by H. E. Bates
‘No, she’s not married.’
‘One blonde, one brunette. I ought to bring my mate the corporal up. Make a foursome. Sister care for dancing?’
‘We neither of us care much for that sort of thing.’
‘Oh! come on. You’re young.’
‘By the time we’re finished up here we’re just about ready to drop into bed.’
This, it seemed to the sergeant, was a joke. He laughed with an easy, oily sense of fun.
‘Well, who’s against dropping into bed?’
Once again she stood frigid, aloof, not speaking. Suddenly the cackle of a hen from somewhere in the direction of the hurdles made her turn her head and she saw the subaltern coming back across the yard.
‘Well, here comes Lemon Face.’ The sergeant seemed to think that this too was a joke. ‘That’s his name. Lieut. Lemmon. Fits him all right, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t fit names to people I don’t know.’
‘Oh! dear, oh! dear, what have we here?’ The sergeant was gay with irony, ‘What have we here, what have we said?’
Her face was like a mask against the wind.
‘Oh! well, if you’re going to come the old acid I can always ask your sister.’
‘You leave my sister alone.’
‘Well, that’s for her to say. Who’s to say she wouldn’t mind a bit of the old Turkish? Delight, I mean.’
‘Leave my sister alone. She’s been ill. She’s not very strong.’
‘Oh! I don’t like ’em strong.’ The sergeant, blessed by another joke, laughed. ‘I don’t like ’em strong. Weak, that’s how I like ’em.’
His laugh, prompted again by the easy oily sense of fun, died as the subaltern arrived.
‘Well, all serene, sergeant. Road must be in the other direction. Time we cracked on.’ He turned and gave a scarcely perceptible courteous bow in her direction. ‘Good-bye and thank you, Mrs – is it Mrs Charles-worth?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I thought that’s what your sister said.’
The subaltern gave a half-salute and turned to go. The sergeant, breaking away from the act of undressing her for the last time, turned and followed him. A hen cackled again. There was a flurry of snow along the hill side, of flying white bullets against black yews.
She stood for what seemed an hour staring stonily at the sergeant and the subaltern disappearing towards the ramparts of beeches. Then the bucket fell from her hands and she started running.
‘You think they were after you? You think that’s what they were up here for?’
Barton sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea, sometimes blowing on it. It wasn’t quite a lie, she told herself, about his being ill. Sometimes, with the lengthening fair hair and the withdrawn sensitive blue eyes, he gave an appearance of being fragile.
‘Did you recognise either of them? You think they recognised you?’
‘Different mob. Not my mob. These are Tank Corps. We were Artillery. My mob must have moved on somewhere.’
‘Then what were they doing, snooping about up here?’
‘Good tank-training country up here. Just what they’re looking for.’
Now and then she found herself still trembling. He, by contrast, had a surprising air of assurance and calm.
It was true, as he said, that this was good tank country. The hills repeated themselves in a series of folds, mostly rough tussocky grassland broken only by clumps of gorse and hawthorn. It was the sort of country, she sometimes said, that wouldn’t keep a donkey. In winter you never saw a living soul up there.
‘Did the lieutenant speak to you?’ she said. ‘What did he say?’
‘Just wanted to know your name. I thought for a moment he was going to ask for my identity-card. That would have torn it.’
‘God, we never thought of that.’
‘Not to worry. Just a second-lieut. Dumb as the rest.’
‘The sergeant wasn’t dumb, though. It was a good job you didn’t speak to the sergeant. Got eyes like gimlets. Looking right through you.’
‘Sergeants are always bad types. That’s the way they pick them.’
‘I hope I’ll never see this one again, that’s for sure. Cheeky devil. Wanted to go dancing.’
‘With you?’
‘With you too.’
Barton, like the sergeant, was quick to perceive a joke in this. He laughed and blew on his tea.
‘God, now that would be funny.’
‘I’m glad you think so. If the officer hadn’t been there he’d have had me on the floor.’
After some days numbers of tanks, like dark monstrous ants embroiled in slow conflict with each other, started to scour the hillside. The crunch and moan and whine of them blistered the dry winter air. Through areas of snow they left behind them tortuously twisted trails as of black dung droppings. Now and then a splutter of shots made puny echoes.
‘I’ve got a feeling we’re in for one of those winters,’ she said one day. Above the eastern crust of hills a skein of cloud had begun to build ominously, like dark smoke. ‘I’ve got a feeling.’
It was December before the first snow spread downwards across the farm. Below, in the valley, the fields still lay in green tranquillity.
‘I saw hare tracks,’ she said one morning. ‘Right slap across the yard. I’ll have the gun out. That’d make a dinner or two.’
‘I never touch hare.’
‘Oh? How’s that?’
‘We never had them in our family. My mother would never have them. Something funny about them.’
‘I never heard that.’
‘Something superstitious. Brought bad luck or something. It was to do with some saint or other. St Peter – ’
‘Oh! bosh. You’re getting dainty. You won’t be so dainty if we get snowed up for a while. The winter before last we were cut off for six weeks up here.’
‘Six weeks or sixty, I don’t touch hare.’
After all he was quite right, she discovered, about the gun. It wasn’t bad at close range. You could shoot a rat at close range. But when it came to a running hare or a pigeon there was, she discovered, no joy.
On a milder afternoon of melting snow she tramped about the hillside, shooting without success. Cartridges, already expensive, were now also difficult to get. There was no joy.
Going back to the farm she was startled by the sudden sight of the sergeant of the Tank Corps coming into the yard. With him was his mate the corporal, a wiry man of ferrety appearance, with pinched shifty grey eyes.
Seeing the shot-gun the sergeant was moved to make his customary joke. It took the form of raising his hands, mockingly.
‘Surrender! Kamerad! We give in, don’t we, Stan? This is my mate, Stan.’
Stan grinned. She had nothing to say.
‘Nice brace o’ pheasants you got there.’
The idea of pheasants was another of the sergeant’s jokes. She still had nothing to say.
‘Nothing for the pot, tonight, eh? Well, not to worry. How about coming dancing instead?’
‘Excuse me,’ she said, and started to walk towards the house. ‘I’m busy.’
She hurried to the kitchen door, snatched it open and slammed it behind her. Barton, waiting for a kettle to come to boil on the stove, was reading a paper.
‘Upstairs,’ she said. ‘Make yourself scarce. In bed. It’s that sergeant again. Quick. Anywhere.’
Barton scurried upstairs. The gun still in her hands, she stood tense in the centre of the kitchen, fearful and dazed. There was suddenly a knock on the door and the voice of the sergeant was breezy outside.
‘Don’t be shy, duckie. Sergeants are tame.’
The door-latch clicked and the door opened. The face of the sergeant beamed across the threshold. She greeted it with the gun half up-raised.
‘Now, it’s rude to point, dear. Especially with guns.’
‘Don’t worry. Cartridges are getting scarce. I wouldn’t waste one.’
The sergeant appeared
much aggrieved. He was expansive with gestures of pain.
‘What,’ he said to the corporal, ‘do you make of that, Stan? Here we come offering Mister frankincense and myrrh. Dance tickets. Drinks. Eats. The Good-Time-By-All. And what do we get? The old mutton. The old cold shoulder.’
Stiffly she laid the gun on the kitchen table, without a word.
‘We should have thrown our caps in first, Stan,’ the sergeant said, ‘shouldn’t we?’
‘Decent men,’ she said, ‘take them off.’
‘Ho, ho,’ the sergeant said. Again he made expansive gestures of pain. ‘And all because we said “Come Dancing”.’
‘Thank you, we don’t want to come dancing.’
‘We? Speaking for your sister too? Doesn’t she have nothing to say for herself? Not here today?’
‘My sister’s not well. She’s in bed. She’s had a terrible bad throat this past week or two.’
‘Wants keeping warm,’ the sergeant said and actually winked at the corporal, ‘don’t she, Stan?’
That was right, Stan said, she wanted keeping warm. That was right.
‘Ah! well, some other time,’ the sergeant said. They had a dance every week, anyway, down at camp. An obliquely contemptuous glance crossed his face: directed not at her, but now at the gun. Contemptuously too he picked it up, broke it, examined the barrels against the light, then put the gun on the table again.
‘Come over with Julius Caesar. You want to be careful. Things like that are liable to go off at the wrong end.’
‘Do you mind if I lock up now? I want to get down to the shop before black-out.’
‘Take a look at that, Stan. Stan knows about guns. Take a look, Stan.’
The corporal too picked up the gun, examined it and made his own contemptuous comment.
‘Christ,’ he said, ‘you could shoot your bleeding ear off.’
It was five minutes or more after the sergeant and the corporal had gone before she dared to go upstairs. Barton was lying on the bed in a blue dressing-gown, fair hair loose on the pillow, looking startlingly, uneasily like a girl.
‘It’s all right. They’ve gone.’
‘What happened?’
‘A lot of old buck and so on. Not much else. I was frightened for a bit. They wanted us to go dancing.’
‘Still on the dancing? God, that makes me laugh.’
‘I don’t,’ she said, ‘see anything to laugh about.’
Downstairs she made tea, put the gun away where she always kept it under the stairs and then cut a plate of bread-and-butter. Barton sat down at the table, still in his dressing-gown. She, tired more from fright than any exertion, poured out cups of tea and then sat down at the table too, heavily.
Suddenly there was a knock on the door and then the breezy voice of the sergeant:
‘Only us!’
She had no time to get up before the door opened and the sergeant and the corporal were in the kitchen again.
‘We come back,’ the sergeant said, ‘because Stan was worried about your gun.’
She again had nothing to say. The keen eyes of the sergeant alighted with the brightest interest on Barton.
‘Ah! this your sister?’
‘This is my sister.’
The sergeant seemed not so much to gaze on the blonde figure in the dressing-gown as to taste it. In approval he made a small, kiss-like sound.
‘Like I told you, Stan. One blonde, one brunette. Good-afternoon, miss. Nice to meet you.’
Barton simply stared. He too had nothing to say.
‘Now about this gun,’ the sergeant said.
‘What about the gun?’
‘Stan thought he might take it away. He’s pally with a bloke who was a gunsmith in civvy street. He could put it right for you.’
‘The gun’s all right as it is. We only use it for rats.’
‘You could blow your bleeding ear off,’ Stan said.
‘We?’ the sergeant said. ‘Does your sister shoot? You’ll be blowing your heads off one of these days, the pair of you.’
Again the sergeant’s eyes alighted with a brilliance of unrestrained curiosity on Barton.
‘She tell you about the dancing?’ he said to Barton. ‘Like to fling ’em up one night?’
Again Barton had nothing to say.
‘Reminds me of that film star, Stan. Looks good but don’t have nothing to say. Garbo.’
‘I tell you she’s had this bad throat for the past week or two. I’ll get the gun.’
The sergeant could do nothing but crow in mocking triumph.
‘Stan, we won a trick! Don’t tell nobody, Stan. We won a trick.’
A spell of fine, humid weather worked a miracle across the hills. Once more they became softened, tender and green. The frigid snowy air that had created such a sense of imprisonment about the little farm was replaced by a feeling of release, almost of spring.
This in turn led to a certain atmosphere of carelessness. For the last few snow-gripped days she went about on guard, fearful of a crow-shadow or the noise of a plane, constantly listening for the voice of the sergeant, a knock on the door. During all this time she made Barton stay indoors. Sometimes, for half a day, while she fed and milked the cow, fed the hens and collected eggs, he lay in bed, reading or dozing or listening to music on a small portable radio. She had no cause to resent this. The fact of his being safely out of sight increased, on the contrary, her sense of security, and at last of carelessness.
On a fine soft afternoon, some days before Christmas, she cycled down to the shop to buy her weekly groceries. Like a child with an unexpected toy, she was thrilled almost to dancing by the discovery of a tin of pilchards and a pot of gold paint. Her thoughts were on a Christmas party. Three years of Christmas at war had already blessed women, at Christmas time, with a capacity for much ingenuity. She would paint branches of yew and holly with gold. There were no limits as to what you could do with things: acorns and pine-cones, branches of rose-hips, heads of teazle seed, beech branches, skeletons of leaves. She had even met a neighbour who had wrought patterns of much beauty out of gilded fish-bones.
As she rode home, stopping on the way through the wood to break off an occasional bough of holly or acorns or yew or beech still thick with husks, her sense of carelessness became complete. She hadn’t seen the tanks for days. The entire valley lay below her like a huge green pond, virgin, smoothly peaceful.
Going into the kitchen, she was met by a sight that stunned her. Barton was sitting on one side of the table in a dressing-gown, blonde hair loose; the sergeant a mere foot or so away from him. On the table stood tea-pot and tea-cups. Against a chair stood the gun. Over the back of the chair was slung a brace of pheasants, a cock and a hen, brilliant dead necks in loose embrace.
She stood quite speechless. The absence of the corporal failed to strike her, for the moment, as significant. Half-terrified, she simply stared.
It was the sergeant, naturally, who spoke first; and equally naturally with mockery.
‘Ah! spring has come. Always does in time. One way or another.’
Without a word she went into the little scullery that lay beyond the kitchen. Not really knowing what she was doing, she let her shopping basket fall into the sink. It fell with a violent clatter. The next moment her hands started trembling so violently that she was forced to make several futile attempts before she could unbutton her coat.
‘Cuppa tea?’ It was the sergeant’s voice, breezy and crowing. ‘We kept it hot for you.’
The word ‘we’ stabbed at her. She went upstairs. Again without quite knowing what she was doing she flung her hat and coat down on the bed. An impulse to fling herself down too was arrested by a state of cold and complete paralysis.
For fully five minutes she stood in the centre of the room in this state of cold inertia, her brain and body screwed in a vice.
At last she found herself downstairs without knowing how she had succeeded in getting there. She wandered from kitchen to scullery and then
from scullery to kitchen and then back again.
‘Just right to hang ’em for Christmas,’ the sergeant said. ‘Have to be hung.’
She hadn’t the remotest idea of what he was talking about. In the scullery she stared at her basket, lying in the sink. She hadn’t the remotest idea of how it had got there either.
‘Gun’s in marvellous nick,’ the sergeant said. ‘Perfect. You could pick a flea off a church-steeple.’
She was going mad, she told herself. What flea? Hang what? What flea?
She stared for a long time at the pot of gold paint that had fallen from the basket into the sink, unable to think what on earth she had got it for. Then she suddenly remembered she had left branches of yew and holly and beech, together with a few acorns and pine-cones, outside, on the threshold.
She opened the kitchen door, went outside and came back with the pine-cones and acorns. She dropped them on the table while she went into the kitchen to fetch the pot of gold paint and a new paint-brush she had bought. Then she realized that the day was rapidly growing dark. She found the oil lamp, lit it and set it on the table. The faces of the sergeant and Barton were framed close together, beyond the light.
She opened the paint pot, took the brush and started to paint the pine-cones. She still hadn’t spoken a word. The tips of the pine-cones, painted, wide open after the mild dry spell of weather, looked like so many little golden ears.
It was the sergeant, again naturally, who was the first to speak.
‘It was very sociable’, he said, ‘wasn’t it? It was very sociable like’, he repeated, addressing the air.
She was still speechless. With hands that were no longer trembling now, but by contrast conspicuously stiff, she painted the little ears of more pine-cones.
‘Very sociable,’ the sergeant said again, ‘very sociable. Here it was, pretty near Christmas time. Goodwill an’ all that. You brought old frankincense and myrrh. You brought the old pheasants. Worth five quid if a brass farthing. And so what? Very sociable, very sociable.’
Silently she went on painting the pine-cones.
‘Ah! well,’ the sergeant said, rather as if struggling free of some painful affliction. He supposed you had to put up with these things. No peace for the wicked. ‘Eh, Cath?’
The sergeant actually made a gesture of exploration in the direction of Barton’s knee.