Cut and Come Again by H.E. Bates Read Free Book Online Page B

till night-time. You’ll have to get his tea when he comes back.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜You must do all you can for him. I ain’t much good to him now.’
    â€˜I see.’
    â€˜You can come up again when you’ve done the taters.’
    Downstairs Alice found the potatoes in a wet mould-green sack and stood at the sink and pared them. The kitchen window looked out on the mill-stream. The water foamed and eddied and kept up a gentle bubbling roar against the wet stone walls outside. The water-smell was everywhere. From the window she could see across the flat valley: bare willow branches against bare sky, and between them the bare water.
    Then as she finished the potatoes she saw the time by the blue tin alarum clock standing on the highsmoke-stained mantelpiece. It was past eleven. Time seemed to have flown by her faster than the water was flowing under the window.
    III
    It seemed to flow faster than ever as the day went on. Darkness began to settle over the river and the valley in the middle afternoon: damp, still November darkness preceded by an hour of watery half-light. From Mrs. Holland’s bedroom Alice watched the willow trees, dark and skeleton-like, the only objects raised up above the flat fields, hanging half-dissolved by the winter mist, then utterly dissolved by the winter darkness. The afternoon was very still; the mist moved and thickened without wind. She could hear nothing but the mill-race, the everlasting almost mournful machine-like roar of perpetual water, and then, high above it, shrieking, the solitary cries of seagulls, more mournful even than the monotone of water. They were sounds she had heard all day, but had heard unconsciously. She had had no time for listening, except to Mrs. Holland’s voice calling downstairs its friendly advice and desires through the open bedroom door: ‘Alice, have you put the salt in the potatoes? You’ll find the onions in the shed, Alice. The oil-man calls today, ask him to leave the usual. When you’ve washed up you can bring the paper up, Alice, and read bits out to me for five minutes. Has the oilman been? Alice, I want you a minute, I want you.’ So it had gone on all day. And the girl, gradually, began to like Mrs. Holland; and the woman, in turn, seemed to be transported into a state of new and stranger volatility by Alice’s presence. She was garrulouswith joy. ‘I’ve been lonely. Since I’ve been bad I ain’t seen nobody, only Fred, one week’s end to another. And the doctor. It’s been about as much as I could stan’.’ And the static, large-eyed, quiet presence of the girl seemed to comfort her extraordinarily. She had someone to confide in at last. ‘I ain’t had nobody I could say a word to. Nobody. And nobody to do nothing for me. I had to wet the bed one day. I was so weak I couldn’t get out. That’s what made Fred speak to your dad. I couldn’t go on no longer.’
    So the girl had no time to listen except to the voice or to think or talk except in answer to it. And the afternoon was gone and the damp moving darkness was shutting out the river and the bare fields and barer trees before she could realise it.
    â€˜Fred’ll be home at six,’ Mrs. Holland said. ‘He shaves at night. So you git some hot water ready about a quarter to.’
    â€˜All right.’
    â€˜Oh! and I forgot. He allus has fish for his tea. Cod or something. Whatever he fancies. He’ll bring it. You can fry it while he’s shaving.’
    â€˜All right.’
    â€˜Don’t you go and fry that roach by mistake!’
    And Mrs. Holland, thinking again of the fish in Alice’s hand, lay back on the pillows and laughed, the heavy ripe laughter that sounded as before a trifle strange, as though she were a little mad or hysterical in the joy of fresh companionship.
    Mrs. Holland and Alice had already had a cup of tea in the bedroom. That seemed