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

orange, Alice?’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, please.’
    Hartop put the orange into her hand. ‘Only mind,’ he said. ‘It’s tacked. It’s just a bit rotten on the side there.’ He leaned out of the driver’s seat and pointed out the soft bluish rotten patch on the orange skin. ‘It’s all right. It ain’t gone much.’
    â€˜You gittin’ on all right, Alice?’ Mrs. Hartop said. She spoke from the gloom of the van seat. Alice could just see her vague clay-coloured face.
    â€˜Yes. I’m all right.’
    â€˜See you a’ Friday again then.’
    Hartop let off the brake and the van moved away simultaneously as Alice moved away across the mill-yard between the piles of derelict iron. Raw half-mist from the river was coming across the yard in sodden swirls and Alice, frozen, half-ran into the house. Then, in the kitchen, she sat by the fire with her skirt drawn up above her knees, to warm herself.
    She was still sitting like that, with her skirt drawn up to her thighs and her hands outstretched to the fire and the orange in her lap, when Holland came in.
    â€˜Hullo, Alice,’ he said genially. ‘I should git on top o’ the fire if I was you.’
    Alice, wretched with the cold, which seemed to have settled inside her, scarcely answered. She sat there for almost a full minute longer, trying to warm her legs, before getting up to cook Holland’s fish. All the time she sat there Holland was looking at her legs, with the skirt pulled up away from them. The knees and the slim thighs were rounded and soft, and the knees and the legs themselves a rosy flame-colour in the firelight. Holland felt a sudden agitation as he gazed at them.
    Then abruptly Alice got up to cook the fish, and thevision of her rose-coloured legs vanished. But Holland, shaving before the mirror, could still see in his mind the soft firelight on Alice’s knees. And the mirror, as before, seemed to magnify Alice’s vague form as it moved about the kitchen, putting some flesh on her body. Then when Holland sat down to his fish Alice again sat down before the fire and he saw her pull her skirt above her knees again as though he did not exist. And all through the meal he sat looking at her. Then suddenly he got tired of merely looking at her. He wanted to be closer to her. ‘Alice, come and ’ave a drop o’ tea,’ he said. ‘Pour yourself a cup out. Come on. You look starved.’ The orange Hartop had given Alice lay on the table, and the girl pointed to it. ‘I’m going to have that orange,’ she said. Holland picked up the orange. ‘All right, only you want summat. Here, I’m going to throw it.’ He threw the orange. It fell into Alice’s lap. And it seemed to Holland that its fall drew her dress a little higher above her knees. He got up. ‘Never hurt you, did I, Alice?’ he said. He ran his hands over her shoulders and arms, and then over her thighs and knees. Her knees were beautifully warm, like hard warm apples. ‘You’re starved though. Your knees are like ice.’ He began to rub her hands a little with his own, and the girl, her flat expression never changing, let him do it. She felt his fingers harsh on her bloodless hands and then on her shoulders. ‘Your chest ain’t cold, is it?’ Holland said. ‘You don’t want to git cold in your chest.’ He was feeling her chest, above the breasts. The girl shook her head. ‘Sure?’ Holland said. He kept his hands on her chest. ‘You put something on when you go out to that van again. If you git cold on your chest …’ And as he was speaking his hands moved down until they covered her breasts. They were so small that he couldhold them in his hands. ‘Don’t want to git cold in
them
, do you?’ he said. ‘In your nellies?’ She stared at him abstractedly, not knowing the word,