Winter in Thrush Green Page 11

  At last, she collected a few less obnoxious specimens, paid for them and thrust her way through the mob to the comparative spaciousness of the pavement outside. The clock on the Town Hall pointed to ten past five and Ella decided to try her luck at The Fuchsia Bush, Lulling's most genteel tea-shop.

  The Fuchsia Bush's contribution to Christmas consisted of a charming scene arranged on the sideboard just inside the door. Whitewashed branches, from which white and silver bells were suspended, spread above a bevy of white-clad angels. Unfortunately, the whole had been lavishly sprinkled with imitation frost which blew about the shop in clouds every time the door opened. Discriminating customers chose cakes which could easily be shaken free of the glitter and eschewed the iced sticky buns which were normally a fast-selling favourite at The Fuchsia Bush.

  At a table near by Ella was delighted to see her old friend Dotty Harmer, her grey hair lightly spangled with blown frost. A cup of tea steamed before her and on a plate lay three digestive biscuits.

  'Well, Dotty, expecting anyone?' boomed Ella, dragging back the only unoccupied chair in the tea-shop.

  'No, no,' replied Dotty, removing a string bag, a cauliflower and a large paper bag labelled 'laymore' from the seat. 'Bertha Lovelock was here unI'll a minute ago. Do sit down. I'm just going through my list once more. I think I've got everything except whiting for Mrs Curdle. It's usually rock salmon, you know, but I think she's expecting again and whiting must he less heavily on the stomach, I feel sure.'

  'Tea, please,' said Ella to the languid waitress who appeared at her side.

  'Set-tea-toasted-tea-cakc-jam-or-honey-choicc-of-cake-to-follow-two-and-nine,' gabbled the girl, admiring her engagement ring the while.

  'No thanks,' said Ella.'Just tea.'

  'Indian or China?'

  'Indian,' said Ella. 'And strong.'

  The girl departed and Ella unwound the long woollen scarf from her thick neck, undid her coat and sighed with relief.

  'Wonder why it's "Indian or China"?' she remarked idly to Dotty. 'Why not "Indian or Chinese"? Or "India or China"? Illogical, isn't it?'

  'Indeed yes,' agreed Dotty, breaking a digestive biscuit carefully in half. 'But then people are illogical. Look at Father's man trap.'

  Ella looked startled. Sometimes Dotty's conversation was more eccentric than usual. This seemed to be one of her bad days.

  'What's your Father's man trap got to do with it?' demanded Ella.

  'I just want it back,' said Dotty simply. She popped a fragment of biscuit into her mouth and crunched it primly with her front teeth. The back ones had been removed. She had the air of a polite bespectacled rabbit at her repast.

  'Oh, come off it!' begged Ella roughly. 'Talk sense!' Dotty looked vaguely upset.

  'You know Father gave his valuable man trap to the museum. It was quite a fine working model used in the eighteenth century by Sir Henry–a great-great-grandfather of the present Sir Henry. Father used to demonstrate it to the boys at the grammar school when he was teaching history there.' She paused to sip her tea, and Ella, fuming at the delay, began to wonder if that were all Dotty would say.

  Dotty replaced her cup carefully, patted her mouth with a small folded handkerchief, and continued.

  'Well,' she said, 'now I could do with it."

  Ella made a violent gesture of annoyance, nearly capsizing the tea tray which the languid girl had now brought.

  'What on earth do you want a man trap for?' expostulated Ella. Dotty looked at her in surprise.

  'Why, to catch a man!' explained Dotty. Ella made a sound remarkably like 'Tchah!' and began to pour milk violently into her cup.

  'I suspect,' continued Dotty, unaware of Ella's heightened blood pressure, 'that someone is stealing my eggs. I could set the man trap at dusk and let the police interview him in the morning.'

  'Now, look here, Dotty,' said Ella, in a hectoring tone, 'don't you realise you'd probably break the chap's leg in one of those ghastly contraptions—?'

  'Naturally,' replied her friend coolly, 'a man trap works on that principle, and ours was in excellent condition. Father saw to that. He would be quite safe in it rill morning. I get up fairly early, as you know, so he wouldn't be in it more than a few hours.' She spoke as though she would be acting with the most humane consideration, and even Ella was nonplussed.

  'But man traps are illegal,' she pointed out.

  'Fiddlesticks!' said Dotty firmly. 'So are heaps of other traps, but they're used, mores the pity, on poor animals that are doing no wrong. This wretched man knows quite well he is doing wrong in taking my eggs. He deserves the consequences, and I shall point them out to him–from a safe distance, of course–as soon as I've trapped him.'

  There was a slight pause.

  'You know what?' said Ella interestedly. 'You're absolutely off your rocker, Dot.'

  Dotty flushed with annoyance.

  'I'm a lot saner than you are, Ella Bembridge,' she said snappily. 'And a lot saner than those chits of girls at the museum who won't let me have Father's property back. I very much doubt if they are legally in the right about refusing my request. After all, Father left all his property to me, and as I say, that man trap is exactly what I need at the moment.'

  'You forget it,' advised Ella, rolling a ragged cigarette. 'Pop up to the police station instead and get Sergeant Stansted to keep his eyes skinned. And, what's more,' she added, for she was fond of her crazy friend, 'don't tell him you want the man trap back, or you're the one he'll be keeping his eye on.'

  She drew a deep and refreshing inhalation of strong cigarette smoke. This was an occasion, she thought to herself, when a woman could do with a little comfort.

  Meanwhile, at Thrush Green, Dimity and Winnie Bailey were busy in the cold and draughty church of St Andrews's.

  They were getting the crib ready and had decided that the open-fronted stable, containing the cradle and the figures, really needed re-thatching.

  They were hard at it, ankle-deep in straw, by the font, as the clock above them chimed half-past three.

  Already the church was getting murky. Above their bent heads the tattered remains of regimental flags moved gently in the draughts, and round their cold feet the straw whispered along the tiled floor. The chancel, distant from them, looked ghostly and incredibly old, a place of shadows and mystery.

  'I never knew it would be so difficult,' confessed Winnie Bailey, trying to fold refractory straw into a neat bundle. 'We ought to have asked a proper thatcher to do it for us.'

  'Never mind,' said Dimity, standing back to survey their handiwork, 'it looks very spruce from a distance. Only this corner to do and then we've finished.'

  She gazed ruefully at her small hands.

  'I'm full of splinters,' she said. 'When we've finished the roof, let's clear up and have some tea. It's getting too dark to see properly anyway.'

  'Lovely!' agreed Winnie with enthusiasm. 'And we'll wash the figures at home.'

  In five minutes all was done and the two weary friends were collecting stray wisps of straw when the door opened and the rector came in.

  'How goes the work?' he asked. Dimity and Winnie indicated the golden roof with modest pride.

  'Experts both,' exclaimed the rector admiringly.

  'And very tired ones,' said Winnie. 'We're just going to have tea.'

  'Come too,' insisted Dimity, making her way to the windy porch; and the three set off through the winter dusk to Ella and Dimity's home.

  After the bleak loftiness of the church the low-ceilinged sitting-room appeared very snug.

  The fire glowed with a steady red warmth and the table lamps cast comfortable pools of light on the polished surface of the bookshelves which flanked the hearth. The room was filled with the scent of early Roman hyacinths. A magnificent pale pink azalea caught the rector's eye, and he admired it.

  'Isn't it lovely?' agreed Dimity, rolling her gloves together neatly. 'Harold Shoosmith brought it over for us. The fire's just right for toasting and there arc some crump
ets. Sit down while I fetch the tray.'

  The rector seated himself obediently, while the two women departed to the kitchen, and held out his cold hands to the fire. He seldom saw an open fire these days, he realised with a slight shock. His housekeeper preferred him to use the electric fire as it saved her work, and the good rector was only too willing to fall in with her plans. But, unI'll this moment, he had not realised how much he missed the companionship of a real fire. Here was a living thing that talked with crackling tongues of flame and responded to tending. He really must persuade Mrs Butler to light his fire again. Even if he cleared it up himself in the morning, the rector decided, it would be well worth it.

  He leant back into a soft armchair that enfolded him comfortably and looked with pleasure about the little room. How pretty it was, how warm, how welcoming! This was Dimity's work he knew, and how well she did it–timidly, unobtrusively, but with love. His eye lit upon the pink azalea and a small pang shot through the rector's enveloping sense of well-being. Harold Shoosmith, now he came to think of it, also had the knack of making a place comfortable. It wasn't money alone that did it, the rector mused rather sadly, although Shoosmith was a wealthy man compared with himself. It was an ability to choose and place the most suitable objects together, to plan lighting, to attend to small details. The rector thought of his great barn of a rectory, the cold corridors, the lofty Gothic windows and the everlasting cross-draughts from them, and he sighed.

  At this moment, Dimity and Winnie returned bearing the tea-things, and the rector seeing a pile of crumpets, took the proffered toasting fork, set about his primitive cooking and felt much more cheerful.

  'What news of the statue?' asked Winnie, during the meal.

  'Edward's doing very well,' answered the rector. 'He has asked several people to submit designs and we should be able to commission one of them very soon. We've also tried to find Nathaniel's grandson, but we're having some difficulty.'

  'What about the daughter?' asked Dimity, pouring tea.

  'Nathaniel's daughter? Dead, I fear. She married rather a ne'er-do-well and lived in great poverty somewhere in the West Country. But we hope to trace the son. He should be a man in his thirties now. We all feel that he should be consulted in this business of a memorial to his grandfather. And, as Edward suggested, it would be extremely pleasant if he could unveil it in March.'

  'Do you think it will be ready?' asked Wmnie doubtfully. Thrush Green was not noted for its punctuality.

  'I'm sure of it,' said the rector sturdily. He withdrew a black and smoking crumpet hastily from the fire, blew out the flames and looked at it dubiously. 'Perhaps I'd better keep this one,' he suggested. The ladies agreed with somewhat unnecessary fervour, the rector impaled another crumpet, and tried again.

  'I can't think why Ella is so late,' exclaimed Dimity. 'She must have stopped for tea somewhere. I hope she comes back before you go.'

  But Ella did not. By the time she had finished her tea at The Fuchsia Bush, said farewell to Dotty whose mind still ran dangerously upon the man trap, and stumped up the steep hill to Thrush Green, Winnie Bailey and the rector had departed.

  In the hollow the lights of the little town twinkled in the clear night air, and the rector, walking across to his house looked down upon them with affection. He was much attached to Lulling, and even more to Thrush Green, finding delight in their many aspects. Tonight, snug in its valley, with the dark hills girding it around, the small town appeared particularly endearing.

  He gave it a last look before opening his heavy front door and stepping inside.

  The house was silent and struck him as cold and damp as he closed the door behind him. He went into his study, switched on the light and looked about him.

  The electric fire stood cold and gleaming. Above his desk upon the wall hung a crucifix. The paint was a pale green which gave the room a sub-aqueous look and did nothing to add warmth to the rector's surroundings. The roof was uncomfortably high, and the thin curtains moved restlessly in a continuous draught from the lofty narrow windows.

  The rector, remembering the cosiness he had just left, sighed at so much bleakness and switched on the electric fire. It had all been so different when his dear wife had been alive. Life sometimes seemed as forlorn as this study, he reflected.

  Then he caught sight of the cross upon the wall, chided himself, and sat down at his desk to work.

  12. The Fur and Feather Whist Drive

  MISS FOGERTY, looking at her restless class of infants, thanked her stars that it was the last afternoon of term. The last day of any term was exhausting, but the one which ended the autumn term, less than a week before Christmas, was enough to try the patience of a saint, particularly if one had the misfortune to be looking after the infants.

  Beside themselves with excitement they had fidgeted and squealed, giggled and wept unI'll Miss Fogerty had clapped her hands and said sternly:

  'Heads down!'

  And when the last head had subsided on to fat young arms folded across the little desks, she had added, for good measure:

  'No story unI'll you have been absolutely quiet for five minutes!'

  Only then had comparative peace descended upon the classroom, and Miss Fogerty had felt her sanity return.

  She walked to the window and looked out at the darkening sky. It was nearly half-past three on the shortest day of the year. Beyond the little playground the fields dropped away to the gentle valley where the path ran to Lulling Woods and where Dotty Harmer's solitary cottage lay. Sheep were grazing on the slope and one sat, chewing the cud, so near the hedge that Miss Fogerty could see it plainly, looking like Wordsworth, with its long nose and benign expression. Blandly surveying the landscape, rotating its jaws in placid motion, it gave Miss Fogerty a blessed feeling of calm.

  She turned back to look at the class, much refreshed in spirit. The children lay in varied positions of torpor. Above them hung paper chains in rainbow hues, and here and there a Chinese lantern dangled, swaying gently in the breeze from the windows. Around the room went a procession of scarlet-coated Father Christmases, with white beards made of cotton wool and shiny black paper boots. Normally, all these garnishings would have been taken down before the end of term, but the Thrush Green Entertainments committee had asked for the decorations to be left up as the school would be in use for the Fur and Feather Whist Drive in the evening.

  'We will take down everything,' Mr Henstock had assured the two teachers, and the ladies had been truly thankful.

  The great wall-clock ticked on past the half-hour and Miss Fogerty returned to the high teacher's chair ready to read the promised story. She looked down upon the bowed heads, ranging in colour from gipsy-black to flaxen, of the class before her. On each desk lay the friuts of the term's industry-waiting to be taken home. Spuming tops made of cardboard, calendars, shopping pads, paper mats and Christmas cards jostled together. Soon they would be carried to cottage homes as treasured presents for the families there.

  'You may sit up now,' said Miss Fogerty graciously, from her perch.

  Thirty-odd flushed faces turned eagerly upward. Three heavy heads remained in sleep upon the wooden desks and Miss Fogerty wisely let them remain there. She opened her little book and raised her voice:

  'Once upon a time there was an old pig called Aunt Pettitoes. She had eight of a family; four little girl pigs—'

  The children wriggled ecstatically and settled down to hear yet again the talc of the Christmas Pig–Pigling Bland.

  Later, that evening, the paper chains swung above the parents and other inhabitants of Thrush Green and Lulling.

  The Fur and Feather Whist Drive, whose posters had fluttered bravely from gatepost and tree trunk during the past few weeks, was in progress. The glass partition between Miss Fogerty's and Miss Watson's classrooms had been pushed back with ear-splitting protests from its steel runners. The desks and tables were stacked at one end and upon them lay the prizes. Pride of place went to a large turkey, its snow-white head and
scarlet wattles adding a festive touch. Ranged neatly on each side were chickens, pheasants and hares, and everyone agreed that it was a fine show.

  The rickety card tables were packed closely together, the tortoise stove was red-hot, and there was a pervading odour of warm bodies and drying country clothes. Faces glistened with the heat, the unaccustomed concentration and the excitement of the chase after the dead game.

  At half-time a halt was called for refreshments and the assembly drank coffee or tea from the thick white cups owned and loaned by Thrush Green Sunday School. Conversation was brisk as the brawn sandwiches and sausage rolls were munched, and Nelly Tilling, who dearly loved a whist drive, let her dark eye rove round the company.

  Albert Piggott, she decided, was softening up nicely. He had protested against accompanying her to the whist drive, but she had persuaded him 'to look in" towards the end.

  'Making me look a fool!' he had muttered audibly.' What'll people say, seein' you hangin' round me day in and day out?'

  'No more'n they're saying now,' retorted Mrs Tilling, with spirit. 'Let their tongues wag. What cause have you to bother?'

  He had said no more. He was fast discovering that Nelly Tilling pursued her course very steadily, and it would need a cleverer man than he was to deflect her from it.

  She was enjoying her evening. The cards had been in her favour, and already her score was high. With any luck she should carry home one of the plump birds before her. She appraised them with an experienced eye. The magnificent turkey apart, she decided that she would choose the brace of pheasants to the right of it if she were lucky enough to have the choice.

  Meanwhile, with an eye to the future, she heaved her formidable bulk from the chair and made her way to Miss Watson's side.

  The headmistress knew Mrs Tilling only slightly, but as she had been sitting alone she imagined that the plump widow had taken pity on her plight, and so was unusually welcoming.