The Darling Buds of May

by H. E. Bates

  She put another inch of tap water into the bottle and then poured the whisky and water into two glasses, and calling, ‘Just coming. Sorry I kept you so long,’ went out of the kitchen to find Pop glancing at The Times, a newspaper he had never heard of before.

  ‘No television?’ Pop said.

  ‘Couldn’t possibly afford it.’

  ‘Terrible,’ Pop said.

  With sudden irritation Miss Pilchester remembered some stock exchange figures she had been reading at breakfast and found herself in half a mind to ask Pop what he thought she ought to do with her 3½% War Stock. He seemed so clever about money. He must be. The stock was another government swindle. She had bought it at ninety-six, and now it stood at sixty-seven – that was the way they treated you for being prudent, thrifty, and careful.

  It was perfectly true, as someone or other had remarked to her only the other day, that all governments were dishonest.

  ‘Don’t you think all governments are dishonest?’ she said. She handed Pop the whisky and explained about the shares. ‘All they think about is getting out of you the little you’ve got. What do you think?’

  ‘What do I think?’ Pop said. ‘I think you want to get it out o’ them afore they have a chance to get it out o’ you.’

  Miss Pilchester laughed. She said ‘Cheers’ and, drinking an economical sip of whisky, thanked Pop once again for being so nice about the field.

  ‘Going to pay your Hunt subscription next season? Hope so.’

  Pop said of course he was going to pay a subscription; and one for Mariette too.

  ‘Thank the Good God there are a few chaps like you.’

  The Hunt, Miss Pilchester said, was going down. Hardly anybody had any time. The Christmas Meet last year had been an absolute rag-tag-and-bobtail. It was simply ghastly.

  ‘Captain Prettyman’s retiring as Master next year,’ she said and thanked the Good God a second time. ‘Never has been any good. Never got hold of the right end of the stick from the beginning.’

  She darted Pop another of her rapid, swallow-like glances.

  ‘You’re the sort of chap they ought to have. New blood to pep them up.’

  Pop could hardly bear it. In an uncertain spasm of ambition he actually had a swift vision of himself as Master of Fox Hounds. It was dazzling. At the present time he paid a subscription but never rode to hounds, though Mariette always did. The incredible idea of his being Master had never once occurred to him.

  ‘Here, steady on, old girl,’ he said. ‘You’ll get me started thinking things.’

  Miss Pilchester, remembering the brief interlude when Pop had pressed her knee in the car, laughed as softly as she could.

  ‘Well, that’s always nice, isn’t?’ she said.

  Suddenly Pop did the thing Miss Pilchester feared most: he drained his whisky in a single gulp, smacking his lips with pleasure, as if ready to go. There was no more whisky left, not even a drop to water down, and she experienced a second of panic before he got up from the chair.

  ‘Well, I must push back. Got a few things to do before bedtime.’

  ‘Oh! must you go?’

  With uncertainty Miss Pilchester got up too. She had been careful to sit with her back to the little cottage window, but now twilight was falling rapidly enough to make it almost impossible to distinguish the smaller details of her face. Only her eyes were bright as they gave Pop yet another quick, swallow-like dart.

  ‘You’ve been an absolute lamb,’ she said. ‘Don’t know how –’

  She turned suddenly to find herself wrapped in Pop Larkin’s arms, being kissed in splendid silence, with something of the effect of a velvet battering ram. This was the way Pop always kissed Ma but Miss Pilchester, for her part, had never experienced anything quite like it. It had on her something of the effect of Pop’s cocktail on Mr Charlton: it explored with disquieting fire a few corners of her body that she hardly knew existed before.

  When it was over Pop retired a few inches, took breath and said, in almost exactly the tones he always used when mixing drinks at the glittering Spanish galleon:

  ‘How about one more?’

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Perfick,’ Pop said.

  Five minutes later a palpitating but very happy Miss Pilchester, trebly kissed – one more for luck, Pop had said – came to the gate of the little garden wilderness to wave him goodbye. If it had been possible she would have kissed him goodbye but she knew that even in the gathering May twilight the ex-artificer’s wife would be watching from a window. Not that she cared a damn now. She felt dedicated for ever, with abandon, to the generous, passionate Mr Larkin.

  ‘See you soon!’ she waved.

  ‘Any time,’ Pop said. He laughed merrily. ‘Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do. Keep your hand on your ha’penny.’

  The last of Miss Pilchester’s darting glances, this one almost of fire, seemed actually to set the Rolls in motion and with a neat, side-long wink he drove away.

  At first he drove rather fast and then, suddenly subdued by the immensely incredible notion that he might one day become Master of Fox Hounds, slowed down to a silent crawl. He didn’t want anybody to think he was drunk in charge. Two minutes later he passed a policeman on duty. Seeing the Rolls, the policeman saluted. Pop saluted in reply.

  He’d have to tell Ma, he thought, about the Master of Fox Hounds lark. No, he wouldn’t though. He’d keep that after all; she’d say he was flying too high. What he would tell her, though, was about the inside of Miss Pilchester’s house; that terrible, cramped, untidy, woolly, television-less little bolt-hole. Perfickly awful how some people lived, he would tell Ma, perfickly awful.

  When he arrived home Ma was sitting outside the kitchen door, enjoying a Guinness and a few potato crisps after her battle with the pork. It was still hot in the semi-darkness, but Pop feared he could hear, in the distance, a few muted notes of thunder.

  ‘Where’s Mr Charlton?’ he said.

  ‘Been writing letters,’ Ma said. ‘Just gone off with Mariette to post them.’

  ‘Writing letters?’

  Another high, incredible mark of credit for Mr Charlton.

  ‘Whatever’s he got to write letters for?’

  Impossible to understand how anybody could write letters.

  ‘I think he’d been writing to the tax office.’

  ‘Not about us,’ Pop said. ‘He ain’t got nothing to write there about us.’

  ‘Oh! no,’ Ma said. Enjoying her Guinness, she was quite unperturbed. ‘I think he’s gone and extended his sick leave. That’s all. Since he saw the doctor. Going to stay another week or two.’

  ‘Perfick,’ Pop said. ‘Jolly good.’

  Pop, for whom Mr Charlton was rapidly becoming a more and more agreeable figure, quite exceptional in his literacy, went into the house to pour himself a Dragon’s Blood. When he came back Ma said:

  ‘Well, did you kiss her?’

  ‘Course I did.’

  ‘I thought you would.’ Ma sat with the Guinness balanced on the precipice of her rolling stomach like a little black doll, again completely unperturbed. ‘Do her good. Make her sleep all the sweeter. What was it like?’

  Pop considered. He remembered how, in the twilight, some portion of Miss Pilchester’s moustache had brushed against him.

  ‘A bit like trying to catch a mole,’ he said, ‘in a dark entry.’

  Ma dug him sharply in the ribs and started laughing like a jelly. Pop laughed too at his own joke and then stared up at the sky, his attention rapt for some moments by the young, unquenchable summer stars. A few drops of rain fell, as if by a miracle, from a cloudless heaven, and then ceased in a whisper. Laughing made Pop give a sudden belch and far away, across miles of windless fields, somewhere on the dim hills, nature echoed him in a scarcely audible double note of thunder. Ma looked at the stars too and Pop started to tell her, true amazement in his voice, about Miss Pilchester’s little Tudor bolt-hole and how perfickly awful it was.

  ‘Never cr
edit it, Ma,’ he told her. ‘Never credit it. Still, what I always say: you don’t know, do you, until you get a look inside?’

  For a few moments longer they sat in silence, until at last Ma said:

  ‘Well: I’m waiting.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you kissed me?’

  Pop said he supposed it was. He drained his Dragon’s Blood and set the empty glass behind his chair. Then he leaned over and clasped in his right hand as much of Ma’s vast bosom as he could hold.

  ‘It’s coming to something’, Ma said, ‘when I have to ask you for one. Are you tired?’

  Pop demonstrated that he was far from tired by kissing Ma with prolonged velvety artistry. Ma responded by settling back into her chair into a cocoon of silence unbroken except for an occasional exquisite breath of pleasure, exactly like the murmur of a kitten in a doze.

  In the far distance new waves of thunder rolled. From the cloudless heaven a few fresh warm drops of rain fell. For some moments they splashed the two faces as lightly as a sigh but Pop and Ma, like the youngest of lovers, did not heed them at all.

  7

  On the day of the pony gymkhana Mr Charlton was up at half-past four. The morning was humid, dreamy, and overcast, with low mist on the river. Pop, who had already been up an hour, giving swill to pigs and fodder to the Jersey cow, and was now staunching back the first pangs of hunger with a few slices of bread and Cheddar cheese doused half an inch thick with tomato ketchup, said he thought ‘the wevver looked a little bit thick in the clear’ but otherwise, with luck, it ought to be all right by noon.

  Mr Charlton breakfasted on two lean pork cutlets, some scrambled eggs cooked by Mariette, fried potatoes, and four halves of tomato.

  ‘In the old days,’ said Pop, whose estimation of Mr Charlton rose almost every time he talked to him, especially on occasions like coming down to breakfast at a good time and getting outside a reasonable amount of food, ‘my Dad used to tell me that they always had beer for breakfast. Like a glass o’ beer?’

  Mr Charlton thanked him and said he didn’t think he would. Mariette had just made tea.

  ‘Well, I think I will,’ Pop said. ‘I don’t think a lot o’ tea is all that good for you.’

  Pop, after pouring himself a Dragon’s Blood, had much the same breakfast as Mr Charlton, except that there was a lot more of it and that his plate was gay with mustard, ketchup, and two kinds of Worcester sauce. Mariette, who looked pretty and fresh in dark green slacks and a pale yellow shirt blouse, said she was so excited she could hardly eat but nevertheless managed two eggs and bacon, a pint of milk, and four slices of bread.

  Ma was not yet down but had sent word that as the day was going to be a long one she was having a lay-in, which meant she would be down by half-past six.

  Towards the end of breakfast Pop turned to Mr Charlton, who had not been able to keep his eyes off Mariette for more than two seconds since she had come into the kitchen tying up her hair with a thin emerald ribbon, and said:

  ‘Are you two going to feed and water the donkeys? I’ve got forty thousand jobs to do and Miss Pilchester’ll be here by six.’

  Mr Charlton said of course they would feed the donkeys and helped himself to a fifth slice of bread and covered it half an inch thick with fresh Jersey butter made by Ma. Pop watched this process with immense admiration, telling himself he had never seen such a change in a man’s health as he had witnessed in three weeks in Mr Charlton.

  Mr Charlton was still on sick leave.

  ‘Oh! those sweet donkeys,’ Mariette said.

  The donkeys that she and Mr Charlton were going to feed were not the rest of the Larkin household but four animals pop had secured for racing. Pop thought that gymkhanas were sometimes inclined to be on the dull side, what he called ‘a bit horseface like – so many folks with long faces you can’t very often tell the mares from some of the old women’ – and that therefore something was needed to enliven the customary round of trotting, riding, leading rein, jumping, bending, and walk, trot, canter, and run.

  This was why he had thought of the donkeys and why, later on in the day, he thought of introducing a few private harmless jokes of his own. What these were he was keeping to himself; but he had not forgotten the one about putting a firework under Miss Pilchester.

  To his grievous disappointment the committee had turned down his offer of fireworks. It might well be, they had pointed out, that a few ponies would be late leaving the ground and that some fireworks would in any case go off early and the ponies be distressed. Pop saw the reason in this but if there was going to be one firework and only one it was, he was determined, going to be Miss Pilchester’s.

  ‘What time is the cocktail party, Pop?’ Mr Charlton said.

  Pop was delighted that Mr Charlton now called him Pop.

  ‘Ma thinks eight o’clock would be the perfick time.’

  ‘What a day,’ Mariette said. ‘All this and cocktails too.’

  She went on to confess that she had never been to a cocktail party and Pop said:

  ‘Come to that neither have I. Neither has Ma.’

  ‘What do people normally drink at cocktail parties?’ Mariette said.

  ‘Cocktails,’ Mr Charlton said slyly and before he could move she gave him a swift playful cuff, exactly like that of a dark soft kitten, across the head.

  ‘Not at this one you don’t,’ Pop said.

  Both Mariette and Mr Charlton were too excited to remember that the whole question of what was drunk at cocktail parties had been discussed a week before.

  Since Pop had been unable to indulge himself with fireworks he and Ma had decided that there must, if possible, be something in their place. A cocktail party, Pop said, would be the perfick answer. Ma agreed, but said they ought to keep it very select if possible. Not more than thirty people, she thought, at the outside: mostly the committee and their families and of course nice people like the Miss Barnwells and the Luffingtons and the Brigadier. And what about eats?

  Neither Pop nor Ma had any idea what you ate at cocktail parties; therefore Mr Charlton was consulted.

  ‘Canapés, vol-au-vents, pistachios, and that sort of thing,’ Mr Charlton said.

  A lot more marks for Mr Charlton, Pop thought, as once again he heard words he had never even heard on television.

  ‘You mean nuts and things?’ Ma said. ‘They won’t keep anybody alive very long. I’d better cook a ham.’

  Pop warmly agreed; the ham was firmly decided upon. Ma could cut plenty of the thinnest white and brown sandwiches, with nice Jersey butter. And what else?

  Mariette said she thought small pieces of cold sardine on toast would be nice. ‘They’re absolutely marvellous hot too,’ Mr Charlton said and got himself still more marks by also suggesting small squares of toast with hot Welsh rarebit, chicken sandwiches, and little sausages on sticks.

  Most of this, to Pop, seemed rather light, unsatisfying fare.

  ‘We want to give ’em enough,’ he said. ‘We don’t want ’em to think we’re starving ’em. What about a leg o’ pork?’

  To his disappointment Mr Charlton said he rather ruled out the leg of pork.

  ‘All right,’ Pop said. ‘What about drinks?’

  Pop was all for making plenty of Rolls-Royces and that sort of thing, good, strong ones, together with two new ones he had recently tried out from The Guide to Better Drinking: Red Bull and Ma Chérie. Red Bull was a blinder. That would curl their hair.

  Mr Charlton said he thought it made it so much simpler if you stuck to two, or at the outside, three good drinks: say sherry, port, and gin-and-french. He suggested the port in case the evening was cool.

  He got no marks this time. Pop thought it was all about as dull as flippin’ ditchwater. With sudden enthusiasm he said:

  ‘What about champagne?’

  Both Ma and Mariette said they adored champagne. That was a brilliant idea. Something extra nice always happened, Mariette said, when you had
champagne, and it seemed to Pop that he saw her exchange with Mr Charlton an intimate glance of secret tenderness that left him baffled and unsatisfied. Couldn’t be nothing in the wind?

  ‘Well, champagne it is then!’ Pop said. ‘Might as well do the thing properly.’

  Here Mr Charlton remarked with tact that since not everybody liked champagne it might be just as well to have some other drink in reserve.

  ‘I’ll make a few hair-curlers,’ Pop said. ‘Red Bull – remember that one? – and Ma Chérie.’

  Mr Charlton remembered Red Bull. It had rammed him one evening after a hardish day in the strawberry field. It was not inaptly named.

  It was half-past five before Mr Charlton and Mariette got up at last from breakfast and went across the yard to feed the donkeys. The four little donkeys had been tied up in the stable that Pop had built with his eye on the day when all the family, with the possible exception of Ma, would have a pony or a horse to ride. That would be the day. Two donkeys had been hired by Pop; two had been brought over by their owners the previous night. Three more, it was hoped, were still to come.

  As soon as Mariette and himself were in the half-dark stable, among the donkeys, Mr Charlton took her quickly in his arms and kissed her. His arms and hands, as they tenderly touched her face, breasts, and shoulders, were as brown as her own.

  Mariette laughed, trembling, and said she’d hardly been able to wait for that one, the first, the loveliest of the day. Mr Charlton, with something like ecstasy, said he hadn’t been able to wait either. He could hardly wait for anything. Above all he could hardly wait for the afternoon. ‘Nor me,’ Mariette said and held her body out to him again.

  Quietly, as the second kiss went on, the donkeys stirred about the stable, swishing tails, restless. Hearing them, Mariette partly broke away from Mr Charlton and said with half-laughing mouth:

  ‘I suppose there’s a first time for everything. I’ve never been kissed among donkeys before.’

  Quick as a swallow himself, Mr Charlton answered. It was the answer of a man sharpened by three weeks in the strawberry field, living with the Larkins, and using his loaf.