by H. E. Bates
Travers’s mother, very tired, went on into the house half an hour before Travers and the girl. ‘Git you both a mite o’ summat t’eat. You’ll be hungry when you come in.’ When the time came Travers and the girl walked across the silent field to the house. The moonlight lay like bright cream on the dark potato-flowers, on the raspberry-leaves, on the slate roof of the yellow house. The tired, sore hands of the girl dropped at her side.
All of a sudden Travers stopped and placed his hands on her shoulders, then against her cheeks. He stood for some time looking down at her face, upturned in the moonlight. She could smell the fragrance of the crushed raspberries on his hands and she could feel the trembling of the heavy fingers.
‘I know you’re tired,’ he began to say. ‘I know – ’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m all right.’
‘I wanted to say something,’ he said. ‘It’s important but I don’t want to if you’re tired.’
‘I’m all right. I’m not tired. I’m not tired really.’
She felt his hands fall and grasp her shoulders with abrupt tenderness before he spoke again.
‘I want to know when you’re going to marry me,’ he said. ‘No,’ he corrected himself, ‘not when. I don’t mean it like that. I mean if – if you will. That’s all. I only mean if you will.’
She stood looking beyond him, not knowing what to do or say.
‘I don’t want you to say now,’ he said. ‘Not necessarily now.’
She still could not move or speak, and stood only looking at the moonlight, vacantly.
‘You know I like you,’ he said. ‘You know that. And I know you like me, or you wouldn’t have kept on coming. You wouldn’t have kept on coming and staying if you hadn’t felt something.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I like you.’
She could not now keep the tiredness and indecision out of her voice, and hearing it, he said again, ‘I don’t want you to say now. You want to make up your mind.’ He began to speak with a great effort, more quickly. ‘I know what it is. I know all right what it is. That’s the reason I haven’t said anything. That’s the reason why I want you to make up your mind.’
‘Would it be all right if I told you next week?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he said mechanically, ‘yes.’ His hands fell away from her shoulders. ‘Yes, that’ll do. Only will you promise? Will you make a promise to me?’
‘Yes,’ she said, almost against her will. ‘I’ll promise.’ She looked away from him over the empty moonlit fields. ‘Only you go in now, by yourself. I’ll come in a minute. I want to be by myself a moment, and then I’ll come in.’
He walked away down the potato rows towards the house, but she did not watch him. Only, when she turned eventually and went too, eyes downcast, looking at the brightly outlined earth in the moonlight, she could see where he had walked: where the stump of the leg had made dark holes in the dry earth by the edge of the potatoes.
One day during the next week a surprising thing happened. From the windows of the office, late one afternoon, she saw a young man in a light grey flannel suit continually walking up and down the pavement on the opposite side of the street. When she left the office this young man came up and raised his hat to her. She saw with surprise that it was Austin.
‘I didn’t know you. I really didn’t,’ she said.
Austin was very much changed. His face had lost its narrow, pimpled look; he had no longer an air of pained nervousness when he tried to look at her.
She wanted to know where he had been.
‘I’m an insurance man now,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a small book. Takes me out into the country. I bike mostly. And you were right about the exercise. It’s done me a world of good.’
As he talked they walked up the street in the sunshine. Without knowing it at first, she kept looking at his feet. Then she realized why she was doing it and why they attracted her.
‘Anything wrong with my shoes?’ Austin said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No. I was just looking at them, that’s all – thinking how nice they were.’ But she knew that in reality it was because it was strange to be walking with a man who had two feet. And she remembered too how she once told herself that it could make no difference whether a man were physically fine or not.
‘I wanted to ask you if you’d come out with me again,’ Austin said.
‘I don’t know about that,’ she said.
‘Just sometimes. Weekends.’
‘I’ll see.’
‘Just sometimes. I’m still mad about you. Say you’ll come sometimes. Just now and then.’
‘You’ll be better with some other girl,’ she said, ‘not me.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘All right, but I’ve got to go now,’ she said. ‘I really must go now.’
The impression made on her by Austin remained painfully deep for some days. It was strange to be impressed and pained not by a man’s voice or his looks or by what he said, but by the simple fact that he had feet like other men. In this mood she went about for some days looking at the feet of people walking. She knew that she did not love Austin, but she felt immensely grateful towards him for showing her what the feet of people could mean. She saw feet that were huge, flat, heavy and tired; feet that were assertive and militant and possessive; feet that were slender and jaunty and delicate; and she became aware of something very beautiful in all of them. Only when she thought of Travers she was aware also of something like terror.
When she came to the farm on the following Saturday afternoon Travers did not fetch her, because she had written to say that she would come by bus. As she walked along the road the heat of mid-afternoon seemed to strike her a series of flat sickening blows on the head. In the orchard the sheep were huddled against the hedgerows for shade and the leaves of young willows had begun to drop, curled and yellowed by heat, along the track leading to the house.
The doors of the house stood wide open, but the yard and the field were deserted. She went into the house by the front door, taking off her moist town-gloves. Her brown eyes, ordinarily kind and spirited, now seemed dull and defensive. She had made up her mind already what she was going to say, and even what she was going to do. Except for her gloves her hands were empty. For the first time for several weeks she had not brought her things for the night.
As she went into the living room she saw that it was empty too. She sat down for a moment on the piano stool by the harmonium, twisting her gloves in her hands. On the table stood an empty tea-cup and on the old-fashioned horsehair sofa lay the opened sheets of the day’s newspaper. She sat for some moments looking at this, dully reading the headlines sideways, and then finally she picked it up. As she did so she stopped quite dead. Underneath the newspaper – as if the heat had tried him very much and he had taken it off to rest – lay Travers’s wooden leg.
She walked straight out into the sunlight again with a feeling of faint sickness and terror. She was not really aware of moving until she heard Travers’s voice suddenly calling her quietly from a bedroom window.
‘Hullo, there you are. Wait a minute, Mother’s having a sleep. I’ll be down in a minute.’ His voice was excited by the pleasure of seeing her. ‘Don’t stand in the sun. I’m coming down.’
She walked vacantly round the back of the house, into the raspberry field. Standing looking at the canes, oppressed by an increasing sense of unhappiness, she saw that the hot weather had almost finished the crop, that the few berries looked dark and bruised, and that the leaves were very brittle in the sun.
As she stood there Travers came out of the house. She stood dully watching him hop over the ground, happy at her arrival.
‘I’ve been having a bit of a sleep too,’ he said, ‘on the sofa.’ For some reason he noticed her empty hands. ‘Where’ve you put your case? I didn’t see it in the living room.’
She stood quite still.
‘I didn’t bring my case.’
‘You didn’t bring it?’
‘No.’
He hopped sideways on one leg, as if about to lose his balance.
‘You’re not going to stay?’ he said, ‘is that it?’ His eyes began to tremble with pain.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to stay. I’m not coming any more.’
‘What we talked about last week – you mean you can’t?’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘I know how you feel,’ he began to say, ‘but if you – ’
‘I just can’t!’ she said. ‘That’s all. I just can’t.’
Afraid of crying, and suddenly wanting to end it all completely, she began to walk away across the field. She had walked about a dozen yards in the hot sun when she heard him call something after her.
‘I know how you feel,’ he said, ‘I know. But why did you keep on coming? Why did you keep on coming if you didn’t feel anything? Why did you? Why did you keep on coming?’
Hearing what he said, she could not go on. She stopped and slowly turned and saw him standing against the rows of shrivelled canes in the beating sunlight. She saw him standing like someone struck into inertia by heat and pain, his huge hands apathetically held at his side.
She stood for a moment longer watching him before she ran back to him. The tears were rising bitterly in her eyes and she made a slight cry of pity and terror as she beat her hands on his arms and shoulders.
‘Oh! I will. I will. I do love you. I do love you. I do really love you. Please believe me. I do really love you. Please believe that I do. Please, please believe me now.’
Quartette
‘We’ll begin with “Drink To Me Only”,’ George Abrahams said.
As he spoke Miss Appleby and Mrs. Williams took up their places beside him at the piano, with Tom Willis on the far left hand. Miss Appleby, a rather plain, dry-humoured girl who wore gold spectacles and a plum-coloured velvet frock, sang contralto, and Tom Willis tenor. As for Dora Williams, there was not a more beautiful soprano in the town, perhaps in the county, than this tall reserved girl with silky yellow hair and large meditative eyes.
George Abrahams gave a chord on the piano, waited a moment, and then counted one, two, three. At the given moment the quartette broke into singing that filled the small front room of George Abrahams’s house, where they met two and sometimes three or four nights a week for practice. On the top of the piano copies of part songs, some in manuscript that George Abrahams had himself arranged for four voices, were carefully laid out in neat piles. On the table by the fire there were the usual piles of ham and cheese sandwiches that his wife had prepared, the usual two bottles of elderberry wine, the usual cut wineglasses that the bright firelight seemed already to have filled with dancing sherry.
As they sang, George Abrahams listened critically to each individual voice. Last week Tom Willis had had a slight cold, but now both he and Miss Appleby were in first-rate voice. Miss Appleby was a singer who never varied – always the same splendid, warm attack, the same deep brown colour in her voice. She was an excellent reader too, and would have done herself justice in the best choirs anywhere. And in a district that had never been noted for tenors Tom Willis was a very good one, if a trifle on the light side. His great weakness was that he was a slow reader. He was a tall man with unaccountably gentle manners. He did not speak much, was not married, and did not seem to trust himself with women. He sometimes gave the impression of being too much of an idealist and always sang best in pieces, such as lullabies, that demanded the greatest tenderness of feeling.
One of George Abrahams’s objects, on forming the quartette six months before, had been to aim for perfect balance of tone, but he could not help noticing that to-night Dora Williams was singing in far finer voice than the rest. There was a slight lift in her voice that disturbed the final balance of harmony. It was almost as if she were singing too beautifully for the others.
At the end of the piece he did not say anything, and they went on to try out two pieces of Schubert which he himself had arranged for mixed voices, ‘Standchën’ and ‘Who is Sylvia?’ In both songs the clear beauty of her voice seemed to stand out more plainly than ever. He detected something bright and nervous in her delivery, and once when he glanced up at her she was staring with very large disquieted eyes at a picture on the wall, lost in feelings completely remote from the song.
They went on for more than an hour trying out these songs and one or two others, and the time passed quickly. Now and then George Abrahams would stop them, making a criticism. At the end of each piece they had a brief general discussion and Miss Appleby, who was a good constructive musician, would say that this or that could be improved, that allegro rather than allegro moderato might be better here or there. He noticed that Dora Williams did not say much. Her eyes, which normally could not be other than frank even when most meditative and were sometimes full of immense vivacity, seemed obscured and depressed, in direct contrast with the strange brightness of her voice.
‘Well,’ he said at last, ‘let’s try “Standchën” over once more, and then give it a rest and have some sandwiches.’
‘What about the broadcast audition?’ Miss Appleby said.
‘Heard nothing yet,’ he said hurriedly. ‘Ready?’
They sang ‘Standchën’ through once more. He forced himself not to listen to Dora Williams’s voice, but concentrated instead on the warm tranquil brownness of Miss Appleby’s contralto and to Tom Willis, who had warmed up now and was singing better than ever. He felt pleased when it was all over, and he got up from the piano rubbing his hands.
‘Well, it went splendidly,’ he said. ‘Tom, you’re in grand voice.’
‘They say tenor singing is a disease,’ Miss Appleby said. ‘That probably means he’s got a singing temperature.’
They all laughed, and George Abrahams began to hand round the sandwiches. When he got to Dora Williams he saw that she alone was no longer laughing. ‘Sandwich?’ he said. ‘Cheese this side. Ham that.’
He noticed that she did not look at the plate when she took her sandwich, and that she was not listening when he asked if she would like a glass of wine, so that he had to ask her again.
‘Oh! no,’ she said. ‘No. No thanks, George. No, I don’t think so.’
He went back to the table, put down the plate of sandwiches, and uncorked the wine. As he poured the wine he had a delightful feeling of pleasure in the moment: the deep purple wine veined by upward glances of fire, the great scent of the bowls of winter hyacinths from the window ledge, the strange exaltation in his throat after singing. He stood too on the verge of a more exciting moment. ‘Hold your glasses a moment,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something to say.’
He gave a glass of wine each to Miss Appleby and Tom Willis, and then waited for a moment.
‘It’s about the audition,’ he said at last. He waited again for a fraction of a second. ‘It’s fixed for a week on Tuesday. I didn’t want to tell you until we’d had the practice.’
‘I’ll never trust a bass again,’ Miss Appleby said dryly.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘here’s the letter.’
Quite excited now, Miss Appleby took the letter and read it and then gave it to Tom Willis. They both made some enthusiastic remark and then after a few moments George Abrahams took it back and handed it to Dora Williams.
She took the letter, but George Abrahams saw that she made no attempt to read it. Already she had turned slightly pale, and he saw a sudden tremendous nervousness take hold of her. Her fear of showing this nervousness was concentrated into her eyes, which were now as dead as slate. He saw her try to say something, but without success, and then try again and at last form her words. ‘I’ve got something to say myself.’
For a moment she looked really ill. He looked at her patiently and quietly, puzzled, and asked her what it was, but for another moment she could not say anything. Then she said quickly, ‘I shan’t be coming again.’
‘Not coming?’ Miss Appleby said. ‘But the audition, Dora.’
George Abra
hams could not speak.
‘No, I shan’t be coming again,’ Dora Williams said. ‘I’m giving up the quartette.’
‘But why on earth?’ Miss Appleby said.
She did not speak, and again George Abrahams asked her gently what was the matter. At last she got it out, hurriedly, almost coughing it up, like something distasteful she had swallowed.
‘Jimmy’s jealous,’ she said.
Jimmy was her husband. As soon as she spoke George Abrahams felt an enormous relief. He looked at her strained sad face and burst out laughing.
‘Jealous of what?’ he said. ‘Not me, I hope?’
She shook her head a little, not speaking.
‘He’s just jealous, is that it? Just jealous because his wife sings in a quartette two nights a week?’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing else?’ he said. ‘Just that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, my God!’ he said. ‘My God.’
He turned abruptly away from her. As he turned he had on his lips all sorts of things about the monstrosity of it that he wanted to say – the littleness of it, the thoughtlessness, the casual breaking up of the dreams and happiness of four people – but he was less angry than exasperated, and all he could say was ‘Jealous? Jealous of what? Jealous of who? What made him jealous?’
