H.E. Bates Companion

The narrator recalls a boyhood summer tending cows, in which another boy told "the finest stories in the world [about Jamaica]...heaping lie upon lie, while I listened, as it were, with the very soles of my boots, never doubting him, the magic of his voice and the colour of his tales acting on me like hypnotism and wine together." Years later, the narrator recognizes Dodfish at a dance, charming an adoring partner with the same lies. Bates never included the piece in a collection of stories (other than a limited-edition publication). In John O'London's Weekly (April 2, 1932), The House with the Apricot and Two Other Tales (1933).