(3/13) News from Thrush Green (6 page)

'Oh, damn!' echoed the baby thoughtfully. 'Oh, damn!.'

The two sisters exchanged resigned looks, but had the wisdom not to comment. The bell split the air again, and Joan hurried to the door.

'Oh, do come in, Miss Harmer,' she cried, doing her best to sound welcoming. Who else but Dotty, she wondered, would call at twenty past twelve, and be clad, on a boiling hot day, in a tweed coat with a fur collar, topped by a purple velour hat, thick with dust, and decorated with a fine diamond brooch which, as Joan knew, had been in the family for generations and, amazingly enough, had not yet been lost by its present scatter-brained owner.

'Will you have a glass of sherry?' asked Joan, ushering her guest into the drawing-room.

'No, thank you, dear. I shall have a glass of rhubarb and ginger wine with my lunch. I find I get so sleepy if I mix my drinks midday.'

She looked sharply about the room.

'No cat?' said Dotty.

'No. Just Flo, the old spaniel, you know.'

'Well,' began Dotty, undoing her coat and settling herself. 'I'll tell you why I've come.'

Joan listened patiently to the saga of the kittens, half her mind on the fast-cooling lunch.

'And so it is essential that I wean the kittens, first and foremost,' she heard her visitor saying. 'Mr Fortescue says he can't possibly operate until the mother cat is
absolutely dry.
' Dotty embarked on an involved obstetrical account about nursing felines, showing a remarkable grip on the subject for a spinster, thought Joan.

Her attention wandered again, only to be riveted suddenly when she heard Dotty putting a straight question.

'So how many kittens would you like?'

'Heavens!' exclaimed Joan. 'I must think about this! I don't know that Flo would care about a kitten—'

'Be a companion for her,' said Dotty firmly. 'What about Ruth? She'd like one, wouldn't she?'

'I'll ask her,' promised Joan meekly. To her relief, Dotty rose, and began to make her way to the door.

'Well, dear, I hope that's two kittens settled. It's quite a problem. I refuse to allow them to go to any but the nicest homes.'

'Thank you,' said Joan faintly.

'They won't be ready for a month or so,' continued Dotty, now on the doorstep. Joan rallied her failing senses.

'I will ring you before the end of the week,' she promised, 'and let you know if Ruth and I can have one each.'

'And tell your friends,' shouted Dotty from the gate. 'Those that are
definite cat-lovers.
'

Joan nodded her agreement, and watched her eccentric neighbour trotting briskly homeward to her rhubarb and ginger wine.

'What was all that about?' asked Ruth, when she returned to the kitchen.

'I'll tell you later,' said Joan. 'Little pitchers, you know.'

'Have big ears,' said her son. 'It was Miss Harmer, wasn't it? Did she tell you about her kittens? Chris told me. Isn't it smashing?'

He paused, and his mother watched, with mingled amusement and dismay, the light which suddenly broke out upon his countenance.

'Did she say we can have one, mummy? Did she? Oh,
please
let's! Oh, mummy,
do
let's have one! Please, please!'

Albert Piggott, much refreshed, set out from "The Two Pheasants" to his nearby cottage. An aroma of boiling bacon wafted towards him as he approached.

Mellowed already by a pint of bitter, Albert's spirits were cheered still further by the thought of pleasures to come. Maybe Nell wasn't such a bad sort, after all!

At that moment, a clattering van appeared at the top of the steep hill from Lulling, and Albert's heart turned once more to stone.

'Oilmen!' He spat viciously into the hedge.

'Women!' He spat again.

Albert Piggott was back to normal.

5 A Problem for Winnie

A RARE spell of superb harvest weather was broken early in September by a day of violent rainstorms. Naturally enough, it was the very day on which Mrs Prior and her son moved into Tullivers.

Gusts of wind shook veils of rain across Thrush Green. Sheets of water spread across the ground which was baked hard by weeks of sunny weather. A small river gurgled down the hill to Lulling, and the avenue of chestnut trees dropped showers of raindrops and blown leaves.

Those unfortunate enough to have to brave the weather, routed out long-unused mackintoshes, umbrellas and Wellington boots, and splashed their way dejectedly across the green, sparing a sympathetic glance for the removal men, staggering from their van into Tullivers with rain-spattered furniture.

Within the little house Jeremy and his mother did their best to create order from chaos. It was no easy task, for as fast as they wheeled an armchair to its allotted place, a tea-chest would arrive to be dumped in its way.

'Where d'you want this, ma'am?' was the cry continuously, as the men appeared, far too quickly for the poor woman's comfort, with yet another bulky object.

She had thought, when packing up the belongings in Chelsea, that each tea-chest and large piece of furniture had been labelled. As in most moves, only half seemed to bear their place of destination, and soon the kitchen was beginning to become the resting place of all those boxes needing investigation.

'It's like a shop,' said Jeremy happily, surveying the scene.

'Or a lost property office,' said his mother despairingly.

At that moment, Mrs Bailey appeared.

'I'm not even going to offer to help,' she said. 'I should be quite useless. But do please both come to lunch. It's only cottage pie, but I'm sure you'll be ready for a break when the men have gone.'

She put up her umbrella again in a flurry of raindrops, waved cheerfully, and set off through the downpour.

By one o'clock the removal van had rumbled away, and Mrs Prior and Jeremy sat thankfully at the doctor's hospitable table.

'I feel as if I'd been through a washing machine,' said the girl. 'Thoroughly soaked, then tumble-dried. I'll never move again!'

'Goody-goody!' commented her son. 'I don't ever want to move away from here.'

'I certainly hope you won't,' replied Mrs Bailey, handing vegetable dishes. 'Runner beans? They're from the garden.'

'That's something I must do,' said the girl. 'I intend to grow as many vegetables as possible. There are some currant and gooseberry bushes in the garden at Tullivers, I see.'

'You may have to replace them,' said the doctor, toying with his tiny helping. 'They must be pretty ancient.'

'Do fruit bushes cost much?'

There was a note of anxiety in the girl's voice which did not escape the doctor's ear.

'More than they used, no doubt. If I were you, I should clear away all those weeds and long grass around them, fork the ground and put in plenty of bone meal. Then see if they give you a decent crop next season. If they do, well and good. If not, out with 'em!'

The girl nodded thoughtfully, acknowledging his advice. Mrs Bailey, watching her eat her cottage pie, noticed how exhausted she looked. It was understandable: the two had made an early start, and a moving day was always bone-wearying. But she seemed thinner, and there were shadows under the lovely eyes, as though she had slept poorly for many nights. Mrs Bailey's motherly heart went out to this quiet young woman in her trouble - for trouble she guessed, correctly, that she had in abundance. But this was no time to force any confidences. Perhaps, one day, the girl would feel ready to speak, and then would be the time for understanding.

At the end of the meal, the girl and her son rose to go.

'It has been simply lovely. You've really restored us both. But now we must go back and tackle the muddle.'

'Thank you for having us,' said Jeremy politely. He stood soberly eyeing the doctor's wife for a few moments, then flung his arms round her waist and gave her a tremendous hug.

'You
are
nice!' he cried. 'Like my granny!' His face was alight with happiness.

Mrs Bailey ruffled the flaxen hair, more touched than she cared to admit.

'Then I
must
be nice,' she agreed. 'Come and see me whenever you like. And put up your umbrella in the porch, or you'll be washed away before you reach home.'

She watched them splash down the path, and then caught sight of Willie Marchant, the postman, tacking erratically back and forth uphill. His black oilskins ran with water, and drops fell from the peak of his cap on to the mackintosh which covered his parcels.

He pulled in to the kerb, propped up his bicycle amidst a shower of drops, and extracted a letter from a bundle.

'One for you, Mrs Bailey,' he grunted gloomily. 'Marvellous, ain't it? Got twice as many this afternoon just because it's raining cats and dogs. That's life, ain't it?'

Mrs Bailey agreed, accepting the letter and studying it with drooping spirits.

Richard again! Now what on earth did he want?

Richard was her sister's boy, and Winnie Bailey had to confess that he was her least favourite nephew. He had always seemed mature, self-centred, and rather smug. Perhaps if he had been blessed with brothers and sisters this unchildlike quality of self-possession would have been mitigated. As it was, as an only child, Winnie Bailey found him uncannily precocious, and at times a trifle supercilious.

As he grew from babyhood to childhood, it was apparent that Richard would make his mark in the world. He was highly intelligent, hard-working, and as efficient on the games field as in the classroom. His school reports were glowing. His parents adored him, and he appeared to be popular with his school fellows. But secretly to his aunt, he was always 'that odd boy'.

To Winnie and her husband he was always punctiliously polite when he saw them. But, thought Winnie, surveying the envelope in her hand, Richard had never given her a warm-hearted hug as young Jeremy had just done!

He had obtained a First in Physics at Oxford, and spent a year or two in America collecting further honours. As he grew older, his manner had become rather more sociable, and his somewhat anaemic looks had blossomed into wiry sparseness as maturity and a passion for walking grew upon him.

He was now a man of thirty-two, engaged upon research so divorced from the ordinary scheme of things that Winnie Bailey and her husband found themselves unable to comprehend the language, let alone the aims, of Richard's studies. They saw little of him; for his travels and lecturing commitments were extensive. Doctor Bailey heard of each academic success with coolness.

'Nothing wrong with his head,' was his comment, 'but he's no heart.'

Perhaps, thought Winnie, making her way to the drawing-room and her reading glasses, that is why she had never really warmed to Richard, but she kept these feelings to herself.

The doctor slept in the afternoon, and it was almost tea-time before she could hand him Richard's letter. The rain still fell relentlessly, drumming upon the roofs of Thrush Green, and drenching the schoolchildren as they straggled from the school porch. Their cries mingled with the spatter of rain on the window panes of the quiet room, as the doctor read the letter.

'Wants something, as usual,' he commented drily. Winnie remembered that this had been her own first unworthy reaction.

'What do you think?'

'It's up to you, my dear. If you feel that you would like to have him here while he is engaged on this particular work at Oxford, then go ahead. But it all means more for you to do, and I'm enough of a burden, I feel.'

'I don't like to refuse him,' began Winnie doubtfully. 'And we've plenty of room,'

She wandered to the window and looked out upon the rain-lashed garden. A few leaves, torn from the lime tree, hopped bird-like about the grass in the onslaught. On the flagged path, shiny with rain, a tawny dead sycamore leaf skidded about on its bent points, like some demented crab. The garden was alive with movement, as branches tossed, flowers quivered, grass shuddered, and drops splashed from roofs and hedges.

Winnie Bailey gazed unseeingly upon its wildness, turning over this problem in her mind. Richard, after all, was her nephew, she told herself - probably rather hard up, and simply asking for a bed and the minimum of board. Perhaps, for a little while—?

'Shall I invite him for a fortnight to see how we all manage?' she asked her husband, now deep in
The Times
crossword puzzle.

'By all means, if you would like to.'

'It wouldn't be a nuisance to you?'

'Of course not, I don't suppose I shall see much of the fellow, anyway, and he was always a quiet sort of chap about the house.'

Winnie sighed, partly with relief and partly because she had a queer premonition that something unusual - something disquieting - might come from Richard's visit.

Time was to prove her right.

During the next week or so the inhabitants of Thrush Green observed their new resident with approval. They watched her tackling Tullivers' neglected garden with considerable energy. The smoke from her bonfire billowed for two days and nights without ceasing, as hedge-trimmings, dead grass, long-defunct cabbage stalks and other kitchen-garden rubbish met their end.

The flagged path was sprinkled with weed-killer, and the hinge mended on the gate which had hung slightly awry for three years, wearing a scratched arc on the flag-stone each time the gate was opened or shut.

The gate was also given a coat or two of white paint, and the front door as well. The girl's efforts were generally approved, and Jeremy too was considered an exceptionally well-brought-up little boy.

But the continued absence of Mr Prior was, of course, a cause of disappointment and considerable speculation among the newcomer's neighbours at Thrush Green. He was obliged to be abroad for a few months, went one rumour, getting orders for his firm - variously described as one dealing in French silk, Egyptian cotton, Italian leather and Burmese teak.

Others knew, for a fact, that he was a specialist in television equipment, computers, road-surfacing, bridge-building and sewage works. Betty Bell, however, had it on the highest authority (her own; that he had something to do with advertising, and went overseas to show less advanced countries the best way to sell ball-point pens, wigs, food-mixers, plastic gnomes for the garden, and other necessary adjuncts to modern living.