A Man of his Time. Alan Sillitoe
live around here.’ He took a loaf and two plates from a cupboard on the wall. ‘The bread’s a bit hard, but it’ll have to do. The bacon’s good, though, and there’s a bottle of ale each. A Hebrew pedlar comes from Newport, so I got a couple of penny bloaters. He’s an obliging chap. Anything else you want and he’ll bring it up on his cart.’
They sat on the bed and, with the remains of what their mother had packed, ate fish, meat, and cheese by the light of a candle in front of the mirror. An argument from next door, as if the walls were made of cardboard, caused Ernest to look up. ‘People have got to sleep after their work.’
‘It’s nothing to do with us,’ George told him. ‘Work is what I want to talk to you about. If you’re lucky you’ll earn a guinea a week, maybe more at times. We get farmers’ trade, and the odd thing or two from the pit or railway. If you aren’t lucky you might draw less than a quid, but you’ll be better off than at home. Our work’s got a good reputation, and people know where to come.’
Ernest was willing to work if he could put the odd shilling by for when he got back to Nottingham. ‘Everything’s arranged, then?’
‘As much as I can make it. I’m not God. Anyway, we’d better look to our sleep. We need to be up by five.’
Ernest took the suit from his bag and smoothed out the creases, hanging it behind George’s on the door. The inability to hear his brother’s words may have been no bad thing at times, but was not to be tolerated now.
George noted the direction of his gaze. ‘You might have the key to the door at home, but you don’t have it here, so leave them alone. They’ll be done in an hour. It don’t bother me. I can sleep through anything.’
A man’s head slamming against the party wall was followed by a cascade of cheering. ‘Doesn’t the landlady put in a word?’
‘She daren’t, I think.’
He took off his neckcloth and, before George could tell him not to be such a fool, set off across the landing. His shins caught a large iron bucket which, going by the stink, was for use should anyone feel a call in the night. Punching the door open, he bent slightly to get through.
Such a pack of scruffy dwarfs he had never seen. He with the banged head sat on a box, pressing his temples as if to hold in whatever bit of brain lay between. Another man with uptilted bottle was getting rid of the beer quite nicely, while a third who was lighting his pipe by the fireplace asked what Ernest interpreted to be: ‘What might you want?’
‘I’m from next door.’ He spoke in as reasonable a voice as could be mustered. ‘We’ve got to be up before five, and want to get some sleep.’ He stood a moment, to be sure his message was understood. ‘So I’d be obliged if you’d make less noise.’
Thinking he could safely turn, a bottle hit the lintel by his head with the force of a shotgun. Thanking God they were half-drunk, he faced them again. ‘Any more of that, and I’ll lay you all out.’ He was ready, but no one came for him. ‘All I ask is that you keep a bit quieter.’
‘You’d better sleep in your clothes,’ George said when he closed the door. ‘It gets cold around here, even in May. There’s a bit of blood on your cheek.’
‘It’ll dry.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t have it all your own way.’ George sometimes disliked the sort of person his brother had turned into, who at times seemed reckless and needed watching. He was young, and just didn’t think, though whether he would ever be capable of that he wouldn’t like to prophesy. ‘It’s all right threatening violence but you’ve got to think well beforehand, and not do it out of temper.’
Ernest lay on the floor, a blanket over him, and his folded bag for a pillow. ‘I did think about it, but I think quick.’
George didn’t want to feel responsible for what scrapes Ernest got into in Wales, but knew that brothers must never stop caring for each other.
They traipsed through a deep and ghostly mist between hedgerows. ‘I forgot to tell you,’ George said. ‘I’ve got a chap coming from the village today who’s going to take a photograph of me at the forge. I fancy getting something back to Sarah showing me earning my bread. Otherwise she might think I’m living the life of Riley.’
‘How much will it cost?’
‘Only six-and-a-tanner, because he’s glad to do it for that price. He likes taking photos of blacksmiths. Don’t ask why. He wanted to know if there was a tree outside, and when I told him there wasn’t he looked a bit put out, but then said he’d do it, just the same. He only hopes it won’t rain, in case his camera gets wet.’
A thin man of middle height, a cigarette under his clipped moustache, ash flaking into the greying Vandyke beard, Ashton gaffered them into place like a sergeant-major. Ernest was surprised at the latitude allowed to such a shortarse, till the picture began to compose around George as the star. Then Ashton had to wait till a placid carthorse was brought to be shod, and George took the hoof firmly between his legs. Sleeves rolled up, he was told to look towards the camera, as was everyone in the scene, head tilted uncomfortably to show full face.
Thick hair was combed forward to a line along his forehead, moustache sloping to either side from under the nose. He gripped the hammer a third of the way down the haft, poised to nail on the shoe held with a pair of long pliers by the striker, a small bearded dogsbody George employed by the day. He steadied the horse’s head.
Leaning against the wall was a man with a curving pipe in his mouth, not in working clothes but wearing a collar and tie because the horse belonged to him. Two little pinafored girls on their way to school were collared by Ashton to stand by his side and complete the scene. Ernest and George were the only men not wearing caps.
Ernest didn’t want to be part of it, yet chose not to upset his brother by looking on from the open door, unmistakably himself, a tall thin young man with a well-shaped head whose thatch of short hair made a line halfway down his brow much like his brother’s. He wore a highnecked collarless shirt, a working waist-coat, but no jacket, a self-aware youth who wanted after all to be somewhere in view. He looked towards the camera, speculating on the mechanism when the black cloth went over Ashton’s head.
The photograph came a week later with, printed on the back in an ornate scroll: ‘Ashton of Pontllanfraith, Monmouthshire.’ George was happy with the scene. ‘Do you want a copy?’
‘Not likely.’ Ernest didn’t care for anything to do with the picture, since he wasn’t the gaffer in it, but he would keep it in his memory as something he hadn’t had to pay for.
Rasp in hand, Ernest faced the dray horse’s quarter, the front left hoof between his lower thighs. Willie, a tool bag convenient to his feet, waited to put on the new shoe. Ernest told the horse to keep still, though there was little need with such a quiet animal.
All through youth he had talked more to horses than he did or wanted to to people, not only because horses couldn’t answer back – the worse thing, he reckoned, that either human or animal could do – but because they liked to hear your voice even if you only nattered about the weather. It also calmed those horses that baulked at being pushed between the shafts when the work was finished.
He talked in silence but as if he’d be heard and understood. I’ll do the thing so well you won’t tell whether you’re walking at all, especially as the tracks around here are fit for neither man nor beast.
To get the old shoe off was a job in itself, because you never tear the nails out by force, as I’ve known some blokes do. Raise the clenches carefully and keep them straight, so that you don’t make the holes wider, or injure the hoof, or leave in stubs that make the horse limp, or go lame after a while. A horse who’s had that done to it feels pain just like a person, so it’s harder for other smiths to shoe and the horse might injure them in its distress. You get the job done as quickly as you can or you won’t make any money, but you still have to do everything well.
He rasped down the cusp at the