The Elderbrook Brothers (33 page)

‘She'll be easily tired at first, Mr Elderbrook,' said the nurse, hovering protectively. ‘You mustn't mind that. It's not long since she learned to walk again. Is it, Mrs Elderbrook?'

By taking things easily and carefully they reached the ground floor without mishap. Ann was supported by her rising spirits, but they were themselves treacherously uncertain, apt for sudden desertion. Bodily weak, she was also weary with the excitement of looking forward to this day. In the entrance hall they were met by a lean, arrow-straight, elderly woman just emerging from her office to say goodbye. At her appearance the nurse, with a demure farewell, discreetly vanished. The matron was frostily gracious. It was always a satisfaction to her when a patient was discharged from the hospital alive: so many were not. She was a humane woman but a tired one, and her cast-iron theory of discipline had made it difficult for her to seem kind even when she felt so.

At last-—for it seemed a long time since five minutes ago when he had called to a passing boy to mind the pony for him—Matthew and Ann found themselves out in the road, enjoying the late October sunshine. A mercy there is any, thought Matthew as he half lifted her into the trap: so easily might not have been at this time of year.

‘All right, boy. Let her go.'

He handed the child a shilling and not waiting to witness the gratified astonishment it created spoke a quick quiet word to the pony, and they were off. He reckoned an hour and a half should see them back home. He had often enough done the journey in much less time than that, but he judged that Ann would prefer a gentler progress.

There was much to be said on the way, and much to be
enjoyed unsaid. Having lost his fears for Ann's safety, being confident in her possession, he was now at peace about her. His thoughts were not those of a lover: they reflected a less excited feeling, deep-rooted in habit, a sense of home to which each of the days and years of their being together had silently contributed. He already had all his wish, being at peace in that part of his mind where her forlornness, in a series of poignant pictures, had found its reflection.

‘What we want now,' said Matthew, ‘is a real good downpour.'

‘You've got your winter oats in, then?'

‘Yes, and wheat too. Funny. I can remember the time when we grazed sheep on Oxenleas. The old man would be surprised to see it in corn. A nice steady drenching of small rain, that's what we could do with. Three or four days and nights of it.'

‘I think we shall have it too,' said Ann contentedly.

‘Too late for the roots anyhow,' remarked Matthew. ‘They're past praying for. Yes,' he said, ‘we shall be short of cattle-feed all right. Have to make up with cake. But it's not the same, mind you: they don't do so well on cake, not to my way of thinking, though there's some that swear by it. Let alone the expense. Buttercup's had her calf all right, day before yesterday: did I tell you?'

‘No. What a good job! You didn't tell me.'

‘Good strong calf. Heifer. Dick Edgcombe is for calling her Daisy because she's got a white patch on her forehead.'

‘I do want to see her,' said Ann. It was true, but chiefly because seeing the new calf was part of the homecoming.

‘What's to stop you?' said Matthew. ‘I've told her you're coming,' he added with a grin. ‘Were they nice to you in the hospital, Ann?'

‘Most of them were,' she answered soberly. ‘My little dark nurse was a diamond to me.'

‘I've often wondered,' he said. ‘It was difficult talking
when I came to see you. Never knew who might be listening. Or so I felt anyhow.'

For the next few miles Ann talked of what had been happening to her. She had been shut away from the world, with many thoughts and no one to share them with, and now, gradually, her tongue was unloosed.

There followed a long, easy silence. Then she said, with a sidelong glance:

‘You're rather thin, Matt. Has Hilda been looking after you properly?'

The name of Hilda gave him a momentary start: he had forgotten her.

‘You bet he has,' she said heartily. ‘She's a good girl, Hilda is.'

He spoke his spontaneous thought, but the words, echoing in memory, gave him a moment's pause. In all the circumstances it seemed an odd remark to make. If Ann could know everything, what a mockery of truth it would seem to her! But ‘everything' was past. The past was done with. And Ann could never be hurt by what she would never know.

‘A sprinkle of rain we did have, last week,' said Matthew. ‘But ‘twas hardly enough to notice.'

NEXT day the weather broke. Signs of the impending change had not been wanting, but people in these parts had waited so long, been disappointed so often, that they hardly dared to draw the obvious conclusion from the look of the sky, the small wind springing up, the faint delicious smell in the air. In their resolve not to be fooled they almost persuaded themselves that they were inventing these things, that the hint of change was in their fancy, not in their nostrils, and that the promise in the sky admitted of some other interpretation, though in their weatherwise hearts they knew better. Even those who, rashly
in the general opinion, went so far as to remark that it ‘looked like rain' crossed their fingers as they spoke, or touched wood to propitiate the jealous fates, and were quick to add that it likely wouldn't come to much. These countryfolk, both gentle and simple, met Sunday by Sunday to sing ancient and alien psalms, to hear ‘lessons' read from which little or nothing to the point could be learned, to enjoy in their hearts a sense of community and common worship, and to draw a deep obscure comfort from the sonorities of sixteenth-century prose. But the gods they instinctively feared were older than Christianity, older even than the Old Testament. They were gods for ever on the watch, ready to take offence, ready to punish presumption and cheat expectation. You had only to let them hear you say that the child would soon be well again, that the rain was coming; and promptly the child would die on your hands, the rain-clouds drift continently across the wide sky to let fall their blessing on a less impious region. Such was the inarticulate conviction of at any rate the older folk. But in this particular last week of October it is to be presumed that the gods were heedless of those rash whispers, or that the rites of propitiation were punctually observed. For in fact the rain came, and came abundantly.

Matthew was in the field called Robertswood when, at about four o'clock in the afternoon, the first drops fell. Only a few ancient trees remained in what had been, once upon a time, a densely wooded region; and Matthew, lingering in their shade, was suddenly aware of a new sound and commotion among the leaves overhead, a quick new rhythm, a rustling as of paper. This music persisted for a minute or two, while he waited hopefully, pretending not to know what it meant. Then came a pause, the gust dying away, and then, above him, the abrupt long-expected slap, raindrop on leaf. Then another and another. Already the air was colder: the season seemed to have changed in a moment. A large drop splashed upon Matthew's welcoming hand. He laughed aloud, softly, exultantly. It had come at last! Looking westward he saw the massed rods
of rain slanting down to the horizon, saw the shadow spreading towards him, and knew those drops for the first comers of an invading host. He opened his mouth, greedy to draw in the fresh earth-smelling air and fill his body with it. Its clean savour was delicious and exciting. And now, in huge deliberate drops, the rain continued, multiplied, gathered speed, and gradually, yet with quickening tempo, divided and subdivided itself into smaller units, though even so it came down in sheets. Trees, waking from their dry trance, began to toss and shiver, as with delight. The very grass of the field seemed to come alive again, to grow suddenly green under the assault. Cows and sheep lifted their faces to receive it, with no thought yet of taking cover. Faster and faster came the slanted rain, hurrying out of the west, striping the sky, filling the world with an intoxicating fragrance. The noise of it among the leaves was a joke and a joy, the taste of it a refreshment to body and spirit.

Matthew stood a long while, watching and listening. Presently he saw that the cattle, on second thoughts, had moved into the brief shelter of the hedge. In the same moment he became aware of his own condition. On shoulders and legs his clothes were very wet, in spite of the tree's protection, and suddenly the wetness reached his skin and he knew himself to be wet through. It was a long time since he had been that. He felt lighthearted and merry, and wanted to tell someone about it.

He made his way back to the house in stages, taking shelter where he could, for the rain showed no sign of relenting. In his last port of call he found Walter Patchett and Dick Edgcombe sheltering under the lee of a haystack, between stack and hedge. They greeted him with broad grins, glad to share the enormous joke: that it was raining, raining good and proper, and didn't look like giving over for a long time.

‘I mind we had just such another year as this in ninety-eight,' Patchett said, producing a small blackened clay pipe from one waistcoat pocket and a quid of shag from another. ‘A long
dry we had, weeks together, and then a great comedown. You was a baby then, I reckon, young Dick?'

‘And didn't weigh much either,' Dick answered dryly, unsmiling. ‘For I wasn't born till December.'

‘Floods and all we had,' said Walter complacently. He teased some tobacco into the palm of his left hand, the thumb of which was crookt dexterously round the neck of the pipe. ‘Two hundred yards of the Coxeter road was under water, if you please. Me, I went along there in high waders to see what had become of Nelly Shelton, her that lived in the Marshes' cottage, as it was to be. We reckoned her was bedridden, pretty much. Had her bedroom in the parlour, as the saying goes, and hadn't been upstairs many a long year. By her own will and choice it was, because being a large body she reckoned they'd never get her coffin round the stair-bend, poor soul; And I've no mind, she says, to spend my eternal joy on the stairs, says she, when I might be lying snug in the churchyard, she says, with good neighbours all round me.'

With an air of having finished his story, Walter struck a match, cupped the flame in his two hands, and began drawing vigorously at his pipe.

‘You'll be setting the stack on fire with that furnace of yours,' said Matthew, bantering.

‘Not in this weather, I won't, master,' returned Walter, between puffs. ‘Not in this type of weather I won't,' he repeated with a chuckle.

‘He's a dangerous old man, is Walter,' Dick said severely. ‘And did you find the poor woman drowned then, Walter?'

‘You may well ask,' said Walter Patchett, with relish. ‘For indeed she'd every right to be drowned, the way it was. There was no opening the door, up to my thigh-bones in water. And the window was that foul you couldn't see no more than a blink of what was inside. So I broke un in.'

‘That would be unlawful entry,' said Dick, with a grave look. ‘Wouldn't you say so, Mr Elderbrook?'

‘And there she was,' said Walter, with rising excitement,
‘there she was, if you please, no more drownden than you nor me. She was sat on her own kitchen table, two inches you might say above water level, with pretty nigh half a score chicken huddled and squawking in her big lap.'

‘Well I never!' exclaimed Dick appreciatively. ‘And her bedridden too!'

‘Ah,' said Walter, ‘there's nothing like a sprinkle of water to get folks out of their beds. Not but what there
was
creatures drownden, young Dick. There was that. Your own father, Muster Elderbrook, lost a sucking pig or two. And there was old Harry Good, that missed his footing and fell, going home with a couple o' quart of small ale in him. And a didn't get up no more, believe me.'

‘I was only a lad then,' said Matthew. ‘But I remember something about it.'

‘Yes indeed, yes indeed,' said Walter with mournful pride. ‘There was some very pretty havoc in ninety-eight.'

‘Cheer up, Walter!' said Matthew. ‘We may all be drowned yet, you never know.'

‘Best get milking done first,' Dick suggested, making a move.

Matthew decided to go with him. There was too much milking for one pair of hands. Moreover the cows had first to be fetched in, rain or no rain: which would have meant a visit to the house to get waterproofs, but that Dick, a piece of sacking draped across his shoulders, insisted on braving the weather as he was.

‘Can't be much wetter,' he said.

‘Nor can I, come to that,' said Matthew.

But he was getting on for twenty years older than Dick, he ruefully reflected, and he was beginning to shiver in his wet clothes after standing about so long. So to the house he went, to change into something dry before joining Dick in the milking shed. It gave him a chance, too, of looking in on Ann. She had scarcely moved from her chair all day; yet she looked tired, he thought, as well as happy. She looked tired when she thought herself unobserved, but Matthew was too quick for
her. He gave her a questioning, accusing glance. She smiled reassurance. ‘I'm all right, Matt. I'm having a nice rest.' He could not doubt that she was glad to be home. And strength would return to her, he told himself, in its own good time.

On his way to the cowshed he looked into the dairy, where Hilda was.

‘She looks a bit tired, Mrs Elderbrook does, don't you think?' he said.

‘So she will be, for a bit,' said Hilda sensibly. ‘Lovely rain, isn't it!' She glanced appreciatively at the streaming window pane. ‘Did you get wet?'

‘Drenched. Nice bundle in the kitchen for you to dry. Don't like to see her looking so tired.'

‘She won't be long now,' said Hilda. ‘Getting well, I mean. Takes time though.'

‘I suppose so,' Matthew agreed.

Without intention his fingers touched her bare forearm. She drew quickly away as though she had been stung. ‘What's the matter?' he said, surprised. She did not answer. There was a dark cloud in her face. ‘What's wrong, Hilda?'