Cut and Come Again

by H. E. Bates

  ‘She’s nobody,’ the little woman said.

  ‘You’d better tell her so,’ I said.

  I sat down, and then after a minute the door opened again, and in came a stubby man wearing thick spectacles and an iron and a spring on one of his boots. He sat down next to me. He sat quietly for a few moments and then began to unlace his boots.

  ‘Going to bed?’ said the little woman.

  ‘Bed!’ he said. He was speaking to us all, in a voice of bitter weariness. ‘I hope to Christ I never go to bed again.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I been in bed a year!’ he half shouted.

  He took out a paper and began to read it savagely, in silence. I glanced over his shoulder. It was a journal of the fried-fish trade, and in it I could see advertisements for cod and Yarmouth herrings and fish-oil and ice. It was new to me.

  ‘Is that a good paper?’ I said.

  He was savagely silent.

  And gradually his silence seemed to affect us all. We sat staring and waiting. Through the highest unfrosted panes of the window I could just see the sky, greyish black and full of the snow that seemed too bitterly frozen ever to fall. And we sat there in silence for a long time, nothing happening, no one coming, as though no one knew or cared we were there.

  And then suddenly four nurses came in at once. They flounced in at one door, marched stiffly through the waiting room and out at the other door, a procession of ice-maidens, going by us as though we did not exist. The last of them was very tall, the tallest girl I had ever seen, and almost the thinnest. In her stiff white nurse’s uniform she looked like some great carrot-shaped icicle. When she had vanished we all burst out laughing. The fat man as he laughed quivered like a red jelly. We had scarcely recovered before the door opened again and three other nurses came through, marching in procession, white and frigid, and disappearing like the other four.

  ‘The seven virgins,’ I said.

  In a second later came a doctor. He followed the nurses. He had a kind of lamp, like a miner’s head lamp, strapped to his head. We waited for him to go and then we burst out laughing again.

  ‘It’s an operation,’ said the little woman.

  ‘It looks as if it’s going to be very pleasant for him,’ I said.

  ‘It is pleasant,’ she said. ‘I’ve had three and …’

  But we were all laughing like a pack of fools; and for the first time she couldn’t go on.

  The laughter was only silenced by the opening of the door. It opened slowly this time, and a nurse began to come in, backwards. I got up at once, almost out of habit, to say something to her, and then I saw that she was wheeling a carriage stretcher backwards, so that she could open the doors as she went. On the stretcher lay a woman between fifty-five and sixty. I thought at first that she was dead, but then I noticed that her eyes, which were the same dead grey colour as her face, were wide open and that she was looking at us as she was wheeled through. She had no expression on her face except one of blank terror. As the nurse wheeled her into the other room, the rubber tyres of the stretcher soundless on the wooden floor, she kept her eyes desperately fixed on us who sat waiting. It was as though she felt that we were the last fellow creatures she would ever see.

  The nurse wheeled her through and closed the door. For a minute or two we were chastened, sitting silent, listening. I believe we all expected the woman to cry out. But nothing happened, and finally the little woman said to me:

  ‘Now’s your chance. Catch her when she comes out.’

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  And I sat waiting in alert readiness, as a reporter waits to catch a public man as he comes out of a meeting. And when the door opened at last I sprang up. The nurse was flummoxed, and for the first time I succeeded in saying something.

  ‘I have come for an X-ray,’ I said. I tried to speak nicely, with consideration for her, gently. ‘I have the papers.’

  She took the papers and looked at them without speaking.

  ‘I should like to be able to go as soon as possible,’ I said.

  ‘A broken arm,’ she said. She spoke as though I were a horse. ‘Which arm?’ she looked from one of my arms to another.

  ‘Oh, my brother’s arm,’ I said.

  ‘I see,’ she said. I ceased in that moment to be as important even as a horse. She spoke to me as though I were a candlestick or a bed-pan or something she saw and handled every day of her life, her pretty pink lips thinning and widening into a half-smile of contemptuous tolerance of me.

  ‘You will have to wait,’ she said to my brother.

  ‘We have been waiting a long time,’ I said.

  She went out of the room. After that we sat and waited again, the conversation giving way to periods of silence and the silence to the arrival of other patients. More and more people began to come in, so that we had to squeeze up to each other on the benches. At last a mother and her daughter arrived, the daughter wasted by some kind of paralysis of the arms and shoulders, so that she walked as though she were carrying a terrific and invisible weight across her back. Red-Face got up and gave his seat to the two women. ‘How is she?’ said the little woman. The mother shook her head, secretly, without speaking, and the little woman kept her eyes on the girl, as though weighing up the symptoms of an affliction she herself had not yet had the fortune to contract, but as though she had hopes about it still. Once a nurse came in and telephoned again and then went out again. Hours seemed to pass and finally we caught the fragrance of the hospital dinners, and I could tell by the angle of the icy light that it was almost noon.

  I could bear it no longer. I got up, opened the door through which the patients came, and went along the corridors. After a time, meeting no one, I came back again.

  ‘The other door,’ said the little woman. ‘Try the other door. They all go that way.’

  I opened the other door and then stopped. The woman on the stretcher was lying in the half-darkened room, all alone. She was staring straight at me. The expression on her face had changed since I last saw her. She still had the same deathly grey colour, and her eyes still stared with desperation, but she had gone beyond terror into a kind of apathetic trance, almost childish, as though the interminable waiting had turned her mind. She stared at me without a change of that expression or a word and I stared back in return until I closed the door.

  ‘Nobody there?’ said the little woman, as I sat down.

  ‘Nobody,’ I said.

  And we went on waiting.

  Little Fish

  Every Saturday morning, Osborn, the schoolmaster, and Eric, his only son, walked down into the town to buy fish for midday dinner. The Osborns had eaten fish, some sort of fish, for this same meal on this same day for fifteen years. Osborn himself knew the calory values of cod and plaice as he knew the multiplication tables, and he believed in the value of fish almost as much as he believed in the value of himself. He was a small, perky, jumpy man, dressed in black coat and black bowler hat and white hard collar: a magpie with pince-nez. The boy too wore glasses. They were over-large for him, the lenses thick and gold-rimmed; so that his eyes had a round shiny look of magnified vacancy and fear.

  ‘Hands out of pockets. Hands out. Hands out. Ha-nds ou-t!’

  As they walked along Osborn snapped out abrupt commands, as though he were addressing an invisible class. He used a kind of verbal whip on the boy. Years of habit made him chip off the ends of his sentences, snap, clip, his lips like scissors: ‘Where you’re going, where you’re going! Before you leap. Many more times have I to say it, many more times? Hands out, hands out.’ The boy was silent, his terror of his father expressed in speechlessness. Each time he was commanded he took his hands out of his pockets, but somehow they crept back again, like fish sliding back into water. They were thin white frozen hands. He could not feel the ends of his fingers for the frost. The wind came in gusts of ice along the street, cutting and whipping up harsh storms of frozen dust from the skin of black ice on the pavements.

 
‘Cross! Take care. Be safe than sorry.’

  They crossed the street. The wind cut them crossways and the boy thrust his hands into his pockets and held himself rigid against the force of it and then remembered and took his hands out of his pockets in fear. He was carrying a yellow straw fish-basket; the wind flapped it harshly against his bare pink legs. And his father walked fast, with nipping jaunty steps, a little pompous, and the boy was always trotting behind, the bag flapping.

  And finally at the fishmonger’s he hung behind even further, standing on the threshold of the shop while his father went in. The open-fronted shop was an ice-house, the white fish cut out of gleaming snow. And his hands crept back into his pockets while his father catechised and snapped in the shop.

  ‘Well, what have you got, what’ve you got? Anything any good? Eh?’

  ‘Nice hake, sir.’

  ‘Hake. Hake? What are the sprats? How much?’

  Sprats were cheap and Osborn spoke as though he were saying: ‘Well, the square root of forty-nine, how much, what is it, how much? Quickly, quickly. Can’t wait all day!’

  And as the fishmonger weighed the sprats Osborn watched him, critically, with professional superciliousness, as though he were doing an arithmetical exercise. He stood ready to pounce on the slightest mistake. The fishmonger weighed and wrapped the little fish in silence, subdued, his expression frozen up.

  ‘Boy! Eric! Quickly, quickly. Quick-ly!’

  The boy came forward with the bag, trying to open it as he came, blundering, his fingers frozen.

  ‘Blunderbuss!’

  Osborn seized the bag, snapped it sharply open like his own lips, and the fishmonger dumped in the little silvery fish. The boy stood with the bag at his side, meekly, his thick glasses reflecting the white shop and the frozen fish so that his eyes looked sightless. Then Osborn paid the bill and the boy followed him out of the shop into the street.

  ‘Not cold?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘No business. Move. Circulation. Keep up with me.’

  The boy, not speaking, tried to keep up with his father, but immediately his father seemed to walk faster, purposely. And as the boy hurried the fish bumped against his legs, bump, bump, like a lump of ice.

  And suddenly his teeth chattered, involuntarily, against his will. He could not help it. And his father heard it. It seemed to startle him out of himself for a moment, into an accidental moment of humanity.

  ‘Better get something to drink.’

  Osborn stopped, looking up and down the street.

  ‘Cross.’

  They crossed, Osborn in front, the boy trotting.

  And in a moment they were in the restaurant. The boy liked it. It was warm and steamy, there was a smell of tea. He sat with his elbows on the table, rubbing his hands.

  ‘Elbows!’

  The waitress arrived; and Osborn regarded her as the boy had seen him regard the infants’ mistresses, as though she were a snail or something to be trodden on.

  ‘Cocoa! For two. And hurry.’

  And for a while after the waitress had gone and they sat waiting for her to return the boy kept his hands in his lap and rubbed them softly and furtively together. Then he became conscious of a steam condensing on his glasses, and he took them off and began to polish them slowly with his handkerchief. His eyes were very weak and the glasses had made sore lines of red on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. And without his glasses the world, the restaurant, was strangely restricted and softened: a warm steamy world, vague and soothing.

  He was still cleaning his glasses, holding them up to the light, squinting, when the waitress arrived with the cocoa. She set down the cups and Osborn watched her in silence until she went away.

  Then all of a sudden he called her back. ‘Miss!’ She came, the full length of the restaurant.

  ‘What’s this, what’s this?’ The girl stood still, flushing. ‘Well, what is it? I’m asking you.’

  ‘It’s some cocoa hasn’t melted, sir.’

  ‘Take it back.’

  ‘It’ll be all right, sir. It’ll melt all right. It’ll——’

  ‘Take it back! Change it!’

  Osborn’s voice was raised in command, as though he had momentarily forgotten himself and thought the restaurant were the classroom. He half-rose from his seat and shouted. The whole restaurant listened and watched in surprise, the waitress alone moving as she walked away with the spilling cocoa. And the boy, suspended too in the act of cleaning his glasses, sat in a state of meek embarrassment. He was embarrassed for his father, and yet afraid, and he could hardly look at him. Osborn sat blinking through his pince-nez in anger, in aggressive outrage, as though he owned the restaurant. Then the boy dropped his handkerchief under the table; and stooping to pick it up, he could smell the sprats in the straw bag. In the warm restaurant the smell was faintly unpleasant. Then when he had picked up his handkerchief he put on his glasses again, blinking constantly. Osborn was trembling with impatience and outrage. His face was set in harsh domination. And the boy more than ever was afraid to speak or move. For five years he had seen his father behaving like that, glaring, snapping, terrifying everyone in spasms of half-theatrical anger of which he never questioned the justice, of which no one in fact ever questioned the justice. His father was always right. No one had ever dared to say his father was not right. He himself said so, and what his father said was axiom and proof in one.

  And then as they sat there, and before the waitress had returned, the boy saw a change come over the face of his father. The anger in his face began to evaporate. It was gradually replaced by restlessness. He kept blinking across the restaurant through his pince-nez with little furtive glances of apprehension.

  ‘Eric. Hold yourself up. Straight. And look straight across the restaurant. Do you see the man in the big grey overcoat? The big man in the corner?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s Mr. Wyndham. Chairman of the county education committee. Don’t stare.’

  The boy looked down at the table.

  ‘He’s a big man in the educational world. Sit up. Round shouldered. Round shouldered. He may come over and speak. It’s very probable he may come over.’

  The waitress brought back the cocoa. But Osborn scarcely noticed her and he began to stir the cocoa mechanically, not looking at it. He was looking instead across the restaurant, on the chance of catching the eye of the man in the big overcoat. The chairman of education was drinking tea and reading the morning paper, engrossed. The little schoolmaster watched all his movements. What was he in town for? What was in the wind? Little fears kept crossing his mind and in turn expressed themselves in his face. Ah! But what if he should come over? That would be a great honour. A great moment. Every time the big man turned over his newspaper Osborn coughed or spoke more loudly to his son. But the big man never noticed. And Osborn would go on staring and stirring his cocoa and wondering. What if he should recognise him? What if he should notice, condescend to come over?

  And the boy, silently drinking his cocoa and watching his father through his polished glasses, could not help seeing the change in his father. The anger had vanished completely from his face, together with all the old domineering, perky, pompous air. His father seemed to have gone like a piece of cold toast, soft and flabby. His face was filled with an increasing and almost pathetic desire to be noticed, to attract the attention of the big man in the corner.

  But time passed, and nothing happened. And gradually the boy and his father emptied their cups and it was time to go.

  ‘Now then, cap straight. And hold yourself up. And be ready to raise your cap when we go out. Bound to notice us. Be ready to raise your cap.’

  Osborn paid the waitress and the boy stood ready with the fish-bag.

  ‘Hold the bag unobtrusively. Put it in your left hand. Left, left! And be ready to raise your cap with your right.’

  Together they began to walk through the restaurant towards the door, Osborn sharply watching the big man in the
corner, the boy trotting behind, and watching too. As they reached the door the big man suddenly turned over his newspaper with a great rustling, and in a moment Osborn raised his bowler hat and the boy snatched off his cap.

  Unnoticed by the big man, they passed out in obsequious silence. Outside the wind whipped up little ice storms. And suddenly in a spasm of anger and disappointment Osborn began to walk very fast down the street, bobbing and jerking like a marionette, snapping at intervals for the boy to keep up with him as though he were a little dog in disgrace.

  And the boy trotted along in habitual fear and obedience. His glasses were quite clear now. And every now and then he would look up at his father and blink rather sharply, in wonder, as though through the new clarity of the glasses he could see something about his father he had never seen before.

  The Station

  For thirty seconds after the lorry had halted between the shack and the petrol pumps the summer night was absolutely silent. There was no wind; the leaves and the grass stalks were held in motionless suspense in the sultry air. And after the headlights had gone out the summer darkness was complete too. The pumps were dead white globes, like idols of porcelain; there was no light at all in the station. Then, as the driver and his mate alighted, slamming the cabin doors and grinding their feet on the gravel, the light in the station came suddenly on: a fierce electric flicker from the naked globe in the shack, the light golden in one wedge-shaped shaft across the gravel pull-in. And seeing it the men stopped. They stood for a moment with the identical suspense of the grass and the trees.