A Man of his Time. Alan Sillitoe
older but with the same small nose, pale high forehead, and cherry-rich lips a man would give a fortune to kiss, or stake his life to do even more. The older one wore a tall hat with embroidered flowers along the brim, but the other had a swathe of fair hair roped into a coil and pinned under a sort of yachting cap. Near the edge of the platform, halfway facing him, he fixed them with his eyes so that one or the other would sooner or later turn, and once they became aware of him they might want to make sure of what they had seen, and look again.
A goods train went to the shunting yards, another belched from the engine sheds. When the women moved from getting splashed at sudden rain the younger caught the fire of his grey-blue eyes, took in his tallness, and stare – firm but without being offensive – the trim moustache, and thin features. Premature speech was the mark of someone unsure of himself, though he didn’t want to lose an opportunity by such an attitude. If they got on a train before his at least he’d had the pleasure of being noticed. He could afford a look yet keep his dignity as a blacksmith.
Her smile was the best present he could wish for. If they were going in the Birmingham direction he would find himself by chance in the same carriage. ‘Are you travelling far?’
She must have liked the way he touched his cap, not to know he only ever did so for a woman. ‘We’re waiting to meet someone.’
It should have been obvious they weren’t going anywhere, without hatboxes and portmanteaux. ‘You live in Derby, I suppose?’
The glare from her sister deserved a smack in the mouth, but he touched his cap to her as well. She buttoned her mauve gloves, as if he might try to shake her hand. ‘Maud!’
‘We live at Spondon,’ Maud told him, ignoring her sister.
‘Do you ever go into Nottingham?’
‘Sometimes, to the shops.’
With such a smile the other would have trouble keeping her on the rein. ‘We might cross each other’s path, then.’
Most unlikely, her look said, nor had he thought so, but you never got anywhere unless you tried it on. He recalled delivering a piece of iron grating to a house in Nottingham, a bit of fancy work his father had done. The woman was a parson’s wife, but after a bit of joshing he’d had her on a couch in the summer-house.
The elder girl tilted her head. ‘Here’s the train, Maud. And they’ll be coming first-class.’
Pleased at the encounter, he hoped for better luck in Wales. A crowd along the platform, he pushed through before the train stopped, to find a seat.
Blossom from the trees came down like confetti at a wedding, as if earth and sky thought a meeting might do some good. The Trent flashed steely water now and again, meandered its merry way through the meadows. If the girls at Derby had got on the train he would have helped them into the carriage, a bit of a climb for such dainties, and if they hadn’t wanted to talk to him – though he couldn’t see why not – he’d have kept an eye on Maud for a mile or two. With the glint in her eyes she looked as if she’d spend marvellously, though he didn’t doubt that the one with the sour face would bring the house down as well when she came.
Forgetting them for a moment, he pictured Mary Ann at the White Hart, a well-built girl the same age as himself, worth twenty of them. The blue and white striped high-necked shirt with a lapis lazuli brooch at the throat told him she was no common sort of barmaid, as she assiduously filled the pint pots, or dispensed stronger stuff from a high façade of bottles behind the bar, responding with a flick of her auburn hair if anyone made the kind of remark she didn’t care to hear. He wasn’t daft enough to talk like that to any young woman.
On first seeing her and asking where she came from her soft though decisive voice had a different twang to the neighbourhood accent. She stood back to answer. ‘I was born at St Neots.’
‘Where might that be?’
‘In Huntingdonshire. I was a milliner’s apprentice’ – which showed in the neat dress fitting the slim waist so nicely, noticed as she walked into another room at the call of her mistress.
‘How did you come to find this situation?’ he asked another time.
‘My father saw an advertisement in the newspaper, and thought I’d be better off in service than looking for work as a milliner.’
She could read and write, so belonged to a decent family. ‘Are there many girls at home like you?’
‘I’m the fourteenth child out of fifteen,’ she told him, ‘but seven died when they were babies.’
‘That was a shame. I’m the youngest of ten, and we’re all still alive. Will you come out with me on Sunday afternoon? We can walk to the Trent. It’s pretty in the meadows.’
‘I only have one day off a month.’
He already knew, but the more words from her the better. ‘Come on that day.’
‘I can’t. I go to church. Mrs Lewin sees me there, and fetches me after the service. Then I have other things to do.’
He disliked being denied. ‘Such as what?’
‘I must write to let my parents know how I am. And then I have to see to my clothes.’
‘If that’s the way it is.’ Men at his elbow were calling for ale. ‘Pump me another before you go back to your work.’
He ignored her for a few weeks, though noticed her look in his direction when he asked Ada the other barmaid to fill his tankard. He could have had her for tuppence. Her mouth always open, he called her the Flycatcher, not that he had ever seen a fly go in, and she wasn’t bad-looking, but would have been prettier if she closed her mouth. Mrs Lewin the landlady told her about it once, but it didn’t get through. Even when she smiled her lips barely met but, gormless or not, she’d have done all right under a bush, though to try and get her there would have spoiled his chances with Mary Ann.
Hard to keep his glance from whatever part of the bar she was in, and enjoy the modest way she served, wondering how she could favour anybody more than him as she went quietly about her work. When not at the bar it was because Mrs Lewin had her attending to household matters in the back, or busy on a millinery job. She’d be a useful wife, though he wouldn’t tackle wedlock yet, there being so many willing girls in Nottingham.
He had gone home a few weeks ago with a woman called Leah who worked in a lace factory, her husband doing shifts as a railway shunter, and had the sort of time that showed no need to marry for what he wanted. A lovely robust woman ten years older, he seasoned her till she was greedy for all he could give, asking him to call any time he liked, as long as nobody else was in the house.
The only way of getting Mary Ann into bed, and he wouldn’t think anything of her otherwise, was with a marriage certificate pinned on the wall behind. So maybe he should ask her hand before anybody else did, though if she turned him down there were plenty of others to keep him busy.
He smiled when his name was called, on realizing it was that of the place they were stopping at, a smell of beer and hops wafting in from the breweries. The train went puffing its way by foundries and forges, workshops and coalpits, wholesome beer fumes replaced by a sulphurous stink. Laden drays trundled up to their axles in mud along lanes and tracks, but even if he got off here he would find work as a trained blacksmith, though he couldn’t because George was expecting him in Wales, and George didn’t wait for any man, brother or not.
It was George who had tutored him in the basics of the trade from the day he could swing bellows, shoulder pieces of iron, hump bags of coke to the fire, or hold a hammer with a firm hand, and any mishap on the uptake, or slowness in obedience, he got a blow across the shoulder with a bar of iron. George had a temper when it came to doing your work properly.
Filling the unfamiliar idleness Ernest recalled George’s fury after setting him to polish a pile of horse brasses. At eleven Ernest hadn’t brought out a sufficient shine so George held him against the wall and banged his head until stars prettier than any