When the Green Woods Laugh

by H. E. Bates

  When Pop now suggested that Edith should dry her eyes and have a grape or something she said no, no, no thank you, she couldn’t touch a thing.

  ‘Have a drink then,’ Pop said and immediately poured out half a tumbler of red port, advising Edith to get it down her at once, so as to warm the vital parts.

  Edith, taking the port in one quivering hand and dabbing her eyes on the corner of her flannelette nightgown with the other, apologized several times, begging that Pop wouldn’t think her too silly, and said it wasn’t merely that the gifts had overwhelmed her. It was a combination of things.

  ‘Oh?’ Pop said. ‘For instance what?’

  ‘I heard the most awful news about you. It was absolutely ghastly.’

  Awful news? Pop, cheerful as ever, couldn’t think what that could be.

  ‘This awful woman. This Mrs Jerebohm. They tell me you’re actually being prosecuted.’

  Pop laughed with a bucolic sort of bark that actually reached the young nurse in another ward.

  ‘Oh! that,’ Pop said. ‘That’s a real lark, that is.’

  ‘But did you-I mean is there any truth in it?’

  ‘Course,’ Pop said. ‘Case comes up in two weeks’ time.’

  ‘Ghastly,’ Edith said. ‘Absolutely ghastly.’

  Pop, treating the matter with renewed levity, wondered if Edith would mind all that much if he joined her in a glass of port? With birdlike joy, tears drying now, Edith begged him to do so, adding:

  ‘But what is it all about? What are you supposed to have done?’

  Pop, still sitting on the bed, adroitly poured himself a glass of port.

  ‘Pinched her bottom. She was getting out of a rowing boat.’

  Edith, half way between tears and laughter, could only give a froglike croak in answer, silently wishing it might have been her. No such opportunities had come her way for some time, not even at Christmas.

  ‘But aren’t you at all concerned? You don’t seem to be worried about it one little bit’

  Pop, she thought, seemed to be taking life in a spirit of jollier, livelier levity than ever. Incorrigible, remarkable man.

  ‘I’ll worry when the time comes,’ Pop said. It was a major part of his rather loosely made philosophy to cross bridges when he came to them. ‘After all, anything might happen before then.’

  It might indeed, Edith thought. It might indeed.

  ‘I only hope,’ she said, ‘you’ve got a good solicitor?’

  Pop, purporting to be utterly unconcerned, gave her one of his sudden smoothly mischievous glances that had the immediate effect of making her toes tingle sharply at the bottom of the bed.

  ‘Going to conduct the case myself,’ he said. He laughed rousingly, winking. ‘Counsel for the defence-that’s me.’

  Edith, sipping port, didn’t know whether to be alarmed or delighted.

  ‘But do you know how? I mean –’.

  ‘Seen it all on telly!’ Pop assured her blandly. ‘Court cases nearly every night of the week on telly.’

  ‘But how you dare! I should die.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t. Going to enjoy myself that day. Drink up.’

  Edith drank up, raising her glass to Pop at the same time.

  ‘I can only wish you all possible success,’ she said, looking Pop straight in the face with a refreshed swallow-like glance, eyes glowing. ‘Oh! I know it will be. I feel it. I’ve got that sort of thing about it.’

  Whole thing would go like a bomb, Pop said. Would she be well enough to be there? He hoped so.

  ‘I shall be there if it kills me. And so will all your friends. We’ll absolutely band together.’

  Such fervent promises of support had Pop chuckling again. With charm he started lightly urging Edith to peel herself a grape or a peach or something. In reply Edith had to confess, as she gulped down deep rich breaths of freesia perfume, that she was really altogether too nervous to eat anything for the moment.

  Something, she said, biting her lips, had just come to her.

  ‘Oh?’ Pop said and looked at her bitten lips with concern, wondering if perhaps she had had a sudden post-operative twinge.

  ‘I’ve just thought that if it could be of any help at all I’d cheerfully appear as a witness,’ she said. ‘I mean as character or something–’.

  Or something? Pop thought. Good old Edith. Very nice of Edith. But he wasn’t sure about that something.

  ‘Haven’t quite got the case worked out yet,’ he said. ‘Haven’t got the order of battle ready.’

  Edith, who was sure it was going to be absolute battle royal when it came, suddenly felt herself go unreasonably coy. She shrank perceptibly into her nightgown, feeling her toes tingle sharply again at the bottom of the bed.

  ‘By the way, what are you charged with? I’ve asked myself over and over again.’

  ‘Indecent assault or summat,’ Pop said. ‘It’s all in the summons.’

  The word indecent immediately seemed to whirr and flash about the room like a dragon-fly on a hot afternoon, making Edith flush in her throat. She knew perfectly well now that all night long she would lie awake and wonder about what could possibly have happened in that rowing boat.

  ‘I never have liked that Mrs Jerebohm,’ she said. ‘Such people don’t belong in the country.’

  Oh! old Pinkie wasn’t bad, Pop said. You could hardly blame Pinkie. It was Corinne Perigo that was the snake in the grass.

  ‘That woman!’ Edith said. ‘I could kill her!’

  The magisterial vehemence of this remark made her suddenly flop back on the pillows, surprised, flushed, and weakened. Pop had to confess to himself that he was surprised too. It was very strong stuff for Edith. Probably the drink had got into her, like it sometimes did into Charley.

  ‘It’s women like her who bring disgrace on our sex,’ she said. ‘They make you–oh! I don’t know what they make you–!’

  Edith, completely crimson in the face now, broke off helplessly, impotent to express another thought. Pop, slightly alarmed that she might start up a temperature or have a relapse of some sort, urged her to take it easy, at the same time holding her hand.

  ‘Easy,’ he urged her softly. ‘Easy. Easy.’

  Easiness came to Edith Pilchester in the form of a long quiet thrill. The last deep sigh before sleep could never have quietened her more effectively than that single repeated word or the clasping of Pop’s hands.

  ‘Got to trot along now,’ Pop told her some time later. ‘Come and see you again soon.’

  Light cold April showers were falling on the window. The cloud that dropped them was slate-dark, bringing on an early twilight in which the freesias, the peaches, and the apricots all glowed a curious, almost phosphorescent orange.

  In a low voice, though not tired, Edith several times thanked Pop for coming. He would be very much in her thoughts, she said. Very much. Never, in fact, out of them.

  Pop, who had made up his mind to treat her to a goodnight kiss, then remembered something himself.

  ‘Forgot to tell you about our swimming pool. Going to have a party when we open it next month. What about a donkey race in the water? Eh? Men and girls?’ He laughed with his customary carelessness. ‘That’s if they don’t put me inside.’

  ‘Inside?’ Her mind vibrated madly with alarm. ‘You don’t mean, prison?’

  He meant prison, Pop said. Well, why not? It was warm. It was free. He believed they even had telly there too nowadays.

  ‘Awful man,’ she said. ‘I believe you’re really trying to frighten me.’

  ‘Not on your nelly,’ Pop said and a second later, pressing her back on the pillows, gave her a faultless dream of a kiss that couldn’t have acted more like a sedative, so much so that when the nurse came back, twenty minutes later, she found Edith peacefully sleeping, the half-drunk glass of port still in her hands.

  ‘Visitor for you,’ Ma said, when Pop reached home half an hour later. ‘And I’ll bet you’ll never guess who.’

  Pop could guess
all right; he knew.

  ‘Sergeant Buzz-whiskers.’

  Sergeant Wilson, that was. He was the policeman who had originally served the summons. Hated doing it to Sid, he confessed, but there it was. Duty.

  ‘Well, it’s not the sergeant,’ Ma said. ‘That’s caught you.’

  It had caught him too, Pop said, and after two or three guesses decided he might just as well go into the sitting room and see for himself while mixing a decent pick-me-up at the same time.

  He had hardly decided on this before a small figure, not unlike Pop but twenty years older, nipped into the kitchen. He looked very much like an artful grey terrier who had spent a lifetime gnawing an infinite number of bones, a practice that had knocked several of his front teeth out. His bony yellow forehead had a perceptible hollow in the centre of it. If by some chance this had been filled with a third eye it could hardly have increased the strong magnifying qualities of the rest of his face. The lively little grey eyes were telescopic lenses, picking up every detail. The ears were bulbous earphones, tuned to every breath.

  ‘Uncle Perce!’ Pop said. ‘Haven’t seen you since Mariette’s wedding day.’

  Uncle Perce, in a voice no less diamond-sharp than his eyes and ears, said Perce it was and shook Pop’s hand with a restless rat-trap of wiry fingers.

  ‘Calls for a drink, this,’ Pop said and had just started to mix a couple of Red Bulls when his son-in-law Mr Charlton came in. After an evening hanging curtains with Mariette at the new bungalow in the meadow Charley was thirsty too. So, Ma said, was she. Pop consequently found himself mixing about a pint of Red Bull, well-iced, to which Ma added an offering of fresh cheese straws and a bottle of Worcester sauce.

  ‘Well, what’s it all about, Perce?’

  ‘Hear you’re in trouble, Sid boy.’

  A combination of owl and fox gave Uncle Perce’s half-toothless mouth a remarkably impressive twist.

  ‘Oh! that,’ Pop said.

  ‘They were chewing it over at The Hare and Hounds when I dropped in on my way over,’ Uncle Perce said. ‘First I’d heard on it. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Nothing to tell,’ Pop said, bland as ever. ‘Nothing to it.’

  One lid of Uncle Perce’s searching eyes dropped like a trap.

  ‘Allus come to Perce when the flag’s down,’ he said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Who was nattering at the pub?’ Ma said, carefully sprinkling Worcester sauce on a length of cheese straw. ‘Anybody you know?’

  Uncle Perce cast a pair of artful eyes on Ma and said:

  ‘Some I did and some I didn’t.’

  ‘Oh?’ Ma said. ‘Who didn’t you?’

  ‘There was a piece there,’ Uncle Perce said, ‘calling herself Mrs Perigo.’

  Ma’s bosom, in outrage, was suddenly swollen like a pouter pigeon.

  ‘Don’t talk about her! That woman’s got no finesse,’ she said, pronouncing the word finesse to rhyme with highness. ‘She’s the one who started it all.’

  Uncle Perce went through the startling act of closing both eyes, as if actually thinking, thus looking more artful than ever.

  ‘I’ve seen mat piece somewhere before,’ he said. ‘And it won’t be so long afore I remember where.’

  ‘Sooner I forget her the better,’ Pop said. ‘Drink up, Perce. You’re slow.’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Uncle Perce said, drinking up. ‘I’m always a bit slow when I’m thinking.’

  ‘What about you, Charley boy?’ Pop said. ‘Room for another?’

  Charley was readily agreeing that he had room for another when Pop suddenly remembered something. He hadn’t set eyes on Charley all day, not since breakfast. Had Charley been egg-hunting or something?

  ‘No, as a matter of fact,’ Mr Charlton said, ‘I’ve spent a good deal of the day at the public library.’

  ‘God Almighty,’ Pop said, almost exploding over the glass and chromium expanse of the cocktail cabinet. ‘Anythink wrong?’

  It alarmed him to think that Charley and Mariette might be off hooks again. He could think of no other reasonable excuse for a man spending all day at the public library.

  ‘Better get outside that one quick,’ he said, handing Charley a large second Red Bull. ‘That’ll put you right. You look a bit dicky.’

  Mr Charlton, looking both calm and healthy, said that there was in fact nothing wrong with him at all. He had merely been doing a little legal research.

  In fresh amazement Pop asked Ma if she’d finished with the Worcester sauce for a moment. Ma said she had and passed the bottle, into which Pop dipped a fresh cheese straw. There was no fathoming Charley boy sometimes. Legal research?

  ‘I thought I might get a few tips for you,’ Mr Charlton said. ‘For the case, I mean.’

  Pop, supremely confident that he didn’t need any tips, merely laughed in easy fashion, and went on to say that it was very nice of Charley, but–.

  ‘You see,’ Mr Charlton said, ‘it isn’t as if you’d done this sort of thing before.’

  Pop cheerfully admitted as much, but after all he’d seen it often enough on telly.

  ‘Yes,’ Mr Charlton said, ‘but you’ve never been in court–’.

  ‘Should think not,’ Ma said. ‘The idea.’

  ‘Might have been a couple o’ times if it hadn’t been for me,’ Uncle Perce said. ‘Remember that time–’.

  ‘We don’t want to hear it!’ Ma said. ‘Do you mind?’

  Uncle Perce, artfulness momentarily crushed out of him by the second peremptory rising of Ma’s pouter bosom, hadn’t a syllable to say in answer and merely stared into his glass, thinking.

  ‘The essence of this case,’ Mr Charlton said, in a sudden flush of words so professionally assured that Pop wondered if he oughtn’t to let Charley boy do the defending after all, ‘seems to me this. The case of the prosecution must rest almost entirely on corroborative evidence. Corroborative evidence there must be, otherwise Mrs Jerebohm, as I see it, can stand there until the cows come home.’

  What the pipe was corroborative evidence? Pop wanted to know. A bruise or something? Where he’d pinched her?

  ‘That’ll have worn off a bit by now,’ Ma said, huge body bouncing with laughter.

  ‘Corroborative evidence,’ Mr Charlton said, ‘is evidence from some person or persons able to substantiate the accusation Mrs Jerebohm is making against you. In other words did anyone else see what happened? For instance Mrs Perigo?’

  ‘She was there all right,’ Pop said, ‘shrieking at the top of her voice. Calling me an absolute swine.’

  ‘No finesse, that woman,’ Ma said. ‘No finesse whatever.’

  ‘I shall remember where I’ve seen that piece in a minute,’ Uncle Perce said. ‘I shall remember all right.’

  ‘As I see it,’ Mr Charlton said in another rush of supremely calm assurance, ‘you need call only two witnesses. Mrs Jerebohm and Mrs Perigo, of whom Mrs Perigo is the more important. Alternatively you can elect to go into the box yourself and speak on your own behalf. That, however, I wouldn’t advise.’

  Temporarily startled, Pop recovered enough to remind himself, as so often before, what a marvellous feller Charley was. You had to hand it to Charley sometimes.

  At this point Uncle Perce, dropping an artful eyelid, suggested he might come as a witness too. How about that?

  ‘Why?’ Ma said and to this rather cryptic challenge Uncle Perce had no answer except to look immensely thoughtful again.

  A moment later a cry from upstairs reminded Ma that little Oscar was awake and with her own calm assurance she left the kitchen to see what she could do for the baby, licking her fingers clean of Worcester sauce as she went, half-wondering if a bit of sauce on a cheese-straw wouldn’t help to soothe him down. She hoped Pop wouldn’t be put inside. She really did. It would make it rather awkward in many ways.

  ‘Well, I must go too,’ Mr Charlton said, ‘or Mariette’ll be wondering where I am.’

  ‘That’s it,’ Pop said, terrifically
cheerful, ‘off to bed.’

  ‘Do you mind?’ Mr Charlton said. The April evening, its showers finished, still glowed faintly golden outside. ‘I haven’t had supper. It’s hardly bedtime yet.’

  ‘Then it ought to be,’ Pop said smartly and wished Mr Charlton a very good night, with pleasant dreams and all that lark, hoping the urgent hint wouldn’t be lost on him.

  Alone in the kitchen with an increasingly thoughtful Uncle Perce, Pop suggested another snifter and didn’t Perce think the Worcester sauce went well with the straws. Idea of Ma’s. Uncle Perce agreed and got outside another snifter in very fast time. This encouraged Pop to mix a fourth and for the next half hour or so they sat drinking in steady contentment, one or other of them occasionally dipping a straw into the bottle of sauce.

  Finally Uncle Perce said he ought to be getting back and Pop said he would run him home in the Rolls. Perce, who was boots and odd-job man at a hotel called The Three Swans five or six miles away, had walked over for the exercise but confessed he didn’t feel like walking back. The snifters made him sleepy.

  In the Rolls he fell into a sudden doze and it was only when the car stopped at the end of the journey that he abruptly sat up, sharply awake, and said with all the old compelling artfulness:

  ‘Sid, I just remembered who that piece is. She’s no more Mrs Perigo than I’m the Duke o’ Wellington. You’re going to want me as a witness after all.’

  Driving the Rolls back into the yard, in darkness, Pop couldn’t help feeling, on the whole, rather pleased with himself. What with Charley’s legal research and all that lark, and now Uncle Perce, things were looking rather more rosy.

  These pleasant reflections were shattered, almost as soon as he was out of the car, by a voice.

  ‘Hullo there,’ Corinne Perigo said.

  ‘The gate’s over there,’ Pop said, hardly bothering to look at the hatless, mackintoshed figure leaning against the front wing of the Rolls. ‘Or there’s a short cut over the fields. It’s quicker.’

  ‘Suppose we take the short cut? What I’ve got to say won’t take long.’

  ‘Tell it to the marines.’