A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  He said to Mary Ann more than once: ‘That khaki uniform makes him look like a tramp,’ wanting to remember the well-dressed young man in suit and tie, boots well polished on Saturday night, walking down the lane. ‘It’s a shame we never thought of getting a proper photograph, before he put those khaki rags on; but who of us imagined he would end like that?’

  Killed by a mad horse. It should have been roasted alive over a slow fire. Shooting was too good. I’d have made the animal know what it had done. I’ve handled worse horses. I was often alarmed when Oliver got on one and trotted down the lane from the forge, but I said nothing. Perhaps I should have dragged him off and banged his head, but he would only have hated me more. He thought he knew everything, like you do when you’re young, while I would never trust any horse because all of them nurse a wild streak, more than anybody might realize. Getting on their backs was never for me, and shouldn’t have been for him, either.

  Mary Ann wrote to Oxford for the death certificate, hoping to learn more about how Oliver had died. She thought of him all the time, couldn’t lay a meal without wondering whether or not he would be pleased should he come alive into the house. She wanted to know how he had spent every moment of his last day, and so did Burton, but the death certificate only said: ‘Fracture at the base of the skull and lacerations of the brain following injuries received while following his calling.’

  Which Burton thought wasn’t saying much. There was more to it than that, and I’d like to get to the bottom of it. A horse can go mad and kill a man, but couldn’t have done so to Oliver while he was shoeing one. The leg would have been between Oliver’s thighs, him facing backwards from the horse’s head, and if a horse tries to kick when the leg’s up like that it falls over with such a bang it won’t get back on its feet in a hurry, and would never try such a stunt again. It couldn’t have happened while Oliver was following his calling.

  It wasn’t so much a matter of forgetting, nobody could do that, but of living with what you couldn’t help but remember. Work was the only solace, and he went at it full tilt, as he had to in any case to pay Mary Ann enough for the household, a weekly sum to Thomas and Oswald, and have a few shillings left for himself. Old Nick and Tubal-Cain had shoed a hundred horses a day, or so he had heard tell, and if I did as many, he thought, I’d be a lot better off than I am now.

  Mary Ann said the years went slowly after Oliver’s death. You could count the minutes. Even when you were working they crawled around the clock. Yet according to the newspapers so much was happening in the world beyond, though Burton was scornful at their obvious lies when Mary Ann read to him. Battles called great victories never ended anything. Fighting and slaughter went on, Burton said, and we were always winning (whoever ‘we’ were) but things got worse and worse for the soldiers, who you had to feel sorry for, as well as for everyone else, most of all for those losing sons, husbands, brothers and fathers who had gone like fools when they shouldn’t have let wild horses drag them away. If they were killed the family got a telegram and a photo in the paper, and as for the blind and the crippled, what would they do for a living when the war was over?

  Lottie worked the white handle and pumped two quarts of ale through a funnel into Mary Ann’s bottles, scooping away froth with the same piece of wood she had used for years. ‘A pound of cheese, as well as four boxes of matches and a packet of Robins.’

  The new slot machines by the beer-off wall fascinated Mary Ann, flashing emblems of various fruits, yellows and reds and greens, purples and blues, the incandescent colours of her youth long since discarded but regretted all the same, the favourite stockings, gloves, blouses and dresses resting in a separate drawer of the bedroom, rarely used but always a reminder of happier days. Burton smiled when she mused over them.

  A penny from her change seemed to go into the small zinc slot by its own will. She pulled the handle with vigour, as if the harder she did the more chance of getting the kitty. ‘We haven’t had them long,’ Lottie said. ‘Mr Warrener makes them in a workshop at the end of his garden.’

  Oliver would put in the odd coppers from his wages if he was here, and come home to share a five-shilling win with his brothers and sisters, and even treat his father to a pint, so all she needed was to have three items of the same fruit come around the drums and stop in parallel. They didn’t.

  She ought to stop, but fate beckoned, and after a few pennies had gone she put half a crown from her purse on the counter and told Lottie to give more change, hoping not only to win back the first few pence but have the large amount visible through the glass window fall into her pinafore as well.

  The coloured drums spun, her mindless heart praying that Oliver would come back safe, until she knew he couldn’t. The hungry mouth was made of steel, a wicked little ravenous slot demanding what pennies she had. It took them all. Oliver was spinning a top in the yard, and she knew he was thinking: ‘That top is me. Don’t let it fall. Let the colours keep spinning, though if it does fall, well, I can set it going again.’ Oh, the poor little boy won’t do that anymore.

  ‘Don’t cry, duck,’ Lottie said.

  Having dug so deep into the housekeeping she must go on playing to get it back, wished she hadn’t started, didn’t know why she had, Burton would surely knock all her teeth out this time, and she would have no one to blame but herself, it would be her fault, and yet it wouldn’t, something stronger controlled her arms, other eyes looking on, apart from hers, and laughing with malice when she lost, but the effort of using her arms to pull and pull and pull and hear the clink of machinery moving and see the gaudy colours spinning made her feel better.

  Another woman who came into the shop was astonished at so much being lost, though she willed a cascade of coins to fall like an avalanche into Mary Ann’s lap. ‘Can’t you stop her?’

  ‘I’ve tried, but she takes no notice.’

  Mary Ann gave her a florin for more change. One penny eaten, another slotted in. The machine was big, it demanded more. It wasn’t so much the money she wanted – though she had to hope for it – but to open the prison of the machine and give freedom to all coins inside, as if that would put life back into her.

  ‘She’s losing all she’s got,’ the woman said.

  ‘I don’t know what to do. She hasn’t been the same since her lad was killed.’

  ‘It’s terrible,’ another customer said, ‘this war. But I’ll see if I can meet Burton. He passes about this time on his way from work. If he can’t stop her, nobody can.’

  Mary Ann requested more coppers, with such a glint that Lottie had to spread them along the counter and, arms folded over her chest, watch her pick them up quickly in case they grew legs and ran back to the till. Two more women came in, as if they had heard what was going on and wanted to watch the play.

  No one else in the shop could hear the talking in her heart. ‘I bore him and brought him up, the best lad that ever was. Dear God, bring him back to me. I want him in the house again.’

  With the last of twelve pennies clattering into the steel pocket she knew herself close to getting the kitty. Three lemons showed, though diagonal to each other instead of in a winning row.

  ‘Stop now, duck. You’ve spent enough.’

  Lottie hoped no one would blame her should Mary Ann lose every last farthing. ‘Somebody’s gone to tell Burton. He’s her husband.’

  ‘Burton?’ exclaimed one of the women. ‘Oh bleddy hell! She’ll get two black eyes for this,’ and went off with her groceries as if not caring to see it.

  ‘I don’t know why you went.’ As if Oliver was beside her, she worked through the last pile of coins. ‘I’ll never know,’ and then, feeling a presence behind, knew who it must be. A hand gathered in the few coins. He gripped her by the shoulder. ‘This is a fine way to carry on.’

  She turned but, finding one last penny in her pocket, slotted it in before he could take it away, a desperate pulling of the handle, the same result as ever. ‘I’ve always wanted to play on one of these.’
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  ‘Couldn’t you have stopped her?’ he said to Lottie.

  ‘Not without chopping her hands off.’

  ‘You could have rapped her over the knuckles.’ He gave Mary Ann the sackcloth shopping bag with its bottles of beer and groceries. ‘Come on, let’s get you home.’

  ‘It’s no use blawting,’ he said on their way up the lane. ‘What’s done is done, but I wish you hadn’t done it. I’ve got a pound or two put by, and that should see us through till next week.’

  Her heart beat faster on knowing she had thrown a whole week’s living money away, and it was difficult to imagine that what she had so far heard from Burton, who walked ahead, would be the last of it.

  He opened the gate for her to go into the yard, and she held her head high on passing, the tinkle of bottles playing a tune, as if she had gone through fire and nothing could harm her now. Even the scuffles and grunts of the pigs seemed to welcome her home.

  Burton, telling the others about it round the table, turned the matter into a joke: ‘I don’t know what Oliver would have said if he got to know – if he was still alive. But if he’s where you think he is it’ll give him something to laugh about.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  A message from the farm manager at Wollaton Hall asked Burton if he would come and ring a couple of young bulls, and he had sent Thomas back to say he would. He slid out of bed at five o’clock without disturbing Mary Ann, who needed all the rest she could get, being more than ordinarily tired since Oliver’s death, as if she lived the life he would have gone on living, as well as her own.

  He called Ivy from the girls’ bedroom, to come downstairs and make his breakfast sandwich. She asked where he was going, so he told her, and why. ‘It’s a cruel trade,’ she said. ‘I feel sorry for the poor young bulls.’

  ‘So it is,’ his tone was sharp, ‘but bulls have to be ringed so that they can be easily led, and don’t do any damage to men. They’ll pay me ten shillings for doing each one. Another thing is, if I want your opinion I’ll ask for it, so shut your rattle, and get on with what you’re doing.’

  He didn’t see her glare of loathing but knew it was there. Not with all the tools in the forge would he be able to cut a way through the wall of her dislike, supposing he cared to, which in some way he did. She had hated him well before he had given her cause to, though all he’d ever done was to make her show sufficient respect to himself and her mother.

  Thomas and Oswald were to open the forge, and handle what trade might turn up. No matter how many horses the army took there were still enough to keep them busy. Carts and drays always needed animals to haul them.

  At six he went out of the house, a picture in mind of Ivy putting two fingers to her nose at his departure. High clouds suggested a fine day, birds coming noisily to life, new flowers sprouting in the hedges as he descended the lane to Woodhouse. The driver of the baker’s van called out a greeting while feeding a crust to his horse, then walked across the pavement with fresh loaves for the shop. Burton disapproved of those who bought bread instead of making it themselves, as Mary Ann still did.

  People walked up the road to work, but he turned for the canal, crossing by a lock gate to the towpath. A bargee lighting his morning pipe had a greeting returned, and smells of bacon from the hatchway where his wife was clearing up after breakfast made Burton momentarily hungry. As a magpie out for no good lifted grudgingly from the path to let him by he realized it was 2nd May and that he was fifty today. He wouldn’t mention the fact at home, and didn’t expect them to do so either, though Mary Ann would remind him, and have them take a tot of whisky together.

  A few fishermen were throwing lines from the bank, though what they hoped to catch he couldn’t imagine. A few sticklebacks for the cat, if they were lucky, but they looked as if they were retired, so it was a fair excuse to be idle. What was a birthday, anyway? You were a year older, but that was nobody else’s business. Some people were given presents, and what was the good of that if you were one step nearer to getting old? Presents would only mean something if at every birthday you got younger.

  He slithered down the bank and walked his rapid pace through the sawmill, no place without memories of Oliver which was, he supposed, why Mary Ann left the house as little as possible. He had taken her for a walk to the Rodney a fortnight ago, which she might have enjoyed if an unthinking fool hadn’t blurted out what a shame about Oliver being killed. Not that it was his fault. A year of mourning was the least you needed, so it was said, though for Mary Ann, and himself as well, it would last a lifetime.

  Coal wagons passed on the main road, huge grey Clydesdales hauling the loads. He smiled at a couple of ragged lads following in the hope of picking up dropped cobbles. At the park gates he called his surname to the man in the lodge, and went in the direction of the stables, crossing the large stretch of grass as if steering by compass, the breeze pleasant after yesterday’s mowing of the lawns.

  The great mansion on the hill – worth a glance – was built in olden times from the profits of coal. Nothing wrong with that. If he had owned the land he would have enjoyed it as well, except he’d heard that the man who’d had the Hall built had died bankrupt and miserable in London. Served him right, you could say, because extravagance never forgave.

  He should have gone the back way so that no one would see him from the terrace, but if they did, and didn’t like the sight of him, they could ring the bulls themselves, and see how far they got. Lord Middleton owned the cottage he lived in, but Burton knew he could always find another place. Mary Ann had wondered whether they ought to move, the house having so many memories of Oliver; but if they did she would have to leave them behind, so she decided to stay. In any case Oliver’s framed photograph on the wall couldn’t be moved, because when in the same room alone Mary Ann talked to him, Oliver liking to hear bits of gossip about the family, so it was clear he would always want to stay in the house he was brought up in.

  Walking across the open ground he hoped he’d get a glimpse of some of the maids, even of Lady Middleton, not to mention her daughters, if she had any, he wasn’t particular. A bit of young flesh would be pleasing, and there were plenty of bushes by the lake.

  He’d first come with his father and George at fourteen, to ring five such awkward bulls as kept them busy from dawn until dusk. At midday a maid brought a tray of mugs and a pitcher up to the brim with beer. Her arms could barely hold it, another young wench following with chunks of bread and cheese. A wet April day, they sat on bales of hay in the stable, Father smoking his pipe while he and George eyed the girls tripping oh so daintily back and forth on their duties. The three of them were so exhausted by evening that the old man, in one of his happy moods, treated them to a pint of good ale at the public house. He had drunk most of the pitcher at midday while, it seemed to George and Ernest, they had done all the work.

  He veered to the right of the Hall fair and square on its hill, and under the arch into the stable yard. He told a man besoming dung and straw from between the cobblestones to find Mr Parker and say he was wanted.

  ‘Who shall I say wants him?’

  ‘Burton. He’ll know.’ The smell of cows was healthy, or so he’d heard. A man was brushing a horse in one of the stalls, the broad arse of a placid animal visible over the half-door. If that one went mad a bar of iron at the back of a leg would drop it in no time, and it wouldn’t get up again, which would be its lookout. Oliver should never have been killed like that.

  Parker, a portly bull-tup in gaiters, moleskin waistcoat and bowler hat, strutted as if he and not Lord Middleton was gaffer of the Hall, though you couldn’t fault him for that. His eyes were bloodshot, from putting back too much of his lordship’s brandy, he supposed.

  ‘Morning, Burton.’

  Burton nodded.

  ‘I’ll show you where they are. They’re a right lot of trouble. His lordship wonders whether you’ll be able to do anything with them, because none of us can.’

  Burton wasted little breath in
his response. ‘That’s why I’m here.’ He walked to another wing of the stables and looked over the gate, his victims standing at the back where the light was dim. One sensed his presence, and turned. Burton sent a stare back, at the well-muscled young bull, the deep purple of its orbs steadily gazing as if gauging the prowess of the man. The prouder the soul the poorer the beast, because it was going to be subdued, and he trained his eyes on it, to get the measure of the contest, any satisfaction from the coming struggle more appreciated at this stage than later, when pure force blotted out all thought.

  The two bulls were young and calm, as if the world belonged to them, stocky, well-fed, and powerful, fresh enough to be confident that no one could bring them to docility. But you’ll be eating out of peoples’ hands next week, such an appraisal the most important part of Burton’s task, the weighing-up, the beginning of confidence for him and defeat for them, a long look in the hope of making them realize that there could only be one end to the contest.

  They didn’t know what was coming, yet the second animal turned, stamped, nudged the first out of the way, and took a step forward. The look wasn’t aimed at Burton, who then knew, from the arrangement of its muscled rear and legs, that this was the one he would have most trouble with, because it had already tested itself against the other and won. To tackle it after the first one, which had succumbed to the steel of its gaze, had been beaten, would take some of its heart away. It would sense its impending fall from the alarms of defeat, so Burton would warm himself up with the first, and be in more fettle to crush the disheartened second.