Saville Read online

  The boy would sit between the warring women, immaculate in his child’s suit, with his gleaming hair and bright, robust face, open, frank and blue-eyed, vaguely aware of the animosity that passed between the adult figures and relating it conceivably to the animosity of a not dissimilar nature, a rancour and a bitterness, that passed between his mother and father at home, and which, usually, had preceded if not occasioned this visit to his round-faced, red-cheeked, dark-eyed grandmother. His playing in the dust of the yard at the back of the house was rigidly supervised by his mother. Occasionally, if he were allowed into the paddock at the back of the house, it was with instructions never to let go of his grandfather’s hand – an injunction which the tall, elderly man with large, soft brown eyes and an almost inaudible voice, so self-effacing was his manner, adhered to as conscientiously and as unremittingly as Andrew did himself. ‘Sithee, then, what dost think to Jackie?’ he would say, holding him to the pigs’ pen and, if he couldn’t see through the wooden lathes, lifting him to the top of the wall to peer over: the mud and the mess there would fascinate them both, and they would still be gazing at the pink and whitish bodies splashing through it when Ellen’s voice would call from the house, ‘Dad, bring him away from there.’

  ‘Nay, muck never did no man any harm,’ the old man would say when they got back to the house.

  ‘No,’ Ellen would say with the same vehemence as she did at home. ‘You don’t have to wash and clean him.’

  ‘Nay, I’ve washed and cleaned seven of them. And thy’s been one of them.’

  ‘Who have you washed and cleaned?’ the little old grandmother would say and the father would turn away, silent, leaving these squabbles as he always did to the peculiar moralizing passion of the women.

  Yet Andrew enjoyed these visits to his grandparents’ house. For one thing, he enjoyed being out of his home: even going into the village with his mother he appreciated, as well as those longer journeys with his father that took him to the Park, on the slope that overlooked the village, or even farther afield than that where, some two miles away, the river came round in a vast dark curve from the distant towns.

  On the journey back from his grandparents’ house his mother would frequently set him on her knee, so that his head was raised to the bus window and he gazed out at the fields from between her arms – a gesture she seldom made on their journey to the house when her thoughts, seemingly, were on the chastisement that lay ahead. ‘Well, then, there’s a horse,’ she would say to him on the journey back, pointing out objects that caught her attention as if the relief of going home, and the peculiar victory she had won – for survival in her family atmosphere was sufficient of a victory to satisfy Ellen – were scarcely more than she could bear. These moments of companionability were the deepest that Andrew and his mother shared, as if he himself were both a trophy and a burden, she the successful recipient and the suffering host.

  2

  When Andrew was three the Savilles moved house. They moved up the street to one of the miners’ houses which had a lower rent. As it was, their first cottage was old, and despite their renovations water came in through the roof in winter and soaked in in huge patches through the walls. Shortly after they left the four other tenants of the block moved out and the terrace was demolished, the stone taken away in carts and the timber burnt. A little later the miners’ row was extended to take in the newer ground.

  Shortly after they moved Andrew ran away from home. Saville, coming in from work, was met by his wife at the door. Pale, almost speechless, she came out with him to search the streets, he wheeling his bike beside her. At odd corners she would wait and Saville would pedal off, looking in yards, in odd fields and alleys; finally, as they were returning to the house, the boy appeared, escorted by a neighbour. He had been found several miles away, walking steadily along the road to a neighbouring village: he was quiet and composed: Ellen sat with him by the fire; he scarcely seemed conscious of having gone away.

  Perhaps the warmth that greeted his return persuaded him to leave again: he was brought back a second time from the pit by Mr Shaw, a miner who lived in the house next door. Saville saw him carrying Andrew along the street, the boy’s face pale, earnest, gazing steadily before him, uncertain of the other man’s grasp.

  ‘Why, where’s he been?’ Saville asked him.

  ‘We found him in the engine-house, curled up by the boiler,’ Shaw had said. ‘How he got in we’ll never know. The engine-man found him, tha knows, by chance.’

  Finally on a third occasion, he was spotted by a tradesman on the same road leading out of the village.

  ‘But where were you going?’ Saville asked him.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the boy had said.

  ‘Aren’t you happy here?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’ Andrew nodded.

  ‘Don’t you know it’s dangerous?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I shall have to smack you. You’ll have to know it’s wrong,’ he said.

  Andrew stayed home. It was almost a year before he began to wander off again, his eyes wide, startled, whenever he was brought back, the blueness burning so that, having beaten him, Saville would go to the lavatory outside and sit on the scat, smoking, his hands shaking, like on those first occasions in his marriage when he had quarrelled with his wife.

  She too seemed numbed. There was almost a ritual now; the boy’s wildness a quiet, almost a systematic thing, so that the father no longer felt alarmed or frightened by his going, as if he sensed the boy’s immunity to danger in much the same way that he sensed his own down the pit, a carelessness, almost an indifference. He spent longer hours in bed; he bought a dog. He would take the dog up to a deserted colliery to the south of the village where the small black and white animal ran to and fro amongst the overgrown pit-heaps chasing rabbits or digging at their burrows.

  Andrew started school. He was as much trouble there as he was at home. One day, coming home from one of his walks, Saville saw his son in the road ahead. He was, perhaps because of his mother’s close attention, curiously well-mannered; the trouble came from these almost inadvertent gestures, the same absent-minded movement which, at school, might result in the knocking over of a desk, or the breaking of a window, and which at home led to his constant wanderings off.

  He was kicking a stone in the middle of the road, and as Saville began to catch him up the stone flew up, glancing off another boy’s head, the boy himself stooping down and crying. Saville saw the look of consternation on Andrew’s face, the rigidity which gripped his body, a helplessness which overcame him whenever he discovered he’d done something wrong. A moment later he’d crossed the road but the boy, his hands clutched against his face, ran off, crying. For a while Andrew watched him, disconsolate, standing in the road; then, with strange, stiff gestures, his face flushed, he stepped back on the pavement and with the same strange, stiff strides, set off towards the house.

  He wondered even then why he hadn’t intervened, and wondered what it was that held him back, as appalled by this as he was by Andrew’s grief, that strange remorse which gripped them both, the son walking on ahead, unknowing, the father walking on behind, half-raging. When he finally reached the house he saw Andrew playing in the yard, on his own, digging at the soil between his feet, his face red, glistening, as if recently he’d been crying.

  One morning he came home from work to find the boy was ill.

  His wife was three months’ pregnant. Saville stayed home that night to nurse them both. In the morning his wife was feeling better. Andrew, however, had a hacking cough, slow, half-delirious, fevered.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’ll soon pass,’ he told his wife, and gave the boy a powder, going to bed himself in the afternoon, ready to go to work that evening.

  When he got up the boy was worse.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘If he doesn’t get better I s’ll fetch the doctor.’ He gave Andrew another powder now to sweat it out: he put another blanket on the bed. ‘Will you be all righ
t on your own?’ he asked his wife.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said and shook her head. She was pale, sick herself, moving round the house in a daze, unsure of what was happening.

  ‘I can’t miss another night,’ he said. ‘There’ll be all hell to pay, I can tell you.’

  ‘We’ll be all right,’ she said. ‘You go. I can always ask Mrs Shaw.’

  ‘Nay,’ he said, determined. ‘I’m damned if I can’t look after my own.’

  He stayed at home. In the night the boy got worse. He started crying out and then, a little later, could scarcely catch his breath, his body arched, rising in its struggle.

  Saville got out his bike and set off in the night to fetch the doctor.

  The one he called at in the village was already out. He was given the address of a young doctor who was setting up in practice. The doctor was even younger than himself and had no car: he got out his bike and cycled back with him.

  Ellen was sitting by the fire in the kitchen when they reached the house.

  ‘How is he? How’s he been?’ he said, surprised to find her out of bed.

  ‘He’s just the same,’ she said looking up, still dazed, her face paler than before.

  He saw she was heating milk on the fire.

  ‘Which way up is it?’ the doctor asked.

  They followed him up, putting on the light.

  For a while he stooped over Andrew, half-crouched, running his hands across his chest.

  ‘How long is it since you looked at him?’ he said.

  ‘Ten minutes. Maybe less,’ his wife had said.

  ‘There’s nothing I can do,’ the doctor said, and a moment later, still gazing at them, he added, ‘It seems I’ve come too late. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Why? What’s the matter with him?’ Saville said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  Even then Saville doubted what the doctor said. He stepped past him, looking down, gazing at the boy. His night-shirt had been drawn up above his legs. His head had sunk back against the pillows, his eyes half-open.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said again.

  ‘Nay, he’s never gone,’ he said.

  ‘I should come down,’ the doctor said.

  ‘Nay, he’s never gone,’ he said, his wife standing back, her eyes blank, vacant. ‘He’s never gone,’ he said, gazing at the shadow beneath the half-shut eyes.

  ‘I should come down,’ the doctor said again, turning to his wife and taking her arm.

  At the door, downstairs, he said, ‘No fee. No charge,’ fastening his bag on to the rack behind the saddle.

  A few days later, when the boy was buried, his wife went back to her parents. Saville fended for himself, cooking his own meals, cleaning up the house, cycling to work. When his wife came back a week later she was silent. He helped more in the house, leaving a little later for work and, by cycling harder, getting home a little sooner, cooking, cleaning, helping with the washing. His wife was no longer sick each morning, yet it was as if the pregnancy had fatally weakened her. In the evenings when he left she would be lying prostrate by the fire, exhausted, pale, her dark eyes lifeless, dazed. He asked Shaw’s wife to keep an eye on her. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll sit by her.’ Sometimes too, on a morning, she cooked his breakfast. ‘She’ll soon be over the worst of it,’ she said.

  His own life in some strange way was cancelled out. He got rid of Andrew’s toys, unable to bear the sight of anything that reminded him of the boy and of what they might have done together. Weeds grew in the garden and the holes that the boy had dug there he filled in. Occasionally he set off for walks but seldom got beyond the end of the street. Soon he was falling asleep at work, and was called up by the manager.

  He almost gave up work. He felt ashamed, denying what he was, unable to break the hold, the feeling of contempt. He talked to his wife but saw there a distress he didn’t know how to approach, blank, blinded, uncomplaining. In the mornings when he went to bed he would find the pillow damp from her crying, and when he got up in the afternoon he would find her wandering, lifeless, round the house, a duster in her hand, a broom, unable to put it to any use.

  ‘Nay, we s’ll have to do summat,’ he said. ‘It can’t go on. It can’t. I s’ll kill myself. I shall. Nowt that happens could be worse than this.’

  One morning he came home later than usual, unlocking the back door with his key to find the fire already lit, his wife kneeling in front of it, her head bowed, stiffened.

  Only as he neared her did he see the knife, the blade gleaming in the light, and only as he caught her hand did he stop the movement. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Whatever,’ taking her against him, feeling the resignation. ‘Nay, for God’s sake,’ he said, his hand still on her. ‘What is it? Whatever are you doing, then?’

  She cried against him and he felt his own grief breaking, pouring out, a sudden devastation, calling out, unable to see or hear. ‘Whatever shall we do?’ he asked her. ‘That’s no way out. We’ve got another one to think of now,’ he said.

  ‘Why did he go? Why did he go?’ she asked him.

  ‘Nay, let’s think of the other one,’ he said.

  ‘Why did he die?’

  ‘Nay, we mu’n never think of that,’ he said.

  Some nights now, before he left for work, he prayed with her. The first time he’d seen her had been in a church, with a friend of hers, standing in the porch after an evening service. It had been raining and he’d had an umbrella, borrowed from his father, and he went up and offered it to her, taking her home that evening, and taking her out again a week later. To begin with all their meetings had started at the church. But for the wedding, and the funeral, they had never been again. Now, however, before he left for work he knelt with her by the fire, prayed ‘Our Father’, and then, on her behalf, prayed for the new baby. ‘May it be a good child, may it live and not die,’ he said, while at the back of his mind he prayed, unknown to her, ‘Give us something back. For Christ’s sake, give me something back,’ taking it with him as he cycled through the dark, looking back at the village, at the coke ovens glowing, wondering how she was, if she were sleeping, whether it might be a boy or, better still, a girl. And though all his new hope was on the baby, he felt the dead weight of the other pulling at his back.

  Shortly before the child was born his wife went to a hospital in a near-by town. On two afternoons a week he caught a bus there, taking her fruit, or a change of clothing, sitting on the upper deck, smoking, anxious, yet somehow relieved she was away and he helpless now to intervene. It was two weeks before the child was born, a boy, and when she came back he’d been almost six weeks on his own, his meals occasionally cooked by Mrs Shaw.

  The boy was dark-haired, with dark eyes, like his wife, but with something of his own features, the broad face and the wide mouth, a little larger at birth than Andrew.

  It was a strange child. His wife gave it all her attention. It never cried. Its silence astonished him, its gravity, an almost melancholic thing. After the noise and spirit of the other child, its quietness frightened him.

  ‘Do you think it’ll be all right?’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’ she asked him. She’d seemed confident about it from the start, from the moment he first saw them both together. It was as if her grief had come out of her and was now lying there, to hold. He would watch the baby with a smile, not sure what it represented, half-afraid, reluctant to hold it unless his wife were willing, she suddenly amused by his uncertainty, restored, almost contemptuous of the way he drew back, letting her the whole time go before him. ‘No, no, you see to it,’ he’d say whenever she suggested he should feed or change it, which he’d done often with the other boy.

  They called it Colin. It was the name of her mother’s father, the only member of her family she’d ever admired, a sailor, who was seldom home and who, whenever he returned, was always giving her sweets. Her memories of him were very faint, but for his uniform, the sweets, and the beard which cov
ered her face whenever he embraced her. She had a yellowed photograph of him which she kept with one of her parents and one of their marriage in a folder in the wardrobe by the bed.

  He felt a little helpless with the boy, and only relieved when he could make him laugh, or turn and move at some distraction. In the summer he would sit over him in the garden and wave a leaf to and fro above the pram, the tiny hand reaching up and snatching, the face smiling, the look half-curious, aroused. It scarcely seemed a child. The only time it cried was when she lifted it from the bath, beside the fire, suckling it then, the sobs dying down, shuddering through its shoulders, its tiny hands clutching, reaching out.

  ‘That’ll be a strange ’un, then,’ he said. ‘That’s soon contented.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, gazing down, stroking its head.

  ‘Can’t make head nor tail of it,’ he said.

  It was like a part of her, never leaving, growing, so that he saw the quietness growing in her, a calmness, the other women in the street peering down, uncertain, as bemused by the child’s passivity as he was himself.

  ‘It’s as good as gold. A little angel,’ Mrs Shaw told him, flushing, smiling, whenever she was allowed to pick him up.

  ‘See, he’ll go to anybody, then,’ he told her.

  ‘If he’ll come to me, he’ll come to anybody, then,’ she said, and laughed.

  When it was walking it seldom left the garden, and then only if he called it from the field, or from a neighbouring yard, shouting across the backs as it forced its way between the fence, coming over, blindly, taking his hand while whoever it was he was talking to would gaze down at it, smiling, and shake their heads.

  ‘He’s going to be a boxer, then,’ they said, looking at his hands, his arms. He had the same muscular confidence as Saville himself, his limbs already thickening out. ‘Aye, he s’ll soon have you down, Harry,’ they told him and laughed whenever, for their amusement, he got the boy to skip about.