Saville by David Storey Read Free Book Online

everything else, he had brought with him from the pit. A small, shelllike case, it hung with its pool of yellow light from one of the beams in the ceiling.
    With the remaining timber he built four bunks. He built them in pairs, one on top of the other, nailing them together. Across the bed of each bunk he wove the strips of webbing and the bits of conveyor belt, which he cut into strands like thick bandages, nailing them down, so that each bunk looked like a huge, ill-fashioned net.
    The last thing he brought home was a tin of grey paint. He painted the bunks with it and the wooden door, which was the last thing he made. It had two bolts on the inside and a lock on the outside. When he had painted it he hung a sign over it which said, ‘Wet Paint. No Entry.’ A week later he took it down and let them look inside.
    They went down one afternoon, just after Colin had come home from school and his father had woken from his day-long sleep. The lock too he had brought with him from the colliery and the strange, square, stubby key. ‘Mind the steps,’ he said as they climbed down and he unlocked the door. ‘I’ll just light the lamp.’
    Saville stepped into the darkness beyond, feeling with his foot, then went down the steps inside which led into the well of the shelter. For a moment there came the sound of his heavy breathing, then a match was struck. There was a brief glimmer of light, then it went out. ‘God damn and blast,’ he said.
    ‘Oh, now,’ the mother said. ‘There’s no hurry.’
    There was a second flare of light which faded then, after a moment, expanded.
    A dull yellow glow lit up the interior of the shelter and Saville said, ‘Watch the steps, then. You can come inside.’
    The hole smelled of tar from the wood, of oil, and of the clay. Saville stood in the middle of the pool of light, his head stooped slightly from fear of the ceiling.
    Ellen stood with her arms clenched to her, her eyes shining in the light, gazing round.
    ‘It should be safe,’ she said.
    ‘As safe as houses,’ Saville said.
    ‘Yes.’ She gazed up at the bunks.
    ‘And water-tight,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ She nodded her head.
    The lamp swung slowly on the nail which held it to the beam.To Colin his mother and father appeared to be moving, the shadows on their faces swaying in time to the larger shadows which swung behind them on the walls. Their faces dissolved then re-appeared, their eyes glinting with the light one moment then buried in shadow the next.
    ‘We’ll have the bottom bunks,’ his father said. ‘The lad can have the one up yonder.’
    The whole interior rocked to and fro, like a ship, as if they were floating.
    ‘Let’s hope we won’t have to use it,’ his mother said.
    ‘Oh, yes,’ Saville said. ‘Well, I suppose we s’ll have to, but let’s hope we don’t.’
    As they climbed out he added, ‘I’ll look round for a little stove. We might have to live for days down there, you know.’
    ‘Mrs Shaw’, his mother said, referring to their neighbour, ‘says they’ll go down the pit if there’s any bombing.’
    ‘Oh, will they?’ Saville said. ‘And how many can they get down there, and how fast, once it starts?’ And as they came out of the hole and waited for him to extinguish the lamp, he called up, ‘And what if they bomb the shaft, then? How will they get out?’
    ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ the mother said.
    ‘No,’ Saville said. ‘I’m the only one round here who has.’
    The day the war started Colin had gone out into the garden in the evening and looked up at the sky. It was grey and cloudy, the sun visible only to the west, above the colliery, through narrow gaps. Behind the clouds, he imagined, aircraft were already waiting. Yet they gave no sign. It was as if the houses, the clouds, the pit, the village had been changed now, re-fashioned, the brick no longer brick, the cloud no longer cloud, merely elements of some new and incomprehensible presence stretching all around.
    He