A Man of his Time. Alan Sillitoe

he spared another handkerchief to mop the salty waters, feeling in some way responsible for her.

      Two long pools flashed by, furnaces and collieries scattered over the valley. A train puffed and billied up a hillside among scarves of smoke. ‘At least you’ve got a sister to go to, and you’ll be all right once you get there. A family is all a person needs.’

      She stopped crying. ‘It’s not that.’

      He leaned forward to touch her warm cheek. ‘If her husband gets on to you, and makes your life miserable, I’ll have a word with him.’ He showed his fist, hard and worn with work. ‘I’ll look after you.’

      She was shocked. Didn’t all women want protection from bullies? ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s that I would like to see you again sometime.’

      ‘And so you shall.’ He was gratified, though not sure it would be possible because George would have him slaving all the hours God sent. ‘Write your address so that I shall know where to find you.’

      She took a silver pencil and small pad of paper from her reticule.

      ‘And if you want to find me, send a note to the post office at Pontllanfraith,’ where George called for his letters. ‘That’ll find me.’

      He slipped the note into his lapel pocket, looked at woods to either side of the track. ‘It’ll be the second stop after this,’ she said. ‘My brother-in-law told me in his letter that he would meet me with his pony and trap.’

      The departure kiss was as if they were married, or at any rate as if he ought to marry her, though he scoffed at the notion. Her embrace was so passionate because of the loss of her husband, and maybe even of him. It could not be prolonged, though the look of tenderness pleased him. ‘I’ll put your bag on the platform.’

      His tall figure leaned from the carriage window watching the brother-in-law greet her with uplifted hat, a slender middle-aged man whose smile was nowhere close to his face, a Stephen Meagrim in a Bible-black garb almost as deep as her own.

      Glad to be by himself, he sat opposite a man and woman who fixed him as if knowing he couldn’t be of the area. The man was probably a farmer, and the bedraggled woman one you might see on a winter’s day trudging towards the workhouse. But they smiled, and wished him good afternoon.

      Another cutting of green and shale, and the train stopped. The first thought as he stepped down was to slake the windpipe, but he must let George know he had arrived. He looked north, east, south and west and along the lane wondering where the forge could be, feeling more alone than he liked now that Minnie had gone. Seeing a ragged man covered in coal dust, as if he had just crawled out of the earth, he asked the way to the forge.

      Teeth showed white when he smiled, Ernest barely understanding the singsong response, but waving hands gave the direction, and he walked towards houses on the main road.

      The sky was cloudless, air sweet, a sun still high enough to warm the ripening hedges, a couple of larks arguing as if their wings were lips. It was good to be alive and on his own in a foreign country. Coal smoke tangled faintly at a change of wind as he put down his bags to light a cigarette. He would have plenty of work from now on, knowing George.

       THREE

      The forge was a small building of neat red brick and slate roof on its own at the end of a lane. A field behind sloped up to a line of trees that marked the track of a railway, lifting beyond to a skyline of villa-type houses.

      George, leather-aproned and fire tongs in hand, stood at the door, looked more surprised than welcoming at his brother’s appearance. Willie, the bearded shortarsed striker holding a shoeing hammer, called in a squeaky voice: ‘I could tell it was you a mile off. Master Burton asked me to keep an eye open. You walk just like him, as if you owned the world!’

      ‘Shut up, you daft old bogger.’ No blacksmith suffered fools gladly.

      ‘You’ve come, then,’ George said.

      Ernest didn’t suffer fools at all, so made no answer. None was needed. Everybody could see that here he was.

      ‘I’ll shut the place up in a bit,’ George said, ‘then we’ll wet our whistles at the Mason’s Arms. I expect you’re ready for one. I know I am.’

      ‘What about my tool bag?’

      ‘Keep it here. It’ll be safe.’

      ‘Let’s hope so.’

      ‘You don’t trust anybody, do you?’

      No answer was needed to that, either. Not even his brother, if it came to that.

      ‘Anyway,’ George swung the big doors to, after Ernest had taken the bags inside, ‘there’s plenty of work for both of us. I’ll set you on straightaway in the morning. There’s a chain to make, and a few scythes to sharpen, for a start.’

      The bar room was full, men at their pipes and pots before going home, such a gabble Ernest couldn’t pick out a word, a pint sliding down like an eggtimer with the bottom ripped out, which stayed his hunger. ‘You can sleep on the floor tonight,’ George bawled, ‘and tomorrow we’ll fix you up with Mrs Jones. She’ll lodge you for twelve-and-six a week. And her husband’s a miner, so don’t think you can get away with anything. They’re God-fearing people who go to chapel every Sunday.’

      ‘Can’t we share your room, and I’ll pay half? What do I need one for myself for?’

      ‘You can for me.’

      The floor was better than a bed too short to stretch on. He suffered now and again with twinges of cramp, as did many blacksmiths because of too much sweating, and even large intakes of salt didn’t help. ‘We’ll go, after this,’ George said, on his second jar. ‘I’ve got to save the pence so’s I can send a florin or two back to Sarah. Six young ‘uns are a lot to feed. Did you see ’em before you left?’

      ‘They were in bed when I called. Except Sarah. She was at the washtub.’ At forty she looked an old woman. No man should leave his wife after they were married. ‘She wondered when you’d be coming home.’

      ‘I’ll send another money order, then she can stop wondering.’

      ‘It’s a hard life for her.’

      George’s Adam’s apple worked down the last drop of ale. ‘It is for me, as well.’

      Nothing more to be said, Ernest followed him to the door. Clouds rushed from somewhere and brought a drift of rain, but the air was fresh and sweet, a few stars showing as they tramped along the rough clinker-covered road, potholed and worn from the traffic of drays and wagons. You had to take care where you put your feet. Ernest filled one of the holes with a long piss. Pictures closed in from the day’s trip and his encounter with Minnie, her forlorn goodlooking features less clear now than those he had left her with, the memory of her warm arms such that cheeky John Thomas chafed at his trousers.

      Lights showed faintly from farms and cottages on the hillsides, trains whistling from all directions. Dimly-lamped drovers’ carts trundled towards the red and coppery sky.

      ‘It’s always busy round here.’ George didn’t find it easy to keep up with Ernest who, descending to a crossroads, noted the post office. A left turn beyond a narrow river took them by another public house into a street of raw houses, and faint odours of iron and sulphur.

      George’s room was small but neat, his best suit covered in brown paper on the back of the door, shaving materials laid out on the fireplace shelf before an oval mirror with a brown stain in the middle. Seeing the single bed, Ernest didn’t have to wonder where he would sleep, though unsure that any man could do so with the clink of bottles, shrieks, and breaks into song from next door. ‘Is somebody getting married? Or are they just back from a funeral?’

      ‘It’s