The Golden Oriole

by H. E. Bates

  ‘Mother, I’m back. Are you in?’

  This time, after a moment or two of silence, her voice, muffled from behind the bedroom door, answered:

  ‘I’m lying down. I’ve had a terrible head all day. I’ve taken some aspirin and I’d like to be quiet for a while.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Of course.’

  ‘Get yourself some tea if you want some. If you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I won’t bother,’ he called. ‘I’m right out of stamps and there are a few letters I want to do. I’ll hop down to the post and get some and perhaps have a cup of tea at the Bun Shop on the way back.’

  ‘Do that, dear. That’s the simplest way.’

  It was not until he was actually out of the door and into the street that his mind accepted the image of something he had seen while crossing the hall.

  He hesitated for a moment, then let himself into the house again and stood for fully two minutes staring at a malacca cane umbrella hanging on the hat stand. The black cover was unrolled and slightly wet with rain.

  With a strange feeling of not being himself, of being in some way disembodied, he started to walk slowly to the post office. Another shower was brewing, coming up from the west on blue-black clouds, and spots of rain were actually falling on his jacket without his noticing them when a voice hailed him:

  ‘Hullo there, George. Back so soon?’

  It was his boss, Freddy Rogers. In his engineering draughtsman’s office they worked together more as colleagues than anything else. It wouldn’t be long, Rogers promised, before they were partners.

  ‘Why the swift return?’

  ‘Didn’t like the place. There was no fishing either.’

  ‘You look a bit under par, old boy. Haven’t been on the run, have you? You ought to get some sea air.’

  ‘I’m off again the day after tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Taking the car this time. That’s if it’s all right with you.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to that little place on the Suffolk coast I told you about? It’s terrifically bracing. It’ll put any amount of ginger into you. You look as if you have bad dreams.’

  ‘I sometimes do.’

  ‘You’ve got to snap out of this, George,’ Freddy said. ‘We’ve got that big Smith & Hanson contract coming on in September.’

  Back at the house he was writing letters in the sitting-room when his mother came downstairs, still in a dressing gown. She looked, he thought, rather more brittle than when he had left her three days before. Her eyes were unradiant and tired. She kissed him on both cheeks and said:

  ‘Tell me about your holiday. Why are you back so soon?’

  ‘It was too cold. I had all the wrong clothes with me. I’m off south the day after tomorrow, taking the car this time.’

  ‘I’m glad about that. It’s been cold and rainy here too.’

  He licked the flap of an envelope, sealed it down and pressed it hard with the palm of his hand.

  ‘By the way, whose umbrella was that I saw hanging in the hall? I don’t remember seeing that before.’

  With the utmost casualness she said:

  ‘Is that your last letter? I’ll walk to the post with them if you like. I feel I need some air.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I forgot to ask how your head was.’

  ‘It’s a deal better. I took a fair bit of aspirin. The umbrella? It belonged to an insurance agent who called this afternoon. He forgot it. He came about the final settling up of your father’s policy.’

  ‘I thought it was already settled.’

  ‘Well, so it is to all intents and purposes. It was just that they wanted another paper signed. It’s an awful bore, the time they take to get things settled up. Not that it’s a fat lump when it comes.’

  ‘How much is it? I never asked you.’

  ‘Three thousand.’

  ‘It’s something. You’ll manage for a time.’

  She started laughing with a peculiar distastefulness.

  ‘Manage? Manage? I like to do more than manage in my life, thank you. I like nice things. I was brought up to like nice things. You can’t expect me to live on bread and water.’

  He made no answer to what he thought was an intolerable question. The eyes, behind their fair lashes, were becoming inflamed with temper. He had often seen them flame like that before.

  ‘By the way, the umbrella isn’t there now.’

  ‘Oh! isn’t it? How odd. It couldn’t be, I suppose, because he came back and fetched it five minutes ago?’

  Again he made no answer. She moved towards the door, brittle again in her every movement, hands forming a restless cage as she locked them in front of her.

  ‘Is there any great urgency about the letters?’ she said. ‘If not, I’ll get some supper and take them later.’

  ‘No. No urgency. Just when you feel you’d like to go.’

  ‘All right.’ She was already out of the room. ‘They’ll go at midnight anyway.’

  After supper, tired out and once again oppressed by the curious feeling of being disembodied, not quite himself, he went to bed, leaving his mother to post the letters. The night was very quiet. It seemed suddenly to have grown quite sultry and he lay for a long time with eyes open, re-living among other things the sound of the cornet being practised, the scales haunting and mocking him like the dream of his father.

  When he finally slept he was woken some long time later by two sounds: the shriek of a train roaring through the night and the sound of his mother coming home.

  As she started to climb the stairs he switched on his torch and looked at his watch.

  It was half past two.

  By Saturday he was back in Skelby Moor. The spell of wintry August rain had given way first to sultriness, then to clear brilliant sunshine. Everywhere the green hills were alight, fresh and sparkling.

  As he walked into the silent and empty lobby of The Midland Hotel he suddenly realised, too late, that half past three in the afternoon is not the best of all possible times at which to arrive at small provincial hotels. The staff are generally resting; the proprietress is either out walking or asleep in her room; the boots is having forty winks or waiting for the racing results or playing cards.

  After banging twice without result on a big bell that stood on the reception counter he went and sat in a big horse-hair chair in the lounge. He started to read a magazine in which there was a great deal about dogs and horses. Both were animals in which he hadn’t the slightest interest and suddenly he felt his eyes begin to close.

  Some time later, half asleep, he began to have the strangest feeling that he was being stared at. He also actually thought he heard a voice say ‘Oh! Good God,’ in an astonished half whisper.

  He opened his eyes and looked up to see, standing in the doorway of the lounge, a woman of twenty-nine or so with thick attractive dark hair and large enveloping brown eyes. There was a certain restless air of shyness about her that was, as he afterwards discovered, almost entirely the result of sheer surprise. Her dress was pure white linen with scarlet pipings on the cuffs and collar and it looked as if it had just been ironed.

  He knew, somehow, that this was Mrs Lambton’s sister. She in turn looked at him as if about to greet him with some exclamatory form of recognition. She had the air of being suddenly confronted by a familiar face she hadn’t seen for some time.

  ‘I’m sorry. Did you want something? Have you been waiting long?’

  ‘Not really.’ He got up from the chair. ‘No hurry. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Did you ring? I was upstairs changing my dress. I didn’t hear the bell.’

  ‘It really didn’t matter—’

  ‘Was it a room you wanted?’

  ‘Yes. Just for three or four days.’

  ‘Of course. Perhaps you would register?’

  Her voice was warm, quiet and inclined to be rather slow. The vowels, in the northern way, were a little high but altogether without a trace of sharpness.

  At the reception desk she turned the visitor
s book round to him so that he could fill in his name. He was unscrewing the top of his fountain pen when, to his own intense surprise, she said:

  ‘It is Mr Clarkson, isn’t it?’

  When he said no, he was sorry, it wasn’t Mr Clarkson. Her face suddenly flushed very deeply and then, within some seconds, went dead white, not merely startled but completely shocked.

  ‘Oh! really? I felt sure I recognised you. I felt sure you must have stayed with us here before. I’m so sorry. Your face seemed so—’

  She made a flurried pretence of searching about the desk for papers. Her hands were nervous, slender and pale. There was no ring on them and he said:

  ‘As a matter of fact I have. I was here a few days ago. Mrs Lambton made me very comfortable.’

  ‘Oh! yes, my sister. She’s out this afternoon.’ He was writing his name in the book now. ‘My eldest brother came to fetch her for a drive. They’re going to have tea somewhere—’

  He had finished writing his name by now. He turned the book round towards her and she looked at it and said:

  ‘Oh! I see. Mr Pickard? I do hope you didn’t think it stupid of me just now, Mr Pickard? I really did think—’

  Not all the nervousness had quite gone out of her voice and eyes and hands and he tried to reduce the situation to final calmness by saying:

  ‘It’s just one of those things that could happen to anybody. After all I might say that I’d seen you before. You’re quite like your sister.’

  ‘Oh! you really think so? Hardly anybody does.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Perhaps in looks a little,’ she said, ‘but not in temperament. Certainly not in temperament.’

  As if this were meant to put a sudden stop to the conversation about her she turned abruptly and took the key of room No. 12 from a rack behind her.

  ‘I had No. 7 last time,’ George Pickard said. ‘It was very quiet—’

  ‘I’m afraid there’s a gentleman in there now. He may be out by Monday. But No. 12 is quite nice. It really is—

  ‘Of course. It was only that the trains—’

  ‘Oh! the trains won’t disturb you in No. 12.’

  As she took him upstairs to No. 12 he half paused on the landing and said:

  ‘Oh! there was something I wanted to ask you. I understand there’s some decent fishing here.’

  ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Not exactly here. But four or five miles up the dale there’s a place. Quite a nice stream—’

  ‘Does one need permission?’

  ‘Oh! you simply take a daily ticket, I think. That’s what—’

  She broke off, again with that sudden intimation of the conversation being closed. A moment later she had unlocked the door of No. 12 and he was in the room, gazing again at the familiar swarm of coal dust on window sills, furniture and even counterpane.

  ‘You must tell me when you want to go,’ she said, ‘and I’ll give you directions.’

  ‘I’ll probably go tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I’ll take advantage of the weather. It’s a good spell.’

  She lingered at the door, ready but reluctant to close it. She looked altogether calmer now. The deep, good-looking brown eyes were not troubled. The embarrassment of having mistaken him for someone else had been replaced by an air of rumination.

  ‘I envy you going there,’ she said. ‘I like that place. I really envy you.’

  After that she seemed to disappear from the hotel completely. It was Mrs Lambton who served drinks when the bar opened and again Mrs Lambton who came to ask the guests, at dinner, if all was well. Mrs Lambton was cheerful, glad to see everybody, glad to be of service and even reminded George Pickard to tell the night porter exactly what he wanted for breakfast and when. They believed in good breakfasts at the Midland and there were some lovely kippers.

  After dinner, as before, he wandered into the square. Trains shunted smokily about in the sultry August twilight. What a place for a restless girl to be caught up in, he thought again, and once more started instinctively listening for the cornet’s mournful, mocking scales.

  But this time there was no sound of them and as the light finally faded he started to walk back to the hotel. A figure in a white dress but now with a scarlet sweater slung loosely over the shoulders stood under the big stone portico and a voice said:

  ‘Admiring our great metropolis?’

  He laughed briefly.

  ‘It isn’t so bad when it’s dark.’

  ‘I often think that,’ she said. ‘I often think it’s a mercy we have nights.’

  ‘The night is merciful – didn’t someone once say that somewhere?’

  ‘I don’t know. If they didn’t they should have done.’

  A moment later he was about to ask her if she would join him in a drink when she said:

  ‘I hope you won’t mind but there was something I wanted to ask you. Or rather show you.’

  ‘Oh! Yes?’

  ‘Walk along the street a little way with me, will you?’ she said. ‘Just away from the hotel?’

  It was now obvious to him that she was having the greatest difficulty in keeping calm. Several times, in spite of the sultry evening, she nervously hitched her sweater more closely round her shoulders.

  Fifty yards away, at the corner of the square, a street lamp was burning. She stopped under it, unfastened her handbag and took out a postcard.

  ‘I just wondered if this might mean anything to you. Of course I don’t really suppose it does, but if—’

  He took the card and stared at it under the street lamp. It was a picture of his father.

  ‘Does it? Do you know that man?’

  He stood for some time staring at the card, unsure himself now, not knowing what to say.

  ‘If you do please tell me.’

  He gave the card back to her. He was sharply aware of a bitter sickness contracting the back of his throat.

  ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘It’s my father.’

  She stood against the lamp-post, gripping it with one hand exactly as if in fear that she hadn’t the strength to stand up by herself.

  ‘Can you tell me something else? Where is he now?’

  ‘He’s dead. He—’

  ‘What?’

  The word sounded like a stifled scream; she actually stood with one hand clapped to her mouth, face dead white under the lamp.

  ‘He died six weeks ago.’

  She made a sudden sharp and helpless movement so that for a moment he felt sure that she was falling. Instead she merely turned and held blindly, with both hands, to the street lamp.

  ‘Oh! my God,’ was all she kept saying. ‘Oh! my God. My dear God.’

  No rain had freshened the narrow stream for some days and now the water, in most places, was low and clear. It spilled with leaping brilliance past limestone boulders stained apple-green at the water line and between banks of birch, thick bracken and occasional larch trees. It was the hottest Sunday of the year, George Pickard thought, and in places where big pools formed under trees the water lay in undisturbed glassy darknesses.

  ‘I still think I shouldn’t have come,’ she said. ‘I know how fishermen like to be alone.’

  ‘I asked you to come.’

  ‘Being asked isn’t necessarily a reason for—’

  ‘I asked you to come.’

  He had asked her to come because she was, he thought, in no state to be alone and now they were sitting, half way through the sultry afternoon, by one of the deeper glassy pools. She was wearing a dress that he liked very much: a fresh, simple affair of printed cotton, with a pattern of crimson rose-buds, a rather flared skirt and a low circular neck-line. She looked rather younger than on the previous day, he thought, and though for long periods she was very quiet she seemed altogether less taut, less nervous and with no trace of hesitation.

  In the bracken a prolonged chorus of grasshoppers had the effect of filling the long silences between conversation with a quivering tension. His fishing rod lay undone in its canvas cas
e on the bank; not a single hint of a rise had so far marked the dark skin of water. In one of the longer silences she took off her shoes and then lay full length on the grass, slowly and exquisitely flexing her bare white feet.

  ‘How did you come to know about Skelby Moor in the first place? I suppose your father must have told you?’

  It began with a post-card, he started to tell her – his father had drawn a picture of a fish on a post-card – and then a dream.

  ‘A dream?’

  He half-started to tell her about the dream and then stopped. The strangest of all the effects that the long spells of tension between them produced was a feeling of growing remoteness from each other. He wanted all the time to get to know her better; all the time he felt she was slipping farther away.

  ‘Don’t you want to tell me anything about the dream?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  The words seemed to take him still farther away from her. He heard one of her feet lapping quietly at the surface of the pool. He sat looking at her, in silence, for a long time, noticing how pretty her head was when she held it to one side, watching her feet and the water. The face looked wonderfully cool, he thought, in the warm shadows.

  ‘What exactly made you come up here anyway?’ she said at last. ‘I mean to Skelby Moor. To that awful place. Nobody in their right senses would come up here for a holiday.’

  He thought for some moments in silence and then said:

  ‘Have you ever come to a street corner and felt you simply had to turn it even though it wasn’t the way you intended going?’

  ‘Often.’

  ‘It was like that.’

  How else could he explain, he asked himself, what had made him come up there? There were things that were never capable of rational explanation and he was suddenly aware of juggling confusedly with half-truths, and again of not being himself, of not knowing where he was.

  ‘Have you had the dream again since you came up here?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  For the first time she gave a little laugh, quite happily.

  ‘Just curiosity. I wondered if I might have been in it, that’s all.’

  He was about to say that he wished she had when she went on:

  ‘Do dreams fascinate you?’