by Miss Read
"I'll keep my eyes and ears open," promised the doctor's wife. "Both for posts and somewhere to live."
She leaned forward and placed a hand on the girl's knee.
"You are quite right, and so wise, to see that the country is the only home for you. Some people might think that you are trying to flee from society, that you can't face the fun and fury and stimulus of a crowded life. But I know you better than that.
"Follow your instincts. You've found refreshment here and you'll continue to. I know, for I have too."
She paused, thinking of that morning's delight in her May garden and her delicious walk down the hill to Lulling while the dew still still glittered on Thrush Green. It had taken almost all her life to realize, consciously, how much the country sights and scents around her had contributed to her inner happiness and had provided zest and comfort in turn.
"As one gets older," she continued slowly, "so many things get in the way of one's instincts. There's duty to one's children, the necessity to consider a husband's needs and feelings, the knowledge too that one's strength may not be great enough to do what one would like. All sorts of stupid little things too—like wondering what the children would think, or whether a doctor's wife should really do this or that—all these things one considers in relation to a fine, rapturous, instinctive desire, and so often, that fine, rapturous instinctive desire is gently smothered and its little fire dies under a wet blanket."
She smiled across at the girl.
"Young people, like you, are much freer. When they see what they want, they cut through difficulties, and take it. Just stick by your decision. Make a new life here, and you know that we shall all help you."
"I'll do that," promised Ruth gravely. "When Edward and Joan come back next week we'll talk things over. He offered me a secretarial post in his own firm—and I might begin with that, I think."
Mrs. Bailey smote her substantial thigh a resounding whack.
"Good girl! But do you know what I really came for? To borrow some magazines for poor Ella, and I'd almost forgotten."
She related the details of Ella's accident, and added that her husband seemed to have realized at last that he must have more help.
"He's resting now," she said, "and making very light of his weakness; but he was quite done up when he got back from Dimity's. I thought I'd take Ella something to read. She may turn a page or two and give poor Dimity time to clear up the mess."
"I'll go and find some magazines," said Ruth, jumping up.
"Not the ordinary women's magazines," implored Mrs. Bailey. "It's not a bit of good giving love stories to Ella, as you know; but anything with designs and furnishings she'll look at, and even if they only make her blow her top off, it'll keep her attention from her scalds."
Ruth vanished into the house leaving Mrs. Bailey to wander in the warm sunshine of the garden, and to ponder on the girl's vital change.
Now she looked forward, her back turned forever upon the dark miseries which had held her prisoner for so long.
Mrs. Bailey's next visit was to Ella's, and as she crossed Thrush Green, bearing Ruth's carefully selected magazines and a bunch of mixed daffodils from the Bassetts' garden, she came face to face with Mrs. Curdle.
The old lady was standing by her bright caravan and Mrs. Bailey was shocked at the change in her appearance. Still massive, and still commanding, there was now something pathetic about her. There was a droop about the shoulders and a dullness in those dark eyes which the doctor's wife had not seen before.
The women greeted each other cordially.
"And how are you, Mrs. Curdle?"
"Very middlin', ma'am," answered the old lady. "Very middlin' indeed. And gets next to no help from my family these days." She shot a venomous glance in the direction of Sam's caravan.
"But how's your good man?" she continued. "I hear tell he's been took to his bed for some time past."
"He's been very poorly, I'm sorry to say," said Mrs. Bailey. "But improving daily."
"The years is too much for us," said Mrs. Curdle, with heavy solemnity. She looked across to the doctor's house with a grave face.
"I be coming to see him, after his surgery time, I expect," went on Mrs. Curdle.
"We'll be very pleased to see you," answered the doctor's wife warmly. "But he isn't taking surgery at the moment, so just come whenever you can fit it in most conveniently."
"I'll see the show started, and then be over," promised Mrs. Curdle.
"I hear," began Mrs. Bailey, rather diffidently, "that you are thinking of retiring. Is it true? We all hope not, you know."
Mrs. Curdle turned a somber glance upon her.
"'Tis true I be thinking of it. There's times I feel I can't go on for pain and trouble. But between ourselves, ma'am, I reckons 'twould break my heart to give up."
She put a dusky hand against the gay paintwork of her caravan, tracing a yellow cutout leaf, warm in the sunshine.
"Maybe your good man can help me," went on Mrs. Curdle. "He's been a real friend to me. And you too, ma'am, and that's true."
"You come and have a word with him," said Mrs. Bailey. "It'll do him good to see you, I know."
She made her farewells swiftly, for she did not want to leave her husband alone too long, and Ella had yet to be visited.
But when she had rung Ella's bell and was waiting on the doorstep of the corner cottage, she looked back at the dark figure standing motionless by the gaudy caravan, and felt that she had never seen such loneliness before.
Dimity answered the bell, her hands incarnadined.
"She'll be so pleased to see you," she twittered, leading the way up the stairs. Mrs. Bailey followed her red-speckled legs and scarlet-soled slippers aloft.
Ella Bembridge was an awe-inspiring sight in bed. Her short gray hair stood in a fine shock as she had run her fingers through it in her agitation. A bright red dressing gown, no less vivid than the paint which bespattered her friend, was pinned at her neck with a gruesome gray monkey's paw, and contrasted strongly with the white bandage which enveloped one scalded hand.
Dimity had erected a tunnel made, with considerable ingenuity, from a bow-fronted fireguard, in order to keep the bedclothes from pressing too heavily upon poor Ella's painful legs, and this great mound, covered with a patchwork quilt of Ella's own making, added to the bizarre effect.
"Nurse is bringing a proper leg cage later," said Dimity, gazing with pride at her own handiwork, "but she's at a baby case at the moment."
Mrs. Bailey admired the present appliance and inquired about the patient's sufferings.
"Simple ruddy torture!" responded Ella with energy. "If it hadn't been for your husband I'd have taken a meataxe to my lower limbs. Couldn't have hurt much more than they do now," she added, with gloomy relish.
Dimity uttered a horrified squeal.
"Now darling, don't be so naughty. It'll only make your rash worse."
"And if you toss about," warned Mrs. Bailey, "you'll capsize the tunnel."
"Might just as well give up and die, I suppose," boomed the patient, with a heartiness that belied her words. "What about some tea, Dim?"
"Not for me," said Mrs. Bailey hastily, "I must be getting back. I just wanted to see you and to leave these things." She put the magazines carefully at Ella's side, well away from the sufferer's hurts, but even so the patient winced away and let out a bellow that set the washstand ringing.
Mrs. Bailey tried to look contrite, and Dimity rushed to the bedside.
"Keep back! Keep back!" shouted Ella energetically, like a policeman with an exuberant crowd to control. The two women stood respectfully away from the bed and surveyed the vociferous patient.
"Don't worry," said Mrs. Bailey. "We'll keep right over here away from your legs. Perhaps I can put these flowers in water for you?"
Dimity hurried away and returned with a large glass jug.
"I can't reach anything else in the kitchen," she confessed, "but they should look lovely in that. I must go down agai
n. There's someone at the door."
She fluttered off again and quietness fell upon the room. Mrs. Bailey took the jug and flowers to the washstand, and began to arrange the white and gold daffodils carefully.
Their fragrance crept about the room adding their breath of spring to the scents and sounds that came through the open window. The rooks wheeled and called above the elms nearby, and from Ella's flower beds could be heard the chattering and scolding of half a dozen starlings who were busily demolishing her velvety polyanthus flowers. An early bee droned against the pane, his scaly brown legs tap-tapping against the glass like the frail twigs of the jasmine nearby.
Ella watched, in one of her rare silences, as Mrs. Bailey moved the blossoms, standing back every now and again to survey her handiwork. The glass jug had been a happy choice, for the soft green beauty of the stalks and leaves could be seen. Myriads of tiny air bubbles studded their length, like crystal beads, and Ella, whose gruff exterior hid a discerning sensitivity to loveliness, was moved to speak.
"They're perfect, Winnie. Don't muck 'em about any more. They're just absolutely right in that jug."
"Clever of Dimity to get it," murmured Mrs. Bailey, still engrossed.
"I must say," went on Ella, now emerged from her brief spell of quietness, "it's a real pleasure to see flowers allowed to arrange themselves comfortably against the side of a vase, instead of being threaded through an entanglement of squashed-up chicken wire, or that wadding stuff the Lulling Floral Club will foist on its members."
"Oh come," protested Mrs. Bailey, advancing upon Ella with a pheasant's-eye narcissus flower which had broken off. "I think you must have some help sometimes for flowers. Think of nasturtiums or cowslips!"
She held out the flower for Ella to smell, but she made such violent gestures of dismissal, rocking the fireguard perilously, that Mrs. Bailey tossed her the flower and returned to the washstand. Ella raised the blossom to her heated face and continued her harangue between violent sniffs at its snowy petals.
"Well, I've got no time for the Floral Club, as I've told you all before. It doesn't matter which house you go into within a radius of six miles, you can always tell if the mistress goes to the Lulling meetings." She flung a bolster-like arm in the direction of Mrs. Bailey and pointed an accusing finger at her.
"You know what I mean. You do it yourself. April! Everybody's got some prissy little workbox fished out from the attic and stuffed up with primroses and moss. May! Dam' great boughs of cherry blossoms, impaled in wire, and perched up above eye level somewhere where they're bound to get blown down. June! One iris, Japanese fashion, in a 'cool-gray' or 'celadon-green' vase!"
Mrs. Bailey, shaking with laughter at her friend's vehemence, tried to protest, but was brushed aside.
"July," continued Ella, warming to her theme, "three gladioli in a horrible flat white object, and arranged like a one-masted bark, with one up in the middle, and the other two horizontally fore and aft! And as for Christmas—"
Ella took a large breath, and turned a reddening, ferocious face upon her convulsed friend.
"I tell you plainly—now, in ample time. If you're thinking of concocting some horrible great table decoration out of plastic fern, dried grass, two dusty old sprigs of left-over Cape gooseberries, some ghastly artificial flowers from the haberdasher's, topped up with the bunch of violets you're worn to Lulling funerals for the past ten years, plus three poor little Roman hyacinths—like waifs among the corpses—then you can think again! I can face up to silver-painted holly, if that's what you people have in mind, with the rest of you—but I'm damned if I'll thank anybody, even you, Winnie dear, for a monstrosity like that or for an armful of frosted beetroot leaves!"
"Darling," said Mrs. Bailey, wiping her eyes, "I promise you that I'll give you nothing floral at all when Christmas comes."
She bent towards her old friend and gently kissed her good-by.
Ella, her spirits as much restored by her own loquacity as by the flowers and the company, beamed her farewells. She had stuck the narcissus behind one ear, like a Pacific Island maiden. Its fragility contrasted strongly with the weather-beaten cheek against which it fell, and gave an added rakishness to her raffish appearance.
A large tabby cat, which was the adored pet of the house, crept in as Mrs. Bailey opened the bedroom door. It glided to the bedside, gathered itself together and leaped heavily upon its mistress's lap. Mrs. Bailey, who had been powerless to forestall it, waited for screams and imprecations to rend the air. None came.
"Dear old puss," cooed Ella lovingly, enveloping the creature in an embrace of red dressing gown. "Come to see your poor old mum, have you?"
Mrs. Bailey closed the door quietly upon their reunion, and crept downstairs. At least, she told herself with amusement, she could let her husband know that one patient was well on the way to recovery.
12. A Family Fight
CURDLE'S FAIR was now in readiness for its grand opening, soon after six, in about two hours' time.
It was not a large fair, it is true, but to its owner and its admirers in Thrush Green and dozens of other villages scattered across half a dozen counties, it had everything that was essential for an evening of delicious noise and heady vertigo.
The roundabout was the center piece. Its brass winked in the sunshine, and the dappled horses, legs stretched and nostrils aflare, galloped in eternal fury. A switch-back, a trifle shabby about its red plush seats, but capable of dizzying speed, stood nearby; while eight swing boats, painted red and blue, provided more sensation, and hung now, idly swaying beneath the striped furry sallies of their ropes. Later, as darkness fell, the youths of Lulling would tug with sweating palms at those hairy grips, vying with each other for speed and height and causing their terrified passengers to scream with mingled fear and ecstasy. What could be more exhilarating than the music of those faint screams, tribute to one's manly strength, added to the wild rush of night air as the boat swept up and back in a breath-taking arc, with the glare of the fair's lights swirling below and the pale stars glimmering above? The swing boats were rarely idle once the fair began, but now, in the heat of the afternoon, they seemed to drowse, like boats at anchor in some serene harbor, swaying gently, in that lovelier element than water, above the rippling green grass.
The marquee that housed the menagerie was now in readiness. Rachel, shaken but obediently silent, had finished her ministrations there and now sat plaiting her hair on the steps of her home.
The coconuts stood poised upon the red and white striped posts that Ben had rammed home that morning. Five or six stalls—rolling pennies into a square, toy ducks to be caught with a magnet, the wheel of fortune, and the like awaited their customers. Above each stall, festooned against a glitter of mirrors, hung teddy bears, dolls, teapots, cushions, kettles, crockery, watches, knives and a host of prizes to dazzle covetous eyes.
A shooting range, with playing cards pricked with a thousand pin marks, displayed similar prizes and some of a humbler type, pottery figures of dogs, gnomes and unsteady baskets, doomed to break, chip and peel in less than no time and to find a merciful end in a cottage dustbin.
A few small booths completed the fair. Some sold sweets, great humbugs as big as a child's fist, vast flat tins of treacle toffee that cracked beneath the stall-holder's metal hammer like brown enchanted glass, and billowing clouds of pink and white candy floss. Hanging at the side of one stall from a great hook was a wonderful silky skein of sweet sugar floss which was pulled and twisted, looped and tossed, by dusky hands which were a seven-day wonder to the open-mouthed children and a shocking affront to their elders.
Two of the smaller booths flashed like Aladdin's cave with a galaxy of cheap jewelry. It was from one of these that Molly's much-loved cornflower brooch had come. Bracelets, necklaces, earrings, powder cases, and jeweled pins for scarf and hair sparkled with rubies, sapphires, diamonds, emeralds, pearls and topazes, no less dazzling because they were of glass. They twinkled in the brilliant sunshine, reflecting
its light from a thousand facets. Later they would flash even more brightly beneath the harsh lights set against the mirrored roof above them.
They expressed the very essence of the fair, garish but gay, seductive but innocent, phony but fascinating.
And in many a cottage home next day, one of those sparkling trinkets would be treasured as the souvenir of an enchanted evening, when hearts were as young and light as the newly broken leaves that whispered on Thrush Green's trees.
The infants had already straggled out of school. They had sung their grace, led by Miss Fogerty's quavering soprano:
"Thank you for the world so sweet.
Thank you for the food we eat.
Thank you for the birds that sing,
Thank you, God, for everything."
Some were sharp, some flat, some growled tunelessly, but all took it along at a spanking pace, determined to get out into the exciting canvas world of the fair, which had sprung up so miraculously since morning.
Shouting, running, trailing coats too hot to wear on this golden afternoon they had vanished from Miss Fogerty's sight.
Sighing with exhaustion the teacher bent down and loosened her shoelaces. There was nothing more tiring to the feet than a sudden burst of warm weather, she told herself. Tomorrow, if it lasted, she decided, as she locked her desk and swept the snippets of colored paper which littered it into the wastepaper basket, she really must look out her Clark's sandals and be comfortable.
At the same time Molly and Ben were descending the steep path through Lulling Woods on their way to Thrush Green.
The laundry van had called early, and Ben had persuaded Molly that the main reason for lingering at "The Drovers' Arms" had now vanished.
"Give us the chicken food," he had directed, "and I'll chuck it over while you tidies up."
"But what about my missus?" Molly had said, pretending to be anxious.
"Leave her a note. You can write, can't you?" he said, with a wry smile. Molly gave him a sudden hug, delighted that he could now joke about something that had worried him so recently. The hug was returned warmly, and would have been prolonged indefinitely had not Molly broken away, thrust the chicken's bucket into her lover's hand and run upstairs to put on the yellow spotted frock and hair ribbon.
