Day's End and Other Stories Read online

  DAY’S END

  and Other Stories

  H. E. BATES

  To

  George William Lucas,

  also a story-teller

  Contents

  A Note from the Family

  Foreword by Lesley Pearse

  1. Day’s End

  2. The Baker’s Wife

  3. The Birthday

  4. The Shepherd

  5. The Easter Blessing

  6. The Spring Song

  7. The Mother

  8. Fear

  9. The Dove

  10. The Flame

  11. The Holiday

  12. Two Candles

  13. The Fuel-Gatherers

  14. The Father

  15. Gone Away

  16. Harvest

  17. The Barge

  18. The Lesson

  19. The Schoolmistress

  20. Fishing

  21. Never

  22. Nina

  23. The Voyage

  24. The Idiot

  25. Blossoms

  Bonus Story – In View of the Fact That

  A Note on the Author

  A Note from the Family

  My grandfather, although best-known and loved by many readers all over the world for creating the Larkin family in his bestselling novel The Darling Buds of May, was also one of the most-prolific English short-story writers of the twentieth-century, often compared to Chekhov. He wrote over 300 short stories and novellas in a career spanning six decades from the 1920s through to the 1970s.

  My grandfather’s short fiction took many different forms, from descriptive country sketches to longer, sometimes tragic, narrative stories, and I am thrilled that Bloomsbury Reader will be re-publishing all of his stories and novellas as eBooks, making them available to new audiences, and giving them – especially those that have been out of print for many years or only ever published in obscure magazines, newspapers and pamphlets – a new lease of life.

  There are hundreds of stories to discover and re-discover, from H. E. Bates’s most famous tales featuring Uncle Silas, or the critically acclaimed novellas such as The Mill and Dulcima, to little, unknown gems such as ‘The Waddler’, which has not been reprinted since it first appeared in the Guardian in 1926, when my grandfather was just twenty, or ‘Castle in the Air’, a wonderful, humorous story that was lost and unknown to our family until 2013.

  If you would like to know more about my grandfather’s work I encourage you to visit the H.E. Bates Companion – a brilliant comprehensive online resource where detailed bibliographic information, as well as articles and reviews, on almost all of H. E. Bates’s publications, can be found.

  I hope you enjoy reading all these evocative and vivid short stories by H. E. Bates, one of the masters of the art.

  Tim Bates, 2015

  We would like to spread our passion for H. E. Bates’s short fiction and build a community of readers with whom we can share information on forthcoming publications, exclusive material such as free downloads of rare stories, and opportunities to win memorabilia and other exciting prizes – you can sign up to H. E. Bates’s mailing list here. When you sign-up you will immediately receive an exclusive short work by H. E. Bates.

  Foreword

  I have always believed that H.E. Bates was the absolute master of short story writing. He always managed to create a little world for you to enter into, and that soft focus world would stay with you long after you’d finished the story.

  When I first started writing I tried my hand at short stories, assuming quite wrongly it would be easier than attempting a book. Bates was my guiding light; there appeared to be a simplicity about his work that I sought to emulate. I did get a few short stories accepted by magazines, but they could never be in his league. I certainly never created anything as lovely as ‘The Watercress Girl’. Did any writer before or since? I think I found it in a magazine and read it curled up in my aunt’s spare room one wet school holiday and then went on to rush to the library to find more of his work. Fair Stood the Wind for France, was the first book I borrowed and I was totally hooked on his work, but it was always the short stories I really admired the most.

  Lesley Pearse, 2015

  Day’s End

  I

  Ever since daybreak a strong east wind had raged, the trees had kept up a savage moaning and the clouds had shrunk into a drab, solid mass. And all day the sun had not shone, and only at evening, when sinking, had glowed for one instant on the tree-tops, the black roofs of the barns, the steeple of the church and the sombre sky.

  As Israel Rentshaw came home through his paddock, hobbling badly, he stopped to bring in his horse, a lean old thing which hobbled too, and struggling slowly against this wind, which now and then tore out the ends of his red neckerchief and whipped across his face strands of his horse’s mane, led the nag through the orchard towards the white farmhouse visible at the far end. In the dusky orchard the apple-trees, the cherry-trees and the damsons all looked black and alike. About Israel and the horse kept flying pieces of straw, feathers of ducks and hens, and twigs which snapped off the trees and fell in a pattering shower. Close at hand a pond fringed with alders and poplars gleamed, and beyond were visible groups of black wooden barns, stacks of straw and hay, manure-heaps, old carts, harrows, heaps of stone and drainage pipes covered with dead weeds. Further off dim shapes of woods slept and solitary trees and endless stretches of fields. But a mile away the river by which the village rested, the meadows and the village itself were already lost in darkness.

  In the house a light was burning. As they passed, Israel and the horse were for an instant lit up and the patches of white in the horse’s nose matched perfectly the colour of Israel’s hair.

  The horse was led into the stables, hay was shaken down and the door bolted. Israel, as he hobbled towards the house, sniffed at the wind, which to him smelled strongly of manure, something cooking and of snow. And on entering the kitchen where an oil-lamp was burning he remarked:

  ‘There’s snow about, you’ll see.’

  By the fire a woman sat. She seemed to be in the late thirties, dark, homely and plain-looking, with red cheeks and a dark dress, the neck of which she had pinned high up with an old-fashioned brooch of silver. It was his daughter, Henrietta. She glanced up and said:

  ‘How late you are again. Where have you been?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he impatiently muttered.

  He sat down and began to take off his boots.

  ‘It’s nearly seven,’ the woman went on. ‘Why don’t you come in earlier and rest yourself? You’re always at it. You work too hard.’

  ‘It’s all right!’ he repeated, still with impatience. ‘How many more times?’

  ‘It’s true, you know it.’ She bent forward, put before him soup with swimming bread and vegetables, and looked at him with an expression of despair. ‘Give it up – don’t slave any more. Here we are, working our fingers over nothing. And it’s lonely – nobody ever comes up.’ Her voice became beseeching and tender. ‘You’ve worked long enough. Let’s go and live in the village. You’re seventy.’

  ‘How can we?’ he answered. ‘What should we do?’

  She did not answer. He began to eat. The smell of broth, fresh tea, wood-smoke, dried herbs, malt and something sour was delicious to him. He ate with relish, not speaking to her.

  Then suddenly, from the fire, she said:

  ‘I forgot, there’s a letter.’

  Israel paused, glanced up and repeated: ‘A letter?’ shortly and with distaste. ‘Who’s that from?’ he asked.

  She brought it to him. When he took the envelope he did not speak but only stared, and when she brought his spectacles grunted, but did not look at her.<
br />
  There was silence again. Israel began to read the letter, then having read it over, read it again, and then again.

  ‘We beg to inform you,’ he read, ‘that in accordance with the instructions of the executors of the late Duke of F—, that part of the Duchy, viz. The valley of the Shem, from Shetsoe to the tributary Bide along the north bank, up to and including the forty acres, two roods, fifteen poles, rented by you on the said north bank, will on or before April 5th be offered for sale. To existing tenants, sales by private deed are, however, practicable, if entered into not later than March 22nd. We respectfully solicit your attention to this.’

  The letter came from a firm of lawyers. There was nothing else except that the words ‘Strictly Confidential’ were written on the envelope and that both in the address and in the letter his name had been misspelt.

  The cold, legal formality of the letter, it’s significance and suddenness shocked him. He felt a chill seize him. He turned the letter over and over again with a crisp rustling sound, and when he drank swallowed with difficulty and tasted nothing.

  Suddenly he saw his daughter fix her eyes on him. At once he made efforts to act normally, pretended to look interested in some bacon hanging on the wall and put the letter carelessly away. Soon afterwards he unwound his red neckerchief, left the table and sat down before the fire without a word.

  Henrietta soon afterwards sat down too. There was silence except that in one corner a clock ticked. On the face of this, and on Israel’s and his daughter’s too, firelight came to rest in a pink, tranquil glow.

  Fragments of the letter, as he sat there, began to go through Israel’s head. Sometimes a whole sentence, then only a snatched word or phrase would pass. And to such obscure and difficult statements as ‘Sales by private deed’ would be added the wishes his daughter had expressed: ‘Don’t slave any more, you’ve worked long enough.’

  All the time he sat there he was troubled, at war first with himself, then with the lawyers who had dealt this blow, and then with Henrietta. His white hair, his pale eyes and wrinkled face, his bent shoulders, his untidy beard and continued sniffing, all gave an impression of something simple, weakening and pathetic.

  And at the thought of losing his land he felt that he was weak, was simple and could not help a sensation of fear and misery. An expression of being lost, as if dreaming, came over him too, and he did not answer when Henrietta asked him:

  ‘To-morrow, shall I make a seed-cake again?’

  And he was silent because he did not know that she had spoken.

  II

  Israel Rentshaw’s life had been itself simple and pathetic. As a boy he had begun work at six, so that the memory of his childhood was limited and indistinct; until the age of thirty, as a ploughman, he had periods of being dissolute without being depraved, had got mildly drunk perhaps once a week. At all the fairs and holidays for ten miles round had got hopelessly drunk, abusive and rowdy, and had always to be taken home in a wagon or wheelbarrow. At thirty his father died, unexpectedly leaving him a hundred pounds, though he had all his life been looked upon as a poor man too. And with this hundred pounds Israel had rented land, bought a horse, got married and begun as a small farmer. Ever since he had found himself facing difficulties, acting on the wrong advice, neglecting opportunities. He owned pasture-land, grew all kinds of corn and root-crops. He kept cows, pigs and two horses, and in July and September hired one, or perhaps two men for hay-time and harvest. Yet nothing for any length of time seemed to have gone smoothly and without disaster. Cows had died, two horses had once to be shot within a fortnight, and only the previous summer swine-fever had come for the second time and all his store-pigs, sows and even a fresh litter of young, had had to be destroyed. All his fresh schemes of cultivation, his measures for the prevention of disease, his experiments with fruit never seemed to come to anything either. His wife was dead; he had no sons. The struggle, the loneliness and poverty had for ten years been growing worse. Barns were coming down, his stock was wretched, the methods he used were out-of-date – everything revealed ineffectuality and decay. He himself was a man of seventy, an old man. Only the orchard, whether in summer or autumn or bursting in blossom, gave an impression of the splendid prosperity Israel had once imagined, worked for, and never had.

  As he sat looking into the fire, clasping and unclasping his hands, sharp pangs of disappointment and regret went through him. Then he thought, but with another kind of pang, of his wife, her strict country face, her shrewd manner, whose philosophy had seemed to be ‘Never spend a half-penny when a farthing will do,’ but who also, at the same time, had been discerning, kind-hearted, diligent and understanding.

  Israel, for some reason or other, always thought of her on quarter-days. He thought of her distantly, simply, as if half-afraid of her. Now, at the receipt of this letter, he wished for her with a close, desperate longing that again was a pang.

  He kept knitting his brows, blinking, and asking himself: ‘What would she have done about this?’ All the time he felt weary. ‘Why should this have to come? Why should it?’ he asked. And he would keep glancing at Henrietta, feeling that if she knew of the letter she would at once say: ‘It’s God’s will we should give up at last. Now we can go and live in the village and not slave any more.’ And such a speedy decision, such a sudden break with the land he had farmed for forty years he did not wish for, and he felt he could not tell her of the letter.

  His restlessness grew. He got up, and about the kitchen began to walk softly, in his stockinged feet. Henrietta said: ‘What’s the matter? Why don’t you sit still?’ But he only grunted in reply that he could not sit still.

  Suddenly he had a desire to leave her and be alone. And after being silent a moment or two he took a candle, lit it and holding it before him, went upstairs. The stairs were wooden and bare and creaked like new boots. It was dark, the candle-flame spluttered grease and gave a bad, flickering light. Dampness shone on the walls and every now and then wind came and shook the window-panes violently. At the end of the landing a door had become unlatched and was clanging violently.

  The room Israel entered was cold and dismal, smelling faintly of something ripe, damp and rotting. When he set down the candle, shadows spread themselves like the tail-feathers of a huge bird over some rickety chairs, an old bureau, a litter of untidy papers and a few heaps of peas and beans strewn in the corner to dry. From the walls fell on him cold, unmoved stares from the portraits of his relations, his wife, of his wedding group and of himself dressed stiffly, without his beard, in middle age. Every one in these photographs, even himself, looked bored and stupid, and he did not look at them.

  Sitting down he pondered for a long time over some papers. Outside the wind howled in the lattices, barns and trees, and far off, in the woods and copses, seemed to whine like a dog. And all the time he thought: ‘If I don’t buy the land what will happen, where shall we be?’ And one moment he thought he would buy, then another that he would not. The cold sobbing of the wind made the thought of purchase appear warm and acceptable. Then with his daughter’s repeated words: ‘Don’t let’s slave any more, let’s leave it,’ returning to him, he would remind himself of four bad harvests, a cow that had died and the visitation of swine-fever the previous year, and of the unending struggle they had to meet such things and yet still live.

  The worst of these thoughts was that he must give up his land, go to live in the village and end his days as an odd labourer or even as a grave-digger or pensioner. He remembered the days when he had been strong, able to hoe, plough, and reap tirelessly, sit up all night with sick cattle and begin work again at daybreak. And he felt that as he had obeyed some force then, so he must offer no resistance to it now, but must work, scheme and exist as he had always done.

  He turned over the papers with a sad, reflective expression. Now the shock of the letter did not produce restlessness of thought but only a soft, lingering ache, as if he remembered how some one had hurt him long ago. The effect of this was to
make him more and more loath to face the problem of whether to buy his forty acres from the Duchy or not. He felt the need for strength, but every moment was conscious of retreating a little farther away from the problem, as if succumbing to his own weakness. At last he found himself counting the days to the date of the sale, then to the other date, March 22nd. To the sale it needed twenty-six days, so that if he wished to buy he must decide in twenty-one. And suddenly the space of three whole weeks seemed to him so ample as to give him time to review every point of issue, even take outside advice and to do the thing that was most agreeable and advantageous.

  The wind kept howling as he sat there. Gradually from a matter of complexity he found he had reduced everything to the simplest of terms. And this suited him, not because he was constantly and deliberately avoiding difficulties, but because he was by nature simple and trustful. And as he gathered his papers into a heap, took the candle and descended the damp, creaking stairs again, he would think over and over again:

  ‘To-morrow will do.’

  And in the air he thought he still detected the sharpness of snow.

  III

  Israel, on rising next morning, did not think of the letter. In the night snow had fallen and the thought that he had foretold this filled him with an odd satisfaction. He felt this on first gazing out at the endless stretches of white fields, at the gates, sheep-troughs, hedges and woods half-buried in snow, and the trees on which the snow hung like a blossom, delicate but heavy, waiting to fall.

  Now everything, even the wretched barns, stacks, piles of wood and carts, looked dignified and beautiful. There was a strange stillness. The pond and the sky were of the same sombre grey. In the yard sparrows and starlings hopped noisily to and fro looking for something to eat. As Israel returned from milking all the birds flew into the orchard and sat in the trees chattering at him.