Читать книгу A Man of his Time - Alan Sillitoe - Страница 10

Youngsters looked in the open door to see what he did, and they’re welcome to, Burton thought. They stand all clean in a row like so many sparrows on a wall, staring as if I deal with magic, and when I look up they’ve gone to a place that’ll teach them how to read and write, which they’ll learn if they’re sharp enough, though I’ve managed well without it, sometimes better than a lot of fools who think they’ve learned all there is to teach.

Still, children might end up with more magic than I did, who never went to school because my father needed me, young as I was, two more hands making a difference, so he can’t be blamed for me not knowing my letters. There weren’t as many schools built then as there are now, but you can never blame your parents for anything, and those I’ve heard in the pub who whine against them have no pride, no backbone to stand on their own feet and blame themselves.

My father gave me a trade that’s like gold, you can go anywhere with it, turn your hand to anything. There are smithies all over the place, at every pit and a lot of factories, wherever you go you’ll find one. Each village has enough work to keep more than one family, so nobody owes me anything and I owe not a penny to them.

He took a bar of iron from the mound of heat, shook and tapped the sparks away. Like Vulcan or Tubal-Cain, his arms were bare, his eyes alert and, lean and agile as he had always been, and still was at forty-eight, battered the iron to his will. The world did not exist while he made the first bend of the shoe, saw that it was clean, and brought the two prongs to the right distance apart. He drove the holes fully through, and when the shoe came steaming bright blue from the bucket and the job was finished he looked up at the ever-familiar thin smoke lanced by light and fighting its way through the solitary square window.

The forge, on a lane leading to the church at Lenton, was similar in size and structure to the one in Wales. Work never done, he set to making another, Oliver his eldest son of twenty-three standing by as his striker, a man as well trained as Burton at that age, and much like him in physique, though a trace of sensibility had blended into his features from Mary Ann, and given a more vulnerable aspect.

Oswald, the second son, tackled the bellows with the dignified attentive face of a Norman warrior at the Battle of Hastings. Talk was impossible in the swinging of arms, the clatter of hammers, and the stench of coke, explaining the taciturnity of smiths who worked for hours without speaking.

Burton took a silver snuff box from his apron pocket and tapped a small khaki mound of dust onto the back of his hand, held it under his nose, drew it sharply into one nostril and then the other. A moment’s stillness was followed by a twitch at the face signifying a violent inward sneeze rocking the system as the drug took effect, clearing his head so that for a few seconds the world showed in greater detail and more vivid colouring. At the sound of a customer leading a horse to be shod he went outside.

Oswald put the hammer his brother had used on a bench by the wall, then took tobacco from his pouch to roll a cigarette. He and Oliver had been at school till they were thirteen, so could read and write, but they feared Burton, who would be sure to remind them with his fists if a mistake was made in their work. On the other hand, should a good job be turned out, he would give no sign of satisfaction.

Glad to see the back of him, Oliver wiped his face with a rag, but went out to forestall any shout that he would be needed. A locomotive hauling coal wagons through a nearby cutting shrieked like a glutted kitehawk sighting more offal, so frightening the horse being shod that it broke free and scattered a couple of bystanders.

Burton pushed the shoeing smith aside, took the reins and brought the head close, and looked in the eyes shimmering with panic. He stroked down the grain and, drawing breath, exhaled a warmth of intimate snuff-smelling reassurance up the nostrils to calm its heart, in the way his father had shown him even as a child, who had been drilled in how to do it by his father. How many generations such knowledge had come through he didn’t think to wonder. The worst time was when lightning flashed and a horse imagined that the head of fiery light was meant for it alone. Then you had to take care and, if you could, persuade it that lightning was unavailing against animals close to Thor’s heart. Lightning might go for men, if they got in its way, but never horses, those who cared for them also immune. A higher power looked after horse and farrier, and Burton supposed that even the first blacksmith on earth didn’t know where such protection came from, though they believed in it, and that the only friend of a horse was the blacksmith who fitted its shoes and sent it well-shod to work in comfort.

No blacksmith ever harmed a horse, let alone killed one, and no horse wantonly killed a man, though many a man had been killed or injured while riding because he had done something daft, or hadn’t understood the animal. You had a feeling for horses other people didn’t have. You were born with it, and picked the rest up along the way, no horse impossible to tame, though he wouldn’t ride one, because no horse would trust him again, would smell the breath of the other horse, and think the blacksmith was sharing his favours. A horse, which will do what you want if you know how and what to tell it, would never stand for bad treatment.

Oliver knew all that was in his father’s mind as he watched him still the horse. He had often seen him do it, but the thought now came, and he felt a spurt of triumph at the knowledge, that Burton, in spite of all his experience, had an inborn ancestral fear of horses that would never leave him. He had spotted his father’s one weakness, and wondered why it had taken him so long; because he himself had never been frightened of horses, but was glad at having found a slit in Burton’s armoured covering so small it could only become apparent to a son of his in the same trade,

‘Always get the shoe off slowly,’ Burton told the shoeing smith. ‘They think you’re going to hurt them if you don’t make them think you’re doing it in their time.’

The train frightened it. It wasn’t my fault.’

‘It’s always the farrier’s fault. Learn to take care of them.’

‘I do take care.’

He stood at the door before going inside. ‘Don’t answer back. Wait till you’ve got eight young ‘uns to feed like I have, then you’ll hold the horses still.’

‘Old Burton’s a hard one,’ said the drayman whose horse it was. ‘I wouldn’t like to work for him.’

The shoeing smith looked towards the noise of hammering. ‘I’m fed up with the way he treats me.’ ‘Pack it in. Go somewhere else.’

‘I’d like to, but you work where you can. And every day there’s more motors on the road.’

‘Yeh, one day horses won’t be needed anymore.’

‘We get enough trade here,’ the shoeing smith said, ‘because Burton makes sure the work’s good. People know where to come. But he’s a hard man to be under.’

‘That’s because of the way he was brought up,’ the carter said. ‘I wouldn’t like to be one of his sons. He must have taken some stick from his own father to make him the man he is.’

‘It was his brother George who put him through the hoops. Or so I heard Burton say the other day when he was telling one of his lads off.’

‘I wonder what Burton was like when he was young?’

‘He never was young, if you ask me.’ The shoeing smith stood erect to rub his pained back. ‘Here you are. That should keep your nag going for a while.’

‘I hope so,’ the drayman said. ‘Two bob a time’s getting a bit expensive.’

Burton had so much sweat on him as he stood in the doorway it looked as if he had dipped his head in the waterbutt. He held a hand over one eye where a spark had chipped the flesh below. ‘If you can find somebody to do it for less go and trade with them. But if you do, God help your horse.’ ‘Times are hard, Burton.’

‘They always were.’ Two of his daughters came along the lane. ‘What do you want?’

Oval-faced Sabina, ten years old, shook her chestnut hair, and flushed at his sour greeting. He knew very well why they were there, because couldn’t he see the billy-cans of tea in her hand? ‘We’ve brought you your dinners.’

‘Put them down there.’

Emily set the snap tins on the bench and stepped back as if he might hit her should she get too close. Eight years old and Burton’s youngest, everyone in the family regarded her as a bit touched, being slow-witted and more unpredictable than the others, with too much willingness in her smile to please whoever she met that she was never allowed out of the house on her own. Mary Ann told Burton that while it was his right to treat the children as he thought they deserved, he was never to strike Emily since, when she misbehaved, she didn’t altogether know what she was doing. He found it easy to do as Mary Ann wished because a mere look was enough to scare Emily. He picked up the cans with no word of thanks. ‘I thought you two were at school?’

‘We’re just going,’ Sabina said.

‘Don’t be late. I’ve told you never to miss any of it. See that you don’t.’ His glare at their backs seemed to force them into the right turning. Inside the forge, his eyes roamed over the tools, materials, state of the fire. He missed nothing, but looked again as if he might have done, ever on the lookout for discrepancy, damage or misplacement. ‘Where’s the hammer you were using?’

Oliver stood. ‘It’s over there.’

‘Where’s there?’

‘On the bench.’

‘Don’t I always tell you to put the tools back in their right place when you’ve finished with them?’

‘I didn’t have time to do it.’ The veins jumped on his father’s temples, and he knew that what was coming couldn’t be avoided, the blow at his head too quick. ‘Don’t answer back,’ Burton said. ‘I don’t want to have to tell you again.’

Oliver balanced the weighty hammer as if to swing in for the kill, but didn’t much relish the vision of his body hanging from a gallows. He had long regretted having the misfortune to be Burton’s firstborn and prime competitor.

‘Put it in its proper place, and be quick about it. How shall I be able to find it if it’s not where I think it is?’

‘There won’t be anymore of that.’ But he did as he was told. ‘I’m telling you now. You aren’t going to hit me again.’

A smile shaped Burton’s lips, much of himself in Oliver from almost too long ago to be remembered, except at moments like this. He admitted that the time had come to stop the punches but, even so, he had made him one of the best young men at the trade, who in a few years would be as good a blacksmith as himself, though all you got for such effort was the insolence of being answered back. ‘I hear a horse coming along the lane, so get outside to see to it. And send Oswald in to me.’

‘We haven’t had our dinners yet.’

He softened a little, which for Oliver was far too late. ‘If you’re thirsty drink some tea from one of the cans. You can eat when things get slack. Never delay a customer longer than you have to. So do it now.’ Hunger could wait. Burton only felt thirst, a fire inside always there to be put out. He wiped sweat from his face with a large red spotted handkerchief, took a scoop of water from a bucket covered by a wooden lid, and carried it outside.

Oliver sat on the stool to get the shoe off, the lame horse’s hoof between his knees. He stroked the horse’s poll, knowing when to keep quiet as Burton held the bucket for it to drink, Oliver thinking you had to be a horse to get any kindness out of Burton.

He walked well ahead of his sons on the mile home, went into the long tunnel which carried railway lines to Ilkeston, the way narrowing between brick walls, a muddy pestilence in days of rain, hardly ever drying in summer weather, and dark enough at all times to make the girls timorous of going through on their way to Woodhouse. Beyond, the sunken lane was resplendent with elderflowers. He moved tall and upright, with the slightly swinging gait of a man on his own.

His sons were careful not to follow too close – Burton would never allow it – and came on in silence, until Oliver said: ‘One of these days I’m going to push his head into the fire.’

‘He’d have yours in first.’

He stroked the bruise on his face. ‘Not if you help me. I’m fed up with it. Ever since I was born I’ve been kicked from arse-hole to breakfasttime by him. As soon as I can, I’m off. I hate the sight of him. He’s always been like that, and always will be. He makes everybody pay for the fact that he’s alive. He’s dead ignorant. He can’t even read and write.’

‘That’s not done him much harm. Anyway, people like him live forever.’

He shredded a leaf of privet with a fingernail. ‘There’s too many of his sort around, and it’s time things changed. When he dies they’ll have to put nine padlocks on hell’s door to keep him out, for fear he’d give the place a bad name.’

Burton left them to close the latched gate, walked up the path and paused to inspect two fat porkers in their sty, poking each with a stick till they squealed through the slush out of range. Satisfied that they were lively enough for his mood, he passed the brick storehouse with its copper inside for boiling the weekly wash, and on by a smaller outbuilding divided between coal store and earth closet by whose wooden holes was a large tin of creosote to splash down and diminish the stench. The yard extended to the lane, and behind the cottage a long garden provided the family with vegetables. The first of three properties, each was brickbuilt and tile-roofed, with three bedrooms, a living room, kitchen and larder leading off, and a parlour. The cottages were well fenced and separated, which suited Burton, who never gave more than a nod to his neighbours. He left the door open, again to be closed by those behind.

The warm living room smelled comfortingly of meat, baking bread, and potatoes steaming on the wood fire. After greeting Mary Ann he washed his hands and face in the pantry. Oswald and Oliver stood not too close to do the same. ‘You’ll need to fill the buckets after you’ve had your dinners.’ He spoke as if to no one in particular, but those who would have to do it knew who was meant.

A large brass oil lamp hung by a chain above the table, taken down for cleaning once a fortnight. No one allowed to help, he and Mary Ann polished the brass till their faces could be clearly seen, and washed the shade sufficient to make the glass almost invisible, the only task of their married life performed together.

Oliver combed his hair at a mirror by the door, the trade name ‘Sandeman Sherry’ blazoned in gold letters along the bottom. To the right was a glass-fronted showcase of Burton’s prize horseshoes, and often when Oliver looked at them he recalled how at fourteen Burton had taken him to a county show near Tollerton: ‘Put your suit on tomorrow,’ he was told. ‘You’ll see a few other blacksmiths where I’m taking you.’

On their way through the city Burton allowed him half a pint at the Trip to Jerusalem, in a cool room hewn from the sandstone rock of the castle. By the time they’d done the seven miles to Tollerton he wondered whether his father had only asked him along to test his walking prowess, having trouble at times keeping up with the long stride while maintaining his respectful distance behind. But Oliver adjusted his pace and enjoyed a good day of his life, for it was the middle of May, blossom on the trees and birds happy in their heaven, and he thought how much he could love his father if only it had been allowed.

Burton stood outside the competition marquee, wilful pride preventing him going in to find out who was the winner of the Grand Horseshoe Competition. Oliver wasn’t able to understand his hanging back, but when he came close Burton said, after someone had announced him as the winner, and aware of what was puzzling his son: ‘They can come and talk to me if they want. If you’ve learned nothing else today you’ve learned that a blacksmith never goes up to others in a case like this. Now go to that table and bring me a pint of what they’re dishing out, and get yourself a cup of tea from the tent over there.’

Oliver watched his father accept the prize and handshake from the Duke of Something-or-other, merely nodding at the grandee’s words, and walking away with the five-pound note in his waistcoat pocket, and the prize horseshoe in his hand.

Mary Ann lifted the half-finished rug from her knees, gathered the coloured unused clippings into a cotton bag to get everything away from the fire. Idleness was the only sin, Burton knew, and he had never seen her idle for a moment. He felt justified in scorning others who indulged themselves, because he too had never been idle.

He sat at the large oval table, every muscle aching from his day’s work, though nobody could know and they would never be told, certainly not his sons, because he did his best to make sure they wouldn’t become as tired as himself. Still young, they would strengthen in a year or two, but it was unnecessary even to think such things, though you couldn’t stop what jumped into mind.

Mary Ann drew a pan of Yorkshire pudding and a sauceboat of gravy from the oven by the side of the grate. ‘Where’s my ale?’ Burton asked.

She brought a bottle and glass up the few steps of the pantry, one small task of the number necessary to remember, almost without thought. The potatoes she strained, new from the garden, gave off a pleasing smell of mint, as she served slices of roast lamb.

Burton looked at Oswald. ‘Use a fork with your bread to mop the gravy, not your fingers. You aren’t starving, are you?’

‘We’re hungry,’ Oliver said.

‘So am I. But it looks bad. When you’ve finished, fetch some water from the well.’

‘Do we need it?’

‘We always do.’ He turned back to Oswald. ‘Some wood wants chopping, and that’ll be your job.’

Mary Ann served herself last and, sitting on Burton’s left, saw the darkening bruise on Oliver’s cheek. ‘What happened to you?’

He smiled, always careful not to upset his mother. When Burton struck, all his strength was in it. ‘I banged into a brick wall.’

‘You’d better put some witch-hazel on it.’ She said to Burton: ‘It’s not right, hitting a grown man.’

‘He should do his work properly.’

‘But he doesn’t deserve that.’

‘It won’t happen again,’ Oliver said.

Burton’s grunt was as profound a statement as could be made at his son’s defiance. Having heard such an expressive monosyllable so many times they always knew what lay behind it, on this occasion wondering if he was about to strike out, but Oliver was ready, and decided he would be from now on.

The meal went peacefully, Burton eating to live rather than living to eat, knowing that Mary Ann’s cooking was in any case the best. The first to finish, he pulled the door open and called into the yard: ‘Thomas!’

Thomas was thirteen, none of the children allowed to call him Tom, though they did when Burton wasn’t nearby. Expecting the summons, he stood in the doorway, a swatch of thick fair hair angled towards his eyes, the third son, already up to his father’s shoulders. He had left: school before learning anything because Burton needed him now and again to help in the forge, intending to make a blacksmith out of him as well, though Ivy of the sharp tongue said Thomas was too slow to have qualified in the classroom anyway. From talking to his sisters in the yard, he now stood sullenly by.

Burton had never known them to do anything as willingly as he’d had to do. ‘Feed the pigs. Edith, help him to get the mash from the outhouse. The stuff that was made today.’

The eldest daughter, she was a vivacious seventeen-year-old with golden-blonde hair. ‘I was just going out for the evening.’

‘Do as I say.’ Seeing them start to obey, he closed the door, but as his back turned Edith gargoyled her face, then went to help Thomas.

Oliver came from the pantry with a yoke across the back of his neck, and a steel bucket in each hand. ‘When you’ve done that,’ Burton said, as if never to leave him alone, ‘you can get some coal in.’

Softly whistling, Oliver was happy to be liberated from the pall of his father, and set off along the path between chicken coops and the house wall. Passing the front door, the long garden gave off its smell of dry soil, a scent of fresh flowers, and a tang of rotting potato tops that he would later gather up. Every week he and Thomas, under Burton’s critical eye, lest they slacken on the distance or spill a drop, manoeuvred iron buckets reeking also of creosote from the outhouse to furrows indicated in the garden, and splashed it liberally about, nothing from the house being wasted. The garden gave shining red beetroot, potatoes, onions, carrots, marrows, cucumbers, lettuces and kidney beans, as well as sweet peas and mint, while raspberries, gooseberries and redcurrants made pies, puddings and jam.

The well up the slope was covered by a triangular wooden roof and, however many times Oliver had laboured to and from to get water he liked the sight of its fairy-tale shape, as depicted in books brought home as an infant from Sunday School. The vision of magical enactments at midnight, or even during daylight, summer or winter, when he wasn’t there, set him cheerfully whistling To be a Farmers Boy, letting the chain that Burton had made rattle the bucket from its roller and hit the water with a satisfying smack, before it sank and began to fill. Turning the handle, he brought up the first overflowing bucket.

All the others at work, Burton in the kitchen enjoyed his usual pinch of snuff after the evening meal, stood with back to the fire, as contented as could be after the day’s work.

‘Don’t I get any money this week?’ Mary Ann said.

‘You always have.’ He took cash from his pocket. ‘Take this sovereign.’

‘I was hoping for a bit more.’

‘Have another five bob, then. Trade’s been good.’

And that was all, though it was better than usual. She looked at the head of King George on one of the half-crowns, then put the coins into her pocket.

‘I’m off to town for a couple of hours.’ He stomped his way up the stairs to change.

Thomas was half bent over carrying a huge bucket of pig food from the wash house to the sty, Edith following with another, helped by fifteen-year-old Ivy, while Rebecca, Sabina and Emily looked on.

‘I hate the old bastard.’ Edith’s words were smothered by the shrilling pigs, smelling their supper, already at the trough, as if to start on the bare wood. Thomas drove them away with a stick, then poured in the flood of mash, bran, slops and old seed potatoes, stepping aside to avoid the rush at his trousers.

‘Don’t hit them anymore,’ Emily said. ‘I like the piggies. They’re my friends.’

‘How can you be friends with pigs?’ he jeered.

‘Well, I am. I’ve got names for both of them.’

‘And what are they, young madam?’

‘That fat one’s Lollipop, and the other’s Kidney.’

‘Percy the slaughterer’s coming up from Woodhouse soon to cut their throats,’ he said spitefully. ‘And then we’ll eat ’em.’

It was easy to make her cry. They sometimes called her Monkey Face, or Mrs Meagrim, or Dolly Dumpling, in spite of being told by Mary Ann to treat her kindly. ‘I’ll run away, then, and take them with me. We’ll go and live together in Robin’s Wood. I’ll cook their dinners and wash their faces.’

‘You like sausages and crackling and chitterlings and pork scratchings, don’t you? I’ve seen you gobbling them up when Mam wasn’t looking.’ He turned to Edith. ‘You’d better not let Burton hear you talking about him like that.’

‘Well, I do hate the old bastard. I always have. Did you see Oliver’s face? I’ve never seen such a bruise. He’s always hitting people. I’m going to leave home the minute I can.’

Thomas stroked one of the guzzling pigs. ‘And when will that be?’

Oliver came into the yard, two buckets on the yoke slopping water. He waved, and straightened his back before going into the house.

‘I’ll do it after I’m married,’ Edith said. ‘And he won’t dare touch me then. Every time I go out he tells me not to be long. And when I don’t go out he calls me in to do some work. And when I do go out I’ve always got to be back in bed by nine o’clock. I’m seventeen, and I’ve been working for four years.’

‘You stopped out till eleven the other night.’

‘Yes, and I’ll blind you if you tell Burton.’ The older girls, exploiting the inconvenience of a lavatory set apart from the house, sometimes made their way downstairs when Burton and Mary Ann were already in bed, as if to go there, then walked quietly through the gate and down the lane to see boyfriends in Woodhouse. They might not get back till midnight, but a piece of gravel at the window of their bedroom brought Sabina down to let them in. ‘The only good thing about Burton,’ Edith laughed, ‘is that he sleeps so deep an earthquake wouldn’t wake him, though if one should ever swallow him up it would be good riddance.’

‘I’ll run away from home,’ Rebecca said, ‘one of these days.’

Thomas smiled. ‘You’d soon come back.’

‘I bleddy wouldn’t.’

‘You might, if you got hungry,’ Edith said, ‘but once I go, that’ll be that. He won’t see me till after I’m married.’

‘You’re not twenty-one,’ Thomas said, ‘so he could fetch you back.’

Rebecca smoothed her long dark hair. ‘He might be glad to get shut of us.’

‘And where would you lay your head at night?’ Thomas asked. ‘Under Trent Bridge?’

‘I would if I had to.’

‘I’ll always find a bed to sleep in,’ Edith said, ‘but I shan’t say who with.’

‘You’ll get into trouble one of these days.’ Thomas took the empty buckets back to the outhouse.

They were locked in notions of what they imagined freedom to be. ‘I don’t care.’ Edith was adamant. ‘It’ll be better than staying here.’

Oliver placed the buckets under the large sink, came out of the pantry and picked up the long-handled woodsman’s axe to tackle a heap of logs by the fence at the laneside. At the noisy opening of an upstairs window they saw Burton’s face: ‘Don’t stand there. Get on with your work all of you.’

The house was small but adequate, one bedroom for the five girls, another for the three sons, and the largest for Burton and Mary Ann. There was a four-poster curtain-drawn bed, a wardrobe, and a chest of drawers with a swivel mirror above, which showed Burton putting on a laundered white shirt, a high collar, and square-ended bow tie.

Tucking the shirt into the trousers of his navy-blue suit, and fastening the thick leather belt into place, a sudden irritation took him again to the window. ‘Thomas! Get your hands out of your pockets and come in to polish my boots. The black ones. They’re in the parlour. And look sharp, or you’ll get a stick across your back.’

A few minutes were needed to arrange the correct set of the tie, and finish turning him from a blacksmith at the forge into a smartly dressed man of consequence. He fixed the watch and chain across his waistcoat with its attached couple of sovereigns, and slipped the white folded handkerchief in his lapel pocket. Down in the parlour he held his boots against the window to make sure they had a sufficient shine, then drew both on and carefully laced them up.

He went to the back of the house, the evening warm and damp with plenty of gnats, and from the garden decapitated a chrysanthemum with a small pocket knife, to adorn his button hole, thus completing the presence he wished to show. Satisfied that everyone was at their allotted tasks in the yard, he strode onto the lane, leaving the gate open.