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Authors: Alan; Sillitoe
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brother, Bill Tokins, who lived at Horseforth and had worked as a railway porter all his life. Bill was a big, rather miserable and overbearing type who was not liked by many. The Tokins men at his funeral were over six feet tall, handsome men with raven-black hair and blue eyes, and Burton stood out among them because, though he was as tall, he had fair hair and brown eyes. She was impressed by the collective height and bulk of these men who filled the small parlour of dead Bill Tokinsâs house.
On her visits to Engine Town she remembered that Ernest Burton wore a wide leather belt, and was always ready to take it off to members of his family or to his dogs. A funny quirk of his was that he invariably walked many paces ahead of his wife, as though she were not with him at all.
He would, however, put his hand on her motherâs arm, and still go in front of Mary-Ann. They usually went back to Leeds laden with marrows, potatoes, kidney beans, and rhubarb out of his garden. Burton made a great fuss of her mother, with whom he got on very well. He admired her, and treated her as something special, and she was said to be fond of him. He was indeed a peculiar man, though my correspondent added that the Tokinses, from whom my grandmother sprang, were said to be a stranger breed still.
22
The memory comes back to me of a seven-year-old boy building roads. I might have been younger, wandering alone to a nearby tip away from any houses, on which only waste sand and factory soot was laid, an area between the narrow River Leen and a few acres of swamp bordering the railway line, closed off from the lane by a stockade of high boards. I could get on to the tip by climbing a tree and leaping over the top of the fence, then scrambling down a huge bank of clean sand and gravel on the other side.
In the light of what I was later to become, such occurrences in childhood seem amusing, though this small laugh is merely to protect me from the daunting stab of whatever was relevant. Yet pulling truth out by the nettleheads so that roots snap free makes me realize that these memories are amusing simply because I imagine other peopleâs smiles if I mention them. My own already exist, and tell me that such laughter only points to another kind of truth.
Sometimes I would use guile instead of brawn, and get into the wasteland by waiting for a lorry to enter the gate. When the driver opened it before going in I would follow without being noticed, and hide myself behind rusty, dry-leaved tea-bushes. After heâd left Iâd find an old piece of spade and start to build a new road quite independent of the main track of the lorries.
For an afternoon and part of the evening I was left in peace, levelling a pile of house-bricks and decoratorsâ rammel, and a mountain of black soot from some workshop chimney, widening and hardening the surface, macadamizing my road with spadesful of soot. Deciding where to guide it was always a problem, though when I came the next day to drive it forward another ten or twenty feet, it had been obliterated by lorries that had in the meantime dumped their stuff. I wasnât called upon to commit myself, or to push a road through a morass as I now am, though I was quite prepared to do so had it been either necessary or possible.
In wondering why the lorry-driver had callously buried my road I could only believe that, from the godlike height of his cab, he hadnât even noticed its feeble line. It was too narrow to be of use, or too unreal for him to see. In place of the paved highway I imagined to exist, there was in reality a piece of narrow track that might barely have served as a false lure into rugged mountain country, fit at the most for the feet of men and animals. Yet I wondered why he had tipped his load over it when there was so much unused space round about. Since something in him must have glimpsed the beginnings of a highway, proved by the fact that he had tried to blot it out, I
On her visits to Engine Town she remembered that Ernest Burton wore a wide leather belt, and was always ready to take it off to members of his family or to his dogs. A funny quirk of his was that he invariably walked many paces ahead of his wife, as though she were not with him at all.
He would, however, put his hand on her motherâs arm, and still go in front of Mary-Ann. They usually went back to Leeds laden with marrows, potatoes, kidney beans, and rhubarb out of his garden. Burton made a great fuss of her mother, with whom he got on very well. He admired her, and treated her as something special, and she was said to be fond of him. He was indeed a peculiar man, though my correspondent added that the Tokinses, from whom my grandmother sprang, were said to be a stranger breed still.
22
The memory comes back to me of a seven-year-old boy building roads. I might have been younger, wandering alone to a nearby tip away from any houses, on which only waste sand and factory soot was laid, an area between the narrow River Leen and a few acres of swamp bordering the railway line, closed off from the lane by a stockade of high boards. I could get on to the tip by climbing a tree and leaping over the top of the fence, then scrambling down a huge bank of clean sand and gravel on the other side.
In the light of what I was later to become, such occurrences in childhood seem amusing, though this small laugh is merely to protect me from the daunting stab of whatever was relevant. Yet pulling truth out by the nettleheads so that roots snap free makes me realize that these memories are amusing simply because I imagine other peopleâs smiles if I mention them. My own already exist, and tell me that such laughter only points to another kind of truth.
Sometimes I would use guile instead of brawn, and get into the wasteland by waiting for a lorry to enter the gate. When the driver opened it before going in I would follow without being noticed, and hide myself behind rusty, dry-leaved tea-bushes. After heâd left Iâd find an old piece of spade and start to build a new road quite independent of the main track of the lorries.
For an afternoon and part of the evening I was left in peace, levelling a pile of house-bricks and decoratorsâ rammel, and a mountain of black soot from some workshop chimney, widening and hardening the surface, macadamizing my road with spadesful of soot. Deciding where to guide it was always a problem, though when I came the next day to drive it forward another ten or twenty feet, it had been obliterated by lorries that had in the meantime dumped their stuff. I wasnât called upon to commit myself, or to push a road through a morass as I now am, though I was quite prepared to do so had it been either necessary or possible.
In wondering why the lorry-driver had callously buried my road I could only believe that, from the godlike height of his cab, he hadnât even noticed its feeble line. It was too narrow to be of use, or too unreal for him to see. In place of the paved highway I imagined to exist, there was in reality a piece of narrow track that might barely have served as a false lure into rugged mountain country, fit at the most for the feet of men and animals. Yet I wondered why he had tipped his load over it when there was so much unused space round about. Since something in him must have glimpsed the beginnings of a highway, proved by the fact that he had tried to blot it out, I
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