Cut and Come Again by H.E. Bates

’em yourself!’ she flashed.
    â€˜I got me trousers off!’ he half shouted.
    â€˜Then put ’em on again!’
    This relentless exchange of words went on all the time she was bringing the remaining buckets of water in, and he was undoing the tapes of his pants, he shouting for the wine and the potatoes and shenever wavering in her tart refusals to get them. Finally as he began to roll down his pants and she began to bring in the last half-buckets of water he turned to me and said:
    â€˜Git a light and go down and fetch that bottle o’ wine and the taters. Bring a bottle of elderberry. A quart.’
    While I was down in the cellar, searching with a candle in the musty wine-odoured corners for the potatoes and the bottle, I could hear the faint sounds of argument and splashing water from above. I was perhaps five minutes in the cellar, and when I went back up the stone steps, with the wine in one hand and the candle in the other and the potatoes in my pockets, the sound of voices seemed to have increased.
    When I reached the living-room Silas was standing up in the bath, stark naked, and the housekeeper was shouting:
    â€˜Sit down, man, can’t you? Sit down! How can I bath you if you don’t sit down?’
    â€˜Sit down yourself! I don’t want to burn the skin off me behind, if you do!’
    While he protested she seized his shoulders and tried to force him down in the bath, but his old and rugged body, looking even stronger and more imperishable in its nakedness than ever, was stiff and immovable, and he never budged except to dance a little as the water stung the tender parts of his feet.
    â€˜Git the taters under!’ he said to me at last. ‘God a’mighty, I’ll want summat after this.’
    Gradually, as I was putting the potatoes in the ashes under the fire, the arguments quietened a little, and finally my Uncle Silas stooped, half-knelt in the water and then with a brief mutter of relief sat down. Almost in silence the housekeeper lathered the flannel she had made from her petticoat and thenproceeded to wash his body, scrubbing every inch of it fiercely, taking no more notice of his nakedness than if he had been a figure of wood. All the time he sat there a little abjectly, his spirit momentarily subdued, making no effort to wash himself except sometimes to dabble his hands and dribble a little water over his bony legs. He gave even that up at last, turning to me to say:
    â€˜I never could see a damn lot o’ use in water.’
    Finally when she had washed him all over she seized the great coarse towel that had been warming on the clothes-horse by the fire.
    â€˜You’re coming out now,’ she said.
    â€˜I don’t know as I am.’
    â€˜Did you hear what I said? You’re coming out!’
    â€˜Damn, you were fast enough gittin’ me in – you can wait a minute. I just got settled.’
    Seizinig his shoulders she began to try to force him to stand up just as she had tried to force him, only a minute or two before, to sit down. And as before he would not budge. He sat there luxuriously, not caring, some of the old devilish look of perversity back in his face, his hands playing with the water.
    â€˜He’s just doing it on purpose,’ she said to me at last. ‘Just because you’re here. He wants us to sit here and admire him. That’s all. I know.’
    â€˜Don’t talk so much!’ he said. ‘I’m getting out as fast as you’ll let me.’
    â€˜Come on, then, come on!’ she insisted. ‘Heaven knows we don’t want to look at you all night.’
    The words seemed to remind my Uncle Silas of something, and as he stood up in the bath and she began towelling his back he said to me:
    â€˜I recollect what I was going to tell you now. I was having a swim with a lot o’ chaps, once, in the mill-brook at …’
    â€˜We don’t want to hear your old tales,