by H. E. Bates
After she had known him a few weeks they had been given an assignment, quite a difficult one, seventy or eighty miles north of Marseilles, and suddenly, under all the impulse of war and the emotion of war, they decided to get married before attempting it. They were married in his own village, somewhere south of Paris, and afterwards they set out on bicycles. That was their honeymoon: sleeping in barns, under haystacks, sometimes in small hotels, sometimes in the houses of other partisans. It had been very beautiful, she said, and as she spoke of it he could hear once again the restrictive quietness of unspent tears in her voice, making it flat and calm.
On the second night of the journey as she bicycled downhill in darkness, she missed the road, crashing the bicycle into a bank, buckling it beyond repair. They hid it in a barn so that he could come back for it. Then they rode on together on one bicycle, she on the crossbar. And all that night the feeling of being close to the young eager boy grew deeper, until in that excited, keyed-up, secret and almost funny situation she felt they were inseparable. Here she spoke again of his face, saying how brilliant and beautiful it was.
And then the cross-bar of the second bicycle broke; and they went on to complete the rest of the assignment on foot, quite successfully as it turned out, except that the boy, going back two days later in the hope of picking up at least one of the bicycles, had himself been picked up by waiting Gestapo.
After three months they sent him back. ‘There was not much left of his face,’ she said. Her voice had a stony, barren sound. ‘I did not know him from his face. It was not there.’ He died a week or two later.
Pride and anger and tenderness for her flooded up like her own unspent tears through his heart, confusing and hurting him, so that he could not speak again.
‘I did not sleep for a year,’ she said. ‘I felt I could never sleep again.’
He did not answer.
‘Something was taken away and has not come back,’ she said.
He wanted in that moment to ask her if there was, perhaps, something of himself that could replace the things, the feelings, the inexplicable something she had lost, but he could not express himself in words. A light run of breeze brought a few sharper, more crested waves across the bay. He heard her say how beautiful the evening was, how you could still imagine it was full summer. For some moments longer he listened to a sardine boat chuffing and coughing away to sea and then to her voice reminding him, at last, still with its dry stony pain, that in a week he would be listening to it all no longer.
‘Did you mind that I told you all that?’ she said.
‘No: I’m glad you told me.’
‘Sometimes you make me think of him. The same feeling comes. I’m happy again.’
His own happiness and anguish for her kept him quiet again and after she had said, in a sentence he did not understand and did not ask to have explained, ‘There are things that can kill you like that, unless you find someone in their place,’ they walked back arm in arm to the hotel.
‘One has to live,’ she said.
The following day, at lunch, there were langoustines and Madame Dupont, cracking away with neat relish above a pile of pink-brown shells, stared through her spectacles to where, at the table by the window, the girl was threading the customary flower into the dapper buttonhole.
‘It was only today I discovered from Madame Prideaux who he is.’
Before Harris could answer her the patron came to the table to say: ‘I know you do not like the liver, Monsieur Harris—so if you prefer it we have today for you a piece of meat. A bifteck. If you find it all right?’
‘Excellent,’ Harris said. ‘Thank you.’ The patron smiled and patted Jean-Pierre on the head and walked away. Madame Dupont stared critically, with a kind of dry prudery, through her spectacles. Jean-Pierre said he would be glad when the peaches came and Madame Dupont, holding the lobster-pincers poised under her chin, said:
‘He was at La Baule the summer before the war. With another girl.’
‘Another daughter?’
‘I remembered him very well the moment Madame Prideaux reminded me.’
The noon wind was springing up, deepening the sea to flashing brilliant indigo, across the bay.
‘Daughter?’ Madame Dupont said. ‘She is somebody’s daughter, yes. They are all somebody’s daughter.’
In the dining-room there was a swift breath of fish hot in butter, and richly, thickly, with nausea, it clotted Harris’s throat.
‘It’s a fine game,’ she said. ‘I suppose you find it in England too? I suppose one finds it everywhere.’
He sent the fish away.
‘Nor me!’ the boy said. ‘Nor me. I hate it!’
‘You must eat fish,’ Madame Dupont said. ‘It gives brains.’
‘No!’
‘It gives brains, doesn’t it, Monsieur Harris? He must eat it.’
‘Monsieur Harris doesn’t eat it.’
‘Monsieur Harris is old enough to please himself what he has and what he doesn’t have. Aren’t you, Monsieur Harris?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘You must eat and grow big and get lots of brains,’ she said, ‘so that you can please yourself what you do.’
Across the bay the rising breeze from open sea carried deeper sparkling furrows broadside along the shore. A blue sardine boat, like an ark, shone with its climbing crimson sail tightening against the long promontory of blue-black pines.
‘After all she has to live,’ Madame Dupont said. She smiled with dry tolerance, her mouth twisted, her eyes narrowed like the eyes of the old watchful matriarchs behind her spectacles. ‘They all have to live.’
Harris, eating his beefsteak, stared blindly across the bay.
‘She knows how to make a fuss of an old man like that. And after all the old man wants to live——’
‘Fuss, fuss!’ the boy said.
‘Quiet!’ Madame Dupont said. ‘Take what fruit you want, Jean-Pierre, and eat it.’
Harris, staring across the sea, thought of the boy who had died, the something that had been taken away from the girl and that he hoped, in a sense, he might have given back. Suddenly it seemed that the other shore of the bay was very far away. It quivered and receded in the bristling air of noon.
And staring at it he realised that he had never, all this time, been across the bay. He had never been across to the other side. It was too late now and as he sat thinking of the girl’s dark hair blowing across her face, the rain beating on the windows and the suit of cream alpaca, pressed and neat, hanging in the bedroom, he remembered the stony barren pain of her face and the things that would kill.
‘I have a big one!’ the boy said. ‘Look! Look! Look at that!’
Harris looked away from the sea to where Jean-Pierre, splitting a gold-pink peach in halves, was prodding with the point of his fruit knife a trundling fat maggot that had fattened on the blood-brown shining heart of flesh.
‘Kill it! Kill it!’ Madame Dupont said. ‘Put it away! Take it out of my sight. I can’t bear it! For God’s sake put it out of my sight!’
All across the bay the sea flashed with its deep noon beauty and in the dining-room Madame Dupont, quite pale behind her golden spectacles, buried her face in her hands.
Elaine
‘I suppose the fact is men are more sentimental about them,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you think that was it?’
‘No,’ he said.
Her face, underneath a little hat of striped brown and white fur, was like that of a pretty tigress that did not smile.
‘But don’t they have them at Oxford?’ she said. ‘Isn’t it one of those things there?’
‘How can having them at Oxford possibly have anything to do with it?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I just thought,’ she said.
As the train rushed forward into spring twilight I could see, everywhere on the rainy green cuttings, pale eyes of primroses winking up from among parallel reflections of carriage lights. Above and beyond the cuttings many ap
ple orchards were in thick wide pink bloom.
‘Then what is it you don’t like about them?’ she said.
‘In the first place they’re messy. They’re not like pansies,’ he said. ‘They don’t have the flower on a stem. That’s what repulses me. They’re messy.’
‘Repulses,’ she said. ‘What a word.’
His hair, a weak brandy brown, was shredded like tobacco into short separated curls that hung untidily down over the fiery flesh of his neck. His lips were full and pettish. When motionless they were like a thick slit in a red indiarubber ball. In the soft fat face the eyes were like blue glass marbles that did not quite fit into their sandy lidded slots and I sometimes got the impression that they would suddenly drop out as he gazed at her.
At this moment she hid behind her newspaper and in the darkening glass of the train windows, across the carriage, we exchanged reflections. I half expected her to smile. Instead I saw the last of the paling primrose reflections sow themselves lightly across a pair of dark still eyes that were almost expressionless.
‘Another thing is that the smell absolutely nauseates me.’
‘Why?’ she said. ‘It’s so delicious.’
‘Not to me.’
‘Oh! that’s fantastic,’ she said. ‘That heavenly scent. Everybody thinks so.’
‘I don’t happen to be everybody,’ he said.
She had lowered her newspaper as she spoke. Now, sharply, she raised it up again. As she did so she pulled up, very slightly, the skirt of her dress, so that I could see for a moment or two her small pretty knees.
‘Who was it who made that remark about pansies being one side of Leicester Square and wallflowers on the other?’ she said.
‘That was Elaine.’
‘I knew it was somebody.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
This time I knew she would smile at me and I got ready to smile back at her dark steady reflection in the glass. But to my surprise she did not smile. She sat transfixed, staring at me as if I were transparent and she could see through and beyond me into the mass of fading apple orchards sailing past in the brilliant blue evening above the cuttings.
‘What sort of day did you have?’ she said. ‘What did you do?’
‘I had a very bad, tiring day,’ he said.
‘All bad days are tiring,’ she said. ‘That’s why they’re bad.’
‘Don’t be trite,’ he said.
He began to fuss with a brief-case, taking out first papers, then books, sorting them over and putting them back again. Between his knees he held a walking-stick of thick brown cane, the colour something more than a shade or two paler than the hairs that crawled down the flanks of his face. In the confusion he let the walking-stick slip and it fell with a clatter on the carriage floor and as he leaned forward to pick it up I saw his hands. They were pink and puffy, as if the flesh had been lightly boiled.
‘Why don’t you put it on the rack?’ she said.
‘Because I prefer it here.’
‘You didn’t ask me what I did today,’ she said.
‘If it had been interesting you’d have told me all about it,’ he said.
After that the girl and I stared at each other for a long time from behind the evening papers, first directly and then, when I could not bear the steady smileless dark eyes looking straight at me any longer, obliquely through the darkening glass. Now and then she moved her body slightly and I could see once again the rounded pretty knees. Then when she saw me looking at the knees she would cover them up again, not quickly, but dreamily, slowly, almost absent-mindedly, fixing me always with the steady eyes from under the tigress hat.
All the time I expected her to smile at me but all this time there was no sign of a smile. I had begun to wonder how long this strange exchange could go on, first the direct stare, then the stare that was like something between two apparitions on two smoky photographic plates, and then the knees uncovering themselves and her hands slowly covering them up again, when she said:
‘I think this is frightfully funny. Look at this.’
She leaned forward and gave him the evening paper. He took it with puffy casual hands and for the first time I saw her smile. The parting of her lips, revealing her teeth, produced exactly the same effect as the parting of her skirt when it revealed her knees. They were very pretty teeth and he did not notice them either.
‘Why funny?’ he said.
He gave her back the paper.
‘Don’t you think it’s funny? I do.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, I don’t know—I just think it’s funny.’
‘You mean it’s funny because you think it is or you think it’s funny because it really is?’
‘I just think it’s funny—that’s all. Don’t you?’
‘No.’
The smile, as it went from her face, reminded me of a flame turned off by a tap. Abruptly she turned it on again; and again the teeth were white and pretty and he did not notice them.
‘You can’t have looked at the right piece,’ she said.
She gave him back the paper.
‘It made me laugh——’
‘It’s exactly like the wallflowers,’ he said. ‘Just because you think they’re sweet it doesn’t mean to say they are. That doesn’t make it a fact. Don’t you see?’
‘No.’
Furiously he threw the evening paper back in her face. She caught it in silence and held it rigidly in front of her. In this painful moment there was nothing for me to do but to hide behind my own. By this time the evening was fully dark outside and in place of primroses and orchards of apple bloom, candescent in the twilight, I could see only the rolling phantom lights of little country stations.
For some time I watched these lights. Then there was a long stretch of line with no lights at all and presently from behind my paper I looked at her face again. To my astonishment the smile was still there. It was not only still there but she appeared, it seemed to me, to be nursing it. It was like a light or a piece of fire she did not want to go out.
When she caught me looking at her again she seemed to do the trick of turning the tap again. The pretty teeth were suddenly hidden behind the tight lips. Only the pretty knees remained exposed, delicate and pale and rounded, until with the dreamy absent movement she covered them up again.
Then she began to talk to him from behind her paper.
‘Did you have dinner?’ she said.
He moved savagely among his books and papers and did not answer.
‘With Elaine?’
He did not answer.
‘How was Elaine?’ she said.
Her voice had raised itself a little. She looked at me hard from behind the paper.
The train screamed through a little station beyond which were woods that were torn with long shrill echoes. I shaded my face with my hand and squinted out and pretended to search among the flashing little old-fashioned station lamps for a name, but darkness rushed in and tall spring woods crowded the sky.
‘Dear Elaine,’ she said.
He suddenly got up and snatched a suitcase from the rack. He banged on its locks as if they were jammed and she said:
‘She’s a dear. I like her. Did she have her lily-of-the-valley hat on?’
The suitcase yawned open and he began to try to press into it the brief-case with its books and papers. There was not room for it and he banged at it for some time with his podgy fingers like an angry baker pummelling dough.
‘Or was it wallflowers? or doesn’t she like them?’
He wrestled with the two cases. In a moment or two he gave up the idea of putting one into the other and threw the brief-case on to the seat. Then he shut down the locks of the larger case in two swift metallic snaps and said:
‘You take the brief-case. I’ll take the two suitcases. We’re nearly there.’
From behind her newspaper she had nothing to say. Her knees with their delicate rounded prettiness were exposed again, with a naked effect of
pure smooth skin, but he did not notice them as he leaned forward and said in a voice of slow, cold, enamelled articulation:
‘I said would you take the brief-case? Do you mind? I will take the suitcases. I have only one pair of hands.’
‘What a funny thing to talk to a woman about,’ she said. ‘The scent of wallflowers.’
‘We shall be there in two minutes,’ he said.
He reached up for the second suitcase. It was cumbersome, of old shiny worn leather that slipped too easily down through his hands. He prevented its fall with clumsiness and as he did so she stared at me again, full face this time, unsmiling, the dark bright eyes giving that uneasy effect of trying to transfix and penetrate me.
And when she spoke again it was again in a slightly louder voice, gazing straight at me:
‘I told you it was because men were more sentimental about them. They always are about flowers.’
From the rack he took down a large brown duffle-coat, struggling fatly into it, submerging everything of himself except the untidy mass of brandy brown hair. I could see by this time the lights of the town and I could hear the train brakes grinding on. Sharply he slid back the corridor door but she made no sign of getting up. He did not look at her either. He was unaware of the pretty knees, the uplifted face, the little tigress hat. He was consumed by the struggle to get two suitcases through the door at once. Then the train lurched over points and the sudden motion seemed to throw himself, the suitcases and the heavy walking-stick in one clattering mass into the corridor outside.
‘Don’t forget anything,’ he said.
A moment later he had disappeared along the corridor. The train stopped and I heard him banging on an outer door to open it. I saw him lurch forward under the station lights, grossly out of balance, head forward, puffing.
She got up and began to gather up her things. I waited behind her so that she could leave the carriage first and it was only then that I realised how much he had left for her to carry. She was trying to gather up an umbrella, a handbag, three parcels, the brief-case and the evening paper.
‘May I help?’ I said.
