The Daffodil Sky

by H. E. Bates

  Looking away at the fire, she said:

  ‘You’re looking for Jean Godden, aren’t you?’

  ‘That’s right. How——’

  ‘I’m her sister,’ she said. ‘I’m Doreen.’

  He seemed to look at her for the first time. Her face was flushed under the pale blue eyes with blotches of redness from the bluster of wind and the heat of fire. She had a plain white scarf tied tightly back over her head, giving her hair the impression of being whipped severely and sternly back. Her legs were shapeless in short turn-down gum-boots, like a fisherwoman’s, and in denim trousers the colour of light brown cow-hide.

  ‘I wouldn’t have known it,’ he said.

  The wind seemed to blow a shadow of fury across her face. No, you wouldn’t have known it, she thought. I’m that much older. Nearly forty. On the shelf, past it: that’s what you were thinking. She stabbed at the fire again, moving from one heap to another, rolling fireballs of chaff about the white-blue seething ashes and the running tongues of flame.

  ‘I thought you were coming last Sunday?’ she said.

  ‘I was,’ he said. ‘Then I couldn’t get my day off. I had to work the week-end.’

  ‘She waited all day. She didn’t know what to do with herself.’

  ‘I had to work,’ he said. ‘There was no way of letting her know.’

  ‘You couldn’t get away with that with some girls,’ she said.

  With me for instance, she thought.

  He was standing too near the fire again and as she pushed past him, almost brushing him with the fork-handle, a turn of wind took all the smoke of the three fires upward in a single spiral column that turned in air and doubled back again, plunging down into the central core of ashes so that they grinned, red and teeth-like, in the fanning wind.

  ‘She knows I’m coming today, doesn’t she?’ he said.

  ‘I expect so. She doesn’t tell me everything.’

  She looked up at the sky. Clouds were curling up against each other, low and dirty, not unlike reflections in deeper uglier blue of the descending smoke of the fires.

  ‘The wind’s gone up the hill,’ she said. ‘It’ll rain before you know where you are. You’d better get down to Benacre while it’s dry.’

  ‘Are you going down?’

  ‘I shall do. In a bit——’

  ‘Then I’ll wait for you,’ he said.

  She swung round and said:

  ‘You needn’t wait for me. Get on while you’ve got the chance. I’m used to it. You can cut across to the gate there——’

  ‘I’d rather wait,’ he said. ‘I’m in no hurry.’

  ‘That’s a compliment to somebody,’ she said.

  Her eyes, as she turned, were held in a frown. Then it lifted. Smoke blew across her face in a long wriggling just like the ghost of an escaping snake and when it cleared again her eyes were fixed with a sort of thoughtful transparence on the central grinning portions of fire. The glow seemed to consume some of her hardness and she said:

  ‘Weren’t you going to stay the night? Where are your things?’

  ‘I left my bag over by the gate,’ he said.

  ‘You deserve to get it picked up by somebody then, that’s all. There’s people going by there all the time. You never know who’s about.’

  ‘There’s nothing in it to matter much,’ he said.

  ‘Oh! well,’ she said, ‘if that’s how you look at it.’

  In a moment she was moving again from fire to fire, raking and stabbing, letting in wind that woke the chaff to grinning eyes and bright yellow flags of flame.

  ‘Been threshing?’ he said.

  She wanted to say ‘It looks like it, doesn’t it?’ then she was unpredictably restrained by something, and she remembered her sister, at home in the kitchen, ironing a brown and yellow dress. She said: ‘Oh! weeks ago. We got done early. This was just the day for burning chaff, that’s all.’

  The dress was tight in the waist and had one of those wide black cummerbunds that women were wearing now. It was full about the hips and the ground-colour was a warm and lively brown, the colour of some autumn leaves, with sprigs of yellow tendril-borne flowers all over it, very delicate and small. It was the sort of dress she could never have chosen for herself. She always went wrong somewhere. The brown would have looked like furniture polish and the yellow crude and brassy, like dandelions.

  She hadn’t the taste of her sister. Things never came off for her. She hadn’t the luck either. She hadn’t the way of not seeming to want men, the cool, aloof, irresponsible touch.

  ‘There’s a spit of rain,’ he said, and she laughed, very short and taunting, for the first time.

  ‘You’ll look well if she’s not there when you get there,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! she’ll be there—she said she would.’

  ‘Oh! will she? Supposing she isn’t? You take yourself for granted, don’t you? You let her down on Sunday.’

  ‘I didn’t let her down.’

  ‘Well, something like it. It didn’t make her feel any sweeter.’

  ‘What would you do, then?’ he said.

  ‘I’d pitchfork anybody out, quick,’ she said, ‘if they let me down,’ and she made the gesture with her fork above the fire, scattering ash and smoke and chaff and a few flapping flames that seemed to turn dark orange, above the ash, in the darking afternoon.

  He did not speak and she turned quickly to see if her taunting had touched him at all. His face was flushed. She felt amused in a confident sort of way about that. His hands were in his trousers’ pockets, deep, so that she could not tell if they were clenched or open. Wind had disturbed his hair, raking up a few thin separate strands, exactly like the separations in a feather. His shoes were almost white from dusty ash and she was suddenly uneasy about the changes in the image of him since he had first walked across the field. For a moment she lost all her hard, high taunting composure and she stabbed pointlessly at the fire again and said:

  ‘You mustn’t mind me. You mustn’t take any notice of me. Do you want to go? You do, don’t you?’

  Before he answered she heard the first spits of rain falling softly, piff! piff! into the heart of the fires.

  ‘What about the fire?’ he said. ‘I can wait for you.’

  ‘Oh! it’ll burn itself out. It always does. Or the rain’ll put it out.’

  Her mackintosh and her tea-bag lay behind her. As she turned to pick them up he moved to help her but she was there first, grabbing the coat before he could touch it. Then she slung the tea-bag over her back and sloped the fork over her shoulder.

  ‘Come on, we’d better go,’ she said.

  Rain in faster spits, sharply hissing as it struck down through the full sepia-orange of surrounding oaks, came out of the west as the two of them walked across the field. She found herself striding with head down, her big feet flat, her eyes looking at his shoes, ash-covered and now rain-pocked, their neatness gone.

  ‘You think she’ll be there all right?’ he said.

  ‘I expect so. If you’re fool enough to come I suppose she’ll be fool enough to be there,’ she said.

  She could not resist that. And supposing she was not there? She always was; she liked the boys, she had all the luck with them. She was pretty enough, with all the taste, for anybody. But supposing she were not, this time? Rain came swishing faster through the dry golden-brown oaks and made impression in her mind of thoughts rushing forward, herded and lost in disjointed confusion. What would she do if she were not there? Put on the green dress with the leather belt? And the flat shoes? And do her hair tightly up, in a coconut?

  ‘Where’s your case?’ she said.

  ‘Behind the hedge,’ he said. With head down against the rain he brought back a small brown week-end case he had left in the shelter of the hedge, by the gate to the field.

  ‘Here, you have this mac,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘No. I’m all right.’

  ‘You’ve got your best suit on,’ she sai
d. ‘You’ll get it wet through. You’ll ruin it. Come on, you have the mac on.’

  ‘No, you. It’s yours. You have it.’

  ‘I don’t want it,’ she said. ‘I’m used to it. Come on.’

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said.

  ‘Are we going to quarrel over a mac?’ she said. ‘You’ve ruined your shoes already.’

  Queer how the thought of the ruined shoes upset her. As he looked down at them she put the mac over his shoulders. They were standing in the road now and suddenly rain came beating down in white sheets on the black metal surface, at the same time tearing pale brown clouds of leaves that fell wetly across the slate-blue sky and its lighter drifts of low blue smoke from the fires.

  When he spoke again his voice was sharp and annoyed.

  ‘Now give me your tea-bag and hold the mac over your head,’ he said. ‘Go on. Hold one side while I hold the other. I don’t know what we’re arguing about. Put the mac over your head. Go on. There’s enough for both of us.’

  She was quiet. She put the mac over her head and stared down at her big boots slapping in the wet, leaf-printed road, side by side with the neat half-spoilt shoes she liked so much. She did not know what to say and she wished suddenly that it was night-time, with nobody on the road, so that there was no way of seeing her face.

  Presently she could bear it no longer and stopped and swung round to look back across the fields at the fires. The wind was blowing chaff and smoke and dust and flame into darkening rain from the three yellow heaps that were like solitary pyres.

  ‘Keep the mac over your head,’ he said. ‘What are you looking at now?’

  ‘Just the fires,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! come on, they’ll burn out. You said they would.’

  ‘All right. I know.’

  ‘That’s the trouble with some people,’ he said. ‘They always know. They always think they know.’

  She did not answer. She walked with head still further down, watching the two pairs of feet. The rain beating on her lowered face made her feel dry and tired inside. What did she know? What were the sort of things she was supposed to know?

  She was a fool and there was nothing, she thought, that she did know—nothing but the falling rain, the queer odour of the mac on her head, the fading smell of fire and smoke and falling leaf, and the chaff driving in the wind.

  The Small Portion

  The girl and her mother had driven down from the mountains in August, by way of Cortina and the Vale de Cembra and the towns of Lombardy, at the time when the wild cyclamen were in bloom. It was still hot, with distances of smoky glass, when they reached the lakes in September.

  ‘What dish is this? Do you speak English? What do you call it?’

  Mrs Carey poked with her knife at the main luncheon dish so that the flash of sun on steel made white winks on the under-bellies of the terrace umbrellas.

  ‘It is a sort of pasta, madame. A sort of——’

  ‘A sort of what? What is this green material? Why is it green?’

  ‘That is the pasta itself, madame. Pasta Verdi. Green macaroni.’

  ‘It looks most extraordinary.’ Mrs Carey poked at it again.

  ‘It is very good, madame,’ the waiter said. ‘You will like it, I’m sure——’

  ‘Give us both a very small portion.’ Mrs Carey waved her knife again as if to sever the dish into even smaller segments than those the waiter was spooning. ‘Smaller—smaller—not so much as that. We do not like large portions. You understand? We don’t eat much. We do not like large portions.’

  ‘Yes, madame.’

  ‘No cheese. No cheese. We do not like cheese.’

  With pale eyes the girl sat staring at the lake. The water was a strong blue-green, with distances of molten rose, and above it a sky of misty torrid blue in which the edges of the horizon were completely dissolved. Below the terrace a few people were still swimming; she saw a flash of brown arms on a diving board.

  ‘The lake looks lovely——’

  ‘Eat your food while it’s hot. The lake is very deep,’ Mrs Carey said. ‘It is fourteen hundred and fifty feet deep in one place. I was reading about it yesterday.’

  The face of the girl had the soft colourless plumpness of a big summer apple that has grown unexposed to sun. With unresistant eyes she stared at the lake, eating slowly. She had seen Cortina and Verona and Bellagio and Como and Ponte Tresa, or rather she had been shown them all; but she could not help feeling that Maggiore, now, was the most beautiful of them all.

  ‘It would be nice to stay here——’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. We shall see. We shall see what this place is like.’ Mrs Carey peered with spectacled intensity at something among the macaroni. ‘Those are pieces of spinach stalk. They’ve not been sieved properly. Put them on the side of your plate if you don’t want them.’

  While her mother sat microscopically peering the girl looked up.

  ‘Those people we saw at the Arena at Verona are here,’ she said. ‘Mr and Mrs Smithson and the boy. They’re just coming on to the terrace——’

  ‘Concentrate on your food. I don’t know that we altogether——’

  ‘Well, hullo!’ Mr Smithson said. ‘Small world!’

  Mr Smithson wore a bright blue linen shirt with a deep open neck that showed a forest of strong black chest hairs.

  ‘You remember Mrs Carey and Josephine, Mother,’ he said. ‘The amphitheatre at Verona. Biggest in Italy or something, isn’t it?’

  ‘After the Colosseum,’ Mrs Carey said.

  ‘Well, how nice!’ Mrs Smithson said. ‘What a nice surprise! You remember our boy, don’t you, Mrs Carey? You remember John?’

  The black hair of the young man was still wet from swimming. Mrs Smithson, small, fair, sandy-eyed, was blistered in unhealthy crimson patches from too much sun.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re late for lunch,’ she said. ‘But we waited for John. He kept having another swim. The waiters don’t like it here if you’re late. One said “One-thirty, one-thirty!” to me yesterday.’

  ‘It’s my fault,’ the young man said. ‘I just had to go in again.’

  ‘Well, we must go,’ Mrs Smithson said. ‘We want to get lunch over and go to Orta this afternoon.’

  ‘Ah! yes, the little lake.’

  ‘Oh! you know it?’

  ‘Of course. It’s well known.’

  ‘Well, why don’t you come over with us?’ Mrs Smithson said and Mr Smithson too said why didn’t they come over?

  ‘We’re going to look over a house there,’ he said. ‘A villa or something. Just for fun. We saw the advert. in a paper. Why don’t you come over?’

  ‘I rather like to rest after lunch.’

  ‘Well, why doesn’t Josephine come over?’ Mr Smithson said and Mrs Smithson too said why didn’t Josephine come over?

  ‘Would you find that amusing, dear?’

  ‘I—well, if it’s——’

  ‘Yes!’ Mr Smithson said. ‘Of course. Why not? We’ve got the Bentley. We can have tea there. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Well, if you think you’d find it amusing, dear——’

  ‘Good!’ Mr Smithson said. ‘That’s the stuff. Good! We’ll pick you up at two.’

  It was just after three o’clock, in the heat of the afternoon, when the young man drove the car into the little enclosed piazza, under a line of plane trees, on the edge of the lake.

  ‘Did you have the green macaroni?’ Mr Smithson had said several times. ‘Something in it was salt. The cheese in it or something. God, it was salt—my tongue’s hanging out.’

  ‘Ask the boatman if that’s the island,’ Mrs Smithson said. ‘I suppose we have to row over there.’

  The boy, by the side of the mottled leather-faced Italian boatman, looked very tall, his flanks smooth and slim in their fresh coppery linen trousers.

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ he said. ‘Isola san Giuilo. That’s a monastery or something——’

  ‘I think it’s a Basilica,’ the
girl said.

  ‘Shall we have a cup o’ tea first?’ Mr Smithson said. ‘God, my tongue’s like emery paper.’

  ‘Oh! I don’t know,’ Mrs Smithson said. ‘Do we want to row over there? Just to see a house? We’d never live there, anyway. I tell you what—you go, John. You and Josephine. Dad and me’ll sit here and have tea while you go. Eh, Dad?’

  ‘Do what you like,’ Mr Smithson said. ‘But I got to have a wet of some sort——’

  ‘All right, John and Josephine go and we’ll wait for you.’ She smiled with bright, encouraging, sandy-eyed laughter. ‘John and Josephine—that sounds rather nice, doesn’t it? They go well together. Wasn’t there a book with that name?’

  On the island, from a flight of steps under the Basilica, a street not wide enough for a car went winding up from the water’s edge like a cool stone gully between high houses of crumbling stucco or under walls crested with dark spires of cypress and pink bushes of oleander. There was a sleepiness over everything, a drugged siesta silence that absorbed, as into thick wool, the sound of footsteps.

  ‘Where could the house be?’ the young man said. ‘Villa Agordo—that’s a nice name, I think, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s like a maze,’ he said. Walls of great height, joined across in places by little insecure bridges connecting the top storeys of villas with terraces of vine, kept out the sun. The tiny street curled round and round, deep-cut, traffic-less, without people, with no footsteps but their own.

  ‘We’ll have to ask,’ he said, ‘if there’s anybody to ask.’ His eyes were suddenly amused, impish, blackly twinkling. ‘Shall I shout? Do you think someone will answer if I yell “Anyone at home?”’

  ‘Oh! no.’ She could hear the profound silence of the little street pressing down on her, almost singing, as she stood there.

  ‘I’m going to chance it,’ he said. She watched his face lift, break into a broad smile and yell: ‘Anybody there? Anybody at home?’

  It might have been that his voice set off a spring in the high walls, flicking open the windows of a bedroom.

  ‘Signor?’

  ‘Villa Agordo,’ he said. ‘Do you know the Villa Agordo?’