by H. E. Bates
He seemed not to hear this and asked: ‘What are you eating?’
‘Gooseberries.’
‘I’ll eat some too,’ he said.
And for a long time afterwards she remembered the way he foraged in the bushes, picking gooseberries; and how, throwing them up in the air he caught them again in his mouth, crunched them up at once and made sour faces. And all the time, as she watched him and laughed, it seemed that the past was only a dream and that her emotions about him were at last what she had wished them to be, and were fierce and passionate, like little revolutions in the streets of her mind.
‘I can talk and be understood!’ she thought.
They fell into conversation and soon afterwards left off picking gooseberries and went and sat in the summer-house and talked of the spring. Later they talked of herself and of music. The way he talked she thought wonderful and enchanting. And while listening to him she clasped her hands and let her face fall sideways upon them, lightly and with joy.
Once she unclasped her hands, looked serious and said:
‘I want to ask you something.’
‘What is it you want to ask?’
And she said timidly: ‘Why is it you haven’t spoken to me?’
For having spoken she felt bewildered and ashamed. She tried to turn away, but he seized her hands and tried to look into her hot, flushed face, which she hung downwards to her breast. And he began to whisper:
‘Nina, tell me what I’ve done, forgive me, you don’t understand.’
But suddenly she had no thought of sadness and was aware only of the superb happiness given her by his voice and his presence.
‘I only wanted to talk to you!’ she cried.
He laughed. Nina laughed too and said:
‘But now all that’s gone – it’s all right. I’m happy!’
They went on talking. Dusk fell, the little gooseberries lost themselves in the dark trees, and above the bigger trees spread like broad, black umbrellas put up to keep off the dew. The dusk, the warm-smelling silence and Strawn’s voice excited her imagination. She began to tell herself, with little flutters of joy, ‘He is in love with me, he is in love with me!’
She thought that she too was in love. And from that moment it seemed that her love was serious, passionate and tender. As they sat there Strawn saw that she had scratched her hands and, wetting his handkerchief, bathed off the blood. And it seemed to Nina that now where the smart had been burned something joyful and pleasant instead.
As they went into the house to look for her mother she kept laughing. Her eyes would light up and she would exclaim:
‘I’m so happy – and yet I don’t know why!’
‘Yes? That’s lovely,’ he would say.
She would watch if he were watching her. And all the time it seemed to her that he must know why she was so happy, why she kept saying absurd things, flinging her arms about, and asking him to look at the trees, the sky and the flowers sleeping in the painted stillness of coming darkness.
When he did not seem to notice the reason of all this she would console herself: ‘It will happen! It will come!’
Now she no longer wanted to play to him or hear him play, but only to be near him, to be excited by him and listen to his voice.
She would look at his face and think joyfully: ‘He understands!’
At the sight of her mother, who came suddenly running down the steps of the house saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ she was no longer envious or sad. When they all three went into the house and Strawn for the first time played Mozart on the piano to them, little thrills of pure joy like lovely scales ran up and down her spine, and when he ceased playing, apologised and declared, ‘I’m getting old,’ she thought of the way he had blown his cheeks out like a boy and eaten gooseberries in the garden. And she thought of him only as being young, understanding and splendid.
When she went to bed at last he smiled and pressed her hand and said: ‘Have nice dreams.’
On the stairs and in her bedroom, where she did not undress but sat at the window listening to the owls, she thought of this, of his splendid, dark eyes, his voice, of the entrancing, wonderful things he had said. And she thought that she loved him and perhaps was loved, and was conscious of looking forward to summer and of what summer would be like with him.
It seemed that long afterwards, as she still sat there, she heard the voices of Strawn and her mother coming from below.
Her heart raced, her body trembled and suddenly she longed to go down and look at him for one moment longer.
She took off her shoes and went down. On the stairs and everywhere it was dark, and the darkness seemed to give Strawn’s voice a new sound of enchantment and mystery.
At the foot of the stairs she stood still and listened and heard him say:
‘Sometimes it’s a thousand, sometimes only five hundred.’
Nina went forward, stood at the open door of the drawing-room and, after listening a moment, looked in. And she saw suddenly that in a sad sort of way, before the fire, her mother was pressing her temples against Strawn’s knees and that every now and then she would look up, murmur something and make passionate little signs on his knees, and that Strawn would bend down, whisper in return and draw away his face with tenderness and longing.
She started. Beginning to breathe heavily she did not know what to do with the immense sadness which filled her.
But in a little while she turned, retreated slowly upstairs and in a dull, stupefied way, undressed and got into bed. And as she lay there looking at the stars she began to cry, and it seemed to her that the sounds she made turned and went suddenly through her head, like tiresome children playing up and down stairs. And it seemed too that the scratches on her hands began to smart again and that in her mouth returned a taste of something unpleasant and sour, like the taste of young gooseberries.
The Voyage
She was one of those very clean, unpretentious and unlovable little boats plying regularly between London and the Dutch coast. Having left the port just after eight o’clock, she had succeeded in reaching the open sea before darkness fell. Her passengers, moving or grouped between the piles of baggage on her decks, had not then begun to think of going below, and conversing among themselves remained gazing ahead through the semi-darkness, wondering secretly what lay before them in the open sea.
The passenger seated at the far end of the stern had not once glanced out into the distance ahead of her, and long before this had wrapped her shawl closely about her head and turned her face to the shore. Under the luminous reflection of the sea’s surface and within the darkness of her shawl her face seemed very white; against the restlessness of the figures passing and repassing it on the dark deck behind and the capricious twinkle of lights ashore it was calm and resigned, too.
It did not seem startled at the voice accosting it suddenly but gently from behind, with the words:
‘I just managed to get the last berth.’
She cried out: ‘I didn’t know you’d gone! – The last? – only one?’
In reply to this there was a faint nod from the man who had advanced in order to lean upon the deck-rail. He coughed weakly before repeating in a whisper that seemed painful to him:
‘Yes – only one.’
The face of the woman turned itself upward with a jerk. ‘You must cover your chest – you must, you must. I keep telling you.’
‘Yes – I will.’ A hand, very white and frail too, stole up to his chest and closed the opening then. ‘Will that do?’ he whispered.
For the first time since he had left her there half an hour before the woman rose. Her voice had grown insistent. ‘You mustn’t stay up here!’ she urged. She followed up these words with a compelling gesture of her hands. Then suddenly her voice became affected with a fresh, unexpected emotion – a tenderness almost girlish in its quivering earnestness.
‘You must think! – remember what they said. The night air – so deadly’ – her voice nearly lost itself in
the tragic difficulties of these last words – ‘it’s so dangerous!’
In the pale luminosity rising from the milky waves about the stern the man’s smile seemed doubly faded. It did not seem to be connected with anything. His voice was very detached and feeble, too.
‘It can’t be helped. Not another bunk in the whole ship,’ he whispered.
The woman put her hands up to the throat which had had to struggle even with these words and covered it firmly, as if to instil in the man a sense of their power and unswerving determination.
‘You must go down – now, now.’ She actually seized his shoulders, as if to put into action this commanding entreaty. ‘Not a minute longer!’
‘I’m not tired.’ He averted his face. ‘I swear I’m not,’ he repeated vaguely.
From the woman there was a gleam of white teeth, as if of a sudden yet faint anger. It reached him as he prepared to speak again. Against it he became silent, watching the waves which had on their heads flashes of white illuminating the darkness with similar swiftness. The woman followed his gaze. These gleams of white seemed to her suddenly expressive of mortal enmity, as if having designs on the figure at her side. For the first time there came a note of desperation into her voice.
‘I don’t like it – go down, my dear – I’ll come and see you now and then. I shan’t sleep.’
He gave her a single wistful and very timid look of protest, which she dismissed with gentleness. The concern she had put into her words she put also into a little push which sent him a little nearer the companion-way. Half-way there she frustrated an attempt of his to return by whispering determinedly:
‘I shall be angry with you!’
A moment after he had gone she walked to the head of the stairs, cast one look down them and then returned.
Her mouth relapsed into its quiet solemnity immediately. As if by some inherent instinct or some habit borne fatally upon her by circumstances, the woman once again gazed only backward. The lights of the English coast still studded the edge of a cloudy sky. Without hesitation the woman fixed her eyes on them. Such gaze of this nature had not filled them before: it was as if of some memory disturbed by reality, of some sharp experience allied with dreams. Beneath it the woman was silent, very still, watching the lights die gradually in the darkness.
They expired gently and almost imperceptibly at last. The woman moved her hands and fell into another kind of resignation without resting from the first. Her expression altered accordingly, allied itself more closely with realities, and seemed to dismiss its former dreams for the sake of a single fresh one. She remembered without visible alarm, but with disarming silence, the expression she had last seen on her husband’s face – its faint smile, its indecision, its boyishness, its look of physical weariness. ‘He was so tired,’ she thought.
Half-wistful, she sat like this for a long time, watching the white, curling lips of the waves, the lights of other ships passing, the dark figures moving aimlessly about the deck on which she sat. The ship bore itself softly out through the darkness. The night advanced softly, too. Now and then she caught the chatter of voices above the rumble of screws and the noise of the sea. Some people were eating down below. From them also came the voice of a man arguing with the purser.
‘But can’t I sleep with my wife?’ she heard him whine.
‘I’m afraid not, sir – not to-night – third-class very full, sir. Single berths.’
She sighed and in the ensuing silence wondered if her husband could be asleep yet. A thought struck her with painful abruptness: ‘What if there should have been not even one berth?’ Her head became full of fears, of many remembrances of doctor’s orders, of warnings, the deadly nature of whose truth had been borne steadily upon her. ‘The night air – dangerous!’ she thought.
She gave herself up to long reflections, enlarging on these early thoughts with fear, with stoicism, even with wonder. Facing them again and again she ceased gradually to be afraid of them. Then, without warning, some sharp words flashing out suddenly from that past which she had so long dwelt upon, undid all this.
‘You had better take him away – quickly – it can’t be long.’
She remembered clearly her refusal to believe this, as even now she sometimes refused to believe the existence of the dark sea bearing them steadily outward. This unbelief had not lasted long, however. Gradually she had seemed to become surrounded by symbols of death itself – his weary gestures, his cough, his hopeful frailty, the way he sometimes shut his eyes for a moment or two and sighed. She had become terrified by them without arousing his suspicions.
Sitting very wide awake on the half-lit deck, deserted except for one or two silent figures, she began to reproach herself: ‘Oh! I should have been more careful!’ She should never have allowed him to run after the berths, she thought. She should not have proclaimed her fears so loudly at the critical moment of his coughing. She should have been more kind, more gentle. Above all, she did not want to make him afraid or acquaint him, even ever so slightly, with those signs of death.
In the morning, she thought, when they disembarked, and began the journey to the place where he was to take ‘the cure,’ she would remedy these things – not a word, not a sign! She would make him smile. With her face still turned towards the ship’s wake, she too allowed herself a single smile over the black waters. It vanished a moment later at the distant sound of a cough not far off. She rose, agitated, made her way along the deck and listened.
‘Only the steward!’ – she managed to sigh with profound relief, trembling a little.
After wrapping her shawl more closely about herself she sat down again, closed her eyes, and passed a long time in reflection. On the dark, sickly face of her husband all these reflections had some bearing. Among others there were memories of their youth together, of their unquenchable ardour and hope for the future of those days. They did not pass over her without each leaving some visible impression – in the darkness her features were vivid, pronounced, ardent, her hands expressive of a great vitality, of a hope still not outworn. Gradually a greyness came into the darkness about her. The summer morning shed its faint pink on the waves at last.
At seven o’clock, without having combed her hair, she ran down to her husband.
He was awake – but he had slept! – really he had slept so soundly! – as if he had been going to sleep for ever – just like that – for ever.
She felt she must cry out, but by some means she only smiled and said:
‘We are sailing up the river – look! – the green banks, the cows, the poplars. The sun is shining – I watched it rise. They say it’s going to be fine – sunny all day long. Get dressed, my darling, we shan’t be long!’
She drank some coffee while waiting for him to dress. Excited passengers rushed hither and thither. She gave a steward something to get her luggage on deck.
Very frail and careful in manner, her husband emerged at last. The smiles, the enlivening words she had planned while brooding over a sea that had never ceased to be for her the embodiment of a malicious spirit, rose immediately to her lips. ‘Look – the churches, the ships, the barges – the sun on the water. Oh! my darling, look!’
Obeying her, he watched the gulls flying to and fro in the sunshine. His health, her previous warnings, her fears, were never mentioned. His coughing in that early morning air clinging with double sharpness over the river did not draw from her one reproachful or startled word. She half-closed her eyes in order that, when looking at him, the harsh, painful shadows of his face should be softened and lessened. The strange, too vivid brightness of his eyes she persuaded herself came from the dazzling reflection of the sun on the water, and when they appeared sombre, as if with a dying spark, it was because the shadow of her hat had overlaid them momentarily.
Right to the very edge of the landing stage she continued her delighted cries: ‘Look! – the children in the boats! – the streets! – the canals – oh! how lovely it’s going to be!’
Sh
e held his arm very gently while descending the gangway – she could feel its bone through the feeble flesh and his sleeve. This was another illusion. ‘I hold him so strongly – it’s no wonder,’ she thought.
At the entrance to the Customs drivers and porters besieged her with broken English. She handed her luggage to one of them and gave an address: they would not move on until to-morrow.
Turning her face suddenly to her husband she sought and seized one of his hands and pressed it against her side. Her eyes, amazingly young and bright, seemed full of courage, of the determination of her dreams, the fearlessness of her deep resolves. They sparkled with irrepressible fire before she spoke again.
‘We will walk. It’s so beautiful – so sunny.’ She sought desperately to awaken in his pale features the semblance of a smile. ‘We have not far to go.’
The Idiot
In the little blue-walled chapel the choir streamed in, and having bowed irregularly, faced the western window and blinked in the glare of the evening sun. Below a congregation had already gathered, and opposite, in the gallery, groups of little boys were huddled like noisy puppies. There some one would now and then hiss warningly:
‘Sssh! Sssh!’
To this, however, the children paid no heed but only shuffled their feet, laughed and talked more loudly and suddenly exchanged ecstatic whispers:
‘Taddo’s come! There’s Taddo the idiot!’
One by one they turned to the new-comer, a tall youth of nineteen or twenty, and began to laugh at his vacant face staring from his green, threadbare overcoat, and when he sat down, having forgotten to take off his hat, called to him:
‘Taddo! Taddo! Get up! It’s the hymn! Stand up!’
To their shrieking amusement he obeyed, mutely gazing for a minute at the other seated figures, before feverish hands dragged him down and voices whispered into his dirty ears:
‘You mustn’t stand up, Taddo! Sit down, that’s all.’
Grinning piteously he sat down, but when they laughed again did not understand and shrank into his overcoat. And as he listened to the hubbub of chatter about him it seemed that every one, even the preacher and the familiar coloured figures in the windows, were laughing at him.
