An Introduction to the Pink Collection (2 page)

“The butcher's boy, miss. He'll do very nicely for me.”

Ellie departed next morning in search of whatever success she might have ensnaring Bert. Rena was left alone in a draughty, echoing house, knowing that soon she would be homeless.

Reared on the virtues of thrift and industry she immediately set about searching for a situation. Although she'd told Ellie she wasn't qualified to be a teacher she tried to obtain a teaching post. She would try anything that was honest. But it was January, and no school was hiring teachers.

She placed her name on the books of a couple of agencies. One summoned her to an interview in a town so distant that she had no hope of getting there. Another offered an interview twenty miles away. She walked the distance, got caught in a rainstorm and arrived sodden and covered with mud.

On the way home she was given a lift by a local carter, who dropped her a mile from the vicarage. She trudged home, collapsed with a chill and managed to struggle to bed.

She might have died but for the baker's wife who came to see how she was managing these days, found her in bed with a raging fever, and summoned the doctor.

For the next fortnight a group of women took it in turns to care for her and feed her. In her feverish ramblings she relived moments from the past years.

It had been a gentle, loving life. She could remember, as a little girl, riding on her father's back as he crawled round the drawing room on all fours as she cried “More, more!”

Sometimes Mama had had to rescue him from the little tyrant.

“Your father's tired, my darling.”

And Papa had always said, “No, no, my dear. I like to see her happy.”

And it had been a happy life, but without excitement. She had once ventured to say so. And dear Papa had been shocked.

“A virtuous woman, my darling child, seeks her fulfilment in the quietness of home, and not – ”

How many lectures had started this way! A virtuous woman did not answer back. A virtuous woman endured the misfortunes of life in silence. A virtuous woman turned the other cheek.

“But Papa, there's this horrible girl at school who bullies me, and sometimes I want so hard to smack her.”

“A very natural reaction, my dear. But you must not yield to anger. Answer her with calm strength.”

She'd tried calm strength and the bullying had turned to mockery. But one day she had answered back, and discovered she possessed a tongue sharp enough to silence bullies. She had not told Papa, but she had suffered agonies of guilt at deceiving him.

“I'm sorry, Papa,” she whispered now.

And the baker's wife mopped her brow and murmured, “Poor soul. She's delirious.”

For years it had been like that, secretly growing into a firmer and more determined character than was suitable in a clergyman's daughter, and having to hide it from her parents, who would have been appalled.

When she was fourteen a troop of players came and set up their stage on the village green. She had been entranced. Her parents had taken her to a performance, and she had been so thrilled that she had blurted out,

“Oh I would love to be an actress one day!”

They had been devastated. That a child of theirs could even contemplate such an immoral career had reduced them to shocked despair.

Mama had wept. Papa had talked about a virtuous woman.

But because they loved her they soon persuaded themselves that she was too young to understand her own words. They had comforted and forgiven her.

But Rena had never again confided her longing for a more colourful life, even for outright adventure.

She recovered. Her nurses said goodbye and left her. She came downstairs to find the place empty and her larder filled with nourishing food. She sought them out and tried to thank them, but they all professed ignorance.

Nor would the doctor allow her to mention his bill, which he declared had been paid. For the first time Rena was realising how much the village loved her as well as her father.

It was heart-warming, but at the end of two months she still had no job. As far as possible she ate vegetables grown in her own garden, and eggs from the chicken she kept.

Daily she expected a letter to say that a new parson had been appointed, but from the bishop there was only silence. Both the village and herself had been left in limbo.

“What am I going to do?” she asked herself again and again.

Now was surely the time to embark on that adventure for which she had always yearned. But how could she arrange for that to happen? An adventure was something that came to you, and if one thing was for certain it was that no adventure was going to find her in this tiny backwater that the world had forgotten.

The village which was in an obscure part of the country was seldom visited by anyone outside. This was because the great house in the centre of it, which had been there for ten or more generations, had stood empty and neglected for ten years, since the death of the Earl, Lord Lansdale.

Rena vaguely remembered him, an old man who took no interest in the people who lived in the cottages which belonged to him. He employed very few servants in the house and regrettably few outside, so the villagers knew that they could not look to him for employment.

He had no money. The house, known as The Grange, that he had inherited on the death of the previous Earl, had merely given him a place to lay his head. It did not provide the money to keep it going.

“Nor can he sell the house or any of the lands,” Papa had confided to her, “because they are entailed. They must be passed intact to the next heir.”

“But suppose there is no next heir, Papa?”

“Then it's a bad business, and everything falls to rack and ruin.”

Sometimes he had visited The Grange, taking Rena with him. The old Earl had liked the child, and once shown her the tower which perched incongruously high up over the centre of the building.

That visit had thrilled her, but the Earl had grown giddy and had to be rescued, and she was never allowed up there again. Nor was she invited to visit the house again, which made her sad, because it was a beautiful place, and she loved it despite its dilapidation.

Her last ever visit had been made ten years earlier, when she was twelve. The old Earl had died in the night, and his funeral was held in The Grange's private chapel. Like all the other villagers, she had attended. And, like them, she had hoped that soon a new Earl would arrive, put the place in order and bring prosperity back to the neighbourhood.

But it didn't happen. The Grange, the estate, the fields, all fell into a further state of decay. And the people's despair grew deeper.

The only excitement just now was the rumour that somebody had come, or was coming, to open up The Grange. Bearing in mind what Papa had said about entails, Rena wondered if this meant a new Earl.

For a day or two the village buzzed. But then nothing happened, and the buzzing died down.

One day Rena went to her father's study, where he had written his sermons and where she could still feel his presence. As though he were still there, she found herself saying,

“What can I do, Papa? Where can I go, and who can I ask for help?”

She sighed and waited, as if she would hear her father speak and tell her what to do. Then almost as if the words had been said aloud, she found herself thinking of the cross which had been found in the wood, behind The Grange.

She had been about twelve when it had been discovered by some men working amongst the trees. Her father had been asked to inspect it, and had found something that might at one time had been a large, rather roughly made cross but which was now left with only its centre trunk.

He thought the top had somehow got broken. As it was near the stream it had perhaps been washed away. The large piece of wood was thick with mud, but when they washed it clean, they found engraved on it were some words that nobody could make out.

Her father had cleaned the wood until the words could be seen more clearly. He'd given orders for the cross to be driven back into the ground, high above the stream so that the water would not touch it again.

But they were unable to find the missing cross piece, which had made it look a little strange as it stood surrounded by the trees.

“How can you be certain it is a cross?” she remembered her mother asking, as they walked through the wood.

“You'll be as certain as I am when you see it now,” the Reverend Colwell had told her. “It's been cleaned and we can read what is engraved on it.”

It was spring and the trees were coming into blossom. Rena, holding her father's hand, had been thrilled to walk through the woods which belonged to The Grange, and had thought what a wonderful place to play hide-and-seek.

At last they saw the tall, impressive piece of wood, that her father was so convinced was a cross. When she drew nearer, she saw the writing on it, and her father had translated:

“YE WHO ASK FOR HELP WILL FIND IT WHEN YE PRAY TO ME.”

“That's what convinced me,” her father said when he read it aloud, “that it was originally a cross. I think perhaps it was placed here hundreds of years ago, when the house was being built or perhaps even before that.”

“It's certainly very interesting,” her mother had said. “I only hope the people who prayed there got what they wanted.”

“If it has lasted so long, I'm sure they did,” her father replied.

He had given his orders that the cross should stay here, and it was still in place ten years later. Now it was the only thing left to which Rena could take her troubles, hoping that if she prayed hard enough some help might come to her.

Perhaps, she thought, it might even be her father telling her to go there.

“It's really a very simple problem,” she told herself. “How to stop myself starving to death. What could be simpler than that?”

She often talked to herself in that ironic way, presenting her difficulties with a slightly wry twist. Her father was sometimes a little shocked by what he perceived as her levity. But Rena had found a sense of humour a great help in confronting the world.

She set out now to find the cross. It was spring again, a beautiful warm spring. She didn't wear her best coat, but slipped on the jacket she used in the garden.

She walked through the village until she saw the gates of The Grange, which, unusually, were standing open. So perhaps the new Earl has really arrived, she thought hopefully.

How neglected it was, she thought. It was quite obvious that no one had worked on the drive. When she moved into the fields on one side of it, they, too, had been neglected. It was depressing. But the birds were singing, the sun was shining, and sometimes she saw a rabbit or a squirrel moving through the grass ahead of her.

Just before her were the woods, with the trees in bud. And there was the stream, and beside it what she always thought of as her father's cross, looking incredibly lovely because the kingcups had come into flower at the foot of it. Golden in the sunshine flickering through the trees, they made the cross itself seem to stand out firmly because the wood was dark.

She read again the words carved on the cross which she could see quite clearly, and instinctively she began to pray. As she did so, she looked down at the kingcups, and one side of them she saw a thistle. It was green and ugly and was spoiling one side of the cross.

It seemed dark and mysterious. Then she remembered that she had a pair of gloves in the pocket of her jacket. They were thick and lined with leather.

When she put them on, she attacked the thistle, finding that she had to pull it with both hands as hard as she could before it finally came out.

And then, she saw to her astonishment that attached to the roots were several coins. She picked them up and started to rub away the mud.

Then stared, thinking she must be dreaming.

They were gold.

And there were more of them in the hole she had made in pulling out the thistle. They were ancient, maybe two hundred years old.

And solid gold.

For a moment she was dazzled. Then she took a deep breath and reminded herself sternly that these coins belonged to the owner of The Grange – whoever he was.

She remembered the open gates, the rumour that The Grange had been re-opened. Now was the moment to find out.

She removed two more of the coins under the thistle, then she put the thistle back where she had found it, pressing it into the earth, so that no passing stranger could make this discovery.

First she took the coins from it before pressing it back into the ground.

Then she stood for a moment looking up at the top of the cross.

“Perhaps you have answered my prayer,” she said.

Then she almost laughed at herself for being so optimistic.

“If the owner is a generous man he'll give me at least, one of the coins I found for him. Couldn't I just take one – to help me find some work?”

But it was impossible. She was too much her father's daughter to take anything secretly. Every coin must be handed over to its rightful owner.

At once.

Walking out of the woods she began to move through the field, then into the garden towards the great house.

*

It was a long time since Rena had been to The Grange, and she had forgotten how attractive it was.

It was about four hundred years old, a long, grey stone building, stretching to two wings, and with a tower in the centre.

The tower was an oddity. It had been added about a century after the house was first built, and was topped by small mediaeval style turrets, which clashed with almost everything else about the building. But to the people of the village it was a treasured landmark, and they would not hear a word against it.

The house even maintained its beauty despite its poor condition. Many of the diamond-paned windows were broken and the rest badly needed cleaning.

There had been no gardeners here for a long time, but the flower-beds were brilliant with colour. Even the many weeds somehow seemed part of the picture rather than to spoil it.