Saville (50 page)

‘Ian knows her,’ he said. ‘She goes to the Manor.’

‘Aye, I bet Ian knows her,’ his father said. ‘If she’s left on her own like that you can bet quite a few people know her.’

‘Well, I’m not discussing it any more,’ he said. ‘You don’t know her, and if you did I doubt if you’d feel it necessary to say things like that.’

‘And where do you go in the evenings?’ his father said as if he hadn’t heard this last remark. ‘Where do you go at that time of night?’

‘We go to the Plaza. We go for walks. We sometimes go to the Park,’ he said.

The door from the passage opened and his mother appeared. His brothers’ voices came from the room at the front.

‘And what’re you going to say to this, then?’ his father said. ‘Did
you
know he was out nearly every night with a girl?’

‘I had a good idea of it,’ his mother said, blinking now behind her glasses.

‘Then you kept it a damn good secret,’ his father said.

His mother closed the door behind her. ‘There’s no need to swear,’ she said, her eyes if anything growing larger.

‘I’m not swearing. Did I say a swear word there?’ his father said. He got up from the table; he crossed to the fire, stood there for a moment, then came back to the table. ‘By God, I could swear, I can tell you that. Where do you think they go, and what do they get up to at that time of the night? Aren’t you going to ask him?’ He banged the table with his hand, banged it once again then, having sat down, glanced up helplessly towards his mother.

‘Why don’t you invite her round? Would she mind coming round?’ his mother said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I think she’d like it.’

‘There, then. That’s settled,’ his mother said, and added, turning to his father, ‘Are you satisfied? You’ll be able to meet her and see what sort of girl she is.’

‘A lot that’s going to do,’ his father said, turning once more towards the fire as if there were a great deal he couldn’t tell her.

‘I think he’s forgotten that he was young once,’ his mother said.

‘Nay, I haven’t forgotten,’ his father said. He gazed resolutely towards the flames.

‘Oh, well, one man’s bitterness mustn’t feed another’s,’ his mother said. She picked up Richard as he came into the room, holding his face against her chest.

‘I’m not bitter,’ his father said. ‘I just know more about the world than some.’

‘Some things you know about,’ his mother said. ‘But about other things, I’m afraid you know very little.’

‘Aye. I knew and I know nought about ought,’ his father said, crossing to the hearth and taking up his woollen socks, his shirt and his faded trousers, and turning to the stairs, since it was nearly work-time, to put them on.

She was strangely disconcerted at being asked. He’d met her from her school bus one evening and had walked with her through the village to the corner of her street.

‘Why should I come to the house?’ she said.

‘They’re just anxious to see you,’ he said, trying unsuccessfully to take her hand.

‘Anxious since when? We’ve been going out for weeks,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s since your father saw you.’

‘It’s partly to do with that,’ he said. Yet he was proud of her and would have wished his parents now to see her.

‘You’ll have to give them my apologies,’ she said. ‘It’s inconvenient at the weekends. And most weekdays, I’m afraid, are already spoken for. They’ll have to do their inspecting another time.’

‘They’re interested in meeting you, that’s all,’ he said.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Do they think we might get married?’ Her petulance brought a redness to her cheeks, almost child-like, vulnerable, her eyes darkening.

‘It’s because I spend so much time with you, and because I’m so interested in you that they thought you might like to meet them,’ he said. He added, ‘I mean, I’d like to meet your mother if you’d care to invite me.’

She began to laugh, harshly, her eyes narrowing. ‘I can just imagine you meeting her,’ she said.

‘I wouldn’t mind.’

‘You wouldn’t mind. But I would mind. And so would she. As far as I know she’s not even aware of your existence.’

‘Why isn’t she?’ He gazed boldly down the street as if he intended going down to the house and knocking on the door himself.

‘Because she’d beat the living daylights out of me if she knew I spent so much time with anybody. With a boy, I mean. I tell her I’m going out with Geraldine Parker. I’m lucky so far,’ she added. ‘She’s never checked up.’

‘What if she saw you now?’ he said, still gazing down the street.

‘I’d say I was walking back from the bus.’

‘And if she saw you some other time?’

‘I’ll meet that when it comes.’

Already she was moving off, removing her beret as if anxious to be recognized in the street not as a schoolgirl but simply as another woman.

‘When will I meet you again?’ he said, following her to the first of the doors.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said. ‘And don’t come down the street. I go to enough trouble, as it is, to see you.’

‘Perhaps you better not see me at all,’ he said, pausing now by the first of the houses.

‘That’s up to you,’ she said. ‘You can take it or leave it,’ turning then with some fresh apprehension as she recognized a voice calling from one of the farthest doors. She started running and, more for her sake than his own, he walked to the corner, glancing round at the last moment to find she’d already disappeared.

‘So she’s not coming, then. I could have told you that afore,’ his father said.

‘I suppose she’s heard about you and didn’t want to come,’ his mother said, yet betraying by her expression that she was secretly dismayed herself.

‘Oh, and I remember one or two things about
you
home’, his father said, ‘that’d’ve kept anybody away, let alone somebody coming courting.’

‘Well, there was one person it didn’t keep away,’ his mother said.

‘Aye,
and
he lived to regret it,’ his father said turning away then as he saw the colour rising to her cheeks.

She lifted her glasses and slowly wiped her eyes.

‘Nay, damn it all: we all say things we regret,’ he said. ‘But one thing I’ve never regretted, love,’ he added, ‘that’s marrying you.’

‘It’s at moments like this the truth comes out,’ she said, drawing up the corner of her apron to dry her eyes.

‘Nay, it’s this girl, and his going off so often, that’s at the root of it,’ his father said. ‘If he behaved like any other lad, like Ian next door, we’d have none of this trouble.’

‘You’re always
disparaging
Ian,’ his mother said.

‘Nay. He’s good for some things, I suppose,’ he said.

‘Well, let Sleeping dogs lie,’ his mother said.

‘There’s no smoke without fire,’ his father added.

‘And the way you’re going about it you’ll have it like a furnace when there’s really nothing there at all,’ his mother said, finally, hitting her fist against the table so that his father turned, sulkily, drawing on his slippers, and went slowly from the room.

‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you, Ellen,’ he said, stressing her name as if to exclude Colin now entirely. ‘Don’t come to me when you find you’ve trouble on your back,’ closing the door behind him and refusing any answer.

‘Would she come here? I mean, ever?’ his mother said as his father’s feet sounded roughly on the stairs above their heads.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’d want her. Perhaps I put it badly, making her feel she was to come.’

‘Perhaps you needn’t see her quite so often. And not be out so late,’ she added. ‘It’s that really that affects your father.’

‘Maybe I won’t see her at all,’ he said, shrugging, and when she pressed him further he said, ‘It’s really nothing. I think the best thing, Mother, is to leave us both alone.’

He avoided those places where he might have met her. He took a later bus home from school. One evening he stood with Stafford outside the hotel in the city centre talking to a group of girls amongst whom were Marion and Audrey. ‘And how’s the farm-labourer, darling?’ Marion said. ‘Still pushing turnips?’ at which Stafford had turned, vehemently, and said, ‘Just cut out all that slangy crap.’

‘Oh, my darling,’ Marion said, ‘just listen to the boy.
Just
because some girls take precautions and aren’t prepared to be mauled like cats.’

‘Some cats throw stones in glass houses too often for their own comfort,’ Stafford said, drawing out the sentence word by word so that its effect might be admired by virtually everyone around.

‘If I didn’t think he was such a cad I would have slapped him in the face for that,’ Marion said, adding, ‘Are you coming?’ to Audrey, yet making no effort to move herself.

Audrey had grown, if anything, over the previous two years a little thinner, her neck longer, her features more attenuated, still susceptible to fits of blushing for as Colin approached her a faint, familiar redness spread slowly up her neck and cheeks.

A third girl, slim-featured, tall, pale-eyed, was standing behind their animated group, watching their argument with something of a smile.

Audrey hadn’t answered, and the tall, slim-featured girl, having watched Marion’s final outburst, had touched her arm
and though the gesture itself was disregarded had said, ‘I’ll have to be going, Marion. I’ll see you tomorrow,’ glancing at Audrey then at Colin, and turning, a satchel slung across her shoulder, and setting off across the road to an adjoining street.

‘Who’s that?’ Colin said, glancing after her.

Audrey looked up, apparently surprised.

‘That’s Margaret. She goes on the bus,’ glancing over once more to Marion and adding, ‘I suppose really
I
should leave myself.’

Yet much later, when he went down to the bus, she and Marion and Stafford were still there, Stafford leaning up casually against the side of the hotel entrance, his hands now in his pockets, his heel tucked up against the stonework, calling, ‘See you, Col,’ waving with the same casualness, as if they stood there, or had stood there, each evening of the week.

He’d seen the other girl then standing at an adjoining stop, still waiting there, aloof, tall, with porcelain-like features, when his own bus drew away.

‘You’ve spent long enough avoiding me. How was I to know you were hoping to see me?’ Sheila said as, with Bletchley walking behind, along with several other youths, he followed her from the stop. ‘
I
thought you were avoiding me. So did Geraldine,’ she added, indicating a blonde-haired girl, with round cherubic features, whom he hadn’t noticed before and who, as if summoned by some invisible signal, emerged from the group of chanting, laughing youths behind.

‘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.