The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe

Author:Alan Sillitoe
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: For the Benefit of Mr. Kite
Published: 1959-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

Noah’s Ark

While Jones the teacher unravelled. the final meanderings of Masterman Ready, Colin from the classroom heard another trundle of wagons and caravans rolling slowly towards the open spaces of the Forest. His brain was a bottleneck, like the wide boulevard along which each vehicle passed, and he saw, remembering last year, fresh-packed ranks of colourful Dodgem Cars, traction engines and mobile zoos, Ghost Trains and Noah’s Ark figures securely crated on to drays and lorries.

So Masterman Ready was beaten by the prospect of more tangible distraction, though it was rare for a book of dreamadventures to be banished so easily from Colin’s mind. The sum total of such free-lance wandering took him through bad days of scarcity, became a mechanical gaudily dressed piedpiper always ahead, which he would follow and one day scrag to see what made it tick. How this would come about he didn’t know, didn’t even try to find out – while the teacher droned on with the last few pages of his story.

Though his cousin Bert was eleven – a year older – Colin was already in a higher class at school, and felt that this counted for something anyway, even though he had found himself effortlessly there. With imagination fed by books to bursting point, he gave little thought to the rags he wore (except when it was cold) and face paradoxically overfleshed through lack of food. His hair was too short, even for a three- penny basin-crop at the barber’s – which was the only thing that bothered him at school in that he was sometimes jocularly referred to as ‘Owd Bald – ‘ead’.

When the Goose Fair came a few pennies had survived his weekly outlay on comics, but Bert had ways and means of spinning them far beyond their paltry value. “We’ll get enough money for lots of rides,” he said, meeting Colin at the street corner of a final Saturday. “I’ll show you” – putting his arm around him as they walked up the street.

“How?” Colin wanted to know, protesting: “I’m not going to rob any shops. I’ll tell you that now.”

Bert, who had done such things, detected disapproval of his past, though sensing at the same time and with a certain pride that Colin would never have the nerve to crack open a shop at midnight and plug his black hands into huge jars of virgin sweets. “That’s not the only way to get money,” he scoffed. “You only do that when you want summat good. I’ll show you what we’ll do when we get there.”

Along each misty street they went, aware at every turning of a low exciting noise from the northern sky. Bellies of cloud were lighted orange by the fair’s reflection, plain for all to see, an intimidating bully slacking the will and drawing them towards its heart. “If it’s on’y a penny a ride then we’ve got two goes each,” Colin calculated with bent head, pondering along the blank flagstoned spaces of the pavement, hands in pockets pinning down his hard-begotten wealth.

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