H.E. Bates Companion

At a country cottage offering the joys of "the simple life," the story focuses on a bitter alcoholic wife who finds temporary pleasure in a seventeen-year-old boy. The husband enlists the boy in repairing a boat and going on a cruise, leaving his wife once more lonely and miserable. A year later, Bates would again explore a similar affair in "How Vainly Men Themselves Amaze." An adaptation in the television series "Country Matters" was aired in February 1973. The story was dramatized for BBC Radio by Gregory Evans in 1986 in a production starring Julian Glover, Elizabeth Bell and Nicholas Lyndhurst, and directed by Gordon House. In Argosy (September, 1967), The Four Beauties (1968), The Best of H.E. Bates (1980).