David Storey - Saville

David Storey

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Epub ISBN 9781446419342

www.randomhouse.co.uk

Published by Vintage 1999

8 10 9 7

Copyright David Storey. 1976

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape, 1976

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9780099274087

David Storey was born in 1933 in Wakefield, and studied at the Slade School of Art. His eight previous novels have won many prizes, including the Macmillan Fiction Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Faber Memorial Prize and, in 1976, the Booker prize for Saville. He is also the author of fifteen plays. He now lives in London.

BY DAVID STOREY

Novels

This Sporting Life

Flight into Camden

Radcliffe

Pasmore

A Temporary Life

Saville

A Prodigal Child

Present Times

A Serious Man

Plays

The Restoration of Arnold Middleton

In Celebration

The Contractor

Home

The Changing Room

The Farm

Cromwell

Life Class

Mothers Day

Sisters

Phoenix

Early Days

The March on Russia

Stages

Caring

Poetry

Storeys Lives

General

Edward
(with drawings by Donald Parker)

Towards the end of the third decade of the present century a coal hauliers cart, pulled by a large, dirt-grey horse, came into the narrow streets of the village of Saxton, a small mining community in the low hill-land of south Yorkshire. By the side of the haulier sat a dark-haired woman with phlegmatic features and dark-brown eyes. She wore a long reddish coat which covered the whole of her, except for her ankles, and a small, smooth-crowned hat which fitted her head rather like a shell and beneath which her hair showed in a single, upturned curl. In her arms, wrapped in a grey blanket, sat a child, scarcely more than a year old, with fair hair and light-blue eyes, who, as the cart pulled into a street several hundred yards from the village centre, where the houses gave way to farm fields, gazed about it in a blinded fashion, its attention suddenly distracted from the swaying of the horse in front.

On the back of the cart were piled numerous items of household furniture; numerous that is in the context of the cart, for it was plainly not designed to carry such a multifarious cargo. There were a square wooden table with four wooden chairs, two upholstered chairs in a dilapidated condition, a double bed with wooden headboards and a metal-sprung base, various pots and pans and boxes, a cupboard, a chest of drawers and a tall, brown-painted wardrobe, the door of which was lined with a narrow mirror.

Riding uncomfortably on top of this load was a small, fair-haired man with light-blue eyes. He wore a loose, unbuttoned jacket, a collarless shirt and, unlike the woman, was gazing around him with evident pleasure. As the cart came to a turning of small terrace houses leading directly towards the fields he called out to the driver, who, clicking his tongue, turned the horse and, to the fair-haired mans instructions, pulled up finally outside a small, stone-built house, the centre one of a terrace of five. A door and a window occupied the ground-floor of the building, and two single windows the first-floor, the roof itself topped by large, uneven stone-slab slates.

The fair-haired man sprang down; he opened the tiny gate that led across a garden scarcely six feet broad and, taking a key from his jacket pocket, unlocked the dull brown door and disappeared inside. A few moments later he came out again; he signalled to the cart and after a moments hesitation the child was lifted down. No sooner was it on its feet, however, than it set off with unsteady steps, not towards the open gate, but away from it, back along the street the way theyd come.

Nay, Andrew, the man called and, after helping down the woman, he turned and went after the baby, finally catching him up in his hands and laughing. And wheres thy off to, then? he said, delighted with the childs robustness. Off back home, then, are you? turning the babys head towards the house. This is thy home from now on, he added. This is where thys barn to live, and called to the woman who stood apprehensively now at the open gate, Here, then, Ellen, you can take him in.

The furniture was lifted down, and the haulier and the fair-haired man carried it inside: the bed, in pieces, was set down in the tiny room at the front upstairs; a cot, little more than a mattress in a wooden box, was set beside it with that and the wardrobe there was scarcely any space to move at all. The chest of drawers was squeezed into one of the two rooms overlooking the rear of the house: one room was scarcely the width of a cupboard, the other was square-shaped, its narrow window looking down on to the communal backs and, beyond those, the strips of garden exclusive to each house, which ran down to the fenced field and were enclosed by the houses the other side.

The remainder of the furniture was set in the kitchen and the front room downstairs.

Well, fancy we mun celebrate, the fair-haired man said when the job was done. He hunted through the various boxes and produced finally three cups; from a shopping bag he took out a bottle. He looked round for somewhere to remove the top and finally edged it off against the square-shaped sink which stood beneath a single tap in the corner of the kitchen. A high, mantelshelfed cooking range and a pair of inset cupboards occupied the remainder of the wall.

None for me, the mother said, still holding the baby to her and looking round at the room. I cant stomach beer.

Just what you want after a job like this. The fair-haired man drank his undismayed.

Well, heres to it, Mr Saville, the haulier said. Good luck and happiness in your new home. He raised his cup to the dark-haired woman, who, until now, had removed neither her coat nor her hat, and added, May all your troubles be little ones.

The woman glanced away; the fair-haired man had laughed. Aye, heres to it, he said, quickly filling his cup again and offering the remainder to the driver.