Tomato Cain and Other Stories

  Chapter 1

  Introduction by Elizabeth Bowen

  Within the last few years, readers have become less shy of the short story. That this form of fiction is also a form of art had fairly long ago been recognised; what is more important, from the point of view of popular favour, is that the high potential of entertainment in a good collection of stories may now be seen. There exists, too, a growing body of people who no longer turn to a book in search of “escape” but are genuinely interested in writing - who value craftsmanship and react to originality. To such readers, the short story - in its present rather fascinating position half-way between tradition and experiment - must particularly appeal.

  The experimentary story-writer, lately, has in fact been given a good deal of rope: that the best use has invariably been made of this I cannot say. There has been a danger that, because of its literary privilege, the short story might fall under a certain literary blight, and become an example of too much prose draped around an insufficiently vital feeling or a trumped-up, insufficiently strong idea. The declared reaction against plot - as constraining, rigid or artificial - was once good up to a point, but possibly went too far: the fact that a story must be a story was overlooked. There are now signs of an equally strong (and, I think, healthy) reaction against plotlessness. Of this Nigel Kneale’s stories are symptomatic.

  Indeed, in one sense, these tales in Tomato Cain show a return to the great main stream of the English story tradition - with which one associates Kipling, Wells, Saki, Somerset Maugham. When I say that Nigel Kneale’s stories have plot, I mean that they make their effect by the traditional elements of invention, tension, a certain amazement and, ultimately, surprise. Like his great predecessors, he is impersonal, not using his art either for self-expression or exhibition. His art is the art of narration - the world’s oldest. He knows how to rouse interest; and, which is still rarer, knows how to hold it. He is adept to giving a situation a final twist. These Tomato Cain stories vary in quality, as stories in any collection must; but, personally, I find the author guilty of not one single story which bogs down.

  The writer of stories of this type must be bold; he disdains the shelter of ambiguity; it is essential that each of his pieces should come off. He is gambling - in an honourable sense, for are not Kipling, Wells, Saki, Somerset Maugham gamblers also? - on the originality of his imagination, on his power to grip, on the persuasiveness of his manner of story-telling. It might be too much to say that all the world’s classic stories have had an element of the preposterous about them; one might safely say that any memorable story carried something which had to be put across. A part of the fascination of Nigel Kneale’s story-telling is that he takes long chances; a part of the satisfaction of it is that in almost all cases he justifies the risks.

  This writer is a young Manxman. He has grown up in, and infuses into his stories, an atmosphere which one can cut with a knife. He is not dependent on regionalism - not all of his work has an Isle of Man setting - but it would appear that he draws strength from it: his work at its best has the flavour, raciness, “body” that one associates with the best of the output from Ireland, Wales, Brittany, and the more remote, untouched and primitive of the States of America. He turns for his inspiration to creeks in which life runs deep, to pockets in which life accumulates, deeply queer. Is the Talking Mongoose a sore subject with the Isle of Man? That interesting animal - of which the investigations of the late Harry Price never entirely disposed - might well be the denizen of a Nigel Kneale story. Has he not made frogs avengers; has he not made a deformed duck a tragedian?

  In far-of days [he says, at the opening of The Tarroo-Ushtey] before the preachers and the school-masters came, the island held a good many creatures besides people and beasts. The place swarmed with monsters. A man would think twice before answering his cottage door on a windy night, in dread of a visit from his own ghost. The high mountain roads rang in the darkness with the thunderous tiffs of the bugganes, which had unspeakable shapes and heads bigger than houses; while a walk along the seashore after the sun had set was to invite the misty appearance of a tarroo-ushtey, in the likeness of a monstrous bull ... At harvest-time the hairy trollman, the phynodderee, might come springing out of his elderberry tree to assist the reaping, to the farmer’s dismay; for the best-intentioned of the beings were no more helpful than interfering neighbours ..

  This is the background atmosphere of one group of Kneale’s stories; call them the local pieces. Tomato Cain itself, The Excursion, and The Putting-away of Uncle Quaggin have (for instance) a naturalism not unworthy of Maupassant: the supernatural never raises its head, but eminent human queerness is at its height.

  It is the function of every emerging writer to create, and stamp, his own universe. This Nigel Kneale has done. In his universe, love, in the sentimental or social sense, plays almost no part; but the passions stalk like those island monsters. Like the unfortunate bungalow in Minuke, his characters are wrenched and battered and heaved up. What is remarkable, given the themes of many of the stories, is that the writer so seldom - if, indeed, ever? - crosses the bounds into extravagance; his forte is a sort of control, restraint. His Quiet Mr Evans, tale of an injured husband’s revenge in a fish-and-chip shop, threatens at one point to approach in horror H G Wells’ The Cone, but the last twist gives a pathetic-ironic end. It would be fair to say that his children and animal stories, with their focus on suffering (eg The Photograph, Oh, Mirror, Mirror, The Stocking, Flo, and the semi-fantastic Curphey’s Follower) most dangerously approach the unbearable. It may, however, be found that Nigel Kneale knows how to relax any too great realism at the saving moment.

  To the sheer build, to the something better than ingenuity of the best of the stories, attention should be drawn. Peg and Bini and Bettine would seem to me to be masterpieces in a genre particularly this writer’s own. This is a first book: Nigel Kneale is at the opening of his career; he is still making a trial of his powers. To an older writer, the just not overcrowded effect of inventive richness, the suggestion of potentialities still to be explored, and of alternatives pending, cannot but be attractive. That the general reader will react to Nigel Kneale’s stories, and that the perceptive reader will relish what is new in his contribution to fiction, I feel sure.

  Chapter 2

  Tomato Cain

  When people passed his cottage they said to one another, “That is where Eli Cain lives. He is good, and a sidesman at Ballaroddan Methodist Chapel”.

  Certainly they pointed at his house with interest, for he had often seen them, as he sat at his tea and soda-bread in the evenings.

  On the morning of the harvest festival, Eli brushed his dark-grey Sunday suit with the long tails until every speck of dust had departed. He draped it carefully over the back of a chair while he wrote in his new hymn-book “Eli Cain,” and the date, “September 28th, 1883.” He formed the words slowly and carefully: when he left this fine leather-backed, gold-edged volume in his will, his niece would tell her children, “Learn to write like your Uncle Cain.” He underlined the words twice, and placed placed a bracket on each side for symmetry.

  A flat, damp piece of peat taking care of the fire, he set out with the book held delicately to avoid finger-marks.

  As he passed Mrs Crebbin’s, he raised his hat to the window, in case any one should be looking out, but after that he kept his eyes on the path to avoid muddy pools and slippery gravel.

  His face, which was seen only by the creeping things that lived on the roadside, was grim, and his mouth was pressed tight so that he could not even talk things over with himself.

  He did not glance to the left, where the grey mist was slowly rising on the hillside; or to the right, where sleep
looked up mournfully from the stubble. There were serious thoughts in the mind of Eli Cain.

  He grimaced as he picked his way between the pools at the Chapel entrance. Removing a speck of dust from his hat before hanging it on a peg in the vestibule, he could hear Jacob Skillicorn, the organist, practicing softly inside:

  “…for His mercies still endure.

  ever faithful, ever sure…”

  Eli pushed the door open and found in the hymn-book the place he had marked by the ribbon. Number 381 and number 383 were the harvest hymns for to-day. In good large type. He checked them against the wooden indicator above the pulpit, deliberately keeping his eyes from straying until he had completed the routine.

  “Good morning, Mr. Cain,” said little pale-haired Skillicorn, holding a note on the new American organ.

  “Good day,” said Eli.

  “Come early to see the vegetables, eh?” Skillicorn giggled. “and tomatoes, would y’ believe?”

  Eli Cain looked at the table before the pulpit, seeing what he feared he might. True, there were piled honest Manx harvesting - potatoes, corn, carrots, leeks, turnips, cabbages, barley. There there were of Eli’s own best swedes.

  But in the centre there shone a little heap of scarlet fruit. The new tomatoes of John James Quilleash.

  “So he brought them, for all!” said Eli.

  Skillicorn gave a little fizz and turned again to the organ.

  “…Praise Him for our harvest store,

  He hath filled the garner floor.”

  Eli stared at the things with a cold blush of shame.

  Anger too. Anger that Skillicorn should be amused. Anger that Quilleash should have shown so little respect for what was fitting.

  “Showin’ off, he is,” whispered Eli’s drawn lips, “with his conservatory !”

  For that was where the tomatoes had been grown, as all the village knew. They were not a harvest-fruit to sing hymns for, but foreign things drawn from the earth by hot glass, and then hardly ripened, even at this time of the year. These, likely, were all the miserable, misunderstood plants had bean able to produce. And hardly a creature in the Isle of Man, save John James Quilleash, had ever tasted them.

  Yet he had flouted, carelessly flouted, the earnest wishes of good men; abused his high position as a trustee. Eli felt contemptuous hate for Quilleash, as he laid his hymn-book in the rack of his appointed pew, restraining himself to gentleness.

  Neither fruit nor vegetable by nature, it appeared. Some said they were poisonous if eaten in numbers, and others that the things came from South America, whose immorality was a deep concern to all thinking men. “Love-apples” were the tomatoes called.

  “Next, they’ll be havin’ one of those stage-dancin’ women in the pulpit,” said Eli.

  Skillicorn sniggered absently behind his curtain.

  “Mortifyin’,” it is. “Mortifyin; and - and wanton desecration!”. Eli glared at the brilliant, unnatural redness. Trust’ a Ouilleash to be trying to catch the public eye, by whatever means. . But to spoil the harvest-home for personal glorification!

  He should not. Eli grew stiff with resolution. The purity of the Chapel swelled high in his mind. Like a great wedding-cake, shining, rich, complicated and brittle.

  People were entering the outer door, mumbling pleasantries. Skillicorn was playing softly behind his curtain.

  Eli stepped forward, racked his coat up across his chest. One by one he gathered the soft, loathsome fruit quickly into it. He hurried to the side door and out into the narrow yard, even as the first worshippers came in at the other end. Beads of sweat hung on his forehead. He stumbled in his haste on the gravelled path.

  At the hedge he stopped, trembling a little in his legs. It would be enough to hide the fruit until the service was over. Then Quilleash could do as he wished with them.

  Eli kicked at the flimsy hurdle that barred the way to the tea-field. It fell with a rattle, and as it did so a large tomato tumbled in a red splash on the stony ground. He snatched at it, only to see another fall from his coat-front, and then a third.

  Desperately he ran into the field, crouching low, and deposited the things while he returned to the splotched mess on the stones and swept away the juice and pips with a tuft of grass.

  In the field, close to the hedge, he tore up a great sod with his bare, hard hands.When he had scraped some earth from the place, he bundled all the tomatoes, broken and crushed as they were, into the cavity, and stamped the sod back into place.

  He stood, breathing heavily; leaned against the hedge to think for a time.

  The things were lost now. But no one had seen them go. And later perhaps he would explain the position to his brother officers in the vestry.

  When he walked slowly round to the front entrance he was just in time to assist in closing the draughty doors. As he took his place at the back, Skillicorn was playing with gusto. Always a bit theatrical he was with his stops.

  A woman in front of Eli whispered to her neighbour, “I thought John James was bringin’ some of those tomato fruits?” The neighbour shook her head to indicate ignorance. Eli felt an inner glow.

  “ And for richer food than this.

  Pledge of everlasting bliss…” he sang.

  The sermon was long and the preacher was dully cheerful, and Eli’s gaze wandered to his three fine swedes before the pulpit. Their skins shone cleanly and smoothly, and it seemed to him they were all a good harvest-home demanded.

  Then he dozed a while, never forgetting himself completely, so that he rose as readily as his colleague, Willie Mylroie, when the offertory came.

  “As generous as possible,” recited the preacher, and Eli picked a speck of cotton from the dark-blue velvet of the collection plate, to lead off himself with a bright shilling.

  People coughed and shifted themselves noisily, feeling in pockets and purses for coppers and threepenny pieces, tidying children and reassuring themselves of the presence of their hats beneath the seats.

  Murmurs caught Eli’s uneasy ear: “So John James didn’t have his queer fruit ripe after all!” “Thought better of givin’ ‘em to harvest-home, p’raps.” “If y’ ask me, I don’t believe the things ever grew at all, at all !”

  He caught a glimpse of Quilleash sitting puzzled, as his neighbours questioned in whispers.

  An ill-mannered brat in the front row stared unwinkingly at Eli while he passed the plate along, until her mother corrected her. He saw the child whisper as he moved back, and people turned to glance at him quickly.

  Eli felt uncomfortable, hardly noticing even that someone had placed a sovereign upon the blue velvet.

  Heads turned, faces stared as the hands to which they belonged offered pence or silver. “Hush, child! Mr Cain is a good man,” a woman behind him rebuked.

  Old Watterson, the thatcher, let his last teeth show in a crooked grin, until, embarrassed by Eli’s look, he began to search on the floor for the hymn-book already clutched in his hand.

  A young girl, who should have known better, gave a squeaky titter and hiccuped loudly.

  Eli’s ears burned. He stared across to the window, ignoring the worshippers, until the plate returned along the rows to his hand.

  But instead of the backs of heads, faces were turned to him from the front pews which he had passed. He was stung by the contemptuous state of Mrs Kermode under her shiny-black hat.

  And at the end of the next row sat John James Quilleash.

  Steadily Eli turned to his pew and submitted the partly filled plate.

  Steadily Quilleash eyed him, his hands at his sides. There was a bitter-fat smile under his sandy moustache.

  Every one in the Chapel watched without a breath.

  In an instant Quilleash’s look changed. His eyes closed up and the grin of malice grew on his face. He spoke in a loud whisper that must have been heard by the very mice in the skirting.

  “I hope you enjoyed my tomatoes, Mr Cain,” he said. “But of course you must have, since you ate the lot.
Or p’raps you gave one or two to Mr Skillicorn?”

  Eli was speechless. His face wobbled in bewilderment.

  Quilleash prodded a fat finger forward, and flicked a tiny shining thing from Eli’s waistcoat.

  Eli pressed his fingers to the place, and there, hidden by a fold, was a wet smear of pink juice and seeds. Caught by a horn button hung a long strip of red tomato skin.

  Quilleash leaned forward confidentially. “Thou’rt a sloppy eater, Mr Cain.”

  And the whole Chapel roared with laughter. Even the preacher.

  Faces twisted and rolled before Eli as he stood blushing and sweating, and like a man clutching a red wound. He gasped “I never done that! I never! Just you listen - “

  But no one heard his words, and his tongue stopped working. Desperately he turned to the pulpit and saw the bland faces of the three turnips, and the preacher wiping his eyes. The plate wobbled in his hand. A sixpence tinkled on the floor.

  The grinning Mylroie took over, and Eli, recovered a little, dabbed wildly at his stomach as he fled to the back of the Chapel.

  A streak of red juice sank into the leather of the new hymn-book that he hid himself in, searching the pages frantically for nothing, to cover his confusion.

  Still the Chapel vibrated with laughter, people standing up to stare at the pulpit and then back at the wretched Cain, until at last the preacher held up his hand, still smirking a little himself.

  As the silence poured into Eli’s soul like healing fluid, he realised that he was gasping and shivering. Willie Mylroie was beside him.

  “Eli,” he said, his voice low and curious, ‘what do they taste like?”. But the look of hate he received made him turn away. Perhaps they were poisonous after all, thought Mylroie.

  No one noticed the remainder of the service, except the Eli Cain sat as if in a fever, quickly turning the pages of his hymn-book one by one, and staring straight in front of him.

  Occasionally there was a chuckle or a snigger or a nudging of elbows.