by H. E. Bates
‘Oh! Niggler, Niggler. Thought you were never going to turn up.’
Niggler’s acceptance of the fourth of a chain of impulsively damp kisses seemed to be less passionate than philosophical.
‘Couldn’t do it, Lil. Had to go up north last week. Right up to Doncaster.’
Lil released what appeared to be the beginnings of a sob, either of relief or joy, and Niggler responded by giving her the comfort of a tender hand consolingly placed midway across her bosom.
‘Oh! not now. Not yet,’ she said. ‘You’ll have me all worked up—’
With quivering reluctance Lil removed the hand and turned back to the frying of sausages, of which there were two dozen or more spluttering and popping in a large black pan.
In an undistinguished sort of way Lil was handsome. A bonnet of fluffy permed brown hair sat above a face that was creamy in colour and smooth as alabaster. The large coffee-dark eyes and the biggish soft lips were emotional, fervent and never still.
‘Oh! Niggler, I’m dying to ask – did you get it?’
Niggler adopted an attitude of light mystification and surprise, as if utterly unable to follow what Lil was on about.
‘It?’
With what seemed to be the beginnings of another, deeper sob Lil abandoned the sausages and reminded Niggler with incautious fervour that she was talking about the ring – the engagement ring.
‘You said you’d bring it this time. You promised faithful.’
Airily Niggler confessed he had but at the same time, he told her, he’d been very, very short for the past two weeks. It was bad. One or two dead certs had let him down.
‘I’m still a tenner short,’ he said, ‘for the right ring. The one I want.’
‘You could always get it on the never-never, couldn’t you?’
‘Not this one. I’m getting this one from a pal. He’s in that trade.’ A wide disarming smile brought his features into sudden flower, so that Lil felt herself melting. ‘Diamond and rubies set in platinum – it ain’t half a beaut.’
‘Oh! Niggler dearie, Niggler.’
‘It’s going to be a big bargain too – two hundred pound ring and he’s letting me have it for fifty.’
With almost tearful joy, brown eyes moistly dancing, Lil confessed that she couldn’t believe her ears. Was he sure there wasn’t something funny about it? It hadn’t been nicked or anything, had it, the ring? They didn’t want any funny business.
‘I ask no questions,’ Niggler said, with a passing suggestion of dignity, almost as if affronted. ‘I ask no questions.’
‘It sounds an awful difference to me. Two hundred and—’
‘All I know,’ Niggler said, ‘he’s in that trade.’
‘But will he hold it for you? How soon can you get it do you suppose?’
‘He’ll hold it till I get back from this trip,’ Niggler said. ‘Arter that—’
A threatening despair seized Lil’s ample body and made it go taut. She didn’t want to lose that ring, she started saying, she’d give her head rather than lose that ring.
‘Listen, Niggler dearie, I tell you what. How if I lend you the other tenner? Long as you pay it back soon—’
Not on her nelly, Niggler told her, again with dignified calm. He didn’t do that sort of thing.
‘I’d be glad to. Honest, I’d be glad to. After all it isn’t as if we’re strangers exactly—’
Impulsively she seized his face and kissed him again, an action that seemed merely to have the effect of stiffening Niggler into firmer, more honest resolve.
No use her talking. No use her keeping on about it. His mind was made up. He’d get the ring somehow.
‘I know how you feel, dearie,’ Lil said, ‘but you’ve only got to say. Shall we talk about it tonight?’
‘Eadie’s coming,’ Niggler said.
Into the kitchen bounced Eadie, eager and kittenish in spite of her size. Two customers were cribbing about the sausages being so long, she told her mother.
‘Just coming up,’ Lil said. ‘Had a lot to do.’
‘I don’t think your friend Mr Feather’s feeling very well,’ Eadie said. ‘He says he’s feeling the cold.’
‘A plate of hot sausage’ll soon put him right,’ Lil said. ‘All right for you too, Niggler? Sausages, eggs and mash?’
Niggler, giving Lil a departing friendly squeeze in the back that seemed momentarily to paralyse her into a dream, said it would suit him fine and then went back into the café to talk to Mr Featherstone.
‘Hurry up, Mum,’ Eadie said. ‘Don’t just stand there. They’ll start cribbing again.’
‘Let ’em crib,’ Lil said. ‘Niggler’s going to buy me a two hundred and fifty pound ring.’ New ecstasies began to dart through her at the mere thought of it. ‘Diamonds and rubies in platinum—’
Back in the café Mr Featherstone was beginning to feel that he couldn’t stand the odour of frying cart-grease much longer. He was feeling dispirited, tired, and sick. In a depressed voice he confessed to Niggler that he thought he’d caught a chill in the cab. It was all across his back and he could feel a tonsil coming up. Would it be all the same to everyone if he had a glass of hot milk and went to bed?
‘Have some hot sausage,’ Niggler said.
Mr Featherstone came within a fraction of being sick. From across the café came a strange sucking sound and he turned to see a big ox of a man, crouched over a table, drinking tea from a saucer. A paralysis far more formidable than Lil’s seized him a moment later, so that he could neither speak nor move, and it was as if from foggy distances that he heard Niggler say:
‘Expect it’ll be all right. Eadie’ll see to it. I’ll ask Eadie.’
Five minutes later he was tucked up in the bungalow, in a black iron bed, with an old patch-work quilt on top of him. The patch-work quilt had already induced in him the feeling that he was in the centre of some crazy, lightheaded dream when Eadie boomed in, fresh and brisk as a fledgling, with a bottle of aspirin and a mug of hot milk on a tray.
‘Here you are, dear. I put a drop of whisky in the milk. That ought to do the trick.’
She set the tray on a bedside table and then sat down sloppily, with a big bump, on the bed. Mr Featherstone’s head started rocking with deep reverberations, but Eadie merely laughed boisterously and as it seemed without purpose at something and then said:
‘You’re lucky to travel with Niggler. He’s nice. He’s a lovely man. Mum’s going to marry him soon.’
‘Great God,’ Mr Featherstone said.
It was a dream, it was immoral, he started telling himself. It couldn’t go on.
‘They’re going to get engaged. It’s been a sort of whirlwind courtship.’
‘Whirlwind?’
In a voice that hardly belonged to him Mr Featherstone whispered the one word and then said he’d rather supposed that her mother was married already.
‘Oh! no,’ Eadie said. ‘Oh! no,’ but offered no further explanation.
Mr Featherstone said in an unconvincing fashion, now gently sipping hot milk, that he had sort of formed the impression that Niggler was married too.
‘Oh! no,’ she said, ‘how could he be? He’s going to buy mum a two hundred and fifty pound ring. Diamonds and rubies in platinum.’
Mr Featherstone, his head rocking, was silent. It was a subject he felt too tired and too dispirited to pursue any further and soon he was drifting off into inchoate dreams, madly struggling with truth and fantasy and the crazy patterns of the quilt on the bed.
It was much later, past eleven o’clock, when Niggler sat in the kitchen with Lil on his knee. Ecstasy in her had never diminished all evening. It had kept her eyes continually dancing and now, in a throaty whisper and with a long incontinent squeeze of Niggler’s body, she asked if he thought it wasn’t time they went to bed?
‘Got something to say first,’ Niggler said, solemn in every feature.
‘Oh?’
‘I told you a bit of a lie this afternoon.’
/> ‘Not about the ring?’ she said. ‘You don’t mean you can’t get it?’
‘It’s about the ring, but not that.’
‘What then?’
‘It ain’t a tenner I’m short of,’ he said. ‘It’s twenty.’
Suddenly almost as kittenish as Eadie, Lil burst into fresh peals of relieved, ecstatic laughter.
‘Only that!’ she said. ‘You had me scared for a moment, you really did.’ She started to give him another chain of damp impulsive kisses. ‘You mean you’re actually going to let me lend you the money?’
‘I’ll have to,’ Niggler said, almost as if depressed with sadness at the thought of his own shortcomings. ‘I don’t want to let you down, Lil, and it’s the only way I can think of.’
Still dopey under the effect of aspirin, a swollen tonsil and the notion that he had been wrestling with a strange nightmare Mr Featherstone sat in the cab next morning dumbly staring at the unfolding countryside.
Niggler, blowing shag, didn’t appear to be very talkative either and it was some miles further on before he said:
‘You’re a bit quiet this morning, Feather. Not very philosophical? Don’t feel too good?’
‘Not too bad, thanks,’ Mr Featherstone said. ‘Actually I was thinking about something I heard yesterday.’
‘Oh?’
‘Eadie told me,’ Mr Featherstone said, ‘that you were proposing to get engaged to her mother. It can’t be true?’
‘That’s right,’ Niggler said. ‘I am.’
‘But good God, man, you’re married already!’
‘I know,’ Niggler said.
‘But great Heavens, you can’t do it. It’s called bigamy – haven’t you heard? It’s one of the things they put you inside for!’
‘Oh! I ain’t going to marry her,’ Niggler said. ‘Just going to get engaged. That’s all.’
‘But good God, man, why?’
‘She wants me to,’ Niggler said. ‘She’s set her heart on it.’
‘Good grief, I daresay she has, but—’
Mr Featherstone struggled dopily to pull himself together. His head was bumping wildly again. It was probably the aspirin, he kept thinking. He’d taken too much aspirin. Aspirin and whisky together.
‘You must be out of your mind,’ he told Niggler. ‘What’s this crazy idea about a two hundred and fifty pound ring?’
Niggler laughed, as it seemed despairingly.
‘That’s a fairy tale,’ he said. ‘Eadie must have made that one up. Me? How could I get that kind of money?’
‘How could you think of it at all?’ Mr Featherstone said. ‘Besides, isn’t she married? What about Eadie?’
‘Well, she is in a way.’
‘What do you mean,’ Mr Featherstone almost shouted, ‘in a way?’
‘Her husband left her eight or nine years ago,’ Niggler said. ‘They say that lets her free.’
‘Free,’ Mr Featherstone said, ‘I love this word free. You’ll be telling me next you’re free.’
‘No. I got to get that ring though. I got to borrow the money somehow. If I don’t—’
‘Well, what?’
‘She’ll throw herself in the river. I was up all night with her, trying to console her. Couldn’t pacify her nohow. She was in a terrible track because I hadn’t brought the ring. I promised I would, see? Made a solemn promise. She’ll throw herself in the river. I know.’
‘But you can’t do it, man. It’s immoral.’
At these remarks Niggler looked really hurt, almost dejected.
‘Don’t be hard, Feather. I got to get that ring afore I get back to the Rose of Killarney again. Else I’ll never sleep no more.’
‘But for God’s sake why?’
‘I want to do her a good turn,’ Niggler said. ‘I want to make her happy.’
Speechless, Mr Featherstone sat plunged in deflated silence while Niggler, with hands that seemed touchingly uncertain now, rolled another fag.
‘Didn’t you hear her cryin’?’ he inquired in unsteady tones of Mr Featherstone. ‘She cried all night. I can hear her now.’
Mr Featherstone confessed that, drugged as he was with aspirin, he hadn’t heard a sound.
‘Heart-renderin’,’ Niggler said. ‘I got to get that ring. I got to borrow a fiver somehow today.’
Mr Featherstone begged Niggler not to look at him. He was down to his last ten bob.
‘I wouldn’t dream of askin’ you,’ Niggler said. ‘Wouldn’t do that. Only I wondered—’
‘Yes?’
‘Would Auntie help? Couldn’t you get it from Auntie? It’s only till tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow? Why tomorrow?’
‘I get paid at the depot here tomorrow,’ Niggler said. ‘I could easy drop the fiver into your auntie’s house on my way back.’
‘But couldn’t you get the ring after you get paid?’
‘No. I won’t have time. But I will have time this afternoon. We’ll be there by three o’clock.’
Mr Featherstone sat silent, either as if cogitating or unwilling or even both.
‘I hoped you’d say yes. I hoped you’d help me out,’ Niggler said in tones of such sad reproach that Mr Featherstone’s conscience instantly started biting him. ‘After all I done you a good turn. Two free kips, two free dinners and a long ride.’
Depressedly Mr Featherstone agreed that that was true. Two free kips, two free dinners and a long ride. Not to speak of the chickens.
‘After all,’ Niggler said. ‘It’s only for a day, Feather. I’m only doing it to make her happy. I only want to make her happy.’
It would not have surprised Mr Featherstone at this moment if Niggler had wept on his shoulder and suddenly, in tones almost consolatory, he said:
‘All right, Niggler, forget it now. I’ll do what I can. I promise I’ll do what I can. She isn’t a bad soul at all, Auntie.’
Two hours later Niggler was leaning out of the cab of the lorry, which was parked outside a largish red-brick Edwardian house against the porch of which a large white magnolia was in full blossom in the April sun.
‘Well, ta very much again, Feather,’ he said. ‘I’ll be droppin’ by tomorrow. It’ll be pretty early – I’ll slip the envelope through the door. So long.’
‘So long, Niggler,’ Mr Featherstone said. ‘So long.’
Niggler started to let in the clutch. It was a beautiful day: good to be alive. Soon it would be summer, the time of green peas and new potatoes, nice young ducklings and apple sauce. He must be watching out for some nice young ducklings soon. The really good time, with the flat season in full swing and the Derby and all that, was just coming. In fact it was here.
‘Well, so long, Feather,’ Niggler said. He leaned from the cab with a grin as broad as a barrel, shaking a still dopey and sniffing Mr Featherstone with splendid warmth and gratitude by the hand. ‘Shan’t forget. Best of luck with the old philosophical.’
Finally, as the lorry moved away, he gave one of those spontaneous croaky laughs that were so remarkably like the noise made by a strangled chicken.
‘See you on the Christmas tree.’
The World is Too Much With Us
‘Good girl, Georgina, nice girl,’ Mr Plomley said. ‘Another lovely big brown one.’ Mr Plomley fondly held the large unblemished egg in the palm of his hand, where it felt as smooth as a baby’s cheek and warm as new-baked bread. ‘An absolute beauty, dear.’
Georgina, the Rhode Island Red, always roosted in the old harmonium. That, Mr Plomley was sure, was what made her lay so well. It was a very comfortable and refined place for a hen like Georgina to roost in – he would have none of your precarious perches in old draughty roosts, where rats roved, for a hen like her. The curtains of the front parlour windows were of thick chenille, in a warm strawberry-jam shade, and Mr Plomley always kept them drawn until nine o’clock, so that Georgina could sleep late if she wanted to. There was no rough rousing of Georgina at the crack of dawn, like any common hen.
‘I’v
e brought your mash, dear. Warm this morning. Now September’s started you can just feel that chill in the air.’
Mr Plomley, who still showed some evidence of having once been dapper, was now rather stout, absent-eyed and shabby. His face was an amiable pink melon with misty sepia eyes and his hands as he drew the curtains and placed the white china bowl of faintly steaming mash on the top of the harmonium were like stale and podgy sausages.
‘Sleep well, dear? I hope they didn’t disturb you across the road? I mean the new people in the shop. They seemed to be hammering away for hours.’
Mr Plomley kissed Georgina lightly on the comb and she in turn seemed to return the compliment by an oblique stroke of her beak across his rather untidy moustache, with its slightly gingery curls.
‘Eat up, dear, while it’s warm.’ Mr Plomley put a hand under Georgina and gently raised her up until she stood over the mash-bowl. She proceeded to eat rather daintily, eyes slightly baggy, and Mr Plomley said: ‘What do you think? I’ve got something to tell you. That’s your one hundred and forty ninth egg this year. Aren’t you the proud girl? One more and it’ll be a hundred and fifty.’
With slow and affectionate fingers Mr Plomley stroked Georgina all the way down her smooth brown back. The warm touch of her feathers gave him a curiously exhilarated sensation like that of touching naked flesh. With a blissful croak or two Georgina seemed to acknowledge this while still eating and Mr Plomley said:
‘Won’t be a minute, dear. Be back in a minute. No hurry. Just take your time.’
When Mr Plomley came back from the kitchen a few minutes later, carrying a baby’s hair-brush, a sponge, a box of dusting powder, a pair of scissors and a bowl of soapy water, he was chuckling to himself aloud.
‘Whatever you’ll say to me I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Simply can’t think.’ Mr Plomley, in the course of logging Georgina’s one hundred and forty ninth egg in the marbled-covered ledger he had long kept for the purpose, had suddenly felt himself obliged to do some speedy revision in arithmetic. ‘At first I thought I must have added it up all wrong. I suppose I was excited. But no – it’s absolutely all right, dear. An accountant would certify it – it is your hundred and fiftieth, Georgina, it really is!’
