by H. E. Bates
‘Oh! why won’t you talk?’ she beseeched.
But except for a faint scratch of its pink feet against the perch and some low sound of its unopened mouth, the dove never spoke to them.
Sometimes, suddenly dubious of all this constant attention, they edged quietly away to within the shadow of the almond tree and listened. Only the lightest of sounds came through the stillness, only the most intangible of summer murmurs.
The silence of the dove grew terrible. ‘Oh! why doesn’t it speak?’ they asked, ‘grandfather said it would!’ They had given it everything, they told themselves. It needed nothing – surely it needed nothing.
They would return in order to see if it had moved ever so slightly from its position of melancholy, as if suffering, endurance. Again and again nothing had happened. It was hard for them that this creature to whom they gave everything could not even lift up its eyes, could not emerge from this mysterious serenity so like sleep.
In unfailing hope they hovered about the cage until it was deep in shadow. They could no longer distinguish the delicate colours of the bird’s breast. The pink of its feet had turned to black. They left it at last with earnest whispers, with many tappings upon the wires, and with the last earnest entreaty:
‘Talk to us to-morrow!’
In the morning one of those things they had most desired had taken place. The dove had moved. It lay among the wheat and peas strewn about the floor of the cage, in a position the children had never seen before. Its feet, changed from black to pink again, gleamed like silk in the sunshine coming through the wires. The bright colours of its breast were visible again. But there was a change in these things; it struck the children so much like a blow that they gazed only once before running screaming away.
All day the dove lay in this position, its head on the floor, its feet in the air. The children did not come near again. As though resenting this strange negligence the dove never seemed to cease watching that quarter from which they had always come. The stillness of its bright eyes seemed to convey a look of hopelessness. They seemed to lack faith – they were solemn and cold.
To the children, sitting with their grandfather far away from the almond-tree, there was nothing to wonder at so much as the silence and death of the dove. All afternoon this wonder possessed them. Their little eyes were round and serious. They played with their fingers while pondering on it. Once again only faint sounds reached them – only summer murmurs, low and soft, from the trees above.
One sound, more softly persistent than all others they did not understand. ‘What is it?’ they asked.
Their grandfather spoke sleepily, as if part of it himself. ‘The doves talking in the woods,’ he said.
Slowly the children turned their eyes on him, then on themselves, and lastly to the sky. The doves talking! They did not speak. Their faces seemed to reflect from somewhere indefinable a look of wistful unbelief, of sad conviction, as if knowing this could never be.
The Flame
‘Two ham and tongue, two teas, please, Miss!’
‘Yessir.’
The waitress retreated, noticing as she did so that the clock stood at six. ‘Two ham and tongue, two teas,’ she called down the speaking-tube. The order was repeated. She put down the tube, seemed satisfied, even bored, and patted the white frilled cap that kept her black hair in place. Then she stood still, hand on hip, pensively watching the door. The door opened and shut.
She thought: ‘Them two again!’
Wriggling herself upright she went across and stood by the middle-aged men. One smiled and the other said: ‘Usual.’
Down the tube went her monotonous message: ‘One ham, one tongue, two teas.’
Her hand went to her hip again, and she gazed at the clock. Five past! – time was hanging, she thought. Her face grew pensive again. The first order came on the lift, and the voice up the tube: ‘Two ’am an’ tongue, two teas!’
‘Right.’ She took the tray and deposited it with a man and woman at a corner-table. On returning she was idle again, her eye still on the door. Her ear detected the sound of a bronchial wheeze on the floor above, the angry voice of a customer in the next section, and the rumble of the lift coming up. But she watched the door until the last possible second. The tray slid into her hand almost without her knowing it and the nasal voice into her ears: ‘One ’am, one tongue, two teas!’
‘Right.’
The middle-aged customers smiled; one nudged the other when she failed to acknowledge that salute, and chirped: ‘Bright to-day, ain’t you!’
She turned her back on him.
‘Been brighter,’ she said, without smiling.
She was tired. When she leant against the head of the lift she shut her eyes, then remembered and opened them again to resume her watch on the door and clock. The man in the corner smacked his lips, drank with his mouth full and nearly choked. A girl in another corner laughed, not at the choking man but at her companion looking cross-eyed. The cash-register ‘tinked’ sharply. Some one went out: nothing but fog came in, making every one shiver at once. The man in the corner whistled three or four notes to show his discomfort, remembered himself, and began to eat ham.
The girl noticed these things mechanically, not troubling to show her disgust. Her eye remained on the door. A customer came in, an uninteresting working girl who stared, hesitated, then went and sat out of the dark girl’s section. The dark girl noticed it mechanically.
The manageress came: tall, darkly dressed, with long sleeves, like a manageress.
‘Have you had your tea, Miss Palmer?’ she asked.
‘No.’
‘Would you like it?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘No? Why not?’
‘It’s my night off. I’m due out at half-past.’
She walked away, took an order, answered a call for ‘Bill!’ and found that the order got mixed with the bill, and that the figures wouldn’t add. It seemed years before the ‘tink’ of the register put an end to confusion. The customer went out: fog blew in: people shivered. The couple in the corner sipped their tea, making little storms in their tea-cups.
She put her head against the lift. The clock showed a quarter past: another quarter of an hour! She was hungry. As if in consequence her brain seemed doubly sharp and she kept thinking: ‘My night out. Wednesday. Wednesday. He said Wednesday! He said—’
‘Bill! Bill!’
She went about mechanically, listened mechanically, executed mechanically. A difficult bill nearly sent her mad, but she wrote mechanically, cleaned away dirty platter, brushed off crumbs – all mechanically. Now and then she watched the clock. Five minutes more! Would he come? Would he? Had he said Wednesday?
The waitress from the next section, a fair girl, came and said:
‘Swap me your night, Lil? Got a flame comin’ in. I couldn’t get across to tell you before. A real flame – strite he is – nice, quiet, ’andsome. Be a dear? You don’t care?’
The dark girl stared. What was this! She couldn’t! Not she! The clock showed three minutes to go. She couldn’t!
‘Nothing doing,’ she said and walked away.
Every one was eating contentedly. In the shadow near the lift she pulled out his note and read: ‘I will come for you, Wednesday evening, 6.’
Six! Then, he was late! Six! Why should she think half-past? She shut her eyes. Then he wasn’t coming!
A clock outside struck the half-hour. She waited five minutes before passing down the room, more mechanically than ever. Why hadn’t he come? Why hadn’t he come?
The fair girl met her. ‘Be a dear?’ she pleaded. ‘Swap me your night. He’s a real flame – ’struth he is, nice, quiet!’
Thirty-five minutes late! The dark girl watched the door. No sign! It was all over.
‘Right-o,’ she said.
She sent another order down. The door opened often now, the fog was thicker, she moved busily. She thought of him when a man ordered a brandy and spilt it over her hand because
his own shivered with cold. He wasn’t like that, she thought, as she sucked her fingers dry.
For the first time in five minutes she looked at the door. She felt her heart leap.
He had come at last. Yes, there he was. He was talking to the fair girl. The little doll was close to him. Yes, there he was, nice, quiet, handsome. Their voices crept across to her.
‘Two seats? two seats?’ she heard.
‘Yes.’
‘Oh! I say! And supper?’
‘Of course. And supper.’
The dark girl could not move as they went out.
The door shut hard. ‘Two seats?’ ‘And supper?’ ‘Nice, quiet, ’andsome.’ The dark girl dreamed on.
‘Miss! Miss!’
She obeyed. She was sad, hungry, tired.
‘Yessir?’ They were middle-aged men again!
‘Two teas, two tongues,’ said one.
‘Two seats and supper?’ she whispered.
‘Whaaat? Two teas! two tongues! Can’t you hear?’
‘Yessir. Two teas, two tongues. Thank you, sir.’
She moved slowly away.
‘You can never make these blooming gals understand,’ said one man to the other.
The Holiday
Drawing away his eyes from the window of the guard’s van he suddenly ceased his counting of the telegraph poles, flashing up, down and past, an occupation which had kept him silent for many miles, and turning his back to the window brought his hands together over his knees in a soft clap-clap! and his bright eyes to rest on the bundle of whiteness lying in the arms of the girl at his side. To this he smiled a little and whispered:
‘Is he asleep still?’
The girl nodded her head cautiously as if she too had been nearly asleep and had answered thus for fear of disturbing herself. But her dark eyes were wide open, every moment making swift excursions from the baby to her husband, seated like herself on an iron trunk near the window. They were eyes whose lashes seemed incapable of ever drooping, and in which lay always a strong light, mirroring clearly the panorama of passing landscape, rained upon ceaselessly until the colour of dull steel.
There too were the reflections of the other occupants of the van, sitting and standing about her in dejected attitudes, watching the rain, eating, mournfully playing cards and talking in low whispers, as if sound were forbidden.
She did not talk. Occasionally without opening her lips she made quiet sounds into the face of her baby, and then hid her own in the soft hollow made by the child against her breast. Once or twice the little thing stirred, and for a moment she held her breath in fear before letting it escape her with a faint hiss that was her only sign of relief.
The train went on. The frosty look of the rain on the windows began to hide the moors and hills outside.
The girl continued to follow her husband’s restless movements with her wide eyes. He, for his part, moved about in the limited space between the piles of luggage, peered through the windows and watched the card-players without taking a hand. In the grey light he looked startlingly young. Now and then he spoke to her in soft tones, which she acknowledged by simple gestures and stares, but more often, as if awed by her constant quietness, he merely moved his lips and smiled.
‘Awake yet?’ he would convey to her.
At this she would move the child enough to reveal its white face sealed with sleep. Thus satisfied he would turn away with an air of resignation and perform again all his old tricks for killing time with all the old interest, as if they had been new to him.
‘York soon,’ he once told her. ‘Change there, I expect.’
She jerked up her head, showed signs of fear and spoke for the first time. Her voice was high-pitched, not unmusical and clear.
‘Change?’ she repeated.
He turned to a man at his side and asked:
‘Change at York, do we?’
The other replied moodily: ‘Yes.’
He faced the girl. ‘Yes, change,’ he said.
The next moment, seeing her fear heighten he touched one of her hands and tried to calm her. ‘He won’t get wet,’ he urged. ‘It’s covered in there. It’s safe enough.’
Leaning to get a glimpse of the outside world he said desperately: ‘It doesn’t rain half like it did.’ When she appeared unimpressed by this he declared with a smile: ‘Not like that day at Scarborough. Remember that? Didn’t it come? Well, not half like that, not a quarter.’
He was abruptly silent again at her request and, listening to the scream and growl of the wheels and the metallic patter of the rain overhead, thought: ‘We shan’t be long now, we shan’t be long.’ Nevertheless he yawned, stretched his cramped body and knew that there were still many hours to go.
Through a hole in the misty surface of the window he caught sight of great purple lakes of heather. He turned to direct the girl’s attention there but stopped, his gaze arrested by his son, pulling silently atone of her small, girlish, uncovered breasts. His heart jumped, his hands became clasped over his knees, and his knees, and his whole body took up an attitude of expectancy, as if awaiting a miracle, following every movement which passed before him.
Thus, no longer heeding the motion of the train and the murmurs about them the couple took in this sight, one with a tender stare and the other with her dark, bare head drooped over her breast.
Before they were aware of it, and with the scene still unfinished, the train reached York. There they were unready for the rush which bore them out to the platform. In the crowd the girl was distraught, while the man struggled desperately, trying to protect her as he hauled the tin trunk. The child cried with hunger.
Before long they drifted into an oasis formed by piles of luggage. There it was quieter and as the woman sat down to feed the child again the man elbowed his way to the coffee-stall and there, whenever half an opportunity arose, croaked to the attendant: ‘Cup of tea, please.’
When he steered his way out again he was smiling faintly. He motioned the girl to drink. As she obeyed carefully he produced from his pocket a slab of cake and whispered: ‘I pinched this. Eat it, go on, eat it.’ He grinned again.
She looked up at him. The tea steamed about her white throat and clung in tiny amber-coloured beads to her upper lip. She shook her head vehemently, gave him the cup and held the saucer while he drank. So it went on until the cup was emptied and he took her arm to guide her firmly away.
The train ran in, to be besieged like a corpse by vermin. From end to end of it the girl and the man ran despairingly, struggling with the baby and the tin trunk. Into the compartments they darted beseeching glances. Finally they came to the halt at the guard’s van, already crowded to the windows, and after more struggling the woman was able to climb in a moment before the guard signalled and followed her. The man protested desperately, then with a flash of stoicism stood perfectly still and called:
‘Wait for me at the junction!’
He waved once while watching her white face diminish. After that a sense of loss seemed to strike him in the throat.
Back in the crowd, thicker and noisier, he roamed about, lonely and unhappy, until he came again to the oasis where they had drunk tea. There he sat down near the empty cup, tried to be patient under the delay, but fretted ceaselessly about the woman and the child.
The rain kept on, hissing constantly and prolonging the desolate spectacle of a railway station on a wet day. To the noise of its steadfast downpour the man watched trains and people coming and going without rest. When a flaming poster labelled Scarborough caught his attention he remembered that only that morning he had been there, and that already it seemed a thousand years away.
After that his eyes were constantly resting on the violent colours of the advertisement, and he remembered vividly the green sea, the windy evenings and warm days of the week that had passed. Many times he asked himself: why should it ever end, where was the justice of it?
The rain and the engines hissed out the afternoon.
In the tr
ain he stared from the misty windows and thought of his wife as the grey fields slid past. Already he was weary and, as the train surged on, grew hungry too. The pain of it would catch him suddenly below the ribs and pass with a dull ache that seemed to scoop out a chasm in his stomach. Soon he pressed his knees against his body.
Thus it was that his hand came into contact with something soft, studded with a few coins. With the ravenousness of an animal he began to eat the forgotten cake. As he tasted it his eyes became bright as if a raindrop had been imprisoned in each and he was seized with a strange headiness like that of intoxication. He half-choked when the dry crumbs harrowed his throat.
Suddenly he paused in the act of eating and drew from his pockets two railway tickets and stared stupidly at them, motionless as an idol. To his lips still clung a few crumbs, which moved only when he began to think again.
His thoughts were of the girl. He saw her questioned, frightened and detained and the railway officials unkind and impatient when she could not produce her ticket. He began to sweat with worry and call himself a fool over and over again.
The growl of brakes came like a clarion to him. He ran from the train as if it had been a contaminated prison and so down the platform towards the still, candescent spot he saw there.
A dozen questions ran from his lips as he came to the girl. When he walked away with her his clutch on her arm was fierce and devoted as hers on the child. The rain falling from the same monotone of sky he did not heed, and no longer afraid about the business of the tickets he related some of the things that had happened to him.
When they sat in the train again she fingered his brow coolly and said: ‘Your head’s all sweat.’ He grinned carelessly, but with the touch of her handkerchief on his face looked strangely into her eyes. Soon they began to talk of home in whispers.
That night, though dog-tired, he could not sleep and lay staring at the ceiling, thinking. At his side slept the girl and the child, breathing with a soft sound like that of the sea in the distance. Hour after hour he heard this regular rise and fall until in the end he surrendered to its delusion and lived again the joys of the week that had passed. Soon he made no attempt to sleep but lay on his back, staring in profound thought about it all.
