Something Short and Sweet

by H. E. Bates

  Lorn would have spoken, but Breeze ran out of the room. She was already crying. In the second before the door slammed she heard the faint condescending breath of a laugh from the doctor.

  She lay in bed and cried with anguish and comfort. She waited for Lorn to come, clinging to the hope of reconciliation. It must have been about eight o’clock, and she lay for two hours, until darkness, before she heard a sound from below. Sounds came, then, and went, but nothing happened. She lay in silence and could not sleep. She thought of Lorn. She saw Lorn, physically, as a constant presence, comforting, large, so soft and maternal. She ached for her. She saw her as she had seen her in the forest, bathing, and she was caught up, unexpectedly, by a return of the same singular moment of acute anguish, almost pain, that had shot through her at the first sight of Lorn’s body.

  Then, for the first time, she understood herself. She knew, suddenly, what it was she resented, what exactly it was she had wanted, what she was so extraordinarily afraid of losing.

  She sat up in bed. She had ceased crying and she felt, now, like a rag that has been wrung out. The cold realization of her feeling for Lorn struck her with fear, almost terror, as though she had suddenly become aware that she was incurably ill.

  Simultaneously she saw also the reason for the doctor’s smile: that perpetual smile of aloof knowingness. ‘No, that’s not what you’ve got.’ He knew. Unconsciously she must have known that he knew. But curiously, for all her knowing, her rage against him did not lessen. He had struck so hard at her ideals, the little and now absurd farm, the business partnership, the hope of success. He had taken, and in a way, destroyed Lorn.

  She lay for a long time. She hoped that Lorn would come. She wanted, and for the first time consciously, to be held by Lorn, tenderly, with the same love and strength as she felt in return. Something had taught her that a love of that kind belonged to the limbo of things that were never mentioned. To her, in the full realization of it, it seemed a beautiful thing. She cried tenderly because of it. It comforted her. There was some kind of sad inverted pleasure in the gentle pain of realization and loss.

  At one o’clock she got up, lighted her candle and packed her bag. Going to shut the window she caught the great breath of the forest, damp, profound, summer-drenched, the smell of a whole section of her life. She stood for a moment breathing it in, looking over the dark quiet earth of the garden towards the still darker mass of trees. The night was deadly still. As it hung about her, huge and intangible, with an intolerable quality of suspense and comfort, her life seemed very little and not to matter.

  She shut the window. She felt, at once, back in the cramped confinement of her own affairs, where things had seemed, a moment before, to be all over, but where they seemed, now, to be just beginning.

  And she knew that the rest, whatever it was, lay with herself.

  The Man Who Loved Cats

  The Professor turned his toast and gently pushed the milk for the tortoiseshell farther along the hearth, away from the fire. The angora, asleep on his knees, curled up, was like a lady’s fur. Her little snore was like a toy dynamo. The Professor stroked her silky ears with one hand, while he toasted with the other. Dear puss. Beautiful Angelica. It was a dream to touch her. As he stroked and toasted, the tortoiseshell lapped milk with pretty smacking noises, jingling the saucer against the fire-irons. Until at last he had to rebuke her, pushing the saucer still farther away. Greedy puss. Silly, silly Shell.

  It was about five o’clock: November, a still, already dark afternoon. The house smelled faintly of cats and, more strongly, sourly, of fish. The Professor, used to it over a period of years, did not notice it. It was the natural smell of the house, the sweet soft cat atmosphere he loved. He ate and drank his tea with one hand, loving the angora with the other. He sat curled up in the chair, long and thin, with bony hands. Long love of cats had made him rather cat-like himself: lean and pawing and soft. Only his collar hardened him. It was a high butterfly collar, the wings of it cut deep, so that his scraggy Adam’s apple was free. It was the collar that gave him the look of decayed depravity.

  After about five minutes the street bell rang, and he got up, with the angora still asleep in his arms, to answer it. Before he could reach the door the tortoiseshell was through it: through her own little trap-door at the foot. It was an ingenious contrivance. With seventeen cats it saved much time. It was fitted to all doors except the front. And when he opened the front door the Professor kept his foot against the lintel.

  ‘Ah, it’s Miss Minot! Come in.’

  The girl came in. She was about sixteen. She had gone just beyond gawkiness and was filling out, but she was shy, and the Professor did not help.

  ‘I thought it sounded like your ring,’ he said.

  ‘My ring?’ she said. ‘But I don’t ring differently?’

  ‘Very much,’ he said. ‘You ring shortly – short and sweet. Very much. Very different from any other pupil.’

  ‘But how do you tell?’

  He smiled down at her: a curious and almost lopsided smile, somehow feline and almost fascinating. ‘How do you ever know anything? By memory,’ he said. ‘I remembered. I remembered you from last week.’

  She stood in a little trance of embarrassment, not knowing what to say. ‘What books have you brought?’ he said.

  ‘The Saintsbury and the Introduction to Dramatic Art.’

  ‘Good. Take off your things and come in. Don’t mind the cats. Shelley, Shelley. Silly Shell. Come away.’ The tortoiseshell sleeked off across the hall and slid through the patent trap into the Professor’s room.

  In a moment the girl and the Professor followed. The Professor walked with a slight stoop: a little arched, like a cat offended. ‘Sit down. Warm yourself,’ he said.

  She sat down, in the Professor’s chair. Pointedly, he stood up. And all of a sudden, she saw her mistake.

  ‘Oh! I’m in your chair!’

  ‘Never mind, never mind.’ He smiled: the slow feline smile that was almost, but not quite, fascinating. ‘Never mind, my dear. It’s big enough for two. I’ll sit on the arm for a moment. I’ll sit and hold Angelica.’

  ‘Angelica? Is that the cat?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the cat. The cat. There are cats and cats, you know. Angelica’s a queen. But what’s your name? You didn’t tell me last week.’

  ‘Oh, it’s a rotten name!’ the girl said. ‘I hate it.’ She pouted.

  ‘But tell me what it is. I’d like to know. I can’t call you Miss Minot. Not for three months.’

  ‘It’s Viola. It’s silly. It’s so pi.’

  ‘Viola.’ He spoke it softly, purring, his voice a tone or two above the angora’s snore, a sleepy purr of seduction. Speaking, he looked down at the girl. Her little bust, under the silky dress, was round and smooth, like a plum. He looked at her legs. She was opening the Saintsbury, the book drawing her dress tight across her knees. Her stockings were silvery in the lamplight. ‘Viola,’ he kept saying. ‘Viola.’ Nice legs. Lovely virginal legs. ‘I suppose you think we ought to be doing some work?’ he said.

  ‘I was only thinking we hadn’t much time, if I’m to cram for the exam.’

  ‘My dear child, I’ll teach you all you want to know in three months. I’ve never had a failure yet. Does Angelica upset you?’

  ‘Not a bit. I like her.’

  ‘No? I’ll put her down anyway. She can sleep on the sofa. Anyway, I can’t teach unless my hands are free.’

  So he took the angora and laid her on the settee like a child, cushioning her with precious murmurs.

  ‘How many cats have you,’ the girl said, ‘altogether?’

  ‘Altogether seventeen.’ He came back to her chair, bending, his body arched and slightly twisted, his smile false and sweet. ‘But no kittens. There are no misdemeanours with my cats.’ He sat on the chair-arm, pulling his fingers, cracking them softly. ‘I can’t have promiscuous Tommies in this house. It wouldn’t do, would it? You know what cats are. She-cats, too.’


  The girl, not knowing quite how to take it, sat still somewhere between shyness and entrancement.

  ‘After all, I ought to know,’ he said. ‘I’ve kept cats for so long. For thirty years now. I’ve written books about them.’

  ‘Books? – just about cats?’

  He leaned down and put one hand on her shoulder. It was a soft touch, light as silk, and just detached enough to be safe. ‘My dear child, don’t say just about cats. Cats are the most wonderful creatures in the world – with one exception.’

  ‘And what’s that?’

  ‘Women. Cats and women go together. They were made for the same thing – for petting and loving and stroking. Oh, there are all sorts of points of similarity! However, this isn’t English literature. We ought to get on.’ He leaned over to shut the book on her knees. As he shut it, the book fell through her skirt, between her knees. ‘There, forgive me. I’ve disarranged your dress,’ he said. Her silky young knees fascinated him. ‘Oh, don’t pick up the Saintsbury! We shan’t want him. Just sit still.’

  She sat still: still as a cat, her body delightfully unobtrusive and soft in the Professor’s big chair.

  ‘Now where did we get to?’

  ‘The Reformation,’ she said. ‘You were just running over things. Just to get a sort of skeleton idea.’

  ‘The Restoration. Congreve and that crew. Wycherley and so on. It was a period of great licence.’

  He had his hand on her shoulder still, and now, as though from long habit, he was beginning to stroke it, with his long-boned fingers, in the same feline and almost fascinating fashion as he smiled. ‘I mean that there was not only licence in art and drama, but in private and public life. It was a most licentious age. English literature would have been better without it.’

  ‘We were supposed to do some of the plays last term,’ the girl said, ‘but Miss Brand passed them over. Of course she thought we were innocent.’

  ‘And are you innocent?’

  She did not speak. He let his hand run down her shoulder and down her arm. He squeezed her.

  ‘You don’t say anything. That means you are innocent.’

  ‘It doesn’t!’

  ‘Oh, yes! How innocent?’

  ‘It doesn’t. I’ve read The Way of the World. Any of the sixth would be awfully piqued if you called them innocent.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re not innocent. So now we know.’

  ‘Now you think I’m fast?’ she said.

  ‘Oh, no! Not fast. Very nice. As nice as Angelica. You don’t mind if I stroke you? I feel you’re just like a little cat and you must be stroked.’

  ‘What came after the Reformation?’ the girl said.

  ‘You mean the Restoration?’ He was stroking her absently, his fingers making tiny feline explorations across her dress. Pope. He was a lesson in himself. And then of course the novelists. They were a pretty outspoken lot, too. Sterne and Smollett. I don’t suppose you’ve read them?’

  ‘We had to do Sterne with Miss Brand. But she didn’t take it all. We had private reading for it mostly.’

  ‘You know your groundwork pretty well,’ the Professor said. ‘What you want is a fuller knowledge? You want to go deeper?’

  ‘Yes, I want to know more detail. I think I’ll be all right then.’

  They sat for some minutes without speaking. For the Professor there was no need to speak. He expressed himself by silence and by the soft explorations of his hands, his fingers like feelers across the girl’s dress. Once she quivered.

  He had found the neck of her dress, and she pushed his hand away. But it came back again, sleepy and catlike and insistent. She could not resist or escape it. Until at last his hand was still on her small breast.

  ‘Don’t mind me at all,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything at all. I must stroke something.’

  He stroked her: it was restful and yet exciting. It gave her an extraordinary sensation, not where he stroked her, but in her legs and in the depth of her stomach.

  ‘Is it because you’ve been stroking cats for so long?’

  ‘Yes, it’s because I’ve been stroking cats.’

  She moved a little and gave a big sigh, so that the sensation in her legs and body fused and came up into her throat.

  ‘Where are all the cats?’ she said. ‘There’s only Angelica and the tortoiseshell.’

  ‘They’re all over the house. In their favourite places. Sleeping mostly. They do as they like. I let them.’

  ‘Just as they like?’

  ‘Yes, or just as I tell them. They know when I speak.’

  ‘That’s marvellous.’

  ‘Just see,’ he said. ‘Shelley. Shelley. Silly Shell. Go out of the room, Shell. Shelley go out, I say.’

  The tortoiseshell uncurled from its place by the hearth, soodled across the floor, flapped open its little trap door and was gone.

  ‘Send Angelica,’ the girl said.

  ‘You want me to? She’s still asleep.’

  ‘Yes, send her. See if she hears you while she’s still asleep.’

  Without turning the Professor called. ‘Angelica, Angelica dear. Angel. Go out. Out of the room. Go out, Angelica dear.’

  Listening, the girl heard in a moment the soft flapping of the cat’s door, and then quietness.

  ‘It’s marvellous,’ she said.

  ‘Now we’re alone,’ the professor said. He bent his head close to the girl’s hair. It was soft and thick and silky, almost like the angora’s. ‘Now we can go on. Where exactly had we got to?’

  Spring Snow

  When the sun came out, suddenly, from behind racing white clouds, it was so hot in the cup of the precipice and the chalk face so fiercely white that for a minute it would be like summer. Then the cloud-shadows raced up the road again, and chalk and road and even grass seemed quite grey, only the yellow-gorse branches still bright on the cliff edge and against the chalk-dusty grass round the hut. All the time the wind was tearing in big gusts across the opening in the hillside so that the fire of gorse and dead wood raged wildly with flame.

  Far off, the clouds looked heavy with spring snow. Going backwards and forwards from the gorse-clumps to the fire the girl would look at them, eyes still and emotionless. She carried double armfuls of gorse to burn, carrying them in front of her, so that she seemed heavy with a pregnancy of flowers. She had a colourless face, almost Jewish. Doing the journeys, breaking flowers and burning them without any alteration of expression at all, she looked dreamy, far away. It took about five minutes for every journey. Every time she came to the fire the old woman started her prattle from the hut, her voice high in the wind.

  ‘Last Good Friday was the day, dearie! Last Good Friday. Gawd, we took some dough. Run out o’ bread and run out o’ tea. Turned people away and then took eighteen pound. Dearie, you shoulda seen the money. You shoulda seen it!’

  The girl, not answering, never stopped to listen. The old woman still prattled on long after she had left the fire. Big, dowdy-haired, shapeless, she would waddle down the hut steps with bits of furniture, white-painted tables and chairs and seats carpentered from beer-boxes, and set them out on the grass in the sun. Once she came out with a notice ‘Café’ and then another ‘Motorists Pull Up’. She laid them on the trestle table outside. Then she came out with chairs and odd boxes and a smaller table. She set them all on the grass. For a big woman she moved very quickly, with an avaricious waddle, her fat body squabbing and jellying as she did the journeys up and down the steps. All over the face of the hut were notices, in blue paint, the big letters rain-washed: Pot of Tea 6d., Ham Roll 6d., Ham and one Egg 1/-, Ham and 2 Eggs 1/6d., Café again. And over all, on a separate board: ‘Charley’s. Best and Cheapest.’ Finally the old woman came down the steps empty-handed and called:

  ‘Soon’s you done that, dearie, come and help us have a sweep out here. Gawd, Charley’ll be down with the stuff and on top of us ’fore we know what’s what.’

  The hut, from being shut up all winter, smelle
d of creosote. The girl caught the smell before ever she got to the steps, and it made her momentarily sick. She came almost before the old woman had finished speaking, as though not really in answer to her. Free of the gorse, she looked very heavy. She moved slowly. By the time she got to the hut her face was tight with pain.

  She went straight up the steps and sat down in the sun.

  ‘It’s coming,’ she said.

  ‘What? Gawd, how can it?’ Scared, the old woman came out of the hut quickly, thrusting out thick surprised lips. ‘How can it? You ain’t due. You ain’t due till after Easter. Gawd, how can it come?’

  ‘It’s coming,’ the girl said. ‘I can feel it. I know.’

  ‘You strained yourself,’ the old woman said. ‘You got a bit tired, carrying the wood.’

  ‘No, it’s coming,’ the girl said. ‘I feel it. I know. I feel it. Every now and then I have a pain.’

  ‘Pain? What sorta pain? How often?’

  ‘Every little while. Every five minutes.’

  ‘It’s when you quicken,’ the old woman said. ‘It’s only when you quicken, that’s all. That ain’t nothing, dearie. It ain’t nothing!’

  ‘No, it’s coming,’ the girl said. ‘I ought to know. I know. I know. I can feel it.’

  She sat scared herself. The sun was blazing now, the smell of creosoted boards hot and strong. Across the grass the gorse-fire crackled fiercely, the spring trees beyond the road shimmering behind the rising cloud of heat.

  Suddenly the sun went in and the pain came on the girl, and she sat quite cold and doubled up. It was almost all she could do to speak. She simply moaned the words, quietly:

  ‘Oh! What can we do? What can we do? Oh! do something! Do something!’

  The old woman stumped back across the bare boards of the hut with heavy impatience, in fear almost angry.

  ‘Gawd, this would happen! This would happen! Good Friday to-morrow and all. Oh! Gawd!’

  The girl, free suddenly of pain, came into the hut and lay on the bare boards opposite the door. No longer in anguish, she took off her coat and spread it over herself like a blanket. Her face, pinched up, looked more Jewish than ever. She lay propped up against the wall, her head back. Lying there, she watched the old woman light the oil stove and put the kettle on. Listening to her prattle, ‘I’ll get y’ cup o’ tea. That’ll ease y’. I’ll git y’ cup o’ tea’, she was not really conscious of it. She was conscious of only one thing: the advent of pain. She waited for it with clenched hands.