— Извините, — бормотал Чарли, с трудом выбираясь через ноги мужчины и женщины в коридор, — извините… простите, пожалуйста…

В коридоре он прислонился к стенке возле двери купе и зажмурил глаза. Стенка тихонько дрожала на ходу, толкая его в спину. По лицу его текли слезы, в горле бессильно барахтались не находящие выхода слова, поток жалких, ненужных извинений.

Раздался шум отодвигаемой рядом двери, потом шорох одежды остановившегося возле него человека.

«Если это та стерва, я ее убыо», — тихо сказал спокойный, ясный голос из-под диафрагмы.

Оп открыл горящие ненавистью глаза и увидел перед собой старушку. Она участливо глядела на него.

— Простите, — угрюмо выдавил Чарли, — простите меня, я никак не хотел…

— Ничего, сынок. — Она мягко положила свои красные, узловатые руки на его судорожно сжатые локти и осторожно развела их. — Не надо так переживать, будет.

Почувствовав, как все в нем взвилось на дыбы от ее прикосновения, она отступила на шаг, но не сдалась:

— Нет, сынок, нет, нельзя так. Всяко в жизни бывает, и надо с этим мириться, нельзя отчаиваться.

Она смотрела ему в лицо с тревогой, но твердо и уверенно. И Чарли сказал:

— Да, наверное, вы правы.

Она кивнула, заулыбалась и ушла в купе, и через несколько минут Чарли тоже вошел за ней.^{1}

'I think I'll be off, said Charlie. 'My things are packed'.

He had made sure of getting his holdall ready so that his mother wouldn't.

'But it's early', she protested. Yet she was already knocking red hands together to rid them of water while she turned to say goodbye: she knew her son was leaving early to avoid the father. But the back door now opened and Mr Thornton came in. Charlie and his father were alike: tall, overthin, big-boned. The old miner stooped, his hair had gone into grey wisps, and his hollow cheeks were coal-pitted. The young man was still fresh, with jaunty fair hair and alert eyes. But there were scoops of strain under his eyes.

'You're alone', said Charlie involuntarily, pleased, ready to sit down again. The old man was not alone. Three men came into view behind him in the light that fell into the yard from the door, and Charlie said quietly: 'I'm off, Dad, it's goodbye till Christmas. They all came crowding into the little kitchen, bringing with them the spirit of facetiousness that seemed to Charlie his personal spiteful enemy, like a poltergeist always standing in wait somewhere behind his right shoulder. 'So you're back to the dreaming spires, said one man, nodding goodbye. 'Off to t'palaces of learning, said another. Both were smiling. There was no hostility in it, or even envy, but it shut Charlie out of his family, away from his people. The third man, adding his tribute to this, the most brilliant son of the village, said: 'You'll be coming back to a right Christmas with us, then, or will you be frolicking with t'lords and t earls you're the equal of now?

'He'll be home for Christmas, said the mother sharply. She turned her back on them, and dropped potatoes one by one from a paper bag into a bowl.

'For a day or so, any road, said Charlie, in obedience to the prompting spirit. 'That's time enough to spend with t'hewers of wood and t'drawers of water' The third man nodded, as if to say: That's right! and put back his head to let out a relieved bellow. The father and the other two men guffawed with him. Young Lennie pushed and shoved Charlie encouragingly and Charlie jostled back, while the mother nodded and smiled because of the saving horseplay. All the same, he had not been home for nearly a year, and when they stopped laughing and stood waiting for him to go, their grave eyes said they were remembering this fact.

'Sorry I've not had more time with you, son, said Mr Thornton, 'but you know how 'tis.

The old miner had been union secretary, was now chairman, and had spent his working life as miners' representative in a dozen capacities. When he walked through the village, men at a back door, or a woman in an apron, called: 'Just a minute, Bill, and came after him. Every evening Mr Thornton sat in the kitchen, or in the parlour when the television was claimed by the children, giving advice about pensions, claims, work rules, allowances; filling in forms; listening to tales of trouble. Ever since Charlie could remember, Mr Thornton had been less his father than the father of the village. Now the three miners went into the parlour, and Mr Thornton laid his hand on his son's shoulder, and said: 'It's been good seeing you, nodded, and followed them. As he shut the door he said to his wife: 'Make us a cup of tea, will you, lass?

'There's time for a cup, Charlie, said the mother, meaning there was no need for him to rush off now, when it was unlikely any more neighbours would come in. Charlie did not hear. He was watching her slosh dirty potatoes about under the running tap while with her free hand she reached for the kettle. He went to fetch his raincoat and his holdall listening to the nagging inner voice which he hated, but which he felt as his only protection against the spiteful enemy outside: 'I can't stand it when my father apologizes to me — he was apologizing to me for not seeing more of me. If he wasn't as he is, better than anyone else in the village, and our home the only house with real books in it, I wouldn't be at Oxford, I wouldn't have done well at school, so it cuts both ways. The words, cut both ways, echoed uncannily in his inner ear, and he felt queasy, as if the earth he stood on was shaking. His eyes cleared on the sight of his mother, standing in front of him, her shrewd, non-judging gaze on his face. 'Eh, lad, she said, 'you don't look any too good to me. I'm all right, he said hastily, and kissed her, adding: 'Say my piece to the girls when they come in. He went out, with Lennie behind him.

The two youths walked in silence past fifty crammed lively brightly lit kitchens whose doors kept opening as the miners came in from the pit for their tea. They walked in silence along the front of fifty more houses. The fronts were all dark. The life of the village, even now, was in the kitchens where great fires roared all day on the cheap coal. The village had been built in the thirties by the company, now nationalized. There were two thousand houses, exactly alike, with identical patches of carefully tended front garden, and busy back yards. Nearly every house had a television aerial. From every chimney poured black smoke.

At the bus stop Charlie turned to look back at the village, now a low hollow of black, streaked and spattered with sullen wet lights. He tried to isolate the gleam from his own home, while he thought how he loved his home and how he hated the village. Everything about it offended him, vet as soon as he stepped inside his kitchen he was received into warmth. That morning he had stood on the front step and looked out on lines of grey stucco houses on either side of grey tarmac; on grey ugly lamp-posts and greyish hedges, and beyond to the grey minetip and the neat black diagram of the minehead.

He had looked, listening while the painful inner voice lectured: 'There nothing in sight, not one object or building anywhere, that is beautiful. Everything is so ugly and mean and graceless that it should be bulldozed into the earth and out of the memory of man. There was not even a cinema. There was a post office, and attached to it a library that had romances and war stories. There were two miners' clubs for drinking. And there was television. These were the amenities for two thousand families.

When Mr Thornton stood on his front step and looked forth he smiled with pride and called his children to say: 'You've never seen what a miners' town can be like. You couldn't even imagine the conditions. Slums, that's what they used to be. Well, we've put an end to all that… Yes, off you go to Doncaster, I suppose, dancing and the pictures — that's all you can think about. And you take it all for granted. Now, in our time…