Oh! to be in England

by Bates, H. E.

  Mr Candy was overwhelmed. It was too much. The desperations of the earlier evening didn’t merely disperse; they left in their place a warm, compensatory glow. It was a joy, almost an exulting one, to be blessed with a generosity so free and open-handed.

  A moment later he was crushed again, this time by Ma, who said:

  ‘What I did feel, though, Mr Candy, was this. There’s such a big lot of us and it’s such a piece-work order for you and all that I wondered if you wouldn’t accept a little present from me?’

  ‘Oh! my dear Mrs Larkin, there absolutely isn’t any need –’

  ‘It’s just a little thing,’ Ma said. ‘One of my pictures.’

  The Rev. Candy felt himself go very cold and very flaky all over, like a lizard. It was a subject he devoutly hoped would never come up again. With something like despair he fairly charged into a Gentleman’s Relish sandwich, only to find himself on the verge of half-choking as Ma said:

  ‘It’s one I’ve done of Primrose. She posed specially.’

  Posed? Mr Candy heard himself asking silently. Posed? The word had a dreadful significance. He could only remember Mariette.

  ‘Mrs Larkin, you really needn’t –’

  ‘Oh! I hope you’ll like it,’ Ma said. ‘Everybody seems to think it’s a very good likeness.’ Mr Candy quailed, silently. He knew those likenesses. They could explode in your face, he thought, and once again felt himself go very cold and very flaky all over. ‘There’s a few points I don’t like myself. Couldn’t quite get the eyes. You know? Anyway, fetch it down, Primrose. It’s in our bedroom.’

  For the next few minutes Mr Candy wolfed at sandwiches of Gentleman’s Relish as if they had something medicinal or antidotal about them. He accepted with neither a flicker nor syllable of protest another glass of champagne. He heard himself asking Mademoiselle Dupont in a voice distant and flaky too if she already knew England and heard her echo his own thoughts, rather enigmatically:

  ‘I think there is much that is difficult to know in England.’

  Mr Candy thought so too. He could now hear the footsteps of Primrose coming downstairs. They beat with doom at his heart. And then, a few moments later, she was in the room, carrying the picture and Ma was saying:

  ‘Put it somewhere where there’s a good light on it, dear. It wants a good light on it.’

  Mr Candy actually shut his eyes and saw a vision, before opening them again, of the naked glories of Mariette as seen by Ma. A moment later he found himself looking at a picture of Primrose, in a green jumper and a black skirt, sitting in a chair and modestly holding a small basket of primroses painted in from memory by Ma.

  The shock was so great that he felt his body go stiff. A portion of Gentleman’s Relish sandwich fell from his fingers. He was suddenly aware of the floor coming up to meet him. He felt colder than ever and a moment later fell forward, as through a black tunnel, on his face, dropping at the feet of Mademoiselle Dupont, who cried ‘Quelle horreur!’ and spilled a slow stream of champagne on his face in a final surprising act of baptism, while Ma wondered aloud but imperturbably whatever could have come over him all of a sudden.

  9

  Ma woke in the night, disturbed by a strange feeling that someone or something was prowling about in the yard outside. She could hear nothing as definite as footsteps and might have let the whole thing slip from her mind as something no more serious than a wakeful turkey if if hadn’t been that suddenly she was sure that she heard the clatter of an empty oil drum turning over.

  She gave Pop a quick nudge with her elbow in the middle of the back and Pop, who often confessed to having nightmares in which old ladies were chasing him with equally old umbrellas, groaned.

  ‘You awake, Pop?’

  Pop said no, he didn’t think he was.

  ‘Well, you’d better be. Unless I’m very much mistaken there’s somebody prowling about in the yard.’

  Pop sleepily wondered who that could be at this time of night and Ma said, rather sharply:

  ‘Poachers, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Unperturbed and still more than half asleep Pop wondered aloud who might be poaching and, if so, what?

  ‘Plenty to poach, I should think,’ Ma said. ‘Geese, turkeys, chickens. Suits of armour –’

  ‘Good Gawd.’

  The thought of losing two of his proudest and most treasured possessions made Pop suddenly sit up with an alacrity that surprised even Ma.

  ‘Nobody’d do a thing like that,’ he said, ‘would they?’

  ‘Oh! wouldn’t they?’ Ma said. ‘They’ll nick anything these days. I was reading in the papers only the other day how a gang nicked two great lions from a park. Stone ones, I mean. They weighed a ton apiece or something. You’d better get up and have a peep.’

  Pop agreed and got out of bed, stark naked. The experience of sleeping without a stitch of clothing on was one that, in summer, he greatly enjoyed. It compared very favourably with swimming in the never-never, an experience he also enjoyed, quite often, early on summer mornings.

  At the bedroom window he half pulled back the curtains and stood looking out. A faint rim of daylight hung over the woods to the east and in the half-light he could just make out the colour of the trees.

  ‘See anything?’ Ma said and Pop replied that as far as he could tell everything was as quiet as a church, a remark that by some odd association of ideas reminded Ma of Mademoiselle Dupont.

  ‘You don’t suppose it’s Mademoiselle by any chance, do you?’ she said. ‘Sleep-walking or something like that? You never know with these foreigners.’

  Pop agreed. Could be. Foreign blood an’ all that.

  ‘She’s the highly emotional type all right,’ Ma said. ‘She looked restless all evening, I thought.’

  At this remark Pop chuckled deeply.

  ‘Might be out looking for a bit o’ stray,’ he said.

  ‘Never you mind about looking for a bit of stray,’ Ma said, with quite unusual asperity. ‘You go down and have a look-see before somebody nicks your suits of armour.’

  Pop said he certainly would and turned as if to move to the door.

  ‘Well, not like that, I hope,’ Ma said. ‘The least you can do is put your trousers on. You don’t want to give the poor dear the fright of her life, do you? That would put the tin-lid on it.’

  Pop accordingly put on trousers, shirt, socks and slippers and, before going downstairs, told Ma that he somehow didn’t think he’d be all that long. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least if it wasn’t just one of the turkeys. They sometimes got restless too just as dawn was breaking.

  ‘And if it is her,’ Ma told him firmly, in a final word of warning, just remember what I said. Behave. No larking about. It might be misunderstood.’

  Pop, after giving the most solemn of promises on this particular matter, went downstairs and into the yard. A few light pools of mist lay over the river and the meadows. Thick white dew, shining as rain, covered the grass. A few birds were stirring and one of his young cockerels, in a comic broken voice, started crowing in a barn.

  After being greatly relieved to find that his much-treasured suits of armour were still safely in their places he started strolling about the yard. Everything seemed quiet and normal, he thought, and then suddenly one of his geese started cackling stridently. Instantly every one of his hypersensitive nerves were alert and every instinct warned him that he wasn’t alone in the yard.

  Somehow he was uncannily sure, also, that he wasn’t going to bump into a wandering Mademoiselle Dupont, sleep-walking at dawn. Ma sometimes used the word kipperish to mean something extra fishy and that was how it felt to him now. It felt in fact more than kipperish and the thought made him stop and pick up the broken handle of a hoe that someone had discarded on a muck-heap.

  Some few seconds later he heard the sound that Ma had heard: the distinct clatter of an empty oil drum turning over. It seemed to come from the direction of the hovel where the Rolls was kept and he started walking there.

/>   But less than thirty paces further on he suddenly stopped, convinced that out of the corner of his eye he had seen the flap of a black leather jacket sleeve behind a corner of the barn where his fowls roosted.

  He half-walked, half-ran round the side of the barn and suddenly found himself face to face with a girl. She was standing flat against the side of the barn, both hands behind her back. She seemed, he thought, about eighteen or nineteen and was wearing, besides the black leather jacket, tight dark red jeans. Her figure was as flat-chested as a boy’s and her face, without a trace of make-up, was a kind of dirty putty colour that threw up into garish relief the big piled-up bee-hive of her hair, the dyed strands of it coarse as string and something of the colour of trampled yellow straw.

  ‘So girls have started poaching now.’

  Her lips were thin and colourless and she kept them shut.

  ‘What is it? – chickens, eggs or what?’

  He noticed she didn’t look at him; instead she kept her eyes on the handle of the hoe.

  ‘What are you up to in my yard?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Anybody else with you?’

  ‘You got eyes.’

  ‘Don’t cheek me. I might warm your backside.’

  ‘You and who else?’

  ‘Don’t cheek me.’

  She curled her lip.

  ‘Well, you got the big stick. What are you waiting for?’

  ‘What’s that you got behind your back?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Show me.’

  She slightly lifted her eyes. They were a cold neutral colour, a sort of rat’s tail grey. Otherwise she didn’t move and Pop said:

  ‘Show me. Quick.’

  ‘Oh! belt up.’

  ‘What’s a kid like you doing out this time o’ night?’

  ‘Night? Thought it was day.’

  ‘I said what are you doing in my yard?’

  ‘Well, not chasing an old cock like you, that’s for sure.’

  ‘And I said what have you got behind your back?’

  ‘And I said belt up. You put bloody years on me.’

  Pop started with anger and moved to grab her arms. She squirmed with steely agility, ducked and slid along the wall. He moved to grab her again but she used the wall of the barn like a spring-board and leapt clear away from him by yards. A second later she was racing round the corner of the barn and just as she disappeared Pop saw, for the second time that month, the flash of an open razor.

  Some time later he stood so seriously in thought in the bedroom that Ma was moved to ask if he’d seen a ghost or something?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Who was it then?’

  ‘A kid. A girl.’

  Ma gave a short laugh and said it was coming to something, wasn’t it? Secret meetings at night now, eh? Kidnapping? Pretty?

  ‘Got a razor.’

  Oh? Ma inquired. Sort of protecting her honour or something?

  ‘That was summat she never had. The low-down dirty little crawl.’

  It wasn’t often Pop talked in this vehement way and Ma was perturbed. It was a nice howdedo when girls with razors prowled round your back-yard at night. Next thing they wouldn’t even be safe in bed. How did Pop account for a thing like that?

  ‘Search me. It’s the way they’re dragged up nowadays. Some of ‘em, anyway.’

  It was almost full daylight by now and Pop still stood by the window, deep in thought, looking out on the yard, so that presently Ma was prompted to ask him whether or not he was coming back to bed, careful not to frame the question as if it were a direct invitation in case he might not feel in the mood.

  Very much to her surprise he didn’t. In an absent, preoccupied sort of voice he told her:

  ‘No. Don’t think so. I think I’ll go and look for mushrooms. It looks like a good mushroom morning to me,’ finally adding as an almost melancholy after-thought: ‘Well, Ma, we might not have had the kids christened, but at least they growed up a sight better than that dirty little crawl.’

  *

  By the time he reached the meadow all trace of mist had cleared. The sun was coming up quickly from behind shoals of fish-shaped clouds, all deep rose except for upper fins of gold. The awnings of the shuttered stalls and roundabouts were damp with the night’s dew and he paused for a moment or two to look at them. There was something a trifle sad about a fair by daytime and the sight on this particular morning did nothing to lift his melancholy.

  He was still wondering unsuccessfully what a mere kid of a girl could be doing in his yard in the half-dark of the morning with a razor – he felt in some curious way as if he had been cheated, almost betrayed about something – when he became aware of a figure running after him. It was Primrose.

  ‘Ma said you’d gone mushrooming, so I thought I’d come too. Think there’ll be any?’

  ‘Caught sight of a few in the distance yesterday but hadn’t time to get ’em. You’re up early. Restless or something?’

  ‘Couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Summat disturb you?’ He was curious to know if she’d heard anything in the night and felt for a moment half-inclined to tell her about the incident of the razor and then decided not to. The whole thing was like a dirty secret. He wouldn’t tell another soul.

  ‘Just thoughts.’

  Oh! it was like that, was it? he thought to himself and didn’t say a word.

  ‘Where was it you saw them yesterday?’ she said.

  ‘Over there on the far side o’ the medder. Near that big hawthorn.’

  Suddenly she stopped and started to take off her shoes and stockings. It was better than getting them soaked with dew, she said. Like Mariette’s, her legs were golden brown, almost the same colour and with much the same smooth shine on them as a ripe acorn. She was growing in beauty every day; you could feel maturity possessing her.

  When they walked on again her eyes were quick – quick as his own, he thought, perhaps quicker – and it was she who saw the first mushrooms, like a clutch of five white eggs in a patch of longish grass beyond a big straddling hawthorn half-pitched over by some winter gale.

  She ran forward to gather them and he followed with a basket. It never failed to excite him to see the first pure whiteness of a new-grown mushroom and the tender salmon of the under-gills when you turned it over. Like the sight of the very first primrose, it made all his veins run faster.

  ‘Beauties,’ he said. ‘Beauties.’

  Her responses were exactly like his own, except that, whereas he walked about the field, she ran. The mushrooms were rather few and far between – the season was a bit early, yet – and now and then he found himself tricked by a scrap of sheep’s wool, a daisy or a piece of stray paper showing white in the dewy distances.

  ‘This is blowing the cobwebs away,’ she said, when they met again. ‘I was feeling all frowsy and fuzzy.’

  It wasn’t doing him any harm either, he thought, and he’d got perhaps a bigger need than she had for a little morning freshness. He didn’t suppose anyway that it was anything very serious that had kept her from sleeping and he was half on the point of asking what in fact had kept her awake when she said, in a remarkably secretive sort of way:

  ‘Pop?’

  Yes, he said, what was it?

  ‘Know what kept me awake?’

  Pop said in his most off-hand way that he hadn’t the foggiest.

  ‘Thinking.’

  She’d said that before, he reminded her. What had she been thinking about?

  ‘Mr Candy.’

  What, he said, made her think about Mr Candy?

  ‘I think I’m in love with him.’

  ‘You think? Pop said and was about to remind her that love was something you couldn’t be in two minds about – it either got you by the short hairs or not at all – when she gave him the most melting of glances and said:

  ‘In fact I know I am. I really know.’

  Wasn’t Mr Candy perhaps a bit old for her? Pop wanted to know, a que
stion to which she replied with an equally direct one of her own:

  ‘How old were you when you fell in love with Ma?’

  Oh! about fourteen, Pop supposed.

  ‘You see.’

  Exactly how old was Mr Candy anyway? Pop asked her.

  ‘Twenty-four. But age doesn’t matter. Age is nothing.’

  There was something in that, Pop thought, and stooped to pick two of the most perfick mushrooms he had ever seen: two round sunken shells just moist with dew. The fate of Primrose in the matter of Mr Candy didn’t surprise him very much; as he had quite often remarked before it was an extraordinary thing how his daughters, or at least two of them, were inclined to go for the timid type rather than the muscular, he-man sort.

  ‘Does Mr Candy disturb you?’ she suddenly said.

  Not in any particular way he could think of, Pop said.

  ‘He disturbs me.’

  Got under her skin, did he? He knew that feeling all right. Angela Snow gave it to him sometimes.

  ‘No, it isn’t that,’ she said. ‘I just feel there’s a lot we don’t know about him. I feel he’s a bit mysterious.’

  That hadn’t struck him at all, Pop said. Mr Candy mysterious? How?

  ‘Can’t really explain. But he used to work in a parish in the East End of London and he’s a bit cagey about it. All rather strange, I think.’

  Pop suddenly laughed and made the pronouncement that you could hardly expect anything else with parsons. They were a rum lot. Comical, he thought.

  ‘Oh! Mr Candy’s not comical. I don’t think so, anyway. I think there’s a side to him none of us have ever seen yet. It’ll come out one day.’

  That was what you called feminine tuition or summat, Pop supposed. Women were clever, really, the way they saw through you. No foxing ’em. What other side of Mr Candy could possibly be revealed? he wondered. All he saw was a timid young man as nervous of girls and company in general as a new-born pup. Nothing hidden, nothing mysterious about him at all.

  ‘I think we’ve just about cleared the field,’ he said. He thought the mushrooms in the basket probably weighed less than a pound but they were clean and fresh and would make a couple of good breakfasts. ‘Shall we go back? Feet cold?’