by H. E. Bates
When the hymn began he remembered the warning and remained seated. Shadows fell over him, making him feel safe like a child that cowers between the legs of its father when a dog barks; and believing that every one had forgotten him, he suddenly chuckled deeply.
Instantly the boys lowered their books, exchanged glances and tittered loudly. One or two older people grew stern with shock, but the hymn surged on at a great shout, only Taddo remaining silent. When the singing ended the boys became quiet too and only laughed with their eyes.
Through the prayer, the following hymn and the reading of the lesson Taddo sat with his head drawn into his overcoat, as if cringing under a blow. Soon the ray of sunlight that had rested on his head disappeared, the air grew dim and he became like a dark statue. About him the boys, tired of singing and listening, began to sketch fat men in their books and write couplets on the yellow seats. In the gallery was a never-ceasing riot of muttering and laughter.
At Taddo’s side two boys would now and then whisper urgently:
‘Make a noise like an owl, Taddo! Fire a gun! Wring a hen’s neck!’
Sometimes to those requests he would merely stare as if the speakers were transparent, at others chuckle without obeying, but now and then he would hold an imaginary gun to his shoulder, softly mimic an owl and with a choking sound stretch the neck of an invisible hen.
On all sides the boys would laugh like things exploding. Once there came a desperate hiss of warning and a voice appealing to him in an undercurrent of whispers:
‘Be quiet, be quiet!’
And in a minute he paused, then, growing afraid, buried his head in the thick shadows that lay piled from his feet to his waist. There he tried to breathe furtively, but instead only snorted like a cow. Thinking this to be some new mimicry the boys broke out into fresh laughter, coughed chokingly and dug fingers into his back, so that he became dizzy and imagining himself to be falling headlong over the gallery, tried to shout out. But the result was like the neigh of a horse, startling enough for some one to warn him:
‘Taddo! Taddo!’
He lowered his head.
‘Do you want to be turned out?’ he was asked.
It was the voice of the teacher, and from its tone Taddo at last understood that by imitating the voices of owls, dying hens and animals he had committed some wrong. Sweating and trembling with fear, he folded his arms about his head.
In that attitude of dejection he remained during the next hymn.
By that time the sun had vanished and from the sullen mouth of the west clouds were already surging, making everywhere sultry and dark. Watching Taddo the boys began to think he had fallen into a fit and were silent like a brood of chickens under a sack.
‘What’s the matter with Taddo?’ their minds asked. ‘Why does he look like that?’
But the youth suspected nothing and solemnly played with the beans, nutshells and crumbs he found in his pockets. All the time thoughts swam like sleepy fish into his brain.
The organ played again, but raising his head Taddo saw that no one rose at the sound. He pondered on this, then heard money chinking on all sides of him and saw white plates passing from hand to hand. Fascinated he watched their surfaces darken, but when a plate approached and touched him, became afraid and passed it on with a violent jerk.
Something fell into his lap.
Looking down he at first thought a silver hole had been cut in his trousers. Then he touched it: slowly the burning shape of a shilling became imprinted on his flesh.
The sermon began. He sat like an image, cold and unable to feel his heart beat, and conscious only of the fiery spot in his hand, burning like a brand-mark.
And because he had made neither movement nor sound for so long the boys began whispering again:
‘Taddo! Taddo!’
He shut his eyes, breathed warily and did not answer.
‘He’s asleep!’ they told each other.
He let in little trembling chinks of light through his lashes. The chapel seemed very dark, full of green shapes which made soft collisions with each other. These and the words of the preacher, which he imagined to be accusing him, made him long to be outside again.
In the chapel it grew darker and darker, people looked at each other, at the umbrella-stands and thick windows and muttered:
‘There’s thunder about.’
But while they preserved composure Taddo grew more afraid, and seeing in the dark air and the grey faces only malice and hostility, glanced about him like a girl faced with rape. To his terrified eyes everything had changed. He tried to cry out, but nothing happened. Then, glancing up at the choir, it seemed that the archway there was the cavernous mouth of some great beast, open in a fierce yawn which not only seemed to expand but advance as if to swallow him up. In the distance was born a profound growl, making him grip his fingers in fear, and in the roof a great roar, scattering echoes.
Every moment he expected to be exposed or annihilated and at last, unable to bear his fears any longer, he leapt up and ran from the chapel, whimpering.
Outside there fell on him a grey rain, heavy as the thunder which hammered at the clouds until they opened like dark doors and let in the lightning. In the flashes the roofs and pools glared like brass. As his clothes became soaked it seemed that from one terror he had run directly into another and, seeing the woods lying far down the road like black tents, ran to them for sanctuary.
Over him the sky was dark as a bruise, and as he ran he began to feel old and dispirited, but on reaching the woods the trees seemed to cry out to him in pity and the rain was no longer cold and like a shower of iron. There, too, was a smell of ferns, of pine-needles and many leaves and sometimes a strange pungent whiff as of old smoke.
He crouched at the foot of a pine, shrank to its reddish trunk and whispered continually:
‘Don’t let them come, don’t let them come!’
Above him the branches purred deeply as if understanding, and he was comforted. But the storm grew worse. Rain and wind rushed constantly through the wood and shudders of thunder along the sky. Against Taddo’s chest and arms the pine vibrated powerfully, making him babble instinctive prayers.
Then he remembered the shilling and at once it seemed to him that for the storm’s long affliction nothing else could be responsible; and he suddenly buried it in the dark earth.
The rain washed it up again. He stared and cried out:
‘I didn’t steal it! I didn’t steal it!’
He buried it again and when it was upheaved a second time thought there must be magic in it and shouted:
‘I’ll take it back!’
On the road to the village he blubbered in his desperation. His only comfort was from the thought that soon the shilling would pass into other hands and that the storm would die.
But there were no lights in the slender windows of the chapel and for some minutes he hammered on its door like a child upon an empty box, disappointed and wondering.
Ten o’clock struck as he knocked at the house of the minister. When the door was opened there came to him a warm, protective smell like that of dry linen, which made him forget the rainy darkness, the wood and his fears. When the minister spoke he merely answered:
‘It’s the shilling.’
The man looked at his outstretched palm with a startled air.
‘It’s the shilling,’ repeated Taddo.
But the other was silent.
‘Take it! Take it!’ whimpered the youth, his face half in the light. ‘The shilling – take it!’
‘Go home, my boy,’ he was advised. ‘Go home.’
His frenzied whispers poured out as if through a sudden leak: ‘Take it! Only take it! It’s the shilling! The shilling!’
The minister obeyed at last. For a moment nothing happened. Then suddenly it seemed that out there in the darkness was a mirror reflecting some strange light which even the shadow of the closing door could not darken.
In the warmth of the house the minister pond
ered, and thinking of the boy’s drenched figure shuddered decently and said: ‘God have mercy, God have mercy,’ and went to bed. There he forgot the shilling.
But for Taddo everything was different, and as he walked away it seemed to him that the calming earth, the sweet air, the fresh-smelling trees and the stars appearing in the broken sky like inquisitive children, were all whispering to him: ‘The storm is over, the storm is over.’
And he began to sing.
Blossoms
Every morning, except in treacherous weather, Francie got on her bicycle and rode a distance of more than two miles to the town in order to take her son to school. She was a widow, undersized and puffed out with stoutness. But in spite of this she rode always with her shoulders squarely braced, gripping the handle-bars tightly, her forefingers extended rigidly downward towards the brakes, her knees bobbing up and down like two little pistons under her skirts. About her floppy waist were fastened, tightly also, the fingers of her son, dangling between the saddle and the wheel like a frightened fly.
The journey began from the top of a hill on which sat a row of new villas blinking red and white in the sun. From the moment Francie skipped awkwardly into the saddle the bicycle flew, gathering speed recklessly, creaking under its double weight, ticking excitedly, spurting up fierce, whirring dust into the flashing wheels. The wind made a swoop up the hill like an excited boy. Her skirts laughed against her legs. Her breath ebbed away in fluttering little waves. Trees lumbered past, and between them and the road raced the grass in two never-dying ribbons of bright green fire.
Then, half-way down, with a fear of calamity encircling her breast like a cold band, she would set her teeth and put on the brakes. The sound made was as if many matches were being struck against the wheels. Then carefully, sometimes tremblingly, she released them again, and the bicycle glided with its heavy load into the safety of the level avenue of trees below.
Francie loved the thrilling wind in her skirts, the flashing grass, the tick of the bicycle, and in a squeakily excited voice she would pant out:
‘How did you like that? Wasn’t that lovely? You’re holding on tight, aren’t you? That’s right then!’
Behind her the boy clung like some tiny parasite, frightened to stir, staring with dull, stupid eyes which seemed to be smeared with a sort of dark bloom, reflecting nothing. Only by tightened fingers would he acknowledge her words.
Once again, at this, his mother would experience a proud, thrilling pleasure. Up towards the great trees she would turn her round, sweetish face and sigh.
One spring morning, on the road under the trees lay sprinkled soft, reddish dust. It crouched in little heaps under the fringe of grass and peppered the grass itself. The boy, timid and dull, gazed at it and then asked:
‘What is it, Mother? Where has it come from?’
Dropping her head a little to one side Francie smiled and told him: ‘The elms are coming into blossom, darling. First of all they come out furry and red, like this. Then in a little while they turn and change pale green. Then the leaves come.’
The bicycle sailed on a long way. Then the boy said:
‘Why do they?’
And while she pedalled unceasingly on, her fat legs pumping monotonously beneath her skirt, she would talk to him without turning her head, telling him all she knew of the trees breaking into blossom, and along the roadside point out other trees, the poplars like vain, quivering steeples, the slumberous oaks and beeches, the dark, grave pines and soft firs, and the shy birches hanging their heads.
She would speak to him with soft simplicity, sensitively, so that sometimes the fingers about her waist would seem to tighten about her heart too. And all the time the boy would answer with grave monosyllables, as if confused even by her words.
From the avenue they rode into clear, green space, and thence into the town. Through the streets they glided serenely, like a balloon on wheels, past other children, Francie with her simple, moon-like face looking neither to right nor left, the boy resting stupidly one frightened cheek on the back of her tender body. Sometimes the children, from the pavement, would flutter amusement, but Francie and the boy never turned their heads, and the front wheel of the bicycle never wavered.
At the school she alighted, wheeled the boy to the gates and lifting him off with one arm, pressed her noisy, damp lips to his cheeks and began flabbily to wave her hand to him.
‘Good-bye – be careful! Good-bye, good-bye!’ she sang, ‘good-bye!’
Her eyes pondered over his going. After his disappearance she wheeled the bicycle off, frisked, wriggled and, finding the saddle at last, methodically began the journey back again. As far as the hill her knees pumped indefatigably, her skirts kept up their soft flutter, and the bicycle its furious ticking. Every morning, however, at the foot of the hill, she skipped off, and a little breathless, began to walk.
As she climbed the hill, her stout figure leaning on the machine, she would recall the moment when she and the boy had sped recklessly the other way, both dumb with excitement and fear, and would sometimes imagine she felt his half-terrified fingers still sticking like blunt claws into her side. And then she would recall his face, in reality stupid, unenlightened and mute, but to her so simply and eloquently beautiful, so much more than a face, that she did not see it but felt it softly at her breast like an emotion.
His questions about the trees and flowers she recollected too. All the thoughts which in his stupidity he had not expressed she shaped for herself in her heart, as she might imagine the soft shades of unopened flowers.
And it seemed that as she would wait for the elms to flower, snow down their redness, scatter their green and be draped in leaves at last, so she was waiting for his changes, his blossoming. And she doted constantly over what this blossoming should bring, and saw him no longer as a frightened, questioning mite carried on her bicycle, but as a youth, strong, virtuous, and clever, and as a man, throwing unconsciously over her the mellow shadow of maturity.
Sometimes, if she reflected thus, the ascent of the hill would seem over in a second, and almost before aware of it she would find herself pushing open the swinging white gate, wheeling the bicycle past the snaky crocus borders, and resting it against the wall.
On the wall, under the south sky, had been set a plum-tree, crucified like some weak, lank spider. Francie had planted it for the boy’s birthday. She cared lavishly for it. Every morning she set the bicycle clear of it, and when she saw it was needed, broke off dead twigs and nailed up loose ones, as if to crucify it yet more securely.
Here, as when on the bicycle and when struggling up the hill, she dwelt on her devotion to the boy, her face, like some large pink and white melon, shining at the thought of him. Like his her eyes glowed as if clouded with bloom. Sometimes about the house she sang with a soft, floating soprano, and would be reminded then of the days when she had really sung, taking the solo-parts in oratorio, and singing once at the Crystal Palace, in London, in a choir of five thousand voices. Then it would be her fervent wish that the boy might become a singer, too.
After this she thought: ‘Soon I ought to have his voice tested. I must let some one hear it! I must think of his future.’
One night, before tenderly pressing his head into the warm camphor-smelling pillow, she actually took courage and asked him to sing.
He raised his head and stared. ‘Sing?’ His eyes gleamed duller than ever with their sombre bloom. ‘Why must I?’
‘I want to hear you – for something. Sing, my darling! Then some day perhaps you will sing in opera, or at least like mummy did, in London, in a choir of five thousand people! And mummy would like that.’
But the boy put his face to the pillow and pouted his fat lips, oozing stupidity. Francie rested her flabby cheeks on his and kissed him slobberingly, and when he had gone to sleep wept over him for both misery and joy.
In the morning, however, as they flew down the hill, she sang tremulously, like a bird wondering if spring has come, the notes of
her soft, reedy soprano floating in the air like irresponsible feathers. Above her the sky curved gently and softly, resting itself like a giant blue petal on the green rims of the wide, sunny world. Larks sang everywhere and she thought: ‘How happy I am!’ This morning she did not put on the brakes. The bicycle swooped like an arrow into the soft drifts of elm-blossom under the trees.
There again the boy asked: ‘What is it? I forgot what you said.’
She almost sang in reply: ‘The elms are coming into blossom! I told you yesterday! Into blossom, into flower!’
The bicycle sailed on, and then again his voice asked: ‘Why do they?’
But to all his stupidity and forgetfulness she was tenderly blind, once again imagining all the things he might have said, her thoughts coloured like flowers. When returning she lifted her face to the spring sky, drank from its cascade of sweet, gold spice, and felt within her the soul of the boy softly move, gladden and blossom with her own.
Then, soon afterwards, in the avenue, the elms, instead of red blossom, began to shower down their second flowers, like a storm of green confetti. Every day Francie told the boy what this meant, and showed him also the poplars and elms, the oaks and beeches, the birches and pines. And every night, into his stupid face she put her own, simple, moon-like and soft, and whispered:
‘Sing, my darling. Some day you may sing in opera, in a big hall, or like mummy did, in a choir so big no one will know who you are.’
And in the avenue the poplars became swaying steeples of green, stroking the sky, and on the south wall, crucified in the sun, the plum-tree stirred itself, wakened, and softly burst into a blossom of silky stars.
Bonus Story
In View of the Fact That
In View of the Fact That was originally and only ever published in a short collection with just one other story, The Spring Song. (The Spring Song and In View of the Fact That, E. Archer, 1927)
