by H. E. Bates
‘Ah,’ said the Spriv, deprecatory, yet fat with pride, ‘I’d like as many pounds as hares I’ve knocked over wi’ this gun.’
‘I could see ye were a sportsman; I could see it,’ said the little man enthusiastically.
The Spriv stood with his mouth open a little, as though feeding on these words of quick and oily flattery.
‘Ah yes,’ he began. ‘I just ——.’
‘I was shootin’ meself once,’ said the little man, unheeding, ‘with a party, a fine party. It slips me memory whether there was twenty or twenty-wan of us, but that’s nothing. I’m only after thinking now how many birds we shot. And Chrisht, will I ever forget? That was a grand day, a grand day. We was all photographed for the papers that day, all standing there with the twenty thousand birds laid out on the grass like a catch o’ fish. Ah! that was a grand day.’
As the little man rattled off the story the Spriv stood eyeing him with a growing look of distrust, uneasily aggressive.
‘And where the hell,’ he said in a sort of half-menacing, half-derisive voice, ‘was that?’
‘Ah! that was in Ballaghadereen.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind it. You wouldn’t know it.’
‘Some foreign place,’ said the Spriv, with airy contempt.
‘It’s a grand place. Ah! sure, a sportsman like yourself would be in his glory there. I can see ye can handle a gun. Ah, they’d have welcomed a sportsman like yourself there that day.’
The little man had put into his voice a tone of dark and sweet familiarity, as though he and the Spriv were the only men on earth who understood the ways of sportsmen. Flattered and mollified, the Spriv suddenly lost his expression of distrust and contempt, and over his face spread the old suave boastful look we knew so well.
‘Come in out of the rain a bit,’ urged the little man. ‘Ye’re such a grand man ye shut out the daylight.’
The Spriv swaggered in under the hovel and sat down on the orange box by the little Irishman.
‘I hope you ain’t got to go?’ he said. He spoke with a sort of motherly kindness that was touching in its simplicity. ‘Looks like raining all night to me.’
‘Ah! sure, but I love the rain,’ said the little man, ‘there’s music in it, music in it.’
‘Music?’ said the Spriv.
‘I’m tellin’ ye. As I was comin’ along the road from Grantham this morning I could listen to it in the trees like it was meself playin’ on me ould fiddle. It’s a grand sound.’
‘I’m a player myself,’ said the Spriv.
‘Ah! it was on the tip o’ me tongue to say so. Didn’t I know it? I could see by the fine look in ye handsome face ye were a musician. Sure now, that’s a fine thing. And what insthrument? The fiddle, or what?’
‘A trombone,’ said the Spriv, with careless pride, ‘a trombone.’
‘And what in the name o’ God,’ said the Irishman, ‘is a trombone?’
‘You call yourself a musician,’ began the Spriv, flushing, ‘and not know ——.’
‘Ah, it slipped me memory. I know the thing. It was me dad himself used to play the trombone at the opera house the time I was a little shrimp of a fellow fiddling at the old Duke’s dances. Ah! the trombone. It’s a fine insthrument.’
The Spriv had become suspicious again. And as though setting a trap for the Irishman he said suddenly.
‘If you’re a fiddler, where’s your fiddle?’
The little man was ready for him with a sort of perky gaiety. ‘Ah! I knew ye would be askin’ that. I can see by ye face ye’re a clever man,’ he said. ‘Ah! I wish ye was comin’ wi’ me where me fiddle is. I could do wi’ the company of a grand musician like yourself. I wish ye was comin’.’
‘Where?’ said the Spriv.
‘To London, that’s where. Ye know London? But I can see you do, I can see it.’
‘I was there,’ began the Spriv importantly, ‘only last ——.’
‘Ah! ye’d like to be there wi’ me, a grand musician like yourself. Listen, I’ll tell ye something. D’ye know, did ye ever hear of a man named Pagliacci? The grand musician?’
‘What name?’ said the Spriv, very serious.
‘Pagliacci. I. Pagliacci. The grand Italian musician? I. Pagliacci.’
‘Ah yes, yes,’ said the Spriv. ‘I didn’t catch it. I ——.’
‘Well, it’s this fellow – No, no, after all I couldn’t tell ye. It’s the grand secret. I couldn’t tell ye.’
‘Ah, ye can trust me.’
‘I know, I know. But it’s not meself only.’
‘Ah, go on.’
‘Ye’ll promise not to say half a word?’ the Irishman whispered. ‘Ah! but I can see ye’re the grand fellow. Ye’re a gentleman. Ye’re a sportsman.’
‘I know how it is,’ said the Spriv. ‘I was playing myself in London once in the ——.’
‘I trust ye,’ cried the Irishman. ‘Well, it’s this way I’m tellin’ ye. This Pagliacci is my uncle ——.’
And in his quick perky voice the Irishman began to pour into the Spriv’s ears a strange long tale of how he used to go to London and play in all the grand orchestras with all the grand musicians under his uncle Pagliacci, who was the grand conductor. The tale went on as fast and persistent as the rain still pouring down over the desolate winter land lying beyond the stackyard, and the Spriv himself drank it in as the earth soaked up the rain. Whenever the Spriv grew uneasy or suspicious the little Irishman would repeat, ‘Ah! but ye’re the grand musician yourself. Ye’ll understand,’ like a soothing refrain. Sometimes the Spriv would try and break in upon the easy audacity of the tale with a boast of his own – ‘I was playing before the Prince of …’ – but the Irishman never paused, heaping lie upon lie inexhaustibly, with such compelling subtlety that at last the Spriv sat silent, too overwhelmed and overawed to speak, alternately fooled and flattered yet never suspecting. All the time my grandfather and I sat silent, without a sign, except that once he turned and winked at me.
Finally the little man took up his hat from where he had laid it on the dry bare earth and smoothed its sodden brim with a nonchalant flourish. Then he held the hat ready to put on his head with one hand, and with the other he made ready to shake hands with the Spriv.
‘Ah! sure, I hate to be goin’,’ he said, ‘and not be stoppin’ to talk with a fine musician like yourself. It’s been a grand pleasure.’
He held out his hand and the Spriv took it solemnly. ‘And if ever,’ began the Irishman, ‘ye’re in London …’
‘I’m sure to be there,’ said the Spriv. ‘Sure to…’
‘Sure, that’s fine. It’ll be the grand day when we meet again. Good day.’
‘Good day,’ said the Spriv.
‘I hope ye’ll have good sport – but I know ye will, I know ye will. Ye’re too grand a sportsman ever to ——.’
A moment later his words were cut off and lost in the sound of the wind and rain and his little perky figure was driven across the half-flooded stackyard and through the gate to the road. The sky had the strange glassy look of early winter darkness and almost before we heard his feet scraping on the road the Irishman was lost to us in the rainy gloom.
For a moment or two the Spriv stood staring at the rain. When at last he came back into the hovel he turned upon us a look of aloof contempt, as though we were not to be numbered among the privileged. We said nothing.
But there must have been something in our silent eyes that he did not like, for suddenly he looked red and suspicious, then uneasy, and at last angry, as though he had an idea we were laughing at him.
A moment later he was swaggering off across the half-flooded yard, in great haste, not heeding the puddles or the rain, and my grandfather was calling after him:
‘Don’t you want the gun?’
But the Spriv did not turn or answer. He went across the stackyard and through the gate to the road as though he were in a great hurry to catch someone and the last we saw of him was as he disa
ppeared down the road in the rain, looking like an angry and hopeless second in a walking race.
It was a long time before we saw him after that and longer still before he came to borrow the gun again.
The Plough
The boy and the old man were ploughing the field that lay on the valley-slope. The plough was drawn by a single horse, an old bony chestnut. It was early March, but already the weather was beautiful, and it was like an April day. Great clouds of white and grey and stormy blue kept sailing in endless flocks across the bright sky from the west, into the face of the morning sun. The cloud-shadows, travelling at a great pace down the sloping field, vanished and then reappeared on the other side of the valley, racing across the brown and green of the planted and unplanted fields. There was a feeling everywhere of new light, which created in turn a feeling of new life. The light was visible even in the turned land, which lay divided into regular stripes of shadow and light at every furrow. The earth, a dark clay, turned up in long sections which shone in the sun like steel, only a little duller in tone than the ploughshare itself.
The slope of the field made ploughing awkward. It meant that whenever the plough went down the hill the man had to hold the plough-lines taut and keep up a constant backward pull on the handles; and that when the plough came up the slope he had to keep up an endless shout at the single horse and lash his back with the loosened lines in order to make him go at all.
At the end of each upward journey the man and the boy paused to wind the horse. ‘Lug the guts out on him. Wind a minute.’ Blowing with great gasps the horse would stand with his head down, half-broken, staring at the earth, while the man rested on the plough handles and the boy stood and carved new spirals in an ash-stick.
The man, half-broken like the horse, would sit silent, staring at the earth or scratching his whitish hair. But the boy would talk.
‘Ain’t it about time we lit on a skylark’s?’
‘We’ll light o’ one. Don’t whittle. It’s early yet.’
Or he would bring up an old question. In other fields he had seen men at plough with two, three and sometimes four horses. Tremendous teams.
‘Why don’t we plough with more horses ’n one?’
‘Ain’t got no more. That’s why.’
At the lower end of the field they would pause again, but more briefly. Under the hedge, already breaking its buds, the sun was burning.
‘It’s that hot,’ the boy said, ‘I’ll ha’ me jacket off.’
‘Do no such thing! Only March, and stripping – you keep it on. D’ye hear?’ The old man glanced up at the vivid spaces of sky, wonderfully blue, between the running clouds. ‘Don’t like it. It’s too bright to last. We s’ll ha’ wet jackets afore dinner.’
Like this, struggling up the hill, then resting, then half-running down the hill and resting again, they went on turning up the land. As the morning went on the clouds began to grow thicker, the white clouds giving way to grey and purple, until the distances of sky seemed to be filled with sombre mountains. The intervals of sunshine grew less, so that the fresh lines of yellow coltsfoot flowers, turned up by the plough and pressed down between the furrows, no longer withered like those turned up in the earlier day. And very shortly it was not the shadows of clouds that ran over the sunny fields, but patches of sunlight, brief travelling islands of softest yellow, that ran over a land that was in the shadow of unending clouds.
About eleven o’clock the wind freshened, quite cold, and rain suddenly began to fall in driving streaks across the fields. It was spring rain, sudden and bitter. In a moment it seemed like winter again, the distant land dark and desolate, the furrows wet and dead.
The old man and the boy half-ran across the upper headland to shelter in the bush-hovel that stood by the gate of the field. As they stood under the hovel, listening to the rain on the bush-roof, they heard the sound of wheels on the road outside, and a moment later a thin long-nosed man, wearing fawn gaiters, a check cap and a white smock, came running into the hovel out of the rain.
He shook the raindrops off his cap and kept saying in aristocratic tones: ‘Demn it. The bladdy weather,’ and the old man kept speaking of him as Milk, while the boy sat in a corner, on an old harrow, taking no part in the conversation, but only watching and listening.
A moment or two later there were footsteps outside the hovel again, and in came a second man, a roadman, a large, horse-limbed man holding a sack round his shoulders like a cape. He moved with powerful languor, regarding the milkman with extreme contempt. He seemed almost to fill the hovel and he lounged and swaggered here and there as though it were his privilege to fill it.
‘The bladdy weather,’ the milkman said.
‘We want it,’ said the big man. It was like a challenge.
‘Who does?’
‘We do. Joe and me. More rain, less work. Ain’t that it, Joe?’
‘That’s it,’ said the old man.
‘Be demned,’ Milk said. ‘It hinders my work.’
‘Get up earlier,’ said the big man. ‘Poor old Milk. All behind, like the cow’s tail.’
The milkman was silent, but his face was curiously white, as though he were raging inwardly. It looked for a moment as though there must be a quarrel. And from the corner the boy watched in fascination, half hoping there would be.
Then, just as it seemed as if there would be a quarrel the big man spoke again.
‘Heard about Wag?’ he said. ‘Wag Thompson.’
‘About Wag?’ said the old man.
‘He’s dead.’
‘Dead?’ said Milk. ‘Dead? I see him this morning.’
‘You won’t see him no more,’ said the big man. ‘He’s dead.’
The old man stared across the field, into the rain, half-vacantly, looking as though he did not know what to say or think, as though it were too strange and sudden to believe.
‘It’s right,’ the big man said. ‘He’s dead.’
‘How?’
‘All of a pop. Dropped down.’
The men were silent, staring at the rain. It was still raining very fast outside and clay-coloured pools were beginning to form in the furrows. But strangely the larks were still singing. The men could hear them above the level hiss of the rain.
‘It whacks me,’ the old man said. ‘Strong man like Wag.’
‘That’s it,’ Milk said. ‘He was too strong. Too strong and fat.’
‘Fat?’ said the big man. ‘No fatter’n me. Not so fat.’
‘His face was too red. Too high-coloured.’
‘It’s a licker,’ said the big man.
He took a snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket, flicked it open, and handed it first to the old man, then to Milk. In silence they took pinches of the snuff and then he took a pinch, the sweetish smell of the spilt snuff filling the hovel.
‘Rare boy for snuff,’ said the big man. ‘Old Wag.’
‘Boy. I like that,’ Milk said. ‘Must have been sixty.’
‘Over.’
For almost the first time the old man spoke.
‘Wag was sixty-five,’ he said. ‘We went plough together. Boys, riding the for’ardest.’
He broke off suddenly, drawn back into memory. It was still raining very fast but the men seemed to have forgotten it. It was as though they could think of nothing but the dead man.
‘Ever see Wag a-fishing?’ the big man said. ‘Beautiful.’
‘Times,’ said the old man. ‘He was a don hand. A masterpiece. I bin with him. Shooting too. When we were kids once we shot a pike. It lay on the top o’ the water and Wag let go at it. Young pike. I can see it now.’
‘And mushrooms,’ Milk said. ‘You’d always see him with mushrooms.’
‘He could smell mushrooms. Made his living at it,’ said the big man. ‘That and fishing, and singing.’
‘He could sing,’ said the old man. ‘Ever hear him sing On the Boat that First took me Over?
‘I thought every minit
We should go slap up
agin it.’
The old man broke off, tried to remember the rest of the words, but failed, and there was silence again.
In the corner the boy listened. And gradually, in his mind, he began to form a picture of a man he had never known, and had never even seen. It was like a process of dreamy creation. Wag took shape in his mind slowly, but with the clarity of life. The boy began to feel attached to him. And as the image increased and deepened itself he felt as though he had known Wag, the plump, red-faced, mild-hearted man, the fisherman, the snuff taker and the singer, all his life. It affected him profoundly. He sat in a state of wonder. Until suddenly he could bear it no longer. He burst into tears. And the men, startled by the sound of them, gazed at him with profound astonishment.
‘Damned if that ain’t a licker,’ the big man said.
‘What’s up with you? What’re you crying for?’
‘Something frit him.’
‘What was it? Something fright you? What’re you crying for?’
‘Nothing.’
‘What you think o’ that? Nothing.’
‘Whose boy is it?’
‘Emma’s. My daughter’s. Here, what’re you crying for?’
‘Nothing.’
‘He’s tender-hearted. That’s how kids are.’
‘Here, come, dry up. We’ve had enough rain a’ready. Come, come.’
And gradually, after a few tears, the boy stopped crying. Looking up through the film of his tears he saw that the rain was lessening too. The storm-clouds had travelled across the valley.
Milk and the big man got up and went outside.
‘Blue sky,’ said Milk.
‘Yes, and you better get on. Folks’ll get milk for supper.’
Milk went through the gate and out into the road and a moment later the big man said ‘So long’ and followed him.
Patches of blue sky were drifting up and widening and flecks of sunlight were beginning to travel over the land as the man and the boy went back to the plough. In the clay-coloured pools along the furrows the reflection of the new light broke and flickered here and there into a dull silver, almost as light as the rain-washed ploughshare. The turned-up coltsfoot flowers that had withered on the ridges had begun to come up again after the rain, the earth gave up a rich fresh smell and the larks were rising higher towards the sunlight.