The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner Read online

  When the women of our street could think of no more bad names to call Frankie Buller for leading their children into fights that resulted in black eyes, torn clothes, and split heads, they called him a Zulu, a label that Frankie nevertheless came to accept as a tribute, regarding it as being synonymous with bravery and recklessness. "Why do you run around with that bleddy Zulu?" a mother demanded from her child as she tore up one of father's old shirts for a bandage or patch. And immediately there was conjured up before you Frankie, a wild figure wielding spear and dustbin lid, jumping up and down before leading his gang into battle. When prisoners were taken he would have them tied to a tree or fence-post, then order his gang to do a war dance around them. After the performance, in which he in his fierce panoply sometimes took part, he would have a fire built near by and shout out that he was going to have the prisoners tortured to death now. He once came so near to carrying out this threat that one of us ran back and persuaded Frankie's father to come and deal with his son and set the prisoners free. And so Mr. Buller and two other men, one of them my father, came striding down the steps of the bridge. They walked quickly across the field, short, stocky, black-browed Chris, and bald Buller with his walrus moustache. But the same person who had given the alarm crept back into Frankie's camp and gave warning there, so that when the three men arrived, ready to buckle Frankie down and drive him home, they found nothing except a kicked-out fire and a frightened but unharmed pair of captives still tied to a tree.

  It was a fact that Frankie's acts of terrorism multiplied as the war drew nearer, though many of them passed unnoticed because of the preoccupied and brooding atmosphere, of that summer. He would lead his gang into allotments and break into the huts, scattering tools and flower seeds with a maniacal energy around the garden, driving a lawnmower over lettuceheads and parsley, leaving a litter of decapitated chrysanthemums in his track. His favourite sport was to stand outside one of the huts and throw his spear at it with such force that its iron barb ran right through the thin wood.

  We had long since said farewell to the novelty of possessing gasmasks. Frankie led us on a foray over the fields one day, out on a raid with masks on our faces--having sworn that the white cloud above the wood was filled with mustard gas let loose from the Jerry trenches on the other side--and they became so broken up in the scuffle that we threw each one ceremoniously into a fire before going home, preferring to say we had lost them rather than show the tattered relics that remained.

  So many windows were broken, dustbins upturned, air let out of bicycle tyres, and heads split as a result of pyrrhic victories in gang raids--for he seemed suddenly to be losing his military genius--that it became dangerous for Frankie to walk down our street. Stuffing a few shreds of tobacco into one of his father's old pipes--tobacco that we collected for him as cigarette-ends--he would walk along the middle of the street, and suddenly an irate woman would rush out of an entry wielding a clothes-prop and start frantically hitting him.

  "I saw you empty my dustbin last night, you bleddy Zulu, you grett daft baby. Take that, and that, and that!"

  "It worn't me, missis. I swear to God it worn't," he would shout in protest, arms folded over his head and galloping away to avoid her blows.

  "Yo' come near my house agen," she shouted after him, "and I'll cool yer down wi' a bucket o' water, yo' see'f I don't."

  Out of range, he looked back at her, bewildered, angry, his blood boiling with resentment. He shouted out the worst swear-words he knew, and disappeared into his house, slamming the door behind him.

  It was not only the outbreak of the war that caused Frankie's downfall. Partly it came about because there was a romantic side to his nature that evinced itself in other means than mock warfare. At the end of many afternoons in the summer he stood at the top of our street and waited for the girls to come out of the tobacco factory. Two thousand worked there, and about a quarter of them passed by every evening on their way home to tea.

  He mostly stood there alone in his black corduroy trousers, patched jacket, and a collarless shirt belonging to his father, but if an older member of the gang stayed for company it by no means inhibited his particular brand of courtship. He had the loudest mouth-whistle in the street, and this was put to good and musical use as the girls went by with arms linked in twos and threes.

  "Hey up, duck!" he would call out. "How are yer?"

  A shrug of the shoulders, a toss of the head, laughter, or a sharp retort came back.

  "Can I tek yer out tonight?" he cried with a loud laugh. "Do you want me to treat you to't pictures?"

  Occasionally a girl would cross to the other side of the road to avoid him, and she would be singled out for his most special witticism: "Hey up, good-lookin', can I cum up and see yer some time?"

  Responses flew back like this, laced around with much laughter: "It'll cost yet five quid!"

  "Ye'r daft, me duck, yer foller balloons!"

  "I'll meet you at the Grand at eight. Don't forget to be there, because I shall!"

  It was his greatest hour of mature diversion. He was merely acting his age, following, though in a much exaggerated manner, what the other twenty-year-olds did in the district. The consummation of these unique courtships took place among the bulrushes, in the marsh between the River Lean and the railway line where Frankie rarely led his gang. He stalked alone (a whistled-at girl accompanying him only as a dim picture in his mind) along concealed paths to catch tadpoles, and then to lie by himself in a secret place where no one could see him, self-styled boss of osiers, elderberry and bordering oak. From which journey he returned pale and shifty-eyed with guilt and a pleasurable memory.

  He stood at the street corner every evening as the summer wore on, at first with many of the gang, but later alone because his remarks to the passing factory girls were no longer innocent, so that one evening a policeman came and drove him away from the street corner for ever. During those same months hundreds of loaded lorries went day after day to the edge of the marsh and dumped rubble there, until Frankie's secret hiding place was obliterated, and above it lay the firm foundation for another branch of the tobacco factory.

  On the Sunday morning that my mother and father shook their heads over Chamberlain's melancholy voice issuing from the webbed heart-shaped speaker of our wireless set, I met Frankie in the street.

  I asked what he would do now there was a war on, for I assumed that in view of his conscriptable age he would be called-up with the rest of the world. He seemed inert and sad, and I took this to be because of the war, a mask of proper seriousness that should be on everybody's face, even though I didn't feel it to be on my own. I also noticed that when he spoke he did so with a stammer. He sat on the pavement with his back leaning against the wall of some house, instinctively knowing that no one would think of pummelling him with a clothes-prop today.

  "I'll just wait for my calling-up papers," he answered. "Then I'll get in the Sherwood Foresters."

  "If I'll get called-up I'll go in the navy," I put in, when he did not offer an anecdote about his father's exploits in the last war.

  "The army's the only thing to join, Alan," he said with deep conviction, standing up and taking out his pipe.

  He suddenly smiled, his dejection gone. "I'll tell you what, after dinner we'll get the gang together and go over New Bridge for manœuvres. I've got to get you all into shape now there's a war on. We'll do a bit o' training. P'raps we'll meet some o' the Sodom lot."

  As we marched along that afternoon Frankie outlined his plan for our future. When we were about sixteen, he said, if the war was still on--it was bound to be because the Germans were tough, his old man told him so, though they wouldn't win in the end because their officers always sent the men over the top first--he'd take us down to the recruiting depot in town and enlist us together, all at the same time. In that way he--Frankie--would be our platoon commander.

  It was a wonderful idea. All hands were thrust into the air.

  The field was clear over New Bridge. We
stood in a line along the parapet and saw without comment the newest proof of the city's advance. The grazing lands and allotments were now cut off from the main spread of the countryside by a boulevard sprouting from Sodom's new houses, with cars and Corporation double-deckers already running along it.

  There was no sign of the Sodom lot, so Frankie ordered three of us to disappear into the gullies and hollows for the rest of the gang to track down. The next item on the training programme was target practice, a tin can set on a tree trunk until it was knocked over with stones from fifty yards. After fencing lessons and wrestling matches six of the Sodom gang appeared on the railway line, and at the end of a quick brutal skirmish they were held fast as prisoners. Frankie wished neither to keep them nor harm them, and let them go after making them swear an oath of allegiance to the Sherwood Foresters.

  At seven o'clock we were formed up in double file to be marched back. Someone grumbled that it was a late hour to get home to tea, and for once Frankie succumbed to what I clearly remembered seeing as insubordination. He listened to the complaint and decided to cut our journey short by leading us across the branch-line that ran into the colliery. The factories and squalid streets on the hill had turned a sombre ochred colour, as if a storm would burst during the night, and the clouds above the city were pink, giving an unreal impression of profound silence so that we felt exposed, as if the railwayman in the distant signal box could see us and hear every word we spoke.

  One by one we climbed the wire fence, Frankie crouching in the bushes and telling us when he thought the path was clear. He sent us over one at a time, and we leapt the six tracks yet kept our backs bent, as if we were passing a machine-gun post. Between the last line and the fence stood an obstacle in the form of a grounded railway carriage that served as a repair and tool-storage shed. Frankie had assured us that no one was in it, but when we were all across, the others already rushing through the field and up on to the lane, I turned around and saw a railwayman come out of the door and stop Frankie just as he was making for the fence.

  I didn't hear any distinct words, only the muffled sound of arguing. I kept down between the osiers and watched the railwayman poking his finger at Frankie's chest as if he were giving him some really strong advice. Then Frankie began to wave his hands in the air, as though he could not tolerate being stopped in this way, with his whole gang looking on from the field, as he thought.

  Then, in one vivid second, I saw Frankie snatch a pint bottle from his jacket pocket and hit the railwayman over the head with it. In the exaggerated silence I heard the crash, and a cry of shock, rage, and pain from the man. Frankie then turned and ran in my direction, leaping like a zebra over the fence. When he drew level and saw me he cried wildly: "Run, Alan, run. He asked for it. He asked for it."

  And we ran.

  The next day my brothers, sisters and myself were loaded into Corporation buses and transported to Worksop. We were evacuated, our few belongings thrust into paper carrier-bags, away from the expected bombs, along with most other children of the city. In one fatal blow Frankie's gang was taken away from him, and Frankie himself was carried off to the police station for hitting the railwayman on the head with a bottle. He was also charged with trespassing.

  It may have been that the beginning of the war coincided with the end of Frankie's so-called adolescence, though ever after traces of it frequently appeared in his behaviour. For instance he would still tramp from one end of the city to the other, even through smokescreen and blackout, in the hope of finding some cinema that showed a good cowboy film.

  I didn't meet Frankie again for two years. One day I saw a man pushing a handcart up the old street in which we did not live any more. The man was Frankie, and the handcart was loaded with bundles of wood, the sort of kindling that housewives spread over a crumpled-up Evening Post before making a morning fire. We couldn't find much to talk about, and Frankie seemed condescending in his attitude to me, as though ashamed to be seen talking to one so much younger than himself. This was not obvious in any plain way, yet I felt it and, being thirteen, resented it. Times had definitely altered. We just weren't pals any more. I tried to break once again into the atmosphere of old times by saying: "Did you try to get into the army then, Frankie?

  I realize now that it was an indiscreet thing to say, and might have hurt him. I did not notice it then, yet I remembered his sensitivity as he answered: "What do you mean? I am in the army. I joined-up a year ago. The old man's back in the army as well--sergeant-major--and I'm in 'is cumpny."

  The conversation quickly ended. Frankie pushed his barrow to the next entry, and began unloading his bundles of wood.

  I didn't meet him for more than ten years. In that time I too had done my 'sodjerin'

  ', in Malaya, and I had forgotten the childish games we used to play with Frankie Buller, and the pitched battles with the Sodom lot over New Bridge.

  I didn't live in the same city any more. I suppose it could be said that I had risen from the ranks. I had become a writer of sorts, having for some indescribable reason, after the evacuation and during the later bombs, taken to reading books.

  I went back home to visit my family, and on my way through the streets about six o'clock one winter's evening, I heard someone call out: " Alan!"

  I recognized the voice instantly. I turned and saw Frankie standing before a cinema billboard, trying to read it. He was about thirty-five now, no longer the javelin-wielding colossus he once appeared, but nearer my own height, thinner, an unmistakable air of meekness in his face, almost respectable in his cap and black topcoat with white muffler tucked neatly inside. I noticed the green medal-ribbon on the lapel of his coat, and that confirmed what I had heard about him from time to time during the last ten years. From being the sergeantmajor of our gang he had become a private soldier in the Home Guard, a runner indeed in his father's company. With tin-hat on his sweating low-browed head Frankie had stalked with messages through country whose every blade of grass he knew.

  He was not my leader any more, and we both instantly recognized the fact as we shook hands. Frankie's one-man wood business had prospered, and he now went around the streets with a pony and cart. He wasn't well-off, but he was his own employer. The outspoken ambition of our class was to become one's own boss. He knew he wasn't the leader of kindred spirits any more, while he probably wondered as we spoke whether or not I might be, which could have accounted for his shyness.

  Not only had we both grown up in our different ways since the days when with dustbin lid and railing-spear he led his battalion into pitiless stone-throwing forays, but something of which I did not know had happened to him. Coming from the same class and, one might say, from the same childhood, there should have been some tree-root of recognition between us, despite the fact that our outer foliage of leaves would have wilted somewhat before each other's differing shade and colour. But there was no contact and I, being possessed of what the world I had moved into often termed 'heightened consciousness', knew that it was due as much to something in Frankie as in me.

  "'Ow are yet gooin' on these days, Frankie?" I asked, revelling in the old accent, though knowing that I no longer had the right to use it.

  His stammer was just short of what we would once have derisively called a stutter. "All right now. I feel a lot better, after that year I had in hospital."

  I looked him quickly and discreetly up and down for evidence of a lame foot, a broken limb, a scar; for why else did people go to hospital? "What were you in for?" I asked.

  In replying, his stammer increased. I felt he hesitated because for one moment he did not know which tone to take, though the final voice he used was almost proud, and certainly serious. "Shock treatment. That's why I went."

  "What did they give you shock treatment for, Frankie?" I asked this question calmly, genuinely unable to comprehend what he told me, until the full horrible details of what Frankie must have undergone flashed into my mind. And then I wanted power in me to tear down those white-smocked mad
interferers with Frankie's coal-forest world, wanted to wipe out their hate and presumption.

  He pulled his coat collar up because, in the dusk, it was beginning to rain. "Well, you see, Alan," he began, with what I recognized now as a responsible and conforming face, "I had a fight with the Old Man, and after it I blacked out. I hurt my dad, and he sent for the police. They fetched a doctor, and the doctor said I'd have to go to the hospital." They had even taught him to call it 'hospital'. In the old days he would have roared with laughter and said: "'Sylum!"

  "I'm glad you're better now, then," I said, and during the long pause that followed I realized that Frankie's world was after all untouchable, that the conscientious-scientific-methodical probers could no doubt reach it, could drive it into hiding, could kill the physical body that housed it, but had no power in the long run really to harm such minds. There is a part of the jungle that the scalpel can never reach.

  He wanted to go. The rain was worrying him. Then, remembering why he had called me over, he turned to face the broad black lettering on a yellow background. "Is that for the Savoy?" he asked, nodding at the poster.

  "Yes," I said.

  He explained apologetically: "I forgot me glasses, Alan. Can you read it for me, and tell me what's on tonight."

  "Sure, Frankie." I read it out: " Gary Cooper, in Saratoga Trunk."

  "I wonder if it's any good?" he asked. "Do you think it's a cowboy picture, or a love picture?"

  I was able to help him on this point. I wondered, after the shock treatment, which of these subjects he would prefer. Into what circle of his dark, devil-populated world had the jolts of electricity penetrated? "I've seen that picture before," I told him. "It's a sort of cowboy picture. There's a terrific train smash at the end."

  Then I saw. I think he was surprised that I shook his hand so firmly when we parted. My explanation of the picture's main points acted on him like a charm. Into his eyes came the same glint I had seen years ago when he stood up with spear and shield and roared out: "CHARGE!" and flung himself against showers of sticks and flying stones.