by Bates, H. E.
PENGUIN BOOKS
Oh! To Be in England
‘H. E. Bates was born in 1905 at Rushden in Northamptonshire and was educated at KetterinBg Grammar School. He worked as a journalist and clerk on a local newspaper before publishing his first book, The Two Sisters, when he was twenty. In the next fifteen years he acquired a distinguished reputation for his stories about English country life. During the Second World War he was a Squadron Leader in the R.A.E and some of his stories of service life, The Greatest People in the World (1942), How Sleep the Brave (1943) and The Face of England (1953), were written under the pseudonym of ‘Flying Officer X’. His subsequent novels of Burma, The Purple Plain and The Jacaranda Tree, and of India, The Scarlet Sword, stemmed directly or indirectly from his experience in the Eastern theatre of war. Perhaps one of his most famous works of fiction is the best-selling novel Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944).
In 1958 his writing took a new direction with the appearance of The Darling Buds of May, the first of the popular Larkin family novels, which was followed by A Breath of Fresh Air (1959), When the Green Woods Laugh (1960), Oh! To Be in England (1963) and A Little of What You Fancy (1970). His autobiography appeared in three volumes, The Vanished World (1969), The Blossoming World (1971) and The World in Ripeness (1972). His last works included the novel The Triple Echo (1971), and a collection of short stories, The Song of the Wren (1972). H. E. Bates also wrote miscellaneous works on gardening, essays on country life, several plays including The Day of Glory (1945), The Modern Short Story (1941) and a story for children, The White Admiral (1968). His works have been translated into sixteen languages. A posthumous collection of his stories, The Yellow Meads of Asphodel, appeared in 1976.
H. E. Bates was awarded the C.B.E. in 1973 and died in January 1974. He was married in 1931 and had four children.
Oh! To Be in England
H.E. BATES
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Michael Joseph 1963
Published in Penguin Books 1966
Reissued 1972, 2006
1
Copyright © Evensford Productions Ltd, 1963
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-193865-3
This book is dedicated to
Stephen
Jeremy
Andrew
Beverley
and
Emma
1
As Pop Larkin loaded the last pieces of junk into his newly painted yellow-and-scarlet pick-up all the essence of the fine June morning seemed to pour down like dreamy honey from thick boughs of oak-flower, gold-green against a sky of purest blue, unblemished except for a few floating white doves of cloud. It was a morning when he felt it was good to be alive; you could fairly hear the grass growing. All the air was brilliant with bird song and farther up the road, on a little rise, a field thick with buttercups shone brighter than a bank of sovereigns.
‘Well, I think that’s the lot, Lady Violet. Quite sure you’re satisfied?’
‘Oh! absolutely, Mr Larkin. Absolutely –’
‘Because now’s the time to say if you ain’t. I want to be fair.’
‘Oh! you’ve been more than fair, Mr Larkin. More than fair, I assure you. The offer I had from two men from London was far, far less.’
‘Never trust blokes from London,’ Pop said, quite sternly. ‘Never trust Londoners. Not at no price.’
Lady Violet stood with a kind of hungry frailty in the sunshine, rather like a small brownish moth wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. Soft wisps of sepia whiskers grew about her face, giving it a curious downy charm.
Pop took a cigar from his breast pocket and started to pierce the end of it with the gold-plated cutter Ma had given him for Christmas. Sometimes he used it to pick his teeth with too, but Ma really didn’t like the habit very much. It was a bit primitive, she thought.
‘Well, I’ll just run over the lot again,’ Pop said, ‘just to see I’ve got everything. One bassinet –’
‘Oh! I was wheeled about in that bassinet. So was my sister. I tipped her out of it on many occasions.’
‘One butter churn –’
‘I used to help turn the handle in the dairy. Every Wednesday and Saturday. I can hear the flop-flop now.’
‘One hip-bath. One foot-bath –’
‘I think they’re sweet, don’t you? Especially the foot-bath, with the pink roses. They’re Regency, you know. I suppose nobody ever uses them today?’
‘Put flowers into ‘em,’ Pop said. The Regency wash-basin, the two Regency ewers and the three Regency chamber pots all had pink roses on them too. ‘Two bedsteads and a knife cleaner. One secretaire and two oak chests. Two stags’ heads and one pike in glass case. Two shields and four battle-axes –’
‘And of course the two suits of armour. I must say I think it was wonderfully noble of you to take the suits of armour. I never thought you would.’
Pop, blandly waving the still unlit cigar, warmly assured her that he was very glad to have the suits of armour. They were the prize pieces of the lot: just what he’d been looking for.
‘You don’t think you’ll have difficulty in finding a customer for them?’
‘Customer?’ Pop said. ‘Customer? I got one already. Me.’
The two suits of armour were going to stand in the passage at home, one each side of the sitting-room door. Pop had the picture of them already quite clear in his mind. The two shields and the four battle-axes were to hang each side of them. He might even fit the vizors up with lights, he thought, or if they were too big for the passage they could stand outside the front door, on sentry, sort of. Wherever they stood they’d certainly give some tone.
‘Well, I think that’s the lot. Oh! the buggy, of course. I’ll have to make a special trip to fetch the buggy. I’ll have to have my son Montgomery come and give me a hand with that.’
‘The dear buggy. I’ve ridden in it so often.’
‘Tell you what. Me and Ma’ll come and fetch you out for a ride in it one Sunday. Now if you’re perfickly satisfied I’ll settle up with you.’
Pop stuck the unlit cigar into his mouth and then produced from his inside pocket a roll of f
ive-pound notes as thick as a fair-sized bible.
‘Oh! you must come in and have a glass of sherry before you go. Or port. I’ve got one or the other. I’m not sure which. Do, please.’
Lady Violet turned and led the way into the cramped spaces of a wooden bungalow surrounded by unkempt beds of purple lupins, pink and white peonies and a few early roses. It didn’t seem to Pop much larger than a decent dog kennel and as he went inside he found himself suddenly overcome by an irremediable sadness.
It was the same feeling he got sometimes when he was talking to his old friend the Brigadier. It hurt him to see the top people coming down so low. He could remember without difficulty the time when Lady Violet and her family had lived in a big black-and-white half-timbered house with a moat round it and great splendid stables and farm-barns as dignified as old cathedrals. He supposed change was inevitable but there were times when he didn’t hold with it being so drastic, especially here in England.
‘I won’t be a minute with the sherry. And do you prefer a cheesy biscuit or a ginger nut?’
Pop confessed he preferred the ginger nut; he was a sweet-toothed man.
While waiting for the sherry to arrive he stared about him. There was a great shabbiness in the air. The dust that lay everywhere on furniture, mantelpiece and carpet was, like Lady Violet’s soft brown whiskers, thick as down on moth wings. Horse hair sprouted from the arms and seats of chairs. A dish of primroses, now brown dried emblems of an already distant April, stood on a window sill, forgotten. A few rings of apple-peel, yellow and shrivelled, lay scattered about the hearth, above which a large barn owl in a mahogany case stared out with big saucer eyes, for ever spiritlessly searching. Pop felt sure the floor was rotting underneath him. The air was full of a church-like odour of decay and he longed to light his cigar.
‘It was sherry after all. And there are the ginger nuts.’ Lady Violet handed Pop the smallest possible thimble of sweet sherry and he helped himself to a ginger nut. ‘Good health to you.’
Pop thanked her and said, ‘Cheers, Lady Violet, and down the hatch.’ and could have sworn at the same time that there was dust on the ginger nut too. He felt he wouldn’t get very steamed up on the sherry either and for a few painful moments he longed not only for the luxury of his cigar but for a pint of Dragon’s Blood or a decent cocktail. During the past week he’d invented a pretty good new one consisting of two parts vodka to three of rye whisky with a dash of rum and Kirsch to warm up the flavour. He’d christened it Moon-Rocket and he thought on the whole it went down pretty well.
‘Mind if I light my cigar? Wouldn’t offend you?’
‘Oh! dear, no. Of course not. Please do. I adore the smell of cigars.’
Suddenly full of mischievous entreaty, Pop gave a scarcely perceptible wink, his eye-lid swift as a dragonfly, and made the suggestion that perhaps Lady Violet might even care for one herself? Did she indulge? – he meant on the quiet like?
Lady Violet gave the merest echo of a giggle and her small eyes dithered in tremulous response behind her glasses.
‘Well, I don’t really. But I do confess that I once took several teeny-weeny puffs of one of my father’s.’
‘Like it?’
‘I’m ashamed to say that I did. Rather much.’
Pop gave his first good real laugh of the day and started to light his cigar, feeling better already. He didn’t often get the willies about junk – it was just impersonal stuff, most times – but the sight of a leaking wood-shed half-filled with the suits of armour, the old buggy, the butter churn and even the chamber pots had got him under the skin somehow. It was like seeing another bit of England go.
He puffed richly, filling the little room with smoke, and then, full of mischief, winked again, this time broadly.
‘Have a draw, Lady Violet. Go on.’
Lady Violet, at the mere suggestion of having a draw, flushed quite deeply. It was as if she had been caught out in some awful act of impropriety.
‘Mr Larkin, you’re quite outrageous –’
‘Course I am. What of it? You said you liked ’em. Go on, have a draw. A little bit of what you fancy –’
‘I was only sixteen when I did it before.’
‘Don’t look much older now.’ Lady Violet, who was on the verge of becoming seventy-five, felt flattered into a sudden spasm of mischief of her own and made an impetuous grab at the cigar.
‘All right. You dared me to: I always loved a dare.’
‘Have a good old drag,’ Pop said. ‘Do you all the good in the world.’
Lady Violet, powerfully tempted for one moment to take Pop at his word, finally decided on prudence and merely puffed discreetly.
‘Quite delicious.’
‘Glad you like it. I thought you would. Best Havana.’
‘Thank you very much. You’d better have it back now. You’ve tempted me quite enough.’
Pop, laughing again with all his customary ringing heartiness, said he liked tempting girls, at the same time resisting a strong temptation to pat her playfully.
‘No, keep it. Have another go while I count the money out. What did I say for the lot? – sixty-five quid? Call it seventy. The jerries alone are worth another fiver. Ma’ll be tickled to death with ’em – ring-a-ring-a-roses, eh?’
Lady Violet, still puffing gently, smiled down at the thick wedge of notes from which Pop was counting out her money.
‘I heard someone say the other day that they’re actually coming back into fashion again.’
‘Never been out as far as Ma’s concerned! Well, there you are then, seventy quid. Better count it to see if it’s right.’
‘I don’t think I need to, Mr Larkin. I trust you implicitly.’
‘Just as well somebody does. Well, I must be on the trot. Thank you for everything. Like to keep the cigar?’
‘Oh! certainly not. I wouldn’t dream of such a thing.’
‘Course you would. Keep it. Plenty more at home.’
‘I must say it’s absolutely delicious. It’s absolutely made my
day.’
‘Perfick,’ Pop said. ‘Perfick. That’s what I like to hear.’
Lady Violet tottered gently as far as the front door of the bungalow to say good-bye to him, the cigar still alight in her hand. The frailty of the downy face, with its air of groping hunger, seemed for fully half a minute to disappear. The small eyes were now quite brilliant behind the gold rims of her spectacles. Framed against the gimcrack door she looked positively alight with life and there was something almost jaunty about the way she waved the cigar.
‘Good-bye!’ Pop said. ‘Thanks again. Be over for the buggy tomorrow.’
‘Good-bye, Mr Larkin – Oh! no, not tomorrow. I’ve just remembered. I have to entertain my niece and nephew tomorrow. They’re coming to stay for Whitsun.’
‘Not to worry,’ Pop said. ‘Make it the day after.’
‘Splendid. Thank you again for all you’ve done. Good-bye.’
Cigarless but happy himself, Pop drove slowly home through narrow lanes thick with green-white kex, each head like stiff fragile lace, and by woods of bluebells heavy with the deep eternal perfume that never failed to set all his senses quivering.
It had been a very good morning. It was good to be alive, better still to be alive in England. He chuckled to himself several times about the armour and also wondered what Ma would say to the ring-a-ring-a-roses.
He couldn’t help thinking they’d look very nice with hyacinths in them for Christmas.
2
After quenching his thirst with a steady quart of shandy at The Hare & Hounds Pop arrived home in the expectation of finding Ma in the kitchen, surrounded as always by dishes, saucepans and piles of food. His eager mating call of ‘Hullo, hullo, where’s my old sunflower?’ remained, however, unanswered; and it was some minutes before he discovered her in the garden, where she had set up easel, canvas, paint box and camp stool and was busy painting a picture of Mariette in the nude. She seemed fatter and rounder
than ever, sitting on the tiny camp stool.
When she saw Pop crossing the garden Mariette deftly but with otherwise no great concern, covered her resplendent and now maternal nakedness with the Daily Mirror, which in turn linked up with the only garment she was wearing, a pair of transparent purple briefs with lace edges. Having given birth two months before to a boy who, at Ma’s suggestion, had been named John Marlborough Churchill Blenheim Charlton, she was now anxious to coax her figure back to its normal splendid proportions and to get it, if possible, brown all over. The result was that Ma was now doing a different picture of her almost every other day, either from the front, the back or the sides, according to which part of her was most in the need of being sun-tanned. Mr Charlton found the canvases of intense and palpitating interest, so much so that he had had two of them, one a full-blooded frontal view, the other a horizontal back view of Mariette lying among buttercups, framed.
‘Hullo, hullo,’ Pop said. ‘Art class? Very nice too. How’s it coming on?’
Looking over Ma’s shoulder he surveyed, with something more than paternal pride, the stunning contours of Mariette’s upper figure as seen by Ma. It was six months since Ma had taken up painting, largely because practically everyone else, from Churchill downwards, had taken it up too. She was surprisingly good at it, everyone thought. She had also read the great man’s little book on the subject and as well as being inspired to name the new baby after him had also taken his advice to revel in paint as a physical luxury.
‘Bit blue, ain’t they, Ma?’
Greatly though he admired Ma’s newly revealed talents, there were times when he thought she might be going a bit too modern. The splendour of Mariette’s upper contours looked, he thought, not only as blue as cornflowers but also a bit lop-sided somehow, but he supposed it all depended on how you looked at them. The artist’s eye and all that.
‘Well, they’re no bluer than you’ll be if you don’t soon make yourself scarce so’s I can get another look at them. Go and get yourself a drink, do. I can’t very well see through the Daily Mirror, can I?’