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

hungry – and talkative. Travelling makes me eat more, though I feel thinner than when I was at work. I don’t eat as much as some people. I once knew a man who ate so much he had a blackout. Then he died. I think it was his liver. Some people never know when to stop.’
    â€˜That’s a story you made up,’ she said, pouring his coffee.
    â€˜I know. They’re all true enough. I think them up when I’m walking.’ They sat by the fire. She suspected he was trying to charm her, but was disturbed more by her suspicion than by the fact that it might be justified. He obviously didn’t think about what he said, she decided. ‘This is a comfortable house,’ he remarked, ‘I’m enjoying tonight.’
    â€˜So am I,’ she admitted, ‘in a strange way.’
    â€˜That countryside was getting me down. It’s too green. The road’s hard and the sky’s too grey. I favour a warm room and the supper I’ve just had.’ To spoil it, his feet ached for the walking they’d do tomorrow. He couldn’t thumb any more lifts, as if the man’s accusation of begging free transport had broken one part of his spirit, only to have strengthened another that had just become visible to him. ‘It’s hard to imagine you not getting lonely though, on these nights.’
    She was glad of his curiosity. It comforted her, since it was too rare these days. Yet it was also too brusque and offhand, not only that he might not be sincere in it, but that he might be forgetting that they had only just met, and that such curiosity was premature. Still, she had asked him in – for a cup of tea – and in spite of its short time ago she felt no shyness in talking, mainly because she was only talking out of herself, on the understanding that he would be gone in the morning. In any case, he seemed amiable, almost interesting, though somewhat more remote than a person often is when you stop them in the street to ask a direction.
    Relaxed and comfortable by the fire, another part of him was out on the wide spaces of the road, blinded by sky and distance. ‘I haven’t always lived alone,’ she said. ‘I was married twelve years, until I split up a while ago, to a typical middle-class Englishman, an advertising copywriter – someone who sat in an office all day in Holborn thinking up slogans that would sell soap powders or a correspondence course in bricklaying.’
    Her phrases gave way to a ticking clock, a noise which made the silence deeper than itself. ‘You chose him,’ Frank said.
    â€˜I made a mistake.’
    â€˜So did he. So did I. It’s a marvel to me how many people make mistakes.’
    â€˜You have a sense of humour. But I was tired of the useless life I was leading. It got so that I didn’t need him and he didn’t need me. He was a sort of father to Kevin, but even that didn’t weigh when I decided to leave. Being a housewife in London with a charwoman and an au pair wasn’t enough. I was a trained nurse, and was needed in a village like this, by ordinary people who want some sort of looking after. I think everybody should do useful work. I hate idleness or pretence.’
    â€˜So do I.’
    â€˜Tell me about your work. I’ve never met anyone who worked in a factory, not to talk to.’
    â€˜In what way? I’m what they used to call a mechanic, but I was beginning to see further than the end of my nose. I was also what the gaffers called “a bit of a troublemaker”, but for years they were baffled by me because I was also a good worker. I could set anybody’s tools and take their machine apart as well as the chargehand, and I had many hints that if I stopped being such a keen member of the union, life would be easier for me as far as getting on went. But I saw too much injustice to accept that. I knew which side of the fence I stood on, and still do. I made many others see it