Something Short and Sweet

by H. E. Bates

  ‘Well, I’m blowed.’

  ‘I left school at August. I’m waiting to get a job.’

  ‘Well.’ He looked at her. She was pretty, with short yellow hair cut straight, and strong bare arms, and rather a fine high forehead. ‘Now I’m come to look at you, you’re like your mother.’

  She laughed; and Mr. Sanderson, less depressed, laughed too, and they were intimate.

  ‘Like being a waitress?’

  She just grinned. ‘Would you?’

  ‘Don’t you get out?’

  ‘Oh! yes. But what can you do in a place like this?’

  ‘That’s what I want to know.’

  He drank his coffee. The girl watched the rain. Suddenly he thought ‘Oh! damn it, why not?’ and said:

  ‘If I went to the pictures would you come with me?’

  ‘I would. I’d love it.’

  ‘Good.’ He felt suddenly light-hearted. ‘That’s more than I dare have asked Miss Lomas. Even at my age.’

  ‘She wouldn’t come if you asked her.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t think she believes in it. In relationships, I mean – man and woman. Even if it’s platonic. I think she lives it all in books.’ Then suddenly she said. ‘If I’m coming with you I’d better fly. I’ll meet you at the cinema, shall I? We needn’t broadcast it from the house-tops that we’re going together.’

  ‘I don’t know that we need,’ he said.

  When he went to get his mackintosh Miss Lomas was just going across the hall and into the drawing-room, with a novel in her hands. She did not speak. She carried herself with the same upright negation as ever. Looking straight before her, she seemed to be looking always towards some kind of spiritual but empty horizon. Her medium spiritless brown eyes had some sort of subdued pain in them. ‘Perhaps she suffers from indigestion,’ he thought.

  Later he said this to the girl. When they met at the cinema the rain had ceased. It was windy, with sudden acres of blue sky and, under the shelter of the white boarding houses on the promenade, an almost hot sun. ‘It seems too good to go to the pictures,’ she said, and he agreed. ‘Let’s walk over to the Flats instead.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, and they walked eastwards out of the town, into a gusty bright afternoon. As they walked, the wind and sun cleared the sky above the sea until the air shone with a kind of lofty radiance. And then, beyond the town, the marshland stretched out, yellowish green, the grass still summer-dried, in places almost white with salt. Tufts of sea-pink, half seed, half flower, were still blooming in the drifts of shingle. The girl walked fast. She had no hat, and her hair blew all about her face. She talked a lot, exuberantly, girlishly. She would stop sometimes and point out headlands along the coast, or sea-birds, or churches beyond the rim of marshland. ‘I adore it,’ she would say. It was her favourite word. And she seemed to carry him along on a succession of flights of adoration.

  And then they talked of Miss Lomas. ‘She has indigestion,’ he said. ‘That’s her trouble.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the girl said. ‘She comes to us every winter. This is the fourth winter. She comes when the summer people have gone, and stops till Easter.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Yes. She just sits and reads, that’s all. That’s all I ever saw her do.’

  ‘I still think it’s indigestion,’ he said.

  After that, they forgot her. Mr. Sanderson walked along with a great sense of exhilaration. At home he was a draper. It was fine to feel free, to smell sun and sea instead of serge and calico. ‘This walk is doing me good,’ he said. And then: ‘By the way, you never told me your name?’

  ‘Freda,’ she said.

  ‘And what’s Miss Lomas’s name?’

  ‘I never heard it,’ she said.

  In the late afternoon they rested. They sat down on the very edge of the shore, where hollows of sand were fringed with thin dune-grass and still blue sea-thistle. The girl lay down. He half sat beside her, resting on one elbow. Her hair was almost the colour of the sand. She lay with arms stretched out, her dress tight across her body, her eyes opening and shutting in what seemed to be an ecstasy of mental drowsiness. She seemed to lie there in deliberate invitation to him, so that he felt some kind of stupid eagerness, almost an ache, grow up in him. By that time the afternoon was going quickly. The tide was coming up and the sea losing its light. For two or three minutes he lay and watched the vague passage of ships. Then he turned and looked at the girl again. She looked back, straight, with a frankness of invitation that made him feel almost shocked.

  ‘You’re slow,’ she said.

  Rather stupidly he bent down then and she put her arm up to him. He felt in some way passive, impelled by her. In the end he kissed her, not very well and with a feeling of being out of practice, with consequent stupidity. ‘Come on,’ she said softly. ‘Again. Better than that. A long one. A real one.’ She held her lips still and slightly apart and shut her eyes.

  All the way back across the marshland in the sudden twilight, he was troubled by a constant notion that he ought to be careful. ‘She’s only a kid,’ he would think. All the way he walked with his arm round her, closely. It was she who had put it there.

  And then, in the town, they separated. He felt rather old and a little tired. Walking in that strong air, with intervals of unexpected passion, had been almost too much for him. He was glad to get back to Bellevue and have a bath and a rest before dinner.

  And at dinner only Miss Lomas, as usual, was there; and, as usual, she did not speak. To his disappointment also, there was no sight of Freda. Mrs. Harrap, a jolly, rather assertive woman with ear-rings, brought in the dishes herself. Even for her Miss Lomas had no conversation. And now, since she could not look out to sea, she looked at the Venetian blinds, drawn down over the window. There was no difference in her manner. If the horizon itself had been shut out, the spiritual horizon remained, to be everlastingly affixed by her medium brown eyes, with their air of spiritless martyrdom.

  He did not see Freda until much later. Miss Lomas had gone to bed and he was in the hall, reading the amusement guide before going himself. The girl came in as he stood there. The house was very quiet and for some moments she did not speak. She stood and smiled and then opened the door of the drawing-room and they went inside. It all happened without a word. It was dark and she put her arms about him and kissed him. It was literally she who kissed him. He stood passive, holding her tightly. ‘Again,’ she would say. ‘Tighter, hold me tighter. Please. Tighter.’ And he held her and kissed with something of the old feeling of inadequacy, rather stupidly, feeling somehow that he was no match for her.

  Then, as they came out of the dark drawing-room, they heard a sound on the stairs above. It was as though someone had moved suddenly away.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said. ‘Somebody watching?’

  ‘It’s nothing. What does it matter, anyway?’

  After another moment, they said good night. The girl seemed careless, impish. And then, going upstairs, he saw that the door of Miss Lomas’s room was ajar.

  II

  It was not until two days later that Miss Lomas spoke to him. In the interval he had twice taken the girl out again, once to the cinema, in the afternoon, and once to the pier, late in the evening. Coming out of the cinema, he had been surprised to see Miss Lomas. With umbrella and mackintosh on her arm, she had been walking rapidly along the promenade, as though in a great hurry to get somewhere. He got ready to raise his hat. And then, suddenly she crossed the street and did not see them at all.

  Then, the following day, she spoke to him. He was sitting in the drawing-room, after lunch, reading the paper. He was feeling better in health. He could read and lose himself in what he was reading. And it was pleasant to think of flirting with the girl after all. Suddenly, there was Miss Lomas. She was standing in front of him, ready to speak.

  Then, before she spoke, he noticed an odd thing. Her hands were tightly clenched. And she seemed to be looking be
yond him. She seemed extraordinarily nervous, and it made him nervous. As he got up he kicked the chair-leg and dropped his newspaper and then hurriedly took off his reading glasses.

  ‘I would like to speak to you,’ she said.

  ‘Oh! yes, Miss Lomas,’ he said. ‘Oh! yes. Good. What was it?’

  She was silent. He waited. And then she said, with a kind of righteous, almost comic abruptness.

  ‘I saw you out with that girl.’

  He got ready to reply. She went on at once:

  ‘I don’t think it right. Secretly. She’s only a girl.’ She repeated it, as though to convince him. ‘I don’t think it’s right. Your meeting her like that, secretly. It’s not right.’

  ‘You mean you don’t think it’s right,’ he said.

  ‘It’s the same thing. I don’t think it’s right.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.

  For a moment she stood still, silent. She was breathing fast, in agitation. There was some kind of explosive dignity about her. Her eyes were no longer in any way medium. They were passionately, almost comically indignant. She was a little shortsighted and it was as though her eyes were not strong enough to sustain any such ferocity of emotion. Then suddenly she burst out. ‘Do you expect me to tell you what to do?’ and went out.

  The whole thing made him feel perverse. He was not more than momentarily angry. That afternoon he went out with the girl again, arranging it deliberately. He told her about Miss Lomas. ‘Interfering old cat,’ she said, and they had a good laugh about it together.

  Then, after dinner that evening, something else happened. He took the evening paper into the drawing-room, prepared and even anxious for trouble. Miss Lomas sat there with her eternal book. He had hardly sat down when she got up and did an extraordinary thing. She apologised.

  ‘I’m sorry about this afternoon,’ she said.

  He could think of nothing to say. She was very earnest and it was almost comic. He simply stood still and listened while she made efforts, by repetition, as she had done earlier, to convince him.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m very sorry. It was not my business.’

  Then he did feel, for the first and only time, momentarily angry with her.

  ‘If it was not your business why did you do it? There’s no need to spy on people.’

  She just stood silent, as though it were true and as though she accepted it. Her eyes did not change their look of medium stupidity. Except that now it was painful. He could not look at her.

  After that there seemed nothing he could say and he left the room and got his mackintosh and went for a walk along the promenade. It was a squally cold evening, with a sharp wind off the sea, and when he got back to the boarding house the drawing-room was empty and he rang for some coffee. Freda brought it.

  ‘I must tell you about Miss Lomas,’ he said. ‘By the way, where is she? Gone to bed?’

  ‘She went up some time after eight.’

  ‘I must tell you about her. She apologised tonight.’

  They went on to talk about it and they had another laugh about her.

  ‘She’s not a bad sort,’ he said. ‘She just suffers from indigestion, that’s all.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ the girl said. ‘Why don’t you ask her to the cinema – just to see what happens. Just to see how she takes it.’

  ‘I thought you said she didn’t believe in it?’

  ‘Well, ask her. Just for fun. For a joke,’ she said. ‘Ask her for fun.’

  He put it to Miss Lomas on the following day, casually, rather off-hand. Very much to his astonishment she accepted, and they went in the evening, after dinner. On the way he said something about life being short and there being no reason why they should not be good friends and she said yes, she agreed except that sometimes life seemed rather long. He thought it an odd remark but after that they did not speak much. She had dressed up a little for the occasion: a brown and mauve hat and, underneath her coat, a mauve silk dress. In the cinema she took off her coat and he could see her flat, unbecoming chest that had no shape about it at all. It was a cold evening, but once or twice during the performance she said how hot it was. He thought she seemed restless and afterwards at the boarding-house he said so.

  ‘Oh! I’m like that,’ she said. ‘It was really wonderful.’

  And then, as she shook hands before going upstairs to bed, he was amazed to find out how really hot she was. Her hand was damp with sweat. It was as though it had been a kind of exquisite ordeal for her.

  And when, after lunch on the following day, Freda wanted to know all about it, he said, joking: ‘I think it was a bit too much for her. She got all hot and bothered.’

  ‘She fell for you,’ the girl said. ‘That’s all. You made a hit. She thinks you’re Valentino. Very nice.’

  They were in the dining-room, alone. The girl took a quick look round.

  ‘Kiss me,’ she said. ‘Now. Quickly.’ She kissed him, rapturously, with devilry, and then said: ‘And tell me something. Valentino or no Valentino, that’s the last time? Or else I shall get jealous.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘Once with Miss Lomas is enough for a lifetime.’

  Almost before he had said it he felt curiously uneasy. He turned quickly round and looked at the doorway. Miss Lomas was standing there. Caught in the very act of listening, she did not move or speak. She made no kind of protest, and after a moment she turned and went quickly back to the drawing-room.

  ‘That’s the limit!’ the girl said. ‘That is the limit. That shows what she is.’

  ‘Yes, that finishes it,’ he said.

  From that day until he left, a fortnight later, Miss Lomas did not speak to him. It was even, sometimes, as though he did not exist. She lived constantly in that medium spiritless brown world in which he had first found her, looking out to sea as she ate, reading eternal novels, gazing at her spiritual horizon beyond the drawn Venetian blinds in the evenings. He saw a change only once. Looking up from his paper, unexpectedly, one evening, in the drawing-room, he caught her looking at him. She was looking at him with the oddest conflict of emotions: hatred and doubt and despair and what he felt was also a kind of religious devotion. It was as though she were trying to hypnotize him. It filled her ordinarily emotionless eyes with a painful complexity of tenderness and jealousy.

  Two days later he left. He said good-bye to Freda on the previous evening. She took it badly. The weather had turned warm, with real soft autumnal humidity, and they lay in the dark beach and kissed a lot until, at last, the girl cried. ‘It’ll be rotten when you’ve gone,’ she said. ‘What shall I do? Why don’t you stay? Oh! I’ll drown myself or something.’

  ‘Look here, don’t talk silly.’

  ‘I will. It’ll be so rotten. Why do you have to go?’

  ‘I work for my living. I’ve got a business. I’ll come back. I’ll see you again.’

  ‘You won’t. You’ll forget me.’

  ‘I won’t. I’ll come. Now be a good girl and kiss me and promise you won’t do anything silly.’

  There was passion in her kisses, but no promise. All the way home in the train he was worried by stupid fears. She was a dynamic girl and he felt as though he had left her in suspense. Overcharged with passion, she might very well go off into some tragic explosion. Girls did silly things and even, sometimes, killed themselves. He felt, all along, that he had been something of a fool.

  A week later he got a letter. It was from the girl herself. It was a long letter, and she enclosed a cutting from a newspaper.

  It was Miss Lomas, not she, who had killed herself. It was an awful thing, the girl said, and she did not understand it.

  Nor did he understand it himself.

  The Sow and Silas

  Every August, on the Sunday of Nenweald Fair, my uncle Silas came to visit us. He was a man, sometimes, of strict habits; he wound up his watch after every meal, never let a day pass without a bottle of wine, and never stirred out without hi
s gall-stone, a lump of barbaric rock as large as a pheasant’s egg treasured as the relic of an operation at the early age of seventy, carefully wrapped up in a piece of his housekeeper’s calico and reverently laid away in the bum-pocket of his breeches.

  And in the same strict way he started off early to visit us, spending the whole of Saturday oiling and polishing the harness and grooming the horse, and then another hour on Sunday grooming the horse again and tying his own necktie, all in order to be on the road by eight o’clock. From my uncle Silas’s house to my grandmother’s it was less than seven miles; an hour’s journey. But somehow, at Souldrop, the horse was tired or my uncle Silas was tired, and he knew the widow who kept The Bell there; and it seemed a shame to go past the door of the pub itself without going in to take and give a little comfort. And whether it was the giving or the taking of the comfort or what we never knew, but it was nearly eleven o’clock by the time my uncle Silas drove on to Knotting Fox, where he knew the landlord of The George very well and the barmaid better. From Knotting Fox to Yelden it was less than three miles and at Yelden my uncle Silas had a distant relation, a big pink sow of a publican, who had married a second wife as neat as a silk purse. And at Yelden he had no sooner seen the bottom in a quart twice than it was dinner time, ‘Stay and have a bit o’ dinner now you are here,’ the little silky woman would say, ‘if you don’t mind taking it with me while Charlie looks after the bar. We have to take it separate on Sundays.’ And my uncle Silas would consent to stay, almost forgetting to wind up his watch after the dinner in the back parlour with her, and looking like a man on fire when he climbed into the trap at last and drove on to Bromswold, still out of his course, to sit in the bar of The Swan there all afternoon, reverently unwrapping his gall-stone and wrapping it up again for whoever was there to see. ‘Feel on it, man. Go on, feel the weight on it. That’s a tidy weight y’know. And it used to be bigger, me boyo. Bigger. Used to be bigger’n a duck’s egg. What d’ye think o’ that? Think of having that inside ye. Eh?’

  And all the time, at my grandmother’s, we were waiting for him, eating first dinner and then tea without him.