Argosy, September 1955 — page 34: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

32 H. E. BATES She smiled and sat back beside him on the seat, wrapping the surprisingly cool yellow gloves deftly one over the other. ““'That’s where I’d like to go,” she said. Then, without attaching importance to what she said, without really giving it another thought, he was inspired to remark with sudden cheerfulness that there would probably be, at the hotel, a cup of tea. There were mice in the upper ceilings of the old hotel and he lay listening to them half the night, turning over in his mind what seemed to him the vexing problem of her being there, in that highly unsuitable, dark, cheap hotel, where no English visitor ever came except for a temporary night, in sheer high-season desperation. He had carefully warned her a number of times that the food would not be English. “ It will be oily and all that,” he said. ** It’s something it takes a long time to get used to.” When she reminded him that he at any rate appeared to survive it, he did not dare tell her that it was simply because he could not afford anything else. He had just had to get used to it; and now he did not ask for anything better and in his limited way he was perfectly happy. At least, he supposed he was. But something troubled him much more than this. He was per- plexed and worried by a phrase she had used. “What are you going to do with yourself?’ he asked her. “ It can be terribly exhausting at this time of year—”’ ““[’m going to poke about,’ she said. ‘‘ 1 want things to do. I want to see things.” He grew increasingly uneasy about this as the evening went on. It was not a good thing to poke your nose into things in Salandar. It was a place, in the right season, in the delicious winter flowery days, of infinite surface charm. Bougainvillaeas covered with steep massive curtains of purple and sienna-rose, all the dry ravines coming down from the hills; starry scarlet poin- settias lined the potato patches; a gentle honey odour of incense trees always hung over the old street at night-time. If under- neath all this there were people who had not enough to eat, who were afraid of something or somebody, who were tubercular or illiterate or superfluous or broken, that was no concern of visitors. ** Don’t you ever poke about and find out how things really are?’ she said. cc No.”’’ “Have you been here long?” she said. ‘‘ How many years have you been here? ”’ ““T came here nearly three and a half years ago. Nearly four.” It was getting so long ago now he could hardly remember exactly. His time there had gradually become, in the Salandar fashion, a succession of dull tomorrows. ‘““ How long is it since you went over to the other side of the island? ”’ she said. **1’m afraid I’ve never been over to the other side.”’ comiclooks.conn