Snowstop (38 page)

‘I'm not surprised.'

‘I'll write to you about that job.' She didn't think she would, but she might. You never knew how you would feel in the morning, and why should you? If you knew how you would feel from one day to the next you might as well be dead, and who wants to be dead when you can go on enjoying yourself? She patted his folded hands. ‘I promise I won't bite my nails any more. My mam and dad will be ever so pleased.'

Fred came in with a tureen of fruit salad. ‘I went out to empty the slops, and saw a helicopter over the tor a couple of miles away. I expect it's the police. Or maybe the RAF.'

Wayne yawned, and whispered in his pain. ‘Go and wave a white sheet, then.'

‘You damned idiot,' Fred said. ‘They won't see it in the snow.'

‘I've got to go to court next week for speeding,' Wayne grumbled. ‘I was doing a ton near Youlgreave. They won't let a biker live these days. I didn't even kill anybody. I hope that was a chopper and there's a doctor on board who can fix my ribs up. They're giving me bloody hell.'

‘All I ever hit was a dog,' Lance said, ‘and I was only doing thirty. I'll be scarred for life with this bloody gash in my face. The blood's congealed, though, so it's not running any more. The poor bloody dog ran right out of a garden. The little girl who owned it broke her heart, but the farmer admitted it wasn't my fault.'

Fred set down bowls and spoons. He would stay in Nottingham with his old shipmate Tommy Blidworth who had a fuel delivery service, work with him till he could get a job, or until he made up his mind about buying another hotel, unless it paid him to insist that the insurance build up this one to exactly what it was like before. He had done nothing but send Doris insulting letters since she left, but if he wrote nice things and posted some flowers maybe she would come back. We'll start all over again. I'll need a bit of help in a new place. Her cook's bound to be fed up with her by now. The only thing worse than being together is living apart.

‘We'll have a concrete motorbike built on Garry's grave,' Lance said. ‘A sculptor can do it, set him up in full riding gear, and put some dandelions in an Ogri mug.'

Alfred was ready with money. ‘We'll have a subscription list, a whip-round. I'll put fifty quid in, if you like.' He pushed his scraped dish away. ‘You lads did wonders last night and this morning. And Keith as well. I feel bad that he had to go. He was one of the best.'

‘Shut your stupid gob,' Wayne said. ‘Everybody gets what they deserve. We all did what we could, that's all.'

‘Now what have I said wrong?'

‘Nothing.'

It's no use, Lance said to himself. I've got to get out of this, though I can't say what
this
is, except it's everything and I've been in it all my life. I've only enjoyed being in it because there was nowhere else to be, but it's finished, because I know I don't belong, and ought to find somewhere else. I don't know where that
else
is, either, but I'll get there soon. Garry's dead and gone, and there's no one left at where I am, but I would want to skedaddle in any case, otherwise I'll fly head-on into a juggernaut and die like Garry if I don't escape from this foggy pothole I've been in too long. Now that I can see the future I might write some good songs.

‘You look as if you've swallowed a fairing,' Wayne said. ‘I feel a bit like that. I just can't believe that maniac killed him, not to mention Keith. The wind's not howling like it was, so maybe we can go out and find him. I'll kick him from here to Tipperary if I get my hands on him.'

‘I wouldn't waste my time,' Lance said. ‘Let him rot. Anybody who has anything to do with something like that was rotten as soon as he was born, if not sooner.'

‘How are we going to pass the time, though? Fred said he's seen a chopper, but we might be here all day. I'm bored to death now I'm not waiting to be blown up. And when I think of Garry I want to cry.'

Lance lay as far away as he could get, also wanted to cry but knew you never could. The mattress was damp and the wind cold, but his face burned at the pain in his leg, and he thought he was going to sleep, or faint.

‘We should make an effort to welcome them,' Fred said. ‘Stand outside and wave. They've found us, and they're circling to find a landing place.'

No one seemed bothered. He straightened his jacket, brushed dust and cigar ash from his waistcoat, and took a comb out of his lapel pocket like a concert party magician who had proved it to be empty a moment ago. If he could find a better suit he would change into it, though who could be a pretty picture after such a night?

All of them looked wounded, walking wounded thrown into a bombed-out building after a skirmish, sprawled any old how, and dead to the wide, unable or unwilling to care, couldn't even put hands over their ears to stop the roaring of the blades, though it seemed like the best of music to Fred.

The fun was about to begin. Welcome to The White Cavalier Hotel – as was, gentlemen, as was – though having been the host, and still am even over the ruins, I have put a bottle of something very extra old and special on the table for you to partake of on this wintry but nonetheless soon to be beautiful morning.

20 November 1991

St Pargoire-London

A Biography of Alan Sillitoe by Ruth Fainlight

Not many of the “Angry Young Men” (a label Alan Sillitoe vigorously rejected but which nonetheless clung to him until the end of his life), could boast of having failed the eleven plus exam not only once, but twice. From early childhood Alan yearned for every sort of knowledge about the world: history, geography, cosmology, biology, topography, and mathematics; to read the best novels and poetry; and learn all the languages, from Classical Greek and Latin to every tongue of modern Europe. But his violent father was illiterate, his mother barely able to read the popular press and when necessary write a simple letter, and he was so cut off from any sort of cultivated environment that, at about the age of ten, trying to teach himself French (unaware books existed that might have helped him), the only method he could devise was to look up each word of a French sentence in a small pocket dictionary. It did not take long for him to realize that something was wrong with his system, but there was no one to ask what he should do instead.

So, like all his schoolmates, he left school at fourteen and went to work in a local factory. Alan never presented himself as a misunderstood sensitive being, and always insisted that he had a wonderful time chasing girls and going with workmates to the lively Nottingham pubs. He also joined the Air Training Corps (ATC) where he absorbed information so quickly that by the age of seventeen he was working as an air traffic controller at a nearby airfield. World War II was still being fought, and his ambition was to become a pilot and go to the Far East, but before that could be realized it was VE Day. As soon as possible he volunteered for the Royal Air Force. It was too late to become a pilot or a navigator, but he got as far as Malaya, where as a radio operator he spent long nights in a hut at the edge of the jungle.

The Morse code he learned during this time stayed with Alan all his life; he loved listening to transmissions from liners and cargo ships (although he never transmitted himself), and whenever invited to speak, he always took his Morse key along. Before beginning his talk, he would make a grand performance of setting it up on the table in front of him and then announce that if anyone in the audience could decipher the message he was about to transmit, he would give that person a signed copy of one of his books. As far as I remember, this never happened.

In Malaya, Alan caught tuberculosis—only discovered during the final physical examination before demobilization. He spent the next eighteen months in a military sanatorium, and was awarded a 100 percent disability pension. By then Alan was twenty-three years old, and it was not long until we met. We fell in love and soon decided to leave the country, going first to France and then to Mallorca, and stayed away from England for more than six years. That pension was our only reliable income until, after several rejections, the manuscript of
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
was accepted for publication. Afterward, Alan would say that during those apprentice years he had been kept by a very kind woman: the Queen of England.

It is said that an artist must choose between life and art; sometimes Alan would tell whomever questioned him that after his first book was published and he became a recognized writer, he stopped living—there was not enough time to do both. I hope that was not entirely true. But writing was his main activity: He would spend ten to twelve hours a day at his desk, reading or answering letters when he needed a break from working on his current novel. And there were poems, essays, reviews—and scripts for the films of his first two books,
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
and
The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner
, and later others. He was extremely productive. But certainly he also enjoyed social life with our friends and going to concerts or the theatre. This was the heyday of the young British dramatists at the Royal Court Theatre.

Now, in the 1960s, there was enough money for what we enjoyed most: travel, and although in the first few years our son was still a baby, we would spend up to six months of the year away from England. Alan's books were translated into many languages, which meant that he was invited to many other countries, frequently to literary festivals, or sometimes offered the use of a villa or grand apartment for generous periods of time. I remember a stay at a castle in then-Czechoslovakia, where we were awoken every morning by a scream from our son, who had managed to get his head or hand caught in some part of the rickety crib that had been put in our room for him. We also spent months in Mallorca, in a house generously lent by Robert Graves. During our four years on the island we had become good friends with him and the Graves family.

Time passed … the sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties.… Every year or two a new book, a trip to another part of the world. Japan, India, the United States, Mexico, and Latin America: the range extended. I usually went with him, and as by then I also was having work published, sometimes the invitation was to me, and he would assume the role of consort.

Looking back, I realize what a wonderful life we had then. But a year or two before his eightieth birthday, Alan told me he was not feeling well. It was always hard to persuade him to see the doctor; this time he suggested it himself. There were many hospital appointments for investigations and tests—the National Health Service was as excellent and thorough as ever—and a few weeks later the diagnosis came: There was a cancer at the base of his tongue. His suspicions were confirmed. Although he had continued to smoke his pipe (and the occasional cigar), now he stopped at once. The tragic program of treatments started, and the inevitable oscillations between hope and despair. Twice it seemed that he was cured; then it all began again. In April 2010, not long after his eighty-second birthday, Alan died. We had hoped he could die at home, but he needed the facilities of a good hospital. Months later, on a cupboard shelf in his study, I found the manuscript of
Moggerhanger
.

Sillitoe in Butterworth, Malaya, during his time in the RAF.

Sillitoe and Ruth Fainlight shared their first home together, “Le Nid”, while living in Menton, France, 1952.