by Mary Stewart
‘She hasn’t forgotten her old round, then,’ I said.
‘Rosy? Never forgets anything. Dunno how I’d do without her. If I was to miss a call on my round, she’d take me back there and refuse to shift till I’d done it. Dear knows what I’ll do when she gets her cards.’
‘She must be pretty old now? I remember her – oh, for years back.’
‘She’ll be about seventeen. What I reckon, when she looks like going, I’ll get myself one of those motor vans. I can’t See myself starting over again with a new horse.’
‘And Rosy?’
He was offhand, turning away. ‘I reckon she’s earned her retirement. She’ll finish her life at grass.’
‘I’m so glad. I hope she knows!’
He laughed, not attempting now to conceal the affection in his voice. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me. If she didn’t before, she does now. Look at her. Hears every word. I’ll get the eggs for you, and fetch your case up. No, it’s no bother.’
He started down the path, but, I could see, without much hope of getting near the cart. The old mare was standing with her forefeet inside the cottage gate, blocking the way, and staring fixedly, ears pricked, towards me. Mr Blaney paused and turned, trying to sound apologetic. ‘I told you she never forgot. Mrs Welland used to give her a piece – a bun or a bit of bread.’
‘Oh, dear. Of course! I should have remembered. Would a biscuit do?’
‘She wouldn’t say no. Come up, lass.’ He backed Rosy up a pace, heaved my case out of the cart and carried it up to the door.
I took it from him. ‘Thanks very much. I’ll get that biscuit now. How much for the milk and the eggs, Mr Blaney? I may only be here for three or four days, so perhaps I’d better pay as I go.’
‘Never mind that. You can let me know the day before you leave.’
‘I wondered – could you give me a lift up to the village, please?’
‘Well, of course. Like old times, that’ll be.’
So it would. I thanked him again, and hurried back indoors, snatched up my jacket and the basket and purse I had left ready, found a biscuit among what remained of my stores, and ran out. As I shut the front door I hesitated. We had never locked it, but perhaps now –? I locked it, pocketed the key, then delivered the biscuit to Rosy, who took it with velvet lips, tossed her head, and was away with the milk cart almost before I could jump aboard.
The road to the village ran, deep between its flowering hedges, through a mile or so of pasture and woodland. The only dwellings on the way were two small houses, just too big to be called cottages, which nestled at the edge of a wood. They were still occupied (Mr Blaney shouted it above the rattling of the cart) by the same people. A pair of sisters, the Miss Popes, lived in the first house, with next door a single maiden lady, Miss Linsey. The village had dubbed the place Spinsters’ Corner.
Rosy stopped at the first gate, and Mr Blaney got out. There was no sign that anyone was about yet, for which I was thankful. I remembered the Miss Popes as being deeply interested in all that went on in the village; at least, that was how they would have put it; the village called them, briefly and with adjectives that varied according to the station of the speaker, interfering old tabbies. This may have been true in a sense, but Miss Mildred, the younger sister, interfered only with the kindest possible motives. One gathered that the elderly sisters had been brought up in an era of soup and advice for the deserving poor. In spite of my mother’s dubious goings-on, our family had been in that category, and sometimes glad of it, but even so I had always liked Miss Mildred, whose gentle charity of mind had even included Aunt Betsy. The older sister was a more practical character, and indeed held down some sort of key post with a charitable organisation in Sunderland.
Rosy moved on to the second gate, and put her head down to the roadside grass. No biscuit expected here, and the curtains were still drawn. Miss Linsey’s house. Miss Linsey was in a different category from the ladies next door. She was a mystic. She was to be seen communing (as she would tell you) with the trees and the clouds, and she laid claim to a fairly powerful kind of second sight. As a child, I had been afraid of her, and on the way home from school had always run like the wind till I was well past her doorway. We children had had our own name for Spinsters’ Corner, a name which carried its own terror; we called it Witches’ Corner.
Soon we were trotting briskly past the cemetery wall, to pause at the first of the outlying houses of the village. I thanked Mr Blaney for the lift, patted Rosy, who ignored me, biscuitless as I was, then I walked briskly across the village green towards my first port of call, the vicarage.
Todhall village was a community of about two hundred souls, gathered round a village green with the church at its centre. It boasted one pub, the Black Bull, a post office, a general shop, the vicarage with the smithy close by, and above the smithy the carpenter’s workshop which belonged to Mr Pascoe. To either side of the green the houses straggled in no sort of order, so that what we called Front Street was in fact a wide oval of green set about with a sprawl of dwellings, gardens and smallholdings. The only modern touches (and therefore, perhaps, the less picturesque features of the place) were at the southern end of the village where the milk cart had set me down – the school and the church hall, with the raw brick wall of the cemetery alongside. The church, the proper centrepiece of the village picture, was late Norman, with (as I had known all my life, without understanding why it mattered) all the right stonework and a perfect horseshoe chancel arch. There were wild roses sprawling over the stone wall that surrounded the old graveyard, and some lovely elms lending their shade. A couple of goats and a donkey were tethered grazing on the green, and a gaggle of white geese sunned themselves near the pond.
As it was in the beginning…Nothing seemed to have changed. Nothing ever would. And, as I had done so often in the past, I made straight for the vicarage gate.
Nothing had changed there either, except that here, certainly, the house did not seem the huge mansion it had appeared when the Lockwoods had lived there, and little Kathy Welland had first gone to play with the vicar’s daughter. It was a low, compact house, squarely built but made attractive with whitewashed walls and green window shutters and a trellised porch covered with jasmine. The garden walls were almost completely hidden by ivy, and as I passed the front gate with its glimpse of a pretty garden, a blackbird flew scolding out of a tangle of leaves where, as I knew, there had been a nest every year, time out of mind.
The front gate was not, had never been, my way in. I pushed open the back gate and went into the yard where the motor house stood, and beside it the hen-run, and the cage where Prissy had kept her rabbits. The rabbits had gone, but the hens were there, busy still over the morning feed. I would have lingered for a minute, remembering, but there was someone at the scullery window, and she had seen me. As I reached the back door it opened, and a girl looked at me inquiringly, wiping her hands on her apron.
She was, I supposed, about sixteen. I did not recognise her, nor, obviously, she me.
‘Oh, miss. Did you ring at the front? I’m sorry, I never heard no bell—’
‘No, I didn’t try the front. It’s all right. I know I’m early, but is the vicar in, please? It’s Mr Winton Smith, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right, miss. But he went out a bit since, visiting up the village. Mrs Foster at the post office. She’s been poorly. But Mrs Winton Smith’s down the garden somewhere. Shall I get her, or maybe you’d like to go yourself? It’s through that gate by the hens.’
I hesitated. ‘No, I’ll come back later. When do you think he’ll be home?’
‘I couldn’t say. Sometimes he stays out till dinner, that’s at twelve o’clock. But I’ll tell him you came – what name is it, miss?’
‘Herrick, Mrs Herrick. I think he’ll know who I am. So I may see you later. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘I’m Lil Ashby.’
The Ashbys were farmers a few miles along beyond the station. I remembered Mrs Ash
by, who had called sometimes on Gran, and had supplied the Hall, and us along with it, with eggs and poultry.
‘Well, Lily, thanks for your help.’
‘It’s not really Lily. It’s Lil, short for Lilias. Mum called me after someone she knew. Real pretty, she said, like the name.’ A cheerful giggle. ‘And the name’s the prettiest thing about me, she says that, too. What is it, miss? Is there summat the matter?’
‘No, no. Yes, it’s a very pretty name, and it suits you. Well, then, tell the vicar, and I’ll be back later. Goodbye.’
Outside the gate I paused. A little way to the right a farmer’s cart stood upended by the road, shafts in the air. The horse was presumably in the smithy being shod. I could hear the clink of the hammer and the clatter of hoofs and a ‘Hup there!’ from the smith.
I went that way. I had always loved the smithy. To me, as a child, it had been a mysterious dark cave, with the fire at the back roaring up from time to time under the bellows, and the rhythmic clang and clatter of hammer and anvil mixing with the hiss of the iron plunged to cool and the smell of the smoking hoof as the shoe was tried. I had loved it all; the old smith with his leather apron and hard hands that could be so gentle; the great mild horses, their skins as glossy as licked toffee, their quiet eyes, the way they heaved their feet up at a word and never seemed to feel nail or hot iron, their soft flickering nostrils that nuzzled and breathed down the smith’s neck as he worked. A whole world. A world whose ways, sadly, must soon vanish for ever.
The smith was busy over the hind hoof of an enormous Clydesdale, his back wedged under the chestnut rump, his knees gripping the powerful leg. He shot a glance upward as my shadow paused in the doorway and spat out a nail to let him grunt something that sounded like, ‘Nice mornin’ ’
‘Good morning, Mr Corner.’
Another glance, as he tapped in the last nail, then he checked the shoe’s hold, lowered the horse’s leg, patted the chestnut flank, and straightened himself. ‘Well, if it isn’t little Kathy Welland! Long time since you were in these parts. Your Granny here with you?’
‘No. She’s still in Scotland, and I think she’ll stay there now. She sent me down to get the rest of her things from the cottage.’
‘Ah. Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but it’s nice to have you home again. You be here long?’
‘Only till I get Gran’s things seen to. It’s lovely to be back. Everything looks just the same. How’s Mrs Corner?’
‘Fine, fine. What about your Granny? Annie Pascoe said she hadn’t been too clever.’
‘That’s right. She’s on the mend now, but she’s feeling her age, she says.’
‘Then I’d best be watching out for mine,’ said the smith with a bark of laughter. ‘Ah, here you are, Jem. She’s ready now, done all round, and that should keep her for a canny bit.’
I waited while the young man – a stranger to me – settled with the smith and led the mare away, then said: ‘I was wanting to see Mr Pascoe. Is he upstairs in the shop?’
‘Nay, lass. Him and Davey, they’ve been and gone. They’re working up to the Hall. There’s a lot of alteration there, turning the place into a hotel, but you’ll likely know that.’
‘Yes, I did hear. I saw Davey yesterday. I wanted to ask you – do you make keys, or is it only big things, gates and such?’
‘Anything in iron, I can make,’ said Mr Corner simply. ‘But keys? They don’t come my way often. I once made a spare for the church tower when old Tom Pinkerton – you’ll remember him, he’s still sexton – dropped her down the well. A big old key that was, near as old as the church.’
‘This would be a small key, very small, a bit like a cash box key, I would think. No? Then what about a door key, the old-fashioned sort, quite big. Like this.’ I showed him the Rose Cottage key. ‘I wondered if anyone had asked you to make one lately?’
He regarded me for a moment under those bushy eyebrows, but said merely: ‘Nay, lass. Anything like that, they’d go to a locksmith. Baines in Durham’s the nearest.’
‘I see. Thanks. Well, you’re busy, and I’d better be going. It’s lovely to see you again, Mr Corner.’
‘Good to see you, lass, and if you was dressed for it I’d give you a job the way I used to, you and young Pris. You been to the vicarage? Thought I saw you come out, but I didn’t know you, my eyes not being what they used to be at a distance.’
‘I was wanting to see the vicar, but he’s out. The garden looks nice. Is Mrs Winton Smith the gardener?’
‘Aye. Always at it, she is. Well, if I cannat set you to work, I’ll be getting on myself. I’ve a wheel to fettle next door.’ Next door was the shed where he did his wheel-wright’s work. ‘Come back and see me before you go, lass. Or better still, come up to the house and get a cup of tea. The missus’d be real pleased to see you. Any day about six, and I can run you home in the trap.’
‘That would be lovely. Thanks very much.’
And at any time after six o’clock today, I reckoned, as I went out into the sunshine, everyone in Todhall would know that Kathy Welland was down home at Rose Cottage, packing up her grandmother’s things to send away to Scotland, and asking about keys. Like any other village, we had a very efficient grapevine. So, I would use it for myself. Perhaps someone, somewhere, might know if anyone had been hanging around Rose Cottage and might have broken in and rifled Gran’s safe of her treasures.
9
The village shop lay about a hundred yards beyond the smithy, and looked out across the duckpond. The geese had left the water, and were marching purposefully across the green towards a farmyard we had always known as Scurr’s, though it had been many years since anyone called Scurr had lived there. Their place on the water had been taken by a small fleet of ducks, mostly white Aylesburys, but with a visiting mallard in convoy, and one water-hen. A nondescript terrier sat at the edge of the water, wistfully eyeing the flotilla.
A shrill whistle from just behind me jerked me round, startled, and jerked the terrier, too, from his post. He came running to the shop doorway, which had opened to let a young woman – a girl of about sixteen – out onto the step.
She saw me and stopped in the doorway. ‘Oh, sorry! I never saw you. Come here, Muffin! You leave them ducks alone! Were you coming in the shop? He’d love to get them ducks, but he’s frightened of the water. You can’t blame him, can you, all that mud and the weed and all. A fair disgrace I call it, and no one does a thing about it. Come in, then. I’m Jinnie Barlow, Mrs Barlow’s niece, from Ashhurst, and keeping the shop while she’s on holiday. I haven’t met you yet, have I?’
‘No. I’m Kate Herrick. Nice to meet you, Jinnie. Will Mrs Barlow be away long?’
‘Only a week. She’s gone over to Hartlepool, to her sister’s, my other Aunty’s. She’s just out of hospital, my other Aunty, that is, so I said I’d come and mind the shop, and the cat and dog. The shop’s the least of the troubles.’ She laughed merrily. ‘Whose are the ducks?’
‘I don’t know. They probably belong to Scurr’s, like the geese. I think they’re used to dogs – anyway, I’m sure they’ll know Muffin quite well. I wouldn’t worry about them.’
‘I won’t. What can I get you, then? Is it the rations?’
‘Yes, please. Here’s the book.’
‘Ta. Makes it easy, this does. This is only my second day, and I’ve not quite got the hang of Aunty’s shelves yet, but the rations are easy, and I’ve got some of them made up ready anyway.’
She chattered on as she served me. Ashhurst, where she lived, was about five miles away, and before this visit, she told me, she had done no more than call occasionally on her aunt, but she was enjoying this temporary job because one of her friends from home was working at the vicarage.
‘Lil Ashby?’ I said. ‘Yes, of course. Their farm’s over Ashhurst way. You’d be at school with her?’
I spoke absently, watching all the while through the glass of the door to see if I could catch a glimpse of the vicar coming away from his call
on Mrs Foster at the post office on the other side of the green. Mrs Barlow’s absence was disappointing. She was a great gossip, and since most people who visited the village found their way at some time to the shop, I had hoped she might have some information for me.
‘That it?’ asked Jinnie, putting the last of the packages into my basket. ‘We’ve got some tins of Spam, if you’d like one, and what about flour?’
‘Oh, no thanks. I’ve got all I need, and I don’t want a lot to carry. It’s a long way to Rose Cottage. This’ll do me very well. How much is it?’
She told me and I paid her. As she counted out the change she asked, with the first sign of curiosity, ‘Rose Cottage? Isn’t that the place away down the station road? Where the old lady died and the sister went up north to stay? I heard about that.’
I hesitated, then put the question I had wanted to ask Mrs Barlow. ‘Did your aunt say if there’d been any strangers seen about there lately, or maybe asking about it?’
‘Not that I remember. Here, don’t forget your ration book.’ As she handed it to me she caught sight of the address on the cover. ‘Richmond, Surrey? Oh, you’re not from Todhall, then? And you’re lodging down at Rose Cottage? On your own? Isn’t it lonesome there?’
‘Not really.’ There was the vicar now, shutting Mrs Foster’s gate and setting out to cross the green. He appeared to be making for the church.
‘Are you just there on holiday, then? Related, maybe? Aunty did tell me—’
‘Excuse me. Someone I want to see. I must catch him. Thanks again, Jinnie. Good morning.’ Snatching my basket up I made hastily for the door, tripping over Muffin, who was waiting to be let out again, presumably for further contemplation of the ducks. In the ensuing scuffle as he was caught and held and apologised for, I made my escape from further questions and headed back down the green towards the church.
