by H. E. Bates
‘Would he like a piece of cake, do you think?’ she said.
Alexander, not daring to refuse, although again not hungry, at once said ‘Please.’
‘Please!’ repeated his uncle in a staggering voice.
Nodding and quaking, the old lady turned and slowly retreated, all the dogs following her like mourners at a funeral. While she had gone Uncle Bishop gave the little horse its nose-bag and Alexander unpacked the fruit-baskets and set them on the grass.
After a long interval the procession returned. Alexander’s uncle at once began a secretive whisper:
‘She’s rich, the old teazer. Her husband invented a patent candlestick and made a fortune, but he broke his neck on horseback. She had a son, but he’s a lunatic and no one knows where he is, and so it’s all hers, all the blessed money and this orchard, everything. Fetch the piece of cake, fetch it, fetch it——be on the right side of her, my boy, go along, fetch it.’
Alexander was forced to go and take from the old lady’s quivering fingers a large triangle of bright yellow cake, which looked distasteful and sickly.
‘It’s saffron cake,’ she said to him, in a trembling little voice.
What saffron cake was he didn’t know, but he tried to look as if he did know and as if he were very grateful. Then his uncle and the old woman began to discuss the fruit-gathering and he was left unnoticed, feeling awkward as he lingered about with the cake he did not want in his hands.
‘The little golden plums on the bank are ripe, two trees of them,’ he heard her say. ‘Get them .… get them all. The boys and the wasps are after them. And then there’s a tree of permains: that’s loaded, and they’ll be none left if you leave them. Pears, there’s two trees of pears, the big early ones at the end of the garden, and the little sweet pears. You know where they are. There’s a ladder stands by the wall. You know where everything is, don’t you? It’s a poor year. Some of the trees are blighted, but you do as you think fit .…’
‘You know you can trust us,’ bellowed Uncle Bishop. ‘You know that you always have trusted us.’
‘Yes, I trust you.’
But while they were taking hooks and baskets and all the time they were walking down the long avenue of apples into the depths of the garden, Alexander was conscious of her eyes pursuing all their movements, as if she did not trust them. Her eyes reminded him of gooseberries, and he also felt that though she was so very deaf this deafness did not matter, since her sight was so uncanny and remarkable. And as he turned and shot a last furtive look along the avenue all the seven dogs and the white cat appeared to be watching him too.
‘It’s a garden, if you like, isn’t it?’ his old uncle kept whispering, as though the intricacy of the avenues and the never-ending branches stooping under a weight of red, yellow and green globes awed him. ‘There’s a peach, on the wall, and next to it’s an apricot, but there’s never a finger allowed on them, the old tit, not a finger. Don’t you touch them, do you hear that? Eat what you like and fill your pockets, but she’ll know almost if you look on that wall, God bless me if she won’t.’
But Alexander, so much attracted by the garden, scarcely listened. Everywhere mature, laden trees stood, and as in the little garden in the wood, not a breath or leaf stirred itself, and the sunshine seemed to burn the stillness and came through the leaves with a soft liquid light. In odd places under the trees there were vegetable marrows, which he thought looked like fat sucking-pigs asleep in the sunshine. In the distance some pigeons were cooing and a flock of starlings flew up from an apple-tree and soared away like black dust. They walked on and on. ‘Did you ever see the like?’ the old man kept saying. And then suddenly they came to a point where this level, tranquil order of things changed, and the garden dipped abruptly. They halted. Before them lay a kind of oval basin which seemed to Alexander might have been a stone-pit in some bygone time. Here the trees hung from ledges and precipices and flourished in a toy green valley. ‘Cunning,’ he heard his uncle say. Very cunning and very wonderful indeed he thought it also as he stood there gazing with large eyes at the little golden plums in the grass, with a sensation as if the outer world had been left aside for ever.
‘Get a basket. Let’s begin,’ said his uncle suddenly. ‘The little yellow tree first of all.’
Alexander, rather dazed, took the basket in which lay the saffron cake, and though not hungry, he longed to taste the cake and the tempting, sweet-looking plums. And so he took first a bite at the strange-coloured cake and then at the fruit. The cake he concluded at once was poisonous, but the plums were like honey, and he went on eating them, hardly filling up the basket at all. And shortly, without fuss, and with an expression of sleepy indifference, he put some of the ripest plums in his pockets and dropped the saffron cake into long grass like a stone.
As the work went on, Uncle Bishop at times murmured in a cracked bass some old song Alexander had heard already a hundred times, but which possessed for him still the same enchantment and surprise, and at others related all he knew of some old murder, very cold-blooded and gruesome, telling it all so skilfully and with such cunning pauses that Alexander would cease all movement, and sit on a branch or stand in the grass as if paralysed, not breathing, wondering if the climax would ever come. At times they were very silent. In these pauses the boy wished only that he might lie still in the shady grass, to sleep, or to watch with sleepy eyes the rabbits feeding in the green hollow. But each time a curious sense of pride prevented his doing this. And conscientiously he went on filling and refilling his basket with plums.
When the plum-tree had been stripped the man sighed, and as if for reward, ate the first plum Alexander had seen pass his lips, and blew out his cheeks and spat the stone to an extraordinary height in the air. Then he seized his jacket and opened his watch and looked at the sun.
‘Oh! Lord,’ he muttered, scratching himself. ‘It’s nearly one. Fetch the basket .…’
A sudden feeling of joy and relief filled Alexander, who felt as if he had been locked in a room and released.
When he returned with the basket Uncle Bishop was already seated under a large pear-tree, stropping a magnificent clasp-knife on his trousers-knee in readiness.
‘What have they put in for us?’ he kept saying. ‘What? Cold pie? What sort of a pie? What? … Rabbit? Never! God bless my buttons, but it must be. It can’t be pigeon. It must be the rabbit Ursula bought from the gypsy. And what else? Give me the pie. God bless me, it’s heavy, it must have been a hare. What else, my son?’
‘Potatoes, cold beans, bread .… cheese,’ recited Alexander, ‘and here’s another pie, a fruit-pie, yes that’s fruit, and here’s something else. Bottles.’
‘Bottles?’
After saying this, his mouth remained open and Alexander saw a look of sly astonishment creep into his face. Then he stretched out his hands and took the bottles from Alexander and slowly held them up to the sunshine, closing one eye deliberately. Presently he remarked:
‘That’s for you.’
‘What is it?’
‘Drink! Never mind what. Never ask what a drink is, it’s not manners.’
And leaning backwards, Alexander drank slowly and deeply, scarcely tasting what he drank, but aware only of the satisfaction and coolness of drinking, until he felt as if the breath were being squeezed from his body and he could drink no longer. Suddenly, with a great burst for breath, he ceased and sat upright. His uncle was still drinking, with his head also thrown back, so that he looked to Alexander very like a man blowing a black trumpet from which no sound ever came. And as he watched, wondering how long this could last, the half-sweet, half-bitter taste of what he had drunk awoke in his mouth.
‘Is yours herb-beer too?’ he leaned forward and asked.
His uncle did not answer, however, but suddenly smacking his lips and corking up the bottle, took his clasp-knife and cut the pie. Alexander received the leg of a rabbit, and immediately felt strangely important, as if he had been given a prize or had said somet
hing very witty and clever. He sat with his mouth open, staring.
‘Eat, sonny, eat,’ urged his uncle at once. ‘There’s beans too, and potatoes. Eat!’ He waved his long arms about him to the trees and the sky. ‘All the pears and the little red apples have to be gathered before we go, and it’s a long journey.’
He himself cut two thick slices of bread and began to spear pieces of rabbit with the point of his knife, eating ravenously. A knife and fork had been packed up for the boy, but he felt it would be almost degrading and a little childish to use them, and rather furtively he took out a small tortoise-shell penknife and began spearing fragments of rabbit’s flesh too. There was no time for conversation. And gradually everywhere grew silent. Hardly a bird spoke, and the thick wall of trees about them stood still and breathless. The sun lay directly overhead and Alexander could see the heat shimmering in waves beyond the baskets lying in squares and rings of yellow in the grass.
Soon he felt his thoughts fly back again to all that had happened in the wood. The same overbearing silence, the same heat, the same uncanny sense of utter stillness, without a quiver or breath! The picturesque little house, the old woman sitting staring like death, with a comb clasped in her hands, the pond, the sloe-tree, and most vivid of all, the flowerets on the young girl’s dress reflected in the shining dark water! He ceased eating and the faint sickness and shock of unexpected joy obsessed him.
‘Come, eat your leg, eat your leg, boy!’
He started and responded mechanically, lifting the rabbit-leg in his fingers, and then sank into thought again.
As he sat there, alternately eating and dreaming, he could only wonder what was she doing, where she could be?
‘If you don’t want the leg, don’t waste it. Have a little of this pie, instead. Look, see the crust …’
He took a slice of pie, which had been made with late raspberries, gooseberries, damsons and a sprinkling of dewberries. As he ate he looked up and asked:
‘That man in the little house over there, he’s very ill, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, God bless him; he won’t live, poor fellow.’
‘Shall you go back to see him?’
‘We might and we might not. I don’t know,’ he said, shaking his head, and the boy felt driven back to silence.
During the remainder of that meal he did not speak again; only his uncle’s answer, ‘We might and we might not,’ careered repeatedly through his head, troubling him.
Not long later the man, with a sleepy ‘Don’t you fidget, my son,’ stretched back on the grass and closed his eyes. In obedience the boy sat for some moments very still, feeling as if he were the only creature alive in the still, drowsy noonday.
He rose presently and walked idly away .… The house appeared, its white stone exterior looking forbidding in the sunshine. He stood for some moments staring at it and then turned abruptly down a little sloping path leading towards a group of firs. A grasshopper began chirring, and a low hum of wasps rose from the plum-trees. Suddenly Alexander stared, slackened his pace, and then, gazing still harder at the object he saw under an apple-tree just ahead, ceased walking altogether. Two small eyes like black beans returned his stare, and an intense sensation of guilt and nervousness refused to let him go forward or run away.
Before him sat a man, a very small person in a blue-striped shirt, a black cap and stone-coloured trousers fastened with a most handsome belt of plaited and twisted leather decorated with pieces of brass. His shirt-sleeves were rolled up and on his right fore-arm a purple dragon had been tattooed and on his left there was a crimson bird, like a swallow, designed as if it were flying towards his shoulder. Alexander could not surmise if this man were old or young. He only felt that his thin face with its sharp nose, black little eyes, and boney forehead was very, very cunning. And after a long silence, during which the eyes never flickered, he said falteringly in an apologetic voice:
‘We’re picking the fruit.’
‘What’s your name?’ asked the man, with a very cunning squint and in a sharp arresting voice.
‘I’m Mr Bishop’s nephew.’
The man thought a minute, then asked: ‘Did you come in that cart with that little nag?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, that’s all about of a nag, that is. I wouldn’t be seen dead with a nag like it. It’s a midget!’ he went on derisively. ‘Don’t you feed it?’
Alexander, who was devoted to the little horse, was too outraged to speak, and only nodded several times, staring at the other’s thin, cunning face until he detested it. And then suddenly the man remarked:
‘I’ve got a boy about your clip. How old are you?’
‘Twelve,’ said Alexander.
‘Yes, he’s about that. Perhaps he’s older, though. I don’t know, it’s a job to tell.’ And he informed Alexander abruptly: ‘I’ve got fourteen children, you wouldn’t believe that perhaps, would you?’
‘Yes,’ said Alexander at once, though he felt he couldn’t believe a word.
‘He was the first to be born after I came home from Turkey, he was. Seven came before Turkey, and seven after, and there’s no doubt the first are the strongest. There’s no doubt they are. Fine, strong women and men all of them, and two with children of their own. Only yesterday my eldest came to see me. He’s with a duke—yes, he’s a duke’s servant—a duke with a name as long as your legs. I can’t pronounce his name, no more could you. And this duke says to him, “Baxter,” he says, “if there’s any mortal thing you want while I’m away from home you take it. Take it!” He was drunk—he drinks a lot, this duke—but it didn’t matter, and so no sooner’s his back’s turned than Wag—that’s my son—orders another servant to kill a turkey and gets a leg of mutton and a little barrel of beer, besides a lot of waistcoats and a pair of gaiters—doeskin gaiters, mark you—gentlefolk don’t know what they have got, they don’t wear things out—and a pair of pants worn once and never a second more, and shoes and God knows what besides he didn’t get—and I’ll slit my throat if he didn’t hire a conveyance and bring them home and say to me, “Dad, what with having fourteen of us and times hard, you could do with the Duke’s trousers! “Oh! my God, I laughed till the tears rolled down my cheeks. Why I laughed I don’t know, but there you are, he’s my son, and he’s a chip off the old block, and I’m proud of him. And money! Before he goes he says to me, “Dad, here’s a quid,” and he opens his pocket for me to look. And there they lay, hundreds of them, hundreds and hundreds of pounds, like packs of playing cards, hundreds and hundreds .…’
During all this discourse Alexander grew more and more incredulous and yet more and more fascinated. He felt all the time that he was being told wonderful enormous lies. Everything he could do towards believing these lies he did, yet the thought of so much money, so many children and the look of constant craftiness on the man’s face defeated him.
He stood as if spellbound.
‘Haven’t seen the old lady about, I suppose? asked the man suddenly, completely closing one eye and squinting up at Alexander with the other.
The boy shook his head.
‘Good,’ remarked the other, and took out a small clay pipe, very stained and dirty. ‘She’s a tough customer. No smoking in this garden—perhaps you don’t believe that? Well, believe it or not, it’s true. She’s afraid she’ll be burnt in her bed. Her husband, when he was alive, did nothing but experiment and experiment with things all day and all night long. And one night he set the house afire…… That’s the reason. “Baxter,” she says every morning, “don’t you dare strike a match.”’ Just at this moment the man did strike a match and began smoking. ‘She’s like some little cheese-mouse, twittering and trembling about her money. Not like a man I worked for once. He had money. God strike me, he had some money! “Baxter,” he used to say to me, “if you want a glass of beer there’s a bucket.” A bucket! And I used to draw a bucket of beer as you might draw a bucket of water for your little old nag .… But he killed himself. Money! That’s what mone
y did for that man. Money brings no good. The old lady, what’s all her money bring? What’s she got? Her only son in an asylum, and nobody, not a soul, to live with her—all alone—might as well be under the ground …’
This time Alexander followed the discourse without a thought for its truth, only fascinated profoundly, and as the man went on to tell more and more fantastic episodes he crept nearer and at last sat down at his feet.
While listening he caught sight of an object lying partially concealed by the man’s jacket. After some time he made out the fur, then the ears and whiskers of a dead rabbit. From its snout hung a globule of bright red.
“Did you catch that?’ he asked, pointing at the dead animal.
‘Not so loud. Did I catch what?’ the man asked sharply, and pretended suddenly to be extremely stupid, looking everywhere except where Alexander was pointing.
‘That!’ repeated the boy.
‘Where? What is it you’re after? What you mean—“catch”? There’s nothing but slugs to catch, here.’
To judge from his puzzled, apathetic movements the man looked as if he had just woken up. Nothing of his slyness remained. And yet Alexander felt that under this mask of stupidity the cunning was growing deeper.
He became silent, and the man took advantage of the silence to relight his pipe, while Alexander, nonplussed by this last change of attitude, wondered if he dare ask another question. After a long silence he did ask it:
‘Do you live here?’ he said.
‘Over yonder, by the wood,’ said the man.
‘What’s your name?’ he ventured to ask, timidly.
‘Smack .…’
As he uttered this, his mouth snapped shut as sharply as a mouse-trap, and with a sound very like a smack. This produced a great effect on Alexander, who sat open-mouthed for some moments before daring to say:
‘Were you christened that?’
‘Christened? .… Lord God, my mother ran off all of a sudden, feeling a bit of a pain in the fields one day, and delivered me under a haystack. I wasn’t christened .…’