Saville (57 page)

‘It hardly fits in, this sudden compliance, with all your arguments,’ he said.

‘Perhaps I’m really looking to my own interests,’ she said. ‘After all, education, or certain aspects of it, are a way out of the trap. If you can see the trap waiting, of course,’ she added.

He watched her mount the bus. Only after it began to move did he remember her bag and, running along the pavement, handed it to her as she leaned from the door. She called and waved. He stood at the corner, by the cathedral, and watched the bus and her silhouetted figure disappear.

They met once, sometimes twice a week if he came over specially from the college to see her. After the first interval of a fortnight something of a regular pattern was set in their meetings. Perhaps her parents resisted it; he was scarcely aware of it. Most weekends he would go up to her house on the outskirts of the town, talk with her mother as he waited for Margaret to get ready, seldom with her father, who, if he wasn’t engaged with a patient, was out on the golf-course at the back of the house where, occasionally, on some of their walks they would see him, in plus-fours, sweeping at the ball or standing, smoking a pipe, talking to other men beneath the trees. He would look up casually and wave, his concentration on the game or the conversation scarcely interrupted.

‘And isn’t your mother emancipated?’ he would ask her. She’d been one of the first women to go up to Oxford after the First World War. On some occasions, in order to inveigle herself into a meeting or some club activity, she’d dressed as a man. Margaret would listen with a spellbound look when her mother described these incidents, not looking at Mrs Dorman directly, merely adding once she’d left the room, ‘And what did she do with it all, I wonder?’

‘Oh, she’s emancipated,’ she said. ‘Like all women of her generation. And gave it up at the first opportunity to get married and have children. It’s all part of her romantic past. That’s why she goes on about it. It’s all like puberty: growing up. A pang you
go through at a certain age. Now she puts it all into women’s meetings: the Women’s Guild, the Voluntary Service, like trying to doctor a sick patient when what’s needed is radical surgery.’

It was a pose, her militancy, a belief at times she couldn’t maintain: at other moments, if he referred to it, she would say, ‘Oh, don’t go on about it, Colin. I have enough to last a lifetime,’ sucking her finger if they were alone, the knuckle of her forefinger, clenching it between her teeth.

On other occasions her brother would be at home. He’d been away to college and was doing his military service: he’d recently passed a selection board and was now an officer cadet, standing to attention in front of the fire, wearing his uniform with its white flash against the collar, beaming down at Margaret if any of her arguments exploded inside the house. ‘And what’s this? What’s this? She was a terrible tyrant when she was a girl. Before, that is, she became a woman. Turned on the waterworks the first sign of trouble. And didn’t the boys who played with her get it in the neck? Many a hiding I’ve had because Margaret flooded at the appropriate moment. If you think you’ve seen a woman cry you’ve seen nothing’, he would add, ‘until you’ve seen our Mag.’

Her brother was a short, compact figure, not unlike the mother. He would stand beside his sister as if her height and slimness were somehow a reproach to his more robust proportions. ‘Oh, fine
and
dainty,’ he would say savagely to some conclusive argument of hers, taken up, for the sake of peace, by her mother. ‘Oh, fine
and
dainty:
two
women in the house,’ stepping briskly to the door from where, a moment later, would come his final remark: ‘It’s the wrong sex they’ve scheduled for conscription, you’ve got my word on that.’

Her father, if he were present, took no part in the arguments. He would sit reading a journal or a newspaper, smoking his pipe, pumping clouds of smoke into the room until Margaret would call out in exasperation, wafting away with either hand, ‘Do you
have
to smoke that beastly stuff? What if women poured out all that filth?’

‘Women pour out the equivalent in words,’ her brother would say, invariably defeated by his younger sister. ‘Smoke is infinitely
preferable if one has a choice,’ taking out a pipe himself and puffing it vigorously in her direction.

One week-end Margaret came home to meet his parents. He’d arranged to meet her at the bus, but whether deliberately or otherwise she came earlier and knocked at the front door before he’d set off. His mother, mystified, had gone to answer it. He heard Margaret’s voice, then, inside the passage: ‘I have got the right house? I’m afraid I got here sooner than I thought.’

His mother came into the kitchen holding a bunch of flowers.

‘Look what Margaret’s brought,’ she said, flushed, holding them out.

Colin got up. He’d been about to put on his shoes, and stood there for a moment in his stockinged feet. His two brothers, who’d been roughly prepared for the occasion, got up from the floor where they were playing.

‘See here, Ellen,’ his father’s voice came from the stairs, ‘have you got a shirt?’

Still holding the flowers, perhaps as a signal, his mother went through to the passage.

‘Harry? Margaret’s here. You’ll find your shirt in one of the drawers,’ her voice followed by a significant pause then, as if some further message had been passed between them, his father answered, ‘All right, then. One of the drawers,’ his feet sounding on the floor above their heads.

‘I got here sooner than I thought,’ Margaret said again, looking across then, and adding, ‘Are these your brothers?’

‘This is Steve,’ he said, indicating the taller of the two. ‘And this is Richard.’

‘Hello, Steven,’ she said. ‘Hello, Richard.’

‘Hello, Miss,’ Steven said, confused.

‘Oh, you needn’t call me anything,’ she said, laughing. ‘Unless you want to call me Margaret.’

His mother came in and started looking for a glass. In the end she found a jug, filled it with water, and put the flowers in that.

‘You’ve met Colin’s brothers, then,’ she said, as if this were a privilege which, but for her acquaintanceship with Colin, Margaret might easily have been denied, calling to Steven then to clear a chair. ‘Make room, then, love, for Margaret to sit down.’

Colin sat down himself. He pulled on his shoes. Margaret was wearing a light-coloured coat which she’d already taken off as she came in the door and now laid on a chair at the back of the room. She sat by the fire, which was heavily stoked.

His father came in a moment later, his face red and freshly shaved; his collar was opened and he wore no tie. He advanced shyly into the room, shaking Margaret’s hand as she was introduced, ducking his head, then saying, ‘I’ve lost my tie. I wonder if it’s down here, Ellen,’ his mother drawing the tie out finally from the chair where Margaret was sitting. ‘He leaves everything where he drops it,’ she said, flushing deeper, then adding, ‘Harry, for goodness’ sake, put your tie on outside the room.’

‘Nay, you don’t mind me putting my tie on, do you, Margaret?’ his father said, glancing directly at her then ducking his head to the fractured glass above the sink. Yet the darkness scarcely left his face, an uncertainty at having someone like this inside the room.

‘Would you like some tea, love?’ his mother said. ‘I was going to get a proper tea ready a little later,’ standing with her hands clasped, gazing at Margaret through her glasses, the lenses of which, reflecting the light, obscured her expression.

‘Oh, I’d love a cup of tea,’ Margaret said and added, ‘I’ll get it, if you like,’ going to the kettle at the sink where, startled, his father stood back from straightening his tie. She ran the tap, looked round for a stove, saw none, and went directly to the fire. She set the kettle against the flames.

‘We’re having a gas stove put in shortly,’ his mother said, more alarmed by this gesture than by anything that had occurred inside that room for some considerable time, standing by the fire, anxious now to re-set the kettle.

‘Do you do all your cooking on the fire, Mrs Saville?’ Margaret said.

‘I have done, till now. And that’s how many years, then, Harry?’ his mother said.

‘Oh we’ve been here some time,’ his father said, refusing to count, gazing in amazement at the bright figure of the girl.

‘Twenty years it must be, over,’ his mother added. She glanced at Colin: he had half-risen from his chair at the incident with the kettle, but now sat back with a resigned air, moving his
feet for his brothers who, distracted by Margaret’s arrival, had begun to play once again on the floor.

‘Aye. Nearly a quarter of a century,’ his father said. ‘It seems just like yesterday when we first arrived. We hadn’t got much, I can tell you that. We lived down the street, you know. They knocked it down a few year after and built another row.’

‘Oh, we haven’t done so bad,’ his mother said, sitting down at the table as if to distract his father. ‘There’s plenty worse off, I can tell you that.’

‘Oh, plenty,’ his father said.

‘And where do you live, Margaret?’ his mother added. ‘In town, or out of it?’

‘Just on its edge, Mrs Saville,’ Margaret said, glancing at Colin.

‘I suppose in the outskirts, yes,’ he said.

‘And you’re at the High School?’ his father said.

‘Yes,’ she said, and added, ‘For what it’s worth.’

‘Oh, it’s worth quite a lot,’ his father said. ‘Without an education where could you go,’ he added, ‘and what could you do? You’ve come to the right person to tell you that.’

‘Oh, now, Harry,’ his mother said. ‘You’ve done quite well. You know you have.’

‘Aye. But with the chances of an education there’s no telling where I might have gone,’ his father said. ‘That’s where people like you and Colin are very lucky.’

His father now was almost fifty; his hair was greying. He’d long since removed his moustache. His skin was heavily lined, his figure small, almost shrivelled, his look gaunt; even now, with the liveliness induced in him by the presence of the girl, there was a heaviness in his movements, a slowness in his voice, as if at the back of his mind were some dark dream or vision he couldn’t displace.

‘Aye, we’ve all done very well,’ he added as if, finally, to dispel this mood.

They went out walking a little later while his mother prepared the tea. Margaret had offered to help with this as well, but his mother had insisted they should go. ‘Now, I don’t want you prying into
all
my secrets, do I?’ she said primly, feeling threatened by the girl.

They walked in silence for a while. Colin turned up the hill towards the Park. There was an air of desolation about the village, the pit silent but for the faint hum of the dynamo. It was autumn and most of the greenery about the place had gone.

‘We could look at the church,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing of any interest.’

He turned up the lane leading to the dark, stone building. Mounds of dead leaves had drifted up against the hedge. The door to the building, however, was locked.

‘Do you still go to church?’ she said.

‘Occasionally.’ He shrugged.

They went up the overgrown track to the manor. The caretaker, since the end of the war, had left. The place more than ever now was falling into ruin. Great blocks of stone had fallen into the drive itself. They looked in through the empty windows.

‘It’s strange: but I can’t imagine you living here,’ she said. She gestured to the village below. A faint trail of yellowish fumes drifted off from the colliery heap. The houses, but for odd strands of smoke, were lifeless. The air was still.

‘Why not?’ He’d climbed up the steps at the front of the manor, suggesting she might look in the now unshuttered windows.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, and shook her head. She’d gone on walking around the side of the building; he followed her after a moment. She was standing in the overgrown yard at the back. Vague areas of cobbles and flagstones showed beneath the weeds and grass.

‘My father used to drill in the Home Guard here,’ he said, indicating the now roofless outbuilding where the desk and the chairs and the various pieces of equipment had been stored. A strand of the rope which had fastened the bayoneting targets to the trees was still dangling from a branch. The stairs, however, which had led up to the centre of the main building, from the back, had now collapsed. ‘I used to come here with Steven in a pram. I’d set him under the trees, then climb up through the building.’

‘Haven’t you ever thought of moving from that house?’ she said.

‘Often,’ he said. ‘We’re on the list. They’re going to build a new estate, outside the village. They haven’t started yet,’ he added. ‘In any case, compared to some people, we’ve more than enough.’

They set off back towards the road. He described to her some of the games they’d played, pointing out the Dell across the village. They came out finally opposite the Park. The bare trees stood out starkly across the slope, the apparatus in the playground at the bottom now eroded and, in one or two instances, collapsed entirely.

‘Don’t you mind it being so poor?’ she said.

‘I’ve always minded it,’ he said. ‘But living in it, for most of the time you never notice.’ He added, ‘We’ve been better off than most. It’s that I’ve been aware of more than anything else.’

They sat on a bench for a while at the top of the slope, disinclined to go any farther. The bare fields stretched away below the Park, in one of which a tractor, ploughing, chugged slowly up and down. A railway engine came coasting along the straight length of track and disappeared into the cutting before the junction.

‘I suppose you were lucky even to get out of it,’ she said. ‘I mean, into town and to school, and away from this.’

‘I think I’ll get away for good, in any case,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to hold me here, you see. Well, not really.’

She glanced across.

‘I ought really to help out at home, when I start working, you see,’ he said. ‘While Steven and Richard get through. There’s still quite a bit to go,’ he added, helplessly now, and looked away.

‘One tyranny’, she said, ‘is replaced by another.’