A Man of his Time. Alan Sillitoe
a full-busted young woman with fair skin and a fringe of dark hair across her forehead, a retroussé nose but a well-shaped purposeful mouth, came from across the lane. ‘I saw you, but couldn’t believe it was true. You said you were a blacksmith, but didn’t tell me this was where you worked. I happened to be passing.’
He led her into a place she hadn’t been in before, and wiped the bench with a piece of rag for her to sit, though she preferred not to. He intended to kiss her, but she stood aside. ‘I’ve seen your sisters at Sunday School. They’re always well-behaved.’
‘Unlike me, I suppose. But that’s because I told them to be. We all went there because Mother and Father insisted on it.’
‘We need whoever we can get. I wish every child would come.’ Oswald called that a horse and cart was on its way. ‘I’ll be going, then,’ she said.
‘Don’t you want to see us at our work?’
‘I’d like to, but my Aunt Lydia’s not well, and she lives on her own, so I call now and again. She’s my father’s sister, but they don’t get on, and I try to make up for it.’
The carter pointed with his lit pipe to the horse. ‘Can you put a shoe on this awkward bogger?’
‘I’ll have none of your swearing.’ Oliver caught Burton’s sharp tone behind his, but considered it justified. ‘You can go somewhere else if there’s to be any of that.’
The man laughed. ‘I don’t know if the horse would get that far, it’s such a wayward nag. But I’m sorry I cursed, miss.’ He turned to Oliver. ‘He’s gone fair lame.’
Alma coughed from the dust and fumes of the forge. ‘Shall we meet soon?’
‘What about Sunday? I’m not free till then.’
She nodded. ‘I’d like that,’ and went on her way, Oliver watching for a moment before turning to the carter. ‘Now let’s see what can be done for your old crock.’
Burton was glad to see so few in the Crown, not more than a couple of men who had left their wagons by the kerb. Florence was distracted. Well, she would be. She always was. There was only one thing that could bring her back into herself, but by the look of her he could tell she was wondering whether or not she’d had enough of him.
He was halfway through the pint he allowed himself at midday. ‘Is it your husband you’re frightened of?’
‘It’s not that so much. He might murder me, but apart from that I don’t think he’d care one way or the other. The thing is, he’s leaving his job, and we’ll have to live in Chesterfield.’
‘What does he want to go to a place like that for?’
She might be daft enough to think her husband didn’t care, but he surmised otherwise. Yet you could never be sure of anything. She might be using the assumption that he did know what they were up to because she was fed up and wanted to pack the business in with him, though if her husband did know then maybe he wanted to get out of it because he couldn’t stand and fight like a man for a woman worth fighting for. Let him try, though he wouldn’t like Mary Ann to hear of it.
‘His brother’s in business at Chesterfield,’ she went on.
‘Get him to stay here.’
‘I don’t know as I can,’ her tone implying she might not want to. ‘He’s set on it, anyway.’
He leaned closer, a hand on hers. ‘I’m sure you can if you want to. He sounds the sort who will listen.’
The glitter of desire came into her brown eyes. ‘Is that what you’d like?’
He was irritated by her emotional scheming. It wasn’t up to him to make up his mind. She must come to him, and if she didn’t she wasn’t worth having. ‘It only matters if you want it to.’
She was looking beyond him, and he saw Mary Ann’s reflection in the mirror, between liquor bottles on the shelf. Uneasy at the apparition he turned back to Florence, as if to go on talking would prove innocence. ‘Don’t let her bother you.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Some woman or other. I’d be sorry to lose you. I think a lot of you.’
‘You ought to show it a bit more.’
‘I don’t often see you, in that way. But I always want to. Life is hard for everybody. We’ll have to see what can be done.’
Mary Ann had witnessed all she needed. Pale, blood pulsing in every vein, she pulled at his arm. ‘I was told you weren’t at work, but I knew where to find you.’
He pushed her away, to finish his drink. Dignity was the dearest thing in the world, and he was shaken that she had come into the pub and dared to make a fuss. Florence realized who she was, and stood away with shame and sorrow at what she had become part of, and at what she felt to be her fault. Burton had courted her for weeks before she gave in, though she too had wanted him. And now this. She should have known it would happen.
The few drinkers looked on, as Mary Ann went for him. Nobody had tackled Burton in that way before, and it was extraordinary to witness. ‘You’ve got eight kids to keep,’ she said, ‘and you’re doing it on me with her.’
Words were wrenched out of him. ‘We were talking.’
‘I don’t believe it. You think I’m a fool? I know what’s going on.’ She seemed about to strike him. ‘Come back to your work. No wonder you give me hardly enough to keep the house going, carrying on with a trollop like that.’ She took a piece of paper from her pocket, held it before his face so as to give him time to recognize their marriage lines, and threw it in two pieces on the bar. ‘That’s what I think of you!’
He flushed with shame and rage. ‘Go home.’
‘Only if you come with me.’
As a master blacksmith and man of the house, philanderer and favoured customer at the pub, something had to be done to counter this violation of his dignity, and in such a way that it would never happen again. Such an affront had never been dreamed of, and caused a ripple at the temples fit to burst his head. He gripped her arm and walked her to the door. ‘Get off home,’ and pushed her into the street.
In the silence he dared whoever looked on to deny that what he had done was anything but just. None could. They would have done the same. Or the worst of them would. He wasn’t finished with Florence. ‘Don’t worry about that little set-to. We’ll meet in the woods tomorrow evening.’
She handed him the two halves of the marriage certificate. ‘You’d better have this, and see if you can put it together again.’
‘That’s cold.’ But he took it.
‘I shan’t see you anymore.’
‘Don’t say that. Wait for me. I’ll be back.’ A few strides took him outside.
‘His poor bloody wife’s going to cop it now,’ one of the carters laughed.
‘Well, she could have hammered him in the house instead of showing him up in public.’
The closer to home the less was he able to think, and the faster he walked. No need to think at all, everything spoiled between him and Florence. Rage carried him through Woodhouse, under the railway bridge and up the lane, not caring to avoid puddles from yesterday’s downpour. He passed his neighbour Harold Ollington, who wondered at not receiving the usual nod. Even God, had Burton recognized Him, would have got no greeting, pushed out of mind by the force of such catastrophic events. It wasn’t so much that she had shown him up in a pub as that she’d had the gall to do something like that in the first place. As his wife she had