The Black Boxer Tales Read online

  The Black Boxer Tales

  by

  H. E. BATES

  TO

  MY WIFE

  Contents

  A Note from the Family

  Foreword by Lesley Pearse

  The Black Boxer

  On the Road

  A Love Story

  Charlotte Esmond

  A Flower Piece

  The Mower

  The Hessian Prisoner

  Death in Spring

  Sheep

  The Russian Dancer

  A Threshing Day for Esther

  Bonus Stories:

  The Laugh

  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 Black Boxer

  • I •

  The morning sun was beating hot over Peterson’s fair-ground. The big coloured awnings shrouding the shows and roundabouts hung heavy and still, and the rings of little gay triangular flags on the roofs of the roundabouts and on the helter-skelter tower flapped senselessly in the summer air.

  Perched on a ladder outside the entrance to Sullivan’s boxing show a figure in blue dungarees was polishing the big copper bell hanging before the gold and scarlet curtains. In the intervals between polishing the bell and staring lazily over the fair he sometimes spat and dreamily watched the spittle make its arc in the bright sunlight and settle in the hot dust below. Sometimes he seemed to take languid aim at the specks of confetti scattered in the dusty grass like handfuls of gay coloured seeds.

  He was a small, sharp-faced man, like a little terrier. His yellowish face was peppered with pock-marks and he was slightly deformed in his left shoulder so that he looked by turns pathetic and sinister. His name was Waite but Sullivan’s boxers called him Dutchy. He helped to clean up the show and he often towelled the sweat off the boxers and rubbed them over with the flesh-gloves after the fights.

  He gave the bell a final polish and descended the ladder and lit the fag-end of a cigarette and slouched off across the fair-ground. Men in dungarees and red check shirts and woollen jerseys were busy polishing the brass spirals of the roundabouts and women were hurrying to and fro with pails of water. The smoke of cooking-fires was rising in soft bluish-white clouds from behind the caravans. A workman kneeling high up on the roof of the highest roundabout was hammering and screwing behind a figure of Venus, naked and shining gold in the sunlight. At every tap of his hammer the Venus trembled in all her limbs.

  Dutchy stopped and looked up at the man and whistled him softly.

  ‘Seen Zeke?’ he called.

  The man raised his oily face and looked over the fair-ground and called down.

  ‘Some chaps round at the back of Cappo’s.’

  ‘See Zeke?’

  ‘Can I see through a bloody shooting gallery?’

  He bent down again and tapped behind the Venus, so that she trembled again. Dutchy threw away his cigarette and flashed out a remark about the Venus and the man.

  ‘Aw, go to bed!’ the other bawled. He put his arm about the naked Venus in order to steady the figure. Dutchy flashed another remark and walked away.

  He slouched lazily through the fair towards Cappo’s shooting-gallery. On reaching the shooting-gallery he slipped through a gangway between the awnings and walked across a space of grass and skirted a group of caravans. Beyond the caravans a line of Peterson’s great yellow-and-scarlet trailing vans was drawn up, making a little secluded space of clean grass out of reach of the black and white ponies grazing in the field beyond them. He saw at once that something was happening: a group of show-hands had formed in a ring and were laughing and clapping their hands and shouting noisily. Dutchy slouched from behind the caravans and leaned against the wheel of a water-cart and looked at them.

  In the middle of the ring a big negro was dancing a curious dance, alone. He was dressed in a pair of old grey flapping trousers and a grey sweater tucked in at the top of his trousers, which he kept up with a big bandanna handkerchief printed with great spots of yellow. He was six feet tall, powerful, with magnificent shoulders; the arch of his massive chest looked formidable and superb. He was dancing with a curious flowing negro rhythm, swaying his big hips with an arrogant invitation, brandishing his long arms above his head and letting them droop and swing senselessly with the rhythm of his body. Sometimes he clapped his black hands above his head and on his thighs and his big haunches, and sometimes he let them rest with light grace on the folds of the bandanna handkerchief. He bent his knees and twisted his feet and slithered backward over the grass and then worked forward again, comically slipping and pitching head-first like a man on a sheet of ice. He arched his whole body backward and began to work his feet furiously, as though the grass were moving from
beneath him. The show-hands roared at him. He curled and twisted himself and worked the patter of his feet to a mad crescendo and let them fall as suddenly into a solemn, melancholy step again. As his big arms dropped to his side and the dance died down he suddenly began to fling wild cartwheels, scattering the show-hands in all directions. His wild calls mingled with the shouts and laughter of the show-hands, who all applauded. At the noise a young girl came to the door of a green and gold caravan carrying a copper jug which flashed in the sunshine. She set down the jug on the topmost step of the van and clapped her hands. Dutchy spat in the grass and grinned at her and applauded too.

  When the dance had finished and the applause had died away the show-hands closed in about the negro again and he began explaining the steps of the dance. He danced each step slowly again, talking above the murmurs of the men in a clear bass voice. There was something fine and superior about the quality of his deep voice, his perfect accent and the slow, meditative choice of his words. He had a habit of throwing back his head and smiling richly as he talked. His head was massive, the nose flat and broad and the left ear was wrinkled like a cauliflower. The skin of his face was a deep gleaming black, but it was softened by a strange blush of rose. His thick hair was black and dull as soot, and his eyes were bright and sharp as jet against the whites. He looked invincibly strong and as though he gloried in his strength, and at moments there was something about his face solemnly noble, marvellously dignified and sad.

  Someone came up behind Dutchy and tapped him on the shoulder and whispered:

  ‘Zeke busy?’

  Dutchy jerked back his head and discovered O’Brien, a young light-weight of Sullivan’s.

  ‘See for yourself,’ he said.

  ‘He’s wanted,’ O’Brien said.

  ‘Who wants him?’

  ‘Sullivan. He’s down at the booth with Sandy.’

  Dutchy took his hands out of his pockets and spat.

  ‘I’ll go over and tell him. I want to see him myself,’ he said.

  He walked across the grass and broke the ring of showmen and touched the negro on the shoulder and whispered something to him.

  ‘I’ll come,’ said the negro.

  Dutchy waited aside. The negro slowly put on his jacket. The show-hands were dancing about the grass, practising the steps he had shown them. The negro kept smiling broadly. Finally he walked away with Dutchy past the caravans and by the shooting-gallery and across the fair-ground.

  ‘You know what Sullivan wants,’ said Dutchy, as they walked along.

  The negro did not speak. They passed beneath the workman tapping at the gilded Venus

  ‘It’s about this training,’ said Dutchy.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ said the negro.

  ‘But you’re going to fight this Harrison boy Friday and I ain’t seen you doing a skip or a bit of shadow for a hell of a while.’

  ‘When you’ve done as much shadow-boxing as I have,’ said the negro, ‘you won’t be in a travelling-show.’

  He suddenly thrust out his arm as they walked along. ‘Feel that,’ he said.

  Dutchy pinched the flesh of the negro’s forearm: it seemed as hard as the foreleg of a horse. He nodded and was silent.

  ‘If I train too much I go stale,’ said the negro. ‘You know that.’

  ‘Tell that to Sullivan,’ said Dutchy.

  ‘I hate Sullivan,’ said the negro.

  They came within sight of the long scarlet, gold-tasselled tent of Sullivan’s boxing-show. The ladder was standing at the head of the entrance-steps where Dutchy had left it, and in the hot sunshine the copper bell flashed brightly against the red curtains behind. The sun-baked awnings, the painted yellow pay-box and the immense pictures of the world’s boxing champions painted crudely across the whole width of the show all looked cheap and tawdry.

  Dutchy and the negro stopped before the steps of the show. The air was hot and breathless and the negro’s skin gleamed like rose-black silk in the sunshine.

  ‘Go in and tell him you’re doing a bit with the ball this afternoon,’ said Dutchy. ‘We can play pontoon for a bit when you’re done.’

  The negro shook his head.

  ‘I’m going to sleep this afternoon.’

  He turned abruptly on his heel and walked away behind the long red show-tent. He walked without haste, gracefully and lightly.

  Coming to the rear of the tent he turned the corner. Sullivan’s vans were drawn up behind the tent and outside Sullivan’s own van stood a young red-haired boxer talking to Sullivan himself. Sullivan was resting one foot on the steps of the van. His elbow was crooked on his knee and he was fingering his black chin with his hands. He was a small, thin-faced, unshaven, dirty man with narrow eyes and weedy black hair. His mother had been a dancer from Belfast and his father, a Pole, had been a conjurer in a travelling-show. Sullivan had inherited his mother’s name and her dirty tongue. From his father he had learned inexhaustible trickeries. He had been in the show-business for longer than he could remember and had run the boxing-show for twenty years.

  He looked up at the negro quickly and searchingly. There was something mean and shifty and subtle about the continual flickering of his small black eyes.

  ‘Hello, Zeke,’ he said.

  The negro nodded.

  ‘Been training, I see,’ said Sullivan. ‘Yes?’

  The negro shook his head.

  ‘Ain’t it time you trained a bit?’ said Sullivan.

  The negro showed his white teeth and said, ‘I’m all right. I don’t want to go stale.’

  Sullivan sprang off the steps of the van and in a flash of angry temper thrust his face up towards the negro’s. ‘Stale? By Christ! You know the rules of this bloody show as well as I do.’

  The negro looked down at his quivering face impassively, without a word.

  ‘You know the rules of this show!’ shouted Sullivan. ‘You train and keep yourself in proper nick. I’ve run this show for twenty years and if you can tell me anything I don’t know about boxing I’d be bloody glad to hear it. Bloody glad. You never fought a round last week—not a damn round! And you talk to me about going stale. While I keep you in this show you keep yourself fit like any other man.’

  The red-haired boxer walked quietly away. Sullivan’s hands were quivering with temper. The negro held out his right arm and said with perfect calm:

  ‘Feel that. I am as fit as any man you ever had in your show.’

  Sullivan knocked the arm aside impatiently.

  ‘You know as well as I do you don’t need to worry about your arms!’ he half shouted. ‘Nor your head. It’s here, my old cock’—he pressed his two hands on the negro’s stomach and screwed up his eyes ominously and lowered his voice—‘You niggers are all alike. Your guts are like a sponge.’

  The negro, impassive and tolerant and composed, did not speak.

  ‘Ain’t forgot you’re fighting this Harrison boy Friday?’ said Sullivan quickly.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I want you to beat him. If you beat him he’ll want to come back before the show goes and fight you again. See that? That means another house—means money. I’m putting up ten pounds in this bout—seven and three. That’s money. Ain’t that worth training for? Ain’t it? I want to see you win, Zeke, I want to see you win this fight. Christ, I do.’ Sullivan spat. ‘You ain’t been winning so many fights lately,’ he added slowly.

  ‘I have won plenty of fights for you,’ said the negro.

  ‘Not lately—you’re getting soft—I don’t like it!’ Sullivan paused and scratched his unshaven chin and squinted up into the negro’s face. His eyes were narrow and inquisitive.

  ‘How old are you, Zeke?’ he said.

  For the first time uneasiness came into the negro’s face. He hesitated.

  ‘I am thirty-four,’ he said.

  Sullivan whistled very softly.

  ‘Good age for a boxer,’ he said.

  ‘For a white man.’

  ‘It’s a
good age for any boxer—I don’t care who he is,’ said Sullivan. ‘If a boxer ain’t careful that’s when he begins to lay the fat on. And that’s what you’ll do—that’s what I don’t like. Look at your guts. You better do a bit with the ball before the sun gets too hot.’

  ‘I will train this afternoon,’ said the negro.

  ‘You’ll train now! Christ! do I run this show or do you?’

  ‘I don’t feel the heat so much.’

  ‘You’ll do it now!’ shouted Sullivan. ‘You’ll do it now or get out of this show!’

  They stood looking at each other for one moment antagonistically, in perfect silence. Sullivan’s little eyes, bloodshot in the whites, were dilating with anger and his hands were unsteady with temper. The negro gave one long look at him and then without a word or a change of expression he turned and strode away, imperturbable, solemn and dignified, and vanished into the boxing caravan, a long red vehicle painted with Sullivan’s name in big yellow letters across the sides, before Sullivan himself could move or speak again.

  • II •

  On Friday evening Sullivan and his four boxers were displaying themselves in the blazing light of the big electric lamps hanging over the platform outside the show. The fair was flashing and whirling and quivering with light. Between the shows moved a dark flock of people. There was an air of gaiety and great excitement in the shrieking and laughing and shouting of voices, the brassy music of the big roundabout, the crack of rifle shots and the thunder of switchback cars, which never seemed to rest. The night was sultry, without wind, and above the electric lights the summer darkness, freckled with tiny stars, was coming down a soft dark blue.

  The four boxers, in dressing-gowns, stood in an imposing line, their arms folded, facing the crowd. Sullivan stood before them in his shirt-sleeves, shouting and gesticulating with a megaphone. His voice was thin and hoarse and he kept striking his fist with the palm of his hand, like an orator.