by H. E. Bates
‘No, I’m sorry. I really must be adamant –’
Pop stared with open mouth, powerfully stunned and impressed by this word. He could not ever remember having heard it even on television.
‘Quite understand,’ he said.
In a single moment Mr Charlton was raised greatly in his estimation. He looked at him with awe.
‘Oh! won’t you stay?’ Mariette said. ‘We could ride tomorrow.’
Groping again, struggling against the dark eyes and the fragrance of gardenia, powerful even above the penetrating sting of kippers, Mr Charlton began to say:
‘No, really. For one thing I’ve nothing with me. I’ve no pyjamas.’
‘Gawd Almighty,’ Pop said. ‘Pyjamas?’
His admiration and awe for Mr Charlton now increased still further. He was held transfixed by the fact that here was a man who spoke in words of inaccessible meaning and wore pyjamas to sleep in.
‘Sleep in your shirt, old man,’ he said. ‘Like I do.’
Pop had always slept in his shirt; he found it more convenient that way. Ma, on the other hand, slept in nylon nightgowns, one of them an unusual pale petunia-pink that Pop liked more than all the rest because it was light, delicate, and above all completely transparent. It was wonderful for seeing through. Under it Ma’s body appeared like a global map, an expanse of huge explorable mountains, shadowy valleys, and rosy pinnacles.
‘I wear pyjamas,’ Mariette said. ‘I’ll lend you a pair of mine.’
‘No, really –’
Mr Charlton became utterly speechless as Ma got up, went into the kitchen and brought back four tins of whole peaches, which she began to open with an elaborate tinopener on the sideboard.
‘Save some of the juice, Ma,’ Pop said. ‘I’ll have it later with a drop o’ gin.’
‘I think you’re about my size,’ Mariette said, as if everything were now completely settled, so that Mr Charlton found himself in the centre of a shattering vortex, trapped there by the torturing and incredible thought that presently he would be sleeping in Mariette’s own pyjamas, on her own dreaming bed of foam.
Before he could make any further protest about this Primrose poured him a second cup of tea and Pop, leaning across the table, filled it up with whisky.
‘You ought to come strawberry picking,’ Pop said. Mr Charlton suddenly remembered the tax form. It mustn’t be forgotten, he thought, the tax form. On no account must it be forgotten. ‘This is very like the last summer we’ll ever go strawberry picking, Mister Charlton. We, you, anybody. You know why?’
Tax form, tax form, tax form, Mr Charlton kept thinking. Tax form. ‘No. Why?’
On the television screen a voice announced: ‘We now take you to Fanshawe Castle, the home of the Duke of Peele,’ and Ma, ladling out the last of the peaches, crowned by thick ovals of cream, said:
‘Turn up the contrast. I want to see this. It’s got dark again.’
‘Because,’ Pop said, ‘the strawberry lark’s nearly over.’
Tax form, tax form, tax form, Mr Charlton thought again. How was it the strawberry lark was nearly over? Tax form.
‘Disease,’ Pop said. ‘Sovereigns are finished. Climax is finished. Huxleys are finished. Soon there won’t be no strawberries nowhere.’
Tax form. ‘You mean that in this great strawberry-growing district –’
‘This districk. Every districk. In two years the strawberry lark’ll be over.’
‘Well, myself, I actually prefer raspberries –’
‘The raspberry lark’s nearly over as well,’ Pop said. ‘Mosaic. Weakening strain. And the plum lark. And the cherry lark. And the apple lark. They can’t sell apples for love nor –’
‘We’re in the library,’ Ma said. ‘Pop, look at the library.’
Tax form – Mr Charlton, with piteous desperation, struggled with the power of all his declining concentration to see that the tax form was remembered. ‘I’ve got to go home,’ he thought. ‘I’ve got to start walking.’ Something brushed his leg. ‘I must remember the tax form.’ He was startled into a sudden shivering catch of his breath and a moment later the white kitten was on his knee.
‘Gawd Almighty,’ Pop said. ‘What are all them on the walls?’
‘Must be books,’ Ma said.
In mute staring concentration Pop sat involved by the picture on the television screen, noisily eating peaches and taking an occasional quick-sucked gulp of whisky and tea.
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Can’t be.’
‘Beautiful home,’ Ma said. ‘I like the pelmets. That’s what we want. Pelmets like that.’
Tax form! Mr Charlton’s mind shouted. Tax form –!
‘Books?’ Pop said. ‘All books?’
‘I’ll go and find the pyjamas and get them aired,’ Mariette said. Mr Charlton emerged from a moment of acute hypnosis to feel her hand reach out, touch him softly, and then begin to draw him away. ‘Coming? We could try them against you for size.’
‘The man who owns that owes five million tax,’ Mr Charlton said desperately and for no reason at all. ‘Mr Larkin, that reminds me – we mustn’t forget that form –’
‘Perfick place,’ Pop said. ‘On the big side though. Suppose they need it for the books.’
‘Oh! the carpets. Look at the carpets,’ Ma said. ‘There must be miles of carpets. Acres.’
‘He’ll have to give it all up,’ Mr Charlton said. ‘The State will take it for taxes. You see what can happen –’
‘Come on,’ Mariette said and Mr Charlton, struggling for the last time against the flickering, rising tides of sea-green light rolling across the table in mesmeric, engulfing flow, followed the girl blumderingly into the kitchen, the white kitten softly brushing his legs as he went, the thick night-sweet scent of gardenia penetrating to his blood, seeming to turn it as white as the flower from which it sprang.
3
At half past ten, just before television closed down for the night, Pop, Ma, and Mariette were still trying to teach Mr Charlton the mysteries and arithmetic of crib. Utterly baffled – the only coherent thing he had been able to do all evening was to telephone his landlady to say that he wouldn’t be coming home that night – Mr Charlton found it quite impossible to understand the elements of the game, still less its language and figures.
‘Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, fifteen-six, pair’s eight, three’s eleven, three’s fourteen, and one for his nob’s fifteen.’
Pop dealt the cards very fluidly; he counted like a machine.
‘I don’t understand one for his nob.’
‘Jack,’ Pop said. ‘I told you – one for his nob. Two for his heels. Your deal, Ma.’
Ma dealt very fluidly too.
‘Got to use your loaf at this game, Mister Charlton,’ Pop said. ‘I thought you was office man? I thought you was good at figures?’
‘Rather different sort of figures,’ Mr Charlton said.
‘Oh?’ Pop said. ‘Really? They look all the same to me.’
Pop picked up the cards Ma had dealt him, took a quick look at them, and said smartly:
‘Mis-deal. Seven cards. Bung in.’
‘Pick ’em up!’ Ma said and threatened him with a hand as large as a leg of lamb. ‘Don’t you dare.’
‘Wanted a Parson’s Poke,’ Pop said.
‘No more Parson’s Pokes,’ Ma said. ‘Get on with it. Make the best with what you’ve got.’ Ma kicked Mr Charlton playfully on the shins under the table, laughing. ‘Got to watch him, Mister Charlton, playing crib. Parson’s Poke, my foot. Sharp as a packet o’ pins.’
‘Twenty-two, nine’ll do. Twenty-five, six’s is alive. Twenty-eight, Billy Wake. Twenty-seven, four’s in heaven. Twenty-three, eight’s a spree.’
In the combined turmoil of counting and the glare of the television Mr Charlton felt a certain madness coming back.
‘What you got, Pop?’
‘Terrible. What Paddy shot at.’
‘See what I mean?’ Ma said. She kicked Mr Charlton a second
time on the shins, just as playfully as the first. ‘Mis-deal my foot! No wonder he says you got to use your loaf at this game. Your deal next, Mr Charlton. Your box.’
Mr Charlton, as he picked up the cards, was beginning to feel that he had no loaf to use. He felt awful; his loaf was like a sponge.
‘Let’s have a Parson’s Poke!’ Pop said.
‘No more Parson’s Pokes,’ Ma said. ‘Too many Parson’s Pokes are bad luck.’
‘Your box, Mr Charlton. Give yourself a treat.’
‘Let him play his own game!’ Ma said. ‘Play your own hand, Mr Charlton. Use your own loaf. What’s on telly now?’
‘Something about free speech,’ Mariette said. ‘Freedom of the press or something.’
Pop turned his head, looking casually at the flickering screen. On it four heated men were, it seemed, about to start fighting.
‘Wherever conditions of uniform tolerance may be said to obtain –’
‘Barmy,’ Ma said. ‘Want their heads testing.’
‘The trouble with telly,’ Pop said, ‘it don’t go on long enough.’
‘You miss it when you’re talking,’ Ma said. ‘You feel lost, somehow. Don’t you think you feel lost, Mr Charlton?’
Mr Charlton had to confess he felt lost.
‘I like this set better than the other,’ Ma said. ‘Better contrast.’
‘Thirsty, Ma?’ Pop said. ‘I’m thirsty.’
During the evening Pop had drunk the remainder of the peach juice, laced with gin, two bottles of Guinness, and a light ale. Mr Charlton had drunk two glasses of beer. Ma and Mariette had been drinking cider.
‘I’ll mix a cocktail,’ Pop said. ‘Mister Charlton, what about a cocktail?’
‘You don’t want no more,’ Ma said. ‘You’ll want to get out in the night.’
‘I’m thirsty,’ Pop said. ‘I’m parched up.’
‘You’ll be pickled.’
Pop was already on his feet, moving towards the expensive glass and chromium cocktail cabinet that stood in one corner. ‘Sit down and play your hand.’
Pop stood by the cabinet, his pride hurt and offended.
‘Never been pickled in me life,’ he said. ‘Anyway not more than once or twice a week. And then only standin’-up pickled.’
Was there some difference between that and other forms? Mr Charlton wondered.
‘Layin’-down pickled,’ Pop said, ‘of course.’
‘I’m getting tired of crib,’ Mariette said. ‘It’s hot in here. I’m going to cool off in the yard, Mr Charlton.’ Like her father she found it difficult to call Mr Charlton by his Christian name. ‘Like to come?’
‘After he’s had a cocktail,’ Pop said. ‘I’m going to mix everybody a special cocktail.’
While Mariette packed up the cards, the pegs, and the pegboard Pop stood by the cocktail cabinet consulting a book, A Guide to Better Drinking, given him by Montgomery for Christmas. It was the only book he had ever read.
‘Here’s one we never tried,’ Pop said. ‘Rolls-Royce.’
‘That sounds nice,’ Ma said.
‘Half vermouth, quarter whisky, quarter gin, dash of orange bitters.’
‘Dash you will too,’ Ma said, ‘with that lot. It’ll blow our heads off.’
‘Blow summat off,’ Pop said. ‘Not sure what though.’
Once again Ma started laughing like a jelly.
‘How do you like our cocktail cabinet, Mister Charlton? Pop said. ‘Only had it at Christmas. Cost us a hundred and fifty.’
‘Hundred and eighty,’ Ma said. ‘We had that other model in the end. The one with the extra sets of goblets. The brandy lot. You remember. And the silver bits for hot punch and all that.’
With confusion and awe Mr Charlton stared at the cocktail cabinet, over which Pop hovered, mixing the drinks, in his shirt sleeves. The cabinet, he realized for the first time, seemed shaped like an elaborate glass and silver ship.
‘Am I mistaken?’ he said. ‘Or is it a ship?’
‘Spanish galleon,’ Pop said. ‘Heigh-ho and a bottle o’ rum and all that lark.’
When the cocktail was mixed Pop poured it into four large cut-glass tumblers embellished with scarlet cockerels. He had mixed it double, he said. It saved a lot of time like that.
‘Try it first,’ Ma said. ‘We don’t want it if it’s no good, Rolls-Royce or no Rolls-Royce. Besides, you might fall down dead.’
Pop drained the shaker.
‘Perfick,’ he said. ‘This’ll grow hair.’
‘By the way,’ Ma said, ‘talking about Rolls-Royce, did you do anything about that one?’
‘Sunday,’ Pop said. ‘The chap’s a stockbroker. Colonel Forbes. He’s only down week-ends.’
‘Pop’s mad on a Rolls,’ Ma explained to Mr Charlton.
‘By the way, Mister Charlton,’ Pop said, ‘what was that about that feller on telly owing five million tax? Was that right?’
‘Perfectly correct.’
‘What for?’
‘Death duties.’
‘Deaf duties!’ Pop said. ‘Deaf duties I feel like murder every time I hear deaf duties!’
Pop, snorting with disgust and irritation, struck the table with the palm of his hand and as if by a pre-arranged signal the light in the television went out. Ma uttered a sudden cry as if something terrible had happened. Mariette got up suddenly and switched the set off and there floated by Mr Charlton’s face, as she passed, a fresh wave of gardenia, warm as the evening itself, disturbed and disturbing as she moved.
‘That made my head jump,’ Ma said. ‘I thought a valve had gone.’
‘Closing down, that’s all,’ Pop said. ‘Eleven o’clock and they’re closing down. Hardly got started.’
Pop, giving another snort of disgust about death duties and the brief and contemptible daily compass of television, handed round the cocktails.
‘Cheers, everybody,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘Here’s to the strawberry lark. Roll on Monday.’
Mr Charlton drank. A wave of pure alcohol burned the roots off his tongue. He was utterly unable to speak for some moments and could only listen with undivided and searing agony to a question, first from Pop and then from Mariette, about whether he could be with them on Monday for the strawberry lark.
‘I – I – I –’
A sensation as of a white-hot stiletto descending rapidly towards Mr Charlton’s navel prevented the sentence from developing beyond a single choking word.
‘Make yourself fifteen or twenty quid in no time,’ Pop said. ‘All the strawberries you can eat. And a pound free every day. You can gather a hundred and fifty pounds a day.’
‘I – I – I –’
Burning tears came into Mr Charlton’s eyes. He succeeded in murmuring at last, with a tongue cauterized of all feeling and in a voice that did not belong to him, something about work, office, and having no leave.
‘You could always come in the evenings,’ Mariette said. ‘Plenty of people do.’
As she said this she again turned and looked at him. The eyes seemed more tenderly, intensely, darkly penetrative than ever and he began flushing deeply.
‘It’s lovely in the evenings,’ Mariette said. ‘Absolutely lovely.’
Another draught of alcohol, snatched by Mr Charlton in another desperate moment of speechlessness, injected fire into remote interior corners of his body that he did not know existed.
‘My God, this is a perfick pick-me-up,’ Pop said. ‘We must all have another one of those.’
Mr Charlton despaired and passed a groping hand over his face. His mouth burned, as from eating ginger. He heard Ma agree that the cocktail was beauty. He actually heard her say that they owed everybody in the neighbourhood a drink. ‘What say we have a cocktail party and give them this one? This’ll get under their skin.’
That, Mr Charlton heard himself saying, was what was happening to him, but nobody seemed to hear a voice that was already inexplicably far away, except that Ma once again began laughing, pierc
ingly, the salmon jumper shaking like a vast balloon.
‘A few more of these and you won’t see me for dust,’ she said.
‘A few more?’ Mr Charlton heard himself saying. ‘A few more?’
‘First re-fill coming up, Mister Charlton. How do you like it? Ma, I bet this would go well with a bloater-paste sandwich.’
Something about this remark made Mr Charlton start laughing too. This enlivening development was a signal for Pop to strike Mr Charlton a severe blow in the back, exactly as he had done Ma, and call him a rattlin’ good feller. ‘Feel you’re one of the family. Feel we’ve known you years. That right, Ma?’
That was right, Ma said. That was the truth. That was how they felt about him.
‘Honest trufe,’ Pop said. ‘Honest trufe, Mister Charlton.’
A wave of unsteady pleasure, like a flutter of ruffling wind across water on a summer afternoon, ran through Mr Charlton’s veins and set them dancing. He drank again. He felt a sudden lively and uncontrollable desire to pick strawberries on warm midsummer evenings, no matter what happened. ‘My God, this is great stuff,’ he told everybody. ‘This is the true essence –’
Nobody knew what Mr Charlton was talking about. It was impossible to grasp what he meant by the true essence, but it set Ma laughing again. Somewhere behind the laughter Mr Charlton heard Pop mixing a third, perhaps a fourth, re-fill, saying at the same time ‘Only thing it wants is more ice. More ice, Ma!’
Mr Charlton, for no predetermined reason, suddenly rose and struck himself manfully on the chest.
‘I’ll get it,’ he said. ‘That’s me. I’m the ice-man.’
When Mr Charlton came back from the kitchen, carrying trays of ice, Pop mixed the new drink and tasted it with slow, appraising tongue and eye.
‘More perfick than ever!’
Everything was more perfick, Mr Charlton kept telling himself. The scent of gardenia was more perfick. It too was stronger than ever. He laughed immoderately, for no reason, and at length, looking for the first time straight into the dark searching eyes of Mariette with neither caution nor despair.
‘Mariette,’ he said, ‘what is the scent you’re wearing?’
