(10/13) Friends at Thrush Green (14 page)

Both he and Dimity knew this from first-hand, for when the rectory had gone up in a blaze that fateful night, it was Mrs Jenner who had offered them a home for several months and given them comfort as well as shelter after their shock.

She and Nelly had met at bingo, and struck up a friendship. Mrs Jenner appreciated Nelly's good sense, her industry and cheerful disposition. She felt some pity too for her role as Albert Piggott's wife. She had known Albert since their school days, and knew also that he was incapable of changing his curmudgeonly ways.

The evening was fine, the two ladies agreed, but there was a definite nip in the air. At the bottom of the hill they saw Gladys Lilly hurrying towards them. Occasionally she joined the bingo-players, but as a devout chapel-goer she sometimes had qualms about games of chance which her old father had roundly condemned as 'the devil's work'. Tonight, it seemed, she was about to put aside her doubts and was going to enjoy an evening out.

'Such news!' she gasped, as she approached the two friends. 'My Doreen's back!'

Nelly and Mrs Jenner said how pleased they were and they expressed their gratification as the three made their way up Lulling High Street together.

'She just turned up at midday. Some fellow she'd met, a window-cleaner in London, was off to see his mother in Cirencester, and he gave her a lift.'

'Is she staying long?'

'That I couldn't say.'

'And the little boy?'

'Into everything. Had my dripping bowl over before he'd been in the house five minutes. I'm going to have my hands full, I can see.' By now they had reached the hall where more people were going in. Gladys Lilly lowered her voice. 'There's one snag about all this. Glad though I am to see the girl, she's expecting again, and I've no doubt she'll reckon to stay with me till it arrives.'

Mrs Jenner had gone ahead and was talking to a friend.

'Oh lor!' said Nelly. 'The same fellow, is it?'

'Who's to tell?' replied Gladys despairingly. 'She won't, that's for sure. And to think I brought her up strict chapel.'

The chilly spell of weather which had been blamed for Charles Henstock's illness and a host of other people's ailments, now changed to warm sunshine.

Harold Shoosmith, who was at the end of his garden surveying the view across to Lulling Woods, wondered if anything could beat a sunny, dewy early September morning.

The harvest was now in, and most of the fields sloping away to the Pleshey valley had already been ploughed or drilled, ready for planting. The one immediately adjoining Harold's was still bristling with stubble, and Harold was pleased about that. For one thing, at night it had a strange luminosity which had a beauty of its own. More practically, it provided food for a covey of six partridges which sometimes wandered through the hedge and delighted Harold and Isobel as they sat at breakfast.

This morning they were not to be seen, but Harold became conscious of noises coming from next door in the school house garden. The children were in school and Thrush Green lay peacefully in the morning sunlight; gradually, Harold became aware that Margaret Lester was pottering about at the end of her garden, just as he was.

'Hello!' he called. 'Lovely morning.'

'Oh, you made me jump,' gasped Margaret. She came towards the hedge, and Harold approached her.

'Enjoying the sunshine?'

'It is rather nice,' she said vaguely. 'I've really been too busy to notice.'

There was a sound which Harold surmised was a hiccup.

At that moment, Isobel appeared to say that he was wanted on the telephone. She waved to Margaret, and the Shoosmiths excused themselves to hurry indoors.

'Margaret Lester doesn't look well,' commented Isobel as they traversed the garden.

'Margaret Lester,' said her husband shortly, 'is drunk.'

10. Crisis for Violet Lovelock

ON that same bright September morning, Violet Lovelock was busy in the garden too. Girded in a hessian apron and wearing leather gardening gloves, she was cutting a few late roses for the drawing-room's silver trumpet-shaped vases, and deheading the dead ones at the same time.

Violet liked gardening, unlike Ada whose arthritis hindered her from stooping. She limited her gardening activities to watering geraniums in pots at waist level, while her younger sister bent and stretched, trundled the wheelbarrow, and enjoyed comparative agility.

Among the roses, Violet thought about Bertha; so far, nothing untoward had happened. John Lovell had had to be called when Bertha had developed pains in the chest after the ubiquitous cold germ had done its worst in Lulling, and Violet, finding herself alone with him downstairs, had told him, somewhat guardedly, about Bertha's eccentricities.

John Lovell, who had heard the rumours anyway, was reassuring, simply saying that it would be best to accompany Bertha everywhere in her present state, and that if her symptoms gave cause for anxiety she was to get in touch at once.

On these carefully ambiguous phrases they had parted company, and since then Violet had been comforted by the thought that both Charles and John would now be at hand for support if needed. Meanwhile, it seemed that Bertha, who had soon recovered, was behaving in a normal manner although her bedroom still remained crammed with articles from all over the house, and every now and again some fresh piece of china or silver was added surreptitiously to the collection upstairs.

After Violet's gardening session, the three sisters partook of their usual sparse lunch, took a rest, and spent the remainder of the day in various domestic pursuits. The roses were much admired in the drawing-room that evening as Violet did the crossword, with equal help and hindrance from her sisters, and Ada and Bertha knitted.

At ten o'clock, as the grandfather clock in the hall was striking, the three ladies retired to bed.

Violet remained wakeful. A large moth, pattering against the window pane, obliged her to get out of bed and rescue it. No sooner had she settled again, when she found that the moon, as large and round as could be, was sending brilliant beams across her pillow. She stirred herself again to adjust a curtain, and returned to bed.

This time it seemed she was about to find rest, and was in that pleasant state of drifting between conscious thought and the dreams awaiting her when she was startled to hear loud cries emerging from Bertha's room across the landing.

She struggled once more from her bed, envisaging a dozen emergencies from a severe stroke to a bat which had lost its way during its night-time pursuits, and hurriedly put on her dressing-gown. She heard Ada's door bang along the passage and her voice raised. Within half a minute, the three sisters had met in Bertha's room.

Bertha herself was sitting bolt upright in bed, and a very alarming sight she posed for her two agitated sisters. She was wearing what was known to her as 'my boudoir cap', a confection of pink net decorated with a rosette over each ear, and fastened with pink ribbons under her wrinkled chin. Under the pink net were a dozen or so bumps denoting hair-rollers.

But it was not the boudoir cap which so alarmed Ada and Violet, for they were quite accustomed to Bertha's night-time appearance. What made this particular night's costume remarkable was the cascade of necklaces around their sister's neck. Gold chains, ropes of pearls, and an Edwardian opal pendant which had been one of their mother's favourites jangled, together with strands of glass beads of every colour, two amber necklaces and one of jet.

Pinned to Bertha's pink bed jacket were over a dozen brooches ranging from regimental marcasite-and-silver badges to gold horseshoe tie pins with seed pearls for nail-heads. Gold jostled silver, agate vied with lapis lazuli, and an outsize Italian cameo brooch dwarfed the diamond cluster and the solitary ruby beneath it.

Bertha's bony fingers were ablaze with rings, and there was even a man's signet ring adorning one thumb. Overturned jewel boxes of every shape and size lay on the bedspread, and she was busy scrabbling in another which seemed to hold eatings.

'What's the matter, Bertha dear?' enquired Ada, intent on ignoring her sister's bizarre appearance, and rather hoping that what she saw before her was a mirage.

Violet, strengthened with the indignation of one snatched from sleep all too often, was more positive in her approach. 'What on earth are you doing with all the jewellery? It ought to be in the bank anyway.'

'Rubbish!' retorted Bertha. 'It's far better off here where it belongs, and I can keep my eye on it.'

'It is simply inviting a burglar,' pronounced Violet, 'and in any case, why were you shouting for us in the middle of the night?'

'I simply wanted to find out where the watches and bracelets are,' said Bertha, with a dignity which did not match her bedizened appearance. 'Have you girls moved them from the bottom of the wardrobe drawer?'

'Indeed no,' quavered Ada, now beginning to sound tearful. She had always been the timid one.

'I had no idea all this stuff was here,' responded Violet with spirit, 'and the best thing would be to put it all back.'

She advanced upon the bed, but Bertha began a shrill screaming which made the two sisters recoil. At the same time she began to tug at the ribbon which secured the boudoir cap, her scrawny neck twisting this way and that in her struggles. The multi-jewelled collection of necklaces tinkled and jangled, sending out gleams from gold and flashes of fire from precious stones, and all the time the high-pitched screams continued.

When at last she had flung the cap to the floor, she tore out the plastic rollers which it had concealed, hurling them one by one after the cap. Her hair stood out from her scalp in wild spikes, her breathing came in noisy gasps and her eyes rolled in an alarming way.

With considerable courage, Violet strode towards her and slapped one withered cheek smartly. The screaming stopped and Bertha fell back upon her pillows.

For a moment there was a dreadful silence in the room, then Ada began to cry, the pathetic frightened snivellings of a scared child.

'Go back to bed,' said Violet to her sister. 'I can cope now.'

She kept her gaze upon Bertha, but was conscious of Ada's retreat and the sound of her bedroom door closing.

Violet could hear her heart drumming in the most alarming way, and longed to be able to telephone for help, to get John Lovell with his panoply of remedies, injections, pills, inhalants, and the overall comfort of his authority.

She was afraid of madness. She was afraid of violence. She was mortally afraid of doing something, in her terror, which would seriously damage her sister. But something had to be done to restore some sort of order, and at least the appalling screaming had ceased.

'Sit up,' she commanded. 'We're going to put all this stuff back.'

Bertha struggled from her pillows. She was trembling and looked shocked.

'You
struck
me, Violet,' she whispered. 'How dare you
strike
me?'

'I shall do it again,' Violet said stoutly, 'if you don't help me to take off all this jewellery.'

With shaking fingers, she began to unravel the tangle of necklaces, undoing clasps, hooks and complicated fastenings. Bertha slowly began to slide off the rings, fumbling with various ring-boxes on the counterpane, and watching vaguely as one or two of the trinkets rolled to the floor.

'I thought all this was in the bank,' fumed Violet. 'You know we agreed that you would send it there years ago.'

'I changed my mind,' said Bertha. 'And you are pulling my hair.'

Violet scooped a handful of released necklaces into one of the largest jewel boxes. It was a faded green leather one which had come from Siena on their mother's return from her honeymoon. What would that sweet gentle soul think if she could see her daughters now? Violet pushed this thought away, and concentrated on disentangling a fine silver chain.

'What possessed you to try and keep all this?' demanded Violet, freeing the last of the necklaces. 'It's asking for trouble. Heaven knows what this lot is worth now. It hasn't been valued for years.'

'I want it here,' replied Bertha, with a return of her dominating manner. 'Everything in this room is mine. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.'

'Rubbish,' said Violet, bundling the boxes into a drawer. 'You know quite well that everything in the house,
including
everything in this room, is divided equally between the three of us. Justin has Father's will, and it is perfectly plain.'

She stooped to pick up two rings from the carpet, and realized how dizzy she was with exhaustion. It had been a long day.

'I shall get Justin to change it,' said Bertha, with some spirit.

'You will do no such thing,' responded Violet. 'Tomorrow I shall get John Lovell to call to see you.'

'I shan't see him.'

'We'll see about that in the morning. Meanwhile, lie down and sleep. Even if you don't want to, at least let Ada and me have a few hours rest.'

She tucked in the bedclothes, found a stray brooch which she recognized as one of her own, and left her sister in Comparative peace.