A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘We’re just going,’ Sabina said.

  ‘Don’t be late. I’ve told you never to miss any of it. See that you don’t.’ His glare at their backs seemed to force them into the right turning. Inside the forge, his eyes roamed over the tools, materials, state of the fire. He missed nothing, but looked again as if he might have done, ever on the lookout for discrepancy, damage or misplacement. ‘Where’s the hammer you were using?’

  Oliver stood. ‘It’s over there.’

  ‘Where’s there?’

  ‘On the bench.’

  ‘Don’t I always tell you to put the tools back in their right place when you’ve finished with them?’

  ‘I didn’t have time to do it.’ The veins jumped on his father’s temples, and he knew that what was coming couldn’t be avoided, the blow at his head too quick. ‘Don’t answer back,’ Burton said. ‘I don’t want to have to tell you again.’

  Oliver balanced the weighty hammer as if to swing in for the kill, but didn’t much relish the vision of his body hanging from a gallows. He had long regretted having the misfortune to be Burton’s firstborn and prime competitor.

  ‘Put it in its proper place, and be quick about it. How shall I be able to find it if it’s not where I think it is?’

  ‘There won’t be anymore of that.’ But he did as he was told. ‘I’m telling you now. You aren’t going to hit me again.’

  A smile shaped Burton’s lips, much of himself in Oliver from almost too long ago to be remembered, except at moments like this. He admitted that the time had come to stop the punches but, even so, he had made him one of the best young men at the trade, who in a few years would be as good a blacksmith as himself, though all you got for such effort was the insolence of being answered back. ‘I hear a horse coming along the lane, so get outside to see to it. And send Oswald in to me.’

  ‘We haven’t had our dinners yet.’

  He softened a little, which for Oliver was far too late. ‘If you’re thirsty drink some tea from one of the cans. You can eat when things get slack. Never delay a customer longer than you have to. So do it now.’ Hunger could wait. Burton only felt thirst, a fire inside always there to be put out. He wiped sweat from his face with a large red spotted handkerchief, took a scoop of water from a bucket covered by a wooden lid, and carried it outside.

  Oliver sat on the stool to get the shoe off, the lame horse’s hoof between his knees. He stroked the horse’s poll, knowing when to keep quiet as Burton held the bucket for it to drink, Oliver thinking you had to be a horse to get any kindness out of Burton.

  He walked well ahead of his sons on the mile home, went into the long tunnel which carried railway lines to Ilkeston, the way narrowing between brick walls, a muddy pestilence in days of rain, hardly ever drying in summer weather, and dark enough at all times to make the girls timorous of going through on their way to Woodhouse. Beyond, the sunken lane was resplendent with elderflowers. He moved tall and upright, with the slightly swinging gait of a man on his own.

  His sons were careful not to follow too close – Burton would never allow it – and came on in silence, until Oliver said: ‘One of these days I’m going to push his head into the fire.’

  ‘He’d have yours in first.’

  He stroked the bruise on his face. ‘Not if you help me. I’m fed up with it. Ever since I was born I’ve been kicked from arse-hole to breakfasttime by him. As soon as I can, I’m off. I hate the sight of him. He’s always been like that, and always will be. He makes everybody pay for the fact that he’s alive. He’s dead ignorant. He can’t even read and write.’

  ‘That’s not done him much harm. Anyway, people like him live forever.’

  He shredded a leaf of privet with a fingernail. ‘There’s too many of his sort around, and it’s time things changed. When he dies they’ll have to put nine padlocks on hell’s door to keep him out, for fear he’d give the place a bad name.’

  Burton left them to close the latched gate, walked up the path and paused to inspect two fat porkers in their sty, poking each with a stick till they squealed through the slush out of range. Satisfied that they were lively enough for his mood, he passed the brick storehouse with its copper inside for boiling the weekly wash, and on by a smaller outbuilding divided between coal store and earth closet by whose wooden holes was a large tin of creosote to splash down and diminish the stench. The yard extended to the lane, and behind the cottage a long garden provided the family with vegetables. The first of three properties, each was brickbuilt and tile-roofed, with three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and larder leading off, and a parlour. The cottages were well fenced and separated, which suited Burton, who never gave more than a nod to his neighbours. He left the door open, again to be closed by those behind.

  The warm living room smelled comfortingly of meat, baking bread, and potatoes steaming on the wood fire. After greeting Mary Ann he washed his hands and face in the pantry. Oswald and Oliver stood not too close to do the same. ‘You’ll need to fill the buckets after you’ve had your dinners.’ He spoke as if to no one in particular, but those who would have to do it knew who was meant.

  A large brass oil lamp hung by a chain above the table, taken down for cleaning once a fortnight. No one allowed to help, he and Mary Ann polished the brass till their faces could be clearly seen, and washed the shade sufficient to make the glass almost invisible, the only task of their married life performed together.

  Oliver combed his hair at a mirror by the door, the trade name ‘Sandeman Sherry’ blazoned in gold letters along the bottom. To the right was a glass-fronted showcase of Burton’s prize horseshoes, and often when Oliver looked at them he recalled how at fourteen Burton had taken him to a county show near Tollerton: ‘Put your suit on tomorrow,’ he was told. ‘You’ll see a few other blacksmiths where I’m taking you.’

  On their way through the city Burton allowed him half a pint at the Trip to Jerusalem, in a cool room hewn from the sandstone rock of the castle. By the time they’d done the seven miles to Tollerton he wondered whether his father had only asked him along to test his walking prowess, having trouble at times keeping up with the long stride while maintaining his respectful distance behind. But Oliver adjusted his pace and enjoyed a good day of his life, for it was the middle of May, blossom on the trees and birds happy in their heaven, and he thought how much he could love his father if only it had been allowed.

  Burton stood outside the competition marquee, wilful pride preventing him going in to find out who was the winner of the Grand Horseshoe Competition. Oliver wasn’t able to understand his hanging back, but when he came close Burton said, after someone had announced him as the winner, and aware of what was puzzling his son: ‘They can come and talk to me if they want. If you’ve learned nothing else today you’ve learned that a blacksmith never goes up to others in a case like this. Now go to that table and bring me a pint of what they’re dishing out, and get yourself a cup of tea from the tent over there.’

  Oliver watched his father accept the prize and handshake from the Duke of Something-or-other, merely nodding at the grandee’s words, and walking away with the five-pound note in his waistcoat pocket, and the prize horseshoe in his hand.

  Mary Ann lifted the half-finished rug from her knees, gathered the coloured unused clippings into a cotton bag to get everything away from the fire. Idleness was the only sin, Burton knew, and he had never seen her idle for a moment. He felt justified in scorning others who indulged themselves, because he too had never been idle.

  He sat at the large oval table, every muscle aching from his day’s work, though nobody could know and they would never be told, certainly not his sons, because he did his best to make sure they wouldn’t become as tired as himself. Still young, they would strengthen in a year or two, but it was unnecessary even to think such things, though you couldn’t stop what jumped into mind.

  Mary Ann drew a pan of Yorkshire pudding and a sauceboat of gravy from the oven by the side of the grate. ‘Where’s my ale?�
� Burton asked.

  She brought a bottle and glass up the few steps of the pantry, one small task of the number necessary to remember, almost without thought. The potatoes she strained, new from the garden, gave off a pleasing smell of mint, as she served slices of roast lamb.

  Burton looked at Oswald. ‘Use a fork with your bread to mop the gravy, not your fingers. You aren’t starving, are you?’

  ‘We’re hungry,’ Oliver said.

  ‘So am I. But it looks bad. When you’ve finished, fetch some water from the well.’

  ‘Do we need it?’

  ‘We always do.’ He turned back to Oswald. ‘Some wood wants chopping, and that’ll be your job.’

  Mary Ann served herself last and, sitting on Burton’s left, saw the darkening bruise on Oliver’s cheek. ‘What happened to you?’

  He smiled, always careful not to upset his mother. When Burton struck, all his strength was in it. ‘I banged into a brick wall.’

  ‘You’d better put some witch-hazel on it.’ She said to Burton: ‘It’s not right, hitting a grown man.’

  ‘He should do his work properly.’

  ‘But he doesn’t deserve that.’

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ Oliver said.

  Burton’s grunt was as profound a statement as could be made at his son’s defiance. Having heard such an expressive monosyllable so many times they always knew what lay behind it, on this occasion wondering if he was about to strike out, but Oliver was ready, and decided he would be from now on.

  The meal went peacefully, Burton eating to live rather than living to eat, knowing that Mary Ann’s cooking was in any case the best. The first to finish, he pulled the door open and called into the yard: ‘Thomas!’

  Thomas was thirteen, none of the children allowed to call him Tom, though they did when Burton wasn’t nearby. Expecting the summons, he stood in the doorway, a swatch of thick fair hair angled towards his eyes, the third son, already up to his father’s shoulders. He had left: school before learning anything because Burton needed him now and again to help in the forge, intending to make a blacksmith out of him as well, though Ivy of the sharp tongue said Thomas was too slow to have qualified in the classroom anyway. From talking to his sisters in the yard, he now stood sullenly by.

  Burton had never known them to do anything as willingly as he’d had to do. ‘Feed the pigs. Edith, help him to get the mash from the outhouse. The stuff that was made today.’

  The eldest daughter, she was a vivacious seventeen-year-old with golden-blonde hair. ‘I was just going out for the evening.’

  ‘Do as I say.’ Seeing them start to obey, he closed the door, but as his back turned Edith gargoyled her face, then went to help Thomas.

  Oliver came from the pantry with a yoke across the back of his neck, and a steel bucket in each hand. ‘When you’ve done that,’ Burton said, as if never to leave him alone, ‘you can get some coal in.’

  Softly whistling, Oliver was happy to be liberated from the pall of his father, and set off along the path between chicken coops and the house wall. Passing the front door, the long garden gave off its smell of dry soil, a scent of fresh flowers, and a tang of rotting potato tops that he would later gather up. Every week he and Thomas, under Burton’s critical eye, lest they slacken on the distance or spill a drop, manoeuvred iron buckets reeking also of creosote from the outhouse to furrows indicated in the garden, and splashed it liberally about, nothing from the house being wasted. The garden gave shining red beetroot, potatoes, onions, carrots, marrows, cucumbers, lettuces and kidney beans, as well as sweet peas and mint, while raspberries, gooseberries and redcurrants made pies, puddings and jam.

  The well up the slope was covered by a triangular wooden roof and, however many times Oliver had laboured to and from to get water he liked the sight of its fairy-tale shape, as depicted in books brought home as an infant from Sunday School. The vision of magical enactments at midnight, or even during daylight, summer or winter, when he wasn’t there, set him cheerfully whistling To be a Farmers Boy, letting the chain that Burton had made rattle the bucket from its roller and hit the water with a satisfying smack, before it sank and began to fill. Turning the handle, he brought up the first overflowing bucket.

  All the others at work, Burton in the kitchen enjoyed his usual pinch of snuff after the evening meal, stood with back to the fire, as contented as could be after the day’s work.

  ‘Don’t I get any money this week?’ Mary Ann said.

  ‘You always have.’ He took cash from his pocket. ‘Take this sovereign.’

  ‘I was hoping for a bit more.’

  ‘Have another five bob, then. Trade’s been good.’

  And that was all, though it was better than usual. She looked at the head of King George on one of the half-crowns, then put the coins into her pocket.

  ‘I’m off to town for a couple of hours.’ He stomped his way up the stairs to change.

  Thomas was half bent over carrying a huge bucket of pig food from the wash house to the sty, Edith following with another, helped by fifteen-year-old Ivy, while Rebecca, Sabina and Emily looked on.

  ‘I hate the old bastard.’ Edith’s words were smothered by the shrilling pigs, smelling their supper, already at the trough, as if to start on the bare wood. Thomas drove them away with a stick, then poured in the flood of mash, bran, slops and old seed potatoes, stepping aside to avoid the rush at his trousers.

  ‘Don’t hit them anymore,’ Emily said. ‘I like the piggies. They’re my friends.’

  ‘How can you be friends with pigs?’ he jeered.

  ‘Well, I am. I’ve got names for both of them.’

  ‘And what are they, young madam?’

  ‘That fat one’s Lollipop, and the other’s Kidney.’

  ‘Percy the slaughterer’s coming up from Woodhouse soon to cut their throats,’ he said spitefully. ‘And then we’ll eat ’em.’

  It was easy to make her cry. They sometimes called her Monkey Face, or Mrs Meagrim, or Dolly Dumpling, in spite of being told by Mary Ann to treat her kindly. ‘I’ll run away, then, and take them with me. We’ll go and live together in Robin’s Wood. I’ll cook their dinners and wash their faces.’

  ‘You like sausages and crackling and chitterlings and pork scratchings, don’t you? I’ve seen you gobbling them up when Mam wasn’t looking.’ He turned to Edith. ‘You’d better not let Burton hear you talking about him like that.’

  ‘Well, I do hate the old bastard. I always have. Did you see Oliver’s face? I’ve never seen such a bruise. He’s always hitting people. I’m going to leave home the minute I can.’

  Thomas stroked one of the guzzling pigs. ‘And when will that be?’

  Oliver came into the yard, two buckets on the yoke slopping water. He waved, and straightened his back before going into the house.

  ‘I’ll do it after I’m married,’ Edith said. ‘And he won’t dare touch me then. Every time I go out he tells me not to be long. And when I don’t go out he calls me in to do some work. And when I do go out I’ve always got to be back in bed by nine o’clock. I’m seventeen, and I’ve been working for four years.’

  ‘You stopped out till eleven the other night.’

  ‘Yes, and I’ll blind you if you tell Burton.’ The older girls, exploiting the inconvenience of a lavatory set apart from the house, sometimes made their way downstairs when Burton and Mary Ann were already in bed, as if to go there, then walked quietly through the gate and down the lane to see boyfriends in Woodhouse. They might not get back till midnight, but a piece of gravel at the window of their bedroom brought Sabina down to let them in. ‘The only good thing about Burton,’ Edith laughed, ‘is that he sleeps so deep an earthquake wouldn’t wake him, though if one should ever swallow him up it would be good riddance.’

  ‘I’ll run away from home,’ Rebecca said, ‘one of these days.’

  Thomas smiled. ‘You’d soon come back.’

  ‘I bleddy wouldn’t.’

  ‘You might, if y
ou got hungry,’ Edith said, ‘but once I go, that’ll be that. He won’t see me till after I’m married.’

  ‘You’re not twenty-one,’ Thomas said, ‘so he could fetch you back.’

  Rebecca smoothed her long dark hair. ‘He might be glad to get shut of us.’

  ‘And where would you lay your head at night?’ Thomas asked. ‘Under Trent Bridge?’

  ‘I would if I had to.’

  ‘I’ll always find a bed to sleep in,’ Edith said, ‘but I shan’t say who with.’

  ‘You’ll get into trouble one of these days.’ Thomas took the empty buckets back to the outhouse.

  They were locked in notions of what they imagined freedom to be. ‘I don’t care.’ Edith was adamant. ‘It’ll be better than staying here.’

  Oliver placed the buckets under the large sink, came out of the pantry and picked up the long-handled woodsman’s axe to tackle a heap of logs by the fence at the laneside. At the noisy opening of an upstairs window they saw Burton’s face: ‘Don’t stand there. Get on with your work all of you.’

  The house was small but adequate, one bedroom for the five girls, another for the three sons, and the largest for Burton and Mary Ann. There was a four-poster curtain-drawn bed, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers with a swivel mirror above, which showed Burton putting on a laundered white shirt, a high collar, and square-ended bow tie.

  Tucking the shirt into the trousers of his navy-blue suit, and fastening the thick leather belt into place, a sudden irritation took him again to the window. ‘Thomas! Get your hands out of your pockets and come in to polish my boots. The black ones. They’re in the parlour. And look sharp, or you’ll get a stick across your back.’

  A few minutes were needed to arrange the correct set of the tie, and finish turning him from a blacksmith at the forge into a smartly dressed man of consequence. He fixed the watch and chain across his waistcoat with its attached couple of sovereigns, and slipped the white folded handkerchief in his lapel pocket. Down in the parlour he held his boots against the window to make sure they had a sufficient shine, then drew both on and carefully laced them up.