The Darling Buds of May by H.E. Bates

Author:H.E. Bates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 1958-03-30T05:00:00+00:00

5

That evening Pop, after a half hour of twilight spent with Ma in the bluebell wood, listening to a whole orchestra of nightingales, came back to the house to urge on Mr Charlton the virtues of a little sick leave.

‘Ma and me don’t think you look all that grand,’ he said.

Ma followed this up by saying that she didn’t like the look round Mr Charlton’s cheekbones. There were white spots on them. White spots were a bad sign, but of what she didn’t say.

Pop went on to urge on Mr Charlton to use his loaf and take proper advantage of what he called ‘the National Elf lark’, a service which, after all, Mr Charlton paid for. Pop was certain Mr Charlton had already paid out millions to this swindle in weekly contributions. It must have cost him a fortune in stamps. With warmth he urged Mr Charlton not to be a mug about it. It was, after all, the State that had started this lark – why not go sick, he urged, and have a bit of fun?

Mr Charlton might have resisted these arguments if it hadn’t been that, just before midnight, Mariette pinned him up against the newel post of the dark stairs, kissed him again, and said his hands were hot. Like white spots on the cheekbones, hot hands were a bad sign. Mr Charlton tried to protest that his hands were invariably hot, especially at that time of year, but Mariette kissed him again, pressing her warm plum-like mouth for a long time against his lips, leaving him in another terrible turmoil of divided emotions about the buttercup field, the nightingales, and the affair of the goose-neck entwining his leg.

‘You could stay a week, lovey,’ she said. She had begun to call him lovey in the buttercup field. ‘And then all next weekend.’

Mr Charlton tried to explain that he had a vast and frightful number of papers on his desk at the office that had to be attended to and how there would be an awful stink if he didn’t get back.

‘Think if you broke your leg,’ she said.

Mr Charlton said he didn’t want to think of breaking his leg. He was talking about loyalty, duty, pangs of conscience, and that sort of thing.

‘Sounds silly,’ Mariette said and Mr Charlton, trembling on the dark stairs, under the influence of the pressing, plum-like lips, was bound to admit that it did.

The result was that he got up next morning to a massive breakfast of two fried eggs, several slices of liver and bacon, much fried bread, and enormous cups of black sugary tea.

Pop was already breakfasting when he arrived at table. Poised heartily above a sea of tomato ketchup, under which whatever he was having for breakfast was completely submerged, he praised for some moments the utter beauty of the first young strawberry morning. It was going to be a perfick day, he said. The cuckoo had been calling since four o’clock.

The only thing that troubled Mr Charlton as he ate his breakfast was that he felt there was absolutely nothing wrong with him.

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