by H. E. Bates
Then he suddenly realized that these were no less than the figures of Vanessa La Farge and Kitty O’Connor, stripped naked, their full, delicate, rounded backs statuesque and fully revealed in the half darkness.
The slightest movement of Kitty O’Connor’s shoulders was enough to make him turn and dash to the bath-house. Even before he reached it he heard the splash of two diving bodies and was mentally putting on his clothes.
Some long time later the two women sat at the table, in the light of the lowering candles, in thick bath-robes, sipping brandy.
‘Shall I tell you something?’ Vanessa La Farge said.
‘What?’
‘We failed.’
Their laughter rose and penetrated the fabric of the early summer night like suddenly awakened bird-song.
‘I think,’ Kitty O’Connor said, ‘we tried too hard.’
‘Or perhaps, on second thoughts, we don’t carry enough ammunition for attacking fortresses.’
Again their laughter, now not only loud but deep-throated and voluptuous, rose on the night air.
‘Anyway, how does the song go?’ Kitty O’Connor said, ‘“it was great fun but it was just one of those things”.’
In sudden silence they sat staring at the candlelight. A single dark-bloomed peach still sat in its dish. The deep maroon sweet-pea that Vanessa La Farge once again took from its vase and twirled lightly in her hands, reminding her of the black magnolia, seemed to match it perfectly.
‘No, actually,’ she said, ‘I was thinking of another quotation. Who was it who said “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?’
It was now only Kitty O’Connor’s high-spirited pealing laughter that rose to the summer stars.
‘Search me,’ she said, ‘but it certainly wasn’t Hartley Wilkinson Spencer.’
Love Me Little, Love Me Long
He stood looking down the field, across treeless hedges of old hawthorn, away from her. He did not want to look at her face. He felt transfixed by the dead leaves of many primroses in the dyke, burnt to brown skeletons by the drought of summer.
‘You could often come over and see us,’ she said. ‘Come next week. We shall be having a shoot one day.’
‘I don’t shoot,’ he said.
‘But you could come over. Now that you live so close again.’
He did not speak. He was thinking of how, in the spring, so many primroses would have been very beautiful all along the dykes, under creamy arches of hawthorn.
‘The boys are wonderful shots,’ she said. ‘Better than their father.’
Now from the rise at the end of the field he could see the farm, clustered cubes of cream stone and straw lying at the end of slopes of pasture, grouped about by coppered chestnut trees.
He looked at his watch.
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said. ‘Not yet.’
‘I really ought.’
‘You come over specially to see me and then before I can bat an eyelid, you’re off again. It’s hardly fair. After all this time –’
‘It was just a call,’ he said.
‘Yes, but it’s hardly fair,’ she said. ‘I mean –’
She had stopped by the gate and now she was leaning on it, arms triangular on the top bar. She was much bigger, he noticed, than she used to be, the flesh of her neck rather heavy, arms ripe and brown, breasts shapeless and cushioned under thick brown lapels of tweed. But her eyes were still very brilliant, egg-blue and clear, and now, for the first time, they looked straight at him.
‘If you must go then promise you’ll come over on Tuesday,’ she said. ‘You can do that.’
‘I really ought not –’
‘It’s so like you,’ she said. Her voice was neither sharp nor gentle. ‘You start a thing and then half way through you want to give it up.’
He did not know what to say.
‘You see, you don’t say anything. You know it’s true.’
‘All right.’ He smiled.
‘Do you mean all right it’s true?’ she said, ‘or do you mean all right you’ll come over?’
He put his hand on the latch of the gate, ready to open it, but she pressed the whole weight of her body against it, defying him, holding it shut. And suddenly he found himself pressed against her, his legs melting across her thighs, one hand still on the cold latch of the gate, the other on her warm neck.
‘Oh! God,’ she said.
Presently he opened the gate and she did not protest, and he walked across the field in a daze. Bright cloud spilt milkily across the evening sky intensified the low sunlight so that it dazzled him like white fire. He held his hand to his face and suddenly, at the same moment, across the next field, there was the sound of shooting. It startled him so much that he stopped.
‘It’s the boys,’ she said. ‘After pigeons.’
She stopped too. For a moment he was going on but she held him back by the arms, turning him round so that her body was flat against him.
‘They’re awfully good,’ she said. ‘Pigeons are almost the most difficult thing of all.’
‘Are they?’
‘Almost.’
She began kissing him as shots rang out again across the field but now she did not seem to notice them and they did not startle him. She kissed him in a series of little gulps, her lips hardened and quick and then suddenly softened across his face hungrily.
‘Oh! dear, oh! God,’ she said.
He let her go on for a moment longer, not speaking.
‘This will never do,’ she said. ‘It really won’t. It will never do.’
He looked at his watch again. This time she did not protest and they began walking across the field again, apart.
‘There are wonderful cowslips in this field in the spring,’ she said. ‘You would like it. You were always the great one for flowers.’
A hundred yards farther on he saw the two boys climbing the stile from the field beyond. She waved her hand and they came across to her. They were hatless, with masses of rather coarse black hair, with lips that seemed too wide and adult for their young faces. He saw that their eyes were blackish and deep and that they were not like her.
The four of them walked towards the farm together and the boys, walking slightly apart with their guns, were stiff and polite, calling him ‘Sir’ whenever they spoke to him.
Five pigeons flew out from a copse of ash-trees on steely wings and the boys began firing instantly, picking off two with fluent easy shots. There was an adultness about the way they lifted the guns, fired, re-loaded and picked up the fallen birds and he could see that she was very proud.
‘Hurry on and tell Nancy that Mr Richardson is staying to supper!’ she called.
He suddenly felt that it was a trap, deliberately set for him in the presence of the boys, so that he could not escape it.
‘It will be something cold,’ she said, ‘but there’ll be pheasant and we always have a ham. That’s one thing about a farm. You never lack for anything.’
‘No?’ he said, and for the first time she did not answer.
Under the chestnut trees, by the farm, drifts of scorched leaves had been newly blown by wind across the pond in the farmyard, so that they floated there like fleets of brown feathers.
‘You would love the chestnuts in spring,’ she said. ‘There’s a pink one too. I think it’s that one, there. Yes: it’s that one.’
He followed her into the house. He stood in the old respectable farm sitting-room, looking about him at the heavy furniture, the chairs of brown leather, the solid dark chests by the wall, the varnished doors and the skirting boards. It wasn’t very prosperous.
She seemed to know what he was thinking and said:
‘Excuse me, I must see about the food.’
The elder boy brought him a glass of sherry and then stood in the centre of the room, awkwardly.
‘Do you shoot, sir?’ he said.
‘No.’
The boy was silent for a moment, staring soli
dly; he seemed not to know what to do or say, and then he said:
‘I expect you ride, though, sir, don’t you?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t ride.’
They had no more to say to each other and a moment later she came back.
‘I’ve hurried everything up,’ she said, ‘so that you needn’t be late after all. Do you mind if I don’t change my dress?’
‘No,’ he said.
She spoke to the boy:
‘Go and wash your hands,’ she said. ‘And then call your father and tell him supper is ready. And Robert too. Tell him to scrub them well.’
The boy went out of the room.
‘They never wash unless you tell them to,’ she said.
She suddenly stood rigid, staring at him with glistening hungry blue eyes. She had taken off the coat of her costume. The pale blue of her blouse, cushioned taut by her body, seemed to make the blue of the eyes quite fierce.
‘Please come on Tuesday. No, Wednesday. There will be no one here.’
‘I –’
‘Do come. Please.’ She looked round hurriedly and then came back to him, closely, taking hold of his jacket with both hands. ‘We could take up where we left off.’
Not speaking or moving, he felt himself listening for the boys to come back. She ran her mouth against his face and he saw beyond her fair head a sudden shoal of chestnut leaves freed from the trees like a wild covey of birds across the pond.
‘Do you mind if I kiss you?’ she said. ‘I have to ask. I have to –’
He put his mouth down to her and then, in the same moment, before he could touch her, he heard the footsteps of the boys coming from the passage outside. She went away from him at once, dragging a hand down his arm, pressing his fingers.
‘Did you wash?’ she said.
The younger boy, Robert, came first, carrying a glazed tray of birds’ eggs. Behind him the elder boy kept the door open with one hand.
‘I thought Mr Richardson would like to see my birds’ eggs.’ The boy smiled.
‘Afterwards. After supper,’ she said. ‘Did you wash?’
‘Yes.’
‘After supper then. Is your father there?’
‘He was in the gun room,’ the elder boy said. ‘He said he would come.’
‘Let me see the eggs,’ Richardson said.
‘They are very old,’ she said. ‘They were given him by an uncle. They’re not much. Will you have more sherry?’
He said thank you, not looking at her, and walked over to where the boy, holding the birds’ eggs, looked like a stolid servant holding out to him a tray of little coloured things to eat.
‘Some are old,’ the boy said. ‘But some are new. Some I collected. Do you know what this is?’
‘Isn’t it a herring-gull’s?’
‘I thought so. I was not certain.’
Behind him she called, ‘Come and have your sherry before we go in.’
‘That’s a nightjar’s there,’ he said. ‘That’s good.’
‘Yes, I collected them. That’s mine –’
‘Put them away now,’ his mother said. ‘There will be plenty of time afterwards. Or another day.’
The boy was pained but she did not see it. She seemed to be caught up in a tenuous moment of suspense, rigid and oblivious, somewhere between the glass of sherry she was holding and Richardson’s eyes.
Then from the door the elder boy said:
‘Here’s father now. Just coming.’
He took the glass of sherry from her and turned, and it was as if, by the door, the elder boy had grown suddenly to a man of forty. The father, stocky, broad and weathered, with the same coarse dark hair, stood there, rubbing together large hairy brown hands.
‘You’re just in time. We can go in,’ she said. She was very nervous; she said something in a dazed way about forgetting the introductions.
‘No need, no need,’ the father said. ‘We’ll dispense with formalities.’ He shook hands with Richardson, the stocky hand muscular and warm. ‘Which way did you go?’
‘We walked across the cowslip field,’ she said.
‘See any birds?’
‘No. Robbie, put away the eggs now. No, there was nothing,’ she said.
‘It’s a bad season. It’s something terrible,’ he said.
The boy put the tray of eggs on the table and then the five of them went out of the room, across the passage and into the dining-room beyond, for supper. It was twilight in the dining-room because of the shadow of a walnut-tree, still green, on that side of the house, and one of the boys switched on the light above the table.
On the table was a ham on a pink dish, with a brace of cold pheasants beside it and bread and salad and several large pieces of butter, with bottles of beer. At the head of the table the father sliced the ham steadily and thickly and dissected the pheasants and one of the boys poured the beer.
She did not speak and they began eating. Richardson, for something to say, spoke of the weather and the father said how hot and dry the summer had been and how terribly bad it was for the birds.
‘It’s very bad,’ he said several times. ‘Absolutely awful. There’ll be no birds at all.’
Richardson did not know what to say. ‘Of course it’s been quite exceptional,’ he said. ‘What about partridges?’
‘As wild as blazes. You can’t get near them. It’s somethng terrible. I don’t know what we’re going to do.’
Richardson ate in silence and listened to the sound, across the farmyard, of the falling wind in the dying chestnut leaves. The evening was very beautiful, the sky electric blue under the dark walnut leaves, and he heard a solitary pheasant crying from across the fields.
The father took a deep drink of beer and said:
‘How do you find the ham?’
‘Delicious,’ he said. ‘Wonderfully good.’
‘One of our own,’ the father said. ‘At least we’ve always got that. At least we can feed.’
‘You see, I told you,’ she said.
Richardson turned sharply at the sound of her voice from the bottom of the table. She looked at him in a moment of glittering calm, but the glance was unsustained. She could not look at him any longer.
Her eyes were terribly and hungrily blue and the pheasant cried again across the fields and he was transfixed by a fragmentary moment of pain.
‘You see, I told you. We never lack for anything here. We have everything we want,’ she said.
Same Time, Same Place
One had to keep up appearances, Miss Treadwell always told herself. Whatever else happened one simply had to keep up appearances. After all one had one’s pride.
The sepia musquash coat she always wore throughout the winter had not only the advantage of keeping her warm and making her look almost of upper middle class but of also concealing the fact that underneath it she wore a man’s woollen cardigan and a brown imitation leather waistcoat picked up for a shilling at a rummage sale. Underneath these garments her corsets had so far fallen to pieces that every now and then she padded them with folds of newspaper. If these failed to give her buxom but not too ample figure the distinguished and elegant line she saw so often in advertisements they at least were warm too and cheap and comforting. Above all they helped to keep up appearances.
Miss Treadwell, who was in her late fifties, was apt to refer to her minute bed-sitter, a mere dog kennel, seven feet by ten, as ‘my little domain’, though if occasion demanded she might enlarge a little on that, calling it ‘my apartment’. A divan bed, a chair, a table and a sink left no room whatever for a cooker, though this hardly mattered, since she never cooked except to make toast over a gas-ring. Her diet consisted mostly, except on Sundays, of bread, margarine and tea, though even this, for various reasons, she only had occasionally at home.
Every morning, at about eleven o’clock, she went out and sat on one of the seats in the public gardens. One didn’t have to wait long there before someone dropped a newspaper into a litter basket, so
that one got the news of the day for nothing besides a new padding for the corsets when necessary. After reading for another half hour Miss Treadwell then went into a small café round the corner and had her lunch. This too consisted of a bread roll, margarine and a pot of tea.
It was most important always to order a pot of tea, since in this way one got a small basin of cube sugar, most of which was easily slipped into a hand-bag. It was also important to select a table where someone else had recently been eating. In this way one quite often found two or three pennies or even sixpence left under a plate and uncollected by a busy waitress.
Afte lunch she always went back to the gardens to visit the Public Ladies. It was quite extraordinary what one sometimes found in the Public Ladies. Frequently someone had forgotten a lipstick, a powder compact, a comb, a box of eye-shadow. Once Miss Treadwell had actually found a small handbag containing, among other things, a bottle of peroxide. With the use of this she suddenly went sensationally and almost youthfully blonde, thus keeping up appearances dramatically.
She had learnt other tricks by experience: for example that late on Saturday afternoons one could buy, for a few pence, bags of unsold cakes that wouldn’t keep in the shops until Monday, or bags of broken biscuits which made a delicious Sunday treat if you put them in a basin and poured a layer of thin hot chocolate over them. There were also flowers: sometimes as you walked through the street market you came across a whole box of them, daffodils or roses or carnations or gladioli, that had dropped from a lorry and nobody had ever bothered to pick up. A few swiftly snatched up stalks turned the kennel-like bed-sitter into a little paradise.
Soon after the incident of the peroxide, that had turned her a light youthful blonde and helped to keep up her appearances so dramatically, she was sitting in the public gardens on an April morning. The day was suddenly and unusually hot; tulips that had been mere half-green buds the day before were now becoming, every moment, more and more like shimmering open wine glasses of pink and scarlet and yellow; an occasional white or yellow butterfly skimmed through the many wide yellow trumpets of daffodils under trembling pink canopies of cherry blossom. All the many seats in the gardens were crowded. It was very much a morning when appearances mattered.
