The Flying Goat Read online

  THE FLYING GOAT

  by

  H. E. BATES

  To

  RICHARD CHURCH

  Contents

  Foreword by Lesley Pearse

  A Note from the Family

  The White Pony

  Every Bullet has its Billet

  A Funny Thing

  Château Bougainvillaea

  The Ship

  Perhaps We Shall Meet Again …

  The Machine

  I Am Not Myself

  The Flying Goat

  The Late Public Figure

  The Blind

  Shot Actress – Full Story

  The Dog and Mr. Morency

  The Wreath

  Elephant’s Nest in a Rhubarb Tree

  The Ox

  Bonus Story: Pensioned Off

  A Note on the Author

  Foreword

  I have always believed that H.E. Bates was the absolute master of short story writing. He 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

  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 reissuing all of his stories and novellas, 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 the H. E. Bates’s mailing list here. When you sign-up you will immediately receive an exclusive short work by H. E. Bates.

  The White Pony

  1

  Alexander went down the farm-yard past the hay stacks and the bramble cart-shed and out into the field beyond the sycamore trees, looking for the white pony. The mist of the summer morning lay cottoned far across the valley, so that he moved in a world above clouds that seemed to float upward and envelop him as he went down the slope. Here and there he came across places in the grass where the pony had lain during the night, buttercups and moon-daisies pressed flat as in a prayer-book by the fat flanks, and he could see where hoofs had broken the ground by stamping and had exploded the ginger ant-hills. But there was no white pony. The mist was creeping rapidly up the field and soon he could see nothing except grass and the floating foam of white and golden flowers flowing as on a smooth tide out of the mist, and could hear nothing except the blunted voices of birds in the deep mist-silence of the fields.

  The pony was a week old. Somewhere, for someone else, he had had another life, but for Alexander it had no meaning. All of his life that mattered had begun from the minute, a week past, when Uncle Bishop had bought him to replace the rough chestnut, and a new life had begun for Alexander. To the boy the white pony was now a miracle. ‘See how straight he stands,’ he had heard a man say. ‘Breedin’ there. Mighta bin a race-horse.’ They called him Snowy, and he began to call the name as he went down the field, singing it, low and high, inverting the sound of the cuckoos coming from the spinneys. But there was still no pony and he went down to the farthest fences without seeing him. The pony had been there, kicking white scars into the ashpales sometime not long before, leaving fresh mushrooms of steaming dung in the grass. The boy stood swinging the halter like a lasso, wishing it could be a lasso and he himself a wild boy alone in a wild world.

  After a minute he moved away, calling again, wondering a little, and at that instant the mist swung upwards. It seemed to lift with the suddenness of a released balloon, leaving the field suffused with warm apricot light, the daisies china-white in the sun, and in the centre of it the white pony standing dead still, feet together, head splendidly aloof and erect, a statue of chalk.

  Seeing him, Alexander ran across the field, taking two haunches of bread out of his pocket as he went. The pony waited, not moving. ‘Snowy’, the boy said, ‘Snowy.’ He held the bread out in one hand, flat, touching the pony’s nose with the other, and the pony lowered his head and took the bread, the teeth warm and slimy on the palm of the boy’s hand. After the bread had gone, Alexander fixed the halter. ‘Snowy’, he kept saying, ‘Good boy, Snowy’, deeply glad of the moment of being alone there with the horse, smelling the strong warm horse smell, feeling the sun already warm on his own neck and on the body of the horse as he led him away.

  Back at the fence he drew the horse closely parallel to the rails and then climbed up and got on. He sat well up, knees bent. The flanks of the pony under his bare knees seemed smoother and more friendly than anything on earth and as he moved forward the boy felt that he and the pony were part of each other, indivisible in a new affection. He moved gently and as the boy called him again ‘Snowy, giddup, Snowy’, the ears flickered and were still in a second of response and knowledge. And suddenly, from the new height of the pony’s back, the boy felt extraordinarily excited and solitary, completely alone in the side of the valley, with the sun breaking the mist and the fields lining up into distant battalions of colour and the farms waking beyond the river.

  As he began to ride back to the farm the mood of pride and delight continued: his pony, his world, his time to use as he liked. He smoothed his hand down the pony’s neck. The long muscles rippled like a strong current of water under his hand and he felt a sudden impulse to gallop. He took a quick look behind him and then let the pony go across the broad field, that was shut away from the farm-house by the spinneys. He dug his knees hard into the flanks and held the hal
ter grimly with both hands and it seemed as if the response of the horse were electric. He’s got racing blood all right, he thought. He’s got it. He’s a masterpiece, a wonder. The morning air was warm already as it rushed past his face and he saw the ground skidding dangerously away from him as the pony rose to the slope, his heart panting deeply as they reached the hurdle by the spinney, the beauty and exhilaration of speed exciting him down to the extreme tips of his limbs.

  He dismounted at the hurdle and walked the rest of the way up to the house, past cart sheds and stacks and into the little rectangular farm-yard flanked by pig-sties and hen-houses. He led the horse with a kind of indifferent sedateness: the idea being innocence. ‘Don’t you let that boy gallop that horse – you want to break his neck?’ he remembered his Aunt Bishop’s words, and then his Uncle Bishop’s – ‘She says if you gallop him again she’ll warm you and pack you back home.’ But as he led the pony over to the stables there was no warning shout from anybody or anywhere. The yard was dead quiet, dung-steeped and drowsy already with sun, the pigs silent.

  Suddenly, this deep silence seemed ominous.

  He stopped by the stable door. Now, from the far side of the yard, from behind the hen-houses, he could hear voices. They seemed to be strange voices. They seemed to be arguing about something. Not understanding it, he listened for a moment and then tied the pony to the stable door and went across the yard.

  ‘Th’aint bin a fox yit as could unscrew the side of a hen-place and walk out wi’ the hens under his arm. So don’t try and tell me they is.’

  ‘Oh! What’s this then? Ain’t they fox-marks? Just by your feet there? Plain as daylight.’

  ‘No, they ain’t. Them are dug prints. I know dug prints when I see ’em.’

  ‘Yis, an’ I know fox prints. I seen ’em afore.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Over at Jim Harris’s place. When they lost that lot o’ hens last Michaelmas. That was a fox all right, and so was this, I tell y’.’

  ‘Yis? I tell y’ if this was a fox it was a two-legged ’un. Thass what it was.’

  Alexander stood by the corner of the hen-roost, listening, his mouth open. Three men were arguing: his Uncle Bishop, limbs as fat as bladders of lard in his shining trousers, a policeman in plain clothes, braces showing from under his open sports jacket, police boots gleaming from under police trousers, and Maxie, the cow-man, a cunning little man with small rivet eyes and a striped celluloid collar fixed with a brass stud and no tie.

  It was Maxie who said: ‘Fox? If that was a fox I’m a bloody cart-horse. Ain’t a fox as ever took twenty hens in one night.’

  ‘Only a two-legged fox,’ Uncle Bishop said.

  ‘Oh, ain’t they?’ the policeman said.

  ‘No, they ain’t,’ Uncle Bishop said, ‘and I want summat done.’

  ‘Well,’ the policeman said, ‘jist as you like, jist as you like. Have it your own way. I’ll git back to breakfast now and be back in hour and do me measurin’ up. But if you be ruled by me you’ll sit up with a gun to-night.’

  2

  An hour later that morning Alexander sat on a wooden bin in the little hovel next to the stable where corn was kept for the hens and pollard for the pigs, and Maxie sat on another bin, thumb on cold bacon and bread, jack-knife upraised, having his breakfast.

  ‘Yis, boy,’ Maxie said, ‘it’s a two-legged fox or else my old woman’s a Dutchman, and she ain’t. It’s a two-legged fox and we’re goin’ to git it. To-night.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘We’re jis goin’ wait,’ Maxie said, ‘jis goin’ wait wi’ a coupla guns. Thass all. And whoever it is ’ll git oles blown in ’is trousis.’

  ‘Supposing he don’t come to-night?’

  ‘Then we’re goin’ wait till he does come. We’ll wait till bull’s noon.’

  Maxie took a large piece of cold grey-red bacon on the end of his knife and with it a large piece of bread and put them both into his mouth. His little eyes bulged and stared like a hare’s and something in his throat waggled up and down like an imprisoned frog. Alexander stared, fascinated, and said ‘You think you know who it is, Maxie?’

  Maxie did not answer. He took up his beer-bottle, slowly unscrewed the stopper and wiped the top with his sleeve. He had the bland, secretive air of a man who has a miracle up his sleeve. His eyes, smaller now, were cocked at the distant dark cobwebs in the corners of the little hut. ‘I ain’t sayin’ I know. An’ I ain’t sayin’ I don’t know.’

  ‘But you’ve got an idea?’

  Maxie tilted the bottle, closed his little weasel mouth over the top and the frog took a series of prolonged jumps in his throat. It was silent in the little hut while he drank, but outside the day was fully awake, the mist cleared away, the cuckoos in the spinney and down through the fields warmed into stuttering excitement of sun, the blackbirds rich and mad in the long hedge of pink-fading hawthorn dividing the road from the house. The boy felt a deep sense of excitement and secrecy in both sound and silence, and leaned forward to Maxie.

  ‘I won’t tell, Maxie. I’ll keep it. I won’t tell.’

  ‘Skin y-alive if you do.’

  ‘I won’t tell.’

  ‘Well,’ Maxie said. He speared bread and bacon with his knife, held it aloft, and the boy waited in fascination and wonder. ‘No doubt about it,’ Maxie said. ‘Gippos.’

  ‘Does Uncle Bishop think it’s gippos?’

  ‘Yis,’ Maxie said. ‘Thinks like me. We know dug prints when we see ’em and we know fox-prints. And we know gippo prints.’

  ‘You think it’s Shako?’

  ‘Th’ ain’t no more gippos about here,’ Maxie said, ‘only Shako and his lot.’ He suddenly began to wave the knife at the boy, losing patience. ‘Y’ Uncle Bishop’s too easy, boy. Too easy. Lets ’em do what they like, don’t he? Let’s ’em have that field down by the brook don’t he and don’t charge nothing? Lets ’em leave a cart here when they move round and don’t wanta to be bothered wi’ too much clutter. Lets ’em come here cadgin’. Don’t he? Mite o’ straw, a few turnips, sack o’ taters, anything. Don’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, you see where it gits ’im! Twenty hens gone in one night.’ Maxie got up, sharp snappy little voice like a terrier’s, the back of his hand screwing crumbs and drink from his mouth. ‘But if I have my way it’s gone far enough. I’ll blow enough holes in Shako’s behind to turn him into a bloody colander.’

  Maxie went out of the hut into the sunshine, the boy following him.

  ‘You never see nothin’ funny down in the field when you went to fetch Snowy, did you? No gates left open? No hen feathers about nowhere?’

  ‘No. It was too misty to see.’

  ‘Well, you keep your eyes open. Very like you’ll see summat yit.’

  Maxie moved over towards the stables. Alexander, fretted suddenly by wild ideas, inspired by Maxie’s words, went with him. ‘You going to need Snowy this afternoon, Maxie?’ he said.

  ‘Well, I’m goin’ to use him this morning to git a load or two o’ faggots for a stack-bottom. Oughta be finished be dinner.’

  Maxie opened the lower half of the stable door. ‘Look a that,’ he said. The stable-pin had worked loose from its socket, the door was scarred by yellow slashes of hoofs. ‘Done that yesterday,’ Maxie said. ‘One day he’ll kick the damn door down.’

  ‘He kicks that bottom fence like that. Kicks it to bits nearly every night.’

  ‘Yis, I know. Allus looks to me as if he’s got too much energy. Wants to be kickin’ and runnin’ all the time.’

  ‘Do you think he was ever a race-horse?’ Alexander said.

  ‘Doubt it,’ Maxie said. ‘But he’s good. He’s got breedin’. Look at how he stan’s. Look at it.’

  The boy looked lovingly at the horse. It was a joy to see him there, white and almost translucent in the darkness of the stable, the head motionless and well up, the black beautiful eyes alone moving under the tickling of a solitary fly. He put one hand on the s
taunch smooth flank with a manly and important gesture of love and possession, and in that instant all the wild ideas in his mind crystallised into a proper purpose. He was so excited by that purpose that he hardly listened to Maxie saying something about ‘Well, it’s no use, I gotta get harnessed up and doing something’, his own words of departure so vague and sudden that he scarcely knew he had spoken them, ‘I’m going now, Maxie. Going to look for a pudden’ bag’s nest down the brook’, Maxie’s answer only reaching him after he was out in the sunshine again, ‘Bit late for a pudden-bag’s, ain’t it?’ and even then not meaning anything.

  He left the farm by the way he had come into it an hour or two before with the horse, going down by the stone track into the long field that sloped away to the brook and farther on to the river. It was hot now, the sky blue and silky, and he could see the heat dancing on the distances. As he went lower and lower down the slope, under the shelter of the big hawthorns and ashes and wind-beaten willows, the buttercups powdering his boots with a deep lemon dust of pollen, he felt himself sucked down by the luxuriance of summer into a world that seemed to belong to no one but himself. It gave a great sense of secrecy to what he was about to do. Farther down the slope the grasses were breast high and the path went through a narrow spinney of ash and poplar and flower-tousled elders on the fringe of it and a floor of dead bluebells, bringing him out at the other side on the crest of short stone cliff, once a quarry face, with a grass road and the brook itself flowing along in the hollow underneath.

  He went cautiously out of the spinney and, behind a large hawthorn that had already shed its flowers like drifts of washed pink and orange confetti, lay down on his belly. He could see, on the old grass road directly below, the gipsy camp: the round yellow varnished caravan, a couple of disused prams, washing spread on the grass, a black mare hobbled and grazing on the brook edge, a fire slowly eating a grey white hole in the bright grass. He took it in without any great excitement, as something he had seen before. What excited him were the things he couldn’t see.