The Death of William Posters: A Novel (The William Posters Trilogy Book 1)

by Alan Sillitoe

  He could, of course, go to London and look for her. But where? The only lead was the photo, flashed outside the Arlington Gallery. He could call on her parents, or a few friends, but sensed these to be useless. If Myra had gone to such places she would have phoned him already out of boredom. He didn’t want to move outside the axis of work and home.

  On the fourth day he went up to Town, a desultory visit, calling at Stanford’s to buy survey plans, then looking through the bookshops on Charing Cross Road. He reconnoitred the Arlington Gallery, but saw nothing of Myra. He was back in the village by six, vanguard of the rush hour spreading north out of London. The air smelled of evening when he came out of the garage, sun glowing lampwise down the green slightly inclining land of the valley. It would linger there, slipping gently from heavy cloud to dun-coloured fields and silver trees. He’d take a walk later, after tea, along one of the quiet lanes towards the woods that would darken first. He felt more tired than after a normal day – irritable, ragged, fundamentally disturbed – hoped a stroll would clear his body of lung-destroying air. Walking to the door, he caught the pungent sweetness of fresh-scythed grass – coming to him as if pulled out of the hard grip of winter’s teeth, though spring was far enough on into the year.

  This switched him into the gear of a good mood, and he looked forward to the long solitary evening to follow his walk. Where Myra was he did not know, and he was beginning not to care.

  The door gave even before he turned the key. Taking off his coat in the hall he heard talking from upstairs, and the sound of music playing softly on the bedroom transistor.

  ‘Myra!’ he called, in the same voice he would use after a satisfying day at work. It was the only way he could tolerate the giant spider latched with all claws inside his chest.

  The music stopped. He went into the lounge, sat with legs stretched out, trying to read a newspaper as if she still had not returned. He was too sick to move, at the thought of her bringing back the man she had presumably stayed with.

  ‘I’ve come to say good-bye,’ she said, ‘and get my things.’

  He didn’t look at her: ‘Sit down.’

  ‘I’d better not. We want to catch the last bus back to the station.’

  ‘You can phone for a taxi.’ He was robbing her of a deadline, a time she clung to as the unalterable mark of departure. ‘Sit down,’ he repeated.

  ‘I’ve told you, I’m in a hurry.’ He stood quickly, took her by the shoulders and pushed her into a chair. It was an unknown violence and she smiled slightly, a sardonic expression to conceal her first and sudden hatred of him. ‘I’ve something to tell you before you finally make up your mind:’

  ‘Everything’s set. It’s no use, George.’

  ‘Perhaps not, but while your boy friend is getting your things downstairs I want to say that I’m giving up the house. A while ago I applied for a job as surveyor with a company that’s looking for oil in Tripolitania. I’ve known for a long time that you weren’t happy with the humdrum life here, and I’ve been wanting a change, as well as to do something useful in a country that needs help and patience and knowledge. I thought all this would appeal to you, and as far as I’m concerned, if you want to change your mind, then I’ll be glad. In six weeks we’ll have sold this place and be out there. I got confirmation of the appointment this morning.’

  To the one left behind the world becomes unreal, timeless, dead. The air itself alters, an alien covering of roof and sky that only action can throw off. He held himself tight at the centre, showing a calm almost lethargic exterior – that sharpened to hopelessness and a damaging inability to say anything else.

  She stood up. ‘I can’t stay with you. I wish you luck in your new job.’ Frank waited in the hall, trunk and suitcase by the stair rail. Myra was surprised that what she wanted to take fitted into so little, which gave her the feeling of really leaving.

  There was no shaking of hands when she introduced them. George could not force his eyes onto Frank, and this, more than Myra’s going away, caused a painful rage to burn in him. Frank found it a strange and sterile experience, enmeshed in such a polite but deadly ritual. ‘Let’s sit down and have a drink,’ George said.

  In the living-room he poured generous portions of whisky, emptying the last of the bottle into his own glass. Equal to his rage was the desire to know something about Frank, which also made him ashamed because the only way of finding out was to talk, to be calm and amiable at a time when it was not possible.

  Frank accepted the drink, knowing that if he made any remark at all on the present situation, a man with a face as bunched and putty-coloured as George’s would go berserk, smash the house from top to bottom – which would be a shame since he had to go on living in it after they had gone. He would also maybe smash anyone who got in his way, so Frank was ready, watching for any move that might lead to this. ‘It’s good whisky,’ he said. ‘I needed that’ – and even this was too near the mark, as George’s face took on a subtle but new shade of choler.

  ‘I’m glad you did,’ George said. ‘It’s not easy for any of us.’

  ‘It isn’t,’ Frank said.

  George could not talk. Why do people go away? he wondered. Because they are going to die and so hope to escape their fate; because out of impatience they can’t wait to know their fate and future. Even the gypsy in them can’t tell them that, unless they move. Movement is like gunpowder – needs a flame to set it off. People move because they haven’t started to live to the fullest extent of their basic personality. Those who are always on the move have no personality.

  ‘The trunk’s labelled,’ Myra said. ‘I’d like the railway to pick it up tomorrow.’ She sat down again, unable to stand, and dreading every second. George wished she had come alone. Not that he would have stopped her, but he would have spoken more freely. It was a vile blow to deal, to stand this other person in front of him when there was so much to say that he had never been able to say before.

  ‘We must make that bus,’ Frank said.

  George had an idea, to do something that would open them all to the sky, and end everything in the only way possible. ‘I’ll drive you to the station. You can take your trunk then, at the same time.’

  ‘Don’t trouble,’ Myra said.

  ‘I can be back in forty minutes.’

  ‘No,’ she said. Frank had his coat on, the case by him. ‘You’ve been at work all day.’

  He couldn’t insist. ‘I was in Town, looking for you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, George.’

  His grey eyes smouldered lifelessly: ‘Go on, then. Get out.’

  They left him standing, looking into the tall drawn curtains that opened onto the back garden where she had worked so often, and with the mindless pleasure one often finds in a false role. Fresh cool air snapped at them. It was dark, with only a solitary lamp lit along the deserted street.

  George was unable to believe that nothing else could be done. Clarity of mind existed, it seemed, but only at the restricted middle of the most complex labyrinth. He felt it, but had no way of reaching it. Life had always seemed a straight road, and he hadn’t even been foxed by a simple dead-end or caught in a false cul-de-sac. Instead, he was now trapped in an unsurveyable maze of footpaths darkened by tall hedges. Such a labyrinth was extreme torment for a mind that could exist only on order and calm, which wanted everything measured and shaped, reduced to a beautiful design and set down on paper. The last few days had drawn him into the labyrinth, like a doomed fly fixed in helplessness until the spider-god came out for him. Or maybe he had been going towards it all his life, slowly and more deliberately than he’d known. Tonight there were a thousand routes open all around him, but none indicating with more certainty than any other either a track to the middle, or an exit to the outside world.

  He got up, to follow them out.

  Though it was a long walk to the bus stop, the heavy case didn’t bother Frank. But the size was awkward, and now and again it slammed against his leg. ‘Thank God that’s
over,’ he said, to bring Myra out of the dark silence by his side.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘At last. It’s happened. You don’t know what it means.’

  ‘We can set off in a few days, when you’ve got your passport renewed.’

  The departure hadn’t been as bad as she’d imagined. She knew they’d both been dreading it, but now, as Frank said, it was over, and she couldn’t think of anything except the freedom and emptiness ahead. A few lights glowed from cottage windows, but the two shops were shut, and the pub hadn’t yet taken on its dim spark of evening life. Now and again a loud television set penetrated door and curtains. The street had no pavement, and they walked well into the road, away from the overhanging thatch. The bus and train would make a relaxing journey back to town.

  He changed the suitcase to his outward side, not feeling much like speech – a silence which spread out the road to a greater length than when they’d walked it that afternoon. It was always longer travelling in the dark than by day. As a youth he’d often set off on the bike with friends, for the Peak District after a night at the pictures, and the journey seemed fifty times harder than in sunlight or even day-rain.

  But now it gave time to let thoughts run through, a good moment for it because in a few days they’d be on the water, an end dropped like a dead fish into the sea, and a beginning drawn up like a corpse for resuscitation. In this unreal evening he had the feeling of already slipping out from the bank of an old life, not too much noise as he hit the water on a quiet stretch of this interior coast, and striking across the solitude of an unknown sea. For what? To go where? Getting out of your mother’s womb you were already there. Maybe you were even there at the first shot of your father’s prick. Life was wide, and maybe death was the only place where you could think about it. Or maybe life was death, and life was the only place where you could cogitate. If it was though, where was life? Life is in my eyes and my own two feet, and nothing more. Travelling across such water made for a cold journey, in spite of sun and daylight interspersing night and the presence of accompanying fishes. Dawns were cold and bitter, and only the first hours of darkness comfortable – like now, walking with Myra.

  He switched the case over to the inside. ‘There won’t be long to wait,’ she said. Lights prowled a long way behind, somewhere on the road, like lions let out of a cage, skirting across the far flank of the eye as Frank half turned in changing the case over. A car engine snarled, as if some mad bastard was hell bent for his favourite country pub. He moved out of the way, giving him room to pass, Myra almost into the doors of the cottages.

  The dimly lit bus shelter was a hundred yards away, no one else there. A lamp flickered on and off. The car seemed close, revved-up to choking point, but he didn’t turn round to see the make of it. Myra gripped his arm, as if she knew what would happen when it was too late.

  It struck him, spun him against a garden hedge, a spade at his back and a thousand knives all going for his eyes at the same time. He heard a scream, then a tremendous shuddering smash as the car went out of control and hit the solid perpendicular wall of the church. He was falling through the red and black, the vast acreage of intestines in a vat as wide as the world and in which there was no stopping as black beat red and closed over him.

  Part Three

  20

  The island lay like a death-mask, the tip of its black chin flashing a lighted pimple in dubious welcome to the ship that had steamed south all night from Barcelona. A few peasants and soldiers making the passage on deck watched the distended visage of the island coming out of its cavern of darkness. A soldier shivered in the November wind, spat some of his bodily warmth into the calm and indigo water, then raised his eyes to the first streak of light and turned to finish rolling his blanket. Another soldier drew off an enormous slice of bread with a razor-sharp clasp knife and sat down to eat it dry. The only noise was a heavy breathing of engines and the slop of parting water at the bows.

  Frank buttoned his overcoat. On the night train from Paris a few dozen French soldiers had been singing and bawling up and down the corridors. They barged into compartments looking for seats to rest their tired and fuddled heads, and Frank had to ease one out who wanted solace on Myra’s lap. Frank gave up his seat so that she could make use of both. He had gone outside and smoked, talked as best he could to a dark-faced youth from a mining town in the Nord. The soldier pointed with staring exhausted eyes in the direction of the train: ‘Algeria! Algeria! Algeria!’ – his mock English pronunciation not quite matching the rhythm of their separate travels.

  The moon showed its continents, like an X-ray plate held up to a lightbulb. He took bread and sausage from his pocket and began to eat, uncorked a bottle of cognac which he offered to the soldiers. Each took a sip in silence, as if afraid to speak before the day came, then handed it back. Frank was emerging from the debris and suffering of a prolonged battle. The nightmare of recovery left scars in, wiped scars out, scars cone-deep that almost robbed him of the desire for life – while his skin healed and gave back the possibility of it without consulting him. George had been killed, the pulp of him indistinguishable from the lip-twisted mass of his car. Myra had been unharmed in her body – the only good to come out of the ‘accident’. He could understand why George had done it, but not why he had missed, and killed himself alone. If he were determined to die he should have taken all three with him. By some failure of split-second reasoning he had bungled the job, robbed of his surveyor’s precision when he really needed it for the first and last time.

  The ship never lifted the level of its silent advance, while stars and moon pushed back the limits of a cloudless sky. Myra was sleeping down in the ship. In spite of everything, and the past miscarriages, the child hung on in her body, grew and prospered beyond the danger point. And beyond that point she had decided to come with Frank, on balance to discard regret and bitterness and apathy, and to trust herself with him. It was a shade too close to be called a decision, but his persuasion worked and they were together. For how long was up to him, and up to her, as if the opening of her eyes every morning took place on the heels of a renewed consultation that would become less and less necessary, he hoped, as time went on and distances increased.

  She was exhausted after their stay in Paris, and the days in Barcelona. It was hardly the time for travel, with the kid already kicking, but if you waited until it was time for anything at all you’d never shift one foot. The sound of George’s death wouldn’t leave her, a noise as if he’d tried to rend the night apart in order to see through it and beyond to a vivid daylight in which everything was clear and conspicuous – something ordered specially for him but which existed for no one at all, ever. Perhaps by trying to breach the night he’d hoped to find some reason as to why she was going away with Frank. There had to be something outside the immediate mad act of revenge and murder. His death hadn’t returned her love to the memory of him – if that was what he posthumously wanted.

  They hadn’t been able to talk about it while in England, but their senses opened on the trains in France, even on the up-chucking storm-hauled boat across from Dover. Frank had a greater respect for George than if they had simply caught the bus that night and forgotten all about him. The injury, scars, and weeks of pain seemed unconnected with him, as if they’d been dealt by a dislodged boulder or a fall of lightning.

  A passenger came out of the first-class lounge and stood by the rail, a tall young American of indeterminate age, well-wrapped in a grey overcoat and several folds of woollen scarf. Narrow blue jeans came down to the top of his cheap Spanish shoes. He had short, grizzled, greying hair and a rugged sort of pug-dog face that made him look like a ramrod Napoleon getting his first look at desolate St Helena. Frank had helped him carry his trunk aboard the night before, been cautioned as he took one end of it: ‘Steady up the gangway, pal. It’s full of books.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Frank said. ‘I shan’t crease myself.’

  ‘My name’s Shelley Jones,�
�� he said. ‘What’s yours?’

  Frank called out a good morning: was he going to live on that island? ‘Hell, no,’ Shelley responded, cigarette held over the water. ‘I’ll stay a few days in Palma, then maybe get me a cab out to that monastery where Chopin shacked-up with George Sand. Then I’ll hump the hell out of it – to Morocco or some place. What are you doing then, in little old fascist Spain?’

  ‘I’m just waiting for the sun to shoot up.’ He turned to the empty sea and, seeing that a new tint had been born, stared hard to observe the exact birth of the next colour. He saw shades of dark green on the mountainslope that had jumped there while he watched the sea; and going back to the sea, other colours had spread themselves meantime on the horizon. ‘I’m travelling,’ Frank said, passing the brandy. ‘Drifting for a few months.’

  ‘As long as your wife likes it. What’s your work, if you don’t mind my discourtesy?’

  ‘I’m in a factory, but I’m taking time off.’

  Careful to wipe the spout, Shelley returned the bottle: ‘I thought you weren’t the usual kind of Limey. I even told myself you were a working man.’ People were still sleeping on deck, huddled in blankets or overcoats against the sharpening wind. An old woman in black leaned against the saloon, eyes open in a wide stare as if she didn’t hear the clink of spoons and coffee cups inside. ‘Even an American recognizes me as a worker!’ Frank laughed. ‘There’s hope for me yet.’

  Scorn didn’t put Shelley off: ‘I suppose in 1936 someone like you would have been in this country helping the Republic.’