(3/13) News from Thrush Green (16 page)

The rector, robing in the vestry, realized with alarm, that Piggott was absent.

'You'd better ring the bell,' he told the largest choir-boy. 'Mr Piggott seems to have been held up.'

Privately, Charles Henstock feared that his verger might be the worse for drink. It had happened before, but he did not wish to be uncharitable, and he told himself that he must postpone judgement until he had seen the fellow.

Albert did not appear during the service, and as soon as his few parishioners had departed, Charles put out the lights himself, saw that things were in order, and then crossed to Albert's cottage.

The windows were dark, and the rector feared that Albert was indeed in a stupor. Really, drink was a great nuisance!

He knocked and got no reply.

'Anyone at home?' called the rector, opening the door. The sight that met his eyes, in the gloom, frightened him exceedingly.

He found the light switch and surveyed the chaos. Albert's huddled body lay before the dying fire, but his heavy breathing showed that he was still alive.

'Thank God!' said the rector from his heart, kneeling beside the man. He turned him over, into a more comfortable position and put the cushion from the armchair beneath his head.

'Piggott!' he cried sharply. 'Can you hear me, Piggott?'

A growling sound came from Albert's pale lips, and his eyelids fluttered spasmodically.

'Stay there,' cautioned the rector, thinking, as he said it, how idiotic it was. There was small chance of Albert moving far.

'I'm going for help,' he said, making for the door. The man must have a doctor. Should he telephone from home, or run along to Harold Shoosmith's? There was nothing in it as to distance, and he did not wish to alarm Dimity. Harold it should be.

He ran through the darkness, past 'The Two Pheasants' and was soon banging Harold's knocker.

'My dear chap,' said Harold to his breathless friend. 'What is it? Come in, do.'

'It's Piggott. A seizure or something,' puffed Charles. 'Can I use your telephone?'

'I'll ring Lovell,' said Harold, taking command, 'while you go back. I'll follow as soon as I've got through. And don't worry,' he shouted to his retreating friend, 'it's probably only the drink!'

'Not this time, I fear,' called back the rector, hurrying away.

***

Twenty minutes' later Doctor Lovell agreed with the rector as he surveyed his patient.

The three men had carried Albert up the narrow stairs to his bed. He was conscious now, but very weak and pale.

'We've got an ambulance on the way for you, Albert,' said Doctor Lovell. 'I want to have a proper look at those innards of yours. Where's your wife?'

'Gorn,' said Albert, in a whisper. 'For good.'

None of the three men tried to dispute the statement. The signs of a fight downstairs, the empty clothes cupboard in the bedroom, and the general disorder, were plain enough. There had been plenty of talk about the Piggotts' differences, and about the oil man's advances. Albert, they knew, was speaking the truth.

'We'd better let her know anyway,' said the doctor. 'Know her address?'

'No,' said Albert shortly. 'Nor want to.' He closed his eyes.

An hour later he was asleep between the sheets at Lulling Cottage Hospital, and Harold and Charles were telling Dimity what had happened.

'She's bound to come back,' she said. 'She wouldn't leave him just like that - not in hospital, not when she hears that he's ill!'

'I agree that most women would bury the hatchet when they heard that their husbands had been taken ill, but somehow,' said Harold, admiring his whisky against the light, 'I don't think Nelly will return in a hurry.'

'But what will he do?' asked the rector, looking distressed. 'He must have someone to look after him when he comes out of hospital!'

'I know,' said Dimity suddenly. 'I'll write to Molly, his daughter. She married Ben Curdle, the man who owns the fair,' she told Harold. 'She left here just before you came to live here. A dear girl - we all liked her so much. She should know anyway, and perhaps she will come and look after him.'

'He wasn't very nice to her when she did live with him,' ventured the rector doubtfully. 'And now. she has Ben and the baby to look after, I really can't see—'

'Never mind,' said Dimity firmly. 'I shall let her know what has happened, and it is up to her to decide. I must ring Joan Young for her address. I know she keeps in touch. They were such friends when Molly used to be nursemaid to Paul.'

She made her way briskly to the study, and the two men heard her talking to Joan.

The rector gave a loud yawn and checked himself hastily.

'I'm so sorry. I'm unconscionably tired. It's the upset, I suppose. Poor Albert! I feel very distressed for him.'

'You'd feel distressed for Satan himself,' replied Harold affectionately. 'Poor Albert, indeed! I bet he asked for it. I don't blame Nelly for leaving that old devil.'

'I married them myself,' said the rector sadly, gazing at the fire. 'I must admit, I had doubts at the time.'

Dimity returned, a piece of paper fluttering in her hand.

'I've got the address. If I write now, then Willie can take it in the morning.'

'Well, I must be off,' said Harold rising. 'Many thanks for the drink.'

'I've just thought,' cried Dimity, standing transfixed. 'Did you see Albert's cat? I'd better go across and feed it.'

'You leave it till the morning,' advised Harold, patting her thin shoulder. 'It won't hurt tonight. There's plenty of Christmas pudding lying about the kitchen to keep it going.'

13 Christmas Preparations

SIGNS of Christmas were beginning to appear in Lulling and Thrush Green.

The squat Butter Market cross, beloved by residents and antiquarians from further afield, was being wreathed in coils of wire ready for its garland of coloured lights later on.

In the shops, gifts were on display. Puddocks, the stationers, decked one of their windows with Christmas cards and the other with a fearsome array of table mats arranged round a scarlet typewriter. Ella found the juxtaposition of these articles extremely annoying, and said so to the manager.

'If you're going to show table mats put something like a large dish, or a vase with Christmas decorations in it,' Ella told him, in a voice audible to all his customers.

'Or if you want the ruddy typewriter on show - though who on earth you imagine is going to pay over thirty quid for one Christmas present these days, I'm blessed if I know - then put office stuff round it. Blotters, say, or calendars, or pens and pencils. But to mix up the two just isn't good enough!'

The manager made perfunctory apologies. As a young man he had dreaded Ella's comments. Now that he was grey and tubby he was hardened to this awkward customer's remarks. Ella Bembridge was a byword in the town. No one was going to worry about her little foibles, he told himself.

He directed her attention to the other window.

'I've done my own,' said Ella, scrutinizing the crinolined ladies, the churches in the snow, and the kittens in paper hats, with obvious disgust.

'Appalling, aren't they?' she said cheerfully, and departed before the manager could think of a cutting reply.

The window of the electricity showroom was much admired by the young if not by their elders. It showed an all-electric kitchen with the oven prominently displayed. The oven door stood open, the better to show a dark-brown shiny turkey and some misshapen roast potatoes. At the kitchen table, a smiling woman stirred something which seemed to be Christmas pudding mixture, while a dish of mince pies stood on the top of the refrigerator beside her.

Quite rightly, the good wives of Lulling found this scene as exasperating as Ella found Puddocks' window.

'Bit late mixin' the pudden,' one said sourly to another.

'And that bird won't get done with the door open,' agreed her friend tartly. 'I shouldn't care to try them spuds either.'

'Nor them mince-pies,' observed another. 'Plaster-a-Paris as plain as a pike staff. Bet some fool of a man arranged that window. I've a good mind to go in and tell 'em.'

'The Fuchsia Bush' had excelled itself with rows and rows of silver bells, made from tinfoil, which were strung across the ceiling and rustled metallically every time the door opened.

'Come in handy for keeping the birds off the peas later,' observed one practical customer, speaking fortissimo above the din of the dancing bells.

The bow-shaped windows were studded with dabs of cotton-wool to represent snowflakes, and two imposing flower arrangements of dried grasses, seed-pods and fern, all sprayed with silver by the ladies of the Lulling Floral Society, took pride of place in each window.

Thrush Green's preparations were less spectacular, but Dimity took out the figures for the Christmas crib and washed them carefully in luke-warm water well-laced with Lux.

Miss Watson and Miss Fogerty were in the throes of rehearsals for the annual Christmas concert. Miss Fogerty, who was the more realistic of the two and knew the limits of her infants' powers, had wisely plumped for simple carols, sung in unison by the whole class, with 'growlers' tucked strategically at the back of the stage and warned to 'sing very quietly'. A few percussion instruments in the hands of the most competent few, who included young Jeremy Prior, were going to accompany the infant choir.

In fact, Miss Fogerty's main concern was to get the children to pronounce their vowel sounds correctly. Constant repetition of:

'Awy in er-er mynger'

was causing her acute distress.

Miss Watson, who was more ambitious, had decided rashly to stage a nativity play. The ten-year-olds who were the most senior of her pupils and who, it might be supposed, would be competent to play the leading roles, were at the self-conscious stage, and tended to giggle and look sheepish, which Miss Watson found both irritating and irreligious.

She found herself speaking with unusual sharpness.

'Don't mumble into your beard, Joseph. The parents want to hear you, remember. And if you three wise men keep tripping over the rector's spare room curtains I shall be returning them in shreds. Pick your feet up, do! As for you beasts in the stall, for pity's sake stop nodding your masks in that inane way. You'll have them off, and I'm not made of cardboard!'

With such travail was Christmas being welcomed at the school.

'I suppose it will be all right on the day,' said Miss Watson resignedly to Miss Fogerty.

'Of course it will,' Miss Fogerty replied stoutly, watching her children paste paper chains with frenzied brushes, and more chatter than was usually allowed. She dived upon one five-year-old who was twirling his paste-brush energetically in his neighbour's ear, removed the brush, slapped the offender's hand, and lifted the malefactor to the corner where he was obliged to study the weather chart for December, with his back to the class. Throughout the whole incident, Miss Fogerty's face remained calm and kindly.

Miss Watson sighed. Dear Agnes's methods were hopelessly old-fashioned, and she knew quite well that corporal punishment was frowned upon by all enlightened educationalists.

Nevertheless, thought Miss Watson, returning to her own boisterous class, a sharp slap seemed to work wonders now and again, and at times, like this, one surely could be forgiven.

In the houses round the green, more preparations were going on. Ella had looked out half a dozen lumpy ties, ear-marked for male friends such as Charles Henstock. The Christmas cards, a stack of bold woodcuts with a certain rough attraction, waited on the dresser for despatch later.

Her present to Dimity remained to be finished. She was sewing a rug, in a stitch called 'tiedbrick stitch', in gay stripes of scarlet, grey and white. It gave her enormous satisfaction to do, but its bulk was difficult to hide in a hurry, on the occasions when Dimity called unexpectedly to see her.

Harold Shoosmith, efficient as ever, had bought book tokens for all his friends, and had a neat pile waiting in his desk to be written in, and posted on the correct day. Betty Bell had made him a Christmas pudding large enough for a family of ten, and was upset when her employer told her firmly that he refused to countenance her proposal to make him a dozen mince-pies, two trifles and a couple of jellies 'to keep him going'.