Free The Broken Chariot by Alan Sillitoe

called to his mate above the din: ‘We beat the fuckers. Oh yes, we beat the fuckers. Didn’t we Alf?’
    â€˜Yeh,’ Alf said, ‘but they’ll be at it again in twenty years.’
    â€˜No they won’t,’ the old man said. Bert had never seen a pint go so quick. ‘Not this time they won’t.’
    To the tune of ‘Coming Round the Mountain’ (and she’ll be wearing camiknickers when she comes) Bert took a wet-gin kiss from a woman old enough, he thought, to be Mrs Denman’s grandmother. ‘That’s for you, my lovely handsome duck,’ she said.
    â€˜Yer’ve clicked,’ Archie laughed.
    â€˜Course he’s clicked,’ she screamed at them with a laugh, huddling back against her smiling husband.
    â€˜Let’s run, Bert, or she’ll ’ave us both.’
    â€˜She will, an’ all,’ her husband laughed.
    In the Royal Children a girl shoved a full pint at Herbert through the fug saying she’d bought it for her bloke but he’d nipped out to heave his guts up, and what a shame it would be to waste it. The cold slurry went down too quickly, and after a further jar in the Rose of England Herbert also ran out to the back yard and threw up as if all the weary years at school were fighting pell-mell to get from his system.
    Archie led him the shortest way back to his digs, Bert hardly aware of passing streets. They sang their way up the steps into Mrs Denman’s impeccable parlour, from which place she hurried them into the kitchen. Bert screwed a knuckle into his eyes for clarity. A tall thin man with greying hair was introduced by Mrs Denman as Frank, her Frank, her own especial Frank (she’d had one or two as well), Frank of about forty who, the only one sober because he’d had to stay on at work doing maintenance, suggested Bert be roped to a pit prop, first to stop him falling on his face, and then to shoulder him up to bed.
    â€˜It’s the best place for him,’ Mrs Denman said. ‘Poor lad’s as white as chalk. He ain’t used to it. I wouldn’t trust him to keep even a cup of coffee down in that state, nor yo’, either,’ she said, turning on Archie. ‘So gerrof home and let us look after him.’
    Archie laughed – and belched. ‘All right, ma. You don’t need to tell me twice.’
    Such speech was perfectly clear to understand, and Herbert didn’t seem one bit drunk, though realized that the slightest wind would blow him down. All he wanted to know was how much sleeping time there was between the coming collapse and getting back to his lathe. The wall clock wouldn’t tell him, one hand moving slowly rightward, while the angle between the two increased until his forehead hit the floor, mocked on his way down by the strident laugh of Bacchus, which seemed to come from himself, though also from those looking on.
    â€˜Ah Beryl,’ and Herbert barely heard Frank’s words, ‘let’s stomp up the wooden hill as well. You can’t blame ’im, though. He won’t have owt else to celebrate like this again in his lifetime. They’ll be no more o’ them concentration camps. Worn’t it terrible?’
    â€˜Them pictures,’ Mrs Denman said.
    From his laid-out state in front of the fender Herbert told himself how nice were Mrs Denman’s shapely legs – Beryl, as Frank called her, then felt hands under his armpits and knew he had better co-operate in standing so that they could get him to where he most wanted to be.
    Archie, as if undecided about switching on his machine, came over and bellowed: ‘How yer feeling after last night then, Bert?’
    Herbert’s head rang like a month of Sunday mornings, his feet felt shoeless and half buried in broken glass, a band of nails gripped around his waist, and his mouth tasted as if he’d swallowed a tramp’s overcoat. ‘Never felt better.’
    Archie drew