A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  He closed the door carefully. Mary Ann, who had long since lit the lamp, sat by the fire, a sheet of clean sacking over her knees, clippings of various colours but of the same shape on the floor, to be fitted into any pattern that took her fancy. ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

  He held a bunch of watercress. ‘I found this in the wood. Wash it. It can go with my supper.’

  ‘What were you doing in the wood?’

  The black dog was a bit too comfortable before the fire, so he held it around the mouth with his strongest hand, till the animal struggled as if in a fit, its helpless whine filling the room.

  ‘Leave the poor thing alone.’

  He let it go, a hard slap at its ribs. ‘Where is everybody?’

  ‘In bed, except Oliver.’

  He sat at the table. ‘It’s time he was in.’

  ‘He will be presently.’ She put the rug peg and clippings into a neat roll, got up to set out bread, cheese, and a bottle of ale. ‘I’m off to bed.’

  ‘And I shan’t be long.’

  She stood a moment. ‘I hope you won’t get on to Oliver when he comes in.’

  ‘He’s late.’

  ‘I saw him walking down the lane with Alma Waterall.’

  He wondered who else she might have seen. ‘When was that?’

  ‘Two hours since. She’s a Sunday School teacher at Woodhouse.’

  He grunted. ‘That’s a fine business.’

  ‘Somebody’s got to do it.’

  He had sent their children to Sunday School, on the one afternoon of the week when he and Mary Ann could have a peaceful couple of hours in bed, because he was usually too exhausted after the normal day’s work. The children came home every year with a prize for good conduct, books only looked at by Oliver. ‘I thought you might have seen them in the wood.’

  ‘There was nobody there but me.’

  ‘Wasn’t there?’

  ‘What would a Sunday School teacher be doing in a place like that? Go to bed, then. I’ll be there soon enough.’

  He pushed the empty supper plate aside, no sitting still, every moment something to be done, anything, everything, but anything was better than nothing, than stillness. Stillness was inanition, idleness, death, putting yourself at the mercy of penury, the workhouse, or illness. If you weren’t busy you didn’t know who you were, so George said, but George was dead now, and he’d never known anything, either.

  He took off his shirt, and in the pantry lifted a bucket of water fresh from the well, splashed a gallon into a tin bowl and then over him, soaping himself in reflected light from the living room lamp. Up the steps, towelling his neck, he saw Oliver. ‘Where have you been? It’s gone ten o’clock.’

  ‘Walking, with a girl,’ lips set as if to whistle a lively tune, happy, but standing some distance from his father. Out of the lane into sudden light, he blinked, like Burton in everything but with darker hair, and a mouth softened by resembling Mary Ann’s. He would never grow a moustache to conceal the shape of his upper lip, in case he looked too much like Burton as a young man. ‘I didn’t know the time.’

  ‘Get yourself a watch. Maybe that’ll tell you when it’s dark. I usually know, because I use my eyes.’

  ‘I’d get a watch, if you paid me more.’

  Burton’s fist was clenched by his side. Such answering back called for a blow, but he knew that if his father had threatened such at that age he would have punched him to the ground. So he hesitated. A fully qualified blacksmith of twenty-three was beyond the stage of being knocked about, and in any case no one knew better than Burton that whatever you did to someone who had just been out tumbling a girl was unlikely to have any effect. Oliver didn’t know how lucky he was to be young. ‘Get up to bed.’

  ‘Is there any supper?’

  ‘You heard what I said.’

  Not caring to argue, he went. The sweetness of Alma’s caresses would be easy to live on till getting up for breakfast.

  Burton walked across the yard to the closet, and wondered as he stood there whether it was true that thin people pissed more than fat people. Back in the kitchen he booted the dog out, and double-locked the door now that everyone was safe in bed.

  He took off the apron and reached for his jacket. ‘I’m going out for a while.’

  The fire at full heat, Oliver noted a grunt of approval at the work he was doing. ‘Where to?’

  ‘Mind your own business. You’re in charge.’

  Wherever it was, Oliver was glad to see the back of him, and went to striking in the nail holes of the shoe he was making. Oswald came from seeing to a horse, dropped the money in a tin. ‘There ain’t much trade today. If it doesn’t get better we’ll be in Queer Street.’

  ‘It goes up and down. It always did.’ Oliver dipped the shoe, set it aside, and walked with his brother to the door. ‘Which direction did he go in?’

  ‘The pub way.’

  ‘It’s not like him, to go at midday, though when I saw him in the Crown last week he was very thick with that Florence. She was too busy talking to serve anybody else, and Burton didn’t even greet me.’

  ‘Not that he would.’

  ‘No, but something’s going on with them.’

  ‘He met Mam when she was serving behind a bar,’ Oswald said.

  ‘Yes, and I think she’s regretted it more than once.’ Back in the forge he picked up the horsehoe, held it to the light, and considered it done. ‘In those days barmaids were different. Mother was, anyway. But Florence is married, and if Mam finds out there’ll be ructions. I hope she never does.’

  He rolled two cigarettes from Burton’s tobacco tin, and they went outside as if he might pick up the lingering fumes when he came back. ‘He’ll notice some’s missing,’ Oswald said. ‘There’ll be hell to pay.’

  ‘If he went off in such a hurry as to forget his tobacco he can’t be up to much good. Anyway, he treats me like a dog so I might as well behave like one.’ A mouthful of delicious smoke drifted towards his brother. ‘We’ll enjoy it while we can.’

  Emily and Sabina stood in the doorway with the men’s dinners. Oliver set the cans on the bench. ‘Did you see any lions and tigers on the way here?’

  Sabina came forward. ‘We saw two, our Oliver, when we crossed the wide road.’

  ‘And did one of them have blood on its teeth?’

  Emily glanced sideways at the ground, as if finding her brother too handsome to look at. ‘It had lovely fur. It was ever so tame, and I stroked it.’

  Alma Waterall, watching from across the lane, saw Oliver take a coin from his pocket and close a hand over it, then hold both hands towards Sabina. ‘Which one is the penny in?’

  She glanced, and pointed decisively. ‘That one.’

  He opened his fist. ‘You little devil! Lucky first time. It’s got His Majesty’s head on it! Now it’s cheeky Emily’s turn. See if you win a prize as well.’

  Her face a mockery of adult consideration, she tapped a knuckle and, on her lips going down to weep at the empty palm, Oliver put a hand to his left ear, rubbed at a simulated itch, and brought a penny away that had been hidden in the other hand. ‘It was stuck in my tab-hole, but I pulled it out by the tail.’

  She smiled like a daisy in spring. ‘I’ve won! I’ve won! Now I can buy some toffees on my way to school,’ and ran off hand-in-hand with Sabina.

  Alma, a full-busted young woman with fair skin and a fringe of dark hair across her forehead, a retroussé nose but a well-shaped purposeful mouth, came from across the lane. ‘I saw you, but couldn’t believe it was true. You said you were a blacksmith, but didn’t tell me this was where you worked. I happened to be passing.’

  He led her into a place she hadn’t been in before, and wiped the bench with a piece of rag for her to sit, though she preferred not to. He intended to kiss her, but she stood aside. ‘I’ve seen your sisters at Sunday School. They’re always well-behaved.’

  ‘Unlike me, I suppose. But that’s because I told them to be. We all went there
because Mother and Father insisted on it.’

  ‘We need whoever we can get. I wish every child would come.’ Oswald called that a horse and cart was on its way. ‘I’ll be going, then,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t you want to see us at our work?’

  ‘I’d like to, but my Aunt Lydia’s not well, and she lives on her own, so I call now and again. She’s my father’s sister, but they don’t get on, and I try to make up for it.’

  The carter pointed with his lit pipe to the horse. ‘Can you put a shoe on this awkward bogger?’

  ‘I’ll have none of your swearing.’ Oliver caught Burton’s sharp tone behind his, but considered it justified. ‘You can go somewhere else if there’s to be any of that.’

  The man laughed. ‘I don’t know if the horse would get that far, it’s such a wayward nag. But I’m sorry I cursed, miss.’ He turned to Oliver. ‘He’s gone fair lame.’

  Alma coughed from the dust and fumes of the forge. ‘Shall we meet soon?’

  ‘What about Sunday? I’m not free till then.’

  She nodded. ‘I’d like that,’ and went on her way, Oliver watching for a moment before turning to the carter. ‘Now let’s see what can be done for your old crock.’

  SEVEN

  Burton was glad to see so few in the Crown, not more than a couple of men who had left their wagons by the kerb. Florence was distracted. Well, she would be. She always was. There was only one thing that could bring her back into herself, but by the look of her he could tell she was wondering whether or not she’d had enough of him.

  He was halfway through the pint he allowed himself at midday. ‘Is it your husband you’re frightened of?’

  ‘It’s not that so much. He might murder me, but apart from that I don’t think he’d care one way or the other. The thing is, he’s leaving his job, and we’ll have to live in Chesterfield.’

  ‘What does he want to go to a place like that for?’

  She might be daft enough to think her husband didn’t care, but he surmised otherwise. Yet you could never be sure of anything. She might be using the assumption that he did know what they were up to because she was fed up and wanted to pack the business in with him, though if her husband did know then maybe he wanted to get out of it because he couldn’t stand and fight like a man for a woman worth fighting for. Let him try, though he wouldn’t like Mary Ann to hear of it.

  ‘His brother’s in business at Chesterfield,’ she went on.

  ‘Get him to stay here.’

  ‘I don’t know as I can,’ her tone implying she might not want to. ‘He’s set on it, anyway.’

  He leaned closer, a hand on hers. ‘I’m sure you can if you want to. He sounds the sort who will listen.’

  The glitter of desire came into her brown eyes. ‘Is that what you’d like?’

  He was irritated by her emotional scheming. It wasn’t up to him to make up his mind. She must come to him, and if she didn’t she wasn’t worth having. ‘It only matters if you want it to.’

  She was looking beyond him, and he saw Mary Ann’s reflection in the mirror, between liquor bottles on the shelf. Uneasy at the apparition he turned back to Florence, as if to go on talking would prove innocence. ‘Don’t let her bother you.’

  ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Some woman or other. I’d be sorry to lose you. I think a lot of you.’

  ‘You ought to show it a bit more.’

  ‘I don’t often see you, in that way. But I always want to. Life is hard for everybody. We’ll have to see what can be done.’

  Mary Ann had witnessed all she needed. Pale, blood pulsing in every vein, she pulled at his arm. ‘I was told you weren’t at work, but I knew where to find you.’

  He pushed her away, to finish his drink. Dignity was the dearest thing in the world, and he was shaken that she had come into the pub and dared to make a fuss. Florence realized who she was, and stood away with shame and sorrow at what she had become part of, and at what she felt to be her fault. Burton had courted her for weeks before she gave in, though she too had wanted him. And now this. She should have known it would happen.

  The few drinkers looked on, as Mary Ann went for him. Nobody had tackled Burton in that way before, and it was extraordinary to witness. ‘You’ve got eight kids to keep,’ she said, ‘and you’re doing it on me with her.’

  Words were wrenched out of him. ‘We were talking.’

  ‘I don’t believe it. You think I’m a fool? I know what’s going on.’ She seemed about to strike him. ‘Come back to your work. No wonder you give me hardly enough to keep the house going, carrying on with a trollop like that.’ She took a piece of paper from her pocket, held it before his face so as to give him time to recognize their marriage lines, and threw it in two pieces on the bar. ‘That’s what I think of you!’

  He flushed with shame and rage. ‘Go home.’

  ‘Only if you come with me.’

  As a master blacksmith and man of the house, philanderer and favoured customer at the pub, something had to be done to counter this violation of his dignity, and in such a way that it would never happen again. Such an affront had never been dreamed of, and caused a ripple at the temples fit to burst his head. He gripped her arm and walked her to the door. ‘Get off home,’ and pushed her into the street.

  In the silence he dared whoever looked on to deny that what he had done was anything but just. None could. They would have done the same. Or the worst of them would. He wasn’t finished with Florence. ‘Don’t worry about that little set-to. We’ll meet in the woods tomorrow evening.’

  She handed him the two halves of the marriage certificate. ‘You’d better have this, and see if you can put it together again.’

  ‘That’s cold.’ But he took it.

  ‘I shan’t see you anymore.’

  ‘Don’t say that. Wait for me. I’ll be back.’ A few strides took him outside.

  ‘His poor bloody wife’s going to cop it now,’ one of the carters laughed.

  ‘Well, she could have hammered him in the house instead of showing him up in public.’

  The closer to home the less was he able to think, and the faster he walked. No need to think at all, everything spoiled between him and Florence. Rage carried him through Woodhouse, under the railway bridge and up the lane, not caring to avoid puddles from yesterday’s downpour. He passed his neighbour Harold Ollington, who wondered at not receiving the usual nod. Even God, had Burton recognized Him, would have got no greeting, pushed out of mind by the force of such catastrophic events. It wasn’t so much that she had shown him up in a pub as that she’d had the gall to do something like that in the first place. As his wife she had lost all respect, flaunted intolerance of him as his own master when away from the house as well as in it. His boot hit the gate.

  Mary Ann pegged out a line of clothes fresh from the copper. Work for the household must go on, but tears went down with drops from the sheets. What she had done to Burton served him right, though she’d be damned for her Irish temper. Emily had seen him in the field talking to that wicked woman, then he had stayed so late in the wood, and today she hadn’t found him at work when he should have been, and had caught him in the public house talking to the barmaid in such a way it was plain what had been going on.

  She felt only anger and wild resentment that he had betrayed her who had brought up their eight children on short money over so many years; nor did she suppose it was the first time he had done such a thing, which caused more tears to flow as she thrust wooden pegs onto cotton or cloth.

  She heard nothing, then Burton pulled her around to face him. Dead grey eyes fixed her, then black and orange sparks exploded at a blow impossible to avoid. ‘Don’t ever interfere with anything I do, ever again. Never. Do you understand? Keep out of my business.’ Ignoring her scream, he fixed her in readiness for another across the mouth.

  A third blow was held back. One was enough, and he had given two. Never lose control. He immediately knew he had done wrong, shouldn’t have g
iven even the first, because she was his wife and not a child or animal to be kept in order. George would never have done the same to Sarah. She caught him out once, though hadn’t dared tackle him in public. George had done nothing more than laugh in her face, because fair was fair, he told Ernest, who was now sorry he hadn’t recalled the incident on his way up the lane. He pushed Mary Ann aside, and slammed the door into the house.

  Annie Ollington looked over the fence at the commotion, and hurried around by the front gate. She sat Mary Ann on a log. ‘Oh, what a terrible thing! Look what a mess he’s made of your mouth. But you’ll be all right in a bit, duck.’ She wiped her cheeks with a handkerchief, shook it square, and saw smears of red. ‘Does he do this often?’

  ‘He’s never hit me before. I wish I could die.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that. But if he does it again you ought to set your lads onto him. I never thought Burton would do a thing like this. And he thinks himself such a gentleman! If anybody treated me like this I’d take the carving knife to their guts.’ She put an arm around her. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it, though I know a lot of it goes on.’

  Burton came with a bowl of water and a cloth. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Can’t you see? I’m trying to help. What did you hit her like that for?’

  ‘It’s none of your business. Clear off, and don’t come here again.’ A hand jerked, as if to throw the water should she move any closer. ‘She’ll be all right.’

  ‘Not with a beast like you she won’t.’

  ‘Have less of your lip.’

  In answering back she was more brave than she knew.

  ‘You’d better go,’ Mary Ann said.

  She saw the glint in Burton’s eyes, and went quickly down the path. He dabbed at Mary Ann’s face. ‘I was only talking to the barmaid, passing the time. I’d had a heavy morning at work, and thought I’d go to the Crown for a drink. There was no need to show me up in front of everybody.’