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

taken to speak the words Holland saw the girl’s open nightgown, and then her breasts, more than ever like two lemons in the yellow candlelight. The light shone straight down on them, the deep shadow of her lower body heightening their shape and colour, and they looked for a moment like the breasts of a larger and more mature girl than Holland fancied Alice to be.
    As he went downstairs in the winter darkness he kept seeing the mirage of Alice’s breasts in the candlelight. He was excited. A memory of Mrs. Holland’s large dropsical body threw the young girl’s breasts into tender relief. And time seemed to sharpen thecomparison. He saw Alice bending over the candle, her nightgown undone, at recurrent intervals throughout the day. Then in the evening, looking at her reflection in the shaving-mirror, the magnifying effect of the mirror magnified his excitement. And upstairs he forgot to ask if Alice was all right.
    In the morning he was awake a little earlier than usual. The morning was still like night. Black mist shut out the river. He went along the dark landing and tapped at Alice’s door. When there was no answer he tapped again and called, but nothing happened. Then he put his hand on the latch and pressed it. The door opened. He was so surprised that he did not know for a moment what to do. He was in his shirt and trousers, with the celluloid collar and patent tie and jacket in his hand, and no shoes on his feet.
    He stood for a moment by the bed and then he stretched out his hand and shook Alice. She did not wake. Then he put his hand on her chest and let it rest there. He could feel the breasts unexpectedly soft and alive, through the nightgown. He touched one and then the other.
    Suddenly Alice woke.
    â€˜All right, Alice. Time to git up, that’s all,’ Holland said. ‘I was trying to wake you.’
    V
    â€˜I ’spect you want to git home week-ends, don’t you, Alice?’ Mrs. Holland said.
    Alice had been at the mill almost a week. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said.
    â€˜Well, we reckoned you’d like to go home a’ Sundays, anyway. Don’t you?’
    â€˜I don’t mind.’
    â€˜Well, you go home this week, and then see. Only it means cold dinner for Fred a’ Sundays if you go.’
    So after breakfast on Sunday morning Alice walked across the flat valley and went home. The gas-tarred house, the end one of a row on the edge of the town, seemed cramped and a little strange after the big rooms at the mill and the bare empty fields and the river.
    â€˜Well, how d’ye like it?’ Hartop said.
    â€˜It’s all right.’
    â€˜Don’t feel homesick?’
    â€˜No, I don’t mind.’
    Alice laid her five shillings on the table. ‘That’s my five shillings,’ she said. ‘Next Sunday I ain’t coming. What shall I do about the money?’
    â€˜You better send it,’ Hartop said. ‘It ain’t no good to you there if you keep it, is it? No shops, is they?’
    â€˜I don’t know. I ain’t been out.’
    â€˜Well, you send it.’ Then suddenly Hartop changed his mind. ‘No, I’ll tell you what. You keep it and we’ll call for it a’ Friday. We can come round that way.’
    â€˜All right,’ Alice said.
    â€˜If you ain’t coming home,’ Mrs. Hartop said, ‘you’d better take a clean nightgown. And I’ll bring another Friday.’
    And so she walked back across the valley in the November dusk with the nightgown wrapped in brown paper under her arm, and on Friday Hartop stopped the motor-van outside the mill and she went out to him with the five shillings Holland had left on the table that morning. ‘I see your dad about the money, Alice. That’s all right.’ And as she stood by the van answering in her flat voice the questions her father and mother put to her, Hartop put his hand in his pocket and said:
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