The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Alan Sillitoe
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ALAN SILLITOE
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
These short stories are entirely works of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
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This Harper Perennial Modern Classics edition published 2007
Previously published in paperback by Grafton 1985 (reprinted five times), by Flamingo 1993 and as a Flamingo Modern Classic 1994
First published in Great Britain by W. H. Allen & Co. Ltd 1959
Copyright © Alan Sillitoe 1959
PS Section copyright © Sarah O’Reilly 2007, except ‘A Biographical Sketch copyright © Travis Elborough 2006
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Alan Sillitoe asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007255603
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2013 ISBN: 9780007381968 Version 2017–01–12
Contents
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
The Disgrace of Jim Scarfedale
The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller
P.S. Ideas, Interviews & features …
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
As soon as I got to Borstal they made me a long-distance cross-country runner. I suppose they thought I was just the build for it because I was long and skinny for my age (and still am) and in any case I didn’t mind it much, to tell you the truth, because running had always been made much of in our family, especially running away from the police. I’ve always been a good runner, quick and with a big stride as well, the only trouble being that no matter how fast I run, and I did a very fair lick even though I do say so myself, it didn’t stop me getting caught by the cops after that bakery job.
You might think it a bit rare, having long-distance cross-country runners in Borstal, thinking that the first thing a long-distance cross-country runner would do when they set him loose at them fields and woods would be to run as far away from the place as he could get on a bellyfull of Borstal slum-gullion – but you’re wrong, and I’ll tell you why. The first thing is that them bastards over us aren’t as daft as they most of the time look, and for another thing I’m not so daft as I would look if I tried to make a break for it on my long-distance running, because to abscond and then get caught is nothing but a mug’s game, and I’m not falling for it. Cunning is what counts in this life, and even that you’ve got to use it in the slyest way you can; I’m telling you straight: they’re cunning, and I’m cunning. If only ‘them’ and ‘us’ had the same ideas we’d get on like a house on fire, but they don’t see eye to eye with us and we don’t see eye to eye with them, so that’s how it stands and how it will always stand. The one fact is that all of us are cunning, and because of this there’s no love lost between us. So the thing is that they know I won’t try to get away from them: they sit there like spiders in that crumbly manor house, perched like jumped-up jackdaws on the roof, watching out over the drives and fields like German generals from the tops of tanks. And even when I jog-trot on behind a wood and they can’t see me anymore they know my sweeping-brush head will bob along that hedge-top in an hour’s time and that I’ll report to the bloke on the gate. Because when on a raw and frosty morning I get up at five o’clock and stand shivering my belly off on the stone floor and all the rest still have another hour to snooze before the bells go, I slink downstairs through all the corridors to the big outside door with a permit running-card in my fist, I feel like the first and last man on the world, both at once, if you can believe what I’m trying to say. I feel like the first man because I’ve hardly got a stitch on and am sent against