A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘IN MEMORY OF OLIVER THE BELOVED SON OF MARY ANN AND ERNEST BURTON WHO WAS ACCIDENTALLY KILLED WHILE DOING HIS DUTY NOVEMBER 15TH 1914. LATE FARRIER SOUTH NOTTINGHAMSHIRE HUSSARS.’

  He stood by the grave, and at times Oliver was so fleshly vivid that he reached out to touch, and say a few words – before the agonizing truth came that his son was dead.

  He threw the wilting flowers against the church wall, and carried the water-filled vase back to put the daffodils in, and stood upright, no words to his sorrow, as still as a dummy inadvertently left there, to stay until rotted into the soil by rain and be even closer to whoever was so intensely mourned.

  Unwilling to go directly home, he replaced his cap and walked to the White Hart, to stand by the bar he had chatted over to Mary Ann thirty years ago. Emma Lewin, whom he had so much fancied, and who had been so good to them, was long since gone, and the landlord who gaffered in her place had ex-sergeant-major written all over his face, upright behind the pumps, potbellied and moustached, hair parted down his skull. A couple of chaps were listening to the story of his life, Burton getting little more than the end: ‘I was in the Ordnance Corps, all through the war, and swore every day that when I got out I would have a pub of my own.’

  He should run it, instead of jawing, Burton not stopping to discover how he had found the money to set himself up. Energy to wear down after his pint, he walked over the Leen and the canal, leaving houses behind, up and over the railway bridge. Far left across the meadows was the line he had travelled on to get the gloves for Mary Ann, and again for the coveted claddach ring in his attempt to mollify her after doing what no man ever should. Packed trees on the heights of Clifton were painted darkly under a clouded sky too high to threaten rain, though a shower would be welcome for a richer sniff of the grass.

  Sense told him that you couldn’t be on your own for long, but after being so close to Oliver it seemed an intrusion to hear a woman shouting: ‘Come down, you little monkey, or you’ll get your suit dirty.’ She held a bunch of flowers, and turned to the two younger women. ‘He’ll never listen,’ but laughing at her unnecessary concern.

  Alma’s dark and slender companion stylishly smoked a cigarette: ‘I don’t see why you go to that cemetery every month.’

  Burton looked across the nondescript fields, lighting a cigarette before facing an encounter impossible to avoid, recalling their stay at Matlock as if it had been last weekend. Her face was more full – plainer – not as it had come back to him since last seeing her.

  ‘I knew him,’ she retorted. ‘You don’t have to worry. He’s been dead a long time.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ the smarmy woman said.

  ‘I shall go whenever I want to,’ Alma said, ‘whatever your dislikes, dear Rachel.’

  Rachel let the spent cigarette fall from its holder. ‘I shan’t say any more.’

  Lydia hoped not, but was used to quarrels boiling up out of nothing, couldn’t understand why they shared a house when much of the time they seemed to like each other so little. In the beginning Alma had asked her to live with them, but Lydia knew that such a scheme would end in pain and turmoil, wanted in any case to stay where she was, small and dingy though her own place sometimes felt, bothering nobody and not being upset by them. The Old Age Pension was hardly enough, but she earned a few shillings dressmaking, and by looking after peoples’ children. ‘Oliver! Don’t fall into that ditch.’

  ‘I can see tadpoles.’ He kneed himself up a low tree in his neat short-trousered suit, and waved from the top: ‘I like it here. I’m the King of the Castle!’

  Burton stood by the gate, and she noted his unmistakable stance, the same long jaw and firmly-angled chin, and though he looked at least the decade older he was still placed as if he owned the earth and was the only man on it. She couldn’t think why she had given herself to him – so long ago – except there was always Oliver to remind her. I fell in love, and the villain took advantage of me, unless in a fit of juvenile madness I was the one who did that.

  His look demanded recognition, everything they had done burning in his possessive stare, irony and some humour on his lips as a hand went to the rim of his cap, and glanced the smartly clipped moustache on coming down.

  The last time she was reminded of him was on seeing a man in the Duke of Portland’s retinue at an agricultural show that Rachel had wanted to attend, who wore a large flat cap in exactly the same way. She smiled, and went forward.

  He was glad the two other women walked in different ways across the field. ‘I hardly expected to see you around here,’ he said.

  ‘I call at Oliver’s grave now and again, though I don’t often come this way, unless to let my son run about.’

  He wondered how much better she would have felt if the grave had been his. ‘It’s a wonder we didn’t meet before, or that you saw some of my family there.’

  ‘I came across Edith once.’

  ‘Who’s the lad up the tree?’

  Whatever he’d done he’d given her something to make life worthwhile, and the worst of the struggle was behind her. ‘Can’t you tell?’ she smiled.

  A twitch at the left cheek told her he could. ‘Why didn’t you let me know?’

  ‘Didn’t Edith say I was pregnant?’

  ‘She might have done.’

  ‘I didn’t want to let you know, with any of your family around. You wouldn’t have wanted that. In any case I thought it best not to bother you.’

  Pleased more than not at such consideration, he nodded towards Oliver. ‘So he’s mine?’

  ‘He can’t be anyone else’s.’

  Rachel came back, stood aside with lips sourly closed, thinking it curious that Alma could have any connection to a man who looked like an old soldier from the war before the one before. Lydia had waited a long time, till this casual meeting with such a tall impressive man showed the last piece of her puzzle coming into place. You could see from the face, and the shape of his head, that he was Oliver’s father.

  ‘Fetch him over,’ Burton said.

  ‘Oliver, come here,’ she called in her schoolteacher’s voice as if he was miles away. ‘Come here at once.’

  He ran. ‘What do you want?’

  Burton noted the blue eyes and a fair curl over his forehead, while the shape of the nose, and the lips as if about to start, whistling, reminded him of Oliver, though the lad was his right enough. He put a hand towards him: ‘Shake this.’

  ‘Why should I?’

  Burton laughed. He must be mine. ‘Do as I say.’

  The tone gave no option, and Burton took the warm hand for a moment, then turned to Alma. ‘You aren’t married?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘and I never shall be. I’ve been a teacher for five years. And this is my friend, Rachel.’

  A jaunty, intriguing woman, she wore a dark costume with a scrap of lace at the throat, picked a fleck of tobacco from small white teeth with a painted nail. He sensed the sort of woman who would never do for him, and there weren’t many he could say that about. Her reluctant hand came forward, so he offended her by a mere touch.

  ‘We share a house in Carlton,’ Alma said.

  ‘That’s why I didn’t see you.’

  ‘And this is my Aunt Lydia,’ to whom he gave the full hand, realizing that she was the one who had covered for her in Matlock, and afterwards cared for her. ‘We’re going on holiday to France next month,’ Alma told him.

  ‘I expect you’d rather go to Skegness,’ he said to Oliver.

  ‘I’ve not been there yet, so I don’t know what it’s like, do I?’ He had given up trying to understand the meaning behind all that was being said. ‘But I’ve been to Rachel’s cottage at Staithes.’

  ‘Rachel and I will be going on our own,’ Alma said, ‘and he’s to stay with Lydia.’

  ‘We’ll go into Belgium, to see my brother Charles’s grave,’ Rachel said. ‘He was killed.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

  Oliver grasped his hand. ‘Who
are you, Mister Man?’

  The boy sensed more about Burton than his name, but what a bust-up it would cause if I told him, Alma thought.

  ‘Everybody calls me Burton, so you can as well.’

  ‘He seems to know you,’ she said, not altogether liking the idea, though supposed that blood would always tell.

  ‘A year ago I could have shown him the forge.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll ever be a blacksmith.’

  ‘The trade’s finished,’ Burton said, seeing Rachel’s eyebrows go up. ‘There was none better. Both my sons have found good jobs because of it. I’ll take the little chap off your hands, while you go to the grave.’

  More an order than a request, though Rachel’s lips curled in disapproval. He’s mine, Alma thought, not yours, anyway, let him be with a man for once. ‘Would you like to walk with Burton for half an hour?’

  Oliver gripped his long legs. ‘Oh yes! That’s thirty whole minutes. Can it be thirty minutes and fifteen seconds?’

  ‘Bring him back to Lydia’s house on Park Street.’ She told the number. ‘We’ll be having tea there.’

  ‘I know where it is,’ Burton said.

  Rachel watched them striding the lane hand-in-hand. ‘Why did you let him go off with that chap?’

  She wanted to manage everything and everyone, and Alma wasn’t sure how much longer she’d care to put up with it. ‘I did it because I did.’

  Burton bent his knees, to touch Oliver’s head. ‘The Trent’s not far away.’

  ‘Oh, not that same old dreary river.’ He looked at the shapes and veins of leaves, and threw them down. ‘I’d rather go to the Amazon.’

  ‘And where might that be?’

  ‘It’s a mighty river in Brazil, with fish that eat your fingers to the bone. Not like the piddling Trent, full of minnows. Lydia often takes me there because she thinks I like it.’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘Of course not. But I tell her I do.’

  ‘You’re a real little sharpshit.’

  ‘Rachel doesn’t like swearing.’

  ‘I’ll bet she doesn’t. Shall you tell her?’ – rather hoping he would.

  ‘I don’t think so. She’d get on at me. My mother doesn’t like it, either, but we sometimes swear at school, in the playground.’

  ‘Do you learn a lot there?’

  ‘I suppose so. But I’m good at reading and writing, and geography.’

  The river was shot with cooling light, cloud lower above the ripples. He stopped by the dredger, and held out an arm, saying, ‘Pull this finger.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘It’s giving me gyp. You’ll make it better.’

  Amused yet distrustful – Burton had seen the expression on the other Oliver. The blood had done some funny twists and turns. The boy got a grip on the long bony finger. ‘You mean like this?’

  He dampened a smile. ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

  Oliver pulled, angled against the ground, face reddening at the effort. ‘I’m doing my best.’

  Burton let out a long splintering fart. George had tried the same game with him as an infant, to the amusement of all the others, while he could still be treated as a pet, and before he grew old enough to work.

  ‘Oh, you farted!’

  He took the boy’s hand. ‘You’ll be a rum lad when you grow up.’ Spits of rain fell onto Oliver’s hair, so Burton used it as a reason to end the outing. ‘We’ll go back now, or your mother will miss spoiling you.’

  ‘She doesn’t spoil me. But she’ll miss me, I bet. She always worries about me.’

  ‘That’s no good.’

  ‘That’s what I say. And then Rachel gets on to me.’

  He hurried the pace, to see if Oliver would keep up. ‘It sounds like you have two mothers, and that’s no good, either.’

  His face twisted with dislike at the idea, a more delicate boy than he looked, which was even less good. ‘You’re a fine young lad,’ he said sternly, ‘but you must never let anything like that bother you. In fact you should never let anything bother you at all.’

  ‘I shan’t. But I’m tired, Burton.’

  ‘You’ve walked a long way.’ Back among the streets he arched his back down from full height. ‘Climb up me as if I’m a lamppost.’ He had played it with Oliver and the others in their early years, recollection more than effort giving an ache at the heart. ‘You can get on my shoulders, and you’ll see as far as Brazil from there.’

  He set him squarely on, and crossed the main road towards Park Street, where he knew of a pub called the Black’s Head, good for a pint after he’d handed him back, knowing he would never see him again.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Ivy pulled her coat collar up and fastened the scarf against a cold rain-laden wind, the smell of the air clean and good. Too dark to go along the canal and through the sawmill, it was even so lonely enough on the main road after leaving the building sites and the last glow of the nightwatchman’s fire. She carried a tin of food to give Burton at Wollaton pit two miles away, because he had sent word with a collier on his way home that he would be working till midnight, and Mary Ann was not to wait up.

  Tall and strong like all the Burton daughters, she still didn’t fancy being alone in the dark, so carried the usual bag of pepper to sling in the face of anyone who might jump on her from a hedge, knowing that Mary Ann’s arcane method of defence was more to reduce anxiety than have much effect.

  A pony and trap went by, a light back and front, the crack of a whip in the dull air, creating such a clatter on its way towards Nottingham you’d think the devil himself had come out of hell for a drive to frighten people. She had been to the coalmine in daytime, but when it was dark Sabina or Emily would come with her, laughter certain to keep them safe. Tonight they had been allowed to go to the Ilkeston Road Picture Palace.

  Mary Ann told her someone had called that evening to see Burton, a tall impressive man, well-dressed and quietly polite. ‘Let your father know about it,’ she said, and Ivy repeated the message aloud every few minutes so as not to forget, and to gain courage while walking. Startled by an owl’s hoot from the marshes around Martin’s Pond, she hurried by the park walls dimly seen across the road. Perhaps the man who had called for Burton was a lost relative come back from Australia, and the family would one day come into a fortune, and he might fall in love and want to marry her, which couldn’t be, because Ernie Guyler was her sweetheart, and they would never chuck each other.

  The lit-up Admiral Rodney was noisy with boozers, horses and carts and motor cars lined up outside. She felt safer, with only another half-mile to go. She and Ernie Guyler had walked in Shepherd’s Wood last Sunday, and even though he had consumption, or maybe because of it, and knowing he might not have long to live, he was able to make her happy. And she could play her part as well in that way. People at work said you might get left on the shelf at twenty-five if you didn’t look sharp, but she didn’t worry about that, as long as she had a good time.

  Yellow and orange lights at the pit were close, and the man on the gate told her she’d find Burton in the engineering shop. ‘You can give the snap straight to him, duck.’

  She made her way between sheds and buildings, so much machinery it was surprising anyone could hear what was being said. Coal, fire and sulphur gave a smell of the inferno and, behind Burton in the wide doorway, were enough jangling noises to go with it. He glared at her, as if not wanting to be seen in a place he didn’t own, but he was only wondering whether she had brought bad news from home. ‘What do you want?’

  She put the tin forward. ‘Mam sent you some supper.’

  He wore a large leather apron, tools in hand, features even thinner in the half-light. In a sour mood, because nobody liked working till midnight, he also thought she had been put to unnecessary trouble in having to walk so far, when he could have managed without eating till the end of his work. He took the tin as if grudgingly. ‘You needn’t have bothered.’

  S
he walked the whole way back with his unappreciative words so rankling that she felt no fear, thinking she ought to have opened the paper bag and thrown the pepper in his face at getting not even a thank you and having given up her evening for the errand. Only when putting her hand to the gate latch at home did she recall the message Mary Ann had insisted that she recite, about the strange man who had come to the house. Ivy regretted her lapse because maybe Burton would have told her who he was. Then she was glad at having forgotten, laughing at the thought that it served the old devil right.

  Mary Ann waited up for him nevertheless. ‘He was a very smart young man.’ They were undressing by the curtain-drawn four-poster bed. ‘He wouldn’t say what he wanted, and I didn’t like to seem nosy and ask, but you could tell by his voice he came from Wales.’

  ‘Did he say he’d call again?’

  ‘He mentioned tomorrow evening. I had a funny turn, because he looked a bit like your brother Edward when he was young.’ He had resembled Burton more, having black hair instead of fair, but she wouldn’t say so. ‘Haven’t you any idea who it might be?’

  ‘It’s a mystery to me.’ One of his longest yawns ever signalled the end of the matter. ‘I expect it’ll be solved.’ He got into bed and was soon on his way into sleep, taking speculation to be shared with no one.

  A cup of Camp coffee in hand, he sat by the fire after his meal, while Mary Ann went to answer a firm knock at the door. ‘It’s that gentleman who came for you yesterday.’

  ‘Tell him I’ll be out directly.’ He stood before the Sandeman mirror to straighten his shirt collar, draw a hand through bristly hair, and put on a jacket and cap, to appear as neat as anyone could just back from work.

  Mary Ann was right regarding the man’s likeness to the family, for he was tall and thin-faced, hair not quite as dark as she had said, more mousy, eyes grey and lips under a similar small moustache as if about to smile. He wore a pepper-and-salt suit, with a tie and well-ironed white collar, a good quality mackintosh over his arm, brogues highly polished. The feather of his smile was momentarily curbed when Burton, weighing him up in a second, asked: ‘What is it you want?’