by Miss Read
And, of course, the paths were slippery, as poor Jane knew only too well.
She supposed it was inevitable, thought Jane, to have these teething troubles. Her mother had often said that old people were worse than children to deal with, and she and Bill had known this from the start. But somehow, there seemed to be more behind these little worries – a general discontent which could not be blamed on the weather, the reaction to initial euphoria, or any other reasons.
Perhaps, she told herself, she was exaggerating things. Her present low state might have something to do with it. How she longed to be up and about again!
Meanwhile, she must count her blessings. Bill and her mother together were coping splendidly with the job, and she was getting stronger and more mobile daily.
Time enough to worry when she had thrown aside her stick, and could scurry about as nimbly as she did before Fate had stricken her down, she told herself.
14 Visitors
TO everyone's relief the first few days of December became beguilingly mild and sunny. The last of the apples glowed on the bare branches. The hedges were still beaded with hips and haws, and a few hardy fuchsia bushes dangled bright tassels in defiance of the calendar.
In the gardens at Thrush Green there was great activity as the sodden masses of leaves were raked into piles and late bonfires coped with the outcome.
People who had not been able to face the torrential rain in the latter part of November, now hurried to Lulling High Street to catch up with neglected Christmas shopping, and to purchase Christmas air letters to send to all the people overseas who had been forgotten earlier.
At The Fuchsia Bush a spate of orders came in, not only for cakes and puddings, but also for catering arrangements for local office parties. Nelly and Mrs Peters worked happily overtime.
In the infants' room Miss Fogerty picked her way over mounds of paper chains which overflowed from the desks, and deplored the way that so many of the links broke, sending down cascades of coloured paper upon the delighted children below. Certainly paste was not what it used to be, thought Agnes, as she repaired the damage. There was a lot to be said for good old-fashioned paste made by hand in a pudding basin with strong plain flour. And it would work out at a quarter the price!
***
Across the green, Winnie Bailey was inspecting the bowls of hyacinths which she had planted at the beginning of September. They were destined to be Christmas presents for neighbours such as Phyllida Hurst, Ella and Dotty, but at this rate, she thought, they would be nowhere near ready.
Certainly, dear reliable Innocence bulbs were doing well, and Lady Derby too, but why was the bowl of Ostara taking so long? She carried them into the kitchen, and decided to give them all more warmth.
Jenny had just put two lamb chops in the grill pan, and was prodding the potatoes. They always lunched together in the kitchen, unless Winnie had one of her increasingly rare lunch parties.
Winnie was just setting the last of the bowls on the wide window sill, when the front door bell rang.
She hurried to answer it, and to her amazement found Richard on the doorstep.
'Well, what a surprise! Do come in, Richard dear. Are you alone?'
A vision of two lamb chops floated before her. Something would have to be rustled up quickly, especially if Fenella and the children were hard by.
'Quite alone, Aunt Win. I'm on my way to Bath, and saw a familiar signpost, and thought I'd drop in.'
'You'll stay for lunch?'
'Yes, please. I should like that.'
'Then I shall give you a glass of sherry, and leave you for a minute to tell Jenny. Then I want to hear all the news.'
She poured her nephew a glass and left him reading the newspaper.
Jenny was equal to the emergency.
'Plenty of rashers here, and a few sausages. And there are eggs and tomatoes, so we can make a mixed grill. But what about pudding?'
'There are lots of apples in the fruit bowl, and cheese and biscuits to spare. He's lucky to get that,' said Richard's aunt, 'if he can't be bothered to ring up beforehand.'
'Shall I set the table in the dining room?'
'Lord, no, Jenny! He can have it here with us.'
She was about to return to the sitting room when she put her head round the door again.
'And he has my chop, Jenny, not yours! That's an order.'
'Now tell me about the family,' said Winnie. 'How's the baby?'
'Growing. Cries rather a lot. Especially at night.'
'It's a way babies have. And Fenella?'
'Quite busy with the gallery. There's an exhibition of paintings on glass at the moment. Ready for Christmas, you know.'
'How does she find time with two young children?'
'Actually, Timothy goes to play school three mornings a week, and of course Roger is mainly in charge of the exhibition.'
'Roger?'
'Fenella's cousin. I think it's five times removed. Something like that. I believe their great-grandfathers were first cousins, but I can never work out those things.'
'Nor me,' confessed Winnie. 'And where does he live?'
'Roger has a flat just round the corner. At least, his wife has. I'm afraid they are not on speaking terms just now, and he quite often sleeps in the gallery.'
'It doesn't sound very comfortable,' said Winnie.
'Oh, he has a sleeping bag,' replied Richard, helping himself unasked to another glass of sherry. 'And the floor of the gallery is carpeted. Can I fill your glass?'
'No thank you, dear.'
At that moment, Jenny came in to say that all was ready, and Richard carried his glass with him to the kitchen table.
Winnie noted, with approval, that Jenny had opened a large tin of baked beans to augment the rations. Richard rubbed his hands gleefully.
'What a spread! Do you always eat so splendidly?'
'Only sometimes,' said Winnie, catching Jenny's eye.
'I'm very glad I didn't drop into a pub,' announced Richard, it did cross my mind, but I thought it would be so much nicer to see you both and have a snack with you.'
'And I suppose you will spend Christmas in London?' said Winnie, as they set to.
'Fenella will. I shall be on my way back from China.'
'China? At Christmas? But it's the baby's first one, and surely Timothy will be just the right age to love it all!'
'Yes, it's rather a pity, I suppose, but I was asked to go when I was on the earlier lecture tour, and it's so well paid I felt I really couldn't turn it down.'
'Does Fenella agree?'
'She was a bit miffed at first, but she hasn't said anything since, so I suppose she's got over it.'
It all sounded remarkably unsatisfactory to Winnie, but she felt that she could not continue to cross-question a grown man, even if he were her nephew, about his domestic arrangements, and the subject was changed to Thrush Green's news and the doings of old friends.
Later, aunt and nephew walked around the garden. The sun still shone bravely although the shadows were as long at two-thirty this bright December day, as if it were nine o'clock of a summer evening.
Winnie plucked a few late apples from a tree which she and Donald had planted so long ago.
'Take them with you in the car,' she said. 'They're a lovely flavour, and I think they are so beautiful.'
She held the golden globes towards him, and for once Richard seemed aware of something other than his own affairs. He looked closely at the tawny beauty, striped in red and gold, in his hand and sniffed at it appreciatively.
'Ah! That takes me back to my childhood,' he exclaimed. He looked around the garden, the dewy grass marked with their dark footsteps, and a collared dove sipping from the bird bath.
'Do you know. Aunt Win, I should dearly like to live in Thrush Green. I've always felt at home here.'
'Well, Richard, it would certainly be a splendid place to bring up a family, but property's rather expensive. People can get quite quickly now to the motorway, and it has p
ushed up the price of houses.'
'I suppose so. And Fenella might not like the country. She seems to enjoy the gallery, and of course she owns it, which means we live very cheaply. I couldn't afford to live as we do if we had to pay rent, or we were buying a house.'
'Then you are lucky to be so well provided for,' remarked Winnie, with a touch of impatience. When she had married, it was the man who expected to provide the home, but times had changed, certainly for Richard, it seemed.
He glanced at his watch.
'I must be off. Thank you for the lunch and those lovely apples. They will remind me of Thrush Green all the way to Bath.'
Occasionally, thought Winnie, as she waved him good-bye, just occasionally, there was a nice side to dear Richard.
But what a pity he was not more of a family man!
One golden afternoon in the following week, Charles Henstock went to visit some of his house-bound parishioners at Thrush Green.
He had dropped Dimity at Ella's, leaving the two friends in animated conversation and an aura of blue tobacco smoke from Ella's pungent cigarettes.
His first call was at Ruth Lovell's house where he found Mrs Bassett sitting up in bed, looking very frail but pretty in a shell-pink bedjacket. She was obviously delighted to see him, and Ruth left them alone together.
Later, he came through to the kitchen where she was ironing and commented on the improvement in her mother.
'Marvellous, isn't it? John's so pleased too. As a matter of fact, it's John I'm worrying about at the moment. He's terribly touchy, and he and Edward are being so silly about some tiff they had about the old people's steps.'
Charles said it was the first he'd heard of it.
'I shouldn't think about it,' he advised her. 'It'll blow over. They're too fond of each other to let a little bit of nonsense like that rankle.'
'Well, I hope so. There's such a lot of illness about, particularly this wretched chickenpox which I'm sure Mary will get just in time for Christmas, and John's run off his feet.'
Charles patted her shoulder comfortingly.
'Well, give him my love, or regards perhaps? Anyway, wish him well from me. Now I'm off to see Dotty.'
'Don't eat anything!' warned Ruth with a laugh.
Dotty too was in bed, but not looking as elegant as Mrs Bassett. She had dragged a dilapidated dark grey cardigan over her sensible thick nightgown. There was a hole in one elbow, and the cuffs were fraying.
She must have seen Charles looking at the cardigan's condition for she said cheerfully: 'Connie puts a shawl round me, you know, but it falls off when I'm busy, so I sneak out and get this favourite woolly from the drawer when she's not looking. Violet Lovelock knitted it for me years ago. Such good wool! Sheep seemed to have better fleece in those days. I suppose the grass was purer – none ofthese horrid pesticides and fertilisers to poison everything.'
'You look very well,' commented Charles. 'Now tell me all the news.'
'Well, the chickens are laying quite nicely for the time of year, and Mrs Jenner has promised me a sitting of duck eggs for one of my broodies later on. Dulcie seems a bit off colour, but goats often do in the winter, I find, and I think Connie forgets to put out the rock salt. Flossie, of course, is in splendid fettle, and is out with Connie and Kit at the moment.'
Charles noted, with amusement, that it was the animals' welfare, rather than her relatives', which concerned his old friend.
'As a matter of fact,' continued Dotty, fishing in the holey sleeve for a ragged handkerchief, 'I think Connie has too much to do with the house and the garden and the animals. The workmen should be gone before Christmas, or so they say, but there'll be a terrible mess to clear up. And then, you see, Kit's no gardener, except for manly things like cutting off branches and burning rubbish and chopping down trees – all destructive, if you know what I mean. You never see him tending anything, putting in stakes for wobbly plants, or pricking out seedlings. That sort of positive gardening.'
Charles remembered Albert Piggott's unaccountable passion for Dulcie the goat.
'Do you think Albert would come regularly to take the animals over?' he suggested. 'Would Connie like that? You know how marvellously he looked after Dulcie whenever you were away, and I hear he's handy with chickens too.'
'A good idea, Charles! I shall mention it to Connie when she gets back. Would that fat wife of his let him come?'
Charles explained about Nelly's new commitments, much to Dotty's interest, and went farther.
'What's more, I think she'd be glad of anything which kept him out of the pub, even if only for an hour or so.'
'Well, I can always supply him with a glass or two of my home-made wine. So much better for him than that gassy stuff from The Two Pheasants.'
Charles, knowing the catastrophic results of imbibing Dotty's potions, thought that Albert should be warned, if he decided to pay regular visits, but that, he felt sure, could be left in Connie's capable hands.
'Now, I must be off, Dotty. But before I go can I bring you anything? Shall I make you a cup of tea and bring it up?'
'No, no, dear boy! Connie and Kit will be back soon, but do make a cup for yourself. Or better still, help yourself to a glass of my cowslip wine. The bottle's on the kitchen dresser. And please take half a dozen eggs for dear Dimity. They're in a wicker basket Ella gave me last Christmas. The one that's coming unravelled.'
Charles thanked her sincerely and went below, helping himself, as invited, to six splendid brown eggs for his wife, but prudently abstaining from helping himself from the bottle hard by.
He set off across the meadow behind Dotty's house to Lulling Woods, and on his way met first Flossie, Dotty's spaniel, who greeted him rapturously, followed by Kit and Connie looking pink with fresh air and exercise.
'Come back with us,' they begged. But Charles explained that he was bound for an ailing couple who lived in a cottage by The Drovers' Arms.
'And I must get back to pick up Dimity. It gets dark so early.'
'And what did you think of Dotty?'
'Looking very well,' replied Charles. He wondered if he should mention their conversation about Albert, and decided to be bold.
Connie considered the suggestion thoughtfully.
'You know, it might work out very well. Dotty and Albert have always got on like a house on fire. I'll talk to her about it. Thank you, Charles.'
They parted company, and the rector went on to his duties.
It was dark when he emerged from the cottage. There was a nip in the air already, which presaged a frost before morning. Charles turned up his coat collar, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets for warmth.
The path through Lulling Woods was fairly wide and carpeted with dead leaves and pine needles, so that his progress was quiet. There was no need to brush against outstretched branches or clinging brambles, and his footsteps were muffled in the thick covering below.
Although the woods were as familiar to Charles as Thrush Green itself, yet in this sudden darkness he found himself apprehensive. One could quite understand primitive man's fear of forests, and the legends which grew up about the gods and spirits who frequented woodland. There certainly seemed to be a presence here, and not altogether a benign one, thought Charles, quickening his pace.
The trees seemed to press nearer the path than he remembered, like a hostile crowd approaching an unwary traveller. Occasionally, a twig snapped with a report like a gun going off, probably triggered by some small nocturnal animal setting off to look for supper. When a screech owl shattered the stillness with its harsh cry, Charles almost broke into a run.
He was glad to emerge into the open meadow. The lights of Dotty's cottage glowed reassuringly on his right, and in a few minutes he had traversed the alleyway by Albert Piggott's cottage, crossed the road by St Andrew's church, and stood for a moment to take breath.
There were all the familiar shapes he knew and loved. There were lights in the windows of friends' houses, the Youngs', Winnie Bailey's, the Hursts',
Harold and Isobel's. There were even lights shining in the village school where, no doubt, Betty Bell was busy sweeping up. The Two Pheasants was as yet in darkness, but a light was on at Albert's next door, and in the gloaming Charles could see the little black cat on the doorstep waiting for its mistress to arrive with bounty from The Fuchsia Bush kitchen.
Calmer now, Charles turned to walk across to Ella's. For a moment, some trick of the light gave him the impression that he was looking at the outline of his old vanished rectory hard by. He thought that he could see the steep roof, the front door, the tall narrow windows that faced the bitter north-east winds.
A great wave of grief for things past swept over the rector. He remembered his study, its high ceiling, its bare look which had secretly pleased him. He saw again the beautiful silver and ivory crucifix which hung on the wall until it had been reduced to a small misshapen lump by the devastating fire. That little pathetic lump was still treasured in his desk drawer at Lulling Vicarage.
And in his heart, thought Charles blinking away a tear, there was still treasured a knot of dear memories of a house much beloved long ago.
The vision faded, and he found himself gazing at the low outline of the new homes, and farther still the lights of Ella's house shone, beckoning him back to the present where Dimity and everyday comfort awaited him.
PART THREE
Getting Settled
15 Christmas
END of term was now in sight, and Agnes and Dorothy were in the throes of rehearsing the children for a concert, in rooms bedizened with paper chains, bells, friezes showing Santa Claus, reindeer, and lots of artificial snow made from pellets of cotton wool which fell from windows, as well as the mural frieze, and was squashed everywhere underfoot.
Miss Watson's children were attempting two carols played by the few who had recorders. The noise produced was excruciating, and Dorothy sometimes had difficulty in distinguishing 'Hark, The Herald Angels Sing' from 'O Come All Ye Faithful'. At times, she despaired. Perhaps straightforward singing would be more rewarding? On the other hand it was only right that the young musicians should be encouraged, and the parents would be gratified to see the expensive recorders being used.
