Saville Read Online Free Page B

sensing in his wife an almost mystical interpretation of what had happened, as if she saw the two boys as elements of the same being, Andrew the transgressed, the new boy a figure of atonement: the same element and spirit was in them both, like a rod put in the fire and brought out cleansed and glistening. Almost for these reasons he would attack the boy, half-joking, afraid of him being moulded, afraid of the way he cancelled the first child out. He would fight him on their walks, at the colliery site, rolling on his back while the boy grappled with his arms and legs, aroused, half-laughing, the dog barking at their heels. ‘Nay, you s’ll half-kill me,’ he said panting, the boy moving round, out of reach, his arms extended, before he made another attack. He would laugh at the boy’s strength and the strange ferocity that drove him. ‘Nay, half a chance,’ he’d tell him, rolling off, the dog barking, the boy jumping at his legs, bouncing on him, up and down, laughing. He came to a strange life the moment he was roused, so that at times it was as if Andrew were there again, calling out and shouting, the mood passing into that even stranger silence when, walking back, he’d glance down to see the face quite still and calm, the dark eyes abstracted, solemn, shadowed by a frown.

3
    The summer after the boy had started school they went away on holiday.
    Colin had never seen the sea before; Saville had told him, during the weeks before they left, about its blueness, its size; about the sand, the gulls, the boats; about light-houses, even about smugglers. He’d heard about a lodging from a man at work; his wife had written; they’d sent a deposit. The day they left he got up early to find the boy already in the kitchen, cleaninghis shoes, his clothes laid out on a chair by the empty grate, the two suitcases which they’d packed the night before already standing by the door.
    ‘You’re up early,’ he said. ‘Do you think they’ve got the train out yet? Yon engine, I think’ll be having its breakfast.’
    The boy had scarcely smiled; already there was that dull, almost sombre earnestness about him, melancholic, contained, as if it were some battle they were about to fight.
    ‘Could you do mine up as well?’ the father asked him.
    Saville got his own shoes out, then got the breakfast, his wife still making the beds upstairs.
    Later, when they set off, the boy had tried to lift the cases.
    ‘Nay, you’ll not shift those,’ the father said. From the moment the boy had finished the shoes he’d been finding jobs, clearing the grate, emptying the ashes, helping to finish the washing-up, following his mother round as she inspected all the rooms, turning off the gas, checking the taps, making sure the window catches had been fastened tightly. They bolted and locked the back door then carried the cases to the front. Saville had set them in the garden, the patch of ground between the front door and the gate, and as he locked the door and tested it, and looked up at the windows, the boy had lifted first one case then the other then, finally, gasping, had put them down.
    ‘Better let me carry those,’ Saville said. He’d laughed. He gave his wife the key. ‘Though I don’t know why we’re locking up. There’s nought in there to pinch.’
    Even then, with nothing to do but follow them, the boy’s mood had scarcely changed; he held his mother’s hand, looking over at his father, waiting impatiently, half-turned, while Saville rested, or switched the cases, trying one in one hand then the other.
    ‘We’ve enough in here for a couple of months,’ he told her. ‘I mu’n have got a handcart if I’d known they were as heavy as this.’
    It was still early. The streets were empty; the sky overhead was dark and grey. Earlier, looking out of the window, he’d said, ‘Sithee, when it sees we’re off on holiday, it’ll start to brighten.’ Yet, though they were now in the street and moving down, slowly, towards