Brensham Village (17 page)

The Colonel came to the door to see us off. The whisky
had warmed him, and his cheeks were as ruddy as autumn leaves. ‘Thank you all,' he said. ‘Thank you every one. But mind you, I expected no less when I rang up Joe. I knew I'd have half the village down at the Summer Leasow in ten minutes. For whatever they say about Brensham, we stick together, don't we?'

‘Quite right, Colonel!' said Joe Trentfield. ‘We may be a funny lot of beggars but we hangs together!'

So off we went down Magpie Lane, Joe and Alfie, David Groves and Dai Roberts, the Mad Lord with Jane beside him striding like a goddess, Jim Hartley waddling somewhat because he'd taken unusual exercise for a sluggish man, the Rector and Sir Gerald, Billy Butcher merry with sloe gin and reciting of all things ‘Sohrab and Rustum' because the flooded river had reminded him of the Oxus, Sammy Hunt who'd tell in the years to come an unending tale of tonight's doings, some Fitchers and Gormleys walking in strict segregation, Mr Chorlton and I. And Mr Chorlton said: ‘As Joe remarks, we're a curious lot of so-and-sos; but something binds us together, and although I've tried hard to find a definition for it, I'm blowed if I am able to put into words exactly what it is.
Can you
tell me?'

I shook my head.

‘Sometimes,' said Mr Chorlton, ‘I am inclined to think that it may be something very old and simple. I think it may be something to do with the Second Commandment.'

The Precocious Season - Whan that Aprille - The Halfway People - The Home Orchard - Shomes Sote - Satyr and Nymph - The Weathercock Turns North - The Reckoning - The Aftermath - The Vultures Wait

Next Year the spring came so early that not even the longest memory could match its February celandines and Lady-day cowslips. It came not shyly, as springs are wont to do upon Brensham Hill, with a modest snowdrop in the larch plantation, a self-effacing violet under the hedge; but in triumph and sudden splendour ‘with bows bent and with emptying of quivers', with banners and trumpets, with an army of crocuses and a fanfare of daffodils.

Even in February, when Alfie was spraying his plum trees, there were blue days that rightly belonged to late March. The rooks flew clamorous to their nests in the wine-red elms, and Mr Mountjoy's bees emerged from their hives in thousands and were rewarded for this act of faith by the golden pollen upon the pussy-willows by the river.

Alfie finished spraying, and began to plough between his lines of plum trees. He didn't plant anything there, but performed the cultivation as a free gift to his orchards;
otherwise the rank-growing grass and weeds would suck the richness from the soil and starve the hungry trees. Very few of our fruit-growers took the trouble to do this; but Mr Chorlton pointed out that it was a very ancient cultivation, and when we asked him what he knew about agriculture, he told us with a smile: ‘It is recommended in the Georgics, Book II.'
*

March, robbed by February, stole in turn some sunshine, some flowers, and even some thrushes' nests from April; and so week by week the prodigal business went on of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and the old men complained that the seasons were out of joint and prophesied that Time would bring its revenges. By April Fools' Day the weeds stood high in the ditches, hedge-parsley made a pattern like old lace, and on the banks with celandines and violets the stitchwort unfolded its petals which were like new-laundered linen. There were white butterflies fluttering everywhere, Mr Chorlton had seen the first orange-tips and holly blues, and in Mr Mountjoy's rectory garden a precocious blackbird had already hatched her young.

And of course, by April Fools' Day, the plum blossom was fully out in all the orchards along the vale; for every sprouting and blossoming thing was three weeks ahead of its normal season. Easter, as well as the spring, was early that year; and like an Easter bride Brensham was dressed in white.

It happened that I had been away from Elmbury and hadn't visited Brensham for several months. Certain things
had occurred to me which are of no importance to this tale: I had left my uncle's office in Elmbury and apprenticed myself to a different trade, that of writing books. So I was now free to live and work wherever I liked, and I had spent most of the winter in London. With all the greater delight, therefore, I saw Brensham in blossom when I walked over its hill upon that first day of April.

I went up as far as the Folly and visited the ancient eremite who had put on his straw hat with the I. Zingari band in honour of the blue skies. He told me that in all his years he had never seen so much blossom; and when I looked down from the Folly roof I felt sure he must be right, for the whole of the vale and the lower slopes of the hill were buried beneath a vast snowdrift of petals. As a rule the effect, as you look down upon the flowering vale, is that of a lace curtain stretched loosely over it; for the plum blossoms are very small and even though they be multitudinous the leafless sepia twigs still show among them. However, in this season of unparalleled prodigality I had the impression not of a lace curtain but of foam and lather, of curds overflowing from a dish of cream. ‘Not once in fifty years,' said the Hermit, ‘have I gazed upon such a sight;' and in his eye there was a look of pride and of possession: ‘Mine, all mine!'

Later in the day I went down into the village and met Alfie, who took me into his orchards to see the flower-laden boughs. He, too, said that he'd never seen anything like it. If one blossom in twenty bore a plum, the branches would break under the burden. We stood in the sunshine beneath the myriad boughs in which the bees already were fertilizing the flowers, and Alfie said:

‘There's probably nothing in it, but they say you get a good season every four years. Last year ‘twas middling, the previous year ‘twas very middling, and the year before that
the plum-picking was like hunting for needles in haystacks. If we got a good crop this summer it'd square up a bit, and there'd be fewer of us getting nasty letters from the bank.'

‘Well, this seems like fourth time lucky,' I said, glancing up at the boughs which looked as if they were draped in white chiffon.

‘Seems like? Maybe. But ‘tis too early for my liking,' said Alfie with a shrug. ‘If it froze smartish tonight, we mightn't have so much as a bud left tomorrow. And there's six weeks to go yet before we're safe. I've known hailstorms and black frosses even in May.'

He walked with me to the gate. I said:

‘It must be an anxious time, while you're waiting.'

He pointed to a small wet-and-dry thermometer which hung on the gatepost.

‘It gives you the jim-jams,' he said. ‘Every night at six o'clock I takes a look at that hygrometer. ‘Tis a better indication to my mind than the barometer or the wireless. If it looks good I thank the Lord. If it looks tricky I prays.'

But tonight the two columns of mercury stood nearly level, and the temperature was fifty-one. There was a warm wet breeze from the south-west.

‘All right for twenty-four hours,' said Alfie, and grinned.

As I walked down the village street, where even in the cottage gardens were blossoming trees, two or three in a back-yard, two score in a little paddock, so that their whiteness spilled between the brown thatch, and the very village became an orchard, it occurred to me how precarious was the condition of the people of Brensham, whose little fortunes were bound to these frail and transient petals. To
Alfie and his kind a black frost might mean a loss of four or five hundred pounds; but to Jim Hartley with his single orchard adjoining the Adam and Eve the loss of one hundred would be severe in proportion, whereas to Mrs Doan, who had a dozen trees behind her shop, or to David Groves the ganger, whose small garden contained only four, a bad season might mean the foregoing of luxuries, the postponement of a holiday, or even the spending of precious savings. Impartial as death were the cold fingers of the frost when they groped their way through the village and along the vale; and from rich and poor alike they took all.

I thought: perhaps after all the people of Brensham are different from other folk; for they experience each year this brief and terrible loveliness, which makes them poets, and yet know each year this sense of terrible transience, which makes them philosophers. They are a halfway people, I thought; they dwell halfway between the hill and the river, holding allegiance to both, and halfway between beauty and ugliness, looking out alternately upon slummy sproutfields and exquisite blossom. And for the whole of their short season of breath-taking beauty, they are poised halfway between triumph and disaster while the weather spins its age-old wheel, and the cold croupier Frost stands by in readiness to sweep the stakes towards him.

But tonight, while the wheel still spun, the soft southerly breeze held steady, and brought with it a few warm raindrops and a few spent petals from early trees already overblown. All was well so far; and Brensham held its breath.

April passed like a cheerful debtor, spendthrift of its days borrowed from May. By day the sun shone and the sap rose
in the trees; Mr Mountjoy's four million bees were kept busy all day vicariously consummating a myriad marriages between flower and flower; by night showers as soft as the bees' kiss refreshed the blossoms, and winds as light as a sigh bore away the unwanted petals when the fruit began to form.

Mr Chorlton brewed his treacly intoxicant and began his nocturnal mothing earlier in the season than ever before. Sammy Hunt painted his boats in anticipation of Whitsun visitors. Mrs Hartley spring-cleaned the Adam and Eve in case any obstinate motes had withstood her twice-daily dustings. Sir Gerald planted out - rare titbits for the slugs! - some valuable Alpines he had obtained from Tibet. Only too aware of the sword over its head, Brensham nevertheless rejoiced in the sunshine and busied itself with the duties and pleasures of the spring.

Jane Orris, her adventurous spirit made more restless by the season, brought an aeroplane to Brensham; the same benevolent aunt, no doubt, who paid her fees at Oxford had provided the money it cost her to learn to fly. The Moth, which she landed rather dangerously in the long flat field below the Manor, was painted bright red and shining silver and it looked like a giant toy. Almost every morning Jane took off over the crooked chimneys of the House Narrow and performed her tyro loops over the church spire and brought the villagers into the street when she dived upon the Adam and Eve.

Once or twice I met her, in the pubs or walking on the hill. She was lovelier than ever; she wore the spring like a new frock and in her eyes was that mystical and transcendent look which belongs to those who discover for the first time the bright-shining regions above the clouds.

I asked her: ‘Jane, how did you get it? Did your aunt buy it for your twenty-first birthday present?'

She laughed and shook her head.

‘Hire purchase,' she said. ‘I managed to borrow just enough for the first three payments. You see, I look upon it as a sort of investment.'

‘An investment?' There was a terrible lot of old Orris in Jane.

‘Yes. I thought I'd fly it to America or Australia or somewhere and restore the family fortunes,' she said airily.

‘Like Amy Johnson?'

‘Yes. Only I suppose I'll have to go farther or faster or something. At present I'm only practising cross-countries. I can't even do a proper slow-roll.'

‘You needn't do slow-rolls all the way to Australia.'

‘I suppose not. I always think I'm going to fall out. But listen,' she said, suddenly serious. ‘The family fortunes will have to be restored, and pretty quick too. As you know, Father borrowed money from the Syndicate, on a mortgage, and then he borrowed some more, and if he can't pay the interest in the autumn, I think they'll pounce. The fruit might just save us.'

‘That big orchard at the bottom of the drive?'

‘Yes, the Home Orchard. Come and see it!' she begged. ‘The trees are old, and half of them are falling down, but I've never seen such blossom. I'll show you a chaffinch nest on an apple bough if you'll come.'

She led me down the hill by the same rough scrambling way she had shown us when she was a small girl. I said:' Jane, do you remember how you took us down into the vault to see your crusader in his urn? Is he still there? - for I had heard tales of a winter flood which had filled the vault with four feet of water and even burst open the coffins, so that when it subsided the bones and skulls of previous lords and ladies Orris littered the muddy floor in sacrilegious and incestuous confusion. Jane laughed. ‘Yes, I rescued Robert;
though he was very nearly drowned. And we got Mr Mountjoy to bury the others in the churchyard, though I'm afraid we muddled them up a bit, putting them back in their boxes.'

‘What did you do with your crusader?' I asked.

‘I keep him in my bedroom! It sounds gruesome, but his urn is so lovely, you know. Thou still-unravished bride of Quietness, and of course one doesn't look inside.'

As we came down into the Park I noticed that the spire of the private chapel had fallen through the roof. There was ruin everywhere, the wind blew through gaping holes in stable and shedding, and at least another dozen of the Manor's top-storey windows were patched with brown paper so that the house looked more than ever like a blinded Argus.

‘Isn't it awful?' said Jane. ‘But never mind: when I make my Record Flight and win a lot of money we'll patch it up!'

I thought they'd have to be quick about it, or the whole house would fall down. We picked our way through the boggy kitchen-garden, which grew little for the kitchen and was a garden only in name. Today it was ablaze with marsh-marigolds growing where the cabbages should have been. Four rabbits jumped up under our feet and ran away through a hole in the tangled wire-netting. Jane remarked with a sort of sorrowful pride: