Saville (69 page)

‘So you’re familiar with the place as well?’ she said when he made some remark describing this.

‘I was educated here,’ he said.

‘Educated,’ she said, looking at him slyly.

Her hair was greying at the temples; she watched him with the same companionable expression which characterized her relationship with Callow.

‘Don’t you lay much store by it?’ he said.

‘More than most,’ she said, ‘and less than some.’

‘Why do you always make fun of Callow?’

‘Do I?’ Neither his tone nor accusation had surprised her at all. ‘He’s such a stuffy old bird,’ she added, and leant across the table to touch his arm. ‘So are you, but a little bit younger.’

She smiled; her eyes were shielded by dark lashes, her eyelids, narrow, almost invisible beneath her brow.

‘Are you married?’ he asked directly.

‘I am,’ she said. She wore no ring.

‘Is your husband here?’ He gestured behind him, towards the town.

‘I hardly think so. Yet nevertheless’, she added, smiling at him still, ‘you could never be sure.’

She wore a dark-green coat; it had a fur collar. The brownness
of the collar gave her face, with its broad cheek-bones and narrow jaw, a peculiar intensity.

‘What does your husband do?’

‘He doesn’t do anything at present.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Is it important?’ she said. ‘I’d have thought, on the whole, it was impertinent to ask.’

There was a certain daintiness about her; her hands were small, her fingers delicate and thin. He watched her pick up her cup: her knuckles were crested white; the veins stood out on the back of her wrist.

‘He worked in a company run by his father,’ she added. ‘Then he broke away, intending to stand on his own two feet. Unfortunately, he didn’t succeed. He’ll go back to the firm, I imagine, and take it over when his father dies. We’re not living together, you see, at present.’

‘Are you divorced?’

‘Oh, no,’ she said, casually. ‘He wants me back.’

She watched him for a moment over her cup.

‘You’re very greedy,’ she added.

‘Am I?’

‘Very.’

She glanced away: her daintiness, her sudden bouts of petulance, simulated it seemed and in response to some imagined pattern of behaviour, had made him smile. He was smiling still when she glanced towards him.

‘Is anything the matter?’ she said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Philip’, she said, ‘is quite impressed,’ and after a moment added, ‘Callow.’

‘What by?’

‘Your rapport with the students.’

‘I’d hardly call them students,’ he said.

‘He does.’

‘They’re really children.’

‘Isn’t that patronizing?’ she said watching him once more through hooded eyes.

‘I suppose it is.’ He smiled again. ‘I’m not much more than a child myself.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I believe you’re not.’

‘Does your husband live locally?’ he said.

‘Fairly locally.’ She paused. ‘I use my maiden name.’ She flushed, then added, ‘Elizabeth Bennett.’

It was as if the name should have had some significance for him. She watched him for a moment then said, ‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Who were you waiting for?’ he said.

‘No one. I saw you coming. I thought I’d wait for you,’ she said. There was some declaration of feeling here he thought he couldn’t avoid: a moment later when she added, ‘Do you want another coffee?’ he got up from the table and held her chair.

As she proceeded him out of the café he took her arm: outside in the street he didn’t release it.

‘Where are you going now?’ he said.

‘I’ll be going home,’ she said.

‘Is it far?’

‘Just out of town. I have a room at my sister’s. I usually walk back for the exercise.’

‘Do you have a job?’ he said.

‘I work at a chemist’s.’

‘At a shop?’

‘Is anything wrong?’

‘Why aren’t you working today?’ he said.

‘It’s run by my father. I go in’, she said, ‘whenever I please.’

Bennett’s, a chemist’s, stood conspicuously at a corner of the road leading up to the school.

‘I’ll walk back with you if you like,’ he said.

‘I usually walk through the Park,’ she said. ‘It’s longer, but it brings me out by my sister’s house.’

‘What does your sister do?’

‘Oh, nothing,’ she said as he led her across the road. ‘She’s married. She and her husband have no children. They frequently travel.’ After a moment she added, ‘They’re away at present.’

‘You haven’t any children?’

‘No,’ she said.

The road led down towards the river; on the flat land immediately at the foot of the city’s central hill a smaller hill stood
up from a surrounding mass of trees: the roof of a large old house was visible beyond.

Paths led off through the grounds; a lake glistened amongst the trees. Birds flew up; the day was windy. As if in fear of the wind she held her coat to her, clasped across her chest.

‘And you? What do you intend to do?’ she said.

‘Oh.’ He gestured round. The trees obscured the view of the town. ‘I’ll teach.’

‘Forever?’

‘For a while.’ Then, bitterly, he added, ‘What alternative is there? It’s all ordained.’

‘Is it? You don’t strike me as a fatalist.’

Other figures moved off beneath the trees. To their right, as they proceeded in the direction of the river, the ruins of the old house were finally enveloped by the profile of the hill.

‘Philip said he’d seen some of your poems.’

‘Yes.’

‘In a magazine.’

‘I don’t think anyone reads it,’ he said.

‘Apparently they were reviewed in the national press.’

‘Three lines at the end of a paragraph,’ he said.

‘Were your family pleased?’

‘Yes,’ he said, though in fact his father’s response had been non-committal. Only his mother had read them with any interest, raising her glasses to gaze at the page. The print was small. She had studied them for quite some time and finally had looked up, flush-faced, as if, in her pleasure, suddenly embarrassed, and said, ‘Yes,’ quaintly, strangely, in half a whisper.

‘Are you and Callow close friends?’ he said.

‘Oh, very,’ she said, and laughed.

On reaching the Park he’d released her arm: they walked along a little distance apart.

‘I knew him before he was a teacher,’ she said.

‘When?’

‘He was a student. We both grew up in the town together. We perform for one another what I believe you would call a supernumerary role: namely we invariably stand in for someone else.’

She didn’t explain it further.

They walked along for a while in silence. The path led by a lake; a statue stood in a pillared alcove on a tiny island.

He had walked here quite frequently with Margaret; often they had sat on a seat gazing across at the island and the female statue, draped to its ankles, its breasts clearly outlined beneath its robe, its gaze inclined towards the water: it had seemed, in its calmness, so much a reflection of their own relationship. Now he walked by with another woman and scarcely glanced at it; it was as if a rupture with his past had taken place, tiny, and scarcely to be considered, but perceptible and, to the extent that he discarded so much of what he felt before, disheartening and repulsive.

He added nothing further until they’d reached the gates.

A road led off to a distant housing estate; close by, opposite the Park walls, stood several large houses: their backs looked on to fields running down to the river.

‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘We’re almost there. Do you fancy’, she added, ‘another coffee? Or do you intend on walking farther?’

‘I’ll come in,’ he said.

They walked along the road by the bevelled brick wall. Originally the retaining wall to the grounds of the ruined house, which now comprised the grounds of the Park, it had fallen down in one or two places, and they could see the gardens and several covered walks inside.

‘It’s a pleasant part to live,’ he said.

‘Is it?’ She looked back now at the Park herself. ‘I suppose so. I hadn’t noticed.’

The house stood away from the road at the end of a drive: bay-windows looked out on to a lawned garden.

Unlocking the front door she revealed a polished hall: a banistered staircase rose immediately ahead; large rooms with carpeted floors opened up on either side.

‘Go straight ahead,’ she said, indicating a door at the rear of the hall. ‘I’ll be with you in a minute.’

He heard her feet stamping overhead.

A window looked out to the garden at the back: flower-beds, bare with winter, ran down to a distant hedge; wooden frames provided a covered walk. In the farthest distance were the hills
across the valley; immediately beyond the hedge figures ran to and fro in a game of hockey.

She came in wearing a dark-brown dress. Her face, as a result of the walk, had regained some colour. She went directly to the fire, which was blazing behind a wire guard, and warmed her hands.

‘It won’t be a minute. It’s warmer at the back. We’re facing south.’ She indicated the window and the view beyond.

Later, when she brought in the coffee, she said, ‘I could get you something to eat if you like.’

‘That’s all right,’ he said.

‘What do you normally do at week-ends, in any case?’ she said.

‘I walk quite a bit.’

‘Don’t you have any friends?’

‘Most of them’, he said, ‘have left.’

‘The ugly duckling.’

‘Do you think that’s right?’

‘
I
don’t think that’s right. I thought you did.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘It’s odd,’ she said, gazing at him once more across a cup, as she had in the café, ‘but your mood has changed again. It seems to fluctuate like anything.’

He laughed. He looked round him at the house: the furniture was large and set down like boulders around the fire. From outside, faintly, came shouts and the occasional click of sticks against a ball.

‘Do you play sport?’

‘I did.’

‘Not any longer?’

‘No.’

‘A native of the city. Though, of course, not quite.’

‘Saxton isn’t really anywhere, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Alienated from his class, and with nowhere yet to go.’

‘Do I seem alienated?’ he said.

‘I believe that was Philip’s word. He’s always looking for a champion, you know.’

‘A champion in what way?’ he said.

‘Why, someone who’s come to the top from the bottom. He,
you see, has gone from middle to middle. His father worked in an office in the county hall.’

‘I don’t think’, he said after a moment’s reflection, ‘I’d measure progress in terms of class.’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘I mean’, she added, ‘not even as an intellectual?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘Well,’ she said and added after a while, ‘Wonders of one sort will never cease.’

‘Why are you always laughing?’ he said.

‘Laughing?’ She smiled.

‘Isn’t that patronizing in its way as well?’

She didn’t answer.

‘I didn’t think you’d go much by it,’ he said.

‘My boy,’ she said. ‘You’ve a lot to learn.’

He left a little later; she came with him to the door.

‘You can get a bus back, if you like,’ she said. She pointed out the stop across the road. It was as if, with his leaving, she’d lost interest in his visit.

‘I’ll probably walk back, though,’ he said.

‘It was good of you to accompany me,’ she said.

‘Perhaps I can see you next Saturday.’

‘All right.’ She shrugged.

‘The same place if you like.’

‘All right.’ She shrugged again.

He turned at the gate to wave, but found she’d already gone inside the house and closed the door.

‘See here,’ his father said, ‘it’s no good going on at him.’

He had been teaching Richard, at the table: a mass of figures on torn pieces of paper lay before them.

His brother’s face had wrinkled: it reddened; a moment later, prompted by his father’s tone of sympathy, he began to cry.

‘See here,’ his father said again. ‘It’s gone too far.’ He thumped his hand against the table: pieces of paper drifted to the floor.

His mother, who had been busy in the room upstairs, came down.

‘He can’t go on at him like that,’ his father said. ‘You can hear
his voice at the end of the backs. How can he learn anything if he shouts at him?’

‘It’s better he leaves it,’ his mother said, looking in despairingly at the crowded table. ‘I’d rather he worked in the streets than we have all this.’

‘Nay, he s’ll never do that,’ his father said, indicating Richard. ‘He’s got more brains than all of them despite his shouting and his saying he’ll never do it.’

‘I haven’t said he’ll never do it,’ Colin said.

Richard had covered his face in his hands: his head was shaken from side to side; his shoulders shook, some fresh anguish broke from him as his father touched his back.

‘Nay, love,’ his father said. ‘It’s not important.’

‘It is,’ his brother said, his voice buried by his moans.

‘Nay, just look at it,’ his father said, stepping back to reveal the situation freshly to his mother. ‘He’s trained as a teacher, he’s
trained
as a teacher, but the first thing he does is lose his patience.’

‘It isn’t important,’ Colin said. ‘Why should he have to do it?’

‘Nay he’ll do it because he
can
do it,’ his father said. ‘It’s on’y thy shouting now that stops him.’

‘Do you shout at them at school?’ his mother said.

‘No,’ he said.

‘Why do you shout at Richard? He’s your brother. I would have thought you’d have
cared
, far more than you do for the others. Why can’t you show the same patience with him? We showed the same patience with you.’

‘Nay,’ his father said. ‘I s’ll teach him myself.’

‘With a trained teacher in the house?’

‘Is he in the house? And is he trained? He’s never here on an evening, and if he’s trained for ought I’d say it wa’ shouting.’

Yet the argument on this occasion petered out. It was one of many similar arguments that broke out now almost every night, but particularly at week-ends: there was a delicacy about Richard which inspired his mother’s protectiveness and brought out a concern in his father which he had seldom shown before. Colin came home each evening from school as he might to a prison: he dreaded the street, he dreaded the houses, he dreaded the pit; the
village was like a hole in the ground. In the winter all he was aware of was its greyness, the soot, the perpetual cloud of smoke, the smell of sulphur, the stench which penetrated to every corner of every room, which infected clothes and, seemingly, the brick and stone: no one could escape it. The village was derelict; it was like a wreck, cast up in the wilderness of the fields and on the shores of that ever-growing heap.