A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  Ivy saw Burton’s leniency towards her courtship as a hope that she would marry as soon as possible, but it wasn’t so easy to get rid of her – and she knew this to be in Burton’s mind. Having fallen in love with a man who had consumption from working two decades in the tobacco factory, he was sure to die soon after they were married, in which case she would certainly come home again.

  Another thing was that if she married Ernie before he died she would lose her place at the factory, because no married woman was allowed to work there. Then if – or more likely when – Ernie died soon after the marriage, she would be a widow and out of a job as well, or at least not get such a good one again.

  Burton indeed saw these pennies moving behind the reasonably clear glass of her mind, as he rested from chopping logs by the fence and watched them go hand-in-hand towards the Cherry Orchard on Sunday afternoon to get what they could while it was possible, for it was plain that Guyler would be dead before any wedding could take place, since the salty cough he eternally carried seemed to be shredding his lungs. Ivy certainly knew how to choose them.

  They reached the huge elm whose inside had been burned out by lightning, in which two or more people could shelter from the rain. Ernie drew her close. ‘Your father never says much.’

  ‘He didn’t to any of us at home, either.’

  ‘I often wonder whether people like him have got something to hide.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘he’s as plain as a pikestaff, to me anyway.’

  He wiped his mouth after a bout of coughing that rattled every bone in his body. ‘Why don’t you like him? He’s your father, after all.’

  ‘Because he’s always been a swine to me, and to the others as well. He interferes in everything, and though he never uses bad language he can be so sarcastic that you want God to strike him dead. Still,’ and he saw her smile in the dim light, ‘God got back at him twice in his life – so far – when he took his firstborn son, and then when he knocked out his eye.’

  He pressed her hand, though couldn’t say whether he altogether liked her, but did when she leaned closer and offered her lips for a kiss.

  She thought Ernie a bit slow on the uptake when talking about other people. ‘Don’t let’s worry about that old so-and-so. We’ve got better things to do.’

  He could only agree. They left their hiding-place, whose smell of burnt ash irritated his chest, and set out for Robin’s Wood, hoping it wouldn’t rain again before they did what they longed to do.

  Brian was six when Sabina his mother first took him to Old Engine Cottages. The country footpath led through a land of wonders after the streets smelling of horse turds and melting gas tar. She held him on the parapet of the railway bridge to see a train go by, and watch the twirling spokes of the colliery head-stocks that circled so merrily he felt sick and had to be pulled down.

  She stopped at the gate to rub lipstick away. ‘Your grandad wouldn’t want to see me wearing this. Another thing is he likes to see little boys with a clean face, so be sure to have a good wash whenever you come on your own.’

  The house was an oasis of calm and plenty compared to his dole-stricken home, because Burton worked at the pit, and Thomas and Ivy paid their board. At the weekend Ernie Guyler opened a twenty packet of Player’s and gave him the cigarette card, as well as a ha’penny from the shilling packet if it came out of a machine.

  Mary Ann saw a shadow of Oliver in Brian, for his curiosity about books, and the cast of his lips on breaking into a question, or his smile on asking for something to eat.

  He sometimes stayed overnight in the same bed as his Uncle Thomas, which was no hardship because he shared one with two sisters and a brother at home. Sent upstairs at nine o’clock, he was still awake when Thomas came in at midnight whistling a tune from pub or dance hall, and having been with some woman or other (he was a great man for the ladies, Ivy said) and Brian would get a whiff of his scent, and hear the clash of silver and coppers emptying into a dish on the dressing table. Thomas smoothed the ironed handkerchief for further use, folded his trousers carefully on a clothes hanger behind the door, and Brian would feel the bed sag as his tall and handsome uncle fell in to sleep.

  After a breakfast of sausage, bacon and fried potatoes, Thomas wheeled his bike from the wash house, checked every moving part, and inflated the tyres to as hard as concrete. He rode every Sunday along the canal bank as far as Trowell selling fishing tickets for the navigation company at twopence apiece to anglers, keeping a farthing to himself for each one. The day’s takings on a warm weekend added a useful few shillings to his spending money. ‘You can come with me, if you’re a good lad.’ Brian didn’t think he had ever been anything else, as Thomas set him on the crossbar. ‘But keep your legs away from the pedals.’

  Ivy had told Brian that Thomas could neither read nor write, but he noticed that no mistakes were ever made in dealing with the clutch of blue tickets, or how much was to be deducted for each one sold. At the counting of pennies and threepenny bits back at the house Brian hoped there would be a coin for himself but, as Ivy also said – who did give him a penny now and again – Thomas was so mean (except perhaps with the women he kept on a string) that he wouldn’t give you the skin off his nose.

  Brian was always glad at not having stuck his feet in the spokes and brought them crashing onto the towpath, which possibility worried him every second, since it was difficult to keep his legs in the right position. When he got cramp he was shamed into asking his uncle to stop. He was also fearful on seeing from his high point the cliff-like brick sides of the deep locks, and wondered how he would climb out if his whistling and carefree uncle’s feet slipped on the pedals and they both went in. But the bicycle and its burdens were like feathers under Thomas, a strong man in his thirties, charging along to claim money from the next fisherman, who glowered over the water as if to become invisible and not have to part with his tuppence.

  In the garden Brian picked potatoes from their furrows and, collecting the tops, pulled them in the laden barrow to a corner where his grandfather lit a fire and left them to smoulder, a vegetable smell Brian took with him into sleep. Rotten potatoes were dumped into a compost heap within squared-off planks next to the field, a mulch taking the place of horse manure which was no longer common due to fewer horses on the road, Burton telling him that in any case thousands hadn’t come back from the war.

  When Brian scraped up shit and feathers, to leave the pigeon coop as clean as a living room, Burton, tall and straight, a finger in his waistcoat pocket, observed an eight-year-old who took care to do things well and was willing to work, probably to please him but also because he was happy to do it. He liked to see a child so absorbed, Brian not knowing that he had found a way to his grandfather’s heart.

  Whenever Burton thought to give him the reward of a penny he sorted the coin for size and feel before pulling it from his pocket, and held it under his nose. ‘Take this, Nimrod!’ Feigning a happy surprise, Brian thanked him, and ran down the lane to buy sweets.

  Burton disliked Edith’s children, those satanic offspring of Doddoe’s, because they had turned into predators like their father. On once letting three into the yard he saw how they took pleasure in tormenting the pigs, and ran about the garden not caring where they trampled. From then on if he saw them coming up the lane he waved a stick to keep them off, and watched till they had gone to do their mischief in Robin’s Wood.

  Brian would sometimes go to Old Engine Cottages along the main road, passing Oswald’s square redbricked cottage a few steps down from the pavement. He heard his cousin Howard practising the piano, random but pleasing notes tinkling in the air, sounds unconnected to any tune he knew but following him by Woodhouse and under the railway bridge, only leaving him when he got to the Burtons’ door.

  Howard was a strange grandson for Burton, and whenever off to the pub, or into Nottingham, and sometimes on his way from work, he called at the house to see Oswald, still the same dignified and handsome man, whereas Helen, with
more uncertainties in her features than he had seen on any woman, seemed to live on an island whose landscape no one could know about but herself, and he marvelled that Oswald was able to look after her as well as he did.

  Her sensitive nature had passed to Howard, and Burton was puzzled that such a delicate boy could be connected to a robust family such as his. He had shown a love for music at school, so Helen insisted they buy a piano on hire purchase, and arrange piano lessons. It had almost cost her life to give birth, and because there could be no other children he was more cherished than most. Burton hoped that as the first grandchild to bear his name he might one day do as well if not better in the world than his chance offspring in Wales.

  Brian once noted the peculiar glint in Howard’s eyes on passing him by the gate, so had no wish to become friendly, too proud to talk to him, because too sensible to be rebuffed. Howard would never be able to skim across the narrow lock gates and explore the intricate wooded paths around Brown’s Sawmills, or climb trees, or jump ditches, or explore the deeper parts of Robin’s Wood, or go with the Doddoe kids to scrump orchards and break into allotment gardens. All such activities were too rough and perilous for Howard to share, much as he might have wanted to, and probably did, for who wouldn’t? He could only watch from the parlour window as they went down the lane in a gang, Brian scruffy and uncared-for, waving a stick and seeming without the bother of having to play the piano or do such a thing as homework after school. There had to be times when Howard longed to come out and ask what he was up to, but he never did, and his enigmatic yet forlorn face at the window made Brian feel perversely glad at not offering to let him take part in whatever exciting mischief he was heading for.

  He didn’t want Howard to come, because suppose one day he avoided his mother’s vigilance and did, and joined an expedition to the woods, and in emulation of others he climbed a tree, and was so full of rapture at his achievement that on starting to come down, always the most dangerous stage (and how he would boast of it afterwards at home, to the horror of Helen, and perhaps the pride of his father) he missed his footing and crashed onto the turf twenty feet or more below? If he broke an arm or a leg, or bruised his angelic face, it would be put down as Brian’s fault, and the trouble he’d get into didn’t bear thinking about.

  Neither could he imagine Howard working in the garden with Burton and getting his shoes muddy, or passing hours at the well dropping the bucket in the water and winding it up with handle and chain to see how many he could get onto the parapet before his arms felt they were dropping off. In the garden Howard might fall and cut his knee on a stone and get blood poisoning – Brian’s heart nearly stopped at the prospect – or at the well he might lean too far over, looking at his face in the coin of water far below, and fall.

  Howard only went to the Burtons’ with his father, Helen not otherwise letting him out of sight for fear something should happen, despite Oswald’s disapproval. To send him alone down the lane and under the bridge was also unthinkable, because he might get into the company of rough kids running up and down the dead-ends of Woodhouse. School was only a few hundred yards along the main Wollaton road, so that was all right, but she was anxious when he left in the morning, and kissed him with relief when he came back.

  Burton saw it as a pity that he wasn’t allowed to run free, but Oswald seemed too frightened of Helen to tackle her on the matter, or he wanted a quiet life. Instead of insisting that she let him loose he treated her objections as if she might hang herself, or run away if he spoke too plainly. Burton wasn’t to know that Oswald didn’t like Howard to be so sheltered from the world either, and argued with Helen, though in as mild a way as possible, trying not to contradict her too directly, since she was so easily upset.

  When she took Howard to mass at St Barnabas Cathedral he always came back saying how he had liked the service, and had enjoyed talking to the priest. As far as Burton was concerned Helen’s religion was her own affair, though Mary Ann was glad to have such an unusual woman in the family, being not irreligious herself, thinking that growing up in such a pious atmosphere went well with Howard’s appearance.

  No one was to know that in the playground, or toing and froing the short distance from school, Howard, at eight years of age, entertained and enthralled his friends with stories containing the most scandalous information, which his listeners lapped up like nobody’s business, as one of his friends later related to Brian, who told nobody else in the family. He stood there, with his bright little face, coming out with things they’d hardly imagined.

  He culled such details from his parents’ quarrels, because, though Oswald had always loved Helen, he was, after all, a son of Burton, and was known to go after other women. Helen was a devout Catholic, and forgiving of a sinner, but was distressed to hear of his behaviour, nothing being secret for long in such a district.

  Tears and anguish would bring Oswald to a state of repentance, compelling him to confess infidelities in detail so that she could forgive him more thoroughly. They imagined young Howard in the kind of deep slumber that angels were thought to enjoy, but his ear was warming the wall or bedroom door, and whatever half-strangled phrase came through was used next day in a narrative for the delectation of his schoolmates.

  When Mary Ann’s relations came to stay in the summer Howard was shown off as a unique being, while Brian was told to stay at home for a few days because of the full house.

  Bill Goss, Mary Ann’s cousin, drove his wife and ageing Aunt Bee from St Neots in a Rolls-Royce. Erect at the wheel in cap and leather gloves, he took care not to scrape the car while tackling the bridge and narrow lane. The stately vehicle going by Woodhouse set tongues flapping at the thought that Burton – amused at such a daft notion – might be connected to a millionaire who would one day die and see him right.

  Thomas bedded down in the wash house, his room given, suitably aired, to Bill and his wife, while Aunt Bee slept on a sofa in the parlour. Tea and dinner services came out of glass-fronted cupboards for them to feed and drink from, Ivy and Emily washing every piece in hot water before they were used, since Mary Ann insisted on nothing but the best for her Huntingdonshire family.

  When Burton in the parlour passed the soda syphon to Bill he didn’t take whisky from the cupboard but opened a bottle of Johnny Walker that could not have been interfered with. ‘So business is good?’

  ‘When was it not?’ Bill said. ‘You work hard, and have a bit of luck now and again.’ Old Charles had started as a saddler, then taken to repairing bicycles, he reminded Burton. ‘At your wedding the old man asked you to come and work for him at St Neots.’

  ‘I saw no reason to,’ Burton responded. ‘And I still don’t.’

  Burton was set in his ways, and always would be, too attached to his district even as a young man to start somewhere else. ‘You’d have been a bit more prosperous.’

  Burton grunted. ‘I might, but money isn’t everything.’

  From bicycles the Goss’s had moved to dealing in motor cars, and bought a small filling station, earning enough for Bill to own his Rolls-Royce. ‘You’re quite right. The only time I relax is when I come up here to see you and Mary Ann.’

  ‘You’re welcome. Any time you like.’ Burton meant it, as Mary Ann would want him to. ‘In the morning we’ll go and see Oswald and Helen, and perhaps Howard will give us a tune on the piano.’

  ‘If he does we’ll take him for a spin around Nottingham. Show him the Trent.’

  He poured more drink for them both. ‘When we come back here I’ll show you the garden. I’ve put a lot of good things in this year, so you’ll have plenty to take home.’

  Curtains open, pots of geraniums nodding on the window ledge, summer light mellow outside, eight sat at table for the feast of welcome. Thomas and Ivy had wanted to go out, for a bit of courting it was supposed, but Burton said they must be in for the first dinner out of respect and politeness, for what Mary Ann, both girls, Aunt Bee and Bill’s wife had been working hard in the kitchen to pr
epare.

  On the train to St Neots’ Burton recalled his carefree journey to South Wales, when he hadn’t been encumbered with baskets of vegetables, and a cloth sack of loaves and cakes Mary Ann had baked the day before, gallantry insisting that he carry them on changing at Grantham.

  Bill waited at Peterborough, and drove them to the Great Northern Hotel for dinner, the best in that part of the country, he said, Burton replying that it needed to be, at six shillings a head.

  Accommodation was more spacious in the Goss house, nobody being put out for Burton and Mary Ann, who noted how much easier he was on such a holiday. The Goss’s were glad to see him, though amused on going out to see how he made what they regarded as the antediluvian request to Mary Ann that she walk a few paces behind.

  He agreed one afternoon to have his photograph taken, but only out of politeness, for it was a disturbance to his privacy. He was seventy, and looked it, after a lifetime of work. Though high summer in the garden, he wore a dark suit and the usual highly polished boots for the occasion. His waistcoat was fastened left over right, a vertical line of six buttons on either side, thumbs stuck into the two lower pockets joined by the watch chain, the long fingers of his gnarled hands half-bent inwards from bony wrists. The tip of a handkerchief showing from the lapel pocket of the jacket was close to the buttonhole of a small white chrysanthemum. His ‘dicky’ collar was old-fashioned even for those days, but the bow tie was perfectly arranged.

  He stood erect, confident yet unwilling to look too relaxed, the face overshadowed by his large flat cap, though sufficient features showed the sort of man he was, and had been all his life. The chin was firm and well-shaped, a small white moustache carefully clipped, lips infinitesimally apart as if to emit withering sarcasm should anyone dispute his right to any detail of the pose.