Laura accepted. She did not play tennis very well, but the Endbury tennis was not of a very high standard; she had only once met a good player there, and he having been so ill-bred as to complain of the softness of the balls had not been asked again.
Hearing that there were other difficult young people in the world, even in the restricted world of Bramton Wick, seemed to console Lady Masters. She began to talk to Mrs. Cole about the garden, praising it in quite a liberal way; she even asked to see it, and accompanied her hostess to the very edge of the boggy bit, where she stood for some time with her eyes screwed up visualizing the changes which were to be made next winter.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Worthy confided to Laura that Jocelyn was anxious to meet her and her sister. She had found this out only that morning, when Jocelyn had expressed an unusual solicitude for her safety and had offered to come and fetch her home from Woodside in the car.
“So I said to him, Don’t be silly, Jocelyn, it’s only just down the road, hardly a walk at all—and then I realized that he wanted to come.”
“And is he coming?” Laura tried to express polite interest, but she felt inwardly that he sounded rather dull and she was glad to hear that Mrs. Worthy had said, No, Jocelyn, it would simply be a waste of petrol.
“But I wonder if you would be very kind, you or your sister, but I somehow feel that you would be best—of course, I’m sure he would be delighted to take you both, but then he can hardly take two partners, can he? The trouble is, I have only one ticket at present,” said Mrs. Worthy obscurely, “but I’m sure I can get another. Why, of course, how silly of me, I can get one from you. It was you, wasn’t it, who brought the tickets round? Curtis meant to buy two, but I’m afraid in the end, by some mistake, he only got one.”
Laura said gravely that it was kind of Major Worthy to have bought a ticket at all, for he had told her that he did not care for dancing.
“Oh, but we shan’t be going,” said Mrs. Worthy. “Our dancing days are over. No, no, he bought it for Jocelyn, but as I said to him, poor Jocelyn can’t dance by himself, and after all, it’s his birthday next month and this dance will do as a little celebration, if only we can find him a partner.”
Laura reflected that it was typical of all she had heard of Jocelyn that he should wait for his aunt to find a partner for him, and apparently be ready to accept whatever sort of partner she produced. She also foresaw that it would be herself, not Gillian, who would accompany Jocelyn to the ball. She had no excuse ready and the ball was some time ahead. Gillian would have wriggled out of it, but Laura was not such a quick thinker as Gillian and her habit of feeling sorry for people was an additional handicap.
At this moment Mrs. Worthy noticed the time, and like Cinderella she started up in dismay. To be sure it was not the stroke of midnight, but it was past the hour at which she had promised Curtis to be home. So the plans for celebrating Jocelyn’s birthday were left undecided. In a very short time, or at any rate in a shorter time than usual, Mrs. Worthy had expressed her thanks, taken leave of her hostesses, and set off up the hill. Lady Masters soon followed her, having only waited to explain to them that it was no good her offering Mrs. Worthy a lift as she could have taken her only to the crossroads, where she turned off for Endbury.
“She has not far to go,” Lady Masters said, “and the exercise will do her good. I am always telling people they should take more exercise. Till Saturday, then, Laura dear.” She got into her car and backed it swiftly out of the gate with a regal disregard for any other users of the lane. Fortunately the lane was empty. Laura walked back to the house, and as soon as she got indoors Gillian came tiptoeing down the stairs.
“Hist—have they gone?” she said.
Laura said yes, Lady Masters and Mrs. Worthy had gone.
“I got back twenty minutes ago, but I made him drop me at the gate and crept in by the back door. What a long time they stayed.”
“Yes, I think it was quite a successful party. But tell me about yours. Was he nice? What’s the garden like?”
“As dull as can be,” said Gillian. “All exquisitely neat, not a weed anywhere, speckless gravel paths, unnatural grass, and hardly any flowers. Of course, he’s terribly proud of it. It’s full of rare plants and shrubs from all over the world—so rare and so delicate, poor things, that they look as if they might die at any moment. Some of them have to live under glass cloches and some have little straw igloos to tuck over them at night.”
“How touching.”
“Come on, I’ll help you wash up.”
“Tell me more. What’s the house like, and is there a butler?”
“A rather sinister-looking man called Schmid—I think it was Schmid, but Mr. Greenley had a cold. Not a bit like a real butler.”
Gillian was in high spirits. In spite of the sinister-looking butler and the dull garden, she had enjoyed herself.
“What did you think of him?” she asked. “His name, you know, is Thomas. Isn’t he exactly like a Thomas?”
Laura had seen Thomas for only a few minutes, when he had arrived to fetch Gillian. He had been a little late. She had brought him in to be introduced and had then hurried him away almost at once, to get him out of the way of the tea party. It was difficult for Laura to say much about him after such a short interview, but she thought it safe to comment on his clothes.
“I told you,” Gillian protested. “I warned you they’d be frightful. Worse today, actually, than when I saw him before. This must be his Sunday suit.”
Giggling over Mr. Greenley’s Sunday suit and listening to Gillian’s gay description of his country house furniture (very black oak in the hall, very loud chintzes in the drawing-room, and an all-electric log fire in the library), Laura soon decided that Mr. Greenley need not be taken seriously. This was a relief to her. It was not that she had disliked him, but at their brief meeting he had impressed her as a person whom it would be easier to laugh at than to love, and it would have been awkward if Gillian had shown any symptoms of loving him.
But as a diversion, a new interest, he would do very well. Gillian, who always knew at once what was best for other people, was now planning a campaign by which his taste was to be radically reformed. He was to be re-educated, re-dressed, and made to take his proper place in the community. For he was really quite a nice creature, she insisted; and it was a shame that so much wealth, and such a fine estate as Cleeve Manor, should be devoted to the ridiculous purpose of making plants grow where Nature had not intended them to grow.
“Cleeve Manor is really a lovely house,” said Gillian. “It’s as beautiful as Endbury, and, of course, historically much more important. It’s really absurd that it should all be wasted.”
She gave Laura a mischievous look.
“It would do Lady Masters good to have a little competition, wouldn’t it? She’s never had to compete with anyone, with Cleeve being empty all these years and Miles not having any money.”
“I can’t quite see Mr. Greenley as a rival to Lady Masters.”
“Oh, not for a long time,” Gillian agreed gaily. “He would need a great deal of re-education first.”
It did not occur to Laura that, for Cleeve Manor to compete with Endbury, Mr. Thomas Greenley would also need a wife.
Chapter Nine
The summer had obligingly come to stay, as Mrs. Trimmer put it, and a succession of fine hot days pleased everyone in Bramton Wick except a few dissidents, mostly farmers and besotted gardeners for whom the weather is never ideal. Mr. Greenley’s gardeners had only to turn on the sprinklers and connect up the hoses, since Mr. Greenley had installed an elaborate irrigation system at Cleeve, but Mrs. Cole trudged backwards and forwards every evening between the water butt and the water-loving plants (which were all at the furthest possible distance from the water butt), and insisted on her daughters’ doing the same.
When the garden was concerned she could be adamant. Gillian said that no one who was familiar with Mrs. Cole in her role of doting Mama would believe it possible
she could speak so harshly to a child who had neglected the sweet peas, and Laura protested that it would have been better to have planted the marrows in the boggy bit where they could have drunk their fill, but Mrs. Cole only smiled and told them not to forget the delphiniums.
Major Worthy, whose gardening reflected his methodical mind, used Jocelyn as a labour-saving device. He had a large water tank on wheels, which could be filled by a short hose connected with the kitchen tap. Mrs. Worthy filled the tank, Jocelyn pushed it to where it was needed, and his uncle applied the water to the plants. Then Jocelyn went back for more water, while Major Worthy rested and smoked his pipe. This plan worked very well; not only did the garden get thoroughly watered, but it gave the boy something to do.
“Lucky you’re not in South Africa,” Major Worthy said, when Jocelyn showed signs of rebellion. “Driest place in the world, I’m told. Have to do this sort of thing all the time there. Draw it out of a well, too. No kitchen taps on the veldt.”
At Bank Cottage, Miss Selbourne and Miss Garrett were also lamenting the drought, though not on account of the garden. In theory they were both gardeners, but in practice they had long ago given up the struggle. They had no money for it, no time, and far too many dogs. When they had first come to Bank Cottage the paddock at the back had been set aside for the dogs’ exercise ground, and the garden had been enclosed with wire netting and a neat little gate, to keep the dogs out. The previous tenants had left them a handsome legacy of wallflowers, daffodil bulbs, marigolds, and clipped box edgings to the beds, and for some time they had lived, as it were, on their capital, telling one another how lovely it was to have a garden, and taking the trouble to close the gate behind them each time they went up to the kennels.
But almost without their noticing it, the lovely garden grew full of weeds, the box edgings straggled, the wallflowers died. Soon afterwards the gate took to sticking and had to be propped open, and then the wire netting rotted away and they had no money to replace it. The dogs definitely preferred to take their exercise in the garden and had dug up most of the flowers, while the few daffodil bulbs which Miss Selbourne had lifted and put to dry, with the intention of replanting them in a window box out of reach of the dogs, had unfortunately been cooked by Miss Garrett, who mistook them for onions.
It was the railway embankment, not the garden, that made them hate droughts. It had not rained since the day of the dog show and the grass was now in a perfect condition for being set on fire by passing trains. They kept a bucket of water by the back door and two more near the kennels. After a train had gone by Miss Selbourne walked from end to end of the domain searching for signs of fire, while Miss Garrett abused the railway company, or alternatively their landlord, Miles Corton. It was a damn fool place to build a house, said Miss Garrett fiercely; he jolly well deserved to have it burnt down. But really neither she nor Miss Selbourne worried about the house. It was the dogs that mattered.
On Saturday, which was market day in Bramworthy, Miss Selbourne usually did the shopping. Housekeeping was not their strong point, but Miss Selbourne was the more domesticated. However, on this particular Saturday Miss Garrett woke up with a bad back. To Miss Selbourne’s morning call of “Tiger, Tiger!” she responded with only a loud groan, which was the agreed signal for her friend to bring her cup of tea to her bedside.
“Oh, poor Tiger—not your back again?” she asked anxiously. Miss Garrett nodded and groaned and rolled her eyes, then, heaving herself up in bed, she stretched out a feeble hand for the tea. After she had drunk two or three mouthfuls her power of speech was restored, and she said gloomily that it had been giving her hell all night.
“You should have called me.”
“No, old thing, you’ve got your hands full already. The house and this beastly fire danger, and only an old crock to help you.”
“And it’s Saturday,” said Miss Selbourne, missing her cue. There was no food in the house, Tiger had forgotten the bread when she went into Bramton yesterday to get the dogs’ meat, and they had opened the last of their emergency tins on the Sunday following the dog show.
“I’ll do the shopping,” Miss Garrett said nobly. “Yes, Bunty, I’ll manage somehow, don’t you worry. You stay here and watch the embankment.”
It was obvious that Miss Garrett, crippled with a bad back, was in no condition for firefighting.
A little later she hobbled downstairs, dressed to go to Bramworthy. She was wearing her best corduroys, which were a bright mustard colour, and a green shirt which had once belonged to Toby Masters and which she had bought at a parish jumble sale. Unfortunately it had proved a little too small, for she was a big woman, so she had been forced to cut the sleeves short and wear it open-necked. As it was summer she had put on her sandals and her straw hat instead of gum-boots and a beret. The hat was perfectly plain and round, like an old-fashioned beehive, and made her appear even taller than she was.
“Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“Now don’t you worry, Bunty. Tiger’s an old campaigner. Tiger can take care of herself.” Wolfing the last of the week’s eggs, Miss Garrett seemed remarkably cheerful, so that Miss Selbourne had a moment’s fleeting doubt about the bad back. It was a chronic complaint and any over-exertion would bring it on, but it usually needed hot-water bottles, hot whisky, and a day in bed to send it away again. A passing train deflected Miss Selbourne’s thoughts, and when she returned from the inspection of the embankment Miss Garrett was about to depart.
“The ration books, Tiger!”
“I’ve got them. But I’ll want some money, old girl. Better give me three quid, in case I see anything we need.”
Anything we need for the dogs, she meant. Miss Selbourne fetched the money from her secret store. The trouble was, Tiger would never keep accounts, and money had a way of slipping through her fingers with nothing to show for it.
But Tiger looked so happy, sitting at the wheel of the shabby old car with Agnes and Leo beside her and her beehive hat cocked jauntily askew, that Miss Selbourne had not the heart to preach economy. Poor Tiger, she thought, she does so enjoy shopping, it’s mean of me not to let her go oftener. And she quite forgave Tiger her little deception of the bad back.
“Tally-ho!” Tiger said joyously. Agnes and Leo gave tongue. The car roared away down the lane, and Miss Selbourne went back to clean up the kennels and brush and exercise the other dogs.
Just at the gates of Marly House, Miss Garrett overtook Laura Cole on her bicycle. She stopped to offer her a lift. It was not her habit to offer lifts to people, but the Coles, since Gillian’s good deed on the day of the dog show, had been established in her mind as decent sorts and useful people to know.
“This way for the Skylark!” she boomed cheerfully. “Penny a mile, any distance! Tiger’ll take you there and bring you back. All aboard!”
It was a hot morning and Laura was already regretting having to go to Bramworthy. It was one of the days when she wished very much they could afford a car. She was glad to accept Miss Garrett’s offer.
After a moment’s thought she wheeled her bicycle through the Marly gates and left it behind the hedge out of sight of the road, since this seemed a better plan than leaving it at Box Cottage and having to talk to the Misses Cleeve.
“Off we go!” said Miss Garrett, and off they went. The hedges bounded by, Agnes and Leo snuffled eagerly, the car rattled and rocked as Miss Garrett set herself to pass everything in front of them. Since it was market day there was more traffic than usual on the road. But as Miss Garrett remarked, they were a lot of old dodderers, half-asleep most of them—put them to drive an ambulance and they’d be sunk, abso-bally-lutely sunk. Half-asleep they might have been, thought Laura, but not by the time Miss Garrett, with loud blasts on the horn and fierce stampings on the accelerator, had hustled past them.
Mrs. Worthy, rudely chivvied from her position on the crown of the road, swerved so violently that she nearly ended up in the ditch. “A typical woman driver!” said Miss Garrett, o
bserving the incident through the back mirror. Evidently she did not think of herself as a woman driver.
They were at the outskirts of Bramworthy when their progress was seriously impeded by a car which was going rather too fast to be overtaken but not fast enough to draw away from them. This was what Miss Garrett liked; this was what she had been waiting for. As a tiger, weary of thin chickens, might bestir himself to stalk a man, so did this Tiger set herself to stalk the blue car ahead.
Her chance came—providentially, Laura thought at first—outside the Bramworthy Hospital, when the blue car slowed down. Miss Garrett pulled out; with a roar and a hoot she thrust past it, only to find herself in imminent risk of collision with an ambulance which was turning across the road to enter the hospital gates. Laura, who had been taught that passengers should never scream, shut her eyes. When she opened them the danger was past; the ambulance, the hospital, and the other car were fifty yards behind them, and Miss Garrett was stopping for the coloured lights.
“That was Corton,” Miss Garrett announced. “Silly ass, pulling up like that and not signalling.”
“But he did signal,” Laura said sharply.
“Flapped his hand up and down—how was I to know that meant an ambulance? If I hadn’t kept my head—!”
Like most people who have had a fright, Laura found herself tense with unreasonable anger. It was not Miles’s fault, and she resented the brusque way in which Miss Garrett spoke of him as Corton. But as she turned to denounce her she was suddenly struck by something deflated and oddly pathetic in Miss Garrett’s appearance. The beehive hat no longer looked jaunty, the green shirt betrayed its second-hand origin. Miss Garrett sagged. It was plain that her fierce words were just a bluff, and that she knew she was in the wrong.
Laura’s kind heart could not but be touched by Miss Garrett’s humiliation. She changed the subject, and by the time they reached the market place she had succeeded in restoring her companion’s good humour.
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