by H. E. Bates
The old, long need for confession, Mr Plomley thought, could no longer be resisted. He said in a low, almost tortured voice:
‘It was Georgina. We were quarrelling.’
‘She must have done it with a knife!’ The surly puss, the quarrelsome bitch, she thought, she might have killed him. ‘She must have been—’
‘No,’ Mr Plomley confessed, ‘she bit me.’
That was even worse! – the cheap, vulgar puss. She wasn’t civilised. Was he going to stand for that sort of thing?
‘No,’ Mr Plomley said. ‘I’m not. Not any longer. It’s finished. It’s all over.’
‘But whatever made her do a terrible thing like that? That’s a savage gash across your ear.’
In a low, humiliated voice Mr Plomley allowed himself another confession.
‘She’s jealous of you. It’s been coming to the boil for weeks now.’
‘Jealous of me? But she’s never even met me! She’s never even seen me!’
‘She’s jealous all the same.’
‘But did you ever talk to her about me?’
‘No. I never said a word.’
‘Then how in Heaven’s name can she be jealous of me? – someone she’s never even seen?’
Mr Plomley’s voice was dim and agonised.
‘It was something horribly instinctive,’ he said. ‘Somehow she sensed it. She knew.’
Phoebe Spencer didn’t speak again. For a long time she sat beside him, pressing a large warm pad of lint against his ear. This acted on him like a blessing, gradually softening his nerves into a state of tranquillity that was like the outer fringe of sleep and from which, some long time later, he emerged to hear her say:
‘Well, it’s all over now.’
‘Thank God.’
‘Has she gone?’
‘To all intents and purposes.’
Mr Plomley did not recognise for some moments that her sudden action in turning her head was deliberate. It was only when he found himself suddenly almost encircled by the flowery mass of her hair that he suddenly realised how intimate the moment was.
‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘Was there anyone else before Georgina?’
Mr Plomley, agonised once again, paused for a little while before answering.
‘Yes,’ he said.
Phoebe Spencer, detecting the long-nursed agony in his voice, threw a last venomous mental hiss at Georgina: caught him on the rebound, I know, the surly puss, they always do! No wonder he wanted to cut himself off from the world.
‘Crack you up badly?’ she said.
‘Please. I can’t talk about it,’ Mr Plomley said. ‘I’ve never talked about it to a soul.’
Nowadays, since he gave up the untidy prison of the big red-brick house with its walls of jagged glass and the garden where pine-cones used to fall on uncut lawns and the dust of unweeded paths and the rising forests of briar, Mr Plomley often puts on a clean white smock, and while Mrs Plomley does the cooking, waits behind the shop counter. His air of dapper briskness is infectious; his moustaches curl as pleasantly as the ears of a spaniel dog.
He is very fond of Mrs Plomley and she, in turn, looks at him not merely with affection and pride and satisfaction and a great thankfulness that she isn’t lonely any longer but always with a never-diminishing lilt of victory in her heart. She is never tired of congratulating herself, with silent joy, on her triumph over Georgina, the brooding, idle, quarrelsome, surly puss with whom Mr Plomley lived in sin.
And in turn Mr Plomley, as if congratulating himself too on his own good fortune, sometimes slips out of the shop when business is slack and goes into the kitchen and there, for a few delicious moments, fondles her. He likes fondling Mrs Plomley. Not only is it much more satisfying to fondle Mrs Plomley, with her skin that is like that of a ripe banana and her crowning orange pyramid of hair, than it was to fondle Georgina. There is altogether much more of her to fondle.
And sometimes, on cold winter nights, they take a tot of whisky and hot water upstairs and sip it in bed together, sitting side by side. And now and then, just for a joke, or perhaps in silent recollection of Georgina, Mr Plomley gives Mrs Plomley hers with the pen-filler.
She always laughs at this. There is a great thrill in her heart. And finally, as a result, when the light is put out, she snuggles softly down at Mr Plomley’s side with all the broody contentment of a hen about to lay an egg.
Bonus Story
Mademoiselle
Mademoiselle is the story of a young ‘innocent’ French maid who comes to work for a family in England. Her apparent homesickness is revealed to in fact be longing of a different nature, and as the tears continue to fall, it soon becomes clear that she is not as naïve as at first appears.
We met her off the boat at Harwich: a squat dumpy Swiss sausage tied round the middle, with a fat red face, large moist black eyes and a blue beret that did not suit her.
She was twenty. As a cook she looked very young, but we had chosen her carefully, out of many, from a photograph, because she looked so innocent, so unemotional, so dependent, so untempermental, so solemnly unimaginative.
That evening she wept. It turned out that she was not so much Swiss as French, and she wept eloquent French tears, with French abandon and for French reasons. I do not speak French. I speak a language which I used to think was French. This is composed largely of English words pronounced in French fashion, accompanied by exclamations such as ‘Ma foi!’ and ‘Quel Horreur!’ the sentences rounded off by a careless ‘N'est ce pas?’ It is very interesting, but it is not a vehicle for the conveyance of the finer emotions. Always unreliable, it breaks to pieces in moments of excitement. ‘Je vous dis, Mademoiselle, que je suis tellement angry avec vous pour cette chose la. See? Compris? Je suis very mad – so look out!’ At first Mademoiselle did not understand; later she got to know, I think, the look in my eye.
When she wept, that first evening, we were very sorry for her. She was so young, so nervous, so far from home; she was among strangers. We called her into the drawing-room. ‘Je suis timide,’ she said, so we gave her a glass of wine. We said: ‘You're homesick. Don't worry. You'll get over it. It will be better. We are your friends. Do you want a fire in your room? If anything is not right, tell us. We want to make you comfortable. Our only concern is to make you happy.’ At first she did not say much. She simply sat weeping out of large eyes that looked so like dark wet grapes, with large innocent tears bouncing off large innocent cheeks.
Then suddenly she let it out, in French distress, in a voluble little breeze of French misery: ‘It's Alphonse. I can't do without him! I've come away and it's so far and now I want him and I can't go back!’
‘There, there,’ we said. ‘Doucement. Take it easy.’ We made light of it. ‘You're not going to cry over a little affaire like that?’
‘Not a little affaire! A big affaire!’
‘If it is so big,’ I said, ‘why did you come away and leave him? Who is Alphonse?’
Another flood of tears. French tears, so wet and bouncing and eloquent. Then suddenly she ran upstairs, rather like an hysterical carthorse. When she came down again she had a large framed photograph in her hands, and I felt it had the air of having been much clasped to the bosom and wept on.
She thrust the photograph into my hands. I looked at the picture of an anaemic-looking Swiss of forty.
‘Not Alphonse?’
‘Yes, Alphonse.’
There was nothing much I could say. But she knew what I was thinking.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘my brother-in-law.’
So much for innocence.
‘You see,’ she said, ‘he is not happy with my sister, so he love me instead.’
‘For how long?’
‘Oh! two year.’
‘In your sister's house?’
‘Oh! yes, where else?’
Nor was there anything I could say to that. And Mademoiselle herself, it seeme
d, had nothing else to say. Affairs with brothers-in-law, I seemed to read in those large innocent tear-washed eyes, are two for three ha'pence in Switzerland.
So we let it pass. We were sympathetic in silence. Sometimes youth exaggerates, affairs with brothers-in-law are mostly adoration, and so on. Mademoiselle went back to her cooking. She was a good cook. She did a great deal of mysterious juggling with eggs and she could produce a tolerable meal in five minutes. But one thing I did not understand. Although she was more than half French and had come to us from Switzerland, all the cream of her cooking was Italian. Her minestrone was beautiful; her risotto and spaghetti and ravioli and things Milanese and Neapolitaine were delicious.
‘You have travelled in Italy?’ I said.
‘No,’ she said. ‘I have never travel in Italy.’
‘How is it, then, you cook the Italian things so well?’ The large innocent eyes filled, as though from a pump, with large innocent tears. Her voice was wet with things remembered.
‘It was Enrico,’ she whispered.
‘And who,’ I said, ‘was Enrico?’
‘Another one.’
‘You can love a man,’ I said, ‘without learning how to cook his favourite dishes for him.’
‘Oh! I live with him.'
'Before Alphonse?' I said, 'or after Alphonse?'
'Oh! before Alphonse. Alphonse not know.'
'For how long?’
‘Two year.’
‘That makes you sixteen,’ I said.
We let it pass. But somehow, after that, I forgot to say that Enrico was married, bald and past forty, our taste for things Italian declined.
‘You can cook German food?’ I said.
‘Oh! yes, German food, yes. Very nice German food. I was in Germany for one year.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘you cook us a nice wiener schnitzel with fried potatoes.’
So we had the wiener schnitzel, and it was sublime.
‘Extra,’ I said, ‘perfect.’
Innocence outdid itself. Tears pumped up into the large black eyes with remarkable agility. They bounced off the fat red cheeks and were wiped away with fat red hands.
‘Now why are you crying?’ I said.
‘It reminds me of Hans Otto!’
‘And who the hell,’ I said patiently, ‘was Hans Otto?’
‘The postman. He used to bring me flowers with the letters.’
‘Very nice. You loved him?’
‘Yes.’
‘A married man?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long did that last?’
‘One year.’
‘That makes you fifteen,’ I said.
We let it pass; but we were a little perturbed. ‘Let's hope,’ my wife said, ‘she hasn't been to Russia. Let's hope she can't go farther back.’ But we had not reckoned with Mademoiselle. We had not reckoned that there might not only be affaires of the past, but affaires of the future. Above all, we had not reckoned on myself.
‘M'sieur would like something?’
‘No thank you.’
‘M'sieur looks very tired, writing his book. I could cook m'sieur a nice wiener schnitzel and fried potatoes.’
Or: ‘M'sieur would like his trousers pressing? I press them very quick.’
So she pressed my trousers. She pressed them for an hour and a half. ‘I love to feel the nice pressed trousers,’ she said.
‘So I notice,’ I said.
After that she often wanted to press my trousers. She began to act, indeed, with astonishing solicitude. She contrived to come round corners as I was coming round; she burst into rooms where I was alone and said ‘Oh! pardon, M'sieur!’ She knocked on the bathroom door as I was taking my bath, and last thing at night, as I locked the doors, she would come down in her dressing gown, looking more like a sausage than ever and say ‘M'sieur would like anything before he goes to bed?’ And when it became plain that M'sieur did not want anything at all, Mademoiselle was miserable. She was piqued; she began to show little flutters of temperament; she pouted and mooned and wore the tragic airs of those who suffer much injustice. She was especially miserable on Sundays.
‘Why don't you go to church?’ I said.
‘Do you go to church?’ she said.
‘No.’
‘I don't go to church either.’ Then: ‘Do you believe in God?’
‘In the orthodox way, no.’
‘I don't believe in God either,’ she said.
‘You're an atheist?’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I'm an atheist. I suffer much injustice in my life and I not believe in God. There is no God.’
Then suddenly Alphonse stopped writing. Mademoiselle was in despair, in tears; she flung herself about in paroxysms of temperamental and theatrical emotion; she had premonitions. Alphonse was dead. ‘Oh! My God, I finish life! I make suicide.’ The tears pumped like water out of a doomed ship. ‘This afternoon I throw myself under an auto bus.’
‘There's a bus at the corner at half-past nine,’ I said. ‘Why wait?’
‘No, I jump into the water. Into the pond. Tonight. In the darkness. It is better.’
‘It is better,’ I said.
‘But I do it. I have courage. I do it. In the morning I am gone.’
In the morning she was still with us. She was not only still with us, but she was singing Gotterdammerung as she stirred the minestrone. She had changed her mind. For M'sieur's sake she had decided to go on living. M'sieur was sympathetic,
M'sieur was a writer. ‘I turn a new page.’ M'sieur understood.
M'sieur went out to pull turnips.
Two days later there were sounds, in Mademoiselle’s room, as though she were jumping on beetles. Mademoiselle was packing.
I sent for her. ‘You are not going?’
‘I have nowhere to go,’ she wept.
‘You have the Thames,’ I said. ‘If only you have the courage.’
‘You laugh at me! You think I don't mean it! You think I have no courage! I am going! And I have poison in my room. I have courage to take it! I will take it.’
‘What poison?’
‘Ah! many sorts.’
‘Fetch them,’ I said. ‘All the sorts.’
She went upstairs in tragic triumph, and came down again a little sheepishly, and gave me a small bottle. It was a flop.
‘Corn-cure,’ I said.
‘You laugh!’ she said. ‘You think I don't mean it! But I go! I go to London. And in London
I write one letter to Alphonse and then throw myself in the Thames.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘You go.’
And in the morning, very humble, very reluctant, very contrite and very tearful, she went.
‘I have courage!’ she said. ‘I shall be in it tonight. I shall be finish! It will all be over.’ And the large innocent tears did their best to reproach us as they rolled off the large innocent cheeks.
Two days later we had a letter. It was a nice letter, very cheerful, friendly, without malice or reproach or despair. Mademoiselle was very happy. But there was something about it I could not understand. There was much in it about God.
‘All is well,’ it said. ‘The Dear Good God has seen fit to look down on me with compassion. God is very good and has overlooked my sin and I have a nice place again. It is merciful. It is all through Providence. Providence has saved me.’
I did not understand. Then I looked at the address.
Mademoiselle, it seemed, was cook to a clergyman.
A Note on the Author
H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse.
Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.
His first novel, The Two Sisters (1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels
and collections of short stories followed.
During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym “Flying Officer X”. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944), followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain (1947) and The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (1950). Other well-known novels include Love for Lydia (1952) and The Feast of July (1954).
His most popular creation was the Larkin family which featured in five novels beginning with The Darling Buds of May in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success.
Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being The Purple Plain (1947) starring Gregory Peck, and The Triple Echo (1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed.
H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.
Discover other books by H. E. Bates published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/HEBates.
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For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
The Golden Oriole first published in Great Britain in 1962 by Michael Joseph
‘Mademoiselle’ first published in Great Britain in 1940 by Kingdom Come
This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Reader
Copyright © 1940, 1962 Evensford Productions Limited
The moral right of the author is asserted.
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