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…
And so when Charlie visited his home he was careful that none of his bitter criticisms reached words, for above all, he could not bear to hurt his father.
A group of young miners came along for the bus. They wore smartly shouldered suits, their caps set at angles, and scarves flung back over their shoulders. They greeted Lennie, looked to see who the stranger was, and when Lennie said: 'This is my brother, they nodded and turned quickly to board the bus. They went upstairs, and Lennie and Charlie went to the front downstairs. Lennie looked like them, with a strong cloth cap and a jaunty scarf. He was short, stocky, strong — 'built for t'pit', Mr Thornton said. But Lennie was in a foundry in Doncaster. No pit for him, he said. He had heard his father coughing through all the nights of his childhood, and the pit wasn't for him. But he had never said this to his father.
Lennie was twenty. He earned seventeen pounds a week, and wanted to marry a girl he had been courting for three years now. But he could not marry until the big brother was through college. The father was still on the coal face, when by rights of age he should have been on the surface, because he earned four pounds a week more on the face. The sister in the office had wanted to be a schoolteacher, but at the moment of decision all the extra money of the family had been needed for Charlie. It cost them two hundred pounds a year for his extras at Oxford. The only members of the family not making sacrifices for Charlie were the schoolgirl and the mother.
It was half an hour on the bus, and Charlie's muscles were set hard in readiness for what Lennie might say, which must be resisted. Yet he had come home thinking: Well, at least I can talk it out with Lennie, I can be honest with him.
Now Lennie said facetiously, but with an anxious loving inspection of his brother's face: And what for do we owe the pleasure of your company, Charlie boy? You could have knocked us all down with a feather when you said you were coming this weekend.
Charlie said angrily: 'I got fed up with t'earls and t'dukes.
'Eh, said Lennie quickly, 'but you didn't need to mind
'I know they didn't.
'Mum's right, said Lennie, with another anxious but carefully brief glance, 'you're not looking too good. What's up?
'What it I don't pass ^examinations, said Charlie in a rush.
'Eh, but what is this, then? You were always first in school. You were the best of everyone. Why shouldn't you pass, then?
'Sometimes I think I won't, said Charlie lamely, but glad he had let the moment pass.
Lennie examined him again, this time frankly, and gave a movement like a shrug. But it was a hunching of the shoulders against a possible defeat. He sat hunched, his big hands on his knees. On his face was a small critical grin. Not critical of Charlie, not at all, but of life.
His heart beating painfully with guilt, Charlie said: 'It's not as bad as that, I'll pass. The inner enemy remarked softly: I'll pass, then I'll get a nice pansy job in a publisher's office with the other wet-nosed little boys, or I'll be a sort of clerk. Or I'll be a teacher — I've no talent for teaching, but what's that matter? Or I'll be on the management side of industry, pushing people like Lennie around. And the joke is, Lennie's earning more than I shall for years. The enemy behind his right shoulder began satirically tolling a bell and intoned: 'Charlie Thornton, in his third year at Oxford, was found dead in a gas-filled bed-sitting room this morning. He had been overworking. Death from natural causes. The enemy added a loud' rude raspberry and fell silent. But he was waiting: Charlie could feel him there waiting.
Lennie said: 'Seen a doctor, Charlie boy?
'Yes. He said I should take it easy a bit. That's why I came home.
'No point killing yourself working.
'No, it's not serious, he just said I must take it easy.
Lennie's face remained grave. Charlie knew that when he got home he would say to the mother: 'I think Charlie's got summat on his mind. And his mother would say (while she stood shaking chips of potato into boiling fat): 'I expect sometimes he wonders is the grind worth it. And he sees you earning, when he isn't. She would say, after a silence during which they exchanged careful looks: 'It must be hard for him, coming here, everything different, then off he goes, everything different again.
'Shouldn't worn', Mum.
'I'm not worrying. Charlie's all right.
The inner voice inquired anxiously: 'If she's on the spot about the rest, I suppose she's right about the last bit too —
But the enemy behind his right shoulder said: A man's best friend is his mother, she never lets a thing
