The Flowering Thorn (7 page)

“Now that,” said the young man proudly, “is what I call completely furnished.”

Lesley looked at him in silence. He was thick, red, raw and bounding; but the mere fact of his being there—of his being actually in conversation with her—lent him a transitory interest. ‘So this is what it's going to be like,' she thought: ‘talking to people like this about outdoor sanitation.' And aloud, as though to practise, she said severely,

“As I should probably be here so long, do you think Sir Philip would add on a bathroom?”

“Long?” said the young man, startled. “They told me about four or five years. Isn't that what you were thinking of?”

“Even one year,” explained Lesley patiently, “is long to go without a bath. Ask him about it, please, and let me know.”

With a face of extreme doubt the young man took out his pocket-book and made a note in it. He wrote like a policeman, every faculty in play: and while he laboured Lesley walked back to the barn. By clearing it of lumber—and it at present seemed to contain almost as much furniture as the cottage itself—one would treble the floor-space and have somewhere to give parties. That was important. The rest of the place, of course, would hardly bear thinking of: it was hideously ugly and hopelessly inconvenient. With a shrug of her shoulders Lesley stepped outside again and took it on the spot.

2

By an unfortunate coincidence, the day Lesley went down to the cottage was also the day of Mrs. Carnegie's luncheon, the Magyar Count's cocktail-party, and a reception for a Czech pianist, to each of which entertainments Elissa had accepted an invitation. She had accepted, she would go: but she had also, with characteristic generosity, promised Lesley the use of Hugo Dove's car, and without making the trip in person it would be almost impossible to preserve the distinction between Hugo's lending his Minerva and Elissa lending Hugo's car.

“So you see, darling,” she told Lesley over the 'phone, “we won't be able to pick you up till about six. But Hugo says we can do it in three-quarters of an hour, and my dinner isn't till eight-thirty. You will be ready, won't you?”

Lesley frowned. It was then nearly half-past twelve, and she had been ready packed since ten.

“Couldn't Hugo run us down this afternoon? Leaving here at six means getting there practically in the dark,” she said.

“Darling, I'm sure he would, only I've got a hairwave at three-thirty, and then there's the cocktail-party.…”

“Darling, if it's the least bit inconvenient to you, why not let us go down by ourselves?” suggested Lesley. “You're being most terribly sweet about it, but I'm sure we're upsetting your day.”

All down the line emotion quivered.

“Let you go alone to a desolate cottage!” cried Elissa indignantly. “I wouldn't think of it! We'll be there at six sharp, darling, and mind you're ready.”

Lesley hung up the receiver and made no attempt to feel grateful. Her trunks were strapped. She had tipped Mrs. Lee; a basket of provisions stood ready to hand. Her only special preparations—the opening of an account with Fortnum and Mason, and of a double subscription with Mudies—had occupied exactly half-an-hour on the previous afternoon. And the most trying part of all, the final and bitterest drop, was that at both the luncheon and the cocktail-party she herself might also have been present. Both Mrs. Carnegie and the Count had pressingly invited her: and she had refused, rather spectacularly, with an amusing reference to love in a cottage.…

“Damn,” said Lesley; and ringing for Mrs. Lee (she had been very well tipped indeed) ordered lunch at home.

The period of waiting, however, was unexpectedly diversified, if not exactly shortened, by the arrival of a visitor. Shortly before three there was a knock at the door, a step in the hall: it was Mrs. Bassington in person, come all the way from Cheam to advance her crucial argument.

“But, my dear Lesley, supposing you ever want to marry? You can't have considered the extreme awkwardness—the impossibility—of such a situation.
No
man would stand for it.”

Lesley raised her eyebrows.

“My dear Aunt! I thought we'd gone into that once and for all about seven years ago?”

It was quite true. Like many another wise virgin of her generation, she had early advertised a disinclination for marriage. The dangers of such a line, however, being only too obvious, she had chosen her attitude with particular care: there was nothing aggressive, nothing embittered about it: far from liking no one man well enough, it was the commonly accepted interpretation that Lesley Frewen liked too many men too well. But the root principle was there nevertheless, and properly understood should have saved Mrs. Bassington a good deal of anxiety.…

Not unpricked by annoyance, Lesley got up and looked out of the window: Aunt Alice's remarks were probably everything that a young girl should have heard in 1860, but their application to herself showed a certain lack of faith.

“I'm expecting a car,” she explained untruthfully, “to run us down to the cottage. Do stay and see it, Aunt Alice, it's the second longest in London.”

Mrs. Bassington rose. She did it rather effectively, ruffling out her feathers like a turkey in a story-book: and her voice too was like a turkey's—not quite so dignified as the rest of the picture.

“If it wasn't for your poor dead mother,” she said, “I should never speak to you again. But I'm your only living relative, my dear, and I know my duty if you don't.”

“I'm sure you do,” agreed Lesley politely. “You'd like me to continue to come to you, I suppose, whenever I'm in trouble?”

The feathers quivered.

“I
was
going to say, my dear, that as soon as you come to your senses again I shall be perfectly willing to see you at Cheam. But that,” said Aunt Alice finishing bitingly, “is perhaps looking too far ahead.”

When she had gone Lesley went upstairs, turned on a hot bath, and lay there for an hour. The perfection of the appointments, however, started a series of unfortunate comparisons, and the treatment soothed her less than usually. She then had her tea, and immediately afterwards assembled Pat, the luggage and the basket of provisions, and placed them all in readiness in a room off the hall. The result was a modern
genre
picture—The Last Day in the New Home—of considerable authenticity: only two boxes, and only one child. Lesley looked at him curiously: on being told that he was now to live in the country he had displayed no more emotion than on being told that he was now to go for a walk: on the actual point of departure, he was displaying even less. Well, it was a comfort in a way; and settling herself in the window Lesley took up and opened the first of her Mudie's books.

It was fortunately quite interesting, for the car was a good deal late.

It arrived, in fact, at exactly twenty-five past seven, when Pat had just been given his supper; but as Elissa was naturally in haste to be off, Lesley sent it away again and bundled him into his coat. The injustice, however, scarcely saved time, for he at once went into the lavatory and remained there interminably. Mrs. Lee had given him a banana, and he was eating it to make sure.

“Darling, if you call that house-trained, I don't,” said Elissa crossly. She was worried about her hair, which had not set as well as usual, and also about the Czech pianist, whom she had met in New York and who she feared might have forgotten her. Once on the road, however, her humour improved; she made no objection to stopping for a drink; and all the way down, with her head screwed down and her chin on Hugo's shoulder, she gave Lesley advice.

“The one thing that's really important, darling, is not to know
any
one. Then you can do just as you like and shock the whole village. We'll all come down and help. And be specially careful about the Vicar, darling, and that new kind of rat—the one that was imported and then began to burrow. Don't you feel excited, darling, starting on your new life?”

“Terrifically,” said Lesley.

As well as she could in her rather coquettish position, Elissa suddenly looked intense.

“It's like a new incarnation,” she pointed out. “A new incarnation, going—” The car swerved violently, and also gave her an instant to think. The country and hard labour—was that up and up, or down and down? She compromised. “— Round and round. You'll probably change enormously, one way or the other. Only do be careful of your figure, because that's always where the country tells first. Exercises, darling—do
lots
of exercises on a wooden floor.…”

In the back of the car, however, her friend repaid her with little attention. Lesley disliked inefficiency, and she disliked being made to wait: they had stopped twice already for a drink, and the daylight was steadily waning. She said,

“What time is your party, Elissa?”

The word, as always, produced an instant reaction: from Wendover onwards the hedges began to flash. The cars they overtook stood still, the cars they met exceeded the speed limit. Every few minutes Pat bumped over sideways and hit himself on the basket. He was three parts asleep and so fairly well armoured; but with every fresh collision Lesley half expected tears. He did not habitually weep, but nor for that matter did she; and it was from her own sensations, as they at last turned up the lane, that she gathered the clue to his.

“Here you are, darling! How delicious it looks!” cried Elissa gaily. Out went the suitcases, out went Pat, out went the basket of food. “And now for God's sake get a move on, Hugo, or I shan't have time to dress.”

3

For a minute or two longer Lesley stood just as they had left her, motionless among the packages, young Patrick pressed close to the folds of her coat. The air felt fresh, and colder than the air of London: it was so quiet that she could quite easily follow the first mile or two of the Minerva's progress.

When the last throb had died away, leaving all still again, she took out the big key and pushed it into the lock.

“I don't like this place,” said Patrick suddenly.

From the sound of his voice she knew the tears to be near: but no impulse to console awoke in her, only a faint shiver of revulsion. A crying child, a dark house.…

“I don't like it either,” said Lesley.

The door gave under her hand, they were over the threshold. From a blackness deeper than the night's, and far colder, the dim proportions of walls and furniture gradually emerged. (Where was the electric light switch? To the left or to the right?) What with fatigue, darkness and excitement, Pat's tears, the only sound in that unnatural silence, were rapidly overwhelming him.

“Be quiet, Pat,” said Lesley coldly. A deep and secret antagonism hardened her voice and her heart. To the pressure of his body against her side she deliberately denied response.

And now the light leapt out under her fingers, so that they were suddenly standing in a strange room. It was hideous, neat and dusty, and the clock did not go.

Part II

CHAPTER ONE

About four centuries before the invention of cottage architecture, someone built the White Cottage. That there were ever any ground-plans is extremely doubtful: rather is it to be supposed that one day in the late sixteen hundreds a man and a boy went with spades, paced their distances, and began to dig without further deliberation. They dug well: like oak-trees the outer walls took surface-level at scarcely less than their middles. But it also seems probable that the boy paced the south side and the man the north, for the rectangle they drew was not a true one; all the floors ran together a little, and no corner was absolutely square. By the great brick chimney, of course, they cannot be judged: it bears unmistakable signs of rebuilding, and indeed could scarcely have smoked so badly for three centuries without someone laying a hand to it. The barn, too, dated from a good deal later, wood-built throughout and beamed with quartered tree-trunks: men had worked on the place from generation to generation, until when Lesley Frewen took it the amenities included an outside lavatory and a substantial tool-house. But none of the builders, one felt, had been professionals; they were all just men who could build a bit, and with an amateur's self-distrust they had each of them made sure and built solid. From without at least the effect was not unpleasing: the cottage squatted down like a hare in its forme, close-pressed against the earth and friendly to the apple-trees.

Once over the threshold, one might have been in Brixton.

“
Brixton
, darling?” echoed Elissa, making her first call over the new telephone.

“But
exactly
, darling,” Lesley assured her. “The wallpapers have chrysanthemums on them.” With a conscious effort she flicked her voice to irony. “And there's a lot of stuff I think must be rep—it's got bobbles all round the edge.”

“Darling! How terribly funny! Is there an aspidistra?” asked Elissa greedily.

Lesley glanced over her shoulder.

“No, but there's a coloured picture of two cats sitting under an umbrella. And a china mug—this is perfectly true, darling—with ‘A Present from Margate' on it.”

“My dear, you mustn't alter a
thing
,” said Elissa, audibly impressed.

“I'm not going to. It's only temporary, thank God. When are you coming down to the house-party?”

“Darling, but the minute you invite me! Only not perhaps this week or next, because I've rather a lot on.… And then of course it's June, which is always hopeless. But I'll see you soon, darling.…”

Lesley hung up the receiver and went to the window. Outside in the orchard a couple of Walpole pigs were grunting round the apple-trees, but the technique of chasing them away was utterly beyond her. Patrick was out there too, thumping up and down with a bean-pole between his knees: she looked at him with an intensity of dislike so nearly bordering on hatred that her own features, could she have seen them at that moment, would have seemed completely strange to her. And even without seeing, it was as though she guessed: for in all their enforced companionship she never once spoke to him without consciously masking her face. It was a hatred to be ashamed of, ignoble and unjust: but she did not love him the more for making her ashamed.