by H. E. Bates
Everywhere primroses, with drifts of white anemone, were growing in lush masses under hazel-trees and she gathered a handful while she waited for Parker to come in with the harrow. But after a time there seemed to be something wrong with the tractor and she gave up waiting and went back into the house.
She put the primroses into a little red glass jug on the supper table. She had already laid out all the food she could find, a little bread, a piece of home-killed bacon, and a lump of cheese. Now she sat down to wait for Parker and after about ten minutes he came in.
For some moments he stood on the kitchen threshold with small rabbity eyes transfixed by all he saw. This transfixed narrow stare was not surprised or unbelieving or even doubtful. It was held in suspicion: as if he could not accept it without also accepting that behind it there lay some sort of motive. Nobody did such things for nothing; nobody gave things away without wanting something back.
‘I didn’t have much time, Mr Parker,’ she said, ‘but it’s a bit better. It’s a bit sweeter anyway.’
‘Ah,’ he said.
‘I don’t know what you want for supper,’ she said. ‘That’s all I could forage. I’ll make you a cuppa tea.’
While she was in the scullery making tea Parker sat at the table in concentration on the food, gnawing with slow greed at lumps of bread.
‘You want some new curtains,’ she said. ‘Them others’ll fall to pieces if you wash ’em.’
‘I got no money for curtains.’
‘Well, it’s your place,’ she said. ‘You wanta look after it.’
‘I ain’t made o’ money,’ he said. ‘I got a living to git.’
For a second or two it occurred to her to say something about the money in the hat; thirty or forty pounds of it, something that seemed extraordinarily vast to her. It seemed not only incredible but also idiotic that anyone with so much money tucked into the brim of his hat could speak as narrowly and meanly as Parker did. Such dreams as lay in the brim of Parker’s hat were stupendous. They were dreams she had often thought about and had never attained.
She said simply instead: ‘I’ll just pour myself a cup and then run along or else somebody’ll be in a two-and-eight at home.’
He drew lumps of pork gristle from his mouth and dropped them on the new-scrubbed floor.
‘What’s your name?’ he said.
‘Gaskain.’
‘One o’ Jim Gaskain’s lot?’
‘Yes.’
‘Which one are you?’
‘Dulcima,’ she said.
For the first time he smiled. This smile seemed no more than a bristling of dirty teeth from between thin greasy lips, but she was wholly aware of it. It seemed to humanize Parker a little further.
‘Funny name, ain’t it?’ Parker said. ‘What do they call you?’
‘Dulcie,’ she said. ‘Or else Dulce.’
‘Worse ’n Dulcima,’ he said.
She did not answer. She had been a little sorry for Parker; she had been a little puzzled and baffled by him; and now she was hurt. It seemed a poor return for her kindness, and deep down in her there was kindled, for the first time, out of that terse and narrow uncharitableness about her name, a remote spark of resentment.
‘Well, I’ll be going now,’ she said.
He guzzled tea. She waited at the door for a word of acknowledgement, of thanks, of simple recognition for the things she had done, but he did not speak and she said:
‘How about them curtains? I could git the stuff for you if you wanted.’
‘I’ll atta see,’
‘Everybody says they’re goin’ up again,’ she said. ‘You could save a bit now.’
‘Ah?’
‘You could save ten or twelve shillings,’ she said. ‘Very like more. You could be twelve or thirteen shillings in pocket.’
‘Ah?’ he said. He appeared to consider this possibility; it seemed to appeal to him. Then the sudden touch of humanity that made her feel inexplicably sorry for him came out again:
‘Ain’t had no new curtains since the missus died.’
‘Then it’s time you had some,’ she said. ‘You let me git ’em and fix ’em up.’
He hesitated for some moments longer, and then:
‘All right,’ he said. ‘You git ’em.’
He spoke flatly, staring at the primroses, as if seeing them for the first time.
‘I shall want some money,’ she said.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll atta see about that.’
After that she began to go up to the farm every evening. With the money Parker gave her she bought the material for the curtains and made them and hung them up. They were of bright yellow material, with scrolling scarlet roses, and they flapped like signal flags against the windows of the square drab house on the hill. As summer came on she cleaned through the sitting-room, the stairs and the landing, and then into the three bedrooms above. Parker had slept in a small back bedroom on an iron bedstead, throwing an old army overcoat over himself for extra warmth in winter. She turned him out of this frowsy unwashed room into another and then out of that into another, until the three were cleaned. She beat the dust from the carpets in the farmyard and washed the sheets until they too looked like long rows of signal flags strung out under the summer apple-trees.
From time to time Parker said ‘I shall atta settle for your time,’ or ‘Soon as I git that hayin’ done I’ll settle up wi’ you,’ but on all these occasions she would simply look at him with her slow dark eyes, as if searching for something beyond him, and say:
‘It don’t matter. There’s no hurry, Mr Parker. There’s plenty of time.’
Summer was dry and beautiful on the hill and in the evenings, from that high point about the farm, the sun seemed to go down very slowly across the plain of deep flat country below. Because of this she got into the habit of waiting for Parker to come in from the fields, no matter how late it was. Now that the rooms were all turned out and tidy it was easier to keep everything clean and sometimes there was nothing to do but lay the table for supper.
While she waited she got into the habit of sitting at the kitchen table and writing down, in a small black notebook, a little account of all the things she had done. She wrote very simply. She wrote down: ‘Mr Parker, April 24th, 1½ hrs, 2/3; Mr Parker, curtain pins and tape, 7/6; Mr Parker, June 8, 2½ hrs, 3/9; Mr Parker, soap and scrubbing brush, 3/6; Mr Parker, making curtains, 16/6.’ At the bottom of each page she added up the figure and carried it over to the next. Sometimes she checked it over for a mistake and when she heard Parker coming in from the fields she stuffed the book down between the front of her body and her dress. In that way it made no difference to the solid stoutness of her figure, squabby and shapeless from her bust down to the heavy plodding legs still covered with cotton stockings.
Every Tuesday and Friday Parker came home from market, driving wildly up the hill. She grew so used to it that after a time she got into the habit of going up to the farm a little earlier on those days so that she could take off his shoes where he had fallen on the kitchen floor, and loosen his collar and find his hat. There was always money in the hat, twenty or thirty pounds, and once, after some heifer calves had been sold, fifty or sixty; but she did not touch it. It was as if she did not regard the debt that Parker owed her as having any bearing on this; as if something in Parker or something in herself, his meanness and her own patience, were quite separate, and as if she could wait for a long time, perhaps years, before they came together.
By July summer began to burn the thin earth of the hillside until the chalk was like dry white flame and there was an evening in late July when she found it too hot to sit in the kitchen. Instead she sat on the stone steps outside, writing her accounts in the small black book, her cotton stockings rolled down, for coolness, over her ankles.
That evening Parker came unexpectedly from the barn behind the house, surprising her. She was torn for a moment between the necessity of hiding the book and the necessity of rolling up h
er stockings, and she decided on the book. Some moments later Parker was crossing the threshold, stepping over her thick bare legs as he went into the house for supper.
‘Everything’s on the table,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
She stretched out her big fleshy legs and began to roll up her stockings and Parker, at the kitchen table, sat watching her.
He watched her for some time longer, across the table, as he ate his meal. Heat came in pulsating thick waves as it rose from the valley. Once again she began to long for a breath of air and suddenly she decided, a little earlier than usual, to get up and go.
As she reached the doorway Parker got up from the table, his eyes curiously excited, and said:
‘How about you coming up here for good?’ he said. ‘I bin wanting to ask you.’
‘Me?’ she said. ‘No.’
‘Ah, come on,’ he said. ‘You like it up here. Don’t you like it?’
‘I like it.’
‘You come up and keep house for me. I’ll pay. When you finished in the house you can give me a hand outside. I’ll pay.’
‘I couldn’t,’ she said.
‘I’ll pay.’
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Why?’ he said. ‘Why? I git on well with you. I’ll pay.’
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ she said. It was as if she seemed to give way a little, to consider it. She looked past him with black slow eyes, in remote calculation. ‘You keep saying pay but how do I know? What’ll you pay?’
‘Two pound,’ he said. ‘And keep.’ It was like speaking of an animal. ‘Two pound a week.’
‘I could get that down in the village. Without traipsing all this naughty way up here.’
She lied flatly, calmly, as if for some time she had prepared herself for it.
‘All right. Two pounds ten.’
‘Then there’s what you owe me.’
‘I know, I know that,’ he said. Clumsily he tried to grasp her shoulders but she held herself back, pressed against the doorpost. ‘I bin meaning – you didn’t think I wadn’t goin’ to pay, Dulcie, did you? Eh? You didn’t think –’
‘You’ll pay,’ she said. ‘I know.’
‘You come then,’ he said, ‘will you? Eh? It’ll be all right? Two pound ten, eh?’
‘I got to think it over. There’s –’
‘What?’ he said. ‘There’s what?’
‘There’s a lot of things. Well, there’s other people –’
‘Ah,’ he said. He could not guess now at what she was thinking; she simply gave the impression of holding something back.
‘I’ll tell you to-morrow,’ she said.
When she came back, next day, in the early evening, she was surprised to find him already home from the fields. He had changed his shirt and had put on a clean celluloid collar, high and rather old-fashioned, with a brown clip-on tie.
‘You think about what I said?’ he asked her.
‘A bit.’
‘You’ll come then, will you? Eh?’
She did not answer; for some time she walked about the kitchen, and then into the scullery and back again, getting his tea. He began to follow her, dog-like, his face in its scrubbed cleanness queerly earnest above the high choking collar.
‘It ain’t bad up here, is it? You like it, don’t you?’
‘Yes, but what am I going to do with myself all day? Nobody to talk to – nobody up here.’
‘I’ll take you into town – market days, Saturdays – no need to be lonely –’
‘It ain’t that.’
She seemed to dispose of one objection and then suddenly, flatly, emotionlessly, bring up another.
‘It ain’t only what I think,’ she said.
‘Who else then? Your dad?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t care about him.’
‘Who else then?’
‘Well – there’s somebody.’
‘Who?’ he said. ‘Who?’
‘My boy. My young man.’
‘Never knowed you had one.’
‘You don’t know everything, do you?’ she said.
He sat at the table, not answering, confused and very quiet. He stared down at her strong thick legs and then up at her arms. The flesh of her arms, for all its plumpness, was fine and smooth and now in high summer it gleamed a strong soft brown from sun.
‘Don’t think he’d want you to?’ he said.
‘Well, I got to think about him, haven’t I?’ she said. ‘I got to consider him.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Albert.’
She spoke readily, lying again about the name as she had already lied about the young man himself and as yesterday she had lied about the village and the money. It was as if she wanted to fire in Parker a terrible and foolish eagerness; and then in turn to break down, by a series of little things, the caution in him that had once conceived her as a trap.
‘You think he wouldn’t like it?’ he said.
‘It ain’t only that.’
‘What else is it?’
She lied again: ‘He gives me a few shillings a week,’ she said. ‘Saving money. So we can git a few things ready. So we can be married some day.’
‘Married?’ he said. The eagerness in him, already roused, seemed to split his eyes with small fires of helpless bewilderment. ‘You goin’ git married?’
‘Well, some day I hope.’
‘Three pound a week,’ he said. ‘If I give you that, will you come?’
Once again she looked beyond him with her small dark eyes.
‘I’ll ask Albert to-night,’ she said. ‘He’ll probably murder me.’
4
When she moved in, two days later, with all her belongings packed in a cheap brown fibre suit-case, she gave Parker the impression not that it was something she had long prepared but that it was something she was doing with his own peculiar caution, as a favour, reluctantly.
‘I’ll try it for a week,’ she said. ‘I’ll give it a trial.’
She moved into the front bedroom and at night she locked her door. She made a point, during those first few days, of speaking often of Albert. She wondered what Albert would say if he could see her now; she wondered what on earth she would do if Albert popped in. Albert came gradually forward into the situation not simply as a third party but as a watchful and terrifying eye, keeping guard on her. She brought him along as a person of possessive and jealous desire. Albert was a terror for getting to know everything; you couldn’t keep anything from Albert. Whatever she did Albert got to know. Albert would brain her if she didn’t do this and didn’t do that. There was no fooling Albert.
On the following Tuesday she and Parker drove down to market together for the first time.
‘I only hope we don’t see Albert,’ she said. ‘I had to kid him with all sorts of tales about you.’
Parker felt pleased at this. In his ignorance of her lying he was flattered.
‘Never mind about Albert. You keep along o’ me,’ he said. ‘I got a few fly deals on to-day.’
Throughout the day Parker went about the market like a nosing fox. She had grown used to the fact that, up at the farm, he sometimes did not speak much. Now he hardly spoke at all. Now whatever he was thinking seemed to become locked up. The dumb grey eyes flickered occasionally in a tight-drawn face that otherwise had no expression. He leaned on cow-stalls, making bargains, staring at dung-splashed concrete, eyes downcast. She saw him for the first time as a person of ruthless and one-track brain, scheming and cunning, lying too, fanatically pursuing one end. And gradually, beside him, her own thoughts and her own lying seemed very little, quite innocent, of no serious account at all.
During most of that time he did not notice her. Somewhere about noon he went into the Market Arms to start the first drinking of the day. She went away alone and bought herself a dinner of roast beef and potatoes and apple tart and afterwards a cup of tea in a back-street dining-rooms. While she drank the tea she wrote in her littl
e book: ‘Dinner. July 15. 3/4.’
After that, about two o’clock, she went back to find Parker. She found him drinking, but not drunk; and she pulled nervously at his sleeve:
‘Mr Parker, I just seen Albert. I don’t know whether he seen me or not but I’m scared of what he’ll do.’
‘We’d better git home.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ she said.
And once again Parker, because of what she said about Albert, was pleased. It flattered him greatly to think that she was afraid of Albert for his sake. He drove home with a smile on his face and a little more caution than usual: a good day, a hat full of money and now, on top of it, they were kidding Albert. They were running away from Albert together.
In this way they lived for three or four weeks, through July and into harvest. On the hill the summer had been very hot, almost rainless, scorching the barley straw so that it was short, no higher than white grass, and easy to gather. Besides herself Parker had no help except a part-time hand, an oldish man named Barnes, and the three of them worked at the small harvest together.
One afternoon Barnes stopped working and stood staring down the hillside; then he walked forward across the stubble a yard or two and squinted.
‘Somebody a-prowlin’ about down there,’ he said. ‘Somebody with a gun.’
‘Oh!’ she said.
‘Where’s that?’ Parker said.
‘Down aside the bottom gate,’ Barnes said. ‘Young chap. I can see the gun.’
‘It looks like Albert,’ she said.
After a time the young man with the gun disappeared, and once again Parker got the feeling that he had done very well for himself. Not merely was she a good girl, a willing girl, a hard-working girl; she was a girl that someone else wanted. The thought of Albert jealous, Albert prowling about with a gun, Albert watching her, was something that puffed him with satisfaction.
That evening she was changing in her room when Parker went past on the landing. Her door was open a little. She had taken off her dress and she was stooping over her attaché case, which lay open on the bed.
