"Fishers."
Bates's first story of the second World War, preceding his R.A.F. stories by a year, concerns two privates awaiting action by fishing in the English countryside, the sounds of air battle and machine guns increasingly in the background. Butcher, a "little broad-faced Cockney with stubby hands" looks up to the experienced fisherman Jackson, "a young office-clerk with dark hair and refined features," and in time feels joyful gratitude for his trust and friendship, and for the chance to share in Jackson's plans to marry, travel, and build a home (replete with fishpond). One night Jackson shares photographs of his girlfriend, but shortly afterwards is killed by a bomb; holding him in his arms, Butcher reflects on "the girl, the eternally charming smile, the house with the live-bait in the fishpond, and the everlasting sunlight...And thinking of them he knew suddenly that at last, for him, the war had begun." Reflecting the air war in the summer of 1940 in southern England (described by Bates in War Pictures by British Artists, No. 3, R.A.F. and in The Blossoming World, 166-168), the story captures the deceptive peace, tension, and impatience preceding full British involvement in the war. In classic Bates fashion, it does this in the highly personal portrait of the parochial Butcher, whose perspective and life will be forever altered by his friend, and the war to come. In The Listener (January 16, 1941, 25:627 p. 91,) Best Broadcast Stories (London: Faber, 1944, pp. 99-106).