Saville (54 page)

‘I’d still like to apply,’ he said.

‘I won’t say we’ll not be glad to have you. It’s your own interests, really, I’m thinking of,’ the man had added, writing quickly on the sheet before him.

Stafford, his head tilted back, allowed the smoke to drain out of his nostrils: his laughter, light, careless, echoed beneath the trees. He wore evening dress, the black bow knotted immaculately beneath his chin, his fair hair almost luminous against the shadows.

Sitting alone at one of the tables was Margaret. She had on a light-blue dress, her hair fastened beneath a ribbon, and was drinking from a glass which someone had evidently just brought her for a figure was slipping away as he arrived, making directly for Stafford’s group.

‘Anyone sitting here?’ Colin said.

‘No,’ she said. She had light-coloured hair, thin, the ribbon securing it in a horse-tail at the nape of her neck. Her dress, relieved by a large white collar, was secured at the waist with a belt. Her arms were bare. They both sat for a moment gazing to the animated group across the lawn from which, a moment later, came Marion’s loud peel of laughter.

‘Do you come here often?’ he said.

She smiled. ‘No. Never.’

‘What’s tonight’s occasion for?’ he said.

‘I was invited,’ she said, ‘like you.’

‘Are you leaving this year as well?’

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I’m only in the First Year Sixth. Or was. I’ll be in the Second, I suppose, when we start next term.’ She added, ‘You’re leaving, of course. Marion’s told me all about it.’

She had light, greyish eyes. Her cheeks were thin, slender, the nose upturned, the face itself so delicate he imagined it, in the fading light, to have been moulded from ice: there was a lightness about her that he’d noticed before, when he’d first glimpsed her in the city centre then later waiting in the queue. Apart from one occasion, at a First Team party the previous Christmas, when he’d danced with her, they’d scarcely exchanged a word.

‘And where are you going to now you’ve left?’ she said.

‘College.’ He shrugged.

‘You’re not going in the army first?’

‘I’ve got deferment.’

‘Stafford’s staying on another year.’

‘Yes.’ He waited. ‘Would you like another drink?’

‘I’ve enough with this, I think,’ she said.

They sat in silence for a while. Odd couples danced slowly, awkwardly, beneath the trees; a fresh tune started on the gramophone. The house stood on the outskirts of the town, looking out across a valley: a tall, brick-built mansion with gabled roofs
into which Marion’s parents, who had arranged the party, had recently moved. A lawn at the side of the house and the trees surrounding it had been decked out with lights: Chinese lanterns hung in long rows beneath the branches, swaying in the breeze, white, metal-work tables having been set around the edge of the lawn itself. Marion, wearing an off-the-shoulder gown for the occasion, had greeted him with a kiss when he arrived, affecting surprise that he should have brought a present, although there was a large, unattended pile of them behind, and leaving him quickly, with a quick grasping of his arm, the moment Stafford appeared.

The sun was setting behind the trees, the light scarcely stronger than the glow from the lanterns.

‘Do you want to dance?’ he said.

‘I don’t mind.’

She got up from the table, stooping, and stepped on to the grass, waiting, her arms raised.

He held her lightly.

They danced slowly round the edge of the lawn. Fresh peals of laughter came through from Stafford’s group, the smoke from their cigarettes drifting through the pools of light which glowed, almost luminous, against the redness of the setting sun.

They walked round the garden. A path led down beneath the trees to a smaller lawn, a low stone wall and a terrace flanked by roses. Below them were the lights of the town. The sun now had set completely: the light hung high in the sky to the west. Opposite, silhouetted to the north, was the profile of the town, its domes and towers, and the single steeple. He took her hand and then, when she offered no resistance, rested his arm against her waist.

From behind them, muted by the garden and by the darkness, came the voices of the others, and the slow, almost mournful rhythm of a dance tune.

‘Do you live in the town?’ he said.

She shook her head. ‘Well, almost in it. About a mile away.’ She gestured off, vaguely, in the direction of the valley. ‘My father’s a doctor. So we tend to go where the work is.’

‘I suppose that’s true of everyone,’ he said.

‘Is it?’

She glanced across.

‘I suppose it is. Though you’re not always aware of it,’ she added.

They stood awkwardly for a moment, gazing out across the garden. Close by, beyond the gardens of several other houses, stood the mound of a castle; some distance below it, silhouetted against the sky, was a line of ruins, and a single vast window set in a jagged wall of stone.

‘Do you ever go out at all?’ he said. ‘I mean, does anyone ever take you out?’

‘Sometimes,’ she said. She laughed. ‘What a question. What if I said no?’

He shook his head.

‘Do you know what they call you at the High School?’

‘No.’

He shook his head again.

‘Brooder.’

She laughed, flinging back her head.

‘I can’t see why.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you can.’

Hopkins’s voice came from behind them.

‘This is where you are. I say, what a super view.’ He gazed out blankly across the valley.

‘Do you want to dance again?’ Colin asked her.

‘If you like,’ she said, and added, ‘I wouldn’t mind,’ turning from his arm and stepping back towards the lawn.

Stafford had come in a car. It was a vehicle he had learned to drive the previous year, his mother’s. He’d come to school in it. As Colin was leaving, later, he called across, ‘Would you like me to drive you home, old man?’ standing with his arm round Marion at the side of the lawn where, with her parents’ reappearance, she was wishing her guests good night.

‘Oh, you’re not going so soon, Nev?’ Marion said.

Colin looked to Margaret.

‘I was seeing Margaret to the bus,’ he said.

Marion laughed.

‘Aren’t you seeing her to the door, Savvers?’ Stafford said, glancing at the dark, stocky couple at Marion’s side as if to point out the vagaries of this peculiar stranger.

‘Our stops are side by side,’ he said. ‘If I go now I’ve just time to get the last bus.’

‘Oh, we’ll drive Colin home as well, won’t we?’ Stafford said. He bowed to Marion directly.

It was almost dark. The lights in the windows of the house itself flooded out across the lawn, mingling with those suspended beneath the trees.

One or two couples still danced on the grass.

When the car drew up at the front of the house Marion had come out wearing a fur stole. Her parents, after an argument carried out discreetly at the top of the stairs, had been left to dispose of the last of the guests.

Stafford came over to where Margaret and Colin were waiting on the lawn.

‘It seems strange we’ll never meet here again,’ he said. From the gate came the voices of the last guests, and the occasional call. Couples and small groups walked off along the road. ‘All going different ways and that. In twenty years we’ll look back at tonight and wonder where all the different people went. The girls married, with children of their own: almost the same age, perhaps. The boys gone off, as Gannen, or is it Platt, so often says, to the four corners of the earth. It’s very odd.’ He smoked a cigarette quietly, looking off across the empty lawn. ‘It’ll seem then, in a way, that we were never here at all.’

Marion’s voice called from the front of the house.

‘I suppose we better get you home, then, Maggie,’ Stafford said.

The house was located in a small village of old stone houses which had been encroached upon and finally surrounded by the housing estates of the town. Little of the building was to be seen from the road: a gate in a wall, and a path leading off up a narrow garden to a lighted window.

He got out of the car and walked with her to the gate.

‘How would I get in touch again?’ he said.

‘You could telephone,’ she said. ‘The name’s Dorman. We’re in the book.’

‘Will you be free in the next week or two?’ he said.

‘We’re going away.’ She stood, her face concealed, in the shadow of the wall. On a post at the side of the gate he could see,
faintly, in white, ‘Dr R. D. Dorman,
M.D.
’, on a wooden plaque. ‘For a month. I’ll be staying with a friend.’

‘Where’s that?’ he said.

‘In France.’

He waited, kicking his foot against the gate.

‘Well, I better say goodnight,’ he said.

‘I could still write to you, if you liked,’ she said.

‘Yes.’

‘If you write to me here you could send me your address. They’ll send the letter on.’

‘All right,’ he said.

Stafford hooted in the car behind.

‘Thank you for the evening, then,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ she said and added, her hand on the gate, ‘I enjoyed the evening. I hope you’ll write,’ and set off up the path towards the house.

When he got back in the car Stafford was sitting with his arm round Marion.

‘Where to, old boy?’ he said.

‘You could drop me at the bus,’ he said. ‘It could still be there.’

‘Oh, we’ll drive the warrior home. We might never see him again, might we, darling?’ Releasing Marion, he started the car.

The street was in darkness when they arrived. Colin got out of the back seat and stood for a moment by Stafford’s open window. Marion’s pale face stooped over from the other side.

‘Is this really where he lives?’ she said.

‘Darling, don’t be so offensive,’ Stafford said.

‘I’m not being offensive. I’m just being curious,’ Marion said. ‘Last time we came you made me wait at the end of the street.’

‘Ignore her. That’s what I do,’ Stafford said, looking up from the darkness of the car. His hand appeared after a moment at the window. ‘Pip, pip, old man.’

‘Yes,’ he said. He grasped Stafford’s hand and slowly shook it.

‘Look in some time.’ He revved the engine.

‘Oh, do get started, my darling,’ Marion said.

‘Good night, Marion,’ Colin said.

‘Good night, my darling,’ Marion said.

The car moved off; it faltered at the corner, then turned, quickly accelerating towards the village.

Reagan left school and got a job in an accountant’s office. Of the other boys Colin had known earlier, Batty, after working as a grocer’s assistant, and pedalling a bicycle about the village, delivering orders, had gone down the pit like his brothers before him. Stringer had gone there directly after leaving school.

Connors, too, had gone down the pit, to be trained, according to his father, as a manager. Mr Morrison had taken over the Sunday School. Sheila he had seen often in the village; a year after he knew her she’d married a miner and had had two children by the time she was nineteen.

Of all the people that he’d known before, Reagan was the one he saw most often. His job was in the same city, some eighteen miles away, where Colin was at college: he travelled there and back each day by train, and they frequently met each other at the station.

Over the previous two years Reagan had grown even taller. He was now over six feet, wore suits which were specially made for him by a tailor, and shirts sewn up for him by his mother. On Saturday nights, wearing evening dress, he played in a dance orchestra in town, and on odd evenings gave music lessons to children in the village. Invariably on the train he would sit opposite Colin, his legs crossed, a white handkerchief protruding from his top pocket, and, if he wasn’t memorizing a musical score, or reading an accountant’s journal, would describe to Colin his plans for the immediate as opposed to the distant future. The names of leading celebrities of the entertainment world were mentioned with increasing frequency: one had almost dropped into the Music Saloon Ballroom where he played; another had written to say he intended to do so in the not too distant future; a third had invited him to an audition which, but for last-minute commitments in the office, he would have attended. A bandleader in a distant town, who had connections with the radio, had said he would see what he could do for him, though the fact that he played the violin, and not a trumpet or a saxophone, ‘or even a clarinet’, he had added nostalgically, invariably limited his scope of operation. His eyes, bright when he described these
speculations, invariably darkened when the drab streets of the village came into view.

‘I heard from Prendergast’, he’d said one day, looking up from a sheet of music, ‘that your friend Stafford’s going into the family business.’

‘I thought he was going to Oxford,’ he said.

‘After he’s been to Oxford,’ Reagan said. ‘He has an Exhibition.’

‘In music?’

‘Good Lord, no,’ Reagan said, affecting something of an accent that he thought might suit the occasion. ‘His other subject.’

‘History.’

‘Or is it economics?’ Reagan said, his interest fading as quickly as it had appeared. ‘Apparently, you know, he could hardly play the piano.’

Over that first summer he’d written to Margaret in France, and had received strange, almost empty letters back, and had been more alarmed by their bad spelling and lack of syntax than anything else. One letter he’d actually sent back with red-ink corrections and for quite some while she hadn’t answered. Then came a formal note, every word of which, a footnote stated, had been checked with a dictionary. He wrote back immediately a letter in broad dialect, without punctuation, and the flow of letters as badly spelt and as badly put together, had recommenced. In his last letter he arranged to meet her the week-end after her return, in town.

He saw her some distance away, waiting outside a shop close to the cathedral. She wore a short, light-coloured coat, her hair brushed back beneath a ribbon. Her skin was tanned. Beneath the coat she wore a light-blue dress. She carried a bag over her arm and wore high-heeled shoes. Only when she turned and he saw the look of recognition did he realize he might, initially, have mistaken her for a woman.