by H. E. Bates
‘Oh! dear, don’t say that. That would be the last straw. My wife would go mad.’
‘Did you notice how sharply he looked at me when I called him Wee Willie?’ Mrs Daly said. ‘He looked quite shaken. I believe he knows – I mean I think he’s aware of me as a person. Do you know what? I somehow believe he’d let me catch him. Give me the net.’
‘It’s far too high. You’d never reach.’
Mrs Daly set the packet of corn-flakes and the bowl of sugar on the pavement and then suddenly kicked off her bedroom slippers.
‘I could if you’d let me stand on your back. That would give me another yard. I’m not heavy.’
‘Oh! Lord, I don’t know—’
‘It’s either that or the cat,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘After all we’re nearly out to the woods here. Once he gets into the woods we’ll never catch him.’
‘All right, then. Just one try. I feel awful at having dragged you all the way out here.’
‘Not half as awful as you’d feel if you went home without him. Now Wee Willie Winkie, listen.’ Mrs Daly addressed Wee Willie Winkie in the sternest possible terms. ‘I’m coming to get you. And get you I will. I’ll stand no nonsense from you, you little blue devil. Do you hear?’
The budgerigar, looking down at Mr Greenwood already bending his back, actually seemed to hear.
‘You’ll have to bend a little lower,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘I can’t quite reach.’
Mr Greenwood crouched lower on his haunches.
‘Have you got the net?’ he said. ‘The thing to try and do is not to swipe at him.’
Mrs Daly said yes, she had the net and she’d try not to swipe. A moment later she climbed on Mr Greenwood’s back, clutching the butterfly net in one hand and holding the lamp-post with the other. Then Mr Greenwood raised himself gently upward by something like another foot, at the same time clutching the lamp-post with both hands for support. He had never had a woman standing on his back before and the experience suddenly reminded him sharply of a game called mop-stick which he had often played as a boy.
‘Gently does it,’ he said. ‘Gently.’
There was no word of response from Mrs Daly but suddenly Mr Greenwood was convinced that he heard footsteps.
‘Just making the tea?’
The voice of the policeman returning from night duty was inquisitive and gentle. With calm appraisal he stared at Mrs Daly’s bare feet, her cast-off bedroom slippers, the fringe of her nightdress, the butterfly net, the corn-flakes, the bowl of sugar and the bent back of Mr Greenwood, who was unable to see the policeman except through his legs.
‘Oh! Lord – no, we’re trying to catch a budgerigar—’
‘No, Wee Willie Winkie, don’t you dare move!’
‘So it’s Wee Willie Winkie, is it?’ the policeman said. ‘And I suppose he’s running through the town in his nightgown too?’
‘I’ve nearly got him,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘I’ll have him in a moment now – Oh! blast! You wicked little wretch! He’s flown.’
In sudden vexation Mrs Daly sat down on Mr Greenwood’s back, then promptly slid off it, showing several inches of her bare knees. Again with calm appraisal the policeman stared at her as if all this was, as with the milkman, an everyday affair.
‘Excuse me, madam, but have you been to bed or are you just going? Or what?’
‘Oh! I’ve been. I’ve been up hours.’
‘And does your husband here usually let you wander about the streets in your nightdress, madam?’
‘Oh! he’s not my husband.’
‘Oh! he’s not? It’s like that, is it? I see.’
‘Oh! it’s not like that,’ Mr Greenwood said. ‘It’s not at all like that. Not at all.’
‘Then what is it like, sir?’ With light scepticism, the policeman stared at the packet of corn-flakes and the bowl of sugar. ‘Just going to have breakfast, too, I take it?’
‘Oh! no. The idea of the corn-flakes and the sugar is to catch the budgerigar.’
‘I see. And does he have cream with them too?’
‘He doesn’t like cream.’
The policeman gave a sudden long deep sigh, as if for a moment seriously questioning his own sanity. In the ensuing silence Mrs Daly put on her bedroom slippers, at the same time smiling at the policeman, who failed to smile back and merely put his head to one side.
Then after remarking that it was a matter of great interest to hear that the budgerigar didn’t like cream the policeman invited Mr Greenwood with no great urgency but rather with an almost sublime patience to present him with some sort of explanation as to what exactly was going on.
‘Oh! it’s quite simple,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘I woke up early and thought I heard a thrush cracking a snail on the garden path but it wasn’t.’
‘Oh! you did? Go on.’
‘Then I knew it was footsteps. I was worried because I thought it might be an escaped lunatic from St Saviour’s and then my husband looked out of the window and saw this gentleman in the garden. With this butterfly net.’
The policeman surveyed Mr Greenwood with an air of keenest inquiry.
‘So that’s where you’re from, is it?’
‘Oh! no, no,’ Mr Greenwood said. ‘Not at all. Not at all. That’s a great mistake. I’m not from there at all.’
‘How do I know?’ With icy alacrity the policeman turned to Mrs Daly and her butterfly net. ‘How do I know you’re not both from there?’
‘Don’t be insulting.’
With dignified hands the policeman unbuttoned the breast pocket of his tunic and took out his pencil and notebook.
‘Madam, I’m afraid I shall have to ask you for your name.’
‘And supposing I refuse to give it?’
‘That would be very foolish – that’s if you’re asking my opinion.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of asking your wretched opinion. I’ve just given you a perfectly rational explanation of what Mr Greenwood and I are doing here and you haven’t the grace or sense to accept it.’
‘Madam—’
Suddenly Mr Greenwood let out lyrical cries of delight.
‘He’s back! He’s at the corn-flakes! He must be hungry.’
With outstretched hands Mr Greenwood darted to the corn-flake box, on which the budgerigar was now perching with an air at once innocent and bold. In a matter of seconds the capture was over. Deftly Mr Greenwood slipped the budgerigar into his trousers’ pocket like some unwanted glove and then made a gesture of elation, almost as if to put his arm round Mrs Daly.
‘Oh! Mrs Daly, you’ve been wonderful. You’ve been absolutely marvellous. You really have. I don’t know how to thank you.’
‘So it’s Mrs Daly, is it?’
As in a dream the policeman sketched at the air with his pencil.
‘Yes, I’m Mrs Daly.’
‘And it’s Mr Greenwood, is it?’
‘Yes.’
The policeman drew a gargantuan breath as if preparatory to some sort of explosion and then let air slowly expire.
‘All right, Mrs Daly and Mr Greenwood, I’ll give you exactly thirty seconds to make yourselves scarce. And when I say scarce I mean scarcer than that! Corn-flakes an’ all!—’
All the way home Mr Greenwood repeated over and over again how wonderful Mrs Daly had been, how grateful he was for that brilliant idea of the corn-flakes and with what a different outlook he could now face the day. In turn she said she’d done it for the bird’s sake. She hated the thought of suffering in animals and birds. She simply hadn’t been able to bear the thought of those dead blue feathers on the lawn. It had all been so exciting.
‘It’s wonderful to start a day doing something like this,’ she said. ‘It makes you feel – Oh! I don’t know. Almost like a bird—’
In this sustained mood of elation she almost tripped into the kitchen, to find Mr Daly wreathed in bluish smoke and scraping hard with a table knife at a square of scorched toast. Gaily she said something about being back at last and Mr Daly regarded her wi
th a cold, sour eye.
‘Back from where? A trip to Mars? You’ve been gone hours.’
‘If I’ve been gone twenty minutes it’s as much as it is.’
‘Hours and hours I tell you. And what about my breakfast?’
‘What about it? It surely wouldn’t have broken your back to cook yourself a couple of slices of bacon?’
With grim disbelief Mr Daly stared down at her dew-soaked bedroom slippers.
‘Your feet are soaked. Where the hell have you been? Have you been rampaging about the streets like that?’
‘I have not been rampaging anywhere. I’ve been helping to rescue a bird from being mauled by a cat.’
‘God help me.’
‘Perhaps He would if you’d put yourself in other people’s shoes occasionally.’
‘I do not want to put myself in other people’s shoes!’ Mr Daly said. ‘It’s quite bad enough being in my own.’
‘There’s no need to shout even if it is.’
‘I’m not shouting.’
‘It’s like Bedlam.’
‘It damn well is Bedlam. It’s ruddy lunacy. What will people think? My wife rampaging the streets with a strange man at the crack of dawn, chasing a stupid budgerigar. I wonder you didn’t get run in.’
‘As a matter of fact I very nearly did.’
Mrs Daly actually laughed at the memory of the policeman, but Mr Daly merely choked sharply and threw the piece of burnt toast into the sink.
‘God Almighty, what were you thinking of? Whatever possessed you?’
‘Nothing possessed me. I was simply doing what I thought was right.’
‘Right!’ Mr Daly said. ‘Right! Ye gods, right!’
‘I’m going upstairs to change my slippers now,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘I’ll be back directly to cook your breakfast. By the way, could you lend me five pounds until tomorrow?’
‘What in hell for?’
‘To buy something, naturally.’
‘To buy what?’
‘I don’t think you’d understand.’
‘Even money-lenders might at least be given the chance of understanding.’
‘Oh! very well,’ Mrs Daly said, ‘if you must know it’s to buy a budgerigar.’
‘A what? Don’t tell me you’re going to start keeping those damn things now?’
‘No, I’m not. As a matter of fact it’s going to be a companion for the other budgerigar.’
‘I’m mad,’ Mr Daly said, actually grasping the kitchen table to support himself. ‘I’m clean crackers—’
‘They pine,’ Mrs Daly said. ‘When they’re alone, I mean. That’s why they’re called love-birds.’
‘Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me.’
‘It’s rather strange when you come to think of it, isn’t it, that a bird can pine for love? Just like a human being.’
‘Why like a human being? Why can’t they just be themselves?’
Mrs Daly left the kitchen without providing an answer. Mr Daly sat down heavily at the kitchen table and stared hard at the front page of the morning paper. Everything was worse than awful. If he didn’t get breakfast soon he’d miss the morning train. Even if he didn’t miss it he wouldn’t get a decent seat. He’d have to sit with a lot of bounders he didn’t know. They’d try to strike up conversations on politics or football or the Common Market or something and he’d never be able to do the cross-word, which he reckoned to finish every morning in thirty-six minutes flat. If that happened anything could happen. Once you got a day started like that it was hell.
‘One egg or two?’
Mrs Daly, wearing red slippers now, tripped into the kitchen in a still higher mood of elation, half-singing, half-laughing.
‘What on earth you can find to sing and laugh about God only knows,’ Mr Daly said. ‘I’m blessed if I can. It’s going to be one of those days. I can feel it. It’s going to be ruddy awful.’
Mrs Daly, laughing again, broke an egg into a cup. Already it seemed to her that half the day had evaporated like a dream.
‘You think so?’ she said. ‘I think it’s going to be an absolutely marvellous day. I’m perfectly, perfectly happy.’
Squiff
He had always been a drifter. He moved from place to place as the fancy took him, working mostly as a kitchen porter or cellerman or handyman in hotels, along the coast in summertime and then back inland for winter.
He was a trustworthy, stocky little man, not exactly stunted but perhaps what some people would have called a runt: rather simple-looking in a taciturn sort of way but with what were normally good, capable, steady hands. He hardly ever drank and was one of the few of his kind who did no gambling: probably because he had never learned to read or write, so that he could never be quite sure what the names of the horses were.
Somehow or other he had picked up his odd nick-name: Squiff. Nothing could have suited him less. Instead it seemed to mock him. It seemed really to belong to someone else, to a jocular sprightly man with a beery squint in his eye who took life gaily and made easy friends. He on the other hand never made many friends, nor enemies for that matter, and he was hardly ever jocular.
When he was a little over forty he got himself a job as handyman at a country hotel called The Montague Arms. It was a big fake-baronial style house heavily panelled in oak and decorated with gleaming battle-axes, suits of armour, coats-of-arms and portraits in oils of obscure Tudor gentlemen. The large chilly rooms lacked intimacy. Most of the guests found themselves talking in half-whispers and when anyone raised a voice the effect seemed aggressive, even coarse. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps because the food itself was merely indifferent, not a lot of people came to eat there. As a consequence the staff were bored and restless and, like Squiff, always drifting on.
Soon after he got there, on a warm Saturday night in July, it happened that the hotel wine-waiter was careless enough to slip on the stone flagstones of a passage while carrying a tray of glasses. In falling he put out an arm, jabbed it flat on a broken glass and severed an artery.
Probably because the night was so exceptionally warm and fine there were an unusual number of guests in the dining-room. One of the waitresses was sick at the sight of blood and sat outside for the rest of the evening, trembling in a chair, and there was no one to serve wine at the tables until suddenly someone remembered Squiff. The suit of tails they put on him was a little on the large side and the wing collar, over-large too, merely heightened his look of simplicity. He looked altogether clumsy, lost and undignified.
As soon as he went into the dining-room a rending shout of ‘Waiter!’ hit him like a growl from a raging boar. When he answered it he found himself facing a broad, heavy-faced man named Lubbock who was dining at a corner table with a blonde-haired girl of remarkably cool and distinguished appearance, in a low-cut dress of silver blue, who seemed altogether out of place in the company of a second-hand car dealer notorious for loudness of mouth, brutish habits and too much money.
‘Where’s the bloody Liebfraumilch I ordered twenty minutes ago?’ Lubbock shouted. His lips, coarse as the crêpe soles of a shoe, champed out the words viciously enough to make Squiff recoil. ‘And anyway where’s the wine-waiter? You’re not the bloody wine-waiter, are you?’
‘Yessir. I am now.’
‘What do you mean you am now?’
Squiff, who always talked with a good deal of hesitation, started to explain about the accident but Lubbock, furiously stubbing out one cigarette and in another second lighting another, shouted that he didn’t want to hear a lot of crap like that. He wanted the wine – and bloody fast too.
All this time the girl was watching Squiff. Her thick fair hair fell over her bare shoulders like a mane. Her very light blue eyes were as cool and fresh as spring water and the way she looked at him was full of stillness.
He went away, pondered for a few minutes, decided he hadn’t a notion which wine had been ordered and then went back into the dining-room with the wine-list. Would the gentleman mind telling
him again which wine he wanted?
‘The Liebfraumilch, you flapping wet! How many more times? I have it every time I come here. They keep it specially for me.’
‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind just pointing it out on the list for me, sir?’
‘It isn’t on the bloody list, you damn fool. I tell you they keep it specially for me. Are you going to bring the damn stuff or do I have to fetch it myself?’
‘I’m bringing it, sir.’
Again, all this time, the girl sat watching him, never moving an eyelid. Again her eyes had that great penetrative stillness in them. She seemed to be looking completely through him and it was almost as if she had already discovered what his great trouble was: the fact that he couldn’t read or write and that therefore, for him, the names of wines, like those of horses, were for ever locked in mystery.
He finally got over the trouble with the help of the barman, who also gave him some brief advice. ‘Better ask which number on the list people want, Squiff. The bins are all numbered in the cellar and I’ll show you which is which.’
Several minutes later he was on his way back to the dining-room with the bottle of Liebfraumilch when, half way down the broad baronial corridor, he found himself face to face with the girl. It didn’t strike him for a long time afterwards that she might have intentionally made an excuse to come out there simply for the purpose of helping him. He could only stand there, at that moment, looking as stiff and vacuous as one of the faceless suits of armour stuck up against the wall.
‘Did you manage to find it?’ she said.
‘Think so, miss. Is this the one?’
‘That’s the one.’ She laid her hand on the bottle and the way he felt himself start suddenly she might have been laying it on his arm. ‘Yes, the temperature’s about right. You’d better get another one up too. Mr Lubbock’s sure to want another.’
She smiled and for what seemed to be about half a minute he stood utterly transfixed. He had nothing at all to say; but already the greatest of all possible wonders had started to grow in his mind: how it could come about that a girl of her sort, clothed with that beautiful, well-mannered stillness, could have mixed herself up with a man like Lubbock? It was all completely beyond him.