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

it’s a rotten piece because it reminded me of the Germans smashing everything at war. So one day I snapped the record and threw it out.’
    She put sausages and tomatoes on his plate: ‘A pity they’re only the sawdust type, but that’s the worst of working in these outback villages.’
    â€˜I don’t think I know anyone,’ he remarked, ‘who likes the work they do. There’s always something wrong with it.’ He was a quick, orderly eater, as if the food on his plate were a fortified area to be reduced by knife, fork, and mopping-up bread. His manner of speaking annoyed her, of connecting her spoken thoughts too outlandishly to some hook in his own mind. He was a passer-by she’d given shelter to, a footloose working-man from whom, at moments, she wanted the same tone of deference that she’d grown to expect from the grateful Lincolnshire villagers roundabout. ‘People who work at jobs they don’t like are too stupid, unintelligent, and cowardly to break the rut they’re in and get work that they would like.’
    â€˜If everybody changed the job they didn’t like I’d be at the pit face and you’d be roadsweeping.’ She’d set the meal as if the idea of eating had no appeal for her, but now she ate as if hungry at the sight of someone else loading it back before her. ‘Everyone does the job they’re fit for. The natural order of things works pretty well. Eat some bread and cheese.’
    â€˜Thanks. We’ll talk about that when there’s a natural order of things. Most of my mates wanted an easier job, less hours, more pay, naturally. But it wasn’t really work they hated, don’t think that. They didn’t all want to be doctors or clerks, either. Maybe they just didn’t like working in oil and noise, and then going home at night to a plate of sawdust sausages and cardboard beans, and two hours at the flickerbox with advertisements telling them that those sausages and beans burning their guts are the best food in the country. I don’t suppose they knew what they wanted in most cases – except maybe not to be treated like cretins.’
    She went out, returned with a pot of coffee and a jug of hot milk: ‘Anything but work, that’s what you mean. Strike, go slow, or work to rule, seems the order of the day. Why is it, I wonder?’
    He cut bread and cheese. ‘Now you’re being unjust. It was to vary the treadmill. But as well as that there was a collective wish to change the way things are run, so that they’ll have the power of running things. If that happened it wouldn’t be a treadmill any more. They wouldn’t strike. They’d be too busy. And too interested in running it.’
    â€˜That’s being idealistic.’
    â€˜I know it is, but not too much.’
    â€˜I think you’re speaking for yourself,’ she said. ‘You’re more knowing and intelligent than the rest. Not only that, but you speak of it in the past tense, I noticed.’
    â€˜I haven’t thought much about the factory since leaving it, that’s true, because I suppose there’s so much else to think about, soak in. But maybe what I soak in is still connected to the factory that I don’t think about. It still separates me from the world in any case, the fact that I’ve been in one. Whether it’s on my mind or not. How many of the others have you met besides me, come to think of it?’
    Her face relaxed, and she laughed.
    â€˜I thought so.’
    â€˜What would you say if I went on strike, a nurse?’
    â€˜I’d condemn you. You’ve no right to go on strike. You sell your knowledge and art, a workman sells his labour. That’s the big difference. Oh, don’t think I haven’t thought about it. If I had a vocation I wouldn’t have the right to strike, either. But you must concede it to the others. I didn’t know I was so