Saville (62 page)

‘I say, you really are a lucky dog,’ he said as they drove off in the direction of the town. ‘Talk about the chrysalis. I think it’s very sly of you, Savvers, of all the girls available, to have picked out Mag. She really has blossomed, while all the others, if Marion’s anything to go by, have begun to fade. They’ve got “hausfrau” stamped all over them.’

The streets of the town were now deserted. They turned out along the road towards the village. A last bus, its lights blazing, rattled past them in the opposite direction.

‘Are you and she engaged, or anything?’ Stafford said.

‘Not officially.’ He shook his head.

‘Well, unofficially, then?’ Stafford glanced quickly from the road ahead.

‘I’m not sure what it means,’ he said. ‘We’ve talked of getting married. She’s to do three years at university yet. If we haven’t married by that time, I suppose we’ll marry then.’

‘You don’t sound too sure,’ he said.

‘Oh, I’m sure about marrying her,’ he said.

‘Well, then?’ Stafford said.

‘It’s all that goes with it. The planning, the predetermined life. I thought we might go abroad together.’

‘What does Margaret think of that?’

‘I haven’t mentioned it,’ he said. ‘But I thought I might teach abroad. There’d be more freedom, and fewer demands.’ He paused.

‘Do you still write poetry?’ Stafford said.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Have you had any published?’

‘No.’ He shook his head.

‘Well: good luck to you both, in any case,’ Stafford said.

When they got to the village and had pulled up in front of the house the light went on in his parents’ bedroom. The curtain was pulled aside and a moment later the light went on in the passage and the front door was unlocked. His mother, her nightdress covered by a coat, came on to the step.

‘Would you like to come in, Neville? Have a cup of tea or anything?’ she said.

‘That’s very kind, Mrs Saville,’ Stafford said. He’d got out of the car with Colin and was standing by the bonnet, kicking loosely at the wheel as he talked. ‘I was just saying good night to Colin. I better be getting back.’

‘Well, I’ve kept a kettle on in case you wanted one,’ she said. ‘I thought, since he didn’t come back, you must have had a night out together.’

‘Oh, we’ve had that, Mrs Saville,’ he said and laughed.

His mother glanced up, briefly, at the sky. Odd stars were visible through the thinning mist.

‘It’s quite a lovely night,’ his mother said.

‘Oh, it’s a grand night,’ Stafford said, looking up too, his fair hair glinting, almost luminous in the light from the door. ‘Yes, it’s a grand night,’ he said again, more slowly.

‘Well, there’s some tea waiting, if you want some,’ his mother said and holding her coat more closely to her stepped inside.

‘It’s been quite an eventful evening, after all, then,’ Stafford said, still kicking loosely at the wheel. ‘I won’t come in for the tea. You’ll thank your mother for me.’

‘Sure,’ he said.

‘I’ll say goodbye for now, then,’ Stafford added, and quickly put out his hand. ‘See you soon. I’ll drop you a line. Africa. The Far East. If you’ve got the odd word, you know, it’ll help fill in the time. There’s an awful lot of bumf in the army. Damn boring, really. I suppose Oxford’ll be the same. I’m not looking forward much to that. Still. Ours not to reason. Ours but to do and try.’

He got back in the car. The engine started. The tanned face was visible for a moment in the light from the dashboard, a hand was raised, then the car slid forward.

Colin watched it out of sight, then turned to the house.

*

Bletchley had stayed on at school a further year, won a scholarship, and had gone to university to study chemical engineering. He could be seen occasionally at week-ends or on holiday walking down the street in a university blazer, a large university scarf around his neck, smoking a pipe, a pile of books beneath his arm.

On several evenings that summer, while Margaret was away on holiday, Colin went with his friend to the Assembly Rooms in town. The ballroom occupied the entire first floor of the building, a long stone-built structure with tall windows and a pillared entrance, a broad, curving staircase sweeping up to the glass -panelled doors of the room itself. Here, in a small alcove at the side, a man sold tickets.

Reagan, it appeared, had taken over the running of the band. His tall figure, attired in evening dress and holding a baton, was posed in an attitude of studied nonchalance on the edge of a small dais at one end of the room. In front of each of the musicians stood a painted board with the initials MR painted in a single, scroll-like shape from top to bottom. He nodded casually over the heads of the dancers, as they entered, as if there were nothing unusual in their arrival at all, taking up a violin a little later and, stepping forward from the orchestra, playing directly into the microphone.

Bletchley, after some hesitation about coming in his university blazer, had put on his suit. His face was red and beaming, preparing himself before their entry to be amused by if not scornful of what they would find inside, pausing however once they were at the door and gazing with a blank, flushed look of incredulity at the bony elegance of his friend across the room.

Partly discomposed by Reagan’s appearance, and partly by the fact that none of the girls they could see in the immediate vicinity of the door were to his liking, Bletchley stood, his hands in his pockets, gazing with an aggrieved expression across the heads of the swaying dancers, turning finally to Colin and saying, ‘What a terrible lot. He really pulls in the dregs, as we might have imagined if we’d given it a little thought,’ a sweat already forming on his massive features, his thick red neck protruding in heavy rolls above his collar. As a last concession to his university identity, he’d put on a striped and crested university tie. ‘I should think
most of the people here are colliers. As for the girls, I should think they’ve brought them in from the mill. Have I told you about the varsity dances? They go on sometimes till one in the morning and some of the girls don’t mind where they go on to after that.’

Reagan came over during an interval between the tunes, his large head, with its long hair greased carefully back to disguise the protrusion at the rear, bobbing disjointedly above those of the now separated dancers, a small, official smile igniting his pallid features, nodding slightly to Bletchley and saying, ‘It was good of you to come, Ian. I’m glad you could make it,’ gesturing off across the room and adding, ‘Come over to the bar and have a drink.’

‘Only orange juice?’ Bletchley said following Reagan over and examining the glasses of those coming from a table at the opposite end of the room.

‘We haven’t got a licence yet,’ Reagan said. ‘In any case, in my experience, drink and dancing seldom mix. There’s bound to be trouble if we started selling beer, for instance,’ calling then across the heads before him to a woman in a dark dress and white apron. ‘Three oranges, Madge.’

Colin recognized his aunt, now grey-haired and much fatter than when he had last seen her in his grandparents’ one-roomed bungalow, years before. He wondered for a moment whether she might acknowledge him, for she handed him his glass without a second look, passing one to Bletchley and saying to Reagan, ‘Nothing to put in it today, then, Michael?’

‘Hello, Aunty,’ Colin said.

‘Aunty. I’ll give you Aunty,’ the woman said, laughing, her look fading a moment later as, with a hand to her cheek, she added, ‘That’s not our Ellen’s eldest, is it? It’s not Colin, is it, love?’ laughing again when he leant across to shake her hand, the crowd milling round on either side. ‘Well, he was so high when I last saw him,’ she added to Reagan, measuring off a height level with the table. ‘And as proud and as protective of his mother as any man. Our Reg, you know, will hardly believe it. Wait till I tell our David. You might see them here: they come in sometimes, later. After they’ve had one or two in the boozer, you know.’

They finally moved away from the table, his aunt’s gaze still
fixed on him over the heads of the crowd, smiling, nodding, her attention scarcely on the glasses she was selling. ‘Would you believe it? That’s my nephew over there,’ he could hear her saying. ‘It’s years since I ever set eyes on him. I hope Reg and David come in before he goes.’

‘It’s very hot in here. Don’t you find it hot, Michael?’ Bletchley said, easing his finger inside his collar.

‘They keep the windows shut until they’ve sold enough refreshments,’ Reagan said. ‘Though if you’d like them open, Ian, you’ve only got to say.’

‘Oh, no. Don’t let me interfere with your normal way of running business,’ Bletchley said.

‘Perhaps you’d like a dance,’ Reagan said. ‘There’s a couple of our regular ladies who come unattended,’ he added. ‘I could introduce you to them. They usually sit on chairs just underneath the orchestra.’

The two women were in their late twenties; they wore flared dresses, identical in shape, with a narrow waist, and heavy makeup. One of them wore glasses which, before dancing with Bletchley, she removed. One was named Martha, and the other, Bletchley’s partner, Joyce. They danced with a professional remoteness, evidently reconciled to and yet at the same time displeased with the incompetence of their respective partners. They circled the room at a steady pace, came under the beaming gaze of Reagan, and passed on with the heavy, swirling crowd.

Coloured lights rotated slowly beneath the ceiling; a window had finally been opened at one end of the room, through which came, along with the roar of the Saturday night traffic outside, a cooling stream of air.

Bletchley, plainly, was having trouble with his feet. He drew his partner’s attention to them from time to time, the two of them gazing down, she short-sightedly and apparently seeing nothing, he with a look of irritation as if they’d taken up some independent activity of their own. The huge, bull-shaped head, glistening across its massive brow and cheeks, would be lowered in the direction of the floor, the rouged and powdered face beside it, then, as if some fresh adjustment had been made invisibly to those ponderous shoes, they would set off with a fresh uncertainty, together.

A gentlemen’s excuse-me was announced, Reagan’s voice enunciating the words carefully through the microphone as if he were placing each one in by hand, Bletchley coming across and bowing slightly to Martha, who, as if it were immaterial to her whom she danced with, immediately took his hand while Colin went over to the short-sighted Joyce, who, having found herself deserted, was gazing around her in consternation. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said. ‘I thought you’d wandered off.’

They left an hour later. It had grown dark outside. All the windows of the room were open. As they went to the door Reagan, who was playing a violin accompaniment in front of the microphone, had gazed over the heads of the dancers in their direction, questioningly, almost plaintively, nodding with a smile, still playing, when Colin indicated they were going down to the street below.

His aunt came over as they reached the door.

‘You’re not going yet?’ she said. ‘Our Reg and David haven’t come up. They’ll be so disappointed, you know, if they find you’ve gone.’

‘We’ll probably be up next Saturday,’ he said. ‘We could see them then.’

‘I’ll hold you to that,’ she said, laughing, then seizing his hand. ‘And how is your mother? I heard she’d had an operation a year or two ago.’

‘Oh, it’s more than that,’ he said. ‘She’s fine. She’s keeping well.’

‘With a son like you I’m not surprised. I hear you’ve been to college and that. Not like our Reg and David: they’ve hardly learned to read.’

‘There might be a virtue in that,’ he said.

‘Well, they’re earning more than their father,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think it makes much difference. Money doesn’t make you happy. That’s why I come here: to see a bit of life.’

A crowd of young men were coming up the stairs when they went outside; for all he knew his two cousins might have been amongst them. He followed Bletchley’s perspiring figure down to the door. A great burst of cheering and laughter came from the room above their heads.

Once in the street the music welled out from the open windows.

‘How does Reagan get home afterwards?’ Bletchley asked, mopping his face.

‘He goes on the train, I think. There’s one just after twelve,’ he said.

‘Are you waiting till then?’ Bletchley said. ‘I think I’ll go on the bus.’

‘Oh, I think I’ll come as well,’ he said.

‘If you ask me,’ Bletchley said, as they went down to the stop, ‘I think Michael’s heading for trouble.’

‘He seems to think he’s doing well.’

‘I was talking to that girl we were dancing with.’ Bletchley ran his handkerchief round beneath his collar. ‘Apparently he hardly makes anything out of it at all.’

‘Why’s that?’

‘Well, there’s the regular dance hall, the Emporium. They’ve got a bar there, and it’s twice as big. He only gets people here because he hardly charges them to go in. It’s just like Michael. Full of fantasies, you know. He’s no idea. Once he’s paid for the hire of the hall, and the staff, and he’s paid the band, he’s lucky if he makes more than two or three pounds a week. And all that talk of going on the radio. He even mentioned films to me.’

When the bus finally drew in a tall, wiry, red-haired figure got off, followed by a smaller, stockier, black-haired one. Batty paused as he came along the queue, turning to Stringer, then saying directly to Bletchley, ‘How do, Belcher. How you been?’

‘I’ve been very well,’ Bletchley said. ‘And you?’

‘Where’re you going at this time of night, then, Belcher?’ Stringer said.

‘I’m going home, as a matter of fact,’ Bletchley said.

‘We’re going to hear the Reagan Orchestra,’ Batty said. He glanced at Colin. ‘Fancy coming up for a fling, then, Tonge?’

‘We’ve just been up for one,’ he said.

The rest of the queue had moved on towards the bus.

‘Mic Reagan there, then, is he?’ Stringer said. He had recently, to match his hair and eyes, grown a black moustache. It formed a rectangular patch beneath his nose. Both of their faces, in the street light, had the freshness of colliers’ faces that had recently been scrubbed.