by H. E. Bates
‘Don’t mention that there place,’ he said again. ‘It fair curdles me. I had a terrible narrer squeak there.’
I thought I detected in this the beginnings of some ill-timed amorous adventure, such as my Uncle Silas being locked in a still room with a parlour-maid or having perhaps to cope with the unexpected misfortune of being found under, if not in, the mistress’s bed; but I was mistaken.
‘Poachin’,’ he said. ‘Well, I’d bin a-poachin’, we’ll say that. No denyin’ that. Got a couple o’ brace of pheasants on fish-hooks and raisins—nothing much. That never worrited me. It wur what ’appened arterwards what prit’ near cooked me.’
His gills, I noticed, had by this time recovered their customary ruby health, though his voice still quavered.
‘I tell you, boy,’ he said, ‘I wur prit’ near cooked that time.’
He then began to describe for my benefit, as if I had never seen it before, the house at Castle Hanwick and its surroundings. It is one of those great mansions, not castle-like in shape, though a castle in name, that stand splendidly on the escarpment of the middle, flowery reaches of the River Ouse, overlooking the river twisting on its many turns across the reedy meadows below. The place has been sold up now and they keep idiots there, or prisoners without bars: it hardly matters which. But in my day, and still more in my Uncle Silas’s day, the land bloomed and yielded in splendidly ordered pattern and fertility above the valley, its woodlands full of game and foxes, its park carrying a herd of deer which you could see sometimes flicking away in fear beyond big roundels of copper-beeches.
These, at any rate, were my own impressions, but my Uncle Silas said, when I mentioned the Castle’s late lost lushness:
‘Ah! I know: it wur like that one time and it wur like that agin. But round about ’85 it wur a sight different. It changed a terrible lot about that time.’
He broke off and was silent and I thought for a moment, as he actually closed his eyes, that he was going to drop off into one of those cock-like uncommunicative dozes of his, when he would suddenly wake up and say: ‘Lost meself for a moment, boy. Where wur I?’
This time I gave him no chance. ‘You were saying you were poaching.’
‘So I wur,’ he said. ‘One October morning. Bin at it all night and jist nippin’ back home. Got the pheasants in a sack with about half a hundredweight o’ water-creeses a-top on ’em.’
He went on to say how beautiful the water-cresses had been in a little brook that ran down through the southern end of the parkland. ‘Very frem,’ he said, using one of those good local words of his. ‘Frem and young. Bin a very good late season for ’em that year.’
I now reminded him of his remark about how much the place had changed round about 1885 and he said:
‘That’s right. Gone to rack and ruin. The old man of all, old St. John Featherstone, died about 1882. Terrible gambler—spent most of his time in clubs in London. And in two or three years you couldn’t see the place for briars and nettles. Like a damn jungle everywhere.’
‘But still pheasants.’
‘Oh yis, pheasants,’ he said. ‘I ain’t sayin’ they wadn’t no pheasants. Else I shouldn’t ha’ bin there. What I’m a-sayin’ is that a few year afore that your life wouldn’t ha’ bin worth ’atful o’ crabs if you’d ha’ bin seen even starin’ over the fence. Keepers everywhere. Armies on ’em. On sentry.’
That October morning my Uncle Silas skirted a bed of osiers by the brook and worked his way southward across the park, taking advantage of the coverts, just as day was breaking. He was feeling pretty cocksure, safe and pleased with himself when, as he hopped over a stile at the end of an avenue of big straggling rhododendrons, a man popped up out of the bushes and barred his way with a six-foot ash-pole.
‘I wur never more surprised in me life,’ Silas said. ‘It fair took the wind out on me.’
‘Keeper?’
‘Oh! no,’ he said. ‘Oh! no. No sich thing. It was ’im ’isself. Eldest son. The young St. John Featherstone. Well: I say young. Man about sixty I should say.
‘Difficult situation.’
‘Oh! no,’ he said. ‘Oh! no. Never bothered me a bit. Wouldn’t ha’ bothered you either if you’d ha’ seen im.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’ll tell you. Give you a rough idea on ’im if I can. Tall man, terrible thin and bent over at the top, like a parson a-prayin’. Very holler-chested, with a gruet big Adam’s apple like a pump handle stickin’ out over one o’ them high starched collars. Straw hat on his head—October, mind you—and big fishin’ boots over ’is cricket flannels. What d’ye make o’ that?’
It was really not necessary, as I well knew, to say what I made of it.
‘And the face?’ I said.
‘Looked like a blood’ound out o’ sorts,’ my Uncle Silas said.
Here my Uncle Silas raised his voice and started to give an imitation of the accents of the English aristocracy.
‘“My man,” he says, he says, “what you a-got in that there bag, my man, eh?” So I says water-creeses, sir, I said, water-creeses, sir, on’y water-creeses, and then he cackled like a gander and said, “Ho, so it’s only water-creeses is it, it’s only water-creeses? In that there case,” he says, “in that there case,” he says, “my man, I suppose they have feathers on?” And I looked down and I be damned if they wasn’t a pheasant feather stickin’ out of a hole in the sack.’
‘You were cooked,’ I said.
My Uncle Silas, ignoring this, went on with his imitation of the English aristocracy.
‘“My man,” he says, he says, “my man, you’ve a-bin a-poachin’. I know, I know,” he says, “you’ve a-bin a-poachin’. And in that there case, my man,” he says, “in that there case, you’ll have the goodness to come up to the house with me.”’
I remarked for a second time how my Uncle Silas seemed to be cooked, but again he ignored me and went on to tell how there had been nothing for it but to go up to the house, quietly.
‘Not that I were worrit,’ he said. ‘We’d got a bridge to go over and I got it worked out I could drop the bag in the river when he wadn’t lookin’. But it never come orf—he kept me in front on ’im all the time.’
‘Now you were cooked,’ I said.
He turned on me quite sharply.
‘Dammit, don’t keep a-sayin’ I wur cooked,’ he said. ‘That’s later. You allus want to git on sich a ’nation long way ahead. It took days, this ’ere affair. It took weeks. I wadn’t cooked till later—and then’—here he cocked his head at me with severe remonstration—‘on’y damn near see? on’y damn near.’
I had sometimes known him to break off a tale in the middle and never resume it. And remembering it, I was quiet after that, trying not to upset him, simply listening.
‘I jist recollected one more thing as ’appened when we went up to the ’ouse,’ he said. ‘Funny thing—I don’t know what made me do it, but I spotted a jay’s feather that had dropped on a blackberry bush and I picked it up as we went by and put it in me cap. Stuck it in a-one side.’
The incident did not seem of very great importance to me and I was careful to say nothing about it.
‘Any road,’ he said, ‘we got to the house and the old bird locked me up in a room. I wur there about a hour and I thought he’d gone for old Bill Bollard, the policeman. Course I knowed Bill well. We wur ’and-in-glove most o’ the time.’
Soon after the hour was up there was a rattling of a key in the lock and the door opened and in came, to my Uncle Silas’s considerable surprise, the cook.
‘Gal named Em Pack,’ he said. ‘She hadn’t been there very long. Very particular sort o’ gal. Bit miserable. Chapel.’
And what she had to say also surprised my Uncle Silas considerably.
‘Your breakfast is ready,’ she said. ‘You’d better come and eat it while you can.’
He followed her into the kitchen, where she put before him a plate of bacon and two eggs. ‘You c
an have three if you like,’ she said. ‘Or four, or five, or half-a-dozen. I don’t care. I’m leaving tomorrow anyway.’
My Uncle Silas said he did not at all mind the prospect of a third egg or a couple of extra rashers of bacon and presently she cooked these too and put them before him.
‘Then,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘she started ’orse-facin’ at me. An’ if there’s anything I can’t a-bear it is being ’orse-faced at by wimmin. Said I ought to know better, poachin’ an’ trespassin’ on other people’s property. Said I ought to be ashamed o’ meself. Said it would serve me right when I went up there.
‘I didn’t know what she meant by up there at the time,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘so I asked her why she wur leaving.’
‘Never you mind,’ she said. ‘You’ll see.’
‘See what?’ he asked her.
‘You’ll see,’ she said. ‘When you get up there. When she gets hold of you.’
If there was any prospect from which my Uncle Silas did not shrink it was that of being got hold of by a woman and he ate his eggs and bacon calmly to the end. They were very good indeed, he said, and the only thing lacking was a glass of beer to wash them down.
‘You’ll get no beer here,’ she snapped, ‘so I’ll tell you. And I’ll tell you something else—you want to be sober when you go up there or else I’ll be blamed if you won’t think you’re seeing things.’
‘Well, I ain’t seed things on a pint yit,’ he said, ‘but I dessay there’s always a fust time.’
After that he finished his bacon and eggs and presently he was going upstairs, cap in hand, with the young St. John Featherstone, the ailing, drooping bloodhound. The house, as he described it, was dark and gloomy. Ancestral portraits, flanked by numbers of swords, battle-axes and breast-plates, hung on the walls about the stairs. A few moulting fox-heads, keeping funereal company with a stag’s head or two and a scraggy badger, filled the peeling walls of the landings beyond.
‘My sister will see you now,’ the drooping bloodhound said. ‘It is her place to deal with you.’
A moment or two later the old bloodhound knocked on a door, opened it and ushered my Uncle Silas into a room.
‘And there she wur,’ he said. ‘This ’ere female.’
The word female is, at this point, a most important one. My Uncle Silas referred to the opposite sex, generally, in four main categories: gals, old gals, wimmin and females. He might occasionally refer also to ladies, young fillies, old tits and possibly bits of fancy goods. I have heard him also speak of wenches.
Beyond doubt the strongest, most astringent, most scornful and devastating of these words was female. It is clear that Em Pack, the cook, was a female. Females were the tart ones, the dry-lipped ones, the chapel ones, the vinegar-and-starch ones, the horse-facers.
‘God A’mighty,’ he said, and I thought he gave a shiver. ‘There she sat. Like a white toad.’
He gave another shudder and half-amended what he had said by adding:
‘Well, not real white. Mucky white. But jist like a toad.’
It is difficult to give any idea of my Uncle Silas’s pronunciation of the word toad. On his lips it became a sort of ripe snarl, long and scornful:
‘There she wur a-sittin’ in a big four-poster, like an old white toooooard.’
Her mouth, he said, was wide and drooping, the upper lip thick and overhanging the other, like an eave. The flesh of the neck was deeply baggy, hanging like a dewlap, pulsating slowly and sloppily up and down as she breathed. Over the eyes hung thick toad-like lids, creased and drowsy, the eyes themselves bulged and dropsical. Most of the time the mouth hung open, revealing long, yellowish teeth and a pallid, panting tongue.
‘Come here. Come closer. What is your name?’
‘Voice jist like a toad too,’ my Uncle Silas said. ‘Croakin’ at me.’
‘You’ve been stealing water-cress,’ she said.
‘On’y a mossel, ma’am,’ Silas said. ‘That ain’t——’
‘Are you married?’
‘No, ma’am.’
‘Come closer to me, come closer.’
He stood by the bed, the clothes of which he swore had not been changed ‘since the Christmas afore last, at least,’ holding his cap before him in his hands. He was close enough now to see the colour of her eyes. Surprisingly enough they were a sharp deep black and ‘I got a funny idea somehow,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘that she might have half been a good-lookin’ gal at some time.’
‘Come closer. Let me look at you. We shall send you to prison for six months, you know that, don’t you? The last one went to prison for nine months.’
Again she croaked to him to come closer, and again she accused him about the water-cress. He couldn’t understand, he said, why she never mentioned pheasants and he was pondering on this queer omission for the third or fourth time when suddenly she croaked:
‘What is that in your cap? Let me see.’
He lifted his cap, remembering the jay’s feather he had stuck in it, and before he knew what was happening she had snatched the cap with a cackling croak of triumph from his hands.
‘You may go now!’ she said. ‘You are on bail now. Tomorrow we shall see what we shall do with you. But you are on bail now. Your cap is your bail. What a pretty feather.’
‘Now look ’ere, ma’am,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘that’s damn near a new cap.’
‘Is it? Is it? So much the better.’
Cackling again, she put the cap under the bedclothes.
‘Now your bail is locked up,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow morning you must surrender to your bail. Tomorrow morning we shall decide what we shall do with you.’
‘Well,’ my Uncle Silas said, ‘I wur gittin’ jist a bit tired o’ this ’ere goodly lady an’ ’er bail and surrender and I dunno what-all and I said to her:
‘Ma,’am,’ and here my Uncle Silas took a step closer to the bed, ‘I’ll give you about ten half-jiffies to give me my cap back or else I’m a-comin’ in there to git it. Wherever you’ve got it ’id.’
This threat to her privacy under the bedclothes did not perturb her in the least, my Uncle Silas said.
‘Fact on it wur it made her wuss,’ he said. ‘She shook her fist at me and waggled her ugly old dewlap and said I’d better look out what I wur a-doin’ or else she’d have me not on’y for poachin’ and trespassin’ but for assault and battery too.’
‘I know my law!’ she said to him. ‘I am well up in law!’
‘All right, ma’am,’ my Uncle Silas said at last. ‘I’ll be back tomorrer morning. But ’ithout you give me that cap o’ mine back mighty sharp I’ll git the law on you too. For stealin’ other folkses property.’
‘Oh! you will, will you?’ she said. ‘And where are your witnesses? You see, I know my law. You stole four pheasants and a great deal of water-cress and we have witnesses. The last poacher we had here stole only one pheasant and no water-cresses and he got nine months. We know how to deal with poachers.’
She was inclined to talk very fast and by the time she had finished she looked more than ever like a toad with her panting dewlap and her wide mouth slightly slobbering and my Uncle Silas suddenly decided he would give her best for the day.
‘You got to ’umour these ’ere females,’ he said. ‘It’s no use you a-forcin’ on ’em.’
I asked him now if he got his cap back and what happened and if she cooked him for the poaching but he said:
‘Well, I wur back next morning and she wur as sweet as a sugar-ball. You couldn’t ’ave ’ad nobody sweeter.’
Here he cocked his eye at me, shook his head slowly and went on:
‘That’s ’ow wimmin are. Jist like blamed old toads one day, a-croakin’ an’ a-orse-facin’ at you, and the next morning as sweet as summerin’ apples, a-dearin’ an’ a-fussin’ on you.’
‘You’re not going to tell me she deared and fussed you?’
‘Oh yis I am,’ he said. ‘She deared and fussed me for damn near a fortnit.’
‘Well, it wur funny,’ he said. ‘Fust it wur “Ad I ’ad me breakfast?” an’ then “Wur I tired? Would I like a glass o’ beer?” and then it wur “If they was any-think I wanted I’d on’y got to say the word.”’
‘Crazy,’ I said, and it was the only word I could think of for a woman who looked like a white toad, kept a man’s cap in her bed and, as in the nursery rhyme, would never let it go.
‘Poor gal,’ he said.
He shook his head several times, giving once again what I thought was a slight shudder.
‘Well, there wur no sense not ’umourin’ on ’er,’ he said, ‘so there I wur, nearly every morning, up there, askin’ ’er for me cap and she a-pretendin’ she ’adn’t made up ’er mind whether to prosecute me or not. Then one day I had a grave to dig up at the church-yard and I never turned up.’
‘Trouble?’ I said.
‘Never sich a gooin’-on in your life,’ he said. ‘She started ’orse-facin’ and a-tunin’ and a-bawlin’ and I dunno what. “Ma’am,” I told ’er, “I wur on’y diggin’ a grave and folkses got to be buried, ain’t they?”’
‘Dig mine! Dig mine! Dig mine!’ she said. ‘Go away now I beg you and dig mine!’
‘It wur summat cruel,’ he said. ‘It turned your ’eart over. I’d ’ad about enough. I’d stopped a-wonderin’ a good while afore why old Emily Pack couldn’t stand it no longer and so now I said, “Ma’am, I ain’t a-comin’ up ’ere no more. Either gimme me cap or put me in clink—I don’t care which you do. But I ain’t a-traipsin’ up ’ere no longer.”’
The intensely black haunting eyes looked at him from the toad-like face a long time before answering. Then she said, slowly:
‘Come back tonight. I’ve put it away. But I’ll find it by tonight. Come up at seven and I’ll give it back to you.’
He had never seen her by night before. He had seen her only white and creased, toad-like and croaking, by the light of day.
And that evening, when he came up to her, only a candle was burning in a single brass stick by the bedside and she was lying down in the bed. She had brushed her white hair until it lay loose on her shoulders. She did not look so toad-like, he said, as she lay there in the light of the candle; nor was her voice so croaking as before.