Little of What You Fancy, page 1
PENGUIN BOOKS
A Little of What You Fancy
Η. E. Bates was born in 1905 at Rushden in Northamptonshire and was educated at Kettering Grammar School. He worked as a journalist and clerk on a local newspaper before publishing his first book, The Two Sisters, when he was twenty. In the next fifteen years he acquired a distinguished reputation for his stories about English country life. During the Second World War he was a Squadron Leader in the R.A.F. and some of his stories of service life, The Greatest People in the World (1942), How Sleep the Brave (1943) and The Face of England (1953), were written under the pseudonym of ‘Flying Officer X’. His subsequent novels of Burma, The Purple Plain and The Jacaranda Tree, and of India, The Scarlet Sword, stemmed directly or indirectly from his experience in the Eastern theatre of war. Perhaps one of his most famous works of fiction is the best-selling novel Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944).
In 1958 his writing took a new direction with the appearance of The Darling Buds of May, the first of the popular Larkin family novels, which was followed by A Breath of French Air (1959), When the Green Woods Laugh (1960), Oh! To Be in England (1963) and A Little of What You Fancy (1970). His autobiography appeared in three volumes, The Vanished World (1969), The Blossoming World (1971) and The World in Ripeness (1972). His last works included the novel The Triple Echo (1971), and a collection of short stories, The Song of the Wren (1972). H. E. Bates also wrote miscellaneous works on gardening, essays on country life, several plays including The Day of Glory (1945), The Modern Short Story (1941) and a story for children, The White Admiral (1968). His works have been translated into sixteen languages. A posthumous collection of his stories, The Yellow Meads of Asphodel, appeared in 1976.
H. E. Bates was awarded the C.B.E. in 1973 and died in January 1974. He was married in 1931 and had four children.
A Little of What You Fancy
H. E. BATES
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
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First published by Michael Joseph 1970
Published in Penguin Books 1973
Reissued 2006
1
Copyright © Evensford Productions Ltd, 1970
All rights reserved
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-193864-6
1
Most mornings, especially in spring and summer, when the liquid chorus of dawn birdsong often roused him as early as four o’clock, Pop Larkin was awake some time before Ma, a circumstance that afforded him the silent pleasure of drinking in the sight of her warm dark head cradled in tranquillity on the pillow and even, sometimes, if the night had been exceptionally warm, of gazing on the olive amplitude of her expansive bust, its naked slumbering curves swelling and slipping from the lace fringe of her flowery chiffon nightgown.
While Ma still slept Pop almost invariably went downstairs in his pyjamas and brewed a pot of strong fresh tea. The exceptions to this occurred on the very warmest of summer mornings, when Pop was inspired to think that Ma, perhaps, would prefer champagne. Ma was exceptionally fond of champagne, more especially before breakfast.
On some occasions Pop was moved to go even further than mere champagne and concoct a cool but potent mixture of about equal parts of brandy and champagne, preferably pink, with a dash of angostura bitters and a slice of orange. This was the perfick stiffener to start the day on. In particular the pinkness seemed always to have a highly stimulating effect on Ma and as he came back upstairs with bottles, glasses and orange, the glasses already frostily sugared, Pop always hoped that Ma, perhaps, would be in the mood.
Very often Ma was.
‘Drop o’ champagne, Ma?’ On a humid morning in early July the voices of wood pigeons liquidly calling to each other across the meadows had, in Pop’s ears, a sultry, sensual sound. ‘Plain or cocktail?’
‘Better make it a cocktail while you’re about it.’
‘Cocktail it is then. Have it now or afterwards?’
Ma, well-knowing what afterwards implied, responded by a great voluptuous upheaval of laughter, huge sleep-soft breasts half-escaping from her nightgown.
‘Better make it a sandwich, hadn’t we?’
‘Perfick.’ Pop liked the idea of the sandwich. ‘Which part in the middle?’
‘I think,’ Ma said serenely, already drawing her nightgown over the dark mass of her handsome ruffled hair, ‘we’d better see how we get on.’
Pop now laughed too and said he didn’t see why they shouldn’t get on pretty well as usual, though it was thirsty work. Was she sure she wouldn’t have a drop first, as a sort of pipe-opener?
Ma, responding with a dreamy sigh, her body now stretched out in full nakedness, the bed-clothes thrown back, said well, no, she didn’t think so. He’d got her too excited about the other now. She was nicely in the mood.
Pop, declaring with typical gusto that he was very glad to hear it, prepared to enfold himself in the warm, olive continent of Ma when she suddenly interrupted him and asked if he hadn’t better lock the door?
‘Else we’ll have those two monkeys in. Oscar’s got eyes all over the back of his head and Phyllida isn’t much better.’
Phyllida, Ma’s eighth, who had already been christened in perfectly orthodox fashion Phyllida Cleopatra Boadicea Nightingale had turned out, greatly to Pop’s surprise, to be blessed with singularly bright red hair, a fact that Pop was utterly unable to square with the fact that both he and Ma were very dark, until Mr Charlton, his son-in-law, knowledgeable in so many matters, explained that it was all to do with the laws of genetics.
‘Good Gawd Almighty’ Pop said, ‘what next? What the pipe is genetics? Summat to do with the National Elf lark I’ll bet.’
Not at all, Mr Charlton assured him. It was just that dark-haired parents quite frequently produced red-haired children.
‘Just fancy that,’ Ma said. ‘We’ll soon be having blackbirds with red breasts I shouldn’t wonder. Or else donkeys giving milk.’
Donkeys, Mr Charlton assured her in his most knowledgeable fashion, did give milk; and even Ma was silenced.
Anyway, as she was frequently fond of saying, there was no doubt that Phyllida was the pick of the entire Larkin bunch, not at all unlike a perky bright-eyed robin herself, her soft smooth hair rich as purest copper. Quick as lightning too.
Pop having locked the bedroom door, he now paused to listen once again for a moment to the voices of pigeons exchanging sultry greetings across the meadows and then slipped back into bed with Ma, who received him with a deep soundless embrace, her half-opened lips pressed against his. Such was the powerful effect of this union that Pop, conferring the tenderest of caresses on the brown-pink crests of Ma’s ample bosom, had no word to say either for the next half hour or so.
It was Ma who spoke first. ‘Nice and satisfactory,’ she said.
This brief understatement in fact concealed the most affectionate of compliments. That was the nice thing about Pop, she always told herself. He knew his technique all right; very good technique.
‘Now for the champers,’ Pop said.
‘Won’t say you didn’t earn it,’ Ma said and presently sat up in bed, still naked, ready to receive the further blessing of the first cocktail of the day.
‘Goes down a treat,’ Pop said with a fruity smack of his lips. ‘Perfick start.’
‘Anything particular on today?’
‘Nothing much. Army surplus job. About five hundred walkie-talkie sets. Should show about three hundred per cent.’
‘Ought to keep the wolf from the door.’
Pop said it certainly ought and, observing that Ma’s glass was already almost empty, reached for the champagne bottle in readiness to top her up. This he did with such typical generosity that he filled the glass to overflowing, the champagne spilling down on Ma’s left bosom. Instantly recognizing this as an interesting opportunity for further drinking Pop bent down and proceeded to taste the twin delights of wine and breast, causing Ma to struggle with playful delight, thus spilling more champagne.
‘Whatever will you think of next?’ Ma said, as if Pop hadn’t ne
Pop said he shouldn’t wonder if he wasn’t and proceeded yet again to taste the twin pleasures of Ma and champagne, so that Ma shook all over with rich gusts of laughter, finally remarking:
‘You’d better get it out of your system, hadn’t you? Else we’ll be here all day’.
‘Why not? Perfick idea.’
Ma said she could think of worse.
Pop suddenly felt a great new rush of ardour, his heart racing. This sudden rapidity of its beating seemed for a moment to echo the trilling sweetness of wren song from the garden outside. Then the rippling of it became, for a moment, shot with pain. Pop found himself pausing, then actually gasping, for breath.
Ma, now filled with fresh ardour herself, watched the pause without misgiving, concerned only to ask what was holding him up? She’d had an idea he was going to give her an encore.
The pain having passed as rapidly as it had shot through him, Pop replied in his habitually warm and robust tones that he certainly was. He was all for encores. It was rather like drinking champagne. The first glass, though always nice, was only a sort of pipe-opener. It was the second glass that really got you going.
Voluptuously, at this moment, Ma rolled over in bed, her wide and splendid figure half-smothering Pop, who received her breasts in his two hands rather like a hungry man receiving the gift of two round, warm, fresh-baked loaves of bread. From this new and unexpected point of vantage Ma, he thought, looked more inviting and sumptuous than ever.
Ma, at the same time, found herself wondering about Pop’s technique. There was, she told herself, no question of it standing the strain. She merely wondered what form it would take. The slow, quick, slow? or what she sometimes called the old-fashioned waltz time? You never knew with Pop. He wasn’t merely a man of technical excellence. He went in for a lot of variation.
A moment later Pop, instead of proceeding to demonstrate some fresh variation of technique by physical means, actually started a brief discourse. This was inspired by something he had read somewhere in a magazine. It was all about these two people, he explained to Ma, who didn’t get on very well – in bed, that was. They’d sort of kept to the orthodox form of service, Pop explained, laughing richly, for years. Didn’t work, though.
How did he mean? Ma said, utterly confounded that such a condition could befall any mortal man and woman. It didn’t work?
‘Well, he worked,’ Pop said. ‘But she was sort of unemployed.’
Ma let out a rich shriek, quivering all over like a vast jelly. ‘You mean she was on the dole?’ Ma said, ‘or on strike?’
Oh! no, Pop explained, nothing like that. She wanted work. Eager for it. But somehow –
‘Technique wrong.’
Bit like that, Pop said. How did Ma know?
‘Been in the business long enough, haven’t I?’ Ma said and again gave a shriek of laughter, causing the most disturbing of tremulous movements from her breasts down to the very soles of her feet, which she suddenly began to rub caressingly against Pop’s calves, ‘I ought to by now.’
‘What made you do that?’ Pop suddenly said.
‘Do what?’
‘With your feet. Smoothing me up and down like that.’
Ma said she didn’t know. She hadn’t the vaguest. She supposed it was some sort of instinct. Why?
Telepathic was the word that sprang instantly to Pop’s mind, telepathic being one of those words he had picked up from the informative Mr Charlton, his son-in-law. Ma, in other words, he suddenly realized, was reading his mind.
It was what this woman did, he explained.
‘Did what?’ Ma said. She didn’t get it.
Pop went on to explain that it was about the discovery of a new technique. Well, very old technique really. It was all to do with the time when we were apes and all that and feet were as important as hands and suddenly this woman had discovered it. It was to do with foot-worship or summat. Mr Charlton had told him all about it. He’d discussed it with him.
‘Never?’ Ma said, amazed.
‘Fact,’ Pop said. ‘After years of being on the dole, sort of, this woman had suddenly discovered that by using her feet she’d struck it rich. Two minutes with the soles of her feet and she’d got herself into a tizz like hot rum and brandy. No stopping her. She was on the boil all night long.’
‘The things they get hold of in these magazines,’ Ma said. ‘It makes you wonder.’
‘Ended in divorce.’
‘Never?’ Ma said. That beat the band.
‘Beat Fred, that’s what it was.’
‘Fred? Who’s Fred?’
Fred was the husband, Pop explained. Had to drop out. Couldn’t stand the pace.
‘Well, the fast so-and-so,’ Ma said. ‘Don’t they have a name for that sort? Lesbians? – no, not Lesbians. That’s having butter no side of the bread. Well, it doesn’t matter, anyway. The things some women do to get hold of what they were after – really I don’t know.’
‘Lovely grub, though.’
‘I should say so. I’d better keep my feet to myself in future.’
Another peal of laughter, rich and healthy, shook both Ma and the bed. All this time Ma had been allowing the warm continent of her body further and further to envelop Pop, whose only evident sign of resistance was an occasional languid attempt to push Ma’s breasts away – merely, in fact, so that he could see them better. All this, gentle and modified as it was, was thirsty work nevertheless, and he was on the point of suggesting that Ma, being in the better position, should pour another glass of champagne, when he abruptly realized that Ma was caressing him slowly up and down with the naked soles of her feet.
An instant and totally unheralded nervous spasm shot through him, both exquisite and excruciating. It was a sensation he had never remotedly experienced before, even in the long fruitful years of union with Ma. It was at once a pain and a joy. It ravaged his heart, his chest, his stomach and then ran rapidly and hotly down to the soles of his own feet. He was soon nervously hot all over, his heart painfully racing.
‘Here, steady Ma, you’ll have me on the boil next.’
And what else, Ma said, did he think she was up to?
Ma, murmuring in dreamy tones something about it was always nicest, second time round, was now in a state of total ecstasy herself. Her compulsive possession of Pop was so absolute that Pop, straining with every nerve and pulse of blood to meet her demands, was suddenly assailed by the idea, at once both joyful and slightly alarming, that if they didn’t put the brakes on they might well be in for another pair of twins.
Less than a minute later Ma did, in fact, put the brakes on.
‘Lovely,’ was her next word. ‘Lovely. You remember that drink you made once? Peaches and champagne and a bit of maraschino. Like that. Just like that. Lovely.’
Pop, to his slight concern and dismay, suddenly discovered himself to be unusually tired. He lay back on the pillows, panting. Ma was still spread across him, eyes dreamily half-closed, still locked in the ravishing peace of utter satisfaction.
Now and then she also gave a great deep sigh of pleasure in recollection, rather as if drinking a draught of one of Pop’s more memorable liquid confections. These expressions of ecstasy, far from arousing any sort of response in Pop, seemed to leave him cool, so that presently Ma was prompted to remove one bosom some inches away from its resting place on Pop’s neck and remark:
‘Don’t want me now, do you? I know.’
Pop murmured that he didn’t know about that. They’d had two innings already, he reminded her, and it still wasn’t seven o’clock.
‘What’s time got to do with it?’ Ma said. There was a note in her voice of the very slightest injury. ‘You feeling weak all of a sudden or something?’
Oh! nothing like that, Pop declared. He felt sort of languid like, that’s all. After all, you’d got to recharge the batteries.
‘Better recharge them with a drop o’ champers then,’ Ma said and proceeded to reach out of bed for bottle and glasses. ‘Don’t want you losing grip.’
At this suggestion, faint though it was, that he was losing grip, Pop felt a little affronted. Him losing grip? That was a bit off, he told Ma.
