Saville by David Storey Read Free Book Online Page B

shoot anybody you want.’
    He laughed, watching Colin hold it, unaccustomed to the weight.
    ‘Nay, don’t point it at me,’ he said. ‘I’m your friend.’
    When he went down his mother stood back across the kitchen, one hand raised to her cheek frowning.
    ‘You’ve never given him that?’ she said.
    ‘I have,’ the soldier said. ‘Why not? I don’t want it.’
    ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to see when his father comes.’
    And his father too, when he came, looked at it and, in much the same manner, said, ‘You can’t give it away, can you?’ the soldier laughing and nodding his head.
    ‘I’ve lost it,’ he said. ‘It’s yours.’
    ‘Well,’ his father said. ‘I’ll put it away. It’s no good for Colin.’ Yet, although he locked it in the wardrobe in their bedroom, on an evening he would take it out, after the soldier had gone, and ram the bolt to and fro, put in and take out the bullets, and sight it at various objects outside the window. In the end, however,he gave it to the police and said that he had found it under a hedge.
    ‘Don’t you want to fight?’ he would ask the soldier, frowning.
    ‘I have been fighting,’ the soldier said.
    ‘But to fight again,’ his father said.
    ‘What for?’ the soldier asked him. He would lie back easily in a chair or stand in his stockinged feet in front of the fire, smiling down at his father and nodding his head.
    ‘To defend your country,’ his father said. ‘To defend freedom. To keep your wife and children from being captured.’
    ‘Nay, it’ll not make much difference,’ the soldier said. ‘Whoever’s here we’ll live much the same, one way or another. There’ll be the rich and the poor, and one or two lucky ones’, he went on, ‘between.’
    ‘Nay, I can’t make any sense of it,’ his father would say, rubbing his head, shy in the face of the soldier, suddenly uncertain. ‘Don’t you believe in anything?’
    ‘Not you could put your finger on,’ the soldier would say, smiling and lighting – if he hadn’t got one lit already – another cigarette.
    ‘He was nearly drowned. In the sea,’ his father said when the soldier had gone. ‘They picked him up in a small boat as he was going under for the third time,’ he added.
    ‘For the third tin, more likely,’ his mother said. ‘With all that sugar it’s a wonder he came up at all.’
    ‘Still, he’s given it all away,’ his father said.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m not surprised. Nearly everything he’s got is stolen.’
    Yet long after the soldier had gone they continued to use the sugar, to sweeten tea and finally to make some jam.
    When he left, marching off to the station in a long column, his father went with him, walking along the side of the road, across the fields. When he came back he sat by the fire, looking up at the buttons and the medals the soldier had left on the shelf. Then, after a while, he went up to the soldier’s room and tidied up the bed.
    One evening, a short while later, Colin woke to the sound of the sirens and lay for a moment listening for the roar of planes andthe crashing of bombs. But beyond the wailing there was no other noise at all.
    Then he heard his father’s feet pounding on the stairs.
    ‘Come on, lad,’ his father said. ‘We’re all ready.’
    ‘Are they the sirens?’ he said.
    ‘They are.’
    ‘Have they started bombing?’
    ‘Nay, if we wait to see we’ll never get there at all,’ his father said.
    His mother was already wrapped in her coat and had his own coat ready.
    ‘Come on. Come on.’ His father danced at the door. He’d already switched off the light and, in the silence as the sirens faded, other voices could be heard along the terrace.
    ‘Nay, we’ll wrap up warm,’ his mother said. ‘They’ll give us a minute, surely, before they start.’
    ‘A minute?’ His father had lit the lamp at the door, shielding one side with his hand. ‘They don’t give any minutes. Don’t worry. It’ll be