Saville (13 page)

His father sent off the drawings in a brown envelope with the address printed in the same black crayon on both sides. At the top of the envelope he wrote the word ‘Private’ then, shortly before he took it into the village to post, he crossed it out and wrote instead ‘Of Utmost Concern’, practising the words first on a piece of paper.

A little later, when he had given up hope of any reply and had begun to copy out the drawings again with a bigger bomb and even more aircraft falling, the envelope already prepared and marked in red ink ‘Urgent!!’, he received a letter with an official address printed across the top and a typed message underneath indicating that the drawings were receiving attention.

For several days running he took the letter to work, bringing it back each morning a little dirtier and more heavily creased, in the evenings taking it along the backs with various copies of the drawings, stopping at the doors and explaining to Mr Shaw, to Mr Stringer, to Mr Reagan and Mr Bletchley, and even on one occasion to Mr Batty, the principles on which his invention worked. The following week he brought home a fresh pad of paper from the pit office and began to draw a second invention, suspending in this instance not one bomb but several beneath the aircraft, at varying height, like bait swinging from a row of hooks.

The culmination of this design was a drawing which occupied the entire surface of the kitchen table. Several squared sheets had been glued end to end, their edges crinkly and embellished with thumb prints, and on the single sheet, with a great deal of groaning, his face flushed, his tongue almost permanently protruding, he drew a flotilla of aircraft with an assortment of bombs strung out beneath them, some of the bombs, because of their size, carried by two or more aircraft with
‘THIS IS FOR YOU, FRITZ’
printed on the side.

After he had posted it, folded in a neat parcel and sealed with red wax, he turned his attention to several other designs which this recognition of his efforts had suddenly encouraged. As time passed and no news of his inventions reached the papers, these
grew in complexity and profusion, culminating in the design for a bullet which, according to his calculations, could be fired round corners. It was shaped like a ball and was flung out of a grooved barrel in such a way that it curved in flight, eventually, if it was provided with sufficient velocity, returning to the point at which it had started.

‘Won’t it kill’, his mother said, ‘the person who fires it?’

‘How can it?’ he said, irritated whenever he had to explain his inventions unduly. ‘There’s bound to be something in the way. And in any case, you can shorten the range by reducing the size of the cartridge.’

‘I see,’ she said, nodding her head and gazing down at the numerous figures, firing round house corners, that his father had drawn.

Occasionally, as the flow of inventions faltered, he would get up from the table, put his pencil down, stretch for a while before the fire, his head back, his hands clenched into fists above his head, then, making sure that his work things were ready for the evening, his shirt warming in the hearth beside his socks and his boots, his trousers and his coat hanging on a nail beside them, he would wander out on to the doorstep and light a cigarette.

From there it was only a few steps down the garden to the field where the men were playing football. And there, by the fence, he would stand smoking, his hands in his pockets, occasionally calling out, finally glancing back at the house and climbing the fence and offering a kick at the ball as it came in his direction.

Within a short while he would be standing in the centre of the field, waving his arms, calling, the cigarette still in his mouth until that moment when, laughing, the ball at his feet, he flung the cigarette out, running one way then another towards the nearest goal, shooting then calling out, ‘Goal! Goal! What did I tell you?’ His legs were slightly bowed when he ran, and they kicked out wildly whenever he lost control or the ball was taken from him, his voice calling ‘Foul! Foul!’ distinguishable from all the rest by its tone of belligerence and complaint.

Later, as it grew dark, the men would crouch down in the middle of the field. Finally, when the light faded, all that was visible was the glow from their cigarettes and the occasional
flare of a match. The low murmur of their voices came through the quietness. His mother would go on to the step and call into the darkness, scarcely loud enough to hear, ‘Harry. Harry. You’ll be late for work.’

He would come in complaining, his eyes still dazed from the darkness, his elbows and knees stained green, his figure stooping impatiently by the fire as he drew on his work clothes and fastened his boots: ‘I must be a madman, going to work at this time,’ taking his bottle of tea and his tin of sandwiches which his mother had already packed in his knapsack and getting out his bike, feeling the tyres, switching on the dynamo for his lights, then calling out to the men still gathered in the darkness as he rode away.

Mr Reagan’s son Michael had joined Bletchley and Colin at Sunday School. He was a tall boy with a long thin face and a long thin nose. His eyes were pale blue like Mr Reagan’s. When Bletchley and he walked down the road together people laughed, the one so fat, the other so thin, Reagan apparently unnoticing but Bletchley himself walking more quickly, his knees reddening as his agitation grew. When they returned from Sunday School Reagan walked on one side of Mr Morrison and Bletchley on the other, the woman with reddened eyes walking slightly ahead or behind.

On the third Sunday Reagan brought his violin. It was at the invitation of the vicar’s wife, who announced the presence of the instrument at the beginning of the service, Reagan stepping out from behind his chair with the case so that the vicar’s wife could hold it up. The violin itself was like a large shiny nut, reddish brown, lying in a bed of green baize. He had, the previous two weeks, been practising a hymn tune and when the last hymn was announced he went to stand by the piano and took the violin out.

The children watched him in silence. He folded a white handkerchief beneath his chin, bending his head towards it to keep it in place, then sliding in the violin.

Bletchley stared across at him intensely. He had, on the way to Sunday School, kicked the case at one point, saying, ‘The vicar’ll take it off you. They don’t let you have things like that inside.’

‘Mrs Andrews asked me to bring it,’ Reagan said, mentioning the vicar’s wife.

‘She’s not the vicar,’ Bletchley said. ‘In any case, if she doesn’t do what
she
’s told he knocks her about.’

Now, however, Bletchley regarded him with a smile. He winced, screwing up his eyes, glanced at Mr Morrison, and winced again, gazing at the roof.

Reagan’s eyes expanded as he played, squinting slightly as he tried to watch the bow crossing the strings, pausing, his body shuddering, his eyes closing whenever his notes failed to correspond with those from the piano, the sound fading when the children, and Bletchley in particular, began to sing.

Bletchley sang with his eyes closed, turned in the direction of the violin, his head raised as if he were addressing Reagan directly.

When they walked home after the service he kicked the case again. ‘You’ll be getting it broken, bringing it out like this,’ he said. ‘In any case, I bet you can’t play the piano.’

‘No,’ Reagan said.

‘My cousin can,’ Bletchley said.

A few days later Colin noticed Bletchley and Reagan playing in the field at the back of the house. Reagan was carrying Bletchley on his back, his thin figure stooped under the load, his head bent almost double. Bletchley was hitting his legs with a stick, saying, ‘Go on, boy! Go on!’ and clicking his tongue. They wandered round a hole, the sides of which had fallen in.

A little later Mr Reagan appeared in his garden. He had just returned from work and was in fact wearing his yellow gloves and his bowler hat, his jacket alone unbuttoned as an indication that he had, at least, arrived home. ‘Hey,’ he shouted, and when Bletchley looked up added, ‘Get off his back.’

‘What?’ Bletchley said.

‘Get off his back,’ Mr Reagan shouted.

Bletchley got down. He stood for a moment gazing across at Mr Reagan.

‘Michael,’ Mr Reagan shouted. ‘Get on his back.’

Reagan had stooped down to rub his legs, inflamed from Bletchley’s stick.

‘Get on his back,’ Mr Reagan shouted.

Bletchley stood still, frozen, his eyes never leaving Mr Reagan as Regan himself grasped his shoulder and tried, unsuccessfully, to climb on his back.

‘Get down,’ Mr Reagan shouted, waving his arm.

‘What?’ Bletchley said.

‘Bend down.’

Bletchley stooped slightly, his eyes still fixed on Mr Reagan, and Reagan himself slowly clawed his way on to Bletchley’s back. Bletchley stood swaying for a moment, his hands clamped behind him on Reagan’s legs.

‘Give him the stick,’ Mr Reagan shouted and when Bletchley did so he shouted again, ‘Start walking.’

Bletchley stumbled, hoisted the weight on his back and, his legs trembling as he struggled to keep his balance, began to walk round in circles.

‘Hit him,’ Mr Reagan said.

Reagan had looked up, his eyes wide and staring as when he had played the violin.

‘Hit him.’

Reagan did so, fanning the stick beneath him at Bletchley’s legs.

‘Ow,’ Bletchley said, screwing up his face.

‘Faster,’ Mr Reagan shouted.

‘I can’t,’ Bletchley said, beginning to cry.

‘Faster. Or I’ll come out there myself.’

Bletchley tried to run, his cheeks trembling, his knees rubbing together.

‘Ow,’ he said each time Mr Reagan called out, his shouts growing louder as he tried to attract the attention of someone in his house.

‘Faster,’ Mr Reagan said, his face inflamed now as when he watched the cricket, his thumbs tucked into his waistcoat pockets. ‘Faster, or I’ll fan you myself.’

Bletchley had fallen.

He gave a loud groan and collapsed on his side, his eyes closed, his mouth open.

He lay moaning for a while, clutching his ankle, Reagan standing over him scratching his head. ‘Oh,’ Bletchley said. ‘I’ve broken my ankle.’

‘I’ll break the other one if I catch you again,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘Get up now, or I’ll lift you myself.’

Bletchley stood up. He groaned again, his eyes closed, his face turned up. ‘I’m going home,’ he said, adding something which Mr Reagan couldn’t hear, glancing round however in case he had been mistaken and with several groans and grimaces limping his way back to his fence, his arms flung out either side to retain his balance.

‘I’ll give you a leathering myself’, Mr Reagan said to Reagan, ‘if I catch you again. If he hits you with a stick hit him back.’

‘Yes, Dad,’ Reagan said.

Bletchley was attempting to lift his legs over the fence farther down the field retaining at the same time all the effects of his injury, his groans and sighs, his tortured expression, limping up his garden to his door. ‘Mam! Mam!’ he shouted as he neared it, ‘Mam!’ almost screaming and, as the door opened, collapsing on the step.

And yet, after that, it was unusual to see Bletchley and Reagan apart. They went to school together each morning, walking at the same slow pace, each wearing an identical satchel in which they carried an apple, a bottle of ink, which often got broken, and a pen. Occasionally their respective mothers stood talking in the street, or passed across the fronts of the houses to one another’s doors. Finally, a little later, the two women began to go to church together, attending the Sunday morning service, occasionally accompanied by Mr Bletchley dressed in a brown suit, and a little later by Bletchley himself and Reagan. Mr Reagan could occasionally be heard shouting to them from the bedroom as they passed the door.

‘They’ve gone to church, Harry,’ he would say, coming across the backs to where his father sat at the back door reading the paper. ‘She has that lad kneeling down every night by the bed.’

‘Kneeling?’ his father said.

‘Praying.’

‘Ah, well,’ his father said. ‘Praying never did any harm.’

‘Nor any good,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘She’s going to make him as silly as she is.’

‘Ah, well,’ his father said again, still gazing at the paper and, in this instance at least, refusing to be disturbed. ‘You can never tell.’

‘That’s what I mean,’ Mr Reagan said. ‘The same happens whether you do or you don’t.’

On Sundays Mr Reagan wore his suit without the jacket, the waistcoat unbuttoned save for the bottom, a stiff collar and around it the tie of his old school. A thin gold chain ran from the top button of his waistcoat to the top pocket on the left hand side. ‘Though it’s fastened to nought but a lump of stone,’ his father said. ‘I know that for a fact.’

Since his disappointment over getting a job at the local pit his regard for Mr Reagan had slightly faded.

‘Oh, Reagan’s all right,’ he’d say. ‘But if he’s got all these complaints why doesn’t he do something about it?’

‘He’s frightened of his wife,’ his mother said. ‘In fact, he’s frightened of women in general.’

‘Of women?’ His father had laughed, gazing at his mother in amazement. ‘If he was frightened of women,’ he said, still laughing, ‘he’d be on his knees afore any man. And he’s never been that. Not as long as I’ve known him.’

His mother nodded but answered nothing back.

In fact, having heard this excuse, his father’s regard for Reagan was momentarily restored: he even went across the backs to talk to him on a Sunday morning after Mrs Reagan and Michael had gone off to church, sitting in the porch and laughing at the various things they read in the paper, occasionally joined by Mr Batty or Mr Stringer and a little later setting off for the Institute in a noisy group.

It was from Mr Reagan that the idea sprang that Colin should sit for the examinations. The opportunity to go to the grammar school in the city came the following year, and if he failed the examination a second opportunity occurred the year after. If he failed again he would go to the secondary-modern school at the other end of the village, from which the pit recruited most of its miners.