The Death of William Posters by Alan Sillitoe Read Free Book Online

where – and as a girl I was bullied and disciplined in the most awful stupid way. At school it was worse, and the first time I thought to get out of it I became a probationer nurse, out of the frying pan into the furnace. But it all led to this job, so I don’t regret it now. I suppose when you know why you left your wife you’ll go back to her?’
    â€˜I’ll never do that. I haven’t only burned my boats and smashed my bridges, but I’ve burned my heart as well. There’s no going back for me.’
    â€˜You say it as calmly as if you meant it. It’s frightening.’
    â€˜Yet maybe I’m like a bloody moth near a flame, spinning around so close to Nottingham that I’ll have to wrench myself further away to stop going back there to see how things are. I feel the kids pulling at me more than anything.’
    â€˜Come on,’ she said, ‘we’ll see what there is to eat.’ It was a spacious kitchen built onto the back of the house, and he leaned against the fridge while she cleared up. He hadn’t expected to see such desolation. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t time to get things straight before a call came to say that Mrs Robinson’s leg was bothering her again – but it was cluttered with the stains and refuse of weeks. The sink was heaped with pots – tea rims turned green on the inside of cups, porridge mouldy, knives black when she took them out of the water. It’s a damp place, he thought. The smallest of the four stove burners glowed red. Hot water splashed over her words: ‘I always leave that one burning, day and night. It doesn’t cost so much, and it keeps the kitchen warm. I can get coffee quickly without waiting for the stove to warm up.’
    Foreseeing a long job he stored away yesterday’s groceries in the larder. ‘The place is a mess,’ she said. ‘But don’t bother to help. This is woman’s work.’
    â€˜It’s work,’ he said The shelves had no room – about six boxes of various breakfast cereal took up space, some empty enough to discard. Jars of different jam, wrapped cut bread with a few stale slices left, sauces, mustards, various pastes. He’d never seen such a lavish and squalid larder, and threw half out. She didn’t object: ‘You get careless, living alone. I’ve been meaning to clear it for days, but it’s hard enough keeping my work up. Everybody seems to get ill in autumn and spring – when the seasons change.’ She plugged in an electric kettle, turned on a burner of the large stove.
    â€˜You fixed up a fine kitchen,’ he said.
    â€˜Now that it’s clean. I’m still paying for it. It’s not only the workers who get trapped by H.P.’
    â€˜No.’ he said, ‘but there are so many of them that it’s them that keeps it going.’ He made a fire in the parlour, looked around the small heavily carpeted room. Bookshelves padded every possible piece of wall, and he skimmed their titles – medical, history, books about Lincolnshire, poetry, and books on other books. How did I land in this smart educated place, he thought wryly, supping with the village midwife? He looked through a pile of records, kneeling on the floor to get at them. They were mostly chamber music, old seventy-eights, heaped around a small portable windup. ‘I like classical stuff,’ he said, when she came in with the tray. ‘Beethoven, and – who was it wrote the Planets?’
    â€˜Holst.’
    â€˜Somebody got me Mars and Jupiter for my birthday once. I played them so loud that a bloke next door threatened to duff me if I didn’t keep it quieter. I told him to try it, but he backed down and said he’d get the police. I lost interest in it though because Jupiter was what we used to sing at school and I didn’t like it at all. Mars made me laugh, and I used to act the zombie to it for my kids. But