Something Short and Sweet

by H. E. Bates

  ‘Well?’ she said. Then suddenly she realised how much she wanted a let. No money, no fun. No work, nothing. Ingram, that damned cornet. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘how long will you be here? I could make it less for a long let.’

  ‘How much less?’

  Same supercilious tone, classy, as though she were muck. It nettled her.

  ‘I dunno. It depends.’ She was rattled. ‘Well, I’d make it thirty-five shillings for you and the child.’

  He smiled, not casually, or in acquiescence or triumph, but personally, straight at her, eye to eye. She saw, suddenly, a glint of wickedness in him, not News of the World wickedness, crime, kidnapping, but something sporty, devilish. She saw the classiness as skin deep, like a shop-walker’s. She saw him human at last. His eyes held her briefly and fiercely. The dago. She had it now: he was the dago, the film-star sort, with his black sleek hair and side-lines and paper-white hands. And slowly, in reflection, she smirked back.

  ‘That’s all right?’ she said.

  ‘All right.’

  He set down the suit-case. It was noon. Cora thought of dinner.

  ‘I expect you’ll eat with us,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t let you have a separate sitting-room at that price.’

  That’s all right. I’ll be out all day. Ina’ll help with odd jobs when she comes home from school. Yes, we’ll eat with you, Mrs.—?’

  ‘Ingram,’ she said.

  ‘My name’s Weston,’ he said.

  Cora went out and stood on the landing. She remembered dinner. Friday.

  ‘I thought of fish-and-chips for to-day,’ she said. ‘They fry Friday dinner. Do you mind that?’

  He looked at her with the dago-look, flashy, still faintly supercilious, nettling and attracting her at the same time.

  ‘I don’t mind anything,’ he said.

  He smiled. Cora went downstairs. All the time the child had not spoken.

  II

  ‘Widower, Mr. Weston?’

  How many times had she tried to get that out of him? Wasn’t it a fair question? Three weeks and she didn’t know a damn thing about him. What did he travel in? Every morning out with that aluminium suit-case, all day, catching buses, tramping from door to door, selling something. Selling what? Three weeks and she didn’t even know what he travelled in.

  She had tried, more than once, to get a look inside that suit-case. Fancy, aluminium. He kept it in the room. She tried it one Sunday. It was locked. She dropped hints, give him cues. ‘That suit-case of yours is heavy, I know, Mr. Weston. Might be full of bombs.’ But it was no good. Always the same, no answer, no giving anything away.

  ‘Widower, Mr. Weston?’ Always the same. He regarded her with simple inscrutability, with bare superciliousness, offering nothing except that occasional dago smile, one-sided, with the small magnetic eyes fixing her wickedly. She couldn’t make him out, couldn’t fathom him. A mystery. He had her beat.

  Otherwise, no complaints. He paid up, Fridays, regular as clockwork. He ate anything. Never dainty. He was clean: clean to a point of faddiness. His black pin stripe trousers brushed every night, pressed every week. She had felt of the cloth of them: good stuff, thin now, but good stuff, classy. Had he come down in the world? She liked to think it: romance, mystery, woman’s cruelty, trying to forget. Tramping the country with the child, Sunday newspaper drama. But it was no use. She could not bottom him. And she was angered and fascinated, alternately. She wanted to be on terms with him, equal.

  ‘If you ask me,’ Ingram said, ‘he’s all show and nothing else.’

  ‘Nobody asked you!’

  ‘All right, all right. I only—’

  ‘He does work, any rate! Shut up!’

  Well, it was the first time she’d said that; but it was no use. She was nettled. She liked things straight. ‘Widower, Mr. Weston?’ Wasn’t that straight? It wasn’t a crime if your wife had died, was it? It was no use; it beat her.

  Then the child. There was something funny about the child, something dark, stand-offish, classy. Ina: classy name, too classy. Cora didn’t like it. The child had such set lips, set as though in excessive pride or wooden determination or arrogance or secrecy. Yet her eyes were fluid, soft, beautifully child-like, and would be set in long reflective stillnesses, day-dreaming. Cora didn’t like that either. Give me a child who acts sharp, so you can tell what is in their minds.

  At twelve, every day, the girl came home from school, hatless, black hair peacock-shining in the sun, to lay the table for half-past twelve dinner. She laid the knives and forks in silence. She moved silently with her rubber gym shoes on the lino, dainty as a cat.

  Suddenly Cora saw in her a medium. There were days when Weston did not come back at dinnertime. Working on the far side of the town or in some other town, he took sandwiches, returning to eat hotted-up dinner at night. At times Ingram was away, looking for jobs, fed up, mooching about, bread and cheese in pocket. So there were days when Cora and the girl sat down to dinner alone, in a silence that for Cora was like the infuriating shrillness of a note out of pitch. Potatoes? Gravy? Words of necessity hit the note and killed it momentarily, but there was no conversation and no harmony.

  Then Cora tried a different tack: she gave sweetness a trial. It was drawn-lipped sweetness, forced, a pointed too-niceness. ‘You tell me, dear, if you’ve got any trouble. I know what it is, your age. You tell me, when the time comes.’ She made false shots, in the dark. ‘I know how it is. I know about your mother. Do you miss her?’

  No answer. No answer! Only that damned brazen dreamy stare. Only that silent haughtiness, making her look a fool. She looked at the child with fury. So silent, so abnormally aloof, she maddened Cora past all bearing.

  ‘Don’t you know better than that? Not to speak when you’re spoken to? Eh? Don’t you know better than that, my lady?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ah. Something at last. An answer. Very nice, I’m sure. Nice manners. That’s classy folks for you.

  ‘Little girls round here answer nicely. They speak when they’re spoke to, chance what they do where you come from. Understand that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well then, act as if you did. Who else is to correct you when your father isn’t here if I don’t?’

  No answer, only the grim little lips, haughty, tightly shut.

  ‘Where were you brought up?’

  ‘I can’t remember.’

  Ah! Can’t remember. The haughty, stuck up, puss. Can’t or don’t want to? The saucy cat.

  ‘You know what God does to little girls what tell lies?’

  The small black eyes were dreamy, swimming in fear. Cora leaned across the untidy dinner-table, big soap-white arms locked over the vinegar-stained, gravy-sprinkled cloth. The girl was mute with unexpressed and inexpressible little terrors.

  ‘Ah, so you don’t know what He does, eh? You don’t know? Well, I know. I know, my lady. I know. I was brought up to know. What does your father carry in that case?’

  ‘Samples.’

  That was quick enough. Too quick. Answer you back before you could wink.

  ‘What samples?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And how long’s he been carrying it? Doing this work?’

  ‘A long time.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘Ever since we were in Liverpool.’

  ‘Liverpool. Liverpool, eh? Nice place.’ She’d read about it. You couldn’t open the News of the World without reading about it. So it was Liverpool. Well, perhaps not so classy after all.

  ‘I want to know what he carries in that case.’ Then, sweet suddenly, Cora smiled, cajoling, her mouth blossoming in the old easy way. ‘It isn’t my curiosity. I want to know. Because of the insurance. You see, if he carried something that easily catched fire, the insurance company would chelp. Supposing it was celluloid or something? I don’t suppose it is celluloid?’

  ‘I don’t know. I—’

  The damned brazen stubborn puss! Wouldn’t tell you nothing! You
couldn’t get to know nothing! Here in the house a month and she was no nearer than when she started.

  She got up from the table in anger. She tossed her hair: a gesture of pride, smartness, almost a threat.

  The girl sat mute. The threat became an actuality, fierce, delivered with upraised voice.

  ‘I learn you, my girl! I learn you! By God if you were mine I’d limn the skin off your back. I’d learn you damn well whether to answer or not.’

  She clattered knives and forks together on plates: an enraged clash of steel and platter that was like the echo of her maddened voice. She flounced out, plates in hand, into the little whitewashed kitchen. She stood trembling. She went outside, into the back-yard. It was a mid July day of still, brazen sunlight. Buzzers were blowing and moaning for the afternoon shift, men diving past down the backyards. In the sooty little garden marigolds blazed starrily, butter-coloured, deep-gold, hot. She stood a moment to look at them, the cinder-path hot under her feet. She stood almost in a trance, trying to calm herself.

  When at last she walked back into the house the girl had gone to school. Cora felt queer. What was it? She cleared the table, washed up, stared at the soft soda-diamonds dissolving in the water. What was it? Something got her goat: something about the girl, about Weston.

  And then she had it, vaguely at first, intuitively, not certain. Something about him got her down: the way he looked at her, black-eyed, the dago, supercilious. He had her fascinated, like a cat. She had the thought of him playing about at the back of her mind all day, elusively.

  Then, next day, she was at the girl again. They were at dinner, alone again. It was suet day, Thursday: lumps of boiled suet drowned in grey gravy, onion-faint, Cora’s speciality, given to lodgers, take it or leave it, every Thursday, for years. The day was burning, the slate roofs like hot glass, and the girl looked at the suet, tried it softly, sickly, with barely opened lips, like some little black kitten, and then couldn’t face it.

  ‘Well, my lady? What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Been to school, nothing to eat since seven, and you’re not hungry. You mean you don’t want it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I tell you yes! You’re too dainty, very dainty, my lady. Too dainty. That’s what. Too damn dainty. It ain’t good enough for you, is it? You had better food than that where you was brought up perhaps?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then where were you dragged up?’ No manners, won’t eat the food decent people eat. Stuck up, my God!

  The girl began to get up from the table, fear in her face.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Nowhere, I—’

  ‘Then damn well sit down!’

  The girl half-stood, paralysed. Cora rammed food into her mouth, wet suet, almost cold, the grey stew slobbering down her chin. She rammed it in fast, in a sort of angry pantomime, as though to show the girl, as an example.

  Show her! She wants showing! By God I’d show her something, manners, chelp, ignorance. Stare at you as haughty as haughty. Look right through you, get you down. Like her father. Dark, close. Too close. There was something in these people that defeated her.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you to sit down?’ she shouted. ‘Then sit down! Whose house are you in? You ignorant little bitch!’

  Suddenly she leaned across the table and hit the girl, openhanded, across the face. The child reeled, went white, stood still finally in a terror of paralysis. She saw nothing, did not understand. Her head sang with pain, she could not speak. She made motions of feeble humility with her hands, small motions of defeat and fear.

  ‘Now we’ll see if that’ll learn you! See if that’ll learn you any different.’ Cora shouted with excessive elation, with triumph she did not feel. ‘And if that don’t learn you we’ll see what will. We’ll see what will!’

  III

  A week later Ingram got a job, in the next town, five miles off, so that he was off by cycle before seven every morning and not back before six at night. The hot days took it out of him, leaving him limp, more tired than ever, lacking energy even for the cornet.

  Weston left later, was home earlier. The heat did not seem to touch him. He came in with the same saucy supercilious look in the evenings as he left with in the mornings, always smart, always the shining-haired dago.

  Then things got slack: holidays, people not at home, other things on their minds. He began to come home for tea, at four, to lie on the sofa and smoke aloof cigarettes, with that half haughty, half likeable air that had Cora mystified and beaten. And he would lie there and look at her, brazenly, with black winey eyes and a sort of sleepy fascination, while she laid tea. Until, sometimes, he had her in torture. He seemed to know, also, that he had her in torment, and he kept it up, cat with mouse, for the sheer luxury of it, smiling to himself, tasting the devilry of it.

  All that time Cora hated the girl. Dinner was a daily bout of silence, antagonism, Cora; driven wild by the child’s mystery and inscrutability, by something she could not name or get hold of, by something unchildlike, uncanny. They kept it up darkly, bitterly, for weeks, until the child’s soul was tied up inextricably, in knots of terror and pain, until Cora’s only release from anger was to hit her again.

  ‘And one of these fine days I’ll shut you up until you do know better. I don’t care who you are or what you are. I’ll learn you, begod!’

  And still she was no nearer about anything: who they were, what Weston sold, where they had come from. ‘Widower, Mr. Weston?’ Unanswered, she had given up that question at last. She hated it. She always had known about her lodgers. She hated not knowing. And so she spilled her revenge on the girl, in hot bursts of fluid anger, hitting her, threatening, angered most because there was no protest, so that she had to imagine protests and whip up her impotent rage against something the child had not done or said but which only she herself had imagined.

  Then Weston came home very early one day, midafternoon. She was washing herself in the kitchen, blouse off, thin shoulder-straps loose. Weston came in with the old superciliousness and looked at her. He looked at her shoulders. They were handsome heavy shoulders, the flesh pure white. Her chest flowered into heavy breasts. Her arms were powerful and fine. He looked at them openly.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You’re home early,’ she said.

  ‘Nothing doing. I think I’ll go up and lie on the bed.’

  ‘Shall I bring you a cup of tea?’ she said.

  ‘Just as you like,’ he said. He smiled in his slow, winey-eyed fashion. ‘Just as you like.’

  She took up the tea in about twenty minutes. She knocked on the bedroom door. She was quivering. The tea squabbed over. ‘Come in,’ he said. He was lying on the bed, hands clasped behind his neck. She stood at the lower bedrail, leaning against it. He looked at her for about a minute, the smile on his face. Slowly she smiled back.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘how can I drink it if you hold it over there?’ She took the tea to the bed-side.

  ‘Put it on the table,’ he said.

  She set the cup and saucer on the table. Suddenly he pulled her down, across the bed, hands spanning her breasts, his mouth against her neck. She turned, struggled a bit, and then lay down beside him. He kissed her and began to take her almost immediately; and she knew, suddenly, that there were a lot of things she no longer cared about, which no longer mattered: Weston and the girl, who they were, where they had come from, what he sold. Lying there, with him, in the small hot bedroom, in the summer afternoon stillness, she knew she had what she wanted. She had all the solutions at last.

  It was past four when she went downstairs again. She felt elated, clarified, a new woman. The necessity for knowing things, the anger at not knowing things, had both been destroyed. It was all right at last. No more trouble, no more anger. It was all right at last.

  As she came into the kitchen the girl came in from school. Cora stood smiling. The girl did not come in. She stood at
the doorway in unbelief, not moving.

  ‘Come in,’ Cora said. She was smiling, continually without a break. ‘Come on in. Well, why don’t you come in?’

  The child moved at last and came in. She did not speak. Cora tittered. The girl’s face showed no response. It was hard with the crystallization of many emotions: fear, hatred, unbelief and some proud dumb notion of revenge.

  No Country

  Oscar’s wife was Jewish. She was crying hard when I got to the court. Her mother, a dusky, heavy Jewess with sausage hands and a mouth wracked by the immemorial pain of the race, was crying with her. It was not like ordinary crying; it was far removed from the crying of mere relief or apprehension. It was the traditional subdued wailing of intuition and pain: as if they knew that Oscar was doomed.

  I did not see Oscar himself for two or three minutes. It was raining outside, sour January rain, and I came into the lobby quickly. Groups of policemen with greased hair were standing talking, waiting to give evidence, ready to answer questions. Two courts were in sitting. The lobby was crowded, mothers sitting on the benches, with meek bad boys, old women half dozing, solicitors talking with lowered heads, touts, fancy ladies, men waiting all alone. Then suddenly, among them, I saw Oscar. His face was strange, very yellow. It was as though he knew he were doomed himself.

  ‘They’ll deport me,’ he said, when I went to him. He was tied up in knots of fear, almost beside himself. ‘They’ll turn me over to the Nazis. I know. They’ll deport me.’

  ‘Have you said anything?’ I said. ‘Have you signed anything?’

  ‘I made a statement.’

  He was done. I knew it. ‘Did they make you do that?’ I said.

  No. He went down, voluntarily. He dictated it. He had to. He knew if he didn’t they’d send him back to Germany. To the Nazis. That’s why he did it. Now he’d put the statement in they’d give him a month and it would all be over.