by Miss Read
'One for you, Mrs Bailey,' he grunted gloomily. 'Marvellous, ain't it? Got twice as many this afternoon just because it's raining cats and dogs. That's life, ain't it?'
Mrs Bailey agreed, accepting the letter and studying it with drooping spirits.
Richard again! Now what on earth did he want?
Richard was her sister's boy, and Winnie Bailey had to confess that he was her least favourite nephew. He had always seemed mature, self-centred, and rather smug. Perhaps if he had been blessed with brothers and sisters this unchildlike quality of self-possession would have been mitigated. As it was, as an only child, Winnie Bailey found him uncannily precocious, and at times a trifle supercilious.
As he grew from babyhood to childhood, it was apparent that Richard would make his mark in the world. He was highly intelligent, hard-working, and as efficient on the games field as in the classroom. His school reports were glowing. His parents adored him, and he appeared to be popular with his school fellows. But secretly to his aunt, he was always 'that odd boy'.
To Winnie and her husband he was always punctiliously polite when he saw them. But, thought Winnie, surveying the envelope in her hand, Richard had never given her a warm-hearted hug as young Jeremy had just done!
He had obtained a First in Physics at Oxford, and spent a year or two in America collecting further honours. As he grew older, his manner had become rather more sociable, and his somewhat anaemic looks had blossomed into wiry sparseness as maturity and a passion for walking grew upon him.
He was now a man of thirty-two, engaged upon research so divorced from the ordinary scheme of things that Winnie Bailey and her husband found themselves unable to comprehend the language, let alone the aims, of Richard's studies. They saw little of him; for his travels and lecturing commitments were extensive. Doctor Bailey heard of each academic success with coolness.
'Nothing wrong with his head,' was his comment, 'but he's no heart.'
Perhaps, thought Winnie, making her way to the drawing-room and her reading glasses, that is why she had never really warmed to Richard, but she kept these feelings to herself.
The doctor slept in the afternoon, and it was almost tea-time before she could hand him Richard's letter. The rain still fell relentlessly, drumming upon the roofs of Thrush Green, and drenching the schoolchildren as they straggled from the school porch. Their cries mingled with the spatter of rain on the window panes of the quiet room, as the doctor read the letter.
'Wants something, as usual,' he commented drily. Winnie remembered that this had been her own first unworthy reaction.
'What do you think?'
'It's up to you, my dear. If you feel that you would like to have him here while he is engaged on this particular work at Oxford, then go ahead. But it all means more for you to do, and I'm enough of a burden, I feel.'
'I don't like to refuse him,' began Winnie doubtfully. 'And we've plenty of room,'
She wandered to the window and looked out upon the rain-lashed garden. A few leaves, torn from the lime tree, hopped bird-like about the grass in the onslaught. On the flagged path, shiny with rain, a tawny dead sycamore leaf skidded about on its bent points, like some demented crab. The garden was alive with movement, as branches tossed, flowers quivered, grass shuddered, and drops splashed from roofs and hedges.
Winnie Bailey gazed unseeingly upon its wildness, turning over this problem in her mind. Richard, after all, was her nephew, she told herself - probably rather hard up, and simply asking for a bed and the minimum of board. Perhaps, for a little while—?
'Shall I invite him for a fortnight to see how we all manage?' she asked her husband, now deep in The Times crossword puzzle.
'By all means, if you would like to.'
'It wouldn't be a nuisance to you?'
'Of course not, I don't suppose I shall see much of the fellow, anyway, and he was always a quiet sort of chap about the house.'
Winnie sighed, partly with relief and partly because she had a queer premonition that something unusual - something disquieting - might come from Richard's visit.
Time was to prove her right.
During the next week or so the inhabitants of Thrush Green observed their new resident with approval. They watched her tackling Tullivers' neglected garden with considerable energy. The smoke from her bonfire billowed for two days and nights without ceasing, as hedge-trimmings, dead grass, long-defunct cabbage stalks and other kitchen-garden rubbish met their end.
The flagged path was sprinkled with weed-killer, and the hinge mended on the gate which had hung slightly awry for three years, wearing a scratched arc on the flag-stone each time the gate was opened or shut.
The gate was also given a coat or two of white paint, and the front door as well. The girl's efforts were generally approved, and Jeremy too was considered an exceptionally well-brought-up little boy.
But the continued absence of Mr Prior was, of course, a cause of disappointment and considerable speculation among the newcomer's neighbours at Thrush Green. He was obliged to be abroad for a few months, went one rumour, getting orders for his firm - variously described as one dealing in French silk, Egyptian cotton, Italian leather and Burmese teak.
Others knew, for a fact, that he was a specialist in television equipment, computers, road-surfacing, bridge-building and sewage works. Betty Bell, however, had it on the highest authority (her own; that he had something to do with advertising, and went overseas to show less advanced countries the best way to sell ball-point pens, wigs, food-mixers, plastic gnomes for the garden, and other necessary adjuncts to modern living.
Albert Piggott, on the other hand, thought that he was probably in hospital with a lingering complaint which would keep him there for many months to come. He said as much to his fat wife Nelly, whose response was typical.
'Trust you to think that, you old misery! More like he's run off with some lively bit. That wife of his don't look much fun to me!'
It certainly seemed nearer the target than some of the wild rumours. Winnie Bailey, who knew her neighbour better than the rest of Thrush Green's inhabitants, had come to much the same conclusion, but kept it to herself.
Young Doctor Lovell, who occasionally caught a glimpse of the newcomer from his surgery window, also wondered if the girl had parted permanently from her husband, and felt sorry for her vaguely forlorn appearance. He spoke about her to Ruth, his wife, and she pleased him by replying:
'Joan and I are going to see her this afternoon. Paul and her little boy would probably get on very well together, and she might be lonely, even if she is up to her eyes in getting that place straight.'
The two sisters were not the only people to welcome Phil Prior. The rector, of course, called a few days after she had arrived, his chubby face glowing with the warmth and kindness he felt for all he met, even such stony-faced parishioners as his own sexton. Ella Bembridge called, bearing a bunch of Michaelmas daisies tied with what appeared to be a length of discarded knicker elastic, and an invitation to 'blow in any time you feel like it'. Harold Shoosmith spoke to the girl over the wall while she was hacking down some formidable stinging nettles, and offered a hand with any heavy clearing up which she might encounter.
Within a fortnight she found that she knew quite well at least two dozen people nearby, and was on speaking terms, country-fashion, with every other soul who passed. When Dimity Henstock called to invite her to a small dinner party, she looked forward to getting to know her Thrush Green neighbours even better.
'But I shall have to find a baby-sitter,' she said, after thanking Dimity. She looked completely at a loss.
'It's all arranged,' Dimity told her. 'Dr Bailey does not go out these days, and dear Winnie will be staying in too. She says she will look after Jeremy and Donald that evening, and thoroughly enjoy it.'
'You are all so kind. I shall look forward to it,' the girl said.
And Dimity, who had brought her modest invitation half-expecting to find someone used to much more sophisticated entertainm
ent went away knowing positively that young Mrs Prior was quite sincere in her expressions of pleasure.
On her way back to the rectory, she called into her former home to see her old friend Ella, whom she found standing on a chair far too frail to support her bulky twelve stone of solid flesh. She was struggling to hang a curtain.
'Shan't be a minute, Dim,' she puffed. 'Got too many hooks for the rings, as usual.'
'I'll do it,' said Dimity automatically. Ella thumped heavily to the floor, and Dimity took her place on the chair.
As her neat fingers worked quickly at the muddle created by her friend, she told her about her visit to Tullivers.
'And it really looks a proper home,' she added.
'What d'you expect?' cried Ella, a note of truculence in her voice.
'A single woman can make a comfortable home just as well as a married one. Don't need a man cluttering up the place to make a home!' she boomed.
From her perch, Dimity gave an all-embracing glance at yesterday's ashes in the grate, a vase of withered roses and the soft veil of dust upon the furniture.
'You're quite right, dear,' she said meekly, threading the last hook into place.
6 A Dinner Party at Thrush Green
THE 'Fuchsia Bush', which stands well back from the road in Lulling High Street, prides itself on its homemade cakes and artistic furnishings. It is Lulling's only tea-shop, and having no competitor it tends to be a trifle smug.
Ella Bembridge, smoking one of her untidy hand-rolled cigarettes as she waited for her coffee to cool, looked with lack-lustre eye upon the 'Fuchsia Bush's' décor.
The walls had been freshly painted in an unhappy shade of lilac, and the new curtains were purple. The two waitresses wore the habitual garb of the establishment, overalls of pale mauve, with collar, lapels and belt in a dreadful shade of puce. These garments, faded from much washing, now clashed sadly with the new furnishings, and a pot of real fuchsias, on the table by the door, struggled to make the point that what Nature can do successfully cannot always be copied by Man.
A plastic tumbler, pretending to be made of glass, held a sheaf of mauve paper napkins a few inches from Ella's nose. Disgusted, she moved it to a neighbouring table, just as Dotty Harmer entered.
'Come and have a cup of this ghastly drink - coffee I will not call it,' shouted Ella cheerfully. The waitresses exchanged supercilious glances. How common could you get? You'd have thought a lady like Miss Bembridge would have had better manners, their look said clearly.
'Thank you, dear. Yes, a cup of coffee,' said Dotty, pulling up one thick speckled stocking which was forming a concertina over the lower part of her skinny leg. A commercial traveller, coffee cup arrested half way between table and moustache, watched with fascinated horror.
'Was going to bob down and see you,' said Ella.
'Eggs?' queried Dotty.
'No, no. Milk.'
'Why, hasn't the milkman called?'
'He's called all right,' said Ella grimly, grinding the stub of her cigarette into the Benares brass ashtray. 'But he won't be calling again.'
'Why not?'
'Because it's not milk he's delivering, but muck!'
Ella began to throw a small heap of tobacco upon a cigarette paper and roll yet another cigarette.
'Whitewash!' she continued vehemently. 'He calls it "Homogenised - ma'am".' Ella's voice rose to a squeaky falsetto as she mimicked her terrified milkman's tone.
'No cream on it at all. What's a woman to put in her coffee?'
'I take mine black,' said Dotty. Ella brushed aside this irrelevancy.
'It's perfectly horrible. No proper taste of milk, fiendishly white, like liquid paper! No! More like that stuff they make you drink in hospital, to see your innards. Begins with S.'
'Barium,' said Dotty, inspecting the plate of cakes.
'That's it - barium! Well, I'm not standing for it. I want milk that is milk, with cream on top and honest milk all the way down to the bottom of the jug. Can you spare some?'
'I can't make up my mind,' said Dotty thoughtfully, 'which is less indigestible - a Danish pastry or a doughnut.'
'Danish pastry,' said Ella promptly. Indecision nearly drove her mad.
Dotty took it reluctantly.
'I prefer the doughnut,' said Ella, transferring it swiftly to her own plate. 'I'm slimming.'
'Then you shouldn't be eating at all,' replied Dotty tartly, justifiably irritated by Ella's manoeuvres.
'Shock treatment,' Ella informed her blandly. She lodged her smoking cigarette across the ashtray, and attacked the doughnut energetically.
'I've only got goat's milk,' said Dotty, after a few minutes munching. 'I could spare you a pint a day. Dear Daisy is producing splendidly at the moment, but I have one or two regular customers, as you know, and the kittens are heavy drinkers just now. I'm trying to wean them.'
'I thought you had two goats,' said Ella, wiping sugar from her mouth with a man's khaki handkerchief.
'Dulcie is too young yet,' began Dotty primly. 'She hasn't been mated. After the kids are born—'
'Oh, spare me the obstetric details!' begged Ella. 'A pint of Daisy's daily, would be a godsend, Dotty, if you can spare it. I'll collect, of course. When can we start?'
'This afternoon? After tea?'
'Fine,' said Ella, thrusting her wheel-back chair from the table with an ear-splitting grating on the flagged floor.
'Have you got some milk to go on with?' asked Dotty solicitously.
'Half a pint of hogwash,' said Ella. 'I'll do.'
The two ladies collected their parcels, paid their bills to the less disdainful of the waitresses, and emerged into Lulling High Street.
'If them two wasn't ladies,' said one waitress to the other, 'they'd both be in the mad-house, and that's the honest truth.'
'You can say that again,' agreed her colleague, dusting a plate languidly against her lilac hip, as she watched the two customers disappearing into the distance.
St Andrew's church clock was striking six as Ella crossed the green to fetch the goat's milk.
In her basket lay a clean bottle, a copy of last week's Punch and a copy of The Lady. There was also a paper bag containing half a pound or so of early black plums from the ancient tree in Ella's garden.
The air was warm and soft. The gentle golden light of a fine September evening gilded the Cotswold stone buildings, and turned the windows of the church into sheets of dazzling flame.
Albert Piggott stood motionless in the church porch. With his head out-thrust and his drooping mouth he reminded Ella of a tortoise she had owned as a child.
'Lovely day!' she called.
'Swarmin' with gnats,' responded the sexton gloomily. 'Sign of rain.'
Ella did not pursue the conversation, but strode rapidly down the narrow alley beside the Piggotts' abode to the field path which led to Dotty's cottage some half a mile away.
As she approached the garden gate she became conscious of a voice - Dotty's voice - keeping up a relentless monologue.
'Come on, boys, out you come! Come and get your good suppers! It's no use skulking in there. How d'you expect to get anyone to give you a good home if you behave so foolishly? Be brave now. Show yourselves. No food for cowardly cats. Come out and feed properly, or back it goes into the house!'
Ella waited, out of sight, irresolute.
Dotty's slightly hectoring tone changed to one of maudlin encouragement. Obviously, one brave kitten had emerged from its hiding place.
'Sweet thing!' murmured Dotty. 'Brave puss! Now, don't run away again. There's a good little cat.'
There was a sound of lapping, and Ella approached cautiously. Her shadow fell across the dish of milk, the kitten vanished with a squawk, and Dotty gave a startled squeal of exasperation.
'There now, Ella, you've scared them! Just as they were coming out. What on earth brings you here at just this particularly awkward time?'
'Goat's milk,' said Ella mildly. 'And, dammit all, Dot, I had to come some t
ime. How long do you spend here squatting on that uncomfortable log?'
'I try and have half an hour in the morning and another about this time,' replied Dotty, dusting her skirt sketchily. She peered through her steel-rimmed spectacles into the depths of the log shack, but nothing stirred. She sighed sadly.
'Well, that's ruined this evening's session. Come along, Ella, and fetch the milk.'
She led the way into the kitchen, and Ella thought, yet again, what a perfect film set it would make for a witch's background.
Bundles of drying herbs hung from the rafters. A dead chicken, waiting to be plucked, hung upside down against the back of the door. A pungent reek floated from a large copper preserving pan bubbling on the stove, and the kitchen table was crowded with jars, bottles, newspaper cuttings, an enormous ledger with mottled edges, and a butcher's cleaver still sticky with blood.
Add a few living touches, thought Ella, such as frogs and bats, and the place would be complete.
The milk, mercifully, was already bottled, corked, and standing on the cool brick floor in Dotty's larder.
'That looks fine,' said Ella warmly, surveying the beautiful rich colour admiringly. What were a few germs anyway? 'Makes my homogenised muck look pretty silly. Thank you very much, Dotty dear. And what do I owe you?'
'Say sixpence,' said Dotty vaguely.
'Make it a shilling,' replied Ella, slapping the coin down upon the laden table. 'Suits me, if it suits you.'
'Very well,' responded Dotty. 'I must admit the kittens are costing me quite a bit to feed. I'm having to buy tins of stuff called "Pretty-Puss" and "Katsluvit". I don't approve of the names, but the kittens seem to eat everything ravenously. Such a relief! It means that I can take the mother cat to the vet next week.'
'Got homes yet?' asked Ella.
'The Youngs are having one. Paul was persistent, I gather, sensible child. And Dimity is dithering. Frightened of the traffic, I think.'
'I'll speak to her,' said Ella ominously. 'Cats must take their chance these days.'
