New and Collected Stories by Alan; Sillitoe Page A

kicked the bucket that morning when nobody was in the house. I’ll never forget it, straight I won’t, because I was the one that found him and I often wished I hadn’t. Back from a session on the fruit-machines at the fish-and-chip shop, jingling my three-lemon loot to a nail-dead house, as soon as I got in I knew something was wrong, stood leaning my head against the cold mirror above the mantelpiece trying not to open my eyes and see my stone-cold clock – because I knew I’d gone as white as a piece of chalk since coming in as if I’d been got at by a Dracula-vampire and even my penny-pocket winnings kept quiet on purpose.
    Gunthorpe nearly caught me up. Birds were singing from the briar hedge, and a couple of thrushes flew like lightning into some thorny bushes. Corn had grown high in the next field and would be cut down soon with scythes and mowers; but I never wanted to notice much while running in case it put me off my stroke, so by the haystack I decided to leave it all behind and put on such a spurt, in spite of nails in my guts, that before long I’d left both Gunthorpe and the birds a good way off; I wasn’t far now from going into that last mile and a half like a knife through margarine, but the quietness I suddenly trotted into between two pickets was like opening my eyes underwater and looking at the pebbles on a stream bottom, reminding me again of going back that morning to the house in which my old man had croaked, which is funny because I hadn’t thought about it at all since it happened and even then I didn’t brood much on it. I wonder why? I suppose that since I started to think on these long-distance runs I’m liable to have anything crop up and pester at my tripes and innards, and now that I see my bloody dad behind each grassblade in my barmy runner-brain I’m not so sure I like to think and that it’s such a good thing after all. I choke my phlegm and keep on running anyway and curse the Borstal-builders and their athletics – flappity-flap, slop-slop, crunch-slap, crunchslap-crunchslap – who’ve maybe got their own back on me from the bright beginning by sliding magic-lantern slides into my head that never stood a chance before. Only if I take whatever comes like this in my runner’s stride can I keep on keeping on like my old self and beat them back; and now I’ve thought on this far I know I’ll win, in the crunchslap end. So anyway after a bit I went upstairs one step at a time not thinking anything about how I should find dad and what I’d do when I did. But now I’m making up for it by going over the rotten life mam led him ever since I can remember, knocking-on with different men even when he was alive and fit and she not caring whether he knew it or not, and most of the time he wasn’t so blind as she thought and cursed and roared and threatened to punch her tab, and I had to stand up to stop him even though I knew she deserved it. What a life for all of us. Well, I’m not grumbling, because if I did I might just as well win this bleeding race, which I’m not going to do, though if I don’t lose speed I’ll win it before I know where I am, and then where would I be?
    Now I can hear the sportsground noise and music as I head back for the flags and the lead-in drive, the fresh new feel of underfoot gravel going against the iron muscles of my legs. I’m nowhere near puffed despite that bag of nails that rattles as much as ever, and I can still give a big last leap like galeforce wind if I want to, but everything is under control and I know now that there ain’t another long-distance cross-country running runner in England to touch my speed and style. Our doddering bastard of a governor, our half-dead gangrened gaffer is hollow like an empty petrol drum, and he wants me and my running life to give him glory, to put in him blood and throbbing veins he never had, wants his potbellied pals