Saturday Night and Sunday Morning

by Alan Sillitoe

  ‘Cheerful, aren’t you? What makes you think so?’

  ‘All this talk about war.’

  ‘It’s only talk. It don’t mean a thing,’ she said.

  ‘As long as it don’t start before tomorrow night, that’s all I care.’

  She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Men, they’re all the same. It’s easy to see you work in a big factory. You’re dead sharp. I suppose you talk all day to the women?’

  ‘That’s what you think. I’ve got too much wok to do.’

  ‘Well, I believe you, but thousands wouldn’t.’

  The clock-hand crept towards five minutes to ten. ‘What’s on the pictures tomorrow? Owt good?’

  ‘I thought you said you went a lot to the Granby?’ she asked sharply. ‘You always know what’s coming on next because they show you the trailers.’

  Trapped. ‘I know,’ he said, ‘but I never take that much notice. I forget it as soon as I come out. I have a rotten memory. I even forget the picture unless it’s a real smasher, with Boris Karloff or somebody like that. I must have seen thousands of pictures, like everybody else, but I’ll bet I can’t remember half a dozen. I remember “Henry the Fifth” and I saw it years ago, but that’s only because I saw it about six times. I read that long speech he does on his hoss before the fight. It’s in my brother’s book.’

  ‘Can you say it then?’

  Some of it. Certain phrases came in the king’s loud voice, but he could not speak them. For any man this day that shed his blood with me shall be my brother … shall in their flowing cups be freshly remembered … his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse … I would not die … old men forget … that fought with us upon St Crispin’s day … His fingers forgot the jar handle for a moment, and he stood up as if to hear better once more the destructive flight of arrows at Agincourt, the noise of two hosts destroying each other in a colourful slaughter, risking an arm and a leg for promises of loot and fire.

  ‘I’ve forgot it. It’s too long. But if you want it I’ll copy it from our Sam’s book.’

  ‘No, don’t take all that trouble. I think Laurence Olivier’s a good actor, don’t you? He’s handsome. He reminds me of a lad I once knew, who worked in our office.’

  The woman put the towels on, shouting; ‘Time! Time, please, everybody!’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night then, duck,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. At seven. And be there. Don’t let me down.’

  The lights began flickering off and on to hurry them out.

  ‘Don’t say things like that. I’ll be there.’ Doreen’s mother was calling to her. ‘So long, then.’

  ‘Cheerio, see you tomorrow.’

  I’ve clicked, he said, stepping on to the pavement; I’ve clicked — walking down the street, back towards the Match. People were forming bus queues from emptying pubs, each queue the flickering tadpole tail of a weekend. Time marches on, he thought. Before we know where we are Goose Fair will be here, with dark nights and a stone-cold winter, and everybody filling their Christmas clubs for chocolates, pork pies, and booze. I’ll be twenty-three in December. An old man soon. Turning by the church, he saw Winnie walking alone along Woolworth’s darkened window.

  ‘I thought you’d gone to bed?’ she said when he caught up with her.

  ‘I changed my mind. Where’s Brenda?’

  ‘She got fed-up and went home.’

  He detected the lie. ‘Who did she go home with?’

  ‘It’s as true as I stand here,’ she cried, stopping to give force to her lie. ‘She got a splitting headache and took a bus home.’

  ‘If she wants to play that sort of game,’ he said, pulling her into the wall so that people could pass, ‘I won’t stop her, but one day she’ll find it won’t pay, and you can tell her that from me.’

  Winnie glared at him with coal-black eyes. ‘You’re too bloody clever, that’s what’s wrong with you.’

  They walked on, and he placed an arm around her waist. ‘Now then, Gypsy, it ain’t your worry, so don’t get mad.’ He decided that his chances of spending the night with her would be better if they didn’t take a bus. His supposition that a bright ending was after all possible for his tumultuous day seemed reasonable when she squeezed his forearm affectionately. That morning he had been in Shrewsbury, and a quick review of the day and evening passed through his mind, flickering lantern-slides of cityscape, country, and sky, smells of railway stations and train-smoke, replaced by bus fumes and beer-smells, and promising now the odours of a woman’s body and bedroom to crown the end of a mobile and passionate day. As he walked silently up the hill towards Winnie’s he hoped Doreen would not forget her date with him tomorrow night, that she would not keep him waiting too long at the cinema. His opinion of Nottingham women had changed slightly. Of course they were gold-diggers, he told himself, but more often than not they were of the right stuff, and you could usually get what you wanted if you were careful and went out of your way sufficiently to pick the right sort of woman.

  11

  Doreen, at nineteen, was afraid of being ‘left on the shelf’. Her married, engaged, or otherwise firmly attached friends at the hairnet factory had teased her for not yet having a boyfriend, but since meeting Arthur she was able to talk about her ‘young man’ with the rest of them, her oval face smiling as she extolled his attributes of kindness and generosity, affection and industry. She created his image: a tall young man of the world, nearly twenty-three and already a long way past his military service, a man who had been a good soldier and who was now a good worker because he was earning fourteen pounds a week on piecework. He would also make a good husband, there being no doubt of this because above all he was kind and attentive. What’s more, he was good-looking, was tall, thin, had fair hair. What girl wouldn’t be happy with a man like that? Also, she affirmed, he loved her, and, as far as she could tell, she loved him. Sitting with the women and girls over a canteen lunch she told them of how, on their first date, a youth had shouted an unpleasant word at her, and Arthur had turned back and nearly flattened him against a wall. But the women maintained that although Doreen may have a young man, she was not yet engaged, and that was what mattered. For a young man could flit away one fine night and never be heard of again, while if you were engaged he would think twice about it. To have a young man was all very well, but it didn’t mean, not by a long chalk, that you were going to be married. Doreen said that it did, and revived Arthur’s portrait afresh for them each day, until they reluctantly admitted that, even if she wasn’t properly engaged, she at least had a very regular young man.

  Arthur’s view was altogether different. A month passed since their first meeting — nights were darker, longer, colder, and were fast drawing on to Goose Fair — and he had seen her only three times — at the cinema. He liked the thought of going out with an unattached girl, but since she had told him more than once on the back row of the Granby to keep his hands to himself, and had not yet taken him into her home, he had no desire to see her more than once a week. He did not deny that she was nice, that, from as far as she had permitted his sly hands to roam during long good-night kisses, she was beautiful, but he did not want to begin a courtship, while Doreen obviously did. She was a sharp one and knew how to laugh, he told himself, and he liked walking by her side with no fear of being chased by two big swaddies for his trouble, but he realized that, by going out with a single girl he may one day — unwittingly and of course disastrously — find himself on the dizzy and undesired brink of the hell that older men called marriage, an even more unattractive prospect than coming one day face to face with some husband’s irate and poised fist. It was a pity, he thought, that you always had to choose between two or more evils.

  He did not see Doreen often, because his weeks and weekends were divided between Brenda and Winnie. It occurred to him later that he should have kept to the safe and rosy path with Doreen, but the pleasure and danger of having two married women had been too sweet to resist. He pondered a gr
eat deal on Brenda and Winnie as he spun and thrust and pulled at the life of his lathe. Like the tool and stops before him he played off one woman against the other, taking Winnie to the Langham and Brenda to the Rose, and wondering all the time how long it was going to last. Winnie knew all about Brenda and called him a dirty dog and a naughty boy, but Brenda had never the agile mind to twig that he was whiling the days between times away with her sister. It was a dark life and a dark deed, and his darkest thoughts revolved upon the possibility of a clash with the swaddies. But his capacity for discretion had deepened, and so far the tight-rope neither sagged nor weakened nor even threatened to throw him off balance.

  * * *

  He stepped out of the drizzling rain and stood with his back to a glass-case of Technicolor stills, looking across the road for signs of Doreen. The wet highway was bordered by new pink-walled houses that gave an even gloomier appearance than the black dwellings of Radford. He turned back to the stills: a war picture and a funny picture, Korea and slapstick, first the marines having a tough time of it in a dive-bombed ravine, then Abbot and Costello chased by murderers through a thousand laughs to the common ruin of happiness; everyone finally making for the doors to the tune of God Save the Queen.

  It was a few days prior to the big Goose Fair, a week before the Lord Mayor’s opening speech, and huge trailers loaded with complicated roundabout components and Dodgem cars rumbled into the city from all over the Midlands, converging on a large open tract of field near the city centre. Goose Fair was the great time of the year, the one place when you met people you hadn’t seen for years. It was also a tradition that every young man took his young lady there, and for the past fortnight traditional Doreen had been trying to divine whether or not Arthur would ask her to go. He suspected this, but his promise to Winnie and Brenda was of such long standing that it could not be broken even if he wished to do so which he did not.

  She rounded a corner, crossed the road, and waved an arm encased in a plastic mac. ‘I was late for my tea, I’m sorry I kept you waiting.’ She showed her white teeth in a smile, struggled out of her mac and coat, and, as Arthur stood at the paybox they seemed like a loving and long-engaged couple only kept back from marriage by the housing shortage.

  At ten o’clock they took a long walk back to her house, by the boulevard that bordered the estate (Arthur remembered seeing an aerial photo of it: a giant web of roads, avenues, and crescents, with a school like a black spider lurking in the middle). They passed the stationary chip-van and bought a packet of hot chips smelling of vinegar and salt. Doreen mentioned the Goose Fair: ‘I went for a walk on Forest yesterday and they’d already got a lot of the roundabouts up.’

  ‘Have they?’ he said, as if he had never heard of the fair.

  ‘I saw some trailers as well,’ she added, ‘going over Bobber’s Mill Bridge.’

  ‘I got lost on Goose Fair when I was a kid of six,’ he said. ‘I had a lot of fun though, because I went on all the roundabouts for nowt. About eleven o’clock I started to cry, and when I saw a copper I towd him I was lost, and so he took me to Norwood police station. They gave me cakes and cups of tea because I was hungry, and when I’d had my fill I told ‘em where I lived, and then they drove me home in a police van. I can still remember how good the cakes tasted. I must have been a crazy bogger, even then, because I pretended I didn’t know where I lived till they’d fed me. Coppers are all right when it comes to a thing like that, but they worn’t so good to my cousin, because he once robbed nearly every gas and electric meter in one street, and when they caught him they hit him to try and mek him tell ‘em where he’d hid the money. But it was already spent. He got sent to Borstal for that, and when he came home on holiday everybody asked him if he still worked for the gas company, and where was his little brown cash-bag and his peaked-cap.’ He screwed his chip paper into a tight ball and sent it rolling along the gutter.

  She made no comment, and they walked for some minutes in silence. He knew she wanted him to speak first. As at other times, when faced with making a decision against his own good, he felt that his back was to the wall. She also threw her chip paper forcefully down, and took his arm.

  ‘Are you going to the Goose Fair this year?’ he asked at last, on the last avenue before the crescent where she lived.

  ‘I expect so,’ she replied tersely. ‘I usually go.’

  ‘So do I, though I don’t think much to it. You ride on roundabouts till you’re sick. It ain’t much fun.’

  ‘Some people like it,’ she said sharply. ‘Thousands of them.’

  The fair lasted three days, and Saturday was the best night, when he had promised to take Winnie and Brenda. It was also the night when Doreen expected him to take her.

  ‘Will you come to the fair with me, then?’ he asked in a relenting and considerate voice.

  She squeezed his arm with affection. ‘That’d be lovely, duck.’

  ‘I’ll take you on Friday,’ he went on. ‘I like Friday night better than any other because there aren’t so many people as Sat’day. In any case I can’t take you on Sat’day because I promised I’d go to Worksop with my mate. He’s got a motorbike and I’m goin’ pillion.’ Her hand stiffened. What does she think I am? he wondered. Does she think we’re engaged or summat, and that I’ve got to tek her?

  ‘I can’t come on Friday,’ she said. ‘I promised to go and see my sister. She’ll be having her baby in a month, and I go every Friday night to help with the house.’

  Story for story, blow for blow. ‘That’s hard lines,’ he said. ‘I was hopin’ I could tek yer. What about Thursday then?’

  ‘It’s not a good night,’ she said. ‘The fair’s just got started. But I don’t want to put you to any trouble.’

  As if she hadn’t been sarcastic he went on: ‘That’s all right. You won’t put me to any trouble.’

  They came to the gate of her house. ‘I can’t stay out long. I’ve got to go in and wash my hair.’

  ‘What time shall I see you on Thursday then?’

  He heard the disappointment in her voice: ‘Half-past seven at the corner of Gregory Boulevard?’ She reasoned that perhaps Thursday wouldn’t be too bad, being bound to meet at least some of her friends from work and be seen arm-in-arm with her young man. Had he taken her on Saturday though, she would have been seen by everyone. There was only one good-night kiss for him that night.

  He met Winnie and Brenda on Saturday at the place and time he stipulated for Doreen two days earlier. Brenda on his right arm and Winnie on his left they walked towards the fire-lake of the fair, dressed in their best despite the maxim saying: Wear old things on such nights so that fish, chips, candy-floss, brandy-snap, and winkle-stains would not matter. Jack had stayed in to do the pools, check the union dues and enter them in his ledger, Brenda said.

  The fair lights were a sheet of pale coruscating orange obliterating the darkness. Crowds were thick along the pavement, moving in uneven intermingling streams to and from the tents and roundabouts. Children clutched Donald Duck balloons, women and girls wore paper sailor-hats saying: ‘Kiss me quick’ or ‘You’ve had it’; others hugged train-sets and china dogs won at hoop-la and darts. The pungent air smoked brandy-snap and vinegar. They heard the thumping pistons of red-painted engines that gave power to Caterpillars and Noah’s Arks, and distant screams came down at them from the tower of Helter Skelter and the topmost arc of the Big Wheel, noise and lights a magnetized swamp sucking people into it for miles around.

  He dragged his women along, stopped to buy a ‘Kiss me quick’ hat for Winnie and ‘You’ve had it’ hat for Brenda, and as they swung in through the entrance he narrowly missed castration on the steel post invisible in the crush of people. Winnie held his coat-tail so that she would not be lost, screaming: ‘Where shall we go first?’

  ‘Just foller me,’ he bellowed.

  Brenda shouted: ‘I’ve lost my hat.’

  ‘Leave it then,’ he answered. ‘I’ll buy you another.’

  She
pressed it down with her hand. ‘No I haven’t.’

  Music was sweet from the Bobby Horses, a circular up-and-down movement shaking along to captivating organ music. ‘The horses,’ Winnie yelled. ‘I want a bob on the horses.’

  ‘They’re stopping,’ Brenda said. ‘Let’s get on quick’ — she lifted her skirt and Arthur pushed her from behind, pulling Winnie after him who, when on a horse, sat clutching her paper-hat.

  ‘An old-age pensioners roundabout,’ Arthur shouted. ‘Wait till we’re on the rocket.’ When the horses rose they saw over the heads of the crowd, a mixing ground of grown-ups and children.

  On a slow advance towards the centre they mounted the Caterpillar, and when the hoods covered them in darkness Arthur kissed first Brenda and then Winnie so that when the canvas slid back and let the stars look in at them, both were laughing loudly and blushing from Arthur’s passionate caresses, struggling away from his righteous and powerful arms. Not like being with Doreen, he thought, who had watched his step every minute of the way on Thursday, giving no great fun to gladden the heart, and stopping to talk for half an hour to that daft pal from her workplace.

  ‘Try our luck,’ Winnie said. ‘Let’s roll pennies and win a quid.’ Winnie let them fall from the wooden slot over numbered squares in rapid fire and lost five bob in as many minutes, while Brenda aimed well but did no better. Arthur rolled them down slowly yet without aim and won simply because he kept shouting loudly that he was born lucky. Brenda’s judgement prevailed and they came away two shillings on the right side, buying brandy-snap and starting a slow crawl of the side-shows sucking a brown tasty stick. They were turned out of the zoo when Arthur tried to throw Winnie to a pair of half-dead pythons coiled up in sleep. ‘You’d mek a good meal,’ he said as she struggled in his arms. ‘They look as though they ain’t bin fed since Christmas, the poor boggers.’

  The keeper chased them down the steps waving a whip over their heads. At a darts stall Brenda won an ornamental plate. ‘That’s what comes of having done so much practice at the club last year,’ Winnie said knowingly. ‘You should be able to win sommat as well, Arthur.’