Saville (78 page)

Coming away from one such match he had said, ‘I hear they’ve asked you to sign professional. There was a man there from the City.’

‘Yes,’ Steven said, his face reddened from the game, his nose, which had been damaged, fastened with plaster.

‘Will you go?’ he said.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s quite a bit of brass.’

‘Won’t they turn you into a sausage?’

‘What sort of sausage?’ he said, beginning to laugh.

‘Doing it for money.’

‘And what’s wrong with money, all of a sudden? Dost mean tha doesn’t want it when tha does a job of work?’

‘But not for doing that,’ he said. ‘Doing it for the money becomes the end.’

‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ Steven said.

A few days later two men came to the house: a chauffeur-driven car was parked at the door.

The two men went with his father into the front room: Steven was called in a little later.

‘Do you want me to come in with you?’ Colin said.

‘Nay, I’m bigger than all three on ’em,’ his brother said. ‘I mu’n think I can look after it mesen.’

A few days later the car came again; his father and Steven were taken off to town. Steven had put on his suit; his father, too, had put on a suit, but taken it off again and said, ‘I’m not kow-towing to them lot,’ and had gone finally in a sports coat of Richard’s.

They came back almost four hours later.

His father’s face was flushed. He clapped his hands as he came into the house.

‘It’s done,’ he said.

Steven followed him in more slowly, smiling, looking round. His head, strangely, was stooped as if in fear of the ceiling: it was as if he suspected he was much bigger than he was.

His father, feeling in the inner pocket of the sports coat, produced a cheque.

He unfolded it on the table.

‘Two hundred pounds,’ he said slowly, following the writing with his finger then stabbing at the figures. ‘And all due’, he added, ‘to my powers of persuasion.’

‘Well,’ his mother said. She looked at Steve – it was as if all she’d suspected of him had now come true. There was some gift, some peculiar power, unspoken, in her son: he’d brought it in at the door, casually, neither dazzled nor even surprised by it himself.

‘Nay, but it fastens him up more firmly,’ Colin said. ‘Why did you sell him for as much as that?’

‘Oh, take no notice,’ his mother said. ‘You can have no doubt he would have a comment.’

Half of it was put in the bank for his parents; half of it was put in the bank for Steve. His parents bought a television set; a carpet was bought for the stairs; an electric fire was fitted into the fireplace in the other room.

The following spring the Shaws left the house next door and
went to live in one across the village. A family with two young children moved into the empty house. At first the strangeness was acute: the sound of crying came through the walls each morning, and of the man shouting impatiently at night.

Beyond, too, in the Reagan house, Michael finally had disappeared: he was reported being seen in a seaside town, serving as a waiter, then as a doorman at a cinema. Workmen came and carried out refuse from the front room of the house. An elderly couple moved in, a miner who was still working at the pit, his wife and, a few weeks later, an older parent, a woman with white hair and a reddened face who, strangely, would come and stand in the garden as, years before, Mr Reagan himself had done. She would gaze over at the children playing in the field and occasionally, calling to them, pass them sweets across the wooden fence.

‘When you think of the war, and all we’ve lived through here together,’ his father said. ‘There’s only us and the Bletchleys left.’ The Battys, too, a year previously, had left the village, the father with a chest complaint which had made him leave the pit; the various brothers and sisters had moved to the town. ‘How long are we going to be here?’ he added. ‘No inside lavatory, no bath: there’s people who came here long after us have been re-housed.’

Once the impetus of Steven’s football had faded, his father went back into his previous decline. From going to watch every match he now, on occasion, made excuses, and though he would wait eagerly for Steven to come home each Saturday evening, the significance of Steven playing slowly died. He would sit with a fixed smile on his face as he listened to details of the game which, genially, Steven was always pleased to describe. When he did go to the match he came back invariably disgruntled, complaining bitterly about the cold, or the way Steven himself had been cheated or let down by the other players. The impetus of his children’s lives had passed him by, leaving him stranded. He would examine Richard’s books and question the marks, look at the remarkable results and favourable comments Richard brought home in his school reports, and gave some acknowledgment which both disappointed Richard and yet drove him on to greater efforts. A master came from the school to talk of Richard’s university chances.

‘Fancy,’ his father said when the man had gone, ‘who’d have thought it: to come so far from where we began.’

One week-end Bletchley came home. Colin called at his house. ‘Oh, come in,’ his mother said brightly when she opened the door. ‘He’s in the front room.’

Ian was now huge: his neck had thickened; a heavy jowl concealed his chin; his waist was scarcely concealed by a reddish waistcoat. He was sitting in his shirt-sleeves when Colin came in but quickly stood up and pulled on a jacket. He’d been watching television and didn’t turn it off. He appeared to be in no good humour, as if he resented being home.

‘I’ll leave you two together,’ Mrs Bletchley said, closing the door with a smile at Colin.

Bletchley almost filled the room; he indicated the only other chair to Colin and they sat down together, Bletchley’s gaze turned resentfully to the television screen. ‘How have you been?’ he said, watching the picture. ‘I hear your brother’s signed up for the City.’

He described his present teaching; he was, as a supernumerary, being moved on from school to school.

‘Don’t you fancy getting anything steady?’ Bletchley said. ‘Not that there’s much scope in any case in teaching.’ He took out a pipe and quickly lit it. ‘I’m on a management course at present. That’s why I’m home. No work but lectures for the next three weeks. After that I start in the office. I’ll have a department of my own inside three years: after that, the sky’s the limit.’

‘I’ll be leaving soon,’ he said.

‘Where to?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ll go abroad.’

‘Teaching?’

‘Whatever comes to hand.’

Bletchley said nothing for a while: clearly, he’d cast him off in his mind. As if prompted by this thought, he said finally, ‘What happened to Reagan?’

‘He was working in a cinema, the last I heard.’

‘His mother died. Did he tell you that?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘My mother got a message from the hospital.’

‘Poor old Michael,’ he said.

‘Oh, I don’t know. I reckon he’ll be better off without. Do you remember that violin? And going to Sunday School? It seems funny to think of it.’ Bletchley gazed out at the street as he might at an unknown town. There was nothing to connect him with the place at all.

Mrs Bletchley brought in some tea.

‘Are you two going out?’ she said.

‘Where to?’ Bletchley said.

‘Oh, anywhere. Anywhere young men are likely to go,’ she said.

She set down the tea on a tiny table; the room was even cleaner than Mrs Shaw’s had been.

‘There’s nowhere to go to,’ Ian said. ‘Not round here.’ He turned, with renewed discontent, towards the television.

‘Well,’ Mrs Bletchley said, handing Colin the tea, ‘I’ll leave the two of you to it, then.’

‘It’s a terrible place. I don’t know why they go on living here,’ Bletchley said. Through the wall Colin could hear Richard’s voice calling to his mother: he wondered how much of their life had been heard through the wall, and what impression it had made on Bletchley. ‘I tell them to move, but they never do. Do you remember that Sheila you used to go with? She has seven children.
Seven
.’ He picked up his cup blindly, still gazing at the screen.

He was still gazing at it an hour later when Colin got up to leave. ‘Oh, are you going?’ Bletchley said, standing up himself and thrusting out his hand. ‘Where did you say you were going?’

‘Abroad,’ he said, grasping the podgy hand.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ Bletchley gazed at him blindly, nodding his head.

‘It doesn’t sound very promising.’

‘No,’ he said.

‘What happened to that Stafford?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I never heard.’

‘Give my regards to your mother, in case I don’t see her before I leave,’ he said.

He’d already turned back to the screen before he’d reached the door.

‘How
is
your mother?’ Mrs Bletchley said and as he reached the door she added, ‘I’m sorry you’re not going out. I get so worried about Ian at times.’

‘Why?’ he said.

‘He’s progressing so well, but he ought to be married.’

‘Oh, he’s bound to be married soon,’ he said.

‘Do you think so? He never goes out with
girls
.’

‘Who does he go out with?’ he said.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘he drinks quite a lot, on top of which he studies. His work, too,’ she added, ‘is very demanding. His boss thinks he’ll be in charge of the works when he retires. And that, Ian’s told us, is in less than
ten
years!’ She gestured back to the kitchen where Mr Bletchley sat reading a paper. ‘We sit here at times and think of when you and Ian were boys and wonder how all these incredible things have happened. You’ll be leaving soon yourself.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Well,’ she said, gazing at him. ‘Give my love to your mother.’

One evening he was coming down the street and a figure came out of a ginnel at the end of the terrace and called his name, speculatively, as if unsure he’d identified him correctly.

At first he thought it was Reagan; then, in the light, he recognized the red hair.

‘Hi, Tongey,’ Batty said. ‘How ya’ keeping?’

‘All right,’ he said, and added, ‘What’re you doing down here?’

‘I came to see Stringer. I’ve just discovered he’s left.’ He gazed about him aimlessly, almost like Bletchley might have done, at the empty street.

‘They left two or three years ago,’ he said, and added, ‘Where have you been?’

‘I’ve been in the nick.’

‘What for?’

‘For nicking.’ Batty looked at him with a great deal of irritation; his tall figure was stooped, his head turned from the light.

‘Come and have a drink,’ Colin said.

‘Where?’ Batty said.

‘Wherever you like.’

They walked back together towards the centre of the village.

‘You can’t lend us any money?’ Batty said.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘How much do you want?’

‘How much have you got?’

‘Two or three pounds.’

‘Do you have a cheque book?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

Batty said nothing for a while. When they reached the public house at the centre of the village he went quickly ahead as if anxious to get inside: once in he went directly to a table.

Colin went to the bar and ordered the drinks, calling back to Batty to find out what he wanted.

‘Whisky,’ Batty said, and added, ‘A double,’ looking round slowly at the bar then shielding his face.

When he carried the drinks over he said, ‘How much would you like?’

‘As much as you want.’

‘How much have you got already?’

‘To tell you the truth,’ Batty said, avoiding looking at him directly, ‘I’m skint. I came out today. I’ve got the clothes on my back and nothing else.’

‘What were you had up for stealing?’ he said.

‘You name it,’ Batty said, emptying the glass at a single swallow.

Colin bought him another: the extraordinary pallor of Batty’s face was relieved by bright red patches on either cheek.

‘Stringer was my last bet.’

‘I can let you have ten pounds,’ he said.

Batty glanced away. ‘Well, it’s better than nothing, I reckon,’ he said.

When he’d written the cheque Batty examined it before putting it away.

‘I could change this, you know, and make it a hundred.’

‘Why don’t you?’ he said.

‘Are you tempting me?’ he said.

‘It’s up to you. If you can get away with it I reckon it’s worth it. There’s not that in the account,’ he added.

‘What you been doing with yourself?’ Batty said as if he had misjudged the success of Colin’s life entirely.

‘I’m teaching.’

‘Mug’s game.’

‘Like being in prison.’

‘I was in the nick because I was framed. I’ll never be framed again.’ He looked at his glass, which he’d emptied a second time at a single swallow.

‘Fancy another?’

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘Have you been back home?’ he asked him when he brought the drink across.

‘What for?’

‘Where are you going to sleep tonight?’

‘I’ll find somewhere,’ Batty said. ‘They live in town. My dad. I called today. They wouldn’t see me. Go with open arms: what do you get?’

‘What about your brothers?’

‘Two of ’em are inside already: their wives don’t reckon much to having me around.’

He gave him a pound when they went outside. He waited at the bus stop with him for a bus to take him back to town.

‘Do you remember that hut we had?’ Batty said. He looked about him at the deserted, lamp-lit street. ‘What a dump,’ he added. When the bus came he got on without adding anything further, climbed the stairs and disappeared.

One evening, visiting the town, he came out of a pub in something of a daze and gazed around. It was early evening: the sky was clear; sunlight lit up the roofs above his head; an evening bustle came from the city centre; farther along the road was the dark, pillared building of the Assembly Rooms; a faint sound of music drifted down the street.

He walked back slowly to the bus.

When, a little later, the bus crossed the river, the sun was setting beyond the mills.

‘It could be Italy,’ a voice said behind him and when he turned a man gestured off towards the river. ‘Italy,’ he said again, indicating the yellow light.