by H. E. Bates
‘Oh! I don’t think I could possibly –’
‘Try.’
Suddenly Miss Stratton was aware of the man sitting next to her. They were holding The Times together, upside down.
‘Try the headline. This one.’
Miss Stratton stared for fully half a minute at the paper, eyes groping behind her smoky-rose spectacles, like a child trying to read for the first time.
‘I simply can’t make head or tail of it. It looks sort of like Russian.’
‘Oh! it’s easy. It says U.S. Lose More Helicopters in Vietnam. Vietcong Casualties Reported Heavy.’
‘Oh! so it does. I see now. I must be very stupid.’
‘Not at all. It just needs practice.’ The man gave a short treble laugh that Miss Stratton found most engaging. It struck her as being quite boyish. ‘The curious part is that when you’ve been reading upside down for ages it seems most odd when you start reading right way up.’
‘Yes, I suppose that could happen.’
‘It’s all a question of viewpoint. After all the world’s pretty well upside down as it is, wouldn’t you think?’
Miss Stratton laughed too and said she would indeed.
‘You know,’ he suddenly went on, ‘but you’re the first person who’s ever drawn my attention to the fact that I read upside down. Hundreds of people every year see me doing it in the train but not one has ever said a word. I suppose they’re either too shy or they think I’m mad. Do you think I’m mad?’
‘Oh! not at all. Not at all.’
‘It’s merely a question of reversing convention –’
‘Can you do it with figures?’
‘Oh! with figures, yes. I can add up backwards and so on – it’s a mental exercise, you see. A challenge.’
For some five minutes or more the train had been running slowly. With slight irritation the man took his watch from his waistcoat pocket – it hung from a thin gold chain – and looked at it.
‘Thought so. Running late again. It’s a confounded nuisance, this line. Every day last week we were late by ten minutes or more.’
‘The evening trains are worse.’
‘I know. Which one do you catch? The 6.10?’
Yes, she always caught the 6.10, Miss Stratton said. In fact she invariably caught the 5.20.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever run across you before, have I?’ He looked quickly down at Miss Stratton’s legs, encased as they always were in odd stockings, one green and one blue. ‘I’m sure I’d remember if I had.’
Miss Stratton felt herself flush very slightly, without a word to say.
‘I used to come on the 5.20,’ he said, ‘but the thing was a madhouse. A terrible bun-fight.’
‘I think it’s because I usually travel second that you haven’t seen me.’
‘Ah! possibly, possibly.’
Again he took a quick hard look at Miss Stratton’s stockings. The matter of the stockings struck him as being no less unusual than Miss Stratton found his reading The Times upside down. Why did a woman go to work in stockings that didn’t match? Most curious. You might well think her mad.
‘I always stop off across the road at Porter’s Wine Bar for a sherry,’ he said. ‘I allow myself that bit of extra time. It’s a good relaxer. You wouldn’t care to join me, I suppose, this evening?’
Totally ignorant of what prompted her to say so Miss Stratton suddenly said she really didn’t know. It all depended on her friend.
‘Oh! I see.’
Miss Stratton, who had invented the friend on the spur of the moment purely because she was rather flummoxed, now found herself trapped with the problem of getting rid of the friend.
‘Well, perhaps some other evening. By the way my name’s Fletcher.’
‘It’s very nice of you, Mr Fletcher. I daresay I could phone my friend.’
‘Oh! could you? That would be nice. The sherry’s awfully good at this place. Of course one can have something else. A glass of burgundy. They have champagne by the glass too.’
As he said this Miss Stratton found herself unaccountably inspired to laughter.
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘you don’t by any chance drink upside down too?’
‘That’s a thought,’ Mr Fletcher said and was unaccountably inspired to laughter too.
That evening, on the 6.10 train, Miss Stratton found herself deeply flushed and panting as she flopped into the corner of the first carriage, with Mr Fletcher opposite her. The fact that they had had to run for the train, together with two large glasses of sherry – they were called schooners, Mr Fletcher informed her – occasionally made her giggle briefly as she sought to recover breath.
‘Well, that was a close-run thing,’ Mr Fletcher said. ‘Still, if we’d missed it we’d have had an excuse for another schooner.’
‘Oh! those schooners. They must be trebles.’
Having finally got his breath back too Mr Fletcher took a rapid glance at Miss Stratton’s legs, only to find a further interesting surprise awaiting him there. During her lunch hour, in a sudden upremeditated rush of abandon, Miss Stratton had brought herself some new stockings and was now wearing one of a bright raspberry rose and another of a shade of muted violet. They contrasted and yet blended very well, she thought.
Mr Fletcher was impelled to think so too but was far too shy to look at them for more than a few seconds or to say so.
He really wanted to say something else but it was only after reading his evening paper upside down for another half hour that he at last found courage enough to do so.
‘Do you know this place, Purland Court?’ he said. ‘They’ve turned it into flats.’
No, Miss Stratton said, she didn’t think she did.
‘It used to be the old Bradfield house. Big Victorian thing, in its own park. I’ve got one of the flats. Oh! it’s only one of the very small ones. Right at the top. A maid’s box room originally, I suppose.’
‘It’s not the place with the huge wrought iron gates?’
‘That’s it. Marvellously beautiful in spring. Big avenue of limes with millions and millions of aconites blooming underneath. As early as February. All gold.’
‘What are aconites? I’m afraid I’m awfully bad about flowers.’
Mr Fletcher explained about aconites and how he loved them. To him, he didn’t know why, they represented something Grecian. They brought spring into winter, he said, and as he spoke of them Miss Stratton was touched into thinking that his voice took on a certain urgent but at the same time bemused note of tenderness.
‘Will you be on the train tomorrow?’ he finally said.
‘Oh! I’m on it every day,’ Miss Stratton again found herself briefly giggling. ‘Always on the treadmill.’
‘I’ll look out for you. Perhaps we could indulge in another schooner.’
Something about the word indulge instantly illuminated the otherwise drab atmosphere of the railway carriage. There was something intimate and warm about it too: a feeling that almost brought Miss Stratton to the point of saying something about Mr Fletcher’s necktie, which had evidently remained half in, half outside his collar all day. Instead she merely gazed at it with her own air of bemusement. And then Mr Fletcher said:
‘Just in case I miss you in the morning shall we say we’ll meet in the wine bar at half past five? That is unless you have to see your friend.’
Oh! she didn’t think she had to see her friend tomorrow, said Miss Stratton, now under the vexatious impression that Mr Fletcher understood her friend to be a man.
‘Oh! Good.’ Mr Fletcher gave her a shy smile and went on to say how pleasant it had all been, meeting her and the sherry and everything.
Miss Stratton said it had been pleasant too and finally went home to an early bed, where for some considerable time she sat reading her newspaper upside down, an experience that troubled her so much that she afterwards didn’t sleep well.
The next morning Mr Fletcher arrived on the train with a small posy of fifteen or twenty yellow a
conites wrapped in tissue paper. Miss Stratton, amazed that flowers of such delicacy, and so Grecian in feeling, as Mr Fletcher maintained, could produce their cool fresh beauty in the darkest hours of winter, kept them all day, and then for the rest of the week, on her office desk, in a small blue plastic tumbler.
Every time she gazed at them she saw Mr Fletcher’s necktie, the knot of which, that morning, was somewhere in the region of his left ear.
After that they started to meet every evening in the wine bar, religiously repeating the ritual of indulging in schooners. Each evening too Miss Stratton went home to read her newspaper upside down, thereby experiencing a curious intimate thrill, almost as if Mr Fletcher were in bed with her.
All this might have gone on quite uninterrupted if Miss Stratton hadn’t happened to remark one evening ‘Oh! I don’t see my friend now – I – well, let’s not talk about it.’
Mr Fletcher seemed to think this at last released him from some obligation or other and after some minutes of apparent contemplation said:
‘I’ve been wondering if you might care to come and see my little place sometime. It’s very modest, but –’
‘Oh! I should love to.’
‘You couldn’t by some remote chance come to lunch? Say on Sunday.’
Miss Stratton said she would be quite absolutely delighted and immediately started to wonder what she would wear. For several days she went on wondering, finally coming to the conclusion that since Mr Fletcher lived in a flat in a Victorian mansion she had better dress accordingly. As a result she bought herself an entirely new outfit, a two piece linen suit in pale green that made her look unusually neat, even a little elegant. She also decided to discard, for once, the odd stockings and instead wore perfectly ordinary nylons in a flesh-pink shade.
‘The trouble is there’s no lift. I do hope you’re not completely fagged out, climbing the stairs.’
Miss Stratton, more than a little flustered after climbing four flights of stairs, the last narrow and very steep, eventually found herself contemplating the crazy cell of what Mr Fletcher called his little place. A gas-stove piled with books, a divan bed on which slept three white cats, a bicycle draped with bundles of dried beech leaves, a sewing machine of the old treadle kind on which stood plates, wine-glasses, and bottles of tomato ketchup, a bowl of bananas and custard and an unopened tin of sardines, a bureau littered with a mass of papers, some of them held down with pots of crocuses, others with pots of jam, jars of fish paste and even, in one instance, a half eaten currant loaf: the whole appeared to her to have come out of some lunatic dream. She was also strongly aware of an odour of stale fish combined with the sort of dusty pungency that comes of floors long unswept and windows long unopened.
‘I’m afraid I’m a bit tucked for space,’ Mr Fletcher said.
Quite unable to make any sort of comment on this, Miss Stratton found herself mournfully distressed for Mr Fletcher, who was also attired to match the shabby confusion of his little place. His clothes, consisting of a pair of flabby plus-fours the colour of horse manure and a polo-necked sweater that appeared to have been dipped in a solution of stale beer and axle grease, threw her own new pale green suit into such relief that she was now almost ashamed for having put it on.
While Mr Fletcher poured out sherry into a pair of chipped tooth-glasses Miss Stratton could only wonder what lunch was going to consist of. Mr Fletcher soon informed her:
‘I did knock up a pigeon and steak pie. I normally do it rather well. But I went into the park to look for primroses and left the gas too high and the thing burnt to a cinder. I hope you don’t mind sardines? They ought to marry fairly well with the wine.’
Jammed between gas-stove and bureau was a low couch, from which Mr Fletcher presently removed a basket of swede turnips, a portable radio, two empty sherry bottles, a shooting bag and a box of gramophone records, so that he and Miss Stratton could sit down.
‘These are the first primroses. They’re very early this year. I wanted awfully to get a few to put on the lunch table.’
The primroses were in an egg-cup. Miss Stratton again mournfully touched, held them to her face, breathing in the delicate velvet scent of them.
‘I always think you get the whole of spring in the scent of primroses,’ Mr Fletcher said. ‘It takes you back through all the springs of your life.’
Such remarks of Mr Fletcher’s always affected her deeply. It was almost as if Mr Fletcher had stroked her hand or put his face against hers. They had an intolerable, elusive intimacy.
In the intervals of pouring and drinking sherry Mr Fletcher got up to cut thick slices of brown bread and butter. Miss Stratton, wondering continually about the lunch table, of which she could so far see no sign, was prompted to ask if she could by any chance help?
‘I generally eat on the sewing machine,’ Mr Fletcher said. ‘The thing folds in and you get a flat top. It’s about right for two.’
‘Shall I arrange it a bit?’
‘Oh! would you? That’s awfully nice of you.’
Miss Stratton did her best to arrange the lunch table. The plain white tablecloth, much creased, had several holes in it and these she covered with pepper and salt pots, plates and the bowl of bananas and custard. While she was doing this Mr Fletcher opened the tin of sardines and said:
‘I rather fancy the sardines should be good. They’re very old. Did you know that sardines improved with age? Like wine?’
Miss Stratton said no, she wasn’t aware of that. She herself had no great fondness for sardines, though she was too embarrassed to say so, and now secretly wondered if Mr Fletcher wouldn’t allow her to poach some eggs or make an omelette or something of that sort.
Emboldened by a third glass of sherry, she at last made up her mind to suggest this. It would be the easiest thing in the world. And which did he prefer? Poached eggs or omelette?
‘I adore omelettes actually.’
Very well, Miss Stratton said, she would do omelettes. She in fact rather prided herself on her omelettes. Had Mr Fletcher any sort of thing to flavour them with? Cheese or ham or something?
‘I’ve got a tin of mushrooms somewhere,’ Mr Fletcher said and started to search for them in the jungle of his little place, eventually finding them in the bureau, mixed up with tins of cat food.
‘I know it’s the right one,’ Mr Fletcher said, ‘because it’s the one without the label.’
Miss Stratton, at once revolted by the thought of cat food, profoundly hoped it was. In the end it proved to be and Miss Stratton proceeded to make the omelette, the excellence of which Mr Fletcher praised with a typically shy enthusiasm throughout the meal.
After lunch Mr Fletcher sat on the couch and read the Sunday newspapers upside down. Once he looked up to see Miss Stratton reading hers upside down too and said:
‘I see you’re getting the knack of it. It really isn’t all that difficult, is it?’
No, Miss Stratton said, it wasn’t, and then caught Mr Fletcher in the act of gazing at her knees, above which her skirt had ridden up some inches. She hoped that this might mean that Mr Fletcher was taking a greater and more intimate interest in her legs and that in consequence he might suggest that she sat on the sofa with him. But nothing of the kind happened at all.
During subsequent weeks nothing happened either. Mr Fletcher was always kind, polite, considerate, attentive, anxious to please. On the train he brought Miss Stratton little nosegays of violets, once a bunch of cowslips, a pot of white cyclamen for her office desk and in due course a bunch of roses. In the evenings they drank sherry together. On Sundays she cooked lunch for him among the shambles of the sewing machine, the cats, the strewn papers and the clinging odour of fish.
But of the things she wanted most there was no sign. She longed for Mr Fletcher to make a gesture of something more than mere friendship: to touch her knee, to rest his face against hers, to make a gesture of affection, even love. At night, alone in bed, she even entertained the wild notion that one day Mr Fletcher
might suddenly lose his head and kiss her, even approach her with passion. In such moods she was always ready to surrender.
But by midsummer nothing had happened; and Miss Stratton, half in despair, at last decided to do something about it.
She decided to re-introduce her friend.
Her friend, she reasoned, might arouse in Mr Fletcher a keener interest in herself, even jealousy.
‘Well, I’m awfully afraid I can’t meet you tonight. You see, my friend –’
Curiously enough her increasing refusals had on Mr Fletcher an effect quite opposite from that she hoped and intended. Far from becoming more attentive, passionate or even jealous, Mr Fletcher became more and more depressed, turning more and more in upon himself, painfully spurned. Finally, on a hot, humid Sunday in July, they quarrelled.
An unexpectedly prolonged beautiful spell of weather had inspired Mr Fletcher to suggest a picnic in the park. At this time of year the long avenue of limes was in full flower: a great heavenly cathedral of perfume, the whole essence of summer.
Mr Fletcher had suggested one o’clock for the picnic but it was in fact past two o’clock when Miss Stratton arrived. When Mr Fletcher uttered some mild remonstrance about this, slightly agitated that some accident might have befallen her, she said:
‘Well, I had a phone call from my friend – I couldn’t very well not talk –’
In addition to being deliberately late Miss Stratton had also bought herself a new summer dress: a pale yellow short-sleeved shantung, purposely low at the neck. She had been inspired to do this by reading an article in a magazine which had examined the age-old causes of the things by which women attracted men. It seemed that the mode of attraction by the exposure of the legs was comparatively recent; until modern times the legs had been scrupulously concealed. The bosom, on the other hand, especially in the 18th century, had long been exposed.
She and Mr Fletcher sat in the shade of a huge old limetree to eat a picnic of ham, green salad, cheese, tomatoes and finally strawberries and cream, together with a bottle of white Alsatian wine. The scent of limes drenching the air was heavy and exotic. The taste of the wine, flowery too, matched it perfectly.