The Death of William Posters

by Alan Sillitoe

  He had walked since morning in a great circle, down the valley-path and across the old railway, cutting over the speckled leprous surface of a frozen stream and heading between coverts to Market Stainton. With a cold pint in him he trekked over Dog Hill, took the sloping track through fields that met the houses of High Benniworth. His eyes had sharpened and, as winter gripped, more life was evident. The faintest impress of rabbit feet vanished into a spinney. Magpies argued on a dung heap just inside a farm gate; dogs and cocks called in tune with vertical smoke going out of the chimney – life in spite of all doors closed. By Warren Hilltop, where the sun reflected shadows on the green-white landscape, a spring poured from a hedge bottom. Gulls screamed upwards – often seen no matter how bitter the weather, and always reminding him that the sea was close, only fifteen miles east of his crunching feet, a flaking, slow, raw-heaving sea of frost and desolation. Winter was in the earth like King Arthur’s sword, waiting for a hand of resolution to heave it out and set off over land and sea. He smiled at such a flamboyant impossible image, knowing he was fixed in Lincolnshire for a long time with the sort of love he had on his hands.

  In drunkenness he had spoken the truth, saying he was in love for the first time. He reminded Pat next morning that he had said this, and neither had she forgotten the night that his words had branded. Understanding of them had matured, and his drunkenness subsided by the time they got to bed. He was surprised that she hadn’t resented his coming back in such a state. He’d mistrusted her amusement at it, having expected, when phoning in advance, a retort to stay out until he was sober. Not a bit of it. She took it well. Maybe she was not as rigid as he’d often thought. She even seemed more relaxed, as if flattered at the possibility that for the first time he had revealed part of his real self to her. They drew closer together in spirit. She hadn’t even bothered to ask why he’d got drunk. Not that he knew, either, though maybe it had been so that this understanding could be reached between them. Things sometimes worked that way, though he could never imagine her admitting it, and in any case he would never get drunk again.

  They talked about Kevin, who was to come up in a week from boarding school, and stay for Christmas. ‘How are you going to explain me?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m not. I’ll simply tell him.’

  ‘Isn’t he a bit young?’

  ‘You don’t think I could lie, do you? He’s eleven. He’s old enough to know.’ They drove to Lincoln, Frank at the wheel, taking it slowly on frosty bends. Kevin had caught the express from St Pancras, then the diesel from Nottingham. It drew quietly into the long platform on time, half empty so that Frank thought it a train still to go out before the one waited for came in. He expected all trains to arrive crowded, people packed by the windows ready to disembark. Right from the beginning of childhood, railways had been life lines to him, the double attraction later on of machines travelling. A train rushing under a bridge and through a station was a serious and romantic sight, mystical and full of power over a person’s life. He had rarely taken a train, rather bus or car, because to do so would be committing himself in a way he felt hardly ready for.

  They walked along the platform. Pat wore a heavy camel coat and fur boots; Frank a thick sweater under his mackintosh, and ordinary shoes. Kevin already had his case down, stood by it till he saw them. Expecting his mother alone, it took some time to recognize her. She embraced him: ‘Hello, darling’ – and asked about his trip down.

  He was a tall, dark haired boy of eleven, had the same shape and colour eyes as his mother, though lacking their clarity. His features were similar, slightly darker, and his presence seemed more poised and careful regarding the different worlds he moved in, as if much of Pat’s one-time and far-off assurance had passed early to him – though the seeds of something like her present conflict and uncertainty loomed in his eyes. ‘I was looking out of the window all the way,’ he said, ‘watching things. Then in Nottingham I had a pie and some coffee.’ He glanced up.

  ‘I want you to meet Frank,’ she said. ‘He’s living with mummy now.’

  ‘Hello,’ Kevin said, not, as Frank observed, batting an eyelid. They walked out to the car. Frank fastened his case on the luggage rack. Pat embraced her son again. ‘Don’t you think he’s handsome?’ Frank agreed, but wondered why the boy wasn’t shy of so much fuss. He sorted out the various combinations regarding their journey back. Should Pat drive and the boy sit in front with her? Or should he take the wheel, and the two of them sit together in the back? What about her driving, and Frank sitting beside her, with the boy behind? Which would be best for the wellbeing of their time together? They couldn’t all sit in the front, and that was a fact – which was the worst of these mini cars. He laughed, to find himself blessed with so much consideration, only to wonder what the hell it mattered. Well, things do matter, he decided, pulling forward the front seat so that Pat and Kevin could get behind. But halfway to the village Kevin had to sit in front because he felt car sick.

  For the first days he was taciturn, studious, and went only once to visit Waller’s farm. Frank talked to him, spellbound him with facts and possibilities of the various machines he’d worked, discussed motor cars, and natural history which he had taken an interest in through Pat’s books and on his walks.

  The sensual monotony of their existence was broken. Kevin sat at the table for meals, and when he wasn’t telling his mother about school he either ate silently, or looked at a book while slowly dealing with food on his plate. Pat didn’t mind him reading at meals, and on this point Frank wondered whether she was spoiling him, or allowing so much freedom simply because it was good for her. Frank had the sense to treat him as another man which, in intellect if not experience, he often seemed to be. ‘I’m glad you’re here,’ Pat said, after Kevin had gone to bed. ‘Before, I think he used to be lonely, with me out on my calls so much of the time.’

  ‘He seems a good lad,’ he remarked. ‘I can’t make much of him, but then, you never can at that age.’

  ‘I often don’t like the idea of him being bandied about from one part of the country to another, yet it’s best, as things are, that he’s away at school.’ Seeing how she treated him at home, he realized that she must have worried about him a great deal when he wasn’t there, though she had kept it well concealed during the long autumn weeks.

  On his ramblings he had noticed a small plantation of firs in an isolated hump of land beyond Panton Hall – trees that were part of the estate. He set out with a trowel, circled and undermined the roots until the slender trunk sloped into his arms and he could pull it clear. Steering a return course through the backbone of the night, head bent and breathing evenly under the coarse weight of the tree, he felt happy at having made off with a piece of greenery that had sprouted from the earth, land which he considered belonged to him, but was denied by circumstances or sham legislation. He felt nothing like a thief except in the caution of his getaway, and hoped the tree would be missed in the morning – likely, since he’d all but trodden a fence down to get at it. As for being tracked, he’d walked the half mile of a nearby road, and turned across fields from there. Low cloud held back stars and moon, and no one else was out on the broad earth. The frost had broken, loam softening underfoot, a smell of soil and bracken cutting his nostrils as he breached a hedge. It seemed as if the year had doubled on its heels to bring autumn back.

  He sat down to smoke in the Lincolnshire blackness, his tree a piece of plunder towards which freedom had led him. The roots of it smelled of sap and stored-up frost, comforting soil and crushed fir-needles, the fruitful odours of a life snapped out of its accustomed earth and rut. He thought of Nancy and the children, not with shame or anguish, simply saw them for a moment in front of his eyes. Memories made him uneasy, helped him over the long stretches of field bearing his tree, but he wanted to be further away from them, felt as if tied by the ankle and barely hovering beyond the darkness of their confines – whereas a thousand miles might make him feel as if the whole complex recollecti
on had been worth abandoning.

  They were surprised to see him pulling the tree through the back door. ‘Here’s a good-looking conifer for the Christmas pot.’

  ‘What a robust specimen,’ Kevin exclaimed. Pat came in from cleaning the kitchen, and asked with a cold glance: ‘Where did you get it?’

  He weighed up her disapproval, and said for Kevin’s sake: ‘Panton village. I met a man in a pub last week and told him to put one by for me. I paid ten bob for it. Cost a pound in Lincoln.’

  He trimmed it, and Kevin helped him gather soil and fix it in a large earthen pot – which they stood in a corner of the dining-room because Pat hinted strongly that it would spoil the furnished perfection of the lounge.

  When Kevin was in bed she demanded: ‘Well, where did you get it?’

  ‘I dug it up. You don’t think I’d buy a thing like this when there are so many around?’

  ‘No, I don’t. But don’t bring anything else that’s stolen into this house. And don’t tell Kevin where you got it. Not that he doesn’t suspect already.’

  The tree framed him, two trees, his own foliage gone deep within. She would certainly never see it, only the mirror of his grey eyes beating back her inquisition. It was the sort of strength she hated in a man, features as if they had been set for generations, fixed like stone that had somehow learned to move. ‘Kevin’s got a head on his shoulders,’ he said, amused that she should control her anger and not come right out with it.

  ‘It’s a good job he has, otherwise he might mention the tree to someone who’ll hear that one is missing from Panton Hall – to Waller, for example. You still have your city ways: they only have to miss a pound of apples around here and it’s the talk for weeks. Next time, have a head on your shoulders and don’t rely on Kevin having one. I want him to be honest, as well as intelligent.’

  How could you argue with a woman who was worrying about her kid? Especially when he’d tried to do them a favour. There was no love for him that night.

  But on other nights during the holiday their love was more silently rapturous. Her son was in the room across the landing, and this was all he could put it down to. She folded Frank with her warm arms and slender legs, slept naked with him, in spite of the winter, which she had not done before. Her face changed for love in the moments before the light went out, softened in the frame of her outspread reddening hair. He kissed her lips, and flower-blue eyes that wouldn’t close until he touched the light switch. The strong love, the unique tenderness felt when looking at her, compounded itself when he thought back to her anger, seeing how his love had drawn her out of it, and even without him knowing had transformed them both. They had to be quieter with someone else in the house, and maybe this gave their love that slow-motion, secretive bitter-sweet ritual under quilt and blankets that sent through them such all-flooding passion. Unable to cry out with pleasure they bore it within themselves, touched by its sensual echoes long after the first violent spasms, until they were still and separated, pulled down by some irresistible force into an enclosed boat of sleep and left to drift in a black and dreamless sea.

  Such intensities subdued them during the days that followed. Waking up, Frank felt he had been wrenched by a claw-hammer out of a week’s sleep. But he was downstairs before Pat, often while it was still dark. A lorry had dropped off a load of trunks, and he’d set up the horse by the back door, got to work in the bleak air with jacket loose, drawing back the teeth that he’d filed one by one to sharpness so that his rhythm caused streaks of sawdust to mark the asphalt, and created a log-pile by the kitchen wall. At eight he filled the house with a smell of bacon, took breakfast up. They talked, and he watched her put on her clothes as if, he thought, they belonged to someone else, looking at each item as if she’d never seen it before, examining it for cleanliness rather than colour or style. ‘You were up early.’

  ‘I felt like it. I always do after the sort of love we did last night. It turns me into a new man.’

  ‘I’m glad of that,’ she laughed. Sometimes when the phone snapped her out of bed she dressed in a few minutes, ruthlessly. He hated the noise of it, had used one rarely enough in his life to know he would never sound otherwise than a hung-over aborigine when forced to listen and make words at it. Her self-possession when called to it at certain moments never stopped surprising, and, in a way, pleasing him.

  She pulled on her long woollen underwear, and fastened her brassiere – something which he considered her breasts could well live without. Occasionally she left it off, and he would kiss her from behind, his hands roaming the nakedness under her sweater. ‘I thought I’d get the bus today into Louth,’ he said. ‘Buy some things we need.’

  ‘Take Kevin if you would.’

  ‘I was going to. You know, love, I’ve been wondering if it wouldn’t be better for him to live here all the year round.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it, too. But I’m not sure he’s not better off at school. He’s settled there now, and likes it. Apart from that, his father wants him at school, and I’m afraid he has the final say. You see, I was the guilty woman who abandoned my husband and child.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, with a hollow laugh, ‘you can always rely on a society of equals taking it out on the women.’ He thought she was making this up as an excuse, on the assumption that if they all settled happily together he’d go off one day and leave them high and dry, murder their bloody happiness. She must have had a few knocks in her life if she imagines that. He couldn’t tell her all this, but he put his arms around her. ‘I’m with you for good, love, you know that, don’t you?’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘Don’t smile. It means you’re not sure.’

  ‘If I didn’t smile I’d be lying.’ Her lips hardened, ends pointing downward, a sign of boiling sands beneath. ‘What do you want me to say?’

  ‘I want to believe that you feel sure about me,’ he answered, standing by the window, his back to her.

  ‘That’s up to you then, as well.’

  ‘I know.’ He turned, and she was already dressed: a heavy brown sweater, skirt, thick stockings and shoes. ‘You think I don’t know it? But it seems easier for me to feel sure.’

  ‘We’ll have to wait and see whether it does.’

  He felt as if an axe had chipped through to the ashes in his stomach. Her eyes rounded, but she wasn’t smiling: ‘That shouldn’t have sounded as hard as it did.’

  ‘I’m able to wait and see whether it does, whether you’re sure of me.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

  He turned on her: ‘That’s the trouble. We love each other. It’s too easy to say. Maybe we only think we do, which would be better as far as I’m concerned, because there’d be some hope for us of a real love then. There’s too much missing still. In the last few months I’ve had my guts ripped out and put back again. After last night I can’t stand to look at anything. I can’t think at all.’

  Tears were falling: ‘What are you trying to do to me? To get from me?’

  It was an effort to stay calm, and embrace her: ‘It’s what I want to give you,’ he whispered. ‘We’re trying to make something here.’

  She grew quiet and they went downstairs.

  The days were short, occasional sun. Frost would have been better, for mostly it rained out of low cloud that swirled as mist along rolling tops of the hills. Bare hedges and trees were laden with it, and the garden was waterlogged, spreading a heavy permeating smell of rain and soil and soaked wood. It was an odour Frank liked: every sight and tang of the countryside emphasized his complete limb-rip from the past, stamped his isolation from it even more than living with Pat. He stood at the end of the garden; watching far-off house-roofs wilting under rain.

  One morning they stayed late in bed, a rare happening, and Kevin tapped at the door with a tray of breakfast he’d made. ‘Just a moment,’ Pat answered, reaching for a nightdress. Frank got into pyjamas, and all three ate a relaxed easy breakfast in the
room.

  After lunch, shadows drew in, leavened by silence. Frank kept lights burning all day, closed the blinds before night had time to thicken. Pat hated the winter. It made her work a double burden, depressed her with its dragging timelessness. Kevin was sent to bed at ten, so they sat in the lounge reading, a logfire scorching the small room, hissing and spitting as sap rolled into the flame.

  One morning early they went for a walk. It was a winter’s day, the blue dazzling snowless heart of winter in high Lincolnshire. Kevin had stayed at the cottage and tuned in to French lessons on a set of records his father had found one year at the Portobello market. It was winter only because it was cold, air chipping like invisible scraps of steel at the dead flesh of the face. They stepped quickly along the southward lane, through fields of frosty grass, as if they were going somewhere. ‘I hate to stay still,’ Frank said. ‘There’s no work on days like this so I feel good to be walking.’

  She grasped his hand, as if they had much to say to each other, but which her vanity had decided was unnecessary: ‘It’s a change to get away from the house and be alone like this.’ They climbed the sloping hillside of loam, a hard hour’s walk, edging slowly towards the top line that separated them from the touching sky.

  The crest was gradual, shaved off, but suddenly there was nothing between them and the deep mist of the sky. The only sound that the world gave was that of their breathing. Up here, there was nothing else. They stood still: animals were underground, birds dead or far away, no roads, people, houses, nothing to make noise. Such uplands were a world on their own, not high, but isolated by the North Sea, the Fens and marshes, the Humber, and the subtle snakiness of the grey Trent that needed wide lowlands to breed and flood in to the west. Hamlets were half lost in frosty air. The rim of blue haze on the horizon was the pink of spring flowers, campion petals, premonitions of cuckoo spit and primroses, soft grass and tadpoles. The land was a whitened waste, copses and woods like dropped hoods set down to cover something special until spring, isolated farms and cottages hard to see but for minute darkenings of chimney-smoke. The hard breath of their climb subsided, until it could only be heard to each separated self; then they became aware of it, and it decreased again until they were as silent as the bitter unobtrusive air-touching hands and faces.