by H. E. Bates
‘And did things change?’ I said. ‘You know—the puddens. Were they better?’
My Uncle Silas fixed his roving bloodshot eye on the distance and with a delicious spurting juicy sound, squirted the seeds of another gooseberry against his tongue.
‘Arter that,’ he said, ‘I wur never in want fur the nicest bit o’ pudden in the world.’
Queenie White
The name of Queenie White was hardly ever mentioned in our family, except of course by my Uncle Silas, who was inclined to mention it rather frequently.
‘Now that wur the year when me and Queenie——’
‘We don’t want to hear it, thank you, we don’t want to hear it, we don’t want to hear it!’
‘Now wait half a jiff,’ Silas would say. ‘If you can hold your horses I wur going to say as that wur the year we had snow in July——’
‘We know all about it, thank you. We know all about it. We know all about it.’
The trouble was that everyone else except myself seemed to know all about it and it was on an afternoon in September, many years later, before I was able to clear up the mystery of the unmentionable Queenie White and what she had done, if anything, to make her name resound so unspeakably in the ears of the women of my family.
That afternoon I walked over to see my Uncle Silas, taking with me a drop of something I thought would please his palate, and as we sat in the garden, in the drowsy wasp-laden air, under a big tree of Blenheim apples, he turned to me and said:
‘This is a drop o’ good, boy. Red-currant, ain’t it?’
I said that it was red-currant and he rolled another mouthful of it over his thick red tongue before saying:
‘It’s a bit sharper ’n elderberry and it ain’t so flowery as cowslip, but it’s proper more-ish all the same. Proper more-ish.’
A moment later he started to look very dreamy, as he always did in the act of recollecting something far away, and said:
‘You know the last time I tasted red-currant? It’s bin about forty years agoo—over at The Cat and Custard Pot, at Swineshead.’ He gave one of those ripe, solemn pauses of his. ‘Wi’ Queenie White.’
It was always a good thing not to hurry my Uncle Silas in the matter of these more distant recollections and I did not say a word. I poured him another glass of red-currant wine instead and after some moments he picked up the glass and gazed softly through the pure bright wine, an even purer and sharper crimson than the half-transparent, polished currants themselves had been, and said:
‘Yis: she kept The Cat and Custard Pot, or any road she and her husband did.’
I said I was surprised to hear that Queenie White was married but he said blandly:
‘Oh! yis. Married all right. Well, that is if you could call Charley White a man. He wur more like a damn bean pole with a boiled egg stuck on top.’
I must confess that I was not as interested in the appearance of Charley White as in what a woman called Queenie could possibly look like, but there was no hurrying my Uncle Silas, who shook his head in slow disgust and suddenly let out one of those rare-flavoured rural words of his.
‘Maungy,’ he said. ‘That’s what he wur, Charley White. Maungy. A mean, maungy, jealous man.’
I don’t suppose you are ever likely to find the word maungy in any dictionary but the effect it gives is, I think, a very expressive one. You get the impression of something between mingy and mangy and I knew at once, in this case, that Charley White could only have been a mean, moody misery of a man.
‘Wuss ’n a chapel deacon,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Allus countin’ the ha’pence and puttin’ a padlock on the far-dens. If it hadn’t been for Queenie the pub’d never ha’ sold a ha’poth o’ homebrewed to a stray tom-cat in a month o’ Sundays.’
By this time I was more eager than ever to hear what Queenie White had looked like, but my Uncle Silas said:
‘Yis, an’ a lot older ’n her too. Perhaps he’d told her the tale pretty well and she thought he’d got money but I be damned if I know how she ever got married to that streak o’ horse——. Well, never mind, she wur, poor gal, and she had to put up wi’ it.’
Then: ‘Or any road she did till she met me.’
In the very expressive pause that followed I had a moment of recollection myself and said:
‘Jalous he was and held her narwe in cage; for she was wild and young and he was old.’
‘What wur that you jist said?’ my Uncle Silas asked sharply.
‘That was a line of poetry,’ I said, ‘about a carpenter and his wife. By a man named Chaucer. It made me think of Queenie White.’
‘Chaucer?’ he said. ‘Any kin to old Blunderbuss Chaucer over at Stanwick Woods? He wur a rate old poachin’ man.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘this Chaucer was a long way before your time.’
‘Then he must have been a fly ’un,’ my Uncle Silas said.
After that he took another drink of red-currant wine, afterwards brushing the back of his hand across his wet red lips, and then went on to tell me how, in her narrow cage, where even the farthings were padlocked, Queenie White did all the work, attracted all the customers and never had a night’s fun or day’s outing from one year’s end to another.
‘Very sad gal, Queenie,’ he said. ‘Proper un’appy.’
‘You might tell me what she looked like,’ I said.
‘Queenie? Big,’ he said. ‘A very big gal.’
He licked his lips slowly.
‘And when I say big I don’t mean ugly big.’ He lowered his voice a fraction. ‘I mean beautiful big.’
The wine, I thought, was beginning to inspire him now and he went on:
‘You’ve ’eerd talk o’ gals with them titty little waists what you can get your two hands round? Well, Queenie’d got a waist like a big sheaf o’ corn—summat big and strong you could git holt on. Solid. And legs an’ arms like a mare. And upstairs——’
Here he glanced, I thought, at the upstairs windows of the house, as if thinking that someone might be looking down on us from there, but instead he was really preparing, as I heard a moment later, to complete the description of Queenie White.
‘Beautiful bosom,’ he said. ‘Like a winder ledge. You could a’ laid a bunch o’ flowers on it easy as pie.’
This charming picture of the upper parts of Queenie White’s figure brought her fully to my mind’s eye at last, except for one thing.
‘What colour hair?’ I asked him.
He seemed for a moment uncertain, I thought, about the colour of Queenie White’s hair, and he paused for several moments longer, pondering on it.
‘If I wur to tell you it wur just about the colour of the sand that day we nipped off to the sea,’ he said at last, ‘that’d be about as near as I could git to it.’
‘The sea?’
‘Yis,’ he said, ‘the sea. We done a bunk together.’
He ruminated a little more on this, stooping down after some moments to pick up a big fallen apple from the grass. After he had polished this apple on his corduroy trousers he held it up to me, clenching it hard in his hands.
‘She wur as firm as that there apple,’ he said. ‘Beautiful an’ firm. No: she wadn’t one o’ them Skinny Lizzies, Queenie, all gristle and bone and suet. They didn’t call her Queenie for nothing—and I tell you, boy, that’s what she looked like. A red-’eaded queen.’
All this, I thought, was so interesting that I poured him another glass of red-currant wine. And again, before drinking, he held it up to the light of the clear September afternoon. All the ripeness of late summer floated down through it, pouring on to his crusty hands a tender crimson glow.
‘What I can’t a-bear is a man what’s maungy,’ he said. ‘A man what’s jealous. I see that gal a-working night an’ day there and him a-locking the fardens up and skin-flintin’ over every pint o’ beer and a-fiddle-faddlin’ over how many matches in a box. God A’mighty, I believe he grudged breathin’ too often—he hated wastin’ ’is breath. He even grudged
her peelin’ the skin too thick off a tater. Yis!—God’s truth, I be dalled if he didn’t measure a tater skin one day. Told her it wur too thick to give to pigs!’
You didn’t often see my Uncle Silas in a state of anger, but suddenly he lifted the apple and threw it violently across the garden, where it burst on the pig-sty door.
‘That’s what I’d a-like to ha’ done to ’im,’ he said. ‘Throwed ’im up against the ’ug-sty. Instead o’ that I said to myself “Silas,” I said, “you’re a-goin’ to give that there young gal one day in her life as she’ll never forgit if she lives till bull’s-noon.”’
It was June, he said, when they did their bunk together. They waited until the long, bald, jealous bean-pole of a husband had gone off to market one Wednesday—‘allus went skin-flintin’ off to market of a Wednesday wi’ a couple of rabbits or a hare or a brace o’ birds some old poacher had brought in to swop fer a pint—allus on the mek-haste, never ’ettin’ on ’em, no blamed fear, not Charley’—and Silas could drive her to the station in a trap.
That day she was wearing a big white hat with an ostrich feather that she hadn’t worn since the day she was married and a mauve-coloured coat with big black buttons and silk frogs across the front. I imagined her to look splendidly gay and fresh and excited: exactly, as Silas said, like a queen.
The bunk, he was careful to explain several times, was only for the day.
‘I wanted her to ’ave jist one damn good day she’d allus remember,’ he said. ‘Hang about Charley. Hang about the old tits a-gossipin’. Hang about whether she wur a married woman. Hang about the consequences. Dammit! What the ’Anover are we ’ere for? Not to be maungy old narrer-gutses like Charley White, I tell you! We’re dead a long time.’
If there had been another apple at hand at this moment he would, I believe, have hurled that too at the pig-sty door.
‘Sea wur beautiful,’ he said. ‘She’d never seen the sea afore. Couldn’t credit it. Beautiful blue. Beautiful an’ calm. Beautiful sand. She couldn’t credit it. We lay there aside of a big sand-dune very nearly all day a-starin’ at it. And then——’
He broke off and in the long expectant pause that followed I saw that his glass was almost empty. I started to fill it up again and then noticed that, for once, he was hardly watching me. His eyes were resting softly on the September distances, as if he were actually staring at the sea.
‘Then what?’ I said.
‘Then she done summat terrible onexpected,’ he said.
He drank, wiping his mouth. I waited, and again he shook his head.
‘Wouldn’t go home,’ he said.
He stared thoughtfully into his glass, putting it slowly down.
‘Couldn’t turn her,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t budge. Couldn’t git round her nohow.’
I at once pointed out that he had, after all, got round her easily enough to do the bunk in the first place, and he readily agreed that this was so.
‘Yis, but that wur when she wur low,’ he said. ‘It’s easy to git round wimmin when they’re low. But arter a day at the sea wi’ me she wur a different woman.’
I said that I did not doubt at all that any woman would be.
‘Arter all,’ he said, ‘if you turn a nag out into a medder where the grass is sweet it ain’t likely he’s a-goin’ back all that eager to eat chaff and wezzles in a stable, is it?’
I agreed. ‘But what did you do?’
‘Had to give in to the gal,’ he said. ‘Dall it, it wur awk’ard, though.’
It had never been a particularly remarkable feature of my Uncle Silas’s character, I thought, to find such situations awkward, but in this case he was very quick to enlighten me.
‘For one thing I hadn’t got the money,’ he said. ‘I’d on’y come out fer the day.’
‘I’m sure that worried you,’ I said. ‘How much longer did you stay?’
‘Best part of a fortnit.’
‘On whose money?’
‘Her’n,’ he said. ‘Or rather it wur Charley’s. She’d been fly enough to bring it with her.’
It now began to be borne upon me why the name of Queenie White had been, for so many years, an unspeakable one in our family.
‘It wur oncommon awk’ard,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘But arter a few days I started to git used to it.’
Remembering Queenie White’s waist that was like a sheaf of corn, her limbs that were like a mare’s and her splendid bosom on which you might have laid a bunch of flowers, I did not think that getting used to it could, after all, have been so very difficult.
‘Then the money run out.’
‘Made quite a difference, I suppose?’
He pondered.
‘Well, it did in a way,’ he said, ‘but not half so much difference as Charley White did when he turned up.’
He took a rapid drink, as if fortifying himself, and I filled up his glass again.
‘I wisht you could ha’ seen that there fight, boy,’ he said. ‘It wur a proper stack-up. Me a little ’un and him that long thin streak o’ goat’s——boy, it wur a proper rare ’un, that wur.’
I filled up my own glass this time and urged him on with murmurs of approbation.
‘Fust he hit me with a pint pot,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Well, I’d be damned if I wur a-standin’ that, so I hit him wi’ one. Then he fetched me a couple o’ rip-tearing snorters across the chops and I hit him one in the bread basket. Then he blacked my eye and I blacked one of his’n back again. Arter that I dunno what he did hit me with. It felt like a damn cannon ball or summat and I started sailing down the Milky Way. When I come round——’
The admission that my Uncle Silas had been laid out quite startled me, but not nearly so much as the fact that he suddenly started roaring with laughter.
‘You never see anything so damn’ funny in your life, boy.’
He took a deep swig of wine and slapped his other hand down on his knee.
‘What was going on?’ I said.
‘Queenie wur givin’ ’im a good hidin’,’ he said. ‘Ah! an’ it wur a good ’un too. I told you how big an’ strong she was. Well, she wur a-mowin’ into ’im like a Irishman a-mowin’ into a forty-acre field o’ barley.’
‘Pleasant sight,’ I said.
‘Not fer ’im it wadn’t,’ he said. ‘When she’d finished with ’im he looked as if he’d been through a mangle back’ards. He wur a-layin’ flat on ’is back sayin’ “No, Queenie, no, please, that’s enough o’ that!” and she wur a-wipin’ the floor with ’im. And then when it wur all over she picked ’im up and dragged ’im off like a rabbit skin.’
‘Home?’
‘Home,’ he said.
‘And did you,’ I said, ‘go on seeing her after that?’
‘Course they wur a big scandal,’ he said. ‘You bet your breeches they wur. All the old tits wur a-twitterin’ an’ a-gossipin’ an’ a-maunderin’ about it fer years. Couldn’t stop talkin’ about it. Loved it. Couldn’t forgit it. Just their drop.’
‘But did you——’
‘Oh! yes, I used to see her,’ he said. ‘Used to see her quite often. She got out a good deal arter that, happy as you like, when she liked and how she liked. Oh! yis, she wur a free woman arter that. She wur boss arter that.’
Pondering on the word free, I found it difficult to phrase what was in my mind. Running away with another man’s wife was, it seemed to me, not altogether a light affair and what I wanted to know was if my Uncle Silas perhaps——
‘I know what you’re a-thinkin’,’ he said. ‘You’re a-wonderin’ if me an’ Queenie—well, we never. She wur a good gal arter that. The only thing was——’
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘I used to take her a bunch o’ flowers sometimes of a Sunday,’ he said.
He slowly lifted his glass, staring through it, and I saw once again how the red glow of it poured on to his crusty hand a tender pool of light. About us, under the tree, the air was full of the hum of wasps as they worked among the fall
en September apples and for some moments longer his voice was hardly louder than the sound of wings as he described for me how Queenie White would hold the flowers to her face, rest them on her splendid bosom and talk briefly of the beauty of the sea.
Suddenly he clasped my own hand in his own oyster-crusty palm.
‘Mek the most on it while you can, boy,’ he said. ‘Take a tip from Silas—mek the most on it while you can.’
He stared with dreamy contemplation at the last of his wine.
‘Course she’s dead now,’ he said. ‘Bin dead a good while. But I often wonder whether I shall see her—you know, up there. That’s if I ever goo.’
‘You’ll go,’ I said.
‘I ain’t so sure,’ he said. ‘But I know one thing—there ain’t a better-lookin’ gal up there.’
With that certain air of sadness that sometimes overlaid his devilry he once more contemplated the soft September distances, raised his glass and then blessed the name of the woman whose waist was like a sheaf of corn and on whose queenly bosom you could have laid a bunch of flowers.
‘Mek the most on it while you can, boy,’ he said. ‘Mek the most on it while you can.’
The Blue Feather
I once made a chance remark to my Uncle Silas that had the remarkable effect of making him turn quite pale.
‘I was going by Castle Hanwick yesterday,’ I started to say.
‘God A’mighty boy, don’t mention that there place to me,’ he said. ‘God A’mighty.’
Ordinarily my Uncle Silas’s face presented a plummy mixture of reds and purples, with the bright veins of his bloodshot eye most fierily pronounced; but now a distinct pallor, I thought, began to spread through what he always called his gills.