Key to the Door by Alan Sillitoe Page A

was unable to. Maybe they’d seen Alma, he thought, hands deep in his pockets when his grandad had told him a thousand times to take them out, though he didn’t suppose they would because she went to Sunday school as a rule.
    They turned south from the wood, towards the railway. Merton stopped now and again, calling: “Gyp! Gyp!” each gruff cannon-ball shout met only by an echo, or by an uprising bird that didn’t know how lucky it was Merton hadn’t a gun with him. Two partridges took off from a bank, flap-winged over an elderberry bush, turned high in a steep curve, and vanished beyond the railway.
    Great clouds were piled high in the distance like a range of mountains suspended in space. Merton leaned on the iron railing as if wondering whether to cross the railway and search there. Bush leaves swayed with a noise like waves against sand when you put a sea-shell to your ear, and tree branches creaked. “We’ll climb the bank, Nimrod, and see’f we can see owt in Farmer ’Awkins’ field. If we can’t we’ll goo back and see’f your gran’ma’s mashed. It looks as if it’ll piss down soon.”
    Brian was already over and halfway up to the railway, then jumping from one steel rail to another, Merton close behind. He looked beyond, saw nothing but silence. Wheatfields swayed with the wind but made no noise, and smoke from a grey-roofed house went obliquely into the sky. It was funny, he thought, how soil smelled of rain when you’d think it’d be the air it came from. A steel-grey cloud-base stretched for miles, and there was no sign of the dog.
    He shielded his eyes from an imaginary sun: “Can’t see ’im, grandad.”
    â€œWe’ll go back ’ome then. ’E’ll cum when ’e’s ’ungry.”
    Brian turned to recross the railway: the long stretch of track disappeared round a bend to the right, no trains flying. Then he turned his head leftwards and, about to face front and leap over the lines, saw something white tucked into one of the sleepers.
    He knew what it was before beginning to run, stared at the splashed blood on the ridge of each parallel track. It’s been run over, he said to himself, it’s been run over.
    â€œGrandad,” his wavering voice called. He detached the bloodstained collar and folded it into his back pocket. They walked to the house without speaking.
    Merton came later with a spade and buried Gyp in the field. While he was away Brian heard his uncle George and aunt Violet talking in the kitchen. “He led the poor dog such a life,” she said, “that it must have done itself in by laying on the lines till a train came.” Brian was sorry she said this because he’d been with his grandad when the dog was found and, walking back with him, noticed how he hadn’t said a word all the way, which was, he knew, because he was sorry he’d hit the dog. George agreed with her: “He’s got too much of it.” Too much of what? Brian wondered. But they said nothing to Merton when he came in.
    Brian went home that evening, for it was school in the morning. His small figure walked quickly along, waving a stick, his pockets jingling with pennies and ha’pennies that his grandad, uncles, and aunts had given him.

CHAPTER 5
    Eight-wheeled lorries came by the motorworks and followed each other towards the high flat tongue of land that had been raised by months of tipping and was slowly covering a nondescript area of reedgrass and water. From nearly every precipice men walked to where they hoped the loads would be dumped. Empty sacks flapped over their shoulders, and they called to each other, waving sticks and rakes. Brian, having already used his judgement, was scraping into a heap of swarf and scrap steel picked clean days ago, but which still gave off a pleasant smell of aluminum shavings and carbolic, oil and the brass dust of big machines his father