The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

by Alan Sillitoe

  "Yes. Who else, you ass?"

  "Don't know, sir," the boy answered, either because he really didn't, Mr. Raynor told himself, or by way of revenge for being called an ass.

  "Didn't you read the chapter yesterday I told you to read?"

  Here was a question he could answer. "Yes, sir," came the bright response.

  "Well then, who was Aaron?"

  His face was no longer bright. It became clouded as he admitted: "I've forgot, sir."

  Mr. Raynor ran a hand slowly over his forehead. He changed tack. "NO!" he yelled, so loudly that the boy jumped. "Don't sit down yet, Handley." He stood up again.

  "We've been reading this part of the Bible for a month, so you should be able to answer my question. Now: Who was the brother of Moses?"

  Bullivant chanted from behind: "Then the Lord said unto Moses All the Jews shall have long noses Exceptin' Aaron He shall 'ave a square 'un And poor old Peter He shall 'ave a gas-meter! The low rumble reached Mr. Raynor, and he saw several half-tortured faces around Bullivant trying not to laugh.

  "Tell me, Handley," he said again, "who was the brother of Moses?"

  Handley's face became happy, almost recognizable under the unfamiliar light of inspiration, for the significance of the chanted verse had eaten its way through to his understanding. " Aaron, sir," he said.

  "And so "--Mr. Raynor assumed he was getting somewhere at last--"who was Aaron?"

  Handley, who had considered his ordeal to be over on hearing a subdued cheer of irony from Bullivant, lifted a face blank in defeat. "Don't know, sir."

  A sigh of frustration, not allowed to reach the boys, escaped Mr. Raynor. "Sit down," he said to Handley, who did so with such alacrity that the desk lid rattled. Duty had been done as far as Handley was concerned, and now it was Robinson's turn, who stood up from his desk a few feet away. "Tell us who Aaron was," Mr. Raynor ordered.

  Robinson was a brighter boy, who had thought to keep a second Bible open beneath his desk lid for reference. "A priest, sir," he answered sharply, "the brother of Moses."

  "Sit down, then," Mr. Raynor said. "Now, remember that, Handley. What House are you in, Robinson?"

  He stood up again, grinning respectfully. "Buckingham, sir."

  "Then take a credit star."

  After the green star had been fixed to the chart he set one of the boys to read, and when the monotonous drone of his voice was well under way he turned again to span the distance between his high stool and the draper's window. By uniting the figures and faces of the present assistants, and then by dissolving them, he tried to recapture the carnal vision of the girl who had recently died, a practice of reconstruction that had been the mainstay of his sojourn at this school, a line of sight across the cobbled road into Harrison's shop, beamed on to the girls who went to work there when they were fifteen and left at twenty to get married. He had become a connoisseur of young suburban womanhood, and thus the fluctuating labour and marriage market made Mr. Raynor a fickle lover, causing him too often to forget each great passion as another one walked in to take its place. Each 'good' one was credit-starred upon his mind, left behind a trail of memories when it went, until a new 'good' one came like a solid fiscal stamp of spiritual currency that drove the other one out. Each memory was thus renewed, so that none of them died.

  But the last one was the best of all, an unexpected beauty back-dropped against the traffic artery of squalid streets. He had watched her work and talk or on wet afternoons stand at the counter as if in a trance. The boy on the front row was reading like a prophet, and an agitated muttering sea began to grow about him, and the curtain of Mr. Raynor's memory drew back upon the runners of a line recalled from Baudelaire: "Timide et libertine, et fragile et robuste "--revealing the secret of her classical beauty and nubility, which vanished when the blood-filled phrase was dragged away by the top deck of a trolley-bus laden with rigid staring faces. A tea-boy carrying a white jug slipped out of the estate agents' offices, dodged deftly through a line of cars and lorries that had stopped for the traffic-lights, and walked whistling a tune into a café further down the road.

  The sea of noise surrounding the prophet-like monotonous voice of the reading boy increased to a higher magnitude than discipline would permit, until a wave carried his sonorous words away and another sound dominated the scene. He looked, and saw Bullivant on his feet thumping the boy at the desk in front with all his might. The boy raised his fists to hit back.

  Mr. Raynor roared with such fury that there was instant silence, his ageing pink face thrust over his desk towards them. "Come out, Bullivant," he cried. Libertine et robuste: the phrase fought and died, was given a white cross and packed away.

  Bullivant slouched out between rows of apprehensive boys. "'e 'it me first," he said, nearing the blackboard.

  "And now I'm going to hit you," Mr. Raynor retorted, lifting the lid of his desk and taking out a stick. His antagonist eyed him truculently, displaying his contempt of the desperate plight he was supposed to be in by turning around and winking at his friends. He was a big boy of fourteen, wearing long drainpipe trousers and a grey jersey.

  "Y'aren't gooin' ter 'it me," he said. "I ain't dun owt ter get 'it, yer know."

  "Hold out your hand," Mr. Raynor said, his face turning a deep crimson. Timide. No, he thought, not likely. This is the least I can do. I'll get these Teddy-boy ideas out of his head for a few seconds.

  No hand was extended towards him as it should have been. Bullivant stood still, and Mr. Raynor repeated his order. The class looked on, and moving traffic on the road hid none of the smaller mutterings that passed for silence. Bullivant still wouldn't lift his hand, and time enough had gone by that could be justified by Mr. Raynor as patience.

  "Y'aren't gooin' ter 'it me wi' that," Bullivant said again, a gleam just showing from his blue half-closed eyes. Robust. An eye for an eye. The body of the girl, the bottom line of the sweater spreading over her hips, was destroyed in silence. His urge for revenge was checked, but was followed by a rage that nevertheless bit hard and forced him to action. In the passing of a bus he stepped to Bullivant's side and struck him several times across the shoulders with the stick, crashing each blow down with all his force. "Take that," he cried out, "you stupid defiant oaf."

  Bullivant shied away, and before any more blows could fall, and before Mr. Raynor realized that such a thing was possible, Bullivant lashed back with his fists, and they were locked in a battle of strength, both trying to push the other away, to get clear and strike. Mr. Raynor took up a stance with legs apart, trying to push Bullivant back against the desks, but Bullivant foresaw such a move from his stronger adversary and moved his own body so that they went scuffling between the desks. "Yo' ain't 'ittin' me like that," Bullivant gasped between his teeth. "Oo do yo' think yo' are?" He unscrewed his head that was suddenly beneath Mr. Raynor's arm, threw out his fists that went wide of the mark, and leapt like a giraffe over a row of desks. Mr. Raynor moved quickly and blocked his retreat, grabbed his arm firmly and glowered at him with blood-red face, twisted the captive limb viciously, all in a second, then pushed him free, though he stood with the stick ready in case Bullivant should come for him again.

  But Bullivant recognized the dispensation of a truce, and merely said: "I'll bring our big kid up to settle yo'," and sat down. Experience was Mr. Raynor's friend; he saw no point in spinning out trouble to its logical conclusion, which meant only more trouble. He was content to warn Bullivant to behave himself, seeing that no face had been lost by either side in the equal contest. He sat again on the high stool behind his desk. What did it matter, really? Bullivant and most of the others would be leaving in two months, and he could keep them in check for that short time. And after the holidays more Bullivants would move up into his classroom from the scholastic escalator.

  It was five minutes to ten, and to ensure that the remaining time was peaceful he took out his Bible and began reading in a clear steady voice: "Then the Lord said unto Moses (titters here), now shalt th
ou see what I will do to Pharaoh: for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land."

  The class that came in at half past ten was for arithmetic, and they were told to open their books and do the exercises on page fifty-four. He observed the leaves of many books covered with ink-scrawls, and obscene words written across the illustrations and decorating the 'answer' margins like tattooing on the arms of veteran sailors, pages that would be unrecognizable in a month, but would have to last for another twelve. This was a younger class, whose rebellion had so far reached only the pages of their books.

  But that, too, was only something to accept and, inclining his head to the right, he forgot the noise of his class and looked across the road at the girls working in the draper's shop. Oh yes, the last one had been the best he could remember, and the time had come when he decided to cure his madness by speaking to her one evening as she left the shop. It was a good idea. But it was too late, for a young man had begun meeting her and seeing her safely, it seemed, to the bus stop. Most of the girls who gave up their jobs at the shop did so because they met some common fate or other. ("Timide et libertine, et fragile et robuste"--he could not forget the phrase.) Some were married, others, he had noticed, became pregnant and disappeared; a few had quarrelled with the manager and appeared to have been sacked. But the last one, he had discovered, on opening the newspaper one evening by the trafficlights at the corner, had been murdered by the young man who came to meet her.

  Three double-decker trolley-buses trundled by in a line, but he still saw her vision by the counter.

  "Quiet!" he roared, to the forty faces before him. "The next one to talk gets the stick."

  And there was quiet.

  The Fishing-boat Picture

  I'VE been a postman for twenty-eight years. Take that first sentence: because it's written in a simple way may make the fact of my having been a postman for so long seem important, but I realize that such a fact has no significance whatever. After all, it's not my fault that it may seem as if it has to some people just because I wrote it down plain; I wouldn't know how to do it any other way. If I started using long and complicated words that I'd searched for in the dictionary I'd use them too many times, the same ones over and over again, with only a few sentences--if that--between each one; so I'd rather not make what I'm going to write look foolish by using dictionary words.

  It's also twenty-eight years since I got married. That statement is very important no matter how you write it or in what way you look at it. It so happened that I married my wife as soon as I got a permanent job, and the first good one I landed was with the Post Office (before that I'd been errand-boy and mash-lad). I had to marry her as soon as I got a job because I'd promised her I would, and she wasn't the sort of person to let me forget it.

  When my first pay night came I called for her and asked: "What about a walk up Snakey Wood?" I was cheeky-daft and on top of the world, and because I'd forgotten about our arrangement I didn't think it strange at all when she said: "Yes, all right." It was late autumn I remember and the leaves were as high as snow, crisp on top but soggy underneath. In the full moon and light wind we walked over the Cherry Orchard, happy and arm-in-arm. Suddenly she stopped and turned to me, a big-boned girl yet with a good figure and a nice enough face: "Do you want to go into the wood?"

  What a thing to ask! I laughed: "You know I do. Don't you?"

  We walked on, and a minute later she said: "Yes, I do; but you know what we're to do now you've got a steady job, don't you?"

  I wondered what it was all about. Yet I knew right enough. "Get married," I admitted, adding on second thoughts: "I don't have much of a wage to be wed on, you know."

  "It's enough, as far as I'm concerned," she answered.

  And that was that. She gave me the best kiss I'd ever had, and then we went into the wood.

  She was never happy about our life together, right from the start. And neither was I, because it didn't take her long to begin telling me that all her friends--her family most of all-said time and time again that our marriage wouldn't last five minutes. I could never say much back to this, knowing after the first few months how right everybody would be. Not that it bothered me though, because I was always the sort of bloke that doesn't get ruffled at anything. If you want to know the truth--the sort of thing I don't suppose many blokes would be ready to admit--the bare fact of my getting married meant only that I changed one house and one mother for another house and a different mother. It was as simple as that. Even my wage-packet didn't alter its course: I handed it over every Friday night and got five shillings back for tobacco and a visit to the pictures. It was the sort of wedding where the cost of the ceremony and reception go as a down payment, and you then continue dishing-out your wages every week for life. Which is where I suppose they got this hire purchase idea from.

  But our marriage lasted for more than the five minutes everybody prophesied: it went on for six years; she left me when I was thirty, and when she was thirty-four. The trouble was that when we had a row--and they were rows, swearing, hurling pots: the lot--it was too much like suffering, and in the middle of them it seemed to me as if we'd done nothing but row and suffer like this from the moment we set eyes on each other, with not a moment's break, and that it would go on like this for as long as we stayed together. The truth was, as I see it now--and even saw it sometimes then--that a lot of our time was bloody enjoyable.

  I'd had an idea before she went that our time as man and wife was about up, because one day we had the worst fight of them all. We were sitting at home one evening after tea, one at each end of the table, plates empty and bellies full so that there was no excuse for what followed. My head was in a book, and Kathy just sat there.

  Suddenly she said: "I do love you, Harry." I didn't hear the words for some time, as is often the case when you're reading a book. Then: " Harry, look at me."

  My face came up, smiled, and went down again to my reading. Maybe I was in the wrong, and should have said something, but the book was too good.

  "I'm sure all that reading's bad for your eyes," she commented, prising me again from the hot possessive world of India.

  "It ain't," I denied, not looking up. She was young and still fair-faced, a passionate loose-limbed thirty-odd that wouldn't let me sidestep either her obstinacy or anger. "My dad used to say that on'y fools read books, because they'd such a lot to learn."

  The words hit me and sank in, so that I couldn't resist coming back with, still not looking up: "He on'y said that because he didn't know how to read. He was jealous, if you ask me."

  "No need to be jealous of the rammel you stuff your big head with," she said, slowly to make sure I knew she meant every word. The print wouldn't stick any more; the storm was too close.

  "Look, why don't you get a book, duck?" But she never would, hated them like poison.

  She sneered: "I've got more sense; and too much to do."

  Then I blew up, in a mild way because I still hoped she wouldn't take on, that I'd be able to finish my chapter. "Well let me read, anyway, wain't you? It's an interesting book, and I'm tired."

  But such a plea only gave her another opening. "Tired? You're allus tired." She laughed out loud: "Tired Tim! You ought to do some real work for a change instead of walking the streets with that daft post bag."

  I won't go on, spinning it out word for word. In any case not many more passed before she snatched the book out of my hands. "You booky bastard," she screamed, "nowt but books, books, books, you bleddy dead-'ead "--and threw the book on the heaped-up coals, working it further and further into their blazing middle with the poker.

  This annoyed me, so I clocked her one, not very hard, but I did. It was a good reading-book, and what's more it belonged to the library. I'd have to pay for a new one. She slammed out of the house, and I didn't see her until next day. I didn't think to break my heart very much when she skipped off. I'd had enough. All I can say is that it was a stroke of God's luck w
e never had any kids. She was confined once or twice, but it never came to anything; each time it dragged more bitterness out of her than we could absorb in the few peaceful months that came between. It might have been better if she'd had kids though; you never know.

  A month after burning the book she ran off with a housepainter. It was all done very nicely. There was no shouting or knocking each other about or breaking up the happy home. I just came back from work one day and found a note waiting for me. "I am going away and not coming back "--propped on the mantelpiece in front of the clock. No tear stains on the paper, just eight words in pencil on a page of the insurance book--I've still got it in the back of my wallet, though God knows why.

  The housepainter she went with had lived in a house on his own, across the terrace. He'd been on the dole for a few months and suddenly got a job at a place twenty miles away I was later told. The neighbours seemed almost eager to let me know--after they'd gone, naturally--that they'd been knocking-on together for about a year. No one knew where they'd skipped off to exactly, probably imagining that I wanted to chase after them. But the idea never occurred to me. In any case what was I to do? Knock him flat and drag Kathy back by the hair? Not likely.

  Even now it's no use trying to tell myself that I wasn't disturbed by this change in my life. You miss a woman when she's been living with you in the same house for six years, no matter what sort of cat-and-dog life you led together--though we had our moments, that I will say. After her sudden departure there was something different about the house, about the walls, ceiling and every object in it. And something altered inside me as well--though I tried to tell myself that all was just the same and that Kathy's leaving me wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. Nevertheless time crawled at first, and I felt like a man just learning to pull himself along with a clubfoot; but then the endless evenings of summer came and I was happy almost against my will, too happy anyway to hang on to such torments as sadness and loneliness. The world was moving and, I felt, so was I.