Cut and Come Again by H.E. Bates

unbelievably luxurious to Alice, who for nearly five years had drunk her tea from a thermos flask in her father’s van. It brought home to her that she was very well off: five shillings a week, tea by the fire in the bedroom, Mrs. Holland socheerful and nice, and an end at last to her father’s ironic grousing and the feeling that she was a dead weight on his hands. It gave her great satisfaction. Yet she never registered the emotion by looks or words or a change in her demeanour. She went about quietly and a trifle vaguely, almost in a trance of detachment. The light in her large flat pellucid eyes never varied. Her mouth would break into a smile, but the smile never telegraphed itself to her eyes. And so with words. She spoke, but the words never changed that expression of dumb content, that wide and in some way touching and attractive stare straight before her into space.
    And when she heard the rattling of a motor-van in the mill-yard just before six o’clock she looked suddenly up, but her expression did not change. She never showed a flicker of apprehension or surprise.
    About five minutes later Holland walked into the kitchen.
    â€˜â€™Ullo,’ he said.
    Alice was standing at the sink, wiping the frying pan with a dishcloth. When Holland spoke and she looked round at him her eyes blinked with a momentary flash of something like surprise. Holland’s voice was very deep and it seemed to indicate that Holland himself would be physically very large and powerful.
    Then she saw that he was a little man, no taller than herself. He was little and rather stocky, without being stiff or muscular. His trousers hung loose and wide, like sacks. His overcoat, undone, was like a sack. The only unloose thing about him was his collar. It was a narrow stiff celluloid collar fixed with a patent ready-made tie. The collar was oilstained and the tie, once blue, was soaked by oil and dirt to the appearance of old
crêpe
. The rest of Holland was loose and carelessand drooping. A bit of an old shack, Alice thought. Even his little tobacco-yellowed moustache drooped raggedly. Like his felt hat, stuck carelessly on the back of his head, it looked as though it did not belong to him.
    â€˜â€™Ullo,’ he said. ‘You
are
’ere then. I see your dad. D’ye think you’re going to like it?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜That’s right. You make yourself at ’ome.’ He had the parcel of fish under his arm and as he spoke he took it out and laid it on the kitchen table. The brown paper flapped open and Alice saw the tail-cut of a cod. She went at once to the plate-rack, took a plate and laid the fish on it.
    â€˜Missus say anythink about the fish?’ Holland said.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜All right. You fry it while I git shaved.’
    â€˜I put the water on,’ she said.
    Holland took off his overcoat, then his jacket, and finally his collar and tie. Then he turned back the greasy neck-band of his shirt and began to make his shaving lather in a wooden bowl at the sink, working the brush and bowl like a pestle and mortar. Alice put the cod into the frying-pan and then the pan on the oil-stove. Then as Holland began to lather his face, Mrs. Holland called downstairs: ‘Fred. You there, Fred? Fred!’ and Holland walked across the kitchen, still lathering himself and dropping spatters of white lather on the stone flags as he went, to listen at the stairs door.
    â€˜Yes, I’m ’ere, Em’ly. I’m – Eh? Oh! all right.’
    Holland turned to Alice. ‘The missus wants you a minute upstairs.’
    Alice ran upstairs, thinking of the fish. After the warm kitchen she could feel the air damper than ever.Mrs. Holland was lying down in bed and a candle in a tin holder was burning on the chest of drawers.
    â€˜Oh! Alice,’ Mrs. Holland said, ‘you do all you can for Mr. Holland, won’t you? He’s had a long