Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (Vintage International)
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0307389650
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
A rousing and uproarious novel of the life, loves, and misadventures of a working-class rogue, Saturday Night/Sunday Morning marked the arrival of one of the most cherished authors in the twenty-first century.
At twenty-two years of age, Arthur Seaton is a hard-drinking lathe operator in a bicycle factory. Sharp, rowdy, and attractive, he is a lover of life in the raw, and his enormous vitality comes pouring through, at a family party, at the county fair, and in several pubs he haunts on Saturday nights, where more often than not he leaves with a woman on his arm. Before long, however, his devil may care life-style gets him into some serious trouble, and Arthur's life takes a turn that not even he could have imagined.
caught him around the waist and picked him up, kissed him on the cheeks while removing the note from his now relaxed fingers. ‘Run off wi’ my fiver would you, young boggerlugs? My ‘ard-earned lolly. A fiver’s worth o’ Dolly Mixtures! Christ Almighty! You’d a made yoursen sick, I’m sure you would!’ William’s young brain had known all the time that it was only a game, that you could not snatch a five-pound note and hope to achieve your goal of buying a mountain of sweets with it. So instead of
birth certificate now but would show it him tomorrow. Holding the parlour door open, Arthur laughed as he heard Jack stammering out his excuses to the fierce Em’ler who continued to bar his way for reasons best known to herself. Brenda slept obliviously upstairs, and Arthur did not care now whether the night’s work had been successful or not. Feverish and weary, he couldn’t have cared less — standing on the doorstep trying to decide on the best direction to the nearest pub — if he had made twenty
himself, but more often than not they were of the right stuff, and you could usually get what you wanted if you were careful and went out of your way sufficiently to pick the right sort of woman. 11 Doreen, at nineteen, was afraid of being ‘left on the shelf’. Her married, engaged, or otherwise firmly attached friends at the hairnet factory had teased her for not yet having a boyfriend, but since meeting Arthur she was able to talk about her ‘young man’ with the rest of them, her oval face
laughing loudly and blushing from Arthur’s passionate caresses, struggling away from his righteous and powerful arms. Not like being with Doreen, he thought, who had watched his step every minute of the way on Thursday, giving no great fun to gladden the heart, and stopping to talk for half an hour to that daft pal from her workplace. ‘Try our luck,’ Winnie said. ‘Let’s roll pennies and win a quid.’ Winnie let them fall from the wooden slot over numbered squares in rapid fire and lost five bob
a hurry.’ ‘I know,’ Arthur explained. ‘I couldn’t stay. That swaddie had it in for me. I don’t know what for, mind you, but you saw how he went for me. If it ‘ad summat to do wi’ me bein’ wi’ Winnie at the fair, it didn’t mean owt, you know. I’d just met Winnie and Brenda a few minutes before, and I asked them to come on the Helter Skelter with me. I can’t see owt wrong in that, can you? Who was that swaddie, anyway?’ Jack’s eyes looked fixedly at the lathe. ‘Bill, Winnie’s husband. His unit’s