Saville (19 page)

His father dressed Steven to take with them, pushing the sledge up and down outside, wearing the rust off the runners. When they set off it left two brown tracks in the snow behind.

‘No, no, you sit on,’ his father said, setting Steven between Colin’s legs. ‘The more weight on we have the better.’

His father looped the rope around his shoulders and strode along in front, stooped forward to their weight, the studs of his pit boots shining underneath, the snow collecting in the insteps then falling off: it crunched beneath the runners, the woodwork rattling over the bumps. It had already begun to grow dark and as they passed the windows his father would call out, tapping on some, saying, ‘Get him out. Get him out. Let him have some fresh air, then, missis.’

When they reached the hill running up to the Park his father added, ‘Nay, Colin, you’ll have to jump off,’ and as they started up the slope, ‘Don’t you want a pull? It’s light as a feather with Steven on.’

In the Park, on the slope of the hill, several figures were silhouetted against the snow and as they got nearer he recognized Batty and Stringer and Stringer’s father. Batty was half-way
down the slope pulling up a sledge on the back of which Stringer was sitting, kicking his legs.

‘What’ve you got there, then, Harry?’ Mr Stringer said.

‘This is a toboggan,’ his father said.

‘A toboggan, is it?’ He came across. ‘It’ll not last five minutes,’ Mr Stringer said.

‘It’ll beat anything of thine,’ his father said.

‘Right,’ Mr Stringer said. ‘You’re on.’

In the faint light the flattened snow could be seen curving away between the flower beds and the ornamental pond.

‘Ay go, our Malcolm,’ Mr Stringer said. ‘Hurry up wi’ yon sled’, we’re barn t’have a gamble.’

Mr Stringer was dressed as he always was in a sleeveless shirt with its collar undone. His trousers were tucked into his socks: on his feet were a thin pair of shoes.

‘Are you coming down with me, Colin?’ his father said. He sat on the sledge with Steven between his legs. ‘When I give you a nod,’ he added, ‘give us a shove and when we’ve got going jump on behind.’

Mr Stringer had already sat down on the other sledge. It was slightly higher than his father’s and had a piece of carpet to sit on, wet now, however, and crusted with snow. He began to shout through his cupped hands to the figures below, ‘Ay up. Move over,’ adding, ‘We s’ll have killed somebody afore we’ve done. How much do you want on, then? Half a dollar?’

‘We’ll give it a go first,’ his father said.

‘Right,’ Mr Stringer said. ‘When I say off.’ He shouted down the slope once more, waved his arm, then said, ‘Give us a good shove. Hold on. Are you ready? Right. We’re off!’

They began to shout as they pushed the sledges down the top of the slope. ‘Faster,’ Mr Stringer said. ‘Faster. God damn it, I’ll get off here and push it myself.’ He went off first down the slope, Stringer and Batty jumping on behind.

As their own sledge gathered speed his father shouted, ‘Jump on, Colin. You’ll have us over.’ The distance between them, however, increased.

Colin held on to his father’s neck, his father kicking his legs to one side then the other. ‘Nay, you’ll have us over,’ he shouted, laughing, the sledge, half-way down the slope, plunging suddenly
to one side, dipping down into a drift of snow and flinging them off.

His father lay beneath him, kicking up his boots. The front of the sledge was buried in snow. From lower down the slope came Mr Stringer’s shouts followed by his cries as he guided his sledge between the swings.

‘That was short and quick,’ his father said, adding as Steven, his face covered in snow, had begun to cry, ‘A bit of snow won’t hurt you, love.’

‘I want to go home, Dad,’ Steven said.

‘Nay, we’ll have one more go at least,’ his father said.

When Mr Stringer came to the top he said, ‘How much was that, then? Ten bob?

‘Ten nothing,’ his father said. ‘We’ve had no practice.’

‘You’ll need no practice with that,’ Mr Stringer said. ‘You’ll never get it to go, not if you put it on wheels and fasten on a motor.’

‘I’ll ride it down myself,’ his father said. He pushed the sledge to the top of the slope.

‘How much start do you want?’ Mr Stringer said.

‘None,’ his father said. ‘We’ll go together.’

Mr Stringer sat upright and was pushed off by Batty. ‘Go on, Dad,’ Stringer shouted. ‘Faster.’

Colin’s father however ran behind the sledge, pushing it, then, when it had gained momentum, flinging himself on top, kicking out his legs to steer.

‘Get over,’ Mr Stringer shouted down the slope. He caught hold of his father’s sledge and pulled it across. ‘Get it off. Get over,’ he shouted, his small figure upright as if, silhouetted against the snow, he were sitting on nothing at all.

The sledges ran off into the snow to one side. A little later Mr Stringer could be seen standing up, dusting the snow from his head and his shoulders saying, ‘I was going to overtake you there, then, Harry.’

‘He had hold of my legs,’ his father said when they finally came up. ‘I’d have beaten him to the bottom by a mile. I had him beat.’

‘A mile,’ Mr Stringer said. ‘Why, I had to hold on in case he fell o’er.’

His father picked up Steven and said, ‘Come on down and have a ride.’

‘I want to go home, Dad,’ Steven said. He shrank against his father as Mr Stringer said, ‘I’ll warm you up. Have a go on my back, then, love.’

‘He’s a bit frightened,’ his father said. ‘He hasn’t been on a sledge, tha knows, afore.’

Several other people had arrived and set off down the slope. Shouts echoed up from the swings below.

‘I’ll have one more go,’ his father said. ‘Then I’ll take him back.’ And as he put Steven down he said, ‘Give him a ride round, Colin.’ And when it seemed he wouldn’t be pacified he said, ‘Come on, then. We’ll all go down together.’

But Steven refused either to sit on the sledge between his father’s knees or on his back, and when Mr Stringer took him and set him down on his own sledge he called out even louder.

Already his father was pushing off.

‘A gill to nought, then, Harry,’ Mr Stringer said.

Colin pushed against his father then jumped on top. His father gasped. As they came to each bump his father gasped again. Behind them they could hear Mr Stringer’s shouts.

The snow shot up against Colin’s face. Beneath him his father twisted, his legs kicking, as he turned the sledge. They slid between the posts of the metal swings.

‘Hold on. Hold on,’ his father said as Colin clung more tightly to his back, his head pressed down against his father’s neck.

The snow crunched beneath the runners, his father flinging his legs from side to side, the sledge running out into the unmarked snow at the foot of the hill. They turned in a wide arc and came to a halt beneath the hedge.

‘That was a run,’ his father said. ‘A run and a half.’ He lay on the sledge for a while, groaning, after Colin got up. ‘By go, you’re a ton weight,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if I’ve broken my back.’

Mr Stringer was waiting farther up the track. ‘I thought you were off home theer and none of us’d see you again,’ he said. ‘I’ll stand you a gill and a half for that.’

‘I thought I better pull in,’ his father said. He lifted Steven on
to his back and said, ‘I better be getting this one home. He’s not enjoying himself a bit.’

‘I’ll come back with you,’ Mr Stringer said. ‘They’ve been open an hour.’ He rubbed his hand across his arms and then his chest. ‘Sithee, it’s running out of me like watter.’

Colin could see them a little later as they reached the Park gates, his father – with Steven on his back – pausing as he lit a cigarette then held the match for Mr Stringer. They disappeared down the road towards the village.

Later, he was left alone on the track. When he went down all he could hear was the scudding of the snow beneath the runners. No sound came from the Park at all. The sky had cleared. Ice ran beneath the sledge to the foot of the slope.

He went sledging each evening as soon as he came home from school. Occasionally Batty and Stringer came with him, and sometimes only Batty: he would slide down the slope in his large boots, then, having got tired of pulling the sledge, he’d go back home. Only on the second night did Colin’s father come with him: his interest in the sledge expired with its making. He stood at the top of the slope smoking after the first ride down saying, ‘You go, lad. I’m getting too old for this,’ finally turning back up the slope and adding, ‘I better be getting ready for work. Your mother gets worried, you know, if I’m late.’

Often he was last on the slope, waiting for the others to grow tired and leave, pulling their sledges slowly up to the gate, their voices fading down the road. Sometimes, when he had comedown the track, he lay on the sledge, his check on the snow that had frozen to the wood, his breath rising in a thin mist past his face, the hill silent, glowing faintly, the odd calls, the barking of a dog and the shutting of doors coming from the houses beyond. A moon had risen on the second night: it shone as a bright disc, the track like a strip of metal running between the smooth mounds on either side. Towards the town, as the night settled, there was the faint probing of searchlights, moving like stiff fingers, slowly waving to and fro.

Each morning when he came home his father brought news of fresh disasters he had seen: a lorry driven over a banking, a car skidding into a wall, a factory so frozen up that no one could work in it, a chimney that had collapsed through the ice breaking
up the stone. ‘It’s a wonder I’ve got home at all,’ he would say if there had been a fresh fall in the night. ‘It’s not often it comes so late in the year. There were buds on the branches a week ago. Now look at it. Antarctica. I s’ll come home one morning a penguin and you’ll wonder who I am.’

His father built a snowman in the garden almost as tall as himself, setting on top of it his flat cap and underneath a pair of eyes, a nose, a moustache and a large mouth, each feature made up from bits of coal. Bletchley, who had built a snowman in his own yard, threw stones at theirs in the early mornings, removing first its head then various pieces of its body, the buttons, the fingers and the dividing of the legs, all of which his father had fashioned from pieces of wood. Finally the snowman toppled in the yard. Its body, freckled with soot, still lay there, dismembered, when the rest of the snow in the gardens and the backs had melted.

The last night Colin took the sledge to the Park the runners grated against the pavement. The track was worn through in dull brown patches.

In the spring his grandfather left. He went back to his uncle’s. ‘I’ll be back,’ he said the day he left. ‘That’s the motto of my life: “Keep moving”.’ He bent down to kiss him. ‘Look after them, Colin. Keep an eye on them. They need somebody, tha knows, round here.’ When his suitcase had been put on the bus he sat by the window at the front, smoking, winking at them with nods of his head.

The next day his father said, ‘It looks as though we shall have another young ’un in the house, then, Colin.’

‘When is it coming?’ he said.

‘Oh, not for a few months yet.’ He grasped his shoulder and laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You and Steve can look after him all right.’

Colin played with Steven now a great deal. His brother had something of his father’s build, broad and fair-haired, his blue eyes slightly pained, and puzzled, preoccupied, so that when they were crossing the field or had gone to play on the wasteland at the end of the street, or, as spring came, in the Park, his sole preoccupation would be on where he was walking, stumbling over holes or protuberances, his arms stretched out, awkwardly,
scarcely looking up from the ground by his feet. The other children called him Flipper. ‘He’s like a seal,’ Batty said. ‘Are we supposed to wait for him or summat?’ Frequently Colin would be left behind, waiting for Steven, taking his hand or finally lifting him up and carrying him on his back.

‘Don’t ever leave him on his own,’ his mother said. ‘If he’s any trouble, wait. He’s more important than any of them.’

Once he took Steven to the river; they went on bikes, taking it in turns to ride. Some of the children rode on the cross-bars, some on the seats; the others ran behind. It took them the whole of the afternoon to get there: they played on the metal coal-slip used to load the barges, and beyond, on the supports beneath a metal bridge. It was almost dark by the time they got home.

His mother was standing at the door.

‘Wherever have you been?’ she said.

He was carrying Steven, who was almost asleep. They were covered in coal dust from the metal shute.

‘Your father’s out looking for you. He’s been all over.’ She took his arm. ‘Is Steve all right?’

‘I’ve been carrying him,’ he told her.

‘Just look at him,’ she said. ‘Where on earth have you had him?’

When his father came back he took him upstairs.

‘Supposing Steven fell in?’ he said. ‘And you couldn’t get out.’

Colin felt the strap against his legs. The pain tugged at his stomach.

Afterwards he stayed upstairs. He heard Steven go to bed, his mother’s voice in the other room, then her steps outside the door. She paused. A moment later he heard her voice.

‘Are you all right?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘I hope you’ve learnt your lesson.’

‘Yes,’ he said.

She put her head round the door, peered in a moment, then closed it quietly and went on down the stairs.

In the summer the results of the examinations had been announced. It was three months since he’d sat them. He was
standing at the back of the hall, in morning prayers, when he heard his name read out. It was the last to be announced. Bletchley’s name came first: he was going to a co-educational school in a near-by village. His own name was included in the list of boys being sent to a grammar school located in the city. When the successful candidates were let out early he ran off home, rushing in the door. There was no one in the kitchen. He could hear his mother in a room upstairs: she came out on the landing.

She stood there for a moment, looking down.