by H. E. Bates
‘Here’s the train. Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’
She had to catch a train to some obscure town in the South of Wales, and she would appear there for three nights and after that she had no other engagement to keep.
‘Oh! I’m off West,’ she said. ‘I shall be in the North after that and then in London, and then I shall be on the piers in the summer—all over the place, in fact. You know! Lord knows where I shall be.’
He took another look at the photograph of the young girl lying on the table, shook hands very hastily and turned away to catch the train.
A moment or two later she followed him and walked beside the train and slowly waved her hand in farewell, but he did not look at her.
A Threshing Day for Esther
• I •
The engine itself stood between the cow barns and five stacks of wheat and barley, belching up clouds of black smoke into the tall poplar trees overstooping the pond. The storm was spending itself furiously, driving dark flocks of clouds low over the farm, spitting cold gusts of rain and yellowing the air with showers of poplar leaves. The stacks were ruffled like birds, and straws in thousands sailed upwards in tufts like golden feathers and were borne away into the distance with a pale mist of chaff from the drum and the black smoke writhing and sweeping over the fields in sombre coils. The air was full of the sound of sighing trees and a never-interrupted roar and stuttering from the engine and a moaning crescendo in the threshing-drum as the knives closed over the sheaves. Black and white hens were feeding everywhere in fluttering crowds. Except for a group of women standing under a wagon-shed, idly gossiping and occasionally tying the sacks as they came from the drum, everybody seemed industrious and excited. The skirts of the women danced and flapped in the high wind like flags, and their voices were drowned in the everlasting roar of the threshing and the storm.
Esther was standing in the wheat stack next to the drum. She was dressed in an old blue woollen frock that was too tight in the bodice for her. Brown and slender, with long, slim legs and arms, and firm, pointed breasts that seemed to be trying to push themselves through her dress, she was like a branch of sallow. She was not more than fifteen. Her hair and eyes were dark and the eyes had a passionate flickering of light in them like that of burning oil. Some neighbours had come to help her father thresh, and she was not wanted on the stack, but she had been standing there since breakfast, although hardly able to keep her feet in the wind, trying to help in throwing up the sheaves to the drum. Her movements were awkward and clumsy. Sometimes she hindered the men; sometimes she was not strong enough to lift the sheaves. Now and then she would lean on her pitchfork and lapse into a sort of watchful oblivion, gazing intently at the men as if fascinated by their dark figures, their feats of strength and their irresistible, indefinable masculinity. Her eyes at these moments would fill with a brooding solemnity, as though she were full of dreams.
The women sacking up the corn under the wagon-shed did not interest her. Soon, however, she noticed a commotion among them; they had ceased talking and were craning their necks and gazing in one direction.
A moment later there was a fluttering of expectation, and suddenly there dashed into the yard a white horse drawing a smart green cart driven by a tall dark man dressed in a black coat, yellow breeches and gaiters. He drove standing up, hammering the horse’s quarters with an ash-stick, jolting up and down with exaggeration. His black head was thrown back and his white neckerchief was flying wildly in the wind behind.
The women, with their hands nozzling the sacks and with pieces of string in their mouths, were staring up at him.
The man flung the reins over the horse’s back. There was mud on the horse, and its jaws were yellow with foam. The man whistled, and from under the cart seat a grey whippet wormed itself out and sat upright.
‘It’s Pike!’ someone shouted.
The men began to put up their hands, greeting him. He was evidently very popular. He turned and grinned, and then shot his hand like lightning into his loose coat and whisked out a rabbit.
‘What price the dinner?’ he shouted.
The threshers began laughing. The whippet put its nose to the rabbit’s red snout and whimpered.
‘Get down, you bitch!’
He held the rabbit higher.
‘That’s a lovely rabbit, that is, Pike, my duck,’ called a woman. ‘If you were a gen’leman, Pike, you’d give me that!’
‘Who said that?’ said Pike, wheeling about sharply. ‘Who said it?’
‘I said it!’ A little perky-faced woman tying a sack thrust her face up to him with a haughty smile. ‘Go on, give us that rabbit, Pike, be a gen’leman!’
‘Give it you! Strike me! I’ll give you something you don’t ask for, and quick too!’ He smiled cunningly.
The women sniggered and tittered among themselves. The whippet made a snap at the rabbit, but the man dealt her a blow on the nose and sent her cowering.
‘How’d you happen on that, Pike?’ shouted a thresher.
‘How’d I happen on it? What’s the dog for?’
‘Lucky devil! I warrant you’d lose a farthing and find a sovereign any day.’
The man remained for a moment or two longer in the cart, laughing and bantering and displaying the rabbit which the dog had caught. There was something handsome and remarkable about his dark face, swarthy as a gipsy’s, with its soft black eyes and humorous, sardonic mouth, and something arresting in the good-natured sharpness of his manner and the glib words flowing from his lips as smoothly as oil. He jumped loosely down from the cart, and still carrying the rabbit, with the whippet sniffing behind, led his horse away, walking with a half graceful swagger of his hips, like a woman. There was a sort of careless assurance about him and a proud, compelling indifference that kept the women staring after him until he had disappeared.
The girl also watched him intently, her dark eyes full of a solemn curiosity. There was a tender half-smile on her lips, as if merely to have set eyes upon him had given her a thrill of expectation and pleasure. And suddenly she no longer wanted to remain on the dwindling stack and watch the drum pouring out the grain, the men forking the sheaves, and the straw-jack everlastingly creeping up with the straw.
She slid off the stack, and, going to the corner of the stables, watched him put up his horse. He was between thirty and forty. The strange impression of his careless personality renewed itself as she watched him unharness the horse. Full of vague and indefinable longings, she started and trembled whenever she felt he glanced at her.
‘There’s a rat! Pike! Where are you? You’re missing the sport!’ someone shouted.
Threshers were standing in readiness about the stack with sticks and pitchforks, waiting for rats and mice to appear. At the sound of the voice the girl turned her head. Suddenly Pike ran past her, brandishing a long hawthorn-root as thick as a horse’s leg. He reached the drum as someone shouted, and a young rat darted away from cover. He turned instantly and swung his arm and struck one blow with the hawthorn-root, and the rat lay red and still.
He kicked it into a heap of straw and a smear of blood marked the wet ground, and he walked on. He walked with a sort of prowl, swaying to and fro, watching eagerly.
Someone had killed a rat, too, on the far side of the stack and was holding it up by the tail. Pike waved his stick and shouted, and suddenly a drove of mice came scurrying towards him, scattering and squeaking like chickens in terror. He swung the root and brought it down like a flail, killing two or three mice at every blow. A mouse escaped and darted in and out of the straw towards the wagon-shed, the women perching on sacks, screaming and laughing and shouting for Pike to kill it. He followed it like a dog and scattered blows until he beat it to death as it fled to open ground. He laughed and picked up the carcass and flung it like a tangle of crimson wool into the midst of the women. They shrieked and fled, telling him only to wait until all was over and they could lay hands on him, but he merely waved his hand and smiled with sh
ining eyes and jauntily went on.
The threshers clustered themselves about the last sheaves. Pike waited apart. Esther was able to watch him clearly, to feast on the extraordinary intentness of his black eyes and to feel the strange impression of his personality as he stood close to her.
She was startled by sudden cries from the threshers and screams from the women, and by rats of all sizes running in all directions. A rat as big as a leveret came scuttling straight for her and she shut her eyes and shrieked ‘Pike! Pike!’ in terror. The unexpected utterance of his name filled her with shyness and consternation, leaving her faint and crimson as if the rat had really come for her. Opening her eyes she saw it lying dead a little distance away and Pike himself already slashing with the hawthorn-root among a litter of young. Empty of sheaves, the threshing drum came to a stop with a long moan. In the silence she was able to hear the squeaking of mice and someone called her name, asking her to come and see a nest of little ones, still blind, lying under a heap of black husks where the stack had been.
She crossed the stack-yard. Rats were lying everywhere, and every now and then another would scamper forth and run blindly away until Pike or another thresher brought the stick to its head.
She walked among the deserted rat holes and peered at the nest of young. The tiny mouse her father tucked into her hand seemed softer than a ball of velvet and she was not afraid.
As she squatted there, holding and stroking it, feeling the wind blow out her dress and hair, she became conscious of Pike standing close to her.
The sun came out, and the hawthorn-root blazed crimson where he had thrown it on the straw. In the strange silence she heard him boasting of the rats he had killed, and she knew he was wiping the sweat from his face. She dared not look at him: his achievement seemed horrible and wonderful, and her heart drummed against her breast as if in fear.
She heard him move away with the men. She stroked the mouse quickly with her finger-tips and gazed on at the nest of tiny squeaking things until she heard the drum being moved. Then she dropped the mouse and went hastily to where Pike was standing, unable to let him out of her sight again.
When they began to thresh the second stack, Pike threw off his jacket and took the place of Jasper Bird on the drum. Esther went to stand by the wagon-shed, by the women, in order to see him better. The women were talking about him.
‘Don’t he have all the luck!’ one was saying. ‘Look at that rabbit. That fair dropped into his lap, didn’t it? He just whistles for whatever he fancies and it comes, and he takes no more notice, the lucky dog.’
‘And see how he killed them rats, just as if they walked up and let themselves be killed, easy as easy. Ah! he’s a Tartar.’
They began whispering together. ‘If you’ll believe me, he got hold of my arms last threshing day, and pressed me back against the straw-stack until I couldn’t get my breath. I thought my ribs would crack. And then when he knew I couldn’t keep him off any longer, he started tickling me and I fell on the straw.’
A fiercer gust of wind raised a storm of chaff and the women buried their heads in their aprons.
Esther moved away and sat on a pile of pine-wood and gazed at him again. The clouds were scattering, and there were intervals of sunshine, very pale and restful. Gazing up at his dark figure outlined against the sky, she could see the silvery flash of his knife as he cut the bands and threw the sheaves to the drum. Her eyes were still full of the same grave and meditative watchfulness and she kept them fixed on Pike as if afraid that he would fall.
• II •
Pike was sitting on an empty oil-barrel under the wagon-shed, drumming softly with his feet and whistling some bars of a comic song. His dinner was spread out on a white cloth over his knees, a piece of fat pork and a square of batter-pudding and a handful of purple cabbage wrapped in a sheet of paper. He was holding a large white loaf in one hand and was busy wiping his knife on his sleeve with the other. The threshing engine was silent except for a sound of escaping steam. Threshers and women were sitting about on sacks and boxes, talking and eating. Pike’s whippet was lying under a corn-drill, pawing and worrying a dead rat. Jasper Bird and his wife and an old man with white hair and trembling lips and ancient blue eyes were seated in absolute silence on some sheaves piled up against a wagon-wheel under the wind, a little apart.
‘Yes, I’ve been in service.’ Pike cut off some pork and dipped his bread in cabbage juice as he spoke. ‘And in service to a lady as well. I know all about putting ladies to bed and getting them up in the morning, I tell you.’
‘Oh! get along with you,’ said a woman. ‘You’ve never been near a woman’s bed in your life.’
Pike emptied his mouth of pork and bread and screwed up one eye.
‘When I was in service to the Honourable Mrs. Alexander Timothy, let me tell you, we used to put the old gal to bed six nights out of seven, if you’d like to know. Drunk as a lord! With enough whisky in her to drown the children of Israel! And God knows what else besides, what with sherry for dinner and brandy with the coffee and a little something else to play with at the bottom of the glass in the firelight before ever she thought of whisky. And perhaps you don’t know what she paid for that bloody whisky? Whisky, mind you, not pig-swill. Never less than a quid a bottle. She’d think nothing of swigging a poor man’s wages before eleven o’clock at night. And when she’d had enough she’d roll on the tiger-skin and pull the hair out with her teeth and wake the house up. And then the butler used to call me and we’d go in the drawing-room. He was an old fool. He used to look as soft as butter, rubbing his hands and bowing and asking her if she’d like “to retire.” Retire! Christ! Either she’d be snoring already or she’d be raving the roof down. Retire! I used to say to him, “snatch hold of her legs quick, and go quietly.” Fat old owl! Her bosom alone must have weighed as much as that sack of barley.’
He filled his mouth with bread and cabbage and gulped, shutting his eyes.
‘Well, lucky enough the stairs in that house were as wide as a forty-foot lane, and somehow we used to drag her to bed.’ His voice grew soft. ‘The bed she slept in was as big as that wagon where Jasper’s sitting. I often think about that bed. It had long pink velvet curtains and smelt of violets and night-scented stock or something, and the counterpane was every inch lace with an underneath part of red silk. Well, when we’d slung the old boozer in like a dead sheep, she’d begin to groan and say she was dying. The butler would get frightened and sweat like a bull and order me to run and get the maids to undress her. But you know if there’s one thing a woman hates, it is another woman drunk. A woman’ll put a man between the sheets as easy as winking, but she’d as lief draw twenty hens, stink as much as they might, as put a woman. And every jack maid in that house used to lock her door as soon as it went round that the old woman was drunk. And they wouldn’t stir! You might knock at their doors for everlasting and they wouldn’t stir.’
He filled his mouth with pork and gnawed at his bread. His dark eyes were bright and handsome, and there was something magnetic and strange about his soft speech and about all he said. He drummed his heels softly in the barrel and went on, eating and speaking alternately.
‘I could get the maids to do almost anything, I tell you,’ he said, ‘but not that. And at last the old butler used to come running out with his shoes off and call me back. The room used to stink like a bar when I went in. Filthy! There’s no one knows how the aristocracy live only those as sees it. Wickedness! Pah!’—he paused and spat out a piece of gristle with a sound of disgust—‘pah!—we used to put her to bed. It took the two of us to roll her over on her chest, then I used to unhook her dress while the butler took care of her jewels. God! the jewellery on that old cow! Emeralds and diamonds and things you read about in the Bible hung round her bosom and neck as thick as peas in a pod! And wasted! Every bit of it wasted. Not a soul, only the servants, to look at her, the ugly old sinner, and sunk as low as driving out in her carriage looking for any man with nothing else to d
o.’
He paused, and a thresher looked slowly up and said:
‘Pike, my son, that only shows what breeding can do.’
‘Breeding! Let me go on breeding pigs if that’s breeding.’
Everyone, even Jasper and Clara Bird and the old man by the wagon, began laughing. And Pike went on in a softer voice:
‘Sometimes it took us an hour to get that old geyser to bed. She’d rave and struggle and sometimes she’d be sick—yes, all on that beautiful counterpane. I used to hold her down while the butler dragged her dress off. It used to be easy enough till we got to her stays. I gamble you’ve never seen stays like that old woman’s! They were like a ship-hurdle on her, buckled and laced and pinned and hooked so that the fat came out at her neck like rolls of suet. And underneath silk enough to make your heart ache. You’d die to see that silk, you women would. Well, there it is: we all know a woman like that ought to live in a pigsty and wear sacks, and I often used to wish she did, but what could I do?’
‘Only put her to bed?’
‘That’s it. Only put her to bed in her petticoats, and hope to God she wouldn’t be at it again before you had the silver cleaned in the morning.’
‘God knows what folks like that are fit for.’
‘Yes, and I doubt if He knows justly.’
Pike finished his dinner and stretched his legs. ‘Yes, she was a wicked, dirty old swine. God bless her though,’ he said. ‘She left me twenty pounds and a pair of pictures, though I’d sooner have had the bed than anything.’
He rose and walked from under the wagon-shed and whistled his dog. He turned his eyes upward and stood for a moment erect and immobile, gazing at the clouds, his whole being full of an unconscious and careless grace, like a lazy animal’s.
