Free The Death of William Posters by Alan Sillitoe Page A

couldn’t shift. For some reason, for the first time in his life, the will wasn’t in him at the crucial moment. Her kisses grew harder, blinder, and the more they increased the less was he able to follow. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘come on, love.’
    But he couldn’t. Or, in the deepest layers of himself, he would not. Unable to satisfy such scalding lust, they lay for some time: ‘Are you nervous of me?’ she said at last. He sat up. ‘I shouldn’t think so. I’ve never been nervous of anybody like that in my life.’
    â€˜Maybe you don’t love me,’ she smiled.
    â€˜Love?’ he said. That had never bothered him before.
    â€˜Some people can’t do it unless they’re in love, been seeing each other for a while first.’
    â€˜I hadn’t thought of that.’ Any reason gave him heart, though it was so unique and stunning he could hardly feel ashamed. Yet beneath all this, a subdued rage was ebbing away: ‘I think I’ll be off’ – standing to get dressed.
    â€˜Why are you in such a hurry?’
    â€˜I stopped yesterday for a drink of water. I can’t swallow the tap as well.’
    She frowned, drew on her dressing-gown. ‘That would sound like folk wisdom to some. To me it sounds like the cold shoulder, as they say.’
    â€˜Well, we’ll see. I was meaning to give that garden of yours a dig over when it stops raining. When was it last done?’
    â€˜I can’t remember. I’ve been too busy to bother.’
    â€˜It’s heavy for you, that sort of work. A man should do it.’ He went downstairs in his socks, put on his shoes by the still burning fire. ‘What was that woodwork you wanted done?’ he called out to the kitchen.
    She laughed: ‘I thought I’d have a couple of shelves above the stove. There’s nowhere to put things.’
    He went to look. ‘I’ll get some brackets and plugs. Are there any tools?’
    â€˜Under the stairs. I had the wood cut last week, thinking I might try it myself, but I don’t suppose I really wanted to.’ She peeled potatoes, dropped them into the pot – cooking without an apron, which was something new to him, better in that she didn’t hide the goodness of herself in the paraphernalia of domesticity. He stood close behind, kissed her neck, and held his hands over her breasts.
    There was less formality about it than the deliberation of walking upstairs and going into the bedroom, and stripping as if to a drill, an exhibition as if performed before all the generations of the world to prove that you were with them in their unconscious battle for survival against the ravages of nature. She turned and lay her face in his shoulder. His hands were below her waist, body pressing stiffly but without urgency. He walked her into the sitting-room. There were no fires of impotence this time; his madness was controlled, hard at the loins, and the hundreds of miles journeying during which he had almost forgotten the need for love had only made him forget it in order to overwhelm him now with an unexpected force and sweetness he’d never known before.
    They lay on the floor, clothes hardly disturbed, crying out together as if they had been burnt.

5
    The village, when he explored the roundabouts of it, was set in a horseshoe of the wolds. After a few weeks he seemed never to have been anything but a countryman, as if much of William Posters had, for what it was worth, been excised from his backbone. Walking alone through the bracken earth of the autumn woods on a long, purposeless, satisfying stroll (while Pat was out in her red Mini on some errand of mercy) he could watch for pheasants, squirrels, or the erratic flip among upper branches of birds tough enough not to go south at the first chill breath of October damp.
    He was surprised at how much life there still was. Two squirrels in the middle of a lane fixed each other,