The Daffodil Sky

by H. E. Bates

  ‘At half-past twelve?’ he said. ‘Is that all right?’

  ‘Whenever you like, Herr Vaughan.’

  She gave him lunch in the Speisesaal, a long bright room with an enormous blue-tiled stove in front of the house from which he could see directly and without obstruction up the entire pine-locked valley. She herself brought in the slate-coloured trout in their steaming copper pan. Dumbly the boy followed her with a dish of brown clarified butter kept hot by a methylated flame.

  ‘Ah! a lady.’

  The trout curled on his plate had its mouth open. That was another joke and she always said:

  ‘You are knowing it now very quickly which is the lady. With the mouth open.’

  That had been the first time he saw her smile: the day she had served him a trout with its mouth gaping and asked him if he knew how to tell, in trout, the male from the female. The second time had been when she showed him the small white saucer of flesh in the cheek of the fish: the piece for the connoisseur, she said, the most delicate piece of all.

  The boy was twelve or thirteen: perhaps a year or two older. It was very hard to tell. The structure of the thick features, coarse and strong, seemed to break down about the mouth, which sagged spongily. The eyes were jellied and globular. The jaw sank itself into a short squat neck that went up at the back like a pipe that had been scoured.

  The hands, which were enormous, generally bungled the little dish of butter, burning themselves against hot metal.

  ‘Go now, go now,’ she said. She spoke in a low voice, with apologetic gentleness. ‘Bring bread for Herr Vaughan. There is no bread.’

  On feet that were like those of a bear shod in metal the boy clumped out across the bare wood floor.

  ‘It would help if he could speak English,’ she said, apologising for him a second time.

  Some of the bread, when it came, slid out of the basket and his big muscle-bound hands to the floor.

  When meals were over the boy and his father worked mostly on the pasture at the back of the house, the man mowing the grass in strips with a broad short scythe, the boy clumsily tossing and feathering with a wide wooden fork the lines of yesterday’s hay. The father, Otto, had a breadth of back and a thickness of neck, covered with shaved salt-and-pepper hair, that made him seem even shorter and squatter than perhaps he was. It was hard, as with the boy, to tell how old he was: perhaps fifty or fifty-five, twenty or twenty-five years older at any rate than Frau Walter, who spent some part of every afternoon scouring the grass for fallen plums.

  When the grass immediately behind the house had been mown the man and the boy moved farther up the slope, a quarter of a mile away. They toiled up there at the grass until darkness fell. With enormous sluggish hands the boy tossed clouds of grass that rained delicate spits of fading crocus bloom. A day or two later the grass came home in great bundles, borne on the shoulders by the man and the boy like burdens on the backs of oxen.

  ‘It is very hard work with the grass,’ he said to Frau Walter.

  ‘Oh! yes,’ she said. ‘But then, that is our life. Without the grass there would not be much for us. We are too high to grow corn. The summer is too short for it.’

  ‘There are wonderful machines now for cutting grass,’ he said.

  ‘Such machines are not for Otto, I think.’

  ‘They save work,’ he said. ‘And after all work is time. And time is money. But then, I think the Swiss like to work.’

  ‘I am not Swiss,’ she said.

  For the second time it was like the opening of a little box: except that this time, he thought, the aperture was slightly wider.

  ‘I am really German,’ she said. ‘I still don’t speak Swiss-German well. Not really well. It is still rather strange for me.’

  ‘But English—you speak that well.’

  ‘That I learned in High School,’ she said.

  ‘Where?’ he asked her. ‘Which town?’

  ‘In München. Munich. I was a student there. That was before the war. That was the time when there was not so much work for German girls. That was when I came here. Many German girls are coming to Switzerland. Even now.’

  Almost every time he came back from walking he would hear the voice of the father, Otto, goading the boy. Its short animal barks might have been snarling at a mule.

  ‘Franz! Franz! Franz!’

  Even from the pastures farther up the slope, where hay-forks clawed the air and drew out of it whirling explosions in pale green clouds, he could hear it grunting and barking down the clear alpine air.

  ‘Huh! Huh! Huh!—Franz!’

  ‘He is not a very quick boy,’ she said once. ‘But he is strong. He is like his father. He is very strong.’

  ‘Huh,’ the father always said. Once, at the most twice a day, he made his greeting, ‘Grüss Gott, huh.’

  ‘That is what we need most here,’ she said. The box, under her small nervous smile, opened a little wider. ‘Strong persons for working. I wanted him to go to the Gymnasium—but he is not very quick. It is better he should work. His father needs him here.’

  ‘Is he the only one?’

  ‘The only one.’

  She made some attempt to smile again, plucking nervously at the edges of her apron.

  ‘In the country people like to have more of course. It is always better if there are more. Especially for the work.’

  He said he thought all work and no play made Jack a dull boy.

  ‘Jack?’ she said. ‘Oh! yes. Yes—we too have some expression rather like that. But work—you see, that is our life. We have not time for much other things in the summer.’

  So it surprised him, some mornings later, when she said at breakfast:

  ‘Herr Vaughan, if you are not walking somewhere too soon—if you are not wishing to do something special this morning—Franz and I are driving up to the farm to fetch trouts. Perhaps you would care to come?’

  ‘Frau Walter,’ he said, ‘I would go to the end of the earth for trouts.’

  ‘Oh! Herr Vaughan.’

  ‘I have always wanted to see the trouts,’ he said. ‘What time do you want to go?’

  ‘As soon as you are ready, Herr Vaughan. After breakfast.’

  She drove him in an old open truck through a shining morning of heavy mountain dew up the valley, to a farm where trout ranged in many oblong tanks from delicate fry as small as needles to growlers of several pounds that pouted darkly against the sides of concrete prisons.

  He made jokes about the trout designed deliberately to please her.

  ‘Little do they know,’ he said, ‘that they will all go to Heaven in butter.’

  ‘Oh! Herr Vaughan, Herr Vaughan.’

  ‘To think that the world is so full of trout,’ he said. ‘If only I’d known I should never have eaten less than four.’

  Under the impact of these jokes she seemed to relax and unfold, almost to blossom. While they were waiting for the boy to collect the trout he saw her laugh for the first time without timidity, her mouth open, her white teeth glowing. She looked a great deal younger. The sun shone through the edges of her fair brown hair, giving it a momentary effect of wearing golden fins.

  Once, below them, in a tank, water was thrashed into a dark whirl by a clash of charging fish.

  ‘Sometimes they are fighting,’ she said. ‘Sometimes they are killing each other.’

  The boy lumbered towards the truck with a big fish-can, lugging it with enormous hands, lifting it on to the back.

  ‘I have just to call for coffee in the village,’ she said. ‘After that we may go home.’

  Looking up at the glittering slopes of grass he had a sudden thought.

  ‘How far to the Reichenbach?’

  ‘Oh! It is quite close, the Reichenbach. Just there.’

  ‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘let’s go up. Let’s look at it.’

  ‘Oh! Herr Vaughan, not this morning—that I have no time for, not possibly——’

  ‘Let the boy get the coffee,’ he said, �
�while we walk up.’

  ‘Oh! no, that really isn’t possible. That I really have no time for——’

  ‘Let the boy get the coffee,’ he said.

  He never knew quite why she suddenly gave up all protest. He had spoken his last sentence a little peremptorily, rather impatient with her shocked formal flutterings, for seeming to regard with horror the simple business of taking half an hour off in order to see the beauty spot she had so often claimed was something special for him. And as he spoke she seemed to crumple up. In defeat her mouth remained open, dumbly. A certain look of freshness he had noticed in her face, with the sunlight giving her hair an effect of almost dancing with golden fins, vanished abruptly, leaving her eyes drab and tightened up again.

  He regretted his shortness of manner immediately. He tried to dispel its effect and to make it up to her by chattering lightly about the view as they climbed the path through the lower slopes of the valley out of sun into pine shadow, leaving the boy to get coffee at the foot of the road.

  In turn she hardly spoke to him. Then presently the rocks above them gave out the strange, escaping sound of falling waters. He stopped to listen.

  ‘Is that the Reichenbach we can hear?’

  ‘Yes, that is the Reichenbach. But it is some way away yet. It is some way away yet.’

  Her repetition of the sentence made him regret even more the way he had spoken. He stopped again. They had reached a place where pines parted for a few yards and let in a touch of sun.

  ‘Don’t you want to go?’

  ‘It is not that.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I made you come up here if you didn’t want to.’

  ‘It is not that, Herr Vaughan.’

  The woods about them were wet and partially scintillating, where the sun broke through, with gentle settling spray from the falls.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  She stood looking at her feet.

  ‘I thought it would be nice for you to come up here and show me something you liked,’ he said.

  ‘It is not something I like.’

  ‘I thought you said——’

  Two tourists striking the ground with alpenstocks came down the path, dislodging stones that echoed in gullies of pine as they fell away. By the time they had come and passed and disappeared down the path he had forgotten altogether what he wanted to say.

  Instead he said:

  ‘Shall we go down? Let’s go down.’

  She still did not move; she still stood looking at her feet.

  ‘I think you’re angry with me. Don’t be angry.’

  ‘I am not angry.’

  ‘Smile then,’ he said.

  She did not lift her face; he was standing close to her and suddenly, for the first time, he touched her. He put his fingers gently under her chin.

  ‘Smile.’

  ‘Please, Herr Vaughan.’

  She put one foot on top of another, still staring down at them.

  ‘I thought girls from Munich were always the smiling ones.’

  That made her lift her head quite sharply.

  ‘That is true. How did you know that?’

  ‘I knew a man who lived there once,’ he said. ‘He told me. Is it true that everybody there was gay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He said once that he had no money to give his landlady a Christmas present. So he borrowed twenty marks from her. Then he gave her two marks back as a present. She was very pleased. Was it like that?’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Were you gay?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I was gay. Everybody was gay.’

  More tourists came down the path, among them a girl who was laughing. Frau Walter watched her out of sight with thoughtful, sidelong eyes.

  Suddenly she was talking quite quickly.

  ‘It wasn’t much good being gay without money, though. That was why I came here. It was a good job, in the Gasthof. I was eighteen. Otto was a good Swiss. Also the first Frau Walter was very good to me before she died.’

  He had a sudden thought that helped to clear his mind.

  ‘Isn’t the boy yours?’

  ‘Yes, he is mine.’

  She glanced up at him with an odd, veiled, anxious look on her face, her mouth twisted.

  ‘Why? Don’t you think he looks like mine?’

  For the second time he was sorry he had spoken.

  ‘I can’t help it if he is not like me. I did my best.’

  He could not look at her. Staring away from her he saw a remarkable band of iridescence, a deep rainbow, actually shimmering below his eye-level across the gorge of pines.

  ‘The only mistake I made was not to have ten like him,’ she said. ‘But then I didn’t know that when Otto asked me to marry him. Up here.’

  ‘Up here?’

  ‘Here,’ she said, ‘on the Reichenbach.’

  A sudden and mistaken impression that she was going to cry made him catch her by the shoulders. She gave what might have been a shudder of resentment or uneasiness or simply pure revulsion. Out of an attempted formation of a few quivering syllables he heard something vague about his understanding, now, why she had not ever wanted to come up there, to the Reichenbach.

  Something, as she spoke, made her look quickly down the path. A moment before that his hands were still on her shoulders. Her lips were slightly parted. If sunlight had continued for another second or two to make golden fins of the edges of her hair he had an impression that he might have kissed her. He even thought that she might have wanted him to kiss her.

  ‘Please,’ she said. ‘Please.’

  He looked down the path. Thirty yards away the boy stood staring at them with the eyes of an ox. Dumbly, from under heavy bovine brows, he seemed to be trying to penetrate the half-golden, shadowy air.

  ‘We’re coming, we’re coming, Franz,’ she said. ‘We’re coming now. It was too far to go up there. Did you think you had lost me?’

  As she turned to go down the path he saw the lightness go out of her face, creating once again his impression of the box, except that this time the lid had closed.

  Two mornings later, after he had paid his bill, she said good-bye to him; at first with all her old formality.

  ‘Good-bye, Herr Vaughan. Wiedersehen.’

  ‘Wiedersehen, Frau Walter,’ he said. ‘Good-bye.’

  ‘Do you know which way you are going?’

  ‘Up the valley.’

  ‘It is very beautiful up the valley,’ she said. ‘There you have wonderful things.’

  She left him for a moment and went to the back of the Stube. She came with two glasses and a bottle in her hand.

  ‘I forgot. You must drink a kirsch before you go.’

  ‘And you too?’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘yes, I will take one too.’

  She poured kirsch into two glasses. He lifted his glass and looked at her clearly and steadily, for several moments, over the edge of it. When she tried to look away he still held her there, looking straight into the pale-brown eyes.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ he said.

  ‘You had better go.’

  ‘Is the room still free?’

  ‘You had better go.’

  ‘Would it be free if I came back down the valley?’

  He drank his kirsch as he waited for an answer. Her face had softened. She drank too, looking at him over the glass. He felt the entire inner core of his body stir, turn over and inflame him with tenderness and he stood entranced again by the golden fins of her hair.

  ‘You should not look at me like that.’

  ‘Would it be free?’

  ‘You should not——’

  ‘Would it be free?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it will be free.’

  A moment later she was playing nervously with the edges of her apron, saying good-bye.

  ‘You will pass the Reichenbach,’ she said, ‘as you go up the valley.’

  ‘And again as I come down,’ he said. ‘
That will be for the third time.’

  ‘Go and look at it,’ she said. ‘That will be something for you.’

  ‘I’ll go and look at it,’ he said.

  All along the valley the sun was prancing on the heavy dew of the grass, making it sparkle. He could hear the sound of cow-bells from higher pastures, among tongues of pines. From the road under the Reichenbach he stood listening to the distant sound of falling waters. He remembered the pretty, golden fins of her hair.

  ‘There will be a third time,’ he thought and as he remembered her own words: ‘That will be something for you,’ he turned and walked back down the valley.

  All about him, up the slopes, in the dancing morning air, peasants were already working on the pastures, bearing down their burdens of grass, like oxen, for the long winter.

  The Letter

  Written for the Star in 1938, and never before published in any collection and only recently rediscovered, ‘The Letter’ is a charming story of a mother trying to dictate a letter to her son. But when the horsekeeper’s son comes to write it for her, all she can think to tell him is about the gooseberries and the weather. The truth behind her struggle with her complex emotions is revealed when we find out where her son is.

  The old woman had been trying for six weeks to write the letter; or, rather, since she could not write, to get it written. And now, at last, the horsekeeper’s son was going to write it.

  He sat at the kitchen table with the new wooden pen and the new bottle of ink and the new pad of paper, and the old woman sat with him. With grey shawl and grey hair and almost grey face she was like an old stocking crumpled into the shape of a woman.

  ‘Put!’ he said. ‘You keep saying put. Put what? Can’t you think?’

  ‘Put “Dear Tom.”’

  ‘I put that.’ He sprawled across the table, head low, pen slanting in readiness. He was about nineteen, raw and greasy, with arrogant lips. ‘I’m ready to put what y’ wanna say. Come on.’

  But it was no use: she could not think. She sat silent, vacant.

  ‘Oh! Blimey,’ he said. ‘You’ll turn me grey, mother. Can’t you think at all?’

  ‘I had it all in my head,’ she said. ‘I had it hand pat.’