by H. E. Bates
‘We know who we’d find!’ she said.
‘I’m surprised,’ I said.
‘I don’t know why you should be!’ she said. ‘She was one of yours –’
At this point I knew that, at last, old rumours, old hatreds, old jealousies, old gossip had, as they always do in little towns, caught up with me. No answer was needed, and Pheley began crying on the threshold.
‘Is that your last answer?’ she said to Tom. I stood utterly flabbergasted. There had never seemed any question to which Tom had been compelled to give an answer. He stood hopelessly staring. He was knocked out by the impact of this stupid appeal, and she took it for his last dumb iron refusal of her. ‘You didn’t treat me like that when we sat there that afternoon,’ she cried bitterly, ‘did you?’
Tom was too stunned to answer, and she took it as his utter rejection.
‘All right,’ she said, ‘then you must be responsible for what happens.’
‘Come on, Pheley!’ Flora said. ‘He knows it now!’
Alone in the house with Tom I took two more drinks and raged about the room in a sad state of mocking bitterness. ‘You must be responsible for what happens, you must be responsible for what happens!’ I mouthed. ‘They always say that. They say it to get under your skin. They say it when they know they’re beaten. They say it when they know they can’t get anything except through conscience and tears –’
‘God,’ Tom said. He held his face in his hands. ‘My head hurts. I can’t think. I don’t know where I am.’
Two nights later a voice called me, at home, on the telephone my father had proudly had installed. It wheezed bronchially several times, with smoky autumn phlegm, before I recognized it.
‘Do you know a girl named Pheley McKechnie?’ it asked. It was Bretherton.
‘No.’
‘I thought you did.’
‘No.’
‘Isn’t she a friend of young Holland’s?’
‘Not that I know of,’ I said.
Bretherton, wheezing again, seemed puzzled by these answers, and I said:
‘Was there any reason for asking me?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘No. None at all.’
‘You should never do things without a reason,’ I said: a remark that, in the past, had been one of his favourite sticks with which to beat me.
Half an hour later, walking down to catch the evening post, I saw the newsboys with their placards leaning by the walls of ‘The Rose and Mitre,’ in the High Street, where in the old days the potato-oven used to stand.
‘Local Girl missing,’ they said, in the daubed violet ink Bretherton used for swift sensation. ‘Inquiries widespread.’
I bought a paper and went to see Tom. Pheley had been missing since the previous afternoon. As I waited for the bus to take me out of the town, Bretherton himself darted past, coughed into a charred stub of cigarette, his scarf unwinding python-wise from his stumpy neck.
‘Oh! you got the paper,’ he said. A few violet words about Pheley were smudged across the stop-press column. ‘Got an idea it’s going to be juicy.’
‘Is it?’ I said.
On the last half mile of road between the bus stop and Tom’s house Nancy came along in the old car and picked me up.
She had never heard of Pheley. ‘Pheley who?’ she said.
I told her about Pheley; I tried to sketch in, casually as it were, with a triviality I did not feel, something of the monstrous scene of two days before. Then I told her what was in the paper, and she said:
‘But it couldn’t have anything to do with Tom?’
‘Of course not,’ I said, and then I felt suddenly and impotently angry, muttering under my breath.
‘What are you muttering about?’ she said.
‘Bigots,’ I said. ‘Crucifiers.’
‘Do you know what you’re talking about?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Perfectly.’
And in a savage bewildered silence we drove on to the farm.
In the yard Tom stood talking to the young Evensford policeman named Arthur Peck. Tom too had been at school with Arthur. I had heard that Arthur was joining the Metropolitan force and it seemed a good opportunity to say:
‘I hear you’re going to London, Arthur. I might see something of you there.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I heard you were going too.’
It was wonderful how in Evensford your most private news had a way of escaping.
‘Still play some tennis?’ Arthur said.
‘Sometimes.’
‘We might have a farewell game before we get lost in the big world,’ he said, and I said that perhaps we would.
During all this Tom did not speak a word.
Trying to keep up a casual light-heartedness about things, I did not look at his strained, rather tired face as I said:
‘What’s Tom been doing? Finding him out at last?’
‘Finding him out,’ Arthur said. He had bicycled over. Now as he began to stoop down, snipping his bicycle-clips on to his trousers, so that his legs looked pinched and his body top-heavy, he said: ‘Just inquiries. Checking through the village.’ He stood heavily on one pedal of his bicycle. ‘Nothing to worry about, Tom.’ He got on to his bicycle and began to wobble away, elephantine, reassuring:
‘Get ’em every day. Run away one day and home the next. No place like home –’
Tom stood staring after him.
‘Come on, Tom,’ I said, ‘the McKechnies drove her away. Let the McKechnies find her.’
Not until a long time afterwards did I discover how right I was in this.
Nancy, out of some solemn sisterly instinct, did not say much. She felt only that tea was necessary. She went into the house and filled the kettle and put it on the paraffin stove. Tom did not come in with us and I looked out of the window and saw him wandering in the yard.
‘He looks terrible,’ Nancy said. ‘Are you sure he didn’t promise that girl? – I mean, was there anything –?’
‘Not a word,’ I said. ‘Nobody in his right senses would even look at her.’
‘He doesn’t look in his right senses,’ she said. ‘Somehow.’
Brightly she went into the yard, calling to Tom that a cup of tea would do him all the good in the world.
He sat for some time nursing a cup in his hands, blowing troubled surface ripples across the tea.
‘I didn’t say anything, did I?’ His eyes, turned up at me, were miserable with too-honest distress. ‘Did I? You know that – I told you everything – did I say a word?’
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘Even if you had –’
‘But I didn’t – Now I could see that what really troubled him was an imputation that his intentions had not been utterly and supremely honest. He was quite childlike as he protested: ‘But I didn’t –’ Over and over again. ‘I never even gave them the slightest cause –’
‘Now look,’ I said. ‘You’ve chewed it over and over all day. Now let it rest. The only thing now is to get hold of Lydia and all of us go over to “The Old Swan” for dinner or to the cinema or something, and forget the whole affair. Look at it rationally. It’s got nothing to do with us –’
‘Rationally?’ he said, and he stared at me as if utterly mystified by the word.
To my relief Nancy said: ‘I think that’s the soundest suggestion yet. We haven’t all been out together for a long time –’
‘It’s exactly what we all need,’ I said. ‘And we can make it a farewell party.’
‘Farewell?’
‘He’s going away,’ Tom said.
‘Who is going away?’ she said to me.
‘I am,’ I said. I had not told her I was going away, and she said, sharply:
‘I suppose everybody else knew but me? I’m always the last to know.’
Bretherton had a genius for uncommunicative late extras, and that night, as we drove home about ten o’clock, newsboys were running about the streets of Evensford trying to sell a few fresh splodged viol
et words about Pheley that told us nothing at all. ‘Search for missing girl widens,’ the stop-press said, and as if that were not quite enough: ‘Anxiety grows.’
‘I feel worried,’ Nancy said. We stood under a street light, reading the paper, waiting for Tom to come down from the park after taking Lydia home. ‘When are you going away? You didn’t tell me.’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
‘You do like to spring things on people,’ she said. ‘Must you go?’
‘It’s all fixed,’ I said.
‘Couldn’t you stay until this thing blows over?’
‘It has nothing to do with me,’ I said. ‘It has nothing to do with Tom. It has nothing to do with you. I keep trying to tell you.’
‘I don’t think Tom sees it quite like that,’ she said.
After Tom had driven away alone, with myself shouting after him, ‘Get a good night’s rest. I’ll be over tomorrow –’ I went with Nancy to get her car from Wheeler’s garage, between the gates of the Aspen house and the church.
The garage mechanic who helped us get the car out saw Bretherton’s late extra in my hand.
‘Any news of the McKechnie girl?’ he said ‘She was in here yesterday afternoon.’
‘In here?’
‘Wanted a taxi,’ he said.
‘Where did she go?’ I said.
‘No idea. Hadn’t a taxi in the place. Three trains to meet in Nenborough and one at Evensford. They say she took a bus to Nenborough in the end.’
‘So that,’ I said to Nancy, ‘is that,’ and I thought she seemed relieved as she said, ‘Can I drive you home? or drop you at the bottom of the hill?’
‘Drop me at the hill,’ I said.
At the bottom of the hill, where old yards come sharply down between Evensford’s earliest back-street Victorian factories, gaunt between gaunter rows of terraced dwellings of yellow brick turned black by furnace smoke, we sat for a few moments in the car, talking.
‘This isn’t what you intended for yourself, is it?’ she said. ‘London? You don’t belong there.’
I said nobody could stop in Evensford for ever. ‘Even Pheley couldn’t,’ I told her.
‘Pheley must have had a reason for going,’ she said.
‘Of course she did. She cut off her hair and her father thrashed her.’
‘You don’t think she could be in love with Tom?’ she said.
‘I’d think anything,’ I said. ‘Women get the queerest ideas about things.’
‘So they do,’ she said. ‘I remember your telling me.’
I spent the next morning cleaning up several pairs of shoes and pressing my two pairs of best trousers and packing most of my things, and it was mid-afternoon before I went over to the farm to see Tom.
When I got there I heard the raised voices of McKechnie and Jamie McKechnie, the eldest son, screeching with dry tight anger in the yard.
‘Because I’m tellin’ ye – for the last time – I’m warnin’ ye’ – McKechnie’s voice had the grating needle-shriek of an unoiled gearing – ‘if anything happens to that lassie – if so much as one hair of her is hurt, I’ll hold you responsible – before God I will.’
‘I’ll tell ye more than that,’ Jamie said. ‘I’ll give ye the kind o’ thrashing you’ll never forget –’
‘Who thrashed Pheley?’ I said, and McKechnie, startled, turned and shouted:
‘And we want no interference from your blasphemin’ gallivantin’ friends!’
‘Come on, Tom,’ I said. I took hold of his arm. It was stiff and rigid. ‘The McKechnies drove her away. Let the McKechnies find her –’
‘What was that?’ McKechnie yelled.
‘Don’t you swing that stick at me.’ I said.
He swung the stick at me. I remembered feeling it chip the bone of my arm, with a crack of pain, just above my elbow. Then I grabbed at the stick, trying to hold it, and he wrenched it like a long lacerating cork through my clenched hands.
The next moment the four of us were fighting. I think McKechnie lashed at me twice more before Tom came in and hit him in the throat. I remember wishing Alex was there. Then McKechnie gripped me by both shoulders, his mouth open, spewing throttled grunts, as he tried to force me away. It was finally like a tangled and clumsy game of leap-frog in which we all fell down together across the threshold of the house door, shouting and choking and trying separately to hit each other. Then in the middle of it I heard, shrilly outside the tangle of our own voices, the voice of Flora McKechnie, coming through the gate of the yard on a scream of pain.
She screamed how the police were through on the wire and how the men were to go down to Evensford as soon as they could.
‘They’re going to drag the river!’ she screamed. ‘They’re going to drag the river!’
I remember how the four of us staggered separately about, speechless and panting.
Then Tom, terribly white, began to say ‘I’m sorry – I’m awfully sorry about this, Mr McKechnie,’ his voice broken and shaking. ‘I’m really most awfully sorry – perhaps I could do something to help –?’
‘You’ve done enough!’ Flora screamed.
I spat blood several times from my mouth, feeling sick. I heard the last of McKechnie’s words lacerating Tom:
‘I’m tellin ye – if they find anything down there ye’ll wish ye’d never drawn breath. And when it’s all over ye’ll hate the day y’ ever did.’
It was five o’clock by the time I took a walk to the village after telephoning for Nancy. Tom at last had the telephone installed.
‘And where is he now?’ she said, when I told her what had happened.
‘He’s all right,’ I said. ‘He’s having a nap. I gather he didn’t sleep much last night.’
‘He’s not spending another night out there by himself,’ she said. ‘He’s coming home.’
‘You persuade him,’ I said.
‘I’ll bring Lydia,’ she said. ‘We’ll persuade him together.’
The coverts were beginning to turn gold-brown, like long flat encrusted loaves, and I stopped several times to look at them as I walked back across the fields. The day had been dull and warm. Now the sky began litting, clearing in time for long rays of amber light to spread across the valley and catch, with bright flames, the brown larches up the hill.
Every time I stopped I felt for some reason that I was looking at them for the last time. When I came back, if ever I came back, the coverts would be bare or snow would have covered them or spring would be breaking. I did not think much about Tom. I thought for a long time about Lydia: about how we had skated and danced together, about how I had often misjudged her and forgiven her in the end. I thought of her with tenderness, perhaps a little sentimentally; I had given up trying to be dispassionate about her. It was no use denying that I was going away because of her, and that because of her I was not coming back.
Flat white saucers of mist were beginning to gather along the brook as I came back to the farm. Tom was not in the yard or the kitchen. When I went upstairs I found him asleep, with all his clothes and boots on, lying across his bed. I covered him over with a blanket from the other bed and then pulled the curtains and he did not stir.
By the time I had put out a little corn and fresh water for the hens I heard Nancy’s Ford driving up the hill. It had grown, if anything, noisier than ever since she had driven it; and I went out to meet her and tell her not to bring it into the yard because of waking Tom.
Nancy went into the house but Lydia sat in the car for some moments while I talked of Tom. She kept inclining her head, as if listening for something. She said at last how quiet it was. I listened too and all I could hear was the bony tap of hen-beaks hammering at the last grains of corn in the enamel bowl across the yard.
‘When do you go?’ she said.
‘Tomorrow,’ I said.
I tried not to look at her face. She was not wearing a hat. The wind in the open car had blown her hair about, and now she sat looking into the driving mirror, p
ressing the parting of her hair into shape with her fingers.
‘You must give me your address,’ she said.
Presently she got out of the car. As I held the door her skirt was pulled up and across her legs and I saw the full curve of them before she pulled it back with her hands. She saw me look at her and I thought a flash of something warm went through her eyes as she said:
‘You ought to shut the hens up, if Tom can’t do it. Shall I come and help you?’
As we shut the hens in the barn, driving them back beyond the old inner partitions that had once been cow-stalls and then bolting them in, so that they were safer, there was a moment when we stood together, listening to the hens rustling down among dry straw, before locking the outer door for the night.
‘Will you be away long?’ she said.
‘All winter.’
‘I wish you weren’t going,’ she said. ‘It’s been nice, with the four of us –’
‘I needn’t go,’ I said. I did not want to go; I felt empty with loneliness and the thought of going.
‘It will do you good to go,’ she said. ‘You are the sort of person who expands through friends. You will meet wonderful new people and in the end you’ll like it better.’
We went into the house. Tom was not awake and when I went up to look at him again he was lying on his side, the blanket drawn up round his face, breathing heavily.
‘He’ll sleep all night,’ I said.
‘What are we going to do?’ Nancy said. ‘Wake him – or let him sleep on?’
‘Let him sleep,’ I said.
‘Perhaps it’s better,’ she said. ‘I’ll sleep here myself and get him something to eat if he wakes.’
As we sat there waiting for Tom to wake I could feel the hush of his sleeping spreading gradually over the house. We did not speak once of Pheley and finally Nancy said:
‘I think we might as well have supper. I’ll make sandwiches and we can have some coffee –’
‘If you don’t mind,’ I said, ‘I must go. I’ll walk back. I’d like the walk.’
‘Oh! please,’ she said. ‘You’ll miss saying goodbye to Tom.’
I said I could ring Tom in the morning and she said, rather curtly:
‘Oh! well, if you must. What about you, Lydia? Will you stay? – I didn’t want to leave the house.’