A Man of his Time. Alan Sillitoe

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СКАЧАТЬ in the middle of town found what looked like pieces of tin or bottletops. They pelted each other till realizing they were ancient coins, when they ran to get a good price at the silversmith’s.

      The five-minute ride into Nottingham took him by the castle, squat and bleak on its high rock, thunderclouds piling above he hoped wouldn’t follow him to Wales. Fifty or so years ago it was set on fire, an old codger told him who’d seen it as a youth, one of thousands cheering the rioters, the sky all flame when not blotted out by smoke. ‘I watched the fire till it started to rain, then walked home. Some of those who stayed were caught, and hanged.’ The Duke of Newcastle got twenty-one thousand pounds to have it built up again, so the poor paid for the bonfire out of their own pockets. All the same, it must have been a treat to see it go up.

      Smoke in his throat at Derby station, he asked a porter which platform to stand on for Worcester. ‘You’ve got half an hour yet, sir, time for a cup of tea in the refreshment room.’

      No reply to that. Time to go outside to the Midland Hotel as well, but he wasn’t thirsty, boots clattering on the ironwork of the footbridge, light in the head at belonging to nobody for a day, everything he owned on his back or in his hands, and not caring who was left behind – not even Mary Ann, if it came to that – or what he would find on getting where he had never been.

      Tea urns steamed in the refreshment room but he stood outside watching engines and wagons shunting through, footplate men shovelling coal to keep the pistons moving, all the doing of that clever chap Stephenson who’d invented the things, though they’d taken some of the blacksmith’s trade.

      Two young women went by – he’d bet a guinea they were sisters – the handsome one a year or two older but with the same small nose, pale high forehead, and cherry-rich lips a man would give a fortune to kiss, or stake his life to do even more. The older one wore a tall hat with embroidered flowers along the brim, but the other had a swathe of fair hair roped into a coil and pinned under a sort of yachting cap. Near the edge of the platform, halfway facing him, he fixed them with his eyes so that one or the other would sooner or later turn, and once they became aware of him they might want to make sure of what they had seen, and look again.

      A goods train went to the shunting yards, another belched from the engine sheds. When the women moved from getting splashed at sudden rain the younger caught the fire of his grey-blue eyes, took in his tallness, and stare – firm but without being offensive – the trim moustache, and thin features. Premature speech was the mark of someone unsure of himself, though he didn’t want to lose an opportunity by such an attitude. If they got on a train before his at least he’d had the pleasure of being noticed. He could afford a look yet keep his dignity as a blacksmith.

      Her smile was the best present he could wish for. If they were going in the Birmingham direction he would find himself by chance in the same carriage. ‘Are you travelling far?’

      She must have liked the way he touched his cap, not to know he only ever did so for a woman. ‘We’re waiting to meet someone.’

      It should have been obvious they weren’t going anywhere, without hatboxes and portmanteaux. ‘You live in Derby, I suppose?’

      The glare from her sister deserved a smack in the mouth, but he touched his cap to her as well. She buttoned her mauve gloves, as if he might try to shake her hand. ‘Maud!’

      ‘We live at Spondon,’ Maud told him, ignoring her sister.

      ‘Do you ever go into Nottingham?’

      ‘Sometimes, to the shops.’

      With such a smile the other would have trouble keeping her on the rein. ‘We might cross each other’s path, then.’

      Most unlikely, her look said, nor had he thought so, but you never got anywhere unless you tried it on. He recalled delivering a piece of iron grating to a house in Nottingham, a bit of fancy work his father had done. The woman was a parson’s wife, but after a bit of joshing he’d had her on a couch in the summer-house.

      The elder girl tilted her head. ‘Here’s the train, Maud. And they’ll be coming first-class.’

      Pleased at the encounter, he hoped for better luck in Wales. A crowd along the platform, he pushed through before the train stopped, to find a seat.

      Blossom from the trees came down like confetti at a wedding, as if earth and sky thought a meeting might do some good. The Trent flashed steely water now and again, meandered its merry way through the meadows. If the girls at Derby had got on the train he would have helped them into the carriage, a bit of a climb for such dainties, and if they hadn’t wanted to talk to him – though he couldn’t see why not – he’d have kept an eye on Maud for a mile or two. With the glint in her eyes she looked as if she’d spend marvellously, though he didn’t doubt that the one with the sour face would bring the house down as well when she came.

      Forgetting them for a moment, he pictured Mary Ann at the White Hart, a well-built girl the same age as himself, worth twenty of them. The blue and white striped high-necked shirt with a lapis lazuli brooch at the throat told him she was no common sort of barmaid, as she assiduously filled the pint pots, or dispensed stronger stuff from a high façade of bottles behind the bar, responding with a flick of her auburn hair if anyone made the kind of remark she didn’t care to hear. He wasn’t daft enough to talk like that to any young woman.

      On first seeing her and asking where she came from her soft though decisive voice had a different twang to the neighbourhood accent. She stood back to answer. ‘I was born at St Neots.’

      ‘Where might that be?’

      ‘In Huntingdonshire. I was a milliner’s apprentice’ – which showed in the neat dress fitting the slim waist so nicely, noticed as she walked into another room at the call of her mistress.

      ‘How did you come to find this situation?’ he asked another time.

      ‘My father saw an advertisement in the newspaper, and thought I’d be better off in service than looking for work as a milliner.’

      She could read and write, so belonged to a decent family. ‘Are there many girls at home like you?’

      ‘I’m the fourteenth child out of fifteen,’ she told him, ‘but seven died when they were babies.’

      ‘That was a shame. I’m the youngest of ten, and we’re all still alive. Will you come out with me on Sunday afternoon? We can walk to the Trent. It’s pretty in the meadows.’

      ‘I only have one day off a month.’

      He already knew, but the more words from her the better. ‘Come on that day.’

      ‘I can’t. I go to church. Mrs Lewin sees me there, and fetches me after the service. Then I have other things to do.’

      He disliked being denied. ‘Such as what?’

      ‘I must write to let my parents know how I am. And then I have to see to my clothes.’

      ‘If that’s the way it is.’ Men at his elbow were calling for ale. ‘Pump me another before you go back to your work.’

      He ignored her for a few weeks, though noticed her look in his direction when he asked Ada the other barmaid to fill his tankard. He could have had her for tuppence. Her mouth always open, he called her the Flycatcher, not that he had ever seen a fly go in, and she wasn’t СКАЧАТЬ