The Broken Chariot by Alan Sillitoe Read Free Book Online

‘Another two shillings.’
    â€˜Where did you pick up that stinking cold?’
    The whole damned school had had one. ‘On the train, I suppose.’ Colds were loathsome, only inferior types stricken – till you caught one yourself. ‘It was packed.’
    â€˜They usually are. Here’s to your health, which seems a fair toast.’
    Wasn’t there a line in Lullabalero about Nottingham’s fine ale? He’d never tasted anything so good. ‘And to yours, as well.’
    â€˜I’m Isaac Frost.’ A frail hand was held out for shaking. ‘What might yours be?’
    He touched the cold fingers. ‘Herbert.’
    â€˜Is that all?’
    â€˜For the moment.’
    Isaac looked at him pityingly. ‘I’ve met some funny chaps in my time, but not one that throws his money about when he’s got so little.’
    Herbert supposed that his lavish father would easily spend his last shilling treating someone he didn’t know to a drink, especially if he came into a place like this and met one of his old soldiers – except that he most probably wouldn’t set much store by this dive. He took his foot from the brass rail and stood full height. ‘As soon as I’ve nothing left it will collect my mind wonderfully towards getting some more.’
    Isaac adjusted his glasses on hearing such pretentious nonsense. ‘Sounds a cock-eyed notion to me. And you’re a bit too young to be a philosopher. You’re from London, I suppose?’
    Herbert had heard of coppers’ narks, and wondered whether he shouldn’t make a run from this noisy and exuberant den, though pride decided him not to. Either that, he thought, or I’m too done in to care. ‘Thereabouts.’
    â€˜What hotel do you propose to put up at?’
    Being laughed at encouraged him to more openness, whether the man was a nark or not. ‘I’m not on the run, if that’s what you mean. I’m seventeen, and want to get a job. As soon as I’m eighteen, though, I’ll enlist.’
    Isaac was appalled at what the war had done to the young. ‘Why do you want to do that?’ A tinkle of broken glass came from further down the hall, and a woman’s scream was followed by such male effing and blinding as made Herbert turn his head, though slowly, to look. The smack of a fist on flesh sounded even over shouts and laughter, and a burly man in evening dress frogmarched a capless glaze-eyed soldier out on to the pavement. ‘There’s always a bit of that going on,’ Isaac said, ‘with so many women on the loose. And you know what soldiers are. But the doormen are very good here at dealing with it.’
    Herbert turned to his drink as if nothing had happened. ‘The army will take care of me for a few years. I need to learn how to kill properly.’
    Isaac laughed in such a way that Herbert wondered if he had asthma, knowing what it sounded like because Dominic had a touch of it when he first came to school. ‘You don’t have to learn a thing like that. Necessity will tell you, if ever you need to. In any case, who would a nice young chap like you want to kill? There’s been enough of that going on in the last five years.’
    â€˜My parents, for a start.’
    â€˜They seem to have made a good job of you.’ His thin lips curved even more in amusement, as if to say: who the devil have I got here? ‘You should be grateful.’
    â€˜They packed me off to boarding school from India when I was seven.’ The laughter at some jokester further down the bar diminished. Herbert, not knowing the right thing to say, or even what he really believed before this sceptical old man, said whatever came to mind. ‘I’d have been quite happy staying where I was.’
    â€˜I wish my parents had been able to send me to such a place. I left a hellhole of a school at thirteen to work on a market stall. And then I