes later, a lorry came down the road behind them and, stopping, the driver offered them a lift. ‘Oh, Reagan. Bryan Reagan. I know Bryan,’ he said when, after asking them where they were going, he’d demanded their names. ‘I know one or two things about your father,’ he added to Reagan, ‘which it’d be wise of me not to mention. Just say Jack Hopcroft gave you a lift and watch his expression.’ He dropped them half an hour later in a lane leading to the village, sounding his horn as he drove away.

‘Well, it’s been a good day,’ Reagan said as they walked into the village, his awkwardness returning with almost every stride. ‘I hope you won’t mention what I told you: about the dancing and the band, and that.’

‘No,’ he said.