500
ALAN SILLITOE
The only foreigners he ever met were a couple of Belgian
refugees billetted on them during the Great War, and his one ob–
servation was tha t they were a "rum pair" - though he never said
as much to their faces. His wife, Mary-Ann, remarked that they
had to have chocolate to drink instead of tea, which seemed ex–
tremely strange to her.
Burton had no belief in God. And after death it was the end,
nothing, a disaster you went to sleep under before it hit you, if you
were lucky. Nevertheless, all his children were packed off to Sunday
School for nearly ten years of their lives, the result of which was a
glass-fronted case of books in the parlor recess, sober volumes they
had brought home as pri zes, a nd the first such collection I'd seen
in a priva te house. Burton had never as much as glanced at any of
them, because he cou ld neither read nor write - though he could
sign his own name.
Another plain result of bundling the elder kids off to Bible
class every Sunday was the birth of more children, for I'm sure that,
like many other people, Burton only sent them there so that he
could get them out of the house and then make free with his wife
without inquisitive kids wondering what they were up to and what
those noises were.
If
the Sunday Schools of England in all their
pertinent and Godly work did not exactly produce a nation of
Christians they at least helped in the days when living-space was even
more cramped than it is today to keep a bit of priva te lo\'e life on
the go. One wonders if those sanctimonious well-meaning men and
women really knew what they were up to, or whether they didn't
just look upon Sunday School teaching as a sure-fire way of keeping
themselves out of mischief.
Even in their sixties Burton a nd Mary-Ann, when I used to
stay there, still went upstairs on a Sunday afternoon " for a bit of a
sleep" as they put it. Burton would try and get me to go to Sunday
School with the Ollington children from across the Cherry Orchard,
but I wouldn't do it, coming right out with the statement that
I
did not believe in God, a straight answer which amused him so
much that he winked a t Mary-Ann, laughed loudly, and didn't
mention it again. H e either recognized me in him, or ga\'e in to
the unknown part of me that stemmed from my father and that he
implacably disliked - though he ne\'er said so.
