Saville (11 page)

Perhaps it was the accident that made him decide to leave the pit where he was and go to the one in the village.

Colin had never really thought of his father working underground at all. He had never even seen the colliery where he worked, though he had heard him describe it many times and the men who worked there, Walters, Shawcroft, Pickersgill, Thomas; each one of them brought some particular image to his mind, large men who in some way, because of their strength, submitted to his father’s authority whenever there was a crisis or a situation they didn’t understand.

‘I’m surprised that that pit’s still working while you’re away,’ his mother said when, after a week or so, she began to grow tired of his stories. She would hold Steven over one shoulder while she changed his nappy, kneeling to the hearth then to lay him down and looking at his father with the pins in her mouth. Since his accident she had grown much stronger, and now Steven slept virtually the whole night through.

His father would get up at these moments and go to the window, rocking on the irons with the aid of his stick. Perhaps it hurt him that the battles he had fought at work, the roofs collapsing, the men he had saved, the instinct that had led him one way rather than another whenever a rock fell, that none of this could be reported to her other than by himself: Walters, Shawcroft, Pickersgill and Thomas all lived in other villages. It might have
been this that finally decided him, so that Mr Stringer and Mr Shaw, and perhaps even Mr Batty could report to her the things which, one way or another, he did to save life and increase production almost every day at the pit.

A few doors down the terrace lived Mr Reagan. He worked in the office at the colliery, and every day went to work in a dark suit, wearing yellow gloves and a bowler hat and carrying a rolled umbrella. He was a tall man with a red face, and had a light Irish accent. His wife would hold open the front door every morning when he left for work, standing there with her arms folded, gazing after him until he reached the corner of the street and disappeared. He never waved nor looked back, yet she never moved until he had gone. Shortly before he came home again in the evening she would re-appear at the door very much as if, in the interval, she hadn’t stirred at all, holding the door for him to enter, which he did at the precise moment that he removed his bowler hat. They had one son. He was called Michael and played the violin. He was built like Mrs Reagan, with a large head which jutted out at the back, a narrow body and thin legs. His father, Mr Reagan, would have nothing to do with him. In the evenings, whenever the men were playing cricket in the field, he would stand by the fence at the end of his garden, his waistcoat open, his white collar removed, and shout, ‘
Hit
it, for Christ’s sake! Hit it harder,’ while behind him, from the open window, would come the sound of the violin.

His father was very attracted by Mr Reagan. He was the only man in the street who didn’t work shifts, who had regular hours, who dressed like a gentleman and who never seemed to care about his wife. On a Saturday night he would go to the Institute dressed in his suit, with his bowler hat and gloves, and stand at the bar never showing, despite the quantities of liquor he consumed, the least discomfort. The miners at the pit stood a little in awe of him: he made up their wages, was responsible for explaining their stoppages, and knew what every man in the village earned. In addition, he would fight any man by whom, for one reason or another, he felt he’d been abused.

His father would describe Mr Reagan’s fights in some detail, and they frequently followed the same pattern. In most instances they took place at the bar of the Institute, and invariably began
with some comment on Mr Reagan’s appearance, on the hat he never took off, except at the office, or as he entered his front door, on the yellow gloves which, similarly, he never removed, or on the rolled umbrella which he never opened, even when it rained.

Mr Reagan himself, in fact, would give no indication to begin with that anything untoward had occurred. He would continue whatever it was he was doing, talking, smiling, gazing benevolently around until, at a point determined entirely by himself, he would put his glass down, resting it a moment on the counter as if he suspected very much that, out of his grasp, it might disappear for good, then, with the same gravity, remove first his hat which he would lay beside his glass, then his right glove which he would lay on the hat, then his left which he would lay on the right; then, finally, he would hoist up his cuffs.

‘Would it be you’, he would say, turning slowly to the person in question, ‘who passed a comment upon my appearance a moment ago?’

The man, quite frequently, would look round puzzled, the moment for him, at least, having passed.

‘If so,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘you’re on the very point of having your teeth pushed down your throat.’

Occasionally the man would deny all knowledge of having made any comment on Mr Reagan’s appearance, or indeed on anything at all.

Other times, however, he might nod his head, smiling, and say, ‘Oh, and who’s going to do that for you?’

‘Why,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘I have the feller here just ready for the job.’

According to his father, who watched over Mr Reagan’s fights with an almost evangelical passion, Mr Reagan seldom hit his opponents more than once, so fast and so hard was his initial blow. If more were required he provided them, if not he turned with the same casual momentum to the bar, pulled down his cuffs, replaced his gloves, then his hat, tilting it to the angle he favoured best, and picked up his glass. Raising it, he would empty its contents at a single swallow.

His father, when he felt strong enough to go outside, spent much of his time now with Mr Reagan. He would stand at the
window at tea-time and wait for him to come down the road from the colliery office, then he would come into the kitchen, wait impatiently for fifteen minutes while Mr Reagan had time to consume his tea and glance at the paper, then go out along the backs, rocking on his rings and swaying on his walking stick, and tap on Mr Reagan’s back window calling, ‘Are you in there, Bryan? Don’t tell me they’ve let you out already?’

Sometimes Mr Reagan would return along the backs with him and putting down a folded newspaper sit on the doorstep, his collar and waistcoat undone, his braces showing at the back when he leaned forward.

His father would argue with him about his work. ‘If I worked the hours you did, and did nought but lick envelopes and fill in forms and count out other people’s money, I’d fall asleep before ever I started.’

‘Ah, well,’ Mr Reagan would say. ‘I know the feeling well. But then, any silly fellow can heave a pick and shovel. It takes a man with brains to sit on his backside all day and get paid for it.’

His father would nod and laugh, looking in at Colin and his mother inside the kitchen as if this were just the answer he wanted them to hear.

‘In any case,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘you don’t do so much yourself. Two pot legs and a pot arm: it’s a wonder there aren’t more at it.’

‘Aye,’ his father would say, sadly. ‘I’m lying around like any old woman.’

‘Oh, now,’ Mr Reagan would say, ‘I wouldn’t say it was as bad as that.’

Whenever his mother protested Mr Reagan would add, his accent thickening, and bowing his head, ‘Oh, now, Mrs Saville, not counting yourself.’ And then, tipping his head in the direction of his own house he would add, ‘But there are some, you know, who go round flicking dusters all day till you can’t put your foot down without breaking your neck, who dress their lads up like lasses and have them scraping cat-gut all evening till you don’t know where you are from one minute to the next.’

Yet Mr Reagan himself seemed either too indifferent or too lazy to do anything about it. He would sit on the step, or stand by the fence, shouting at the cricketers, the colour of his face
slowly thickening, but in the end, his arms swinging loosely, he would turn back to the house. Occasionally he would come out into the yard with a violin and chop it into pieces. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do with it,’ he would shout. ‘And I’ll tell you what I’ll do with him too in a minute.’ Sometimes he would do the same with his son’s clothes, which his wife made specially for him, little suits and bright blouses, standing in the yard ripping them up and stamping on the pieces, his face so red it seemed it would burst.

‘And yet why do I do it?’ he would say to his father. ‘I have to pay for all the damned things in the end.’

Whenever his father asked Mr Reagan about working at the pit he would look up, surprised, and say, ‘Why, you’re better off where you are, Harry. If I told you some of the things that went on there you’d never walk past the place.’

‘Oh,’ his father said. ‘One pit’s much the same as another.’

‘Aye,’ Mr Reagan would say. ‘That’s why I’d stick with what I’d got.’

Perhaps Mr Reagan did put in a word with the management. Yet when his father went to see them, shortly after the pots on his arm and legs had been removed, he came back looking pale and discouraged. Colin saw him walk up the street, his legs straddled slightly as he tried to walk without the stick, and go into the house without as much as glancing in his direction. When he went in his father was sitting at the table, his arms laid out before him, his back stooped.

‘They want you where you are,’ his mother was saying. ‘They know how valuable you are.’

‘Valuable? I’m not valuable. I could be killed tomorrow and there’d be somebody to take my place.’

‘It’s not what you always say,’ she told him.

‘Say?’ he said. ‘What do I say?’

‘How valuable you are. Where you work at the moment.’

‘Aye.’ He nodded his head, not looking up from the table. ‘I have to say that. If I don’t, what am I? Just another piece of muck.’

In the end he went back to his old pit. Even when he could walk without the stick, and had long lost his limp, there was a slowness in his movements as if some part of his life had been arrested.

He started Sunday School. He went with a boy called Bletchley who lived in the house next door.

His mother until then had had little relationship with Mrs Bletchley: she was not unlike Mrs Shaw, who lived the other side. Though no brasses hung on her walls, her floors were covered in rugs and carpets, lace curtains hung in the windows, and in the front window stood a plant with flat, green leaves that never flowered or seemed to grow. Mr Bletchley was one of the few men in the terrace who didn’t work at the colliery. He was employed at the station and occasionally when Colin went there he would catch sight of Mr Bletchley carrying a large pole and supervising the shunting of the trucks in the siding, or walking to and fro across the lines. He was a small man, with sallow cheeks, and seldom spoke to anyone at all.

Mrs Bletchley was small too and was always smiling. Her main dealings were with a Mrs McCormack who lived the other side. Mrs McCormack would stand with her broad arms folded, nodding her head whenever Mrs Bletchley called from her step, unable to resist the attentions of the other woman, for whenever Mrs Bletchley failed to come out, on a morning or in the evening, she would go and knock on her door and stand there, still as silent as ever, listening to Mrs Bletchley speak.

The Bletchleys’ son was called Ian. He was fat; his mother made all his clothes. His trousers were of grey flannel and ended just below his knees, which popped out beneath them as he walked. He had little interest in anything and would stand in the back door sucking his thumb and staring out at the children in the field.

In addition to his fat body he had a very large head, his features were gathered together in a straight line down the centre of his face, folds of fat drawing out the contours disproportionately on either side. His legs too were fat, they were flat at the back and flat at the front, the sides vaguely curved. The skin on the inside of his knees was inflamed: it was at this point that his legs
rubbed together and each morning, before he went to school, Mrs Bletchley would rub them with cream.

On alternate Saturday mornings, if the weather were fine, she would set out a wooden chair in the yard and Mr Bletchley would sit on the step while his son sat on the chair and Mrs Bletchley cut his hair, snipping behind his ears with a comb and scissors. He often cried. Colin would hear him crying on a morning, and in the evening, and when he had his hair cut he would often scream, rising in his chair and attempting, unsuccessfully, to kick his mother. ‘You’ve cut me, you’ve cut me,’ he would shout.

‘No, dear,’ Mrs Bletchley would tell him. ‘I don’t think I have.’

‘You have. I can feel it.’

‘I don’t think so, dear. Let me have a look.’

‘I’m not.’

‘I can’t cut it unless I see it.’

‘I’m not letting you cut me any more.’

He would run off into the house, his knees already reddened from their chafing on the chair, Mr Bletchley standing up to let him by and occasionally going to the chair himself.

‘Oh, we’ll give him a minute, dear,’ his wife would say and stand waiting, occasionally sweeping up the bits she had cut into a pile.

‘If he was my lad,’ Colin’s father would say, watching from the step or the window, ‘I’d boot his backside.’

‘Well, you’re not his father,’ his mother said.

‘I would. From morning till night.’

Once, when his father was working in the garden, he had called out to Mrs Bletchley, ‘You’re as daft as a boat-hoss, missis.’

‘What?’ Mrs Bletchley had asked him.

‘You want to clout his backside.’

Mr Bletchley himself had looked away.

‘Oh, well,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to be patient.’

‘Aye,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘But not for long.’

It was his mother’s idea that he should go to church with Bletchley. She had seen him several Sunday afternoons setting off for church, his legs creamed, dressed in a grey-flannel suit and
a red-striped tie, and in the evening she had said, ‘Well, whatever you say about Ian, he’s always tidy.’

‘So’s a pig-sty,’ his father said, ‘if it’s never put to use.’

‘Well,’ she said, ‘going to church won’t do you any harm.’