The Watercress Girl, page 17
I wanted to hang on to Ben’s coat tails and play horses, but Ben said no, he was going on ahead again to look for spies and that I’d got to wait and stand still and not breathe a word until he whistled a signal back to me.
So I stood under the Akky Duck all alone while Ben went out into the sunlight at the far end to look for spies. I didn’t see any snails or lizards or snakes or Devil’s Coach and Horses, but water dripped about me in long slow spits, splashing in the shadow.
When Ben whistled at last I jumped clean out of my skin and started running through black pools of water.
‘Don’t run, you wet ha’puth,’ Ben said. ‘They’ll hear you. They got ears like old sows. They hang down to their shoulders.’
I think I must have shivered as I came out into sunlight, because Ben said:
‘You ain’t frit, are you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I’m not frit.’
‘If you’re frit,’ Ben said. ‘they’ll know. They they’ll put both on us in the copper.’
‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘To boil us up, you wet ha’puth!’ Ben said. ‘To boil us up.’
‘You said once they poisoned you.’
‘So they do,’ Ben said. ‘Poison you fust, then boil you arterwards.’
Before I could speak again Ben was pointing ahead.
‘There it is. That’s where they live,’ he said. ‘That’s the house.’
Fifty yards ahead stood a double-bayed house of red brick with a blue slate roof and cowls with foxes’ tails on the chimneys. The cowls were black. Half the slates were off the roof and most of the glass was broken in the windows.
When we got a little nearer I could see there were plum trees in the garden, with ripe blue oval fruit shining in the sun. I could see an empty chicken run overgrown with grass and a big red earthenware pot with huge rhubarb leaves growing out of the top like inside-out umbrellas. It was hot now after the tunnel and everywhere the grasshoppers whirred.
I started to say that the house was empty but Ben said:
‘Ah! That’s what you think. That’s what the old wimmen want you to think.’
‘Why do they?’
‘They want you to climb the fence and start gittin’ the plums and then jist as you’re gittin’ ’em they spring out an’ collar you.’
The veins about my heart tied themselves into tighter, colder knots as we crept along the fence on our hands and knees.
‘Crouch down,’ Ben kept whispering. ‘Crouch down. Don’t let ’em see you.’
Then we were in front of the house, in full view of the broken windows, the slateless rafters and the smoky cowls. The sun was on our backs and the light of it sharpened the splintered windows. The plums looked big and luscious now and you could see yellow wasps turning and shimmering madly about the trees.
‘The plums are poison anyhow,’ Ben said, ‘even if they dint collar you. And even if you dint die o’ poison the wasps ’d sting you to death.’
All about the house, from the broken window sashes to the stiff black fox tails, there wasn’t a single movement in the sun.
Then Ben was clutching my arm and whispering hoarsely and pointing upward.
‘There they are. There’s one on ’em now. Watching.’
‘Where?’ I said. ‘Where?’
‘Up at that window. On the left-hand side.’
Ben didn’t know his right hand from his left hand and nor did I. He pointed with the hand he held his knife in and I stared at the right-hand upstairs window but there was nothing there.
‘Can’t you see her?’ Ben said. ‘She’s got long white pigtails and you can see her big ears.’
I looked at all the windows, one by one, upstairs and down, but there was nothing to be seen except splintered holes in the glass, naked and white-edged in the sunlight.
‘She don’t have no teeth, this one,’ Ben said, ‘and her mouth’s all green.’
I didn’t dare tell Ben I couldn’t see anything, but suddenly he grabbed my arm.
‘And there’s the other one!’ he whispered. ‘Downstairs. The one with yeller eyes.’
My heart curdled. I started shivering down the whole length of my spine.
‘Big yeller eyes she’s got,’ Ben said. ‘Big yeller eyes. Like brimstone.’
All the windows downstairs were empty too and the only yellow I could see was in the clouds of wasps whirling about the laden plum trees.
‘Can’t you see her?’ Ben said. ‘Can’t you see her?’
‘No.’
He turned and looked at me sharply, in derision.
‘You’ll never see ’em with your eyes wide open like that, you wet ha’porth. You gotta squint with ’em. Squint. Like this, see? Like owls do, see?’
Ben had his eyes all screwed up so that they were no more than dark slits.
‘Owls can see in the dark,’ he said. ‘They can see what ain’t there when we look. You know that, don’t you?’
I knew that; my father had told me so. And suddenly I screwed up my eyes like an owl’s too, just like Ben.
And when I looked at the house again it was just as Ben had said. I too could see the two old women at the windows, one upstairs and one down, the two old poison ladies, one with yellow eyes and the other with a green mouth and long white pigtails, both of them with awful ears, like sows.
‘I can see them now, Ben,’ I said, ‘I can see them now.’
‘Look out! They’re coming!’ Ben said. ‘They’re arter us!’
Then we were running, in terror, faster than wasps, under the Akky Duck, past the hemlock, the gold poison water, the shippen and the blue-black aisles of sloes. My breath was burning my chest and throat but my spine was chilled from the hairs of my neck downward and the knots round my heart coiled more and more tightly, deadly cold.
We didn’t stop running until we were out in the big open field at the top of the lane. Then Ben started laughing and I was laughing too.
‘We seen ’em!’ Ben said. ‘Both on ’em! They was there! We seen ’em! They was there!’
‘We seen ’em!’ I said. ‘We seen ’em!’
Ben began turning somersaults in the grass and I tried to turn somersaults too. All the time we were laughing and flinging up our hands and shouting.
‘I could see her yeller eyes!’
‘And the other one’s green mouth!’
‘And the white pig-tails!’
‘And their big ears!’
Suddenly a rook cackled sharply in the meadows below us, down where the hemlock grew. Ben looked back down the lane, startled, and I was startled too.
‘Let’s play horses,’ Ben said. ‘Let’s gallop all the way home.’
‘I’ll be horse,’ I said and in a second I was out in front, champing my bit, with Ben holding my coat tails, and a moment later we were away like a cold thin wind.
‘We see the poison ladies!’ Ben kept shouting. ‘We see the ole poison ladies!’
‘We see the poison ladies!’ I echoed. ‘We see the old poison ladies!’
‘They chased us! They nearly got us!’
‘They nearly got us!’
‘I bet they don’t cut their ole nails fer a million years.’
‘I bet they don’t cut their old nails for a million years.’
Everything Ben shouted I shouted too. When he laughed I laughed. What he believed I believed. He wasn’t afraid and I wasn’t afraid. I was only flying home like a wild wind.
When you are only four, seven is a hundred and five inches are a mile.
A Note on the Author
H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse.
Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.
His first novel, The Two Sisters (1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed.
During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym “Flying Officer X”. His first financial success was Fair Stood the Wind for France (1944), followed by two novels about Burma, The Purple Plain (1947) and The Jacaranda Tree (1949) and one set in India, The Scarlet Sword (1950). Other well-known novels include Love for Lydia (1952) and The Feast of July (1954).
His most popular creation was the Larkin family which featured in five novels beginning with The Darling Buds of May in 1958. The later television adaptation was a huge success.
Many other stories were adapted for the screen, the most renowned being The Purple Plain (1947) starring Gregory Peck, and The Triple Echo (1970) with Glenda Jackson and Oliver Reed.
H. E. Bates married in 1931, had four children and lived most of his life in a converted granary near Charing in Kent. He was awarded the CBE in 1973, shortly before his death in 1974.
Discover other books by H. E. Bates published by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/HEBates.
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For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain in 1959 by Michael Joseph Ltd
Copyright © 1959 Evensford Productions Limited
All rights reserved
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eISBN: 9781448215188
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H. E. Bates, The Watercress Girl
