The Wedding Party Read online

  THE WEDDING PARTY

  H. E. BATES

  Contents

  A Note from the Family

  Foreword by Lesley Pearse

  The Winter Sound

  The Wedding Party

  Early One Morning

  Squiff

  The Primrose Place

  Shandy Lil

  The Sun of December

  The Courtship

  A Teetotal Tale

  The Picnic

  The Old Eternal

  Captain Poop-Deck’s Paradise

  Coconut Radio

  Bonus Story: The Sugar Train

  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 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.

  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

  The Winter Sound

  Miss Kingsford had long been in the habit of keeping herself very much to herself; in that way there was no one to quarrel with.

  The small white guest-house at the top of the cliff faced directly on to the sea, its wooden balconies shabby and scaly from much salt air. Many of the guests were old and frail. They moved slowly up and down stairs and in and out of thin-carpeted rooms like grey uncertain snails. A few also kept dogs; and since there was a large notice in the entrance lobby which said All Dogs Must Be Carried these few looked more like decrepit creeping nursemaids guiltily carrying with them shaggy infants, some wrapped in shawls.

  By contrast Miss Kingsford, fiftyish, prided herself on really being quite young. She too kept a dog, a small grey poodle she had brought up to stare with disdain, even derision, at other dogs, so that he had become a kind of canine pharisee. Miss Kingsford, thin and neat and small and blue-eyed with skin as smooth as a balloon, looked not at all unlike a poodle herself, her hair carefully permed and tinted to the shade of pale-medium sherry. Her dog’s disdain of other dogs had been directly inspired by her own disdain of other people, so that just as he was above the common company of lesser creatures she kept herself aloof from the dim affairs of snails and creeping nursemaids.

  ‘Come along, darling pet. We mustn’t loiter. Mummy will be very cross if you don’t do as you’re told.’

  By the middle of September the summer visitors in the guest-house began to thin out a little, leaving behind mostly regular guests, of whom Miss Kingsford was one. But suddenly, wholly unexpectedly, towards the end of September, a Mr Willoughby appeared. And there were, Miss Kingsford was quick to notice, two exceptional things about Mr Willoughby.

  The grey-haired, grey-eyed Mr Willoughby was neither snail nor nursemaid. He dressed with a certain air of smartness. His suit of thorn-proof tweed was of a shade of lichen green touched here and there with flecks of orange, with cap to match. A woollen tie of deep amber picked up the tips of orange to perfection and the same rich touch of gold shone from the highly polished brogues. Mr Willoughby was, Miss Kingsford thought, clearly distinguished. He was obviously, she told herself, not quite as other men.

  Mr Willoughby was also well-mannered. In all her experience he was the only man ever to stand up in the lounge when a lady entered. It was an extraordinary experience, in a way quite thrilling, to see him rise politely to his feet at the entrance of even the slowest, dimmest female snail.

  He was also, it was obvious, acutely shy. Every morning as Miss Kingsford exercised her dog along the wide grassy cliff-top Mr Willoughby fairly skimmed past her, head averted, to disappear into distances of gorse and tamarisk from which, some long time later, he scurried out again as if something unpleasant had frightened him there.

  Always at these moments Miss Kingsford, who constantly kept her poodle on the leash for fear of having him contaminated or even sniffed at by other dogs, wished hopefully that Mr Willoughby would pause in his scurried passage and perhaps raise his cap to her or even offer a syllable of greeting. But for some days nothing of the sort ever happened or even looked like happening. Mr Willoughby always found some sudden path of retreat down the cliff face or over towards the town.

  Suddenly one morning there emerged from the clumps of bushes not merely Mr Willoughby but two large, bounding, almost laughing Dalmatians. Unpleasantly joyful, they leapt wildly along the cliff-top, circled Miss Kingsford madly and then, as if intent on suicide, bounded over the cliff-top and disappeared.

  A second later Miss Kingsford’s poodle sprang into the air with the force of an electrified jack-in-the-box, broke from the leash and with toy-like barks of delight disappeared over the cliff-top too.

  Miss Kingsford let out a sudden scream and Mr Willoughby, startled from shy retreat at last, came running.

  ‘Oh! you wicked, wicked boy! Come back here! Come back! How dare you do that? Come back at once, I tell you! At once!—’

  Even in this moment of crisis, when it seemed that Miss Kingsford might instantly burst into tea
rs, Mr Willoughby was polite enough to raise his cap. In answer Miss Kingsford let out an incoherent shriek or two and then started to run with Mr Willoughby to the edge of the cliff-face.

  ‘Oh! my God, he’ll be killed. He’ll surely kill himself—’

  ‘Oh! no, no. Don’t worry.’ Mr Willoughby’s voice was calm and very soft. ‘There he is.’

  Twenty-five feet down the cliff the poodle was standing on a ledge of chalk, tongue and tail intensely vibrant, looking down at the shore below, as if about to join the gay Dalmatians.

  ‘Come back! Come back at once, I tell you! You naughty, naughty, wicked boy.’

  ‘What do you call him?’ Mr Willoughby said. ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘Toff – Oh! you terrible, terrible, disobedient creature—’

  ‘I think I’d better go down and get him,’ Mr Willoughby said. ‘Oh! it isn’t difficult. Do you mind holding my cap?’

  Why Mr Willoughby should have asked her to hold his cap she never quite knew, but suddenly, without it, she thought he looked shyer than ever, oddly naked and unprotected. She began to tremble visibly as he climbed down the cliff-face, here and there dislodging a stone or two, and then all at once Mr Willoughby and the poodle became completely identified one with another. It was now not merely that the dog might be killed. A violent fear rushed through her that Mr Willoughby might be killed too.

  A tuft of grass as big as a football suddenly dislodged itself from under Mr Willoughby’s foothold and went bouncing past the poodle, startling it into another electrified jump that seemed about to take it down the cliff-face. Miss Kingsford managed to stifle a scream by biting at Mr Willoughby’s cap but he, by contrast, seemed utterly calm.

  ‘Toff boy, come on. Come along now. No more nonsense, boy. Toff—’

  Mr Willoughby gave a low whistle and snapped his fingers. The poodle appeared almost to laugh. Then Mr Willoughby actually turned calmly round and said:

  ‘The Dalmatians seem to have caused a bit of a stir. There’s quite a crowd down there.’

  ‘Oh! do take care.’ Mr Willoughby was within four or five feet of the poodle now, crouching a little, in the attitude of stalking it. ‘Do watch what you’re doing.’

  ‘Perfectly all right. Toff boy, come – come now.’

  Perversely the poodle started to trot further down the cliff but in the same instant Mr Willoughby half-fell, half-jumped and caught him firmly in both hands, a moment later giving him a light but stern box on one ear. Whether from the shock of seeing her dog struck for the first time in his life or from the sheer violence of her relief at seeing him saved Miss Kingsford never quite knew, but suddenly cliff and sea and sky tilted and swayed in sickening confusion. A white veil of vertigo enshrouded her completely and then turned suddenly to black. A moment later she dropped to the grass, burying her face in Mr Willoughby’s cap, smothered by a faint aroma of hair oil.

  When she finally looked up again Mr Willoughby was sitting on the grass too, holding the dog in his lap. There was no heart in her to speak to the dog or even, at that moment, to Mr Willoughby. She simply gave the two figures a sickly stare.

  ‘I think you’d better let me buy you a drink,’ Mr Willoughby said. To her infinite astonishment he gave a short laugh. ‘You look a little peaky. You won’t be sick into my cap, will you?’

  ‘Oh! my God. I’m sorry—’

  Mr Willoughby stood up, gave her a hand and pulled her to her feet. She wanted to be sick but succeeded, somehow, in not being sick. Restlessly the poodle struggled in Mr Willoughby’s arms and playfully he slapped its ear again.

  ‘We’ll get a sherry or a brandy or something at The Mariner’s Arms,’ he said. ‘I sometimes drop in there.’

  They started to walk slowly across the grass, Mr Willoughby carrying the poodle in one hand and his cap in the other.

  ‘Why do you call him Toff?’

  ‘What?—’

  ‘Toff, it’s an odd name for a dog.’

  ‘Oh! yes – it’s because he likes toffee. He always has two after lunch every day.’ Suddenly she turned on the dog with quite savage vehemence. ‘But we won’t get them today, will we? No, we won’t. Nor tomorrow. Nor the next day. Nor the next. We’ve been very, very wicked, haven’t we? I’ve always trained him not to mix with other dogs. It was all because of those beastly Dalmatians. The coarse, common brutes.’

  In the bar of The Mariner’s Arms Mr Willoughby ordered a brandy for Miss Kingsford and half a pint of beer for himself. He had now tied the dog-leash to the leg of a chair and the poodle, cowed and quiet, crouched under the chair.

  ‘What else do you feed him besides toffee?’

  Miss Kingsford, sipping brandy, was quiet too.

  ‘Oh! not so very much. I don’t believe in giving them too much.’

  ‘I suppose that’s wise.’

  ‘Yes. Have you a dog?’

  ‘No. Not now. I had one once. But that’s quite a time ago. Long before my wife died.’

  The air above the sea was beautifully pellucid and Miss Kingsford, staring at it out of the bar window, was reminded of her moment of enshrouding vertigo.

  ‘Oh! I was really frightened back there. When you – I’d never have forgiven myself.’

  ‘Oh! no need to have worried.’

  ‘But I was worried. Awfully.’

  ‘And you? What about you? Do you feel better now?’

  ‘Better now. Thank you for the brandy. In fact for everything! Oh! you were absolutely—.’

  After this the conversation lapsed inconclusively. Miss Kingsford again stared at the sea and Mr Willoughby at his beer. At last she said:

  ‘What about the guest-house? How did you find it? Rather dull?’

  ‘Oh! I’ve tried several along the coast. They’re all much of a muchness.’

  ‘I suppose so. Are you planning to stay?’

  ‘I’m sort of looking round. Don’t know where to drop my anchor. You’re permanent, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I’m permanent I’m afraid. It isn’t that I – it’s the best I can afford.’

  Again the conversation drifted inconclusively and again Miss Kingsford stared at the sky above the sea.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like a dog? I mean, they’re such company.’

  ‘Not really. They’re an awful tie.’

  ‘Do you really think so? I think I’d die without one.’

  ‘Mine was killed. Run over by a tractor of all things. It was pretty wretched at the time.’

  ‘How dreadful for you.’

  On the way back to the guest-house Miss Kingsford, just to keep the conversation going, said she was pretty sure it would be Shepherd’s Pie for lunch. It always was on Tuesdays. That was the only thing – you pretty well knew what was coming every day.

  ‘Do you rest after lunch?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I rest. Do you?’

  ‘I generally run out somewhere in the car. It passes an hour or so. I’ve been thinking of getting a caravan. I’ve given up my house.’

  ‘I see.’

  She gave Mr Willoughby a final smile of admiration, almost worship. ‘And thank you so much again for all you did. It was really—.’

  For several mornings after that she missed the skimming figure of Mr Willoughby on the cliff-top. In the guest-house she noticed irritably that he seemed to avoid her. She never came down to breakfast. She took tea, with three digestive biscuits in her room. The poodle sat on the bed with her and lapped tea from a saucer and had three digestive biscuits too. At lunch Mr Willoughby read a paper-back propped up against a cruet. In the afternoons he disappeared somewhere in the car, not coming back until rather late for supper, when almost all the other guests had finished theirs.

  Clumsily, one morning, the poodle tipped over the saucer of tea, staining the counterpane. In a moment of intense irritation Miss Kingsford cuffed it hard, scolding it furiously. The poodle crept under the bed and lay there silently.

  ‘For that you shan’t go walkies this morning. You clumsy cre
ature. Into your basket! – in, in! – do as I say!’

  Alone, Miss Kingsford walked along the cliff-top. A coldish, squally wind was blowing in from the sea. The air was bright and sharp and there was a touch of autumn in the air. She had luckily taken the precaution of putting on her fur coat and perhaps because of this Mr Willoughby, appearing suddenly from the clumps of gorse and tamarisk, didn’t recognise her. Suddenly he was face to face with her, too late for retreat.

  ‘Oh! it’s you, Miss Kingsford. I—’

  With his habitual shy courtesy he raised his cap to her. He seemed at a loss for further words and she said how cold it was. Oh! was it cold? he said. Yes, perhaps it was rather fresh.

  ‘I’m glad I ran into you,’ she suddenly said. More than anything, for days, she had wanted to run into Mr Willoughby. ‘I sort of owe you an apology.’

  ‘You do? I simply can’t think—’

  ‘Yes, it was awfully remiss of me the other morning. I never offered you a return drink. I really should have done. I suppose I was so upset.’

  ‘Oh! that doesn’t matter.’

  Perhaps, she said, he might let her make up for that now? Perhaps they could go over to The Mariner’s Arms and have something there? She really felt rather chilly anyway. She could do with something to warm her up.

  Again, in the bar, Mr Willoughby ordered a modest half pint of beer. Miss Kingsford chose a sweet sherry and when it came it was much the colour of her hair. As she sipped it she said she did hope that autumn wasn’t coming on too quickly. It was early to think of winter yet. Though it could be awfully nice in winter – bright, lovely days. Had he noticed you could see France this morning?

  No, he said, he hadn’t noticed.

  ‘Oh! we often see it on these clear days.’

  Once again Mr Willoughby seemed at a loss for words and suddenly she said:

  ‘You seem very thoughtful.’