The Day of the Tortoise
Page 6
‘I see,’ said Fred. ‘I understand.’
Two days later he saw her off on the train. At the last moment, before leaving the garden, he had it in his mind to pick her a bunch of flowers. Then he decided against it. Three hundred miles was a long way and you could hardly hope they’d survive.
At the station, just before the train came in, she put her arms on his shoulders to kiss him goodbye. He half-turned his face away, shy of other passengers, but she drew him back again and kissed him for some seconds full on the lips, openly.
The owner of a drapery store in the town, standing at an open window of the incoming train, saw it all, as he told his wife that lunch-time, as clear as daylight.
‘It must be right about Fred Tomlinson and that girl,’ he told her. ‘There they were. Clear as daylight. As near as I am to you. Kissing goodbye.’
Finally, from the train window, the girl kissed him once more and said:
‘Thanks again for everything, Fred. Thanks for helping with the fare. Especially that. I’ll send it back.’
‘Never speak to you again if you do,’ Fred said. ‘Just write. That’s all.’
‘I’ll write,’ she said. ‘Good-bye now.’ The train began moving away and suddenly she was laughing again in her old infectious fashion. ‘My love to William and Francis and Joey and Mr Sylvester. Don’t forget.’
‘I won’t forget,’ Fred said. ‘Good-bye.’
He stood for some time longer waving his hand, trying to overcome the old twisting notion that his heart had stopped beating. The girl was waving too and it was only when the arches of a bridge finally hid the train from sight that he stopped waving, turned and walked away.
A week later, as September came in, he started to gather the first of the apples from the orchard. It would take him more than a month to finish them all and every day he carried them up in boxes and skips to the loft, as he always did, to store. The scent of them, continual and sweet, filled the room as he sat there in the evenings, sometimes listening to an odd record or two the girl had left behind, sometimes talking to Joey and Mr Sylvester.
‘What do you want if you don’t want love?’ Mr Sylvester asked from time to time; and sometimes Joey sang ‘Possess me, possess me.’
The girls didn’t speak to him now. He had started to live entirely in the stable loft, alone, apart from them. It was quite comfortable, sleeping in the same bed the girl had used, and now he had bought himself a new oil stove to keep the place warm.
By the middle of October the apples, all of them early that year, were finished and presently he got into the habit of taking William for gentle walks in the orchard on fine afternoons, before the full fall of leaves, the colder nights and the long sleep of winter.
And now and then he also had an idea for a message and sent it out by Francis, the jackdaw, half hoping for an answer.
A Note on the Author
H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse.
Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.
His first novel, The Two Sisters (1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed.
During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym ‘Flying Officer X’. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944), followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain (1947) and The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (1950). Other well-known novels include Love for Lydia (1952) and The Feast of July (1954).
His most popular creation was the Larkin family which featured in five novels beginning with The Darling Buds of May in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success.
Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being The Purple Plain (1947) starring Gregory Peck, and The Triple Echo (1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed.
H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.
Discover other books by H. E. Bates published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/hebates.
Share your reviews and comments with us via info@bloomsburyreader.com.
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
First published in Great Britain in 1960 by Michael Joseph
This electronic edition published in 2016 by Bloomsbury Reader
Copyright © 1960 Evensford Productions Ltd
The moral right of the author is asserted.
Bloomsbury Reader is an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
50 Bedford Square
London
WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsburyreader.com
Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing plc
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Oxford, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
All rights reserved
You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
eISBN: 9781448215386
Visit www.bloomsburyreader.com to find out more about our authors and their books.
You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.
You can also find us on Twitter @bloomsreader.