Free The Cruise of The Breadwinner by H.E. Bates Page A

separated by what seemed to him vast stretches of years by the terrifying vastness of the man. Now he was comforted by the gigantic adultness of Gregson. It shut him away, for a time, from the things he had seen.
    They were coming in towards the estuary now, Gregson giving the wheel a hard point or two to port, and then another, and then holding
The Breadwinner
hard down, her head a point or two west from north. The face of the sea was cresting down a fraction; the wind gave a suck or two at the sail as the boat turned and lay over, loosing it back as she straightened. The boy could see the shore clearly now, misty with rain, the dunes in long wet brown stripes, the only colour against the winter land beyond. And suddenly, looking up at Gregson, he thought for a moment he detected there a slight relaxation on the enormous bulging face. He saw Gregson lick the rain from his tired lips. It gave him courage to think that at last Gregson was going to speak again.
    â€œAlmost in, Mr. Gregson, skipper,” he said.
    The violence of Gregson’s voice was so sudden that it was like the clamour of a man frightened by his own anger.
    â€œGod damn them!” he roared. “God damn them! All of them, God damn them! Why don’t they let us alone? Why don’t they let us alone! Why don’t they let us alone! How much longer? Why don’t they let our lives alone? God damn and blast them—all of them, all of them, all the bastards, all over the world!”
    Gregson finished shouting and gave an enormous fluttering sigh. It seemed to exhaust him. He stood heavy and brooding across the wheel, his body without savagery, his face all at once dead and old and colourless, the rain streaming down it like a flood of tears.
    He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, as if he now suddenly remembered he was there. The sea was calming down at the mouth of the estuary, and
The Breadwinner
was beginning to run lumpily in towards the narrow gap in the steel defences, rusty for miles along the wild and empty shore. There were no lights in the dark afternoon, and the rain darkened a little more each moment the farther hills, the cliffs and the low sky. The boy did not move again. All the time he had wanted, at this last moment, to raise the binoculars to his eyes. For some reason he did not want to raise them now. There did not seem much use in raising them. He was not even sure that there seemed much use in possessing them. As he stood there with Gregson’s arm on his shoulder he remembered the dead engineer; he remembered Gregson’s violent outburst of words; and he remembered the dead pilots, lying in the orange lamplight in the small cabin darkened by his own shadow with their dead fair faces, side by side. And they became for him, at that moment, all the pilots, all the dead pilots, all over the world.
    At that moment they ran into the mouth of the estuary. Gregson continued tenderly to hold him by the shoulder, not speaking, and the boy once more looked up at him, seeing the old tired face again as if bathed in tears. He did not speak, and there rose up in him a grave exultation.
    He had been out with men to War and had seen the dead. He was alive and
The Breadwinner
had come home.

A Note on the Author
    H. E. Bates was born in 1905 in the shoe-making town of Rushden, Northamptonshire, and educated at Kettering Grammar School. After leaving school, he worked as a reporter and as a clerk in a leather warehouse.
    Many of his stories depict life in the rural Midlands, particularly his native Northamptonshire, where he spent many hours wandering the countryside.
    His first novel,
The Two Sisters
(1926) was published by Jonathan Cape when he was just twenty. Many critically acclaimed novels and collections of short stories followed.
    During WWII he was commissioned into the RAF solely to write short stories, which were published under the pseudonym “Flying Officer X”. His first financial success was
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