Pasmore Read online

  PASMORE

  David Storey was born in Wakefield, Yorkshire in 1933 and studied at the Slade School of Art. His first two novels were both published in 1960, a few months apart: This Sporting Life, which won the Macmillan Fiction Award and was adapted for an award-winning 1963 film, and Flight Into Camden, which won the Somerset Maugham Award. His next novel, Radcliffe (1963), met with widespread critical acclaim in both England and the United States, and during the 1960s and 70s, Storey became widely known for his plays, several of which achieved great success. He returned to fiction in 1972 with Pasmore, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Saville (1976) won the Booker Prize and has been hailed by the Observer as ‘the best of all the Bookers’. More recently, he has published A Serious Man (1998), As It Happened (2002), and Thin-Ice Skater (2004). He lives in London.

  Cover: The cover reproduces the front panel of the original 1972 dust jacket, with art by the author. This jacket design was used for both the British (Longmans) and American (E.P. Dutton) first editions of the novel.

  Also by David Storey

  This Sporting Life (1960)

  Flight Into Camden (1960)

  Radcliffe (1963)*

  Pasmore (1972)*

  A Temporary Life (1973)

  Saville (1976)*

  A Prodigal Child (1982)

  Present Times (1984)

  A Serious Man (1998)

  As It Happened (2002)

  Thin-Ice Skater (2004)

  * Available from Valancourt Books

  DAVID STOREY

  Pasmore

  Kansas City:

  VALANCOURT BOOKS

  2013

  Pasmore by David Storey

  First published London: Longmans, 1972

  First Valancourt Books edition 2013

  Copyright © 1972 by David Storey

  The right of David Storey to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Published by Valancourt Books, Kansas City, Missouri

  Publisher & Editor: James D. Jenkins

  20th Century Series Editor: Simon Stern, University of Toronto

  http://www.valancourtbooks.com

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without prior written consent of the publisher, constitutes an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  isbn 978-1-939140-55-5

  All Valancourt Books publications are printed on acid free paper that meets all ANSI standards for archival quality paper.

  Cover art by David Storey

  Set in Dante MT 11/13.5

  PART I

  One

  He woke to find the room full of sunlight.

  A dull pain throbbed between his eyes. His face was covered with sweat.

  When he turned on his side he saw that Kay was still asleep, her face sunk down in the pillows, almost hidden.

  The children, presumably, had been in to open the curtains. He could hear them crashing about in their room at the front of the house. The alarm hadn’t rung yet. It was almost seven o’clock.

  When he went down to the kitchen his eldest daughter, Susan, appeared on the stairs. ‘Are you making some tea?’ she said.

  ‘I hope to,’ he said.

  Her bare feet pattered down behind him.

  ‘Did you come in and open the curtains?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I heard you call.’

  ‘Call?’

  She stood by the stove, watching him light the kettle. Her head was little higher than the ring.

  ‘You must have been asleep,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and added, ‘What was I calling?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘next time you’d better listen.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and smiled.

  He went through from the kitchen, at the back of the house, to the hall and opened the front door.

  An old man with a dog was walking in the gardens. He glanced up at the opening of the door, then he turned off along the footpath which led to the wooden shelter at the centre of the square. Here he sat down, his hands clasped on a stick, the dog lying by his feet. A pool of sunlight lit up the hut. The rest of the square, because of the trees, was still in shadow.

  It was very quiet.

  He picked up the newspaper from the step and went out to the van and tried the doors.

  ‘What is it?’ his daughter said. She had come to the doorway.

  ‘I’ve left the window open,’ he said. ‘All night.’

  He looked inside. The back was full of children’s seats, toys, domestic appliances, and various parts of the van itself, a headlamp, tyres, a carburettor which, replaced, had never been thrown away. His name had been written in the dust along one side. ‘Please clean this van.’ ‘Pass Along Please.’ ‘Pass More.’

  ‘Is it all right?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  He opened the door, raised the window, then locked it.

  When he went in she had made the tea.

  He took it up to Kay.

  She was sitting up in bed, her cheeks flushed, her eyes still drowsy. The other two children sat on the bed.

  ‘You’re already up,’ she said when he came in. ‘I didn’t hear you.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘They’ve been making the usual racket.’

  ‘Well,’ she said to the children, ‘clear off. We haven’t got up yet.’

  ‘Are you getting up soon?’ they said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Hop it.’

  Then, a few moments later, they heard them in the kitchen.

  ‘We left the van unlocked,’ he said.

  ‘Is it all right?’

  She glanced up; her eyes, dazed, were scarcely open.

  ‘Yes,’ he said.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  He sat on the bed, unmoving.

  ‘Is anything the matter?’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said, and shook his head.

  He got up without adding anything further and went down to the children.

  Normally he took them to school, on his way to college. The eldest child, Susan, went to a primary school a few streets away, the younger girl, Cynthia, to a nursery round the corner. Kenneth, the boy, who was scarcely two, stayed at home with Kay.

  Now, however, when they were ready she had said, ‘I’ll take them. In the van. It won’t be any trouble.’

  ‘I’ll be all right,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked him.

  He turned away, pulling on his coat.

  She came to the door to see them off. The old man was still sitting in the hut, the dog by his feet. The sunlight now had faded.

  At the corner of the square he waved.

  The two girls walked behind him, holding hands.

  When he’d left them at their schools he set off down the hill towards Bloomsbury and the college. The traffic now was thick, moving into town. The sky had clouded. He ran once to board a bus, found it was full, and continued walking.

  The college had formerly been a working-men’s inst
itute for further education. It was a mixture of old brick buildings and new concrete tenements, faced, in one instance, with Portland stone. The history school occupied a corner of the oldest building of all, and could only be reached by crossing two yards and climbing several flights of stairs.

  Coles was waiting for him when he arrived, standing across the corridor from the room they shared, staring down into the yard outside – already, by this time, full of parked cars. He looked up when he heard his steps, gazing one way then another, the light glinting from his glasses.

  ‘I wouldn’t go in there,’ he said, indicating the door. ‘’Crombie’s unpacking his belongings.’

  ‘What belongings?’ he said.

  ‘Oh.’ His friend’s stooped and rather ravaged figure trembled and, clutching his briefcase more closely to him, he added, ‘The usual sort of thing.’ He smiled eerily, his eyes distorted behind the heavy lenses, to indicate that he himself felt in no way put out.

  ‘What are we supposed to do?’ he said. ‘Hang about out here?’

  ‘Well,’ Coles said, ‘I shouldn’t think so,’ his smile widening, his eyes dilating, almost disappearing.

  He followed Pasmore in, relieved.

  Bending over the desk in the centre of the room was Abercrombie. A small, dapper man with a neat, goatee beard, he was unpacking a rucksack. A pair of boots, several lengths of rope, a wind-cheater and various cans and packets were laid out on the desk top. Also scattered there were his squash racquet and his shorts and plimsolls.

  ‘Had a marvellous weekend, man,’ he said, scarcely glancing up. He had, very slightly, a Scottish accent.

  ‘Where’s that?’ Coles said.

  ‘Oh, Wales, man.’ He indicated the boots: they were studded, perhaps excessively, for climbing. ‘Nearly broke my bloody neck.’

  ‘Pity,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ He glanced across.

  Pasmore indicated the desk. The room, normally, was used for tutorials and marking. It looked down into the yard of the college and, beyond that, to the street outside.

  Abercrombie had smiled. ‘Oh, I’ll soon clear this off, old man,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll do it for you,’ Pasmore said.

  He was surprised himself at his own intentness.

  The next moment he had seized the boots, the rope, the wind-cheater, the rucksack and most of the cans, the racquet, the shorts and the plimsolls, and, opening the door with his foot, stepped past the startled Coles and flung them down the corridor outside.

  ‘Why should we be continually subjected to these manifestations of your childish bloody mind?’ he said.

  Abercrombie regarded him for a moment in silence. It was difficult to imagine how the incident had begun.

  ‘I don’t know, man,’ he said. ‘Perhaps these manifestations of my childish bloody mind might do you a bit of good. It seems to me you’ve been shut up in this place for far too long.’ He indicated the college.

  ‘I’ve been shut up, all right,’ he said. ‘Shut up with nuts like you, Abercrombie.’

  ‘Well, you can easily remedy that,’ Abercrombie said.

  ‘Can I?’ he said. ‘Can I?’ his helplessness, he imagined, only too apparent.

  ‘For one thing, you could have mentioned it in a reasonable tone of voice,’ Abercrombie said. He went out into the corridor and began to pick up his boots and his rucksack, and to re-coil his rope. One or two students, smiling, had paused at the door.

  And when, finally, Abercrombie had departed, carrying his possessions with him, Coles had moved to the window to fidget, as was his habit, with his briefcase then his books, saying eventually, ‘I shouldn’t let ’Crombie get under your skin, Colin. It’s not worth it.’

  ‘It’s the general futility, Arthur,’ he said.

  ‘Futility?’ Coles moved the word around his mouth. ‘Futility of what?’

  ‘Of everything, Arthur.’ He was startled himself by the ferocity of his mood.

  ‘Well.’ Coles hesitated. He examined him for a while. ‘In what way are things so futile, then?’ he said.

  ‘In what ways aren’t they? In every way.’ He spread out his arms to indicate his mood.

  ‘There’s your work,’ Coles said.

  ‘There is.’

  ‘There’s also your family.’

  A note of apology had entered Coles’s voice.

  ‘There is my wife, there are my children. There is a house, mortgaged yet nevertheless almost mine, a set of parents, in-laws . . . I can count. I can add. I have a certain mathematical ability, Arthur.’

  Coles nodded; he trembled slightly: his narrow face and balding head – a thin reef of hair encircling a tall and somewhat slender skull – had flushed. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, yet for what he didn’t seem sure.

  ‘Yes, well. There you are,’ he told him.

  ‘I’d like to help,’ Coles said, quite suddenly, flushing deeper.

  ‘You think I need help, Arthur?’

  Coles blinked behind his glasses. ‘I don’t really know what you’re trying to say,’ he said.

  Pasmore looked away; he looked at the floor and shrugged.

  A quietness descended on them both.

  After a while Coles said, ‘Has something happened?’ brushing his hand across his head.

  Pasmore didn’t reply. His hands now in his pockets he stared back at the floor.

  Yet he felt hurt, oddly numbed and frightened when, with a brief, almost violent look, Coles walked quickly out of the room. ‘What have I said now?’ he asked himself, staring at the door.

  He saw Coles later that day, in the afternoon. It was nearly tea-time. He was sitting in a lecture hall, alone, packing his briefcase, preparing to leave for home. The room was warm and stuffy.

  ‘I was thinking, Arthur,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you come home and have some tea? It’s years since Kay saw you. We could leave now if you’re ready. It won’t take us long.’

  Perhaps Coles had been avoiding him all day. He took off his glasses and began to clean them.

  ‘Could you ring home?’ he said. ‘Or leave a message?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Coles said. He breathed on the lenses, polishing them with his handkerchief. The skin around his eyes was white, and ringed slightly from the pressure of the frames.

  ‘I’d like you to come,’ he said, and added, ‘I’m sorry about this morning.’

  ‘Yes,’ Coles said. He stood up, gathering his briefcase, then glanced down at his watch. ‘How long will it take?’

  ‘About ten minutes. To get there. I shouldn’t think much more.’

  ‘I haven’t any change,’ he said, feeling in his pockets.

  ‘I have some,’ he said.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said, and looked round, blindly, for a telephone.

  A short bus ride took them from the Georgian precincts of the college up the steep hill to Islington. A few minutes’ walk from the bus stop, following the upper contour of the ridge, brought them to the square of Victorian houses. The sky, after the day’s earlier darkness, had begun to clear, though the trees in the square virtually excluded any sunlight. Despite their white renovated fronts the houses themselves were sunk in shadow. Coles, whose last visit had been late one night, after a college party, looked round freshly at the sight.

  ‘It must be a good investment,’ he said, ‘the house. I see they’re renovating them all now.’ His own modest dwelling was south of the river, in Clapham.

  ‘Yes,’ Pasmore said. He led the way towards the door, the central one of the southern façade and the one which, as a consequence, stood in the midst of the deepest shadow. A curious mood, one almost of inertia, had overtaken him since climbing off the bus – a feeling which he obviated now by taking out his key and inserting it in the lock. Th
e door, however, was pushed to, apparently accidentally, by an onrush of bodies the other side.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he said. Then shouting, ‘Kay!’ he opened the door again, holding it back with his arm to allow Coles, smiling now, to enter.

  Kay herself had already appeared at the far end of the passage, the door behind her opening to reveal the large room at the rear – at that moment, as the two men entered, full of sunlight. Her figure, silhouetted, rested there like some slender attenuation of the light itself. Then she called, ‘Arthur. I didn’t recognize you,’ and came down the hall to shake his hand.

  ‘I can’t even get in the door,’ Pasmore said, his moodiness still that which had preoccupied him outside, a kind of surliness with which he disowned the children as they clung to his legs, demanding to be lifted. He pushed them down, calling out, though neither his tone nor his actions discouraged them in any way and he was obliged more or less to carry them with him to the room at the rear.

  This was a fairly large interior put together from two previous rooms. A bay window opened onto the steps which led down to the garden, a lawn with tufted knotted grass circuited by an ash path and a thin, flowerless border. A broad table stood in the alcove formed by the bay; across it was strewn the debris from the children’s tea. Several large dolls lay about the room, either on the floor or propped up lugubriously on the chairs like swollen replicas of the children themselves.

  Distracted by all this evidence of communal life he was for a moment unaware of a second woman smiling up at him from across the room.