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

the wine into his glass before he began to say, in a devilish, husky voice that was hardly more than a whisper: ‘Some gals had got the clothes. They stood up on the bridge and dangled our trousers over and threatened to drop ’em in the mill-pond. What d’ye think of that? There we were swimming about wi’ nothing on and they wouldn’t give us the clothes.’
    He went on to tell me how gradually they grew tired and desperate and at last angry at the three girls dangling over the bridge while they grew colder and colder in the deep mill-pool and how finally he himself climbed out of the water and ran up to the bridge, stark naked, and frightened the girls into dropping the clothes and retreating. Long before he had finished I noticed that the housekeeper had returned and was standing in the doorway, unseen by my Uncle Silas, attentively listening.
    â€˜God a’mighty, you should have seen ’em drop the clothes and run when they see me. All except one.’
    â€˜What did she do?’
    â€˜Run off across the meadow with my clothes under her arms. What d’ye think o’ that?’
    â€˜What did you do?’
    â€˜Run after her.’
    He ceased speaking, and taking a slow drink of his wine he moistened his thick red lips with his tongue,as though the tale were not finished and he were trying to remember its end. A strange, almost soft expression of reminiscence came over his face, flushed with the bath and the wine, as though he could see clearly the river, the meadow and he himself running across the summer grass, naked, pursuing the girl running away with his clothes.
    â€˜Rum un,’ he said at last. ‘I never did find out who she was. Never did find out.’
    At that moment the housekeeper came in from the doorway, moving so quietly for once that he scarcely heard her, the sound of the cheese-dish being laid on the table startling him so much that he could only turn and stare at her, fingering the tapes of his pants and at a loss for words.
    â€˜Didn’t you ever find out?’ she said.
    â€˜No. I was just telling the boy. It’s been so damn long ago.’
    She looked at him for a moment and then said: ‘I know who she was. And so do you.’
    It was the only time I ever saw him at a loss for an answer and it was almost the only time I ever saw her smile. He stood there slowly licking his lips in uneasy silence until at last she snapped at him with all the old habitual tartness:
    â€˜Get yourself dressed, man! I ain’t running away with your clothes now, if I did then.’
    She began to help him on with his clothes. He still had nothing to say, but once, as she was fastening the back buttons of his trousers and he stood with his face turned away from her, he gave me a half-smiling but inscrutable look, rich with devilry, his eyelids half-lowered and his lips shining wet with the wine.
    And I began to understand then something I had not understood before.

Waiting Room
    My brother and I were at the hospital early, before nine o’clock. The waiting room, a high one-windowed room painted a dark green, was empty. And for some time we sat on the bench and did nothing but stare at the opposite wall. It was the bitterest day of the winter, the bitterest day I could ever remember, the streets black rivers of ice, the sky full of the bitterness of snow which seemed as if it would never fall. The fingers of my brother’s broken arm had already gone dead, blue to the nails, with the great cold. He sat with the fingers of the other tightly clasped over the dead fingers, trying to warm them. It was all right, I kept thinking, we were first, we should be away in a few minutes. In some other part of the hospital a baby was crying. The fitful sounds echoed and reechoed down the empty corridors. Then suddenly the sound ceased. We listened for it to start again, but nothing happened. The whole place seemed empty and deserted, as though all the