Something Short and Sweet

by H. E. Bates

  She sat forward, so that the whole of her skirt fell loose, the shoulder strap down, her small apple breasts as nearly visible as she dare let them be.

  ‘We’d better get on,’ the man said.

  ‘Yes. Don’t you think it funny about my birth mark?’ she said.

  He did not speak. He started the car. Very slowly she pulled on first the green jumper and then the brown and then, just before the car started, her coat. Putting on her coat she half stood up and when she sat down again her skirt was pulled up over her knees and she did not put it back again.

  In a minute the car moved off into the snow. She sat quiet, her anaemic face intent.

  ‘Don’t worry if people are rude,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to suffer that. That’s our mission. You’ve got to suffer many things before people see as you do.’

  Ten minutes later he pulled up. The gate was black. Far off a cyclist was coming, a dark spot in the snow.

  ‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Something short. God is love. Something short and sweet.’

  She got out of the car and staggered through the snow to the gate. Slowly, with bitterly cold hands, she chalked the words on it, though by that time she could hardly see.

  The Captain

  When the Captain and the woman first took the cottage, they looked out for a boy. ‘Just a kid to mow the grass and tidy up a bit,’ the woman said. At the end of a week they found him. His name was Albert. He was sixteen, one of a large family. He had little black arrogant eyes and a cool way with him and some unconscious habit of looking not quite straight. He was talkative, always on the spot, and the woman liked him from the first. She was amused by his sauce, and he liked to talk to her, bring her little things. He told her of otters one day, five cubs in the river-bank, at the foot of the field beyond the garden, among the meadowsweet. He could bring one. The Captain was listening. ‘You ever seen what a dog can do to an otter?’ he said.

  The Captain himself had a dog, a greyhound, the colour of a field-mouse. It was a sharp, dainty sensitive creature, and the Captain liked to lie under the apple trees, in the grass, and roll with it and nuzzle its mouth with his two hands and tease it into a pretence of anger. He liked the dog, the boy thought, almost more than the woman. The Captain was a heavy dark stiff browed man, about forty, with a way of answering people as though shaken out of an ugly dream. ‘Huh! Eh? What? What? Huh?’ The woman was rather common, with her fair loose hair drooping about and her flopping poppy-coloured pyjamas, but she was human, warm, with a sugary red-lipped little grin for the boy whenever she met him. At first the boy did not understand them, did not get the relationship. Then once he called her Mrs. Rolfe. ‘Mrs. Rolfe! Ha! That’s good. Oh, boy! Mrs. Rolfe. No, I’m just Miss Sydney. That’s all. Plain Miss Sydney.’

  All the week, from Monday to Friday, the boy would be alone, working in the garden, with only the dog for company, and the house locked up. All he had to do was to cut the lawn, trim the quick hedge flanking the lane, sweep the paths, weed the flowers, feed the dog. At first he could not get used to it, with the cottage lying at the dead end of the lane and no one coming, the summer days hot and empty, the warm flowery stillness of the little garden almost deathly. He had been used to company. There was not enough to do. And sometimes, in the heat of the day, work finished, he went down in the rough grass among the hazels and beat about for snakes or the young rabbits that scratched under the wire-netting from the field. Bored with that, he would lie half in the potatoes, half in the shade of the empty hen-run, and go to sleep for a bit.

  Then when the week-end came again he was excited. He was like a dog himself, joyful, eager to please. He nosed into the house, could not stop talking, followed the Captain and the woman about everywhere, like some little cocky terrier.

  He brought the woman a snake. It was a little viper. He had it in a seed-box, with gauze stretched over it, and the snake kept darting up, striking, flicking the gauze. He brought it to the woman as she sat lounging in a deck-chair on the lawn, in her red pyjamas, by herself.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I got him for you. Look. I caught him.’

  The woman saw the small darting head and shrieked. The Captain came running out of the house, hands clenched.

  ‘What’s up?’ Then he saw the snake. ‘Christ almighty, take that damn thing away! Take it away, damn you! Take it away!’

  Afraid, the boy stood still, held the box tight, did not know what to do. Suddenly the Captain tore the box from his hands in a rush of passion and flung it away across the grass. The boy saw with small slantwise eyes the snake slithering out over the grass.

  A sudden flat-handed blow stunned him for a moment. He could not see. The garden went black, surged to crimson and then went black again. On his right wrist the Captain wore a leather strap, with double buckles. It seemed as if the buckles had made hot prints of pain on the boy’s cheek-bone He stood dumb.

  ‘I’ll teach you to scare people. D’ye hear? You hear me? Look. You see that?’

  The Captain wore a leather belt round his waist. It was heavy buckled. He took it off. He held it loose, like a flat whip.

  ‘You see that? Well! Do you see it or don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You see it. Good. Next time you’ll not only see it but feel it. You understand that? You understand?’

  ‘Leave him alone, George,’ the woman said. ‘That’s enough. He knows. It’s all right.’

  ‘Leave him alone be damned. Bringing snakes. What next? What the hell?’

  ‘All right. But let him go. He understands. You understand, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘I just don’t like snakes. They scare me.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  ‘And what goes for snakes goes for anything else,’ the Captain said. ‘See that?’ He still held the belt. The boy had his eyes half on it and on the thick black-haired wrist. ‘And now make yourself damn scarce! Quick!’

  The boy went, humble, half watching.

  ‘There’s something about that damn kid I don’t like,’ the Captain said.

  ‘You shouldn’t have got the belt,’ the woman said.

  ‘Huh! Eh? What? What? Why not?’

  ‘He’s only a kid.’

  ‘Kid be damned. Isn’t he old enough to know?’

  After that the boy was glad to be alone. It was a comfort, the empty week, the hot stillness, and nobody but himself and the dog among the sunflowers and hollyhocks. He liked the small drowsy world, the feeling of being shut off, of having no fear. He felt boxed-up but secure, like the creatures he caught. It had become quite a habit now, since he had so little else to do, to catch something and box it up, half for companionship, half to satisfy in himself some small demon of joy. So at one time he had another snake in a box gauzed over, two fragile lizards in another, a bank vole, reddish-tinted like a fox. He would lie and watch them at the bottom of the garden, in the shade behind the hen coop, out of the hot white edge of sunlight, teasing the snake with straws to make it strike, holding the little vole under his hand, half letting it go, then catching it again, like a cat. All the time he wanted an otter cub, but fear held him back: fear of the Captain, of what the dog might do. In consolation he caught a small rabbit; he fell on it in the grass and then kept it in the hen-coop, in the full blaze of sunlight, until it scratched a way out of the soft cake-floor of hen-muck.

  Then the week-end came, and he let his creatures go. He was miserable. He watched the Captain, sheered away when he saw him coming. He scarcely spoke to the woman. She gave him her little sugary grins, but he no longer brought her anything.

  She saw what was the matter with him. She caught him alone and said, kindly: ‘How are your little otters? Do they grow much? Can they see yet?’

  ‘They’re all right,’ he said.

  ‘Funny, are they? Nice? You said you’d bring me one.’ She gave him a little petulant smile.

  He brightened. ‘So I will,’ he said. ‘I will. I will. I’ll get one. I ca
n get one.’

  He came with it the next day. It was Sunday, his day off. He had the little otter in a bird-cage. It lay in one corner, dead frightened, eyes like slate. It never moved. He came in by the back of the house. When he knocked at the door there was no answer. He waited, set the otter and cage down on the path by the fringes of catmint, and listened. Then he heard voices: the Captain’s, the woman’s, giggling.

  The boy went across the lawn towards them, cage in hand. His mind was on one thing: the otter. He had to give it to the woman. She wanted it. She’d asked for it. He had to give it to her.

  He got to within the shade of the tree before anything happened. Then the woman suddenly stopped laughing. ‘Shut up, you fool. Shut up. There’s someone here. It’s the kid. Let me go, let me go.’

  The Captain sat up, swivelling round on his heavy buttocks. ‘Huh! Eh? What? What? Huh?’

  Then he saw the boy. He leapt up in passion, stopped.

  ‘What the blazes you got in that damned cage? Eh?’

  ‘I got the otter, sir.’

  ‘You got what? Didn’t I tell you not to bring your damn pets here? Didn’t I tell you?’

  ‘It’s all right, George, it—’

  ‘You know what I’ve a good mind to do to you, eh?’ He took a step forward towards the boy, his two hands in his belt. ‘Coming here, with your damn pets, disturbing people, Sunday afternoon. What the blazes you mean by it?’

  The boy dropped the cage, stood frigid, paralysed.

  ‘It’s all right, George. I asked him. I—’

  ‘Then you ought to know better. That damned thing can’t live. It’s a water animal. Don’t you understand? You can’t keep it. It’ll die, in misery.’

  ‘Well, I—’ She stood a little embarrassed, folding her arms, unfolding them, smoothing her white shoulder-straps over her white skin.

  ‘Look at the damn thing,’ the Captain said. He kicked the cage round, so that the woman could see the little otter, cringing, terrorized, almost dead, in the corner of the bird-splashed cage. ‘Expect that to live? How can it? It’s nearly dead already. It wants killing out of its misery. It—’

  Suddenly he had an idea. He whistled, called once or twice ‘Here! Here! Here!’ and then whistled again. In a moment the dog came bounding out from the door-porch, in great leaps over the flowerbeds. He stood quivering by the Captain, in delicate agitation, waiting for a command.

  ‘Down, Bounder, down. Down!’ the Captain said. He turned to the boy. ‘You’ve never seen what a dog can do to an otter, have you? Down, Bounder! Down! Eh? Have you?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘All right.’

  Suddenly the Captain bent down and unfastened the cage and took out the little otter and let it run across the grass. ‘No, Bounder! No! Down, down!’ The otter ran a little way, cramped, crouching. It ran and limped four or five yards. It was small and helpless. The dog stood quivering, watching, waiting for the word, his mouth trembling, in pain. Then the Captain shouted. The dog took an instant great leap and was on the otter and it was all over. The otter hung from the dog’s mouth like a piece of sodden flannel, and then the dog began to tear it to pieces, throwing it about, ripping it in lust, until it was like a blood-soaked swab.

  ‘Now you know what a dog does to an otter, eh? Don’t you? No mistake about that, was there?’

  The boy could not speak.

  ‘George, let him go home,’ the woman said. ‘You go home now,’ she said to the boy. ‘You go –’

  The boy turned to go, white-faced, his eyes half on the woman, half on the dog playing with the bloody rag of the dead otter.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ the Captain said. ‘You understand this, once and for all? You stop bringing things here. Stop it. We don’t want it. And now get out! And when we come next week don’t come here on Sunday afternoons, nosing. Behave your damn self!’

  The boy turned to go. In a rush of rage the Captain kicked out at him, catching him on the flank of the buttocks. The boy ran, hearing the Captain protest to the woman: ‘It had got to die, I tell you. How could it live? It’s a water animal, the little fool.’

  In the morning the boy was back again early. The Captain and the woman had gone. The garden was still, hot already, the dew drying off.

  The boy had a fixed idea. He had worked it out. Nothing could stop it. In the mornings, when he arrived, his first job was to feed the dog. That morning he did not feed it. He let the dog out of the wash-house, where it slept, and the dog bounded about the lawn, sniffing, cocking its leg, coming back to be fed at last.

  The boy did nothing. The dog watched him. When he moved, the dog followed him. Then, about nine o’clock, he took the dog down to the hencoop. Already the sun was hot, with a fierce July brassiness, the sky without cloud or wind. The boy opened the hen-coop and put his hand on the floor of hen-muck. It was hot. He looked up at the sky. The hen-coop was full in the sun. For the whole day it would be in the sun.

  Then the boy called the dog. ‘Bounder, Bounder! Rabbits! Look! Fetch’em, Bounder! Fetch’em, fetch’em!’

  In an instant the dog tore into the hen-coop. The boy slammed the door. The dog tore round and round for a moment and then stood still. The boy bolted the coop door and went up the path.

  When he came back, half an hour later, the dog was scratching frenziedly. The boy had not thought of that. So he rushed back to the toolhouse and came back with a hammer and a small axe. He began to cut short stakes out of bean-poles and hammer them into the ground all round the foot of the coop. The dog stopped scratching and watched him.

  Then when the boy had finished, it began its frenzy of scratching again, clouding up grey dust, already terrorized. The boy watched for a moment. Then he got bricks and laid them in a single row alongside the stakes. He was quite calm. His mouth was set. He was sweating.

  But he was still not satisfied. He went up to the toolhouse and came back with a spade. Then he chopped out heavy sods of rough grass and piled them over the bricks, hammering them firm down with the back of the spade, until he had built at last a kind of earthwork, heavy and tight, all round the foot of the wire.

  Then he stood and looked at the dog. Every time he looked at the dog he hated it. Each time he remembered the otter, saw the bloody piece of flannel being ripped and slapped to bits. His hatred was double-edged. He hated the dog because of the Captain; he hated the Captain because of the dog.

  All that day, at intervals of about an hour, he went and looked at the dog. At first it scratched madly. Then it tired. In the afternoon it did nothing. It lay huddled up, as the otter had done, in the corner of the coop. Then, towards the end of the day, it got back its strength. It stood up and howled, barking in fury. Whenever the boy went near it hurled itself about in a great bounding frenzy of rage and anguish.

  All the time the boy did nothing. The next day he did nothing. In the morning, first thing, he was frightened that something had happened, that the dog might have escaped, might be waiting for him. But the dog was still there. He set up a howling when the boy approached. The boy looked at the sods and bricks and then went away.

  All that day he did nothing. All morning the dog scratched and leapt about in a kind of indiarubber agony. Then in the heat of the afternoon he quietened again. He lay motionless, abject, tongue out. The boy looked at the tongue. He had an idea that it ought to turn black. He wanted it to turn black.

  He wanted the dog to die, but also he wanted it to die slowly. By Wednesday the dog was sick. Heat had parched it, withered it, made an inexorable impression of misery on it. Lean always, it now had the look of a dog skeleton, with the grey skin drumtight over its ribs. It held its tongue out for long intervals, panting deeply, right up from the heart, in agony. Then the tongue would go back, and the eyes would shine out with dark mournfulness, strangely sick. Then the panting would begin again.

  The boy was satisfied. On Thursday he did not go too near the coop. He had some idea that, in time, before death, the dog would go mad. On Thursday
he thought he saw the beginning of madness. The dog began to slobber a great deal, a sour yellow cream of saliva that dribbled down its lower lip and dried, in time, in the hot sun, into a flaky scab. By the end of that day the dog had lost all fight. It lay in supreme dejection. It no longer howled. When its tongue fell out, for brief, slow stabs of breath, the boy could see a curious rough muskiness on it, as though the dog had been eating the sun-dried dust of hen-muck. All the time his hatred never relaxed at all: hatred of the dog because of the Captain, of the Captain because of the dog, and all during Thursday he watched for the dog to show its first signs of madness and dying.

  He wanted the dog to die on Friday: on Friday because it would leave him clear, free. He could drag the dog out and bury it and then go and not come back. To his way of thinking, it seemed simple. The Captain would be back on Saturday.

  On Friday morning he hoped to find the dog dead. It was not dead. It still lay there, against the wire, eyes sick and open, waiting for him. The boy had a spasm of new hatred, really fear, because of the dog’s toughness. Then suddenly he saw the tongue come out, slowly, in great pain. It was swollen, almost black. He jumped about, glad. It was black; it was mad. He knew, then, that it was almost the end.

  Friday was not so hot. White clouds ballooned over and gave the dog a little rest from heat in the afternoon. By afternoon the boy was afraid. The dog still lay there, strangely still, the deep mad eyes almost closed, the mouth sour-flaked, the tongue terribly swollen. But it was alive, and he could do nothing. Once he got a goose-necked hoe and opened the coop door, holding it half open with his feet. He fixed the dog with his eye. If he could hit it once it would die. Then the dog stirred. And in a second he slammed the door shut with terror.

  Then he had another idea. He made a loop with a piece of binder string and let the string down through the mesh of the coop-wire. He let it down slowly, until the loop was level with the dog’s head. But the dog, mouth against the floor of the coop, would not stir, so that he could not slip the knot. He called it once, and for the first time, by its name, ‘Bounder, Bounder!’ but it would not move.