The Human Usual

COLONEL JULIAN (240 pp.)--H. E. Bates --Little, Brown ($3).

Author H. E. (for Herbert Ernest) Bates, 48, is an Englishman who persists in writing short stories even though, as he sadly admits, British rates of pay are "pitiful." There are at least two reasons for Bates's persistence: 1) he writes some of the best short stories of any Englishman of his generation, and 2) whenever he turns out a novel, e.g., The Scarlet Sword, Fair Stood the Wind for France, the critics usually deplore them. In Colonel Julian, a collection of 15 stories about fairly ordinary men & women, Author Bates is back at his proper underpaid trade.

In his quiet way, Bates writes about appearance and reality. His characters wear masks of habit that fool even themselves. Then something happens, and the revelation comes. A hard-bitten nurse, busy convoying wounded soldiers, discovers even to her own surprise that she has a warm heart. A young wife, ground down by a pompous and much older husband, gets a clutch on herself--and evens the balance by smashing his false teeth. The title story examines a group of R.A.F. pilots through the critical eyes of an old army officer, who gradually learns that beneath their abruptness and diffidence lies courage at least as fine as his own.

Some of the best stories take a pathetic turn. In A Girl Called Peter, a farm girl discovers herself for the awkward thing she is. No More The Nightingales tells of the seduction of a rich woman by a confident farm hand who treats her "as if she were a tame hen that . . . could not possibly fly." But every few stories Bates varies his tone. Two comic sketches concern Uncle Silas, a village Falstaff, given to "beery winks from a bloodshot eye that was like a fire in a field of poppies." Reminiscing about his youth, when women were "allus arter you," Uncle Silas tells the story of a landlady with a passion for making puddings. One day, chance dropped her in his lap, and "arter that I wur never in want for the nicest bit o' pudden in the world."

Whatever their mood, most of Bates's stories are swept and refreshed by the winds of the English countryside. In this traditional landscape move people who are neither heroic nor eccentric; Bates is one of those writers whose talent, and it is a fine one, lies in the human usual.

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