Cut and Come Again by H.E. Bates Page A

either!’ she said. ‘We heard ’em all times anew.’
    â€˜Not this one,’ he said.
    Nevertheless her words silenced him. He stood there dumb and almost meek all the time she was towelling him dry and it was only when she vanished into the kitchen to fetch a second towel for him to dry his toes that he recollected the story he had been trying to tell me, and came to life.
    â€˜I was swimming with these chaps, in the mill-brook, and we left all our clothes on the bank. …’
    â€˜Mind yourselves!’
    The housekeeper had returned with the towel, and my Uncle Silas, as though he had never even heard of the tale he was so anxious to tell and I was so anxious to hear, said solemnly to me:
    â€˜Next year I’ll have peas where I had taters, and taters where I had carrots. …’
    â€˜Dry your toes!’ said the housekeeper.
    â€˜Dry ’em yourself and don’t talk so much!’
    At the same moment she thrust the towel in his hand and then began to scoop the water out of the bath with an enamel basin and put it into a bucket. When the bucket was full she hastened out of the room with it, her half-laced shoes slopping noisily in her haste. Almost before she had gone through the door and long before we heard the splash of water in the sink my Uncle Silas said swiftly, ‘Tot out,’ and I uncorked the wine-bottle while he found the glasses in the little cupboard above the fire.
    We were standing there drinking the wine, so red and rich and soft, Silas in nothing but his shirt, when the housekeeper returned. She refilled the bucket quickly and hastened out again. No sooner had she gone than he turned to me to continue the story, andstanding there, his thick blue-striped flannel shirt reaching below his knees, the hairs on his thin gnarled legs standing out as stiff as the bristles on his own gooseberries, the wine-glass in one hand and the towel in the other, he looked more wicked and devilish and ugly than I ever remembered seeing him. Going on with the story, he had reached the point when the men, coming out of the mill-stream, had found their clothes gone, when the housekeeper returned.
    â€˜I think I s’ll have peas along the side o’ the wood,’ he said, serenely, while she refilled the bucket, ‘and perhaps back o’ the well.’
    â€˜You get your toes dried and get dressed!’ she ordered.
    â€˜And you mind your own business and get the supper. And look slippy!’
    As soon as she had left the room again he resumed the tale, but no sooner had he begun than she returned. It went on like this, he telling a sentence of the tale and she returning and he interspersing some angelic and airy remark about his peas and potatoes until at last she came in to spread the cloth on the table and lay the supper. She was in the room for so long, laying out the plates and the cutlery, that at last he gave it up, turning to me with an air of satanic innocence to say:
    â€˜I’ll tell you the name o’ the tater when I can think of it. My memory ain’t so good as it was.’
    After that he proceeded meekly to put on his pants, tucking in the voluminous folds of his shirt before tying up the tapes. While the tail of his shirt was still hanging loose he remembered the potatoes I had put in the hot ashes under the fire and seizing the toasting-fork he began to prod their skins. ‘Damn, they’ll be done afore I get my trousers on,’ he said. And standing there, with the toasting-fork in his hand, hispants tight against his legs and the tail of his shirt protruding, he looked more than anything else like the devil of tradition, prodding the roasting sinners.
    That veritable air of devilishness was still about him when, finding a moment later that the housekeeper had left the room again, he turned swiftly to me to say:
    â€˜Give us another mouthful o’ wine. I’ll tell you what happened.’
    I had hardly begun to pour