by H. E. Bates
Then, at intervals, he stood still and looked down the road. It was almost noon, the sun was quite high, and the road, seen across the new prostrate hedge and in the quiet sunshine, would surprise him. It gave him a fresh sense of space; it was part of a new world, vanishing to a new horizon.
And he seemed to be angry even with that. He stared always as though expecting to see someone, but the road remained empty. And he would vent his anger at that emptiness on the hedge, slashing the hawthorn trunks almost clean through, hooking out the brambles viciously with the point of the bill, his quick sweat filling the wrinkles that ran across his forehead like ploughed furrows.
Then, at last, as he paused to wipe off the sweat and look down the road again, he saw someone coming. It was a young woman. He had no sooner sighted her than he was slashing the hedge again, with great deliberate blows of concentration, in an energetic pantomime of indifference.
In another moment or two the girl was quite near. He behaved as though he did not see her, as though he did not want to see her. But every now and then, furtively, with a kind of cross-glance, he would watch her. And each time she was walking as though he did not exist, looking at the wide winter fields of bare earth and corn stretching away in the sunshine.
Then he was angry again at her display of indifference. And automatically he increased his own. So that as she came nearer he kept up a pretence that she was going farther away; and she in turn walked as though she wanted to make the pretence a reality.
But suddenly he was aware of her standing there, close to him, in the grass, beyond the barricade of bushes he had thrown down. She was younger even than he was; and her gloves of thin creamy cotton, in contrast to his own, made her look still younger. She was very dark, her black hair only half-covered by her red woollen hat, her lips very small and tight, so that she seemed to be for ever biting them.
He looked up quickly, saw the basket she was carrying, and then looked away again. For a moment he did not know what to do with this pose of preoccupied indifference. He felt a fool. And then suddenly he dropped it. He muttered to her:
‘Thought it looked like you.’
She did not speak. She was staring at the bushes. They formed a barricade so that she could not pass.
‘I’ll move ’em,’ he said.
‘You needn’t bother yourself!’
She was already walking along the grass again, towards the gate into the field. He threw down the bill-hook, furious. Then he picked it up again and stood helpless against his sudden anger. He heard the gate click, and then the girl’s feet in the dry hedge-grass. Slowly he took off his gloves, his anger evaporating, the sense of foolish embarrassment coming back again.
Then, for the first time, as the girl halted and set the basket on the ground, he looked full at her, but sullenly.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
The world was like a bubble: very light and airy and careless. He broke it abruptly, almost savagely.
‘I wonder you come at all.’
‘I wonder.’
The sudden retaliation, quicker even than his own, silenced him. He picked up the basket, lifted the napkin, looked in, and then stared at the girl again.
‘Had yourn?’
‘No.’
‘Better stop.’
‘I don’t want none.’
As he sat down, under the hedge that was still uncut, with the basket on his knees, she was looking across the wheat-field as though fascinated by some object afar off.
‘Stand up there like somebody half-sharp,’ he muttered.
‘I can go!’ she flashed.
He seemed not to hear.
‘You don’t want me!’ she said.
‘Who said so? Who said so?’
‘Well …’
‘I never said so. When did I say so? When did I say it?’
He waited for an answer; and when she said nothing it was almost a triumph for him; as though his words were irrefutable.
‘You don’t want me,’ he said. ‘That’s what it is. That’s the drift on it.’
Once again she said nothing. But now her face had lost its look of mock preoccupation, and was in pain, filled with thoughts and miseries too complex for her to express. When she did not answer again he took out the knife from the basket, and then the food: the bread and cheese and onion and meat.
He sat for a moment waiting, as though for her. Then he began to eat, sullenly, staring at the food, not really tasting it. He tried to think of something to say. Then while he was still thinking she came and sat down. And they sat for a moment or two in silence, waiting for each other to speak, but as though at peace with one another, in the warm half-spring, half-winter sunshine under the shelter of the great hedge.
‘Better have a mite o’ summat,’ he said.
‘I don’t want nothing.’
‘All right. Be different.’
The silent antagonism renewed itself. He ate heavily. Looking up, he saw her staring at the earth, lost in reflection. And unable to tell what she was thinking, he was troubled. She looked as though she wanted to let it pass, to forget it. He wanted to thrash it out, get to the bottom of it, find the reason of it all. And he challenged her.
‘We allus going on like this?’
She seemed indifferent:
‘I don’t know.’
‘Don’t you want me?’
‘What do you think I married you for?’
‘Ah, start that again. I thought we had all that out last night.’
They were silent again, waiting for each other to speak. He started to peel the onion, the dry sunbrown outer skin crackling like scorched paper. Then she spoke quite quietly:
‘You want too much,’ she said.
‘Who does? Who does?’ He was consumed with a fresh flame of anger. ‘Prove it, prove it.’
‘I don’t want to prove it. It don’t need to be proved. You’re jealous as well.’
‘That’s it, you see, that’s it. You say things and can’t prove ’em. Jealous. My God!’
‘You know you want too much. Look at last night.’
‘What about last night?’
‘Just because you couldn’t have ——.’
‘A trifle. That’s all. A bloody trifle.’
‘It hurt, anyway.’
That silenced him; but he kept up the pose of arrogance, his mouth stubborn, as he peeled and sliced the onion.
‘You know,’ she said, ‘we shall never get on. Not like that. Not if you don’t give way, sometimes. We’ve only been married five minutes. We shall be everlasting at loggerheads.’
He kept his eyes lowered; they were beginning to smart, sharply, with the juice from the onion. And he did not speak.
‘You lose your temper over nothing. Don’t you? You said it yourself.’
He was still sullen and silent, and would not look up at her. And now the pain in his eyes was blinding, as though he were weeping tears of vinegar. He was too proud to wipe them, and the smarting water ran down his cheeks.
Then she saw what was the matter with him. And suddenly she laughed. She could not help it. In an instant he swung out his hand blindly, to hit her. She lurched and his hand struck her shoulder, and then he could see nothing for the pain in his eyes, the tears running down his cheeks like a child’s. Then as he sat there trying to press the smartness from his eyes with his knuckled hands he became aware that she was crying. They were real tears, bitter and half-suppressed, and she let them fall into her cotton gloves. Hearing her cry, he wanted to do something, but could not. And they sat there together for five minutes, he weeping with the stinging false onion tears and she in reality, until at last he spoke:
‘Shall we chuck it? Afore it’s too late?’
‘What? How do you mean?’
‘Finish. You go and live with your mother.’
He did not mean it. He felt cold and numb. And it was a relief to speak.
‘All right,’ she said.
‘All right,’ he said. And then he saw the fresh opportunity for bitterness. ‘I thought that’d suit you. Damned if I didn’t.’
‘Is that what you think of me?’ she said.
He was sullen and silent, not wanting to commit himself. But she insisted:
‘Is it? Is it?’
‘You know what I think of you,’ he said.
‘What do you think? What do you?’ The words flowed out quickly, with her tears, and bitterly. ‘Tell me what you think. Tell me.’
He sat for a moment in a state of wretched embarrassment, staring heavily, sick of himself and the argument and even the sight of the field stretching out before him, until suddenly she was overcome by extreme tenderness for him.
‘You do love me?’ she said, ‘don’t you? don’t you?’
‘You know I do,’ he said. ‘You know that.’
He stretched out one hand and embraced her and they sat in a silence of retribution; at peace with one another, not thinking, only staring at the bright green wheat and feeling the sun tenderly warm on their hands.
Until at last he knew it must be time to start again.
‘I s’ll ha’ to get on,’ he said. ‘No use.’
‘All right. I’ll get back.’
‘You needn’t. Walk round the field and seek for a primrose or two.’
‘No. I’ll get back.’
Almost, but not quite, the old antagonism broke out again. But she seemed played out, too weary to accept the challenge again, and the moment passed. He picked up his gloves and she began to pack up the basket, wrapping the half-eaten food in the napkin.
‘Don’t storm out without your dinner again, will you? It’s a long drag up here.’
‘All right.’
He drew on his gloves, and the old appearance of age and muscularity returned. He seemed much less volatile in the great scarred gloves, and more sure of himself. And she in turn seemed less troubled by him.
‘It’s a funny old hedge,’ she said.
‘Ah.’
‘Looks as if it could never grow up again, the way you’re layin it.’
‘Ah, it’ll grow up. And be as bad again as ever.’
They stood talking a little longer until, without a definite parting but only ‘I’ll be going I think now’, she went through the field-gate and began to walk along the grass by the roadside. At first the tall uncut hedge cut her off from him, and when she appeared at last he was watching her in a stillness of expectation.
She smiled at him. ‘Don’t be late,’ she said.
‘All right. So long.’
As she began to walk away he attacked the hedge as though it were the cause of all their differences, a tangible barrier that cut them off from one another. She walked slowly and he could see her stopping now and then, by the hedgerow, to look for a chance primrose. He paused at intervals, waiting for her to turn, but whenever he paused she was engrossed in walking or searching for the flowers, and finally he could see her no longer.
And even then he would cease his attack on the hedge and still look after her, unsure about it all, lost in a conflict of doubt and tenderness and some curious inexpressible pain.
The Mill
I
A Ford motor-van, old and repainted green with Jos. Hartop, greengrocer, rabbits, scratched in streaky white lettering on a flattened-out biscuit tin nailed to the side, was slowly travelling across a high treeless stretch of country in squally November half-darkness. Rain hailed on the windscreen and periodically swished like a sea-wave on the sheaves of pink chrysanthemums strung on the van roof. Jos. Hartop was driving: a thin angular man, starved-faced. He seemed to occupy almost all the seat, sprawling awkwardly; so that his wife and their daughter Alice sat squeezed up, the girl with her arms flat as though ironed against her side, her thin legs pressed tight together into the size of one. The Hartops’ faces seemed moulded in clay and in the light from the van-lamps were a flat swede-colour. Like the man, the two women were thin, with a screwed-up thinness that made them look both hard and frightened. Hartop drove with great caution, grasping the wheel tightly, braking hard at the bends, his big yellowish eyes fixed ahead, protuberantly, with vigilance and fear. His hands, visible in the faint dashboard light, were marked on the backs with dark smears of dried rabbits’ blood. The van fussed and rattled, the chrysanthemums always swishing, rain-soaked, in the sudden high wind-squalls. And the two women sat in a state of silent apprehension, their bodies not moving except to lurch with the van, their clayish faces continuously intent, almost scared, in the lamp-gloom. And after some time Hartop gave a slight start, and then drew the van to the roadside and stopped it.
‘Hear anything drop?’ he said. ‘I thought I heard something.’
‘It’s the wind,’ the woman said. ‘I can hear it all the time.’
‘No, something dropped.’
They sat listening. But the engine still ticked, and they could hear nothing beyond it but the wind and rain squalling in the dead grass along the roadside.
‘Alice, you git out,’ Hartop said.
The girl began to move herself almost before he had spoken.
‘Git out and see if you can see anything.’
Alice stepped across her mother’s legs, groped with blind instinct for the step, and then got out. It was raining furiously; the darkness seemed solid with rain.
‘See anything?’ Hartop said.
‘No.’
‘Eh? What? Can’t hear.’
‘No!’
Hartop leaned across his wife and shouted: ‘Go back a bit and see what it was.’ The woman moved to protest, but Hartop was already speaking again: ‘Go back a bit and see what it was. Something dropped. We’ll stop at Drake’s Turn. You’ll catch up. I know something dropped.’
‘It’s the back-board,’ the woman said. ‘I can hear it all the time. Jolting.’
‘No, it ain’t. Something dropped.’
He let in the clutch as he was speaking and the van began to move away.
Soon, to Alice, it seemed to be moving very rapidly. In the rain and the darkness all she could see was the tail-light, smoothly receding. She watched it for a moment and then began to walk back along the road. The wind was behind her; but repeatedly it seemed to veer and smash her, with the rain, full in the face. She walked without hurrying. She seemed to accept the journey as she accepted the rain and her father’s words, quite stoically. She walked in the middle of the road, looking directly ahead, as though she had a long journey before her. She could see nothing.
And then, after a time, she stumbled against something in the road. She stooped and picked up a bunch of pink chrysanthemums. She gave them a single shake, the flower-odour and the rain seemed to be released together, and then she began to walk back with them along the road. It was as though the chrysanthemums were what she had expected to find above all things. She showed no surprise.
Before very long she could see the red tail-light of the van again. It was stationary. She could see also the lights of houses, little squares of yellow which the recurrent rain on her lashes transformed into sudden stars.
When she reached the van the back-board had been unhooked. Her mother was weighing out potatoes. An oil lamp hung from the van roof, and again the faces of the girl and her mother had the appearance of swede-coloured clay, only the girl’s bleaker than before.
‘What was it?’ Mrs. Hartop said.
The girl laid the flowers on the back-board. ‘Only a bunch of chrysanthemums.’
Hartop himself appeared at the very moment she was speaking.
‘Only?’ he said, ‘Only? What d’ye mean by only? Eh? Might have been a sack of potatoes. Just as well. Only! What next?’
Alice stood mute. Her pose and her face meant nothing, had no quality except a complete lack of all surprise: as though she had expected her father to speak like that. Then Hartop raised his voice:
‘Well, don’t stand there! Do something. Go on. Go on! Go and see who wants a bunch o’ chrysanthemums. Move yourself!’
Alice obeyed at once. She picked up the flowers, walked away and vanished, all without a word or a change of that expression of unsurprised serenity.
But she was back in a moment. She began to say that there were chrysanthemums in the gardens of all the houses. Her voice was flat. It was like a pressed flower, a flat faint impression of a voice. And it seemed suddenly to madden her father:
‘All right, all right. Christ, all right. Leave it.’
He seized the scale-pan of potatoes and then walked away himself. Without a word the girl and her mother chained and hooked up the back-board, climbed up into the driving seat, and sat there with the old intent apprehension, staring through the rain-beaded windscreen, until the woman spoke in a voice of religious negation, with a kind of empty gentleness:
‘You must do what your father tells you.’
‘Yes,’ Alice said.
Before they could speak again Hartop returned, and in a moment the van was travelling on.
When it stopped again the same solitary row of house-lights as before seemed to appear on the roadside and the Hartops seemed to go through the same ritual of action: the woman unhooking the back-board, the man relighting the oil lamp, and then the girl and the woman going off in the rain to the backways of the houses. And always, as they returned to the van, Hartop grousing, nagging:
‘Why the ’ell don’t you speak up? Nothing? Well, say it then, say it!’
Finally the girl took a vegetable marrow from the skips of potatoes and oranges and onions, carried it to the houses and then returned with it, and Hartop flew into a fresh rage:
‘I’d let ’em eat it if I was you, let ’em eat it. Take the whole bloody show and let ’em sample. Go on. I’m finished. I jack up. I’ve had a packet. I jack up.’
He slammed down the scale-pan, extinguished the oil lamp, began to chain up the back-board. On the two women his rage had not even the slightest effect. Moving about in the rain, slowly, they were like two shabby ducks, his rage rolling off the silent backs of their minds like water.
And then the engine, chilled by the driving rain, refused to start. Furious, Hartop gave mad jerks at the starting handle. Nothing happened. The two women, silently staring through the windscreen, never moved. They might even have been in another world, asleep or dead.