Saville (46 page)

‘Honestly; do you have to look after them?’ Stafford said.

‘My mother’s in hospital,’ he said.

‘What’s matter with her?’ Stafford said, looking at his bike, then pulling strands of straw from between the spokes.

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

‘You could leave them with this woman,’ Stafford said. ‘Couldn’t she look after them for a day?’

He shook his head. He glanced over at the slope again. He could hear his name being called. Marion’s arm was raised again; Audrey, her slim figure stooping to her bike, stood some distance farther back, almost at the gate.

He pushed the pram towards the slope. Stafford cycled back along the path, standing finally to force the pedals.

The keeper, sitting in his wooden hut, had whistled, waving a stick, wildly, up and down. Stafford got off; he waited for Colin to catch him up.

‘She’s really keen for you to come. It’ll not be much fun with just the three of us,’ he added.

Stephen held on to the pram as he pushed it up. Audrey, as if dismayed, had already turned her bike towards the gate.

‘Honestly, who’s playing Daddies today, then?’ Marion said when he reached the top. She looked at Richard’s tear-streaked face and then at Steven: he too, as if sensing danger, had begun to cry.

‘I can’t get out today,’ he said, holding now to the handle of the pram.

‘Are both of them yours, then?’ Marion said, laughing now and bowing her head. Her dark hair was fastened back beneath a
ribbon. Audrey, as if reluctant to be seen at all, had wheeled her bike out between the gates.

‘I have to look after my brothers,’ he said and stood for a moment, shaking his head, uncertain whether to follow Audrey.

‘Honestly, we’ll wait for you,’ Stafford said. ‘Haven’t you got a relative, or something, you could leave them with?’

‘No,’ he said. He shook his head.

‘I suppose we better go back, then,’ Stafford said. ‘It was Audrey’s idea,’ he added again.

Marion turned her bike.

‘Honestly, you ought to speak to her, at least,’ she said.

Colin pushed the pram towards the gate. Audrey was at the kerb, getting ready to mount her bike.

‘I can’t come today,’ he said. He added, ‘I came last night. To St Olaf’s, but I got there late. I went over to your place. Stafford said you went to Marion’s.’

‘We went there for a bit,’ she said.

She glanced at Steven; there were holes in his pullover, and the sleeves of the pullover had begun to fray. His stockings had slipped down around his ankles; his nose, with his crying, had begun to run. Only Richard had any neatness; yet he was crying now and shaking the pram.

‘I’ve to look after my brothers today,’ he said, and Stafford called out, ‘We better get going then, my dear.’

‘We don’t want our sandwiches getting cold, then, do we?’ Marion said.

‘I’ll try and come over one evening,’ he said.

‘My mother doesn’t like you coming to the house,’ she said.

She mounted the bike. Stafford and Marion, freewheeling, had started down the hill.

‘She doesn’t think it looks very nice,’ she said.

‘Shall I come to the door?’ he said.

She shook her head.

‘We’ll try some other time,’ she said and, pushing from the kerb, pedalled slowly off, freewheeling finally as she reached the hill.

‘I can’t make you out,’ his father said when he came back in. ‘Here’s your mother ill and you don’t want to help. Anybody would think you don’t want to live here any more.’

He stood silently across the room and didn’t answer.

‘Haven’t you got a tongue in your head?’ his father added.

‘What can I say, in any case?’ he said.

‘Tha can say I’m wrong in feeling what I do. Tha can say any number of things,’ his father said. ‘Here I am: I haven’t had a sleep, and I’m off back to work already. You might say summat about that, for a start.’

‘There’s nothing I can say about it.’ He shrugged.

‘There’s nowt thy wants to say about it,’ his father said. ‘For it’s true.’

His mother was away for three weeks. When she came back, at her own insistence, she could scarcely stand. She’d made his father sign her out. ‘I’m better doing nothing here than doing nothing there,’ she said. ‘Just lying on my back, I might as well be home.’

Yet it was some other person now who’d come to the house. Both of her parents had died the previous Easter. Ever since the funeral she had begun to fade: finally, one morning, while he was at school, she had collapsed in the kitchen; his father had taken her to the hospital the following day. Now, returning, she sat silently about the house all day, and at night, sleeplessly, tossed to and fro on the double bed. He did nearly all the housework now: on Mondays he did the washing, under her supervision, standing aside occasionally, as, groaning, she got up from her chair to show him how to wash a particular shirt or blouse; on Wednesdays he cleaned the house upstairs, washing the bedroom floors, on Fridays the front room, the kitchen and the outside toilet. On Saturdays he did the shopping. While she was still in hospital he’d found an opportunity to cycle over to the farm on three occasions; on none had he seen Audrey, though on the last he’d called at the house. A farm dog, barking at the end of a chain, had greeted his arrival, and the door had been opened by a tall, fair-haired woman with bright red cheeks who’d answered his inquiry as to whether Audrey was in with a shake of her head, calling him back as he turned away and saying, ‘I think she’s too young to have boys calling for her. I’d appreciate it very much if you didn’t cycle up and down in front of the gate.’

He’d thought of writing her a letter; he’d looked up her number
in a telephone directory, and had set out on two occasions to ring her up, faltering each time when he reached the phone.

Stafford had called one day when he was out shopping, but hadn’t waited until he got back.

‘We seem to go from one thing to another, and each one worse than the one afore,’ his father said one evening, before he set off for work. ‘If it hadn’t have been for this you could have had a job. That’s ten or fifteen pounds we might have had. As it is, you’re fastened up here and you end up earning nought.’

‘I offered to get a job,’ he said.

‘I know you offered,’ his father said. ‘What’s the use of offering if you can’t go out and do it? Steven can offer. Richard can offer. But that doesn’t add up to much, then, does it?’

‘What if I went and got a job?’ he said. ‘What would my mother do on her own in the house?’

‘That’s what I’m saying. However hard we work we end up where we were afore. There’s no point in doing ought. Whatever we do, whatever we say, we end exactly where we wa’ before. I can’t see any point in it. I can’t. Not any more.’

He kicked the table leg. There was something in his father now that was changed from what he’d known before. It was as if some part of him had died: he seemed pinned down; he no longer talked of moving, or changing house. His job was a habit, a kind of bond. He came home on leave like a soldier from a war: his real life, his real worries, were somewhere else, underground, away from them, invisible, even incommunicable. He would talk frustratedly now in front of Colin while his mother, as if sensing herself the cause of it, would get up from her chair, attempt some household task from which, a moment later, he would rescue her, saying, ‘Leave that to Colin, or we’ll have you back inside. You know what the doctor warned. I was a damn fool to let you out.’

‘How can I sit here’, she’d ask him, ‘and listen to this? If I wasn’t poorly none of this would happen.’

‘If it wasn’t you,’ he’d say condemningly, ‘it’d be something else. There’s been a blight on this family, there always has. We’ve tried to build up something. And see now where we end.’ He’d gesture round. ‘We’ve got nought, and no hope as I can see of anything better.’

His mother would cry; she would hold her apron against her eyes, for she wore her apron though she didn’t work, marking out her intention if nothing else. Long after his father had gone to work, or had gone upstairs to sleep, if the argument had broken out in the morning, she would sit in her chair, moaning, sometimes burying her head against her arm, or take Richard to her, and hide her face against his cheek.

She did more work now, however, when his father was out; she would come over to where he was cleaning, or washing-up, and take whatever he was using from him, a scrubbing-brush or a piece of cloth, and say, ‘You can leave that. I can do that now,’ almost bitterly, as if the sight of him working was more than she could stand. ‘You can get the coal,’ she’d tell him, or, ‘Wash the windows,’ or, ‘Get in the washing,’ tasks which, despite this, she’d decided with herself she wouldn’t do. Each afternoon, after lunch, she went to bed, and whenever his father was around she would sink back in her chair as if determined he should see how placidly she was resting.

Yet, the more determined she appeared in getting better, the more frustrated his father grew. He came home each morning now exhausted, his cheeks drawn, his eyes dark, shadowed, his mouth drawn tight; he would plunge into whatever jobs he could find himself, even digging the garden, mending the fence, washing the windows when, perhaps that week, they’d been washed already. He’d given up his allotment; when he couldn’t find anything else to do he’d sink down in a chair himself, sleeping in his clothes, his mouth wide open, snoring, Steven regarding him nervously from across the room, Richard being quietened in case he woke and yet, even when they shook him and told him the time, that he’d only so many hours left to go to bed, he’d refuse to stir, half-opening his eyes, reddened, bleary, and half-snarling with an anger they’d scarcely seen before, ‘Leave me alone. Get off. I can sleep down here,’ his mother calling, ‘Leave him, then, for goodness’ sake. He knows when he’s resting,’ his father, his eyes half-closed, turning his head blindly towards the room, then sinking back, his face blank, like a piece of stone, seemingly half-conscious, watching them despite his snoring. His eyes would gleam beneath his half-shut lids.

One morning, after his father had gone to bed and his mother,
silently, had begun some cleaning, sweeping the kitchen, she’d suddenly collapsed. She’d sunk down on a chair, holding her chest, half-reclining at the table, and Colin, startled, had stood there for a while, unable to tell how serious it was, unable to decide what he ought to do. His mother had struggled for a while, as if trying to stand or even, perhaps, intending to continue with her job. Calling to her, he’d stood by the table, waiting for some instruction. Her eyes, distorted, rolled slowly in her head.

‘Dad,’ he’d called. ‘Dad.’

His father was upstairs in bed.

He went to the foot of the stairs and called again; then he heard his mother calling out, almost calmly, ‘Get me a chair, then, Colin,’ and then, more clearly, ‘In the front room, Colin.’

His mother lay with her head against the table, one arm sprawled out, unable to move. For a moment it seemed to him like an affectation; as if, had she so wished it, she could get up quite easily herself. He hadn’t touched her now for years, and could scarcely remember a time when she’d even embraced him.

He took her arm; he tried to lift her. He pulled her to her feet and, her legs dragging, her arms limp, tried to carry her through to the other room. As he turned to the door he saw his father standing there, in his shirt and his underpants, gazing in, bleary-eyed, startled, unable to make sense of what he saw. He thought for a moment he might have leapt across: a look of bewilderment crossed his face; then, as if wakening, with a death-like voice, subdued, he came into the kitchen, calling, ‘Whatever is it, lad? What’s wrong?’

‘Harry,’ his mother said, and called, ‘Harry.’

‘I’m here, my love,’ his father said, taking her then, almost fiercely, roughly, holding her to him.

‘She wanted to go to the other room,’ he said. ‘To lie down on the sofa.’

‘Hold on to me, Ellen,’ his father said, ‘hold on to me, then, my love,’ and, trying to lift her, half-carried her through.

He laid her on the sofa.

‘Light the fire, then, lad,’ he said, and added, as he knelt at the grate, ‘Get a blanket, then, I mu’n get her covered,’ almost to himself, half-calling.

He went upstairs, saw where his father had been sleeping, and took a blanket.

His father was rubbing her feet when he went back down; his mother was lying stiffly the length of the sofa; her legs had begun to tremble and, as he watched, her arms had begun to shake as well. Her jaw vibrated. Her body was gripped in a huge vibration.

‘Sithee, fetch the doctor. Tha mu’n call for him. Tell him it’s urgent,’ his father said. He tucked the blanket round her as if about to go himself. ‘Go on. Take my bike,’ he said. His legs were bare, his shirt unbuttoned; Richard, who’d been playing in the kitchen, had come into the room, standing, leaning up against the door. ‘Mam?’ he began to say, ‘Mam?’ his voice trailing off into a sudden wail.

‘Go on. Don’t wait,’ his father said.

He rode to the doctor’s at the end of the village.

His father was dressed when he got back in: he was in the kitchen, drinking tea. Astonished to see him there at all, he said, ‘How is she, then? Is my mother all right?’

‘Aye. She’ll be all right. Is the doctor coming?’ his father said.

‘They said he’d come as soon as he can,’ he said.

‘And how soon’s that going to be? By God, when you want them doctors they’re never there.’

He went through to the other room. His mother was moaning quietly to herself; her glasses had been taken off; her legs were vibrating beneath the blanket. His father came in with his tea. ‘Don’t touch her, then,’ he said. He put the pot down. His hands were trembling. He sat on the arm of the sofa, half-crouching, and began, slowly, to rub his mother’s feet; then, as she began to moan more loudly, he took out her arms from beneath the blanket and rubbed her hands, half-moaning now it seemed himself, his voice harsh, half-startled. ‘Nay, you’ll be all right, then, love. The doctor’s coming. Nay, you’ll be all right, then, love. We’ll just hang on.’

The doctor came an hour later. Colin sat in the kitchen with Richard. He could hear the doctor’s voice with its Scottish accent, then his father’s murmur, then a fainter, inaudible murmur from his mother.