Cut and Come Again

by H. E. Bates

  A minute later we stood in the bedroom. White bed, white washstand, blue ivy growing on white wallpaper: it seemed all right.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘But what I want most is a drink. Some tea.’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ she said. ‘But the water is running out. We’re praying for rain.’

  I thought for a moment of asking her when she prayed for rain, and how, and how often, but she went on:

  ‘How long will you stay?’

  ‘I shall be away to-morrow morning,’ I said. ‘Early.’

  ‘The room will be eight-and-six,’ she said.

  She kept fingering the silver locket-chain where it touched her breast.

  ‘What does that include?’ I said.

  ‘Everything.’

  ‘It’s more than I wanted to pay.’

  ‘It includes everything.’

  I stood in thought. What did she mean by everything?

  ‘It includes a good supper and a good breakfast,’ she said.

  ‘And tea?’

  She hesitated. Then:

  ‘Yes, and tea.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  I dropped my rucksack on the floor. She still stood waiting. All the time she was the lady, speaking with that put-on aristocratic voice that nevertheless had something in it faintly hostile. And still the lady, but a little more hostile than before, she said:

  ‘Could I ask you to pay for the room in advance?’

  ‘It isn’t usual.’

  She smiled by merely pressing her lips together, so that they widened a little, but without opening. All the time she kept up the ladylike fingering of the locket on her bare breast.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t think I shall run off without paying?’ I said.

  ‘Oh! no. Not that.’

  Then what? I said nothing. It was a deadlock. And there we stood: she the ladylike white pigeon, fingering her locket, I looking straight at her, for some reason uneasy, not speaking only because I did not know what to say.

  And then the door opened. It burst open abruptly and the young daughter was in the room before either the mother or I could move.

  ‘Rita!’

  ‘I’m sorry, mother.’

  ‘What do you want coming into the gentleman’s room?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Don’t be so silly. What do you want? Haven’t I brought you up better than that?’

  ‘A handkerchief.’

  ‘Where do you keep them?’

  ‘In the second drawer, mother.’

  The mother strutted across the room to the chest of drawers and opened the second drawer. While she was finding the handkerchief I took one look at the girl. She seemed about nineteen, and as she stood there, with her bright red dress and black hair showing up against the white bedroom door, the hair curled back away from her small white ears, I thought she looked lovely. Later she would run to fat, acquire the same grossness as her sister and mother, but now she was delightful, her sallow face plump but delicate, her breasts firm and sweet as oranges, her naked arms smooth and pinky white, like barked willow. And there was a kind of sulky hauteur about her, only half-conscious, a kind of natural immobile contempt, as if to say, ‘Damn you, who do you think you are? Who are you staring at?’

  In another moment the mother was hustling her out of the room. ‘Now you know better than that in future. Here’s your handkerchief,’ and so on. I could hear them going downstairs, the mother’s voice purposely raised in reprimand so that I could hear it.

  And the mother did not come back. I began to unpack my things, and then, all of a sudden, I heard the long ripping shriek of a car hooter. After the first long shriek there were two or three shorter jerked hoots, and then a longer one, and then the short ones again.

  I went to the window and looked out. The car was standing down on the road, at the end of the cart-track. Two men were in it: one was sitting in the driving seat pressing the hooter-button, the second was standing up. He was whistling with his fingers in his mouth. The man sitting down had his hair cut with long side-linings that came low down on his cheeks. Every now and then the other would cease whistling and shout something and wave his hand. They were wearing straw hats.

  In about another minute the three women, the two daughters first, and then the mother, floundering behind, began to run across the farmyard and down the cart-track. They were dressed up to the nines, flashily, and as they ran the man on the hooter played short excited notes of encouragement. The mother, floundering behind, very soon ceased running and began to walk. She was still walking down the cart-track long after the two girls had reached the car and were sitting inside, laughing with the men at the sight of her floundering and stumbling in her white high-heeled shoes down the wheel-rough track.

  Finally, the men ceased hooting and calling and began to clap her, as though she were coming in from a race. They were all hilarious and friendly by the time she reached the car, and when the car began to move down the road I could see her sitting on the knees of the man behind, laughing and giggling with her head thrown back and her mouth opened like a fat contralto.

  It was strangely silent when the car had gone. The farm seemed to recapture abruptly the deadness of the hot afternoon. I could feel the silence of the house and the fields about it: a scorching August silence, without wind or birds.

  I went downstairs at last to find the tea the woman had promised me.

  The house was deserted. A cup and saucer and a plate had been laid on the front room table by the gramophone, but there was no teapot and no milk or sugar.

  I went outside to look for Thompson. The yard was deserted too. I called once, but no one answered.

  And then suddenly I saw Thompson. He was coming over the brow of the nearest field, carrying two water-buckets on a sway-tree. He began to quicken his pace a little when he saw me and he was spilling the water rapidly over his legs and boots when he came into the yard.

  ‘Ain’t y’ad no tea?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘They gone?’

  I told him they must have been going as he came across the field. Hadn’t he seen them? He was silent. Already he had set down the buckets by the pump; now he picked them up again and began to walk towards the house, motioning me with his head to follow him.

  In the house Thompson boiled the kettle and I got some tea about half-past six. He scarcely spoke to me while he was getting the tea. Dumb embarrassment seemed to govern all his movements, and I scarcely spoke myself, partly because I could see he was troubled, partly because I was afraid always of his not hearing me.

  The sunlight was going rapidly, but it was still hot and more than ever silent when I went out into the farmyard again. Thompson was still carrying water. He was filling a wooden cattle tub that stood by the kitchen door. He must have made by that time half a dozen journeys with the sway-tree, and the tub held less than a foot of water.

  ‘If you’d got another yoke and the buckets,’ I said, ‘I could give you a hand.’

  ‘You rest,’ he said.

  ‘I’m rested. I haven’t come far.’

  ‘What d’ye call far?’

  ‘Twenty miles.’

  He stared at me. I could see that he thought it a great distance, that I had come from somewhere beyond his world.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, ‘let me help.’

  ‘You couldn’t manage the yoke,’ he said. ‘You rest.’

  ‘I learnt to carry a sway-tree,’ I said, ‘when I was so little the buckets dragged along the ground.’

  ‘Ah?’

  He stood a moment longer, considering. Then he seemed to accept me.

  ‘You take this,’ he said. He set the sway-tree across the buckets. ‘I’ll git another.’

  So we began to make the journeys across the fields together, to fetch the water. The spring came out of the hillside beyond the brow of the first fenced-in field, and the earth was so red that the water seem
ed, at first sight, to gush out like watery blood. But in the buckets it was wonderfully clear, like ice. We went on making the journeys for more than an hour. It was a short journey, simply past the potato patch and across the field and half-way down the hill, but it seemed long sometimes because, from first to last, Thompson never spoke a word. He just walked and stared at the sky. Then when he did speak it was to repeat himself, like someone nervous. ‘How far did you say you come? How far did you say you come?’ And then I would tell him again, raising my voice a little for fear he had not heard. ‘Twenty miles.’ And once I said, ‘Twenty miles. From Langford up through Dean and Nassingham.’

  ‘Nassingham?’ he said at once. ‘You come through Nassingham?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s where I were married,’ he said. ‘That’s where she comes from.’

  Gradually, after that, he talked a little more, but still repetitively, as though nervous of himself or me.

  ‘What’s it like now, Nassingham? What’s it like? Changed, I expect. I ain’t been down there for ten year. I reckon it’s bigger?’

  Then he would stop talking of the town, and talk of the weather. At the spring or by the cattle-tub, after he had set the buckets down, we always stood for a moment and looked at the cloudless sky, a dark tawny yellowish-blue at the horizon edge. Then as we made more journeys it seemed to grow hotter and more oppressive. I could feel the sweat running in warm trickles down my back. And finally Thompson said:

  ‘Might be some thunder about. God, we ain’t had a drop for three weeks, not for three weeks.’

  It was after eight o’clock before we made the last journey and the water-tub was full. I was hungry, and glad when Thompson said:

  ‘She say anything about your supper?’

  ‘Yes. We arranged it,’ I said. But I knew that whatever supper I had he would have to get. And I went on: ‘I’ll have mine when you have yours. That’s all right.’

  ‘I’m going to have mine now. You sit and rest. I’ll call you.’

  Half an hour later we sat together in the kitchen and ate fried eggs and thick fat bacon and drank big cups of strong tea. Thompson hardly spoke and I was relieved when it was over and we went outside again.

  ‘I got to shut the chicken up,’ he said.

  After we had shut the chicken house we sat outside the front door. Thompson on a sawing-horse, I squatting on the doorstep. With the falling dusk odd owls were beginning to cry across the silent fields, the only sound in the hot air. There was no wind: the only trees, the old damson trees beyond the potatoes, drooped their scorched leaves, half-dead, in a stillness that was almost ominous. The world seemed in suspense. It seemed as if the thunder must come up with the darkness.

  We sat there for a long time, keeping up a kind of vigil while the twilight thickened and deepened, our eyes fixed alternately on the sky and the darkening fields.

  ‘It ain’t been so bad as this since I bin here,’ Thompson said. ‘Never had to carry water afore. They reckon it were as bad nineteen-’leven, but that were a year afore I come. But I never remember it as bad.’

  Once I asked him how large the farm was, and he said:

  ‘Near enough eighty acres. Pretty near all grass. It gits a-top on me. I only got a man and a boy.’

  ‘You’ve got your daughters,’ I said.

  That began it. It was as though the remark had touched a hidden spring in him. He almost turned on me:

  ‘What good d’ye think they are? Eh? What good d’ye think they are?’

  I couldn’t answer. He answered for me.

  ‘Nothing! Not a damn thing. You see how it is, don’t you? Anybody can see how it is! You can see, can’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know why she put you up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s her idea – wants to make a damn boardinghouse of the place. Tennis court. Tables in th’ orchard. She was a servant in a boarding-house before she married me – down in Nassingham. That’s how I met her.’

  ‘Would it pay?’ I said.

  ‘Eh? Would it what?’ Then the echo of the word seemed to reach him. ‘Pay? That’s all she thinks about. Money. Pay. Money to throw about. And she’s bringing the gals up like it too – money, tearing about, men, drink, everything. They used to be nice kids. Now look at ’em.’

  He would go on like this for several minutes, talking in his soft husky voice, almost to himself, pouring out to me all the grievances pent up in him by time and solitude. And then suddenly he would break off, as though too exhausted and disgusted to go on, or as though he were uncertain of my confidence. After the nervous sound of his voice the silence seemed profounder than ever, the air more oppressive and hushed. Every moment it seemed that the thunder must come, but the air never stirred and the silence was never broken except by Thompson’s voice going on in bitter complaint again.

  ‘They gone off somewhere to-night. Dancing. A booze-up somewhere. I shan’t see them gals till four o’clock to-morrow afternoon. They’ll stop a-bed all day. What d’ye think of that? That’s a nice damn thing, ain’t it?’

  ‘Why don’t you do something?’ I said.

  He was silent. I thought for a moment that perhaps he hadn’t heard me, and I repeated the words. But he still kept silent. He sat staring at the ground, in thought, dejected.

  And finally when he did speak he said:

  ‘What could I do?’

  I didn’t know what to say to him. What could he do?

  ‘I tried all ways,’ he said. ‘She never lets me speak to ’em. I don’t have to say half a word afore she’s down on me. As if they never belonged to me.’

  So, gradually, from what he said and from what he didn’t say, I began to see that somewhere there was a fundamental weakness in him: a lack of aggression, of spirit or vindictiveness, something hard to define, a little crack of gentleness running right across his nature. All his anger and bitterness was shadowy: shadowed over by his affection for the two girls. Underneath he was heart-broken. Whenever he spoke of the daughters that unconscious tenderness for them asserted itself, softening his voice and his rage.

  ‘I told her she wanted to make street women on ’em,’ he said, ‘tarts, and she’s done it. That’s what she’s done. And she’s as bad. Worse. I don’t know what I shall do. But one o’ these days I shall do summat. I shall do summat. I waited long enough.’ He was trembling.

  We sat up till nearly midnight. There was no sign of rain. Long after I was in bed I was woken up by the sound of voices under the window.

  ‘Don’t be silly. You can’t come up.’ It was the younger daughter’s voice. ‘You can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He’s there. I told you. A boarder.’

  ‘Boarder. Huh. Can’t I come in at all? Rita! Rita!’

  Then silence; and then softly again, ‘Rita, Rita!’ until the words changed to mere whispers and the whispers at last to silence.

  In the morning it was six o’clock by the kitchen clock when I came downstairs. The kitchen door was open, but the place seemed deserted. I waited about in the kitchen for a time, but no one came, and finally I went into the front room, wondering if breakfast had been laid there for me.

  There was no breakfast. Gramophone records lay strewn about the table and the room was sour. And suddenly I saw the girl, Rita, lying asleep, still in the red dress, on the sofa under the window.

  I went out again and into the kitchen, and then I noticed a teapot standing on the dresser and by it a cup with dregs in it. The pot was warm, and I found myself a cup and poured out the tea and then drank it standing up, staring out of the window at the sunshine on the yard outside. The air was as hot as ever and beyond the yard the scorched fields stretched out parched and dewless, the sky beyond them as clear as glass.

  Finally, when I had finished the tea I put eight-and-six on the table and went outside. The Sunday morning world seemed empty except for Thompson’s hens pecking round a stack of early wheat. I waited about
for a time but nothing happened, and at last I began to walk away.

  Then, half-way down the cart-track, I saw Thompson. He was standing in the field across which we had journeyed with the water. He was standing on the brow of the field, quite still, staring away from me, towards the sun. I called him. ‘Hi! Mister Thompson.’ Nothing happened. He did not move. Then I called again. ‘Thompson. Hi! Mister Thompson.’ But still nothing happened. Then I realised that he could not hear me, and at last I began to walk on, slowly, turning at intervals and watching him in case he should turn too.

  And when, far down the road, I turned and looked back, he was still standing there. He stood with a slight droop of the shoulders, like someone partly in dejection and partly in hope, his eyes fixed on the distance, as though he were waiting for something: for the chance of a cloud, for rain, for something altogether beyond his control and perhaps beyond his understanding.

  Cut and Come Again

  The man cutting the hedge between the roadside and the field of winter wheat was quite young and slight. But he was wearing gloves: large hedger’s gloves, having deep gauntlets scarred and ripped by thorns of bramble and haw, and for some reason they gave him an appearance of greater age and muscularity. The hedge, old and wild, branched high up with great trunks of ash and hawthorn dwarfed and thickened and misshapen by long confinement with each other. And the young man was laying it: half-splitting the boughs at the foot and bending them prostrate and staking them into a new order. He worked slowly, but with concentration, rather fiercely, and almost at times with anger. In the mild February air the sweat broke out on his fair skin abundantly, renewing itself as soon as he had wiped it away. He would take off his right glove repeatedly in order to wipe his face with his hand; and once he dropped it and it lay on the ground like a flat dry pancake of cow-dung. He picked it up, swore, and flapped it across his knee with exclamations of anger that were really against himself.