The Watercress Girl Read online

  THE WATERCRESS GIRL

  and other stories

  by

  H. E. BATES

  Contents

  A Note from the Family

  Foreword by Lesley Pearse

  The Cowslip Field

  The Watercress Girl

  Let’s Play Soldiers

  The Far Distant Journey

  The Pemberton Thrush

  Death and the Cherry Tree

  A Great Day for Bonzo

  The Butterfly

  Love in a Wych Elm

  The House with the Grape Vine

  Great Uncle Crow

  Source of the World

  The Poison Ladies

  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 Cowslip Field

  Pacey sat on the still, swinging her legs and her cowslip-basket.

  Pacey, he thought, was by far the littlest lady he had ever seen. She had very thick dumpy legs and black squashy button boots and a brown felt hat under which bright blue eyes roamed about like jellyfish behind large sun-shot spectacles. On her cheek, just under her right eye, was a big furry brown mole that looked like the top of a bulrush that had been cut off and stuck there.

  Pacey was nice, though. He liked Pacey.

  ‘How far is it now to the cowslip field, Pacey?’ he said.

  ‘A step or two furder yit,’ Pacey said.

  ‘It’s not furder? he said. ‘It’s further.’

  ‘Oh! is’t?’ Pacey said. ‘All right, it’s further. I never knew such a boy for pickin’ me up afore I’m down.’

  ‘And it’s not afore,’ he said. ‘It’s before.’

  ‘Oh! is’t?’ Pacey said. ‘All right, before then. I never knowed sich a boy for whittlin’ on me——’

  ‘And it’s not on,’ he said. ‘It’s of——’

  ‘Here,’ Pacey said, ‘for goodness’ sake catch holt o’ the cowslip-basket and let me git down and let’s git on. Else we’ll never be there afore bull’s-noon.’

  When Pacey jumped down from the stile her legs sank almost to the top of her button boots in meadow grasses. She was so thick and squatty that she looked like a duck waddling to find the path across the field.

  In that field the sun lay hot on sheets of buttercups. Soon when he looked at Pacey’s boots they were dusty yellow faces, with rows of funny grinning eyes. At the end of the field rolled long white hedges of hawthorn, thick and foamy as the breakers he had once seen at the seaside, and from a row of sharp green larches, farther on, he heard a cuckoo call.

  It was past the time when the larches had little scarlet eye-lashes springing from their branches but he still remembered them.

  ‘Pacey,’ he said, ‘why do the trees have——’

  ‘Jist hark at that cuckoo,’ Pacey said. ‘Afore long it’ll charm us all to death.’

  ‘Pacey,’ he said, ‘why don’t cowslips grow in this field?’

  ‘Because it ain’t a cowslip field,’ Pacey said, ‘don’t you know that? Don’t you know the difference between a cowslip field and a buttercup field? If you don’t it’s time you did. Now you jis run on and git to the next stile and sit there quiet and wait fer me.’

  From the next stile he sat and watched Pacey waddling down the slope of the field, between dazzling sheets of buttercups, under a dazzling high blue sky. In the wide May morning she looked more than ever like a floundering little duck, funnier, tinier than ever.

  ‘Pacey,’ he said, ‘will you ever grow any bigger?’

  ‘Not unless me luck changes a lot more’n it’s done up to yit.’

  ‘Will I grow any bigger?’

  ‘ ’Course you will.’

  ‘Well then, why won’t you?’

  ‘Hark at that cuckoo,’ Pacey said. ‘If it’s called once this morning, it’s called a thousand times.’

  In the next field brown and white cows were grazing and Pacey took his hand. Some of the cows stood at a pond, over their hocks in water, flicking flies from their white-patched brown rumps in the sun. All across the field there were many ant-hills and Pacey let him run up and down them, as if they were switchbacks, always holding his hand.

  Her own hands were rough and clammy and warm and he liked them.

  ‘What do the ants do in their ant-hills all the time, Pacey?’ he said.

  ‘They git on with their work,’ Pacey said, ‘ ’ithout chattering so much.’

  As they passed the pond he could smell the thick warm odours of may-bloom and fresh dung that the cows had dropped and mud warming in the sun. All the smell of rising summer was in the air. The tips of a few bulrushes, so brown and so like Pacey’s mole, were like the last tips of winter, half-strangled by rising reeds.

  Then somehow he knew that the next field was the cowslip field and he suddenly broke free of Pacey’s hand and ran jumping over the last of the ant-hills until he stood on a small plank bridge that went over a narrow stream where brook-lime grew among bright eyes of wild forget-me-not.

  ‘Pacey, Pacey, Pacey!’ he started shouting. ‘Pacey!’

  He knew he had never seen, in all his life, so many cowslips. They covered with their trembling orange heads all the earth between himself and the horizon. When a sudden breeze caught them they ducked and darted very gently away from it and then blew gently back again.

  ‘We’ll never gather them all before it’s dark, Pacey,’ he said, ‘will we?’

  ‘Run and git as many as you can,’ Pacey said. ‘It won’t be dark yit awhile.’

  Running, he tripped and fell among cowslips. He did not bother to get to his feet but simply knelt there, in a cowslip forest, picking at the juicy stems. All the fragrance of the field blew down on him along a warm wind that floated past him to shake from larches and oaks and hedges of may-bloom a continuous belling fountain of cuckoo calls.

  When he turned to look for Pacey she too was on her knees, dumpier, squattier than ever, filling her hands with golden sheaves of flower.

  ‘Pacey, what will we do with them all?’ he said. ‘What will we do with them all?’

  ‘Mek wine,’ Pacey said. ‘And I wouldn’t be surprised if it were a drop o’ good.’

  Soon he was running to Pacey with his own sheaves of flower, putting them into the big brown basket. Whenever he ran he buried his face in the heads of flower that were so rich and fragrant and tender. Then as he dropped them into the basket he could not resist dipping his hands into the growing mound of cowslips. They felt like little limp kid gloves. They were so many
soft green and yellow fingers.

  ‘The basket’ll soon be full, Pacey,’ he said. ‘What will we do when the basket’s full?’

  ‘Put ’em in we hats,’ Pacey said. ‘Hang ’em round we necks or summat.’

  ‘Like chains?’

  ‘Chains if you like,’ Pacey said.

  Soon the basket was almost full and Pacey kept saying it was bloomin’ hot work and that she could do with a wet and a wind. From a pocket in her skirt she took out a medicine bottle of milk and two cheese cakes and presently he and Pacey were sitting down in the sea of cowslips, resting in the sun.

  ‘The basket’s nearly full,’ he said. ‘Shall we start making chains?’

  ‘There’ll be no peace until you do, I warrant.’

  ‘Shall we make one chain or two chains?’

  ‘Two,’ Pacey said. ‘I’ll mek a big ’un and you mek a little ’un.’

  As he sat there threading the cowslip stalks one into another, making his chain, he continually looked up at Pacey, peering in her funny way, through her thick jelly spectacles, at her own cowslip chain. He noticed that she held the flowers very close to her eyes, only an inch or two away.

  ‘Pacey,’ he said, ‘what makes the sky blue?’

  ‘You git on with your chain,’ Pacey said.

  ‘Who put the sky there?’

  ‘God did.’

  ‘How does it stay up there?’

  Pacey made a noise like a cat spitting and put a cowslip stalk into her mouth and sucked it as if it were cotton and she were threading a needle.

  ‘How the ’nation can I thread this ’ere chain,’ she said, ‘if you keep a-iffin’ and a-whyin’ all the time?’

  Squinting, she peered even more closely at her cowslips, so that they were now almost at the end of her nose. Then he remembered that that was how she sang from her hymn-book on Sundays, in the front row of the choir. He remembered too how his mother always said that the ladies in the front row of the choir sat there only to show off their hats and so that men could look at them.

  ‘Have you got a young man, Pacey?’ he said.

  ‘Oh! dozens,’ Pacey said. ‘Scores.’

  ‘Which one do you like best?’

  ‘Oh! they’re like plums on a tree,’ Pacey said. ‘So many I don’t know which one on ’em to pick.’

  ‘Will you get married, Pacey?’

  Pacey sucked a cowslip stalk and threaded it through another.

  ‘Oh! they all want to marry me,’ Pacey said. ‘All on ’em.’

  ‘When will you?’

  ‘This year, next year,’ Pacey said. ‘When I git enough plum-stones.’

  ‘Why do you have to have plum-stones?’

  ‘Oh! jist hark at that cuckoo all the time,’ Pacey said. ‘Charming us to death a’ready. How’s your chain?’

  His chain was not so long as Pacey’s. She worked neatly and fast, in spite of her thick stumpy fingers. Her chain was as long as a necklace already, with the cowslips ruffled close together, but his own was not much more than a loose golden bracelet.

  ‘Thread twothri more on it,’ Pacey said, ‘and then we can git we hats filled and go home to dinner.’

  When he looked up again from threading his last two cowslip stalks he saw that Pacey had taken off her brown felt hat. Her uncovered hair was very dark and shining in the sun. At the back it was coiled up into a rich, thick roll, like a heavy sausage. There seemed almost too much hair for her stumpy body and he stared at it amazed.

  ‘Is that all your hair, Pacey?’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s what they dished out to me. I ain’t had another issue yit.’

  ‘How long is it?’ he said. ‘It must be very long.’

  ‘Prit near down to me waist.’

  ‘Oh! Pacey,’ he said.

  As he finished threading his cowslip chain and then joined the ends together he sat staring at Pacey, with her dark hair shining against the blue May sky and her own cowslip chain lying like a gold-green necklace in her lap.

  ‘Does your hair ever come down?’ he said, ‘or does it always stay up like that?’

  ‘Oh! it comes down a time or two now and again.’

  ‘Let it come down now.’

  ‘It’s time to go home to dinner,’ Pacey said. ‘We got to git back——’

  ‘Please, Pacey,’ he said. ‘Please.’

  ‘You take your hat and git it filled with cowslips and then we can go——’

  ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Then I can put my chain on top of your head and it’ll look like a crown.’

  ‘Oh! you’d wheedle a whelk out of its shell, you would,’ Pacey said. ‘You’d wheedle round ’Im up there!’

  As she spoke she lifted her face to the blue noon sky so that her spectacles flashed strangely, full of revolving light. A moment later she started to unpin the sausage at the back of her head, putting the black hairpins one by one into her mouth. Then slowly, like an unrolling blind, the massive coil of her hair fell down across her neck and shoulders and back, until it reached her waist.

  He had never seen hair so long, or so much of it, and he stared at it with wide eyes as it uncoiled itself, black and shining against the golden cowslip field.

  ‘That’s it,’ Pacey said, ‘have a good stare.’

  ‘Now I’ve got to put the crown on you,’ he said.

  He knelt by Pacey’s lap and reached up, putting his cowslip chain on the top of her head. All the time he did this Pacey sat very still, staring towards the sun.

  ‘Now yours,’ he said.

  He reached up, draping Pacey’s own longer necklace across her hair and shoulders. The black hair made the cowslips shine more deeply golden than before and the flowers in turn brought out the lights in the hair.

  Pacey sat so still and staring as he did all this that he could not tell what she was thinking and suddenly, without asking, he reached up and took off her spectacles.

  A strange transformed woman he did not know, with groping blue eyes, a crown on her head and a necklace locking the dark mass of her hair, stared back at him.

  ‘Well, now I suppose you’re satisfied?’

  ‘You look very nice, Pacey,’ he said. ‘You look lovely. I like you.’

  ‘Well, if you’re satisfied let’s git ready and start back,’ Pacey said, ‘or else I be blamed if we shan’t miss we dinners.’

  Hastily, half-blindly, she started to grope with her hands towards her hair.

  ‘And put my specs back on!’ she said. ‘You took ’em off. Now put ’em back. How the ’nation do you think I can see ’ithout them?’

  ‘It’s not ’ithout,’ he said. ‘It’s without.’

  ‘Oh! without then! But put ’em back!’

  By the time they began to walk back home his hat was full of cowslips. Pacey’s brown felt hat was full too and the basket was brimming over with the flowers that were so like tender, kid-gloved fingers.

  At the plank across the stream, as Pacey set down the basket and rested for a moment, he turned and looked back. Once again, as before, the cowslips seemed to stretch without break between himself and the bright noon sky.

  ‘There’s just as many as when we came,’ he said. ‘We didn’t make any difference at all, Pacey. You’d think we’d never been, wouldn’t you?’

  Suddenly, with a cry, Pacey seized him and picked him up, swinging him joyfully round her body and finally holding him upside down.

  ‘Up, round and down!’ Pacey said. ‘Now what can you see?’

  ‘London!’

  Pacey laughed loudly, swinging him a second time and then setting him on his feet again.

  When he tried to stand still again he found that the world too was swinging. The cowslip field was rolling like a golden sea in the sun and there was a great trembling about Pacey’s hair, her necklace and her little crown of gold.

  The Watercress Girl

  The first time he ever went to that house was in the summer, when he was seven, and his grandfather drove him down the valley in a yellow trap and all the beans were in flower, with skylarks singing so high above them in the brilliant light that they hung trembling there like far-off butterflies.

  ‘Who is it we’re going to see?’ he said.