Thrush Green Page 7

  It was at this moment that Dotty Harmer fumbled her way into "The Fuchsia Bush." Her steel spectacles were awry, her woolen stockings lay, as always, in wrinkles around her chicken-thin legs, and her hair sprouted at all angles beneath a speckled-gray chip-straw hat.

  The less languid of the attendants went forward to greet her.

  "Just one of your small stone-milled loaves, please," murmured Dotty, peering into the glass cabinet that held the loaves.

  The girl replied with considerable satisfaction that all the small ones had been sold, but there was, most providentially, just one large one left. This threw Dotty into the greatest agitation. She dumped her string bag on the floor, thrust her hat farther back upon head, and began to pour out her troubles.

  "But I can't possibly use a large loaf! Living alone as I do a small one lasts me three days at least, and even if I make rusks of the last bit for the animals it is really more than I can manage. And in any case, now that the weather has turned warm I shan't need to light the stove and so there will be no means of making the rusks!"

  The girl suggested a small white loaf. Dotty's agitation was now tinged with horror.

  "A white loaf?" squeaked Dotty, with such repugnance that one might reasonably have supposed that she had been offered bread made from fine-ground human bones. "You should know by now my feelings about white bread. It never, never appears in my house!"

  "DOTTY!" bawled Miss Bembridge, at this point, in a voice that set the crockery rattling. "Get them to cut it in half!"

  The girl cast Ella a look so deadly that it was a wonder that Miss Bembridge's ample form was not shriveled to a small dead leaf. Dotty's face, however, was alight with relief.

  "Dear Ella! How sensible! Yes, of course," she said, turning to the assistant, "just cut the large whole-meal one in half."

  The girl flounced off to the kitchen, lips compressed, and returned with a bread board and knife. She cut the loaf in two and held the board out for Dotty's inspection.

  "Oh dear," said Dotty, her face clouding again, "I wonder if I really need half. It's quite a large amount, isn't it? I mean, for one person?" She peered anxiously at the girl's face for some help, but received none.

  After some tut-tutting she lifted first one piece of bread to the light, and then the other. She then sniffed at each, tasted a crumb or two which had fallen onto the board, and began to shake her head doubtfully.

  Mrs. Bailey became conscious that the bread knife still remained within the grip of the silent waitress, and felt that the time had come to intervene.

  "There are always the birds, Dotty dear," she pointed out. "Take the crustier half and come and have coffee."

  Dotty nodded and smiled. The girl flung one half into a paper bag and handed the bread board to her colleague with a long-suffering look. The knife, Mrs. Bailey was relieved to see, she set aside on a shelf, while she stood watching Dotty fumble among a dozen compartments of a large black purse for the money. Dotty's fingers, stained with many a herb, scrabbled first here then there, and the girl's foot began to tap ominously on the shining linoleum.

  At last Dotty raised a damp worried gaze from her labors and said:

  "I appear to have only a coat button, my door key and an Irish sixpence. Unless," she added, drawing forth a very crumpled piece of paper, "you can change a five-pound note!"

  Ben Curdle, stripped to the waist in the morning sunshine, sat on the grass with his back propped against one wheel of his caravan and a bottle of beer from "The Two Pheasants" propped between his knees.

  He had been hard at work now for over four hours. The main stands were all erected and Ben had just finished helping his cousin Sam to hitch the swing boats into place. It was heavy work, for the boats were old and cumbersome, though they looked gay enough, he admitted, with the fresh paint they had put on during the winter. If he had his way, thought Ben, he'd scrap them and get some of those new light ones. Just as safe and not so back-breaking to heave about. But with Gran as she was, what was the good of suggesting it?

  He watched his cousin Sam, who was sitting on the steps of his caravan with his flashy young wife. Ben had never liked either of them. He'd never trusted Sam since he had found him boasting one day of some shirts which he had stolen from a line in some cottage garden. It was not the sort of thing the Curdles did. If his old gran had ever heard about it Sam would have been given his marching orders, Ben knew. That incident had occurred many years before and Ben had made it pretty plain just what he thought of such goings-on, putting up with the tauntings of the older man in dour silence.

  A few months later Sam had married. Mrs. Curdle did not approve of the match. The girl, she told Sam bluntly, "had been anyone's" in the small Thames-side town from which he had brought her, but providing she buckled-to and worked her way with the fair, old Mrs. Curdle was agreeable to her joining them. The girl, Bella, had had the sense to keep out of the old lady's way as far as was possible, but she deeply resented the matriarch's caustic remarks about her thatch of hair, as yellow and brittle as straw from frequent dosings with peroxide, and the comments on her wardrobe, to which she gave considerable thought and expenditure. Sam bore the brunt of his wife's resentment in the privacy of their small caravan, and he often thought sadly to himself that although she was a real smart bit her tongue could fair flay a man. Three children had been born to them, whining and wet-nosed, but all three dressed extravagantly in the bright and shiny satins to which their mother was addicted.

  Ben watched the family now, and wondered, not for the first time, just how Sam managed to dress all that lot. There was fat old Bella in that red frock—a new one bought in the last town, he knew. And she had flaunted a watch under his nose last week that she'd told him Sam had bought for her. She'd said he'd been lucky with the horses, but you didn't have to be a wizard to know that horses let you down more often than they came home, mused young Ben.

  He drained his bottle, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and leaned forward upon the warm comfort of his knees under their black corduroy covering. He felt pretty sure that Sam was getting money dishonestly, and he could guess where. He knew, as did all the great Curdle family, exactly how much each of them received each week, for on Friday night the ritual of paying-out took place.

  The heads of each family and the single members, such as Ben, who were still underage and under Mrs. Curdle's direct protection, assembled in the old lady's caravan as soon as the lights of the fair had gone out. All the money from that night's stand was put into a great brass bowl ready to be transferred to a battered attaché case which was kept at the foot of Mrs. Curdle's mattress and was the Curdle Bank. Meanwhile the old lady had counted the week's takings already in the case and had allotted them with scrupulous justice to all concerned. Those with children had more, naturally, than those without. Mrs. Curdle would tell the company how much had been earned and would then call out each name in turn. The piles of money stood stacked before her on a small card table, which she had used to support her crystal in earlier days. The wages varied, of course, from week to week, according to the size of the town which the fair was visiting, the weather, rival attractions, accidents to gear and so on. But each man knew that the fierce old lady whose hawklike gaze terrified him was absolutely, ferociously, searingly honest, and if the handful of coins was pitifully small, as sometimes it was, without any doubt he had his right and proper share.

  There had been one or two members of the family who had demurred at this despotism in their time. They had been given their choice—to go or to stay willingly. Two had gone, and no one had ever heard of their fortunes, nor had Mrs. Curdle made any inquiries about them. They had left the Curdle family; therefore Mrs. Curdle had no further interest in them. The others elected to stay, and they spoke no more heresy.

  There were two ways, Ben knew, in which Sam could help himself to money. In the first place he could secrete some from his own takings and pay in the rest after each day's work. This was not as easy as it seemed, for many
eyes were about, the helpers on his stand would soon become suspicious and, in any case, the old lady, after years of experience, had a fairly shrewd idea of the amount to be expected.

  There was a second way. Mrs. Curdle had become increasingly careless of late in the disposal of the money. She was ill, she was old, she was habitually tired, and to heave up the mattress to put away odd sums of money in the case was becoming a burden. Quite often, Ben knew, she thrust it into the little drawer by the side of the half-door, or into a pewter teapot which stood on the mantelpiece beside the photograph of his dead father. Usually she roused herself to transfer it to the case, but Ben had seen, only the week before, notes and silver stuffed into the narrow dresser drawer, which hitherto had only held a shilling or two for a passing beggar or for the purchase of a loaf or a bottle of milk from some traveling tradesman that the caravans might meet in the lanes.

  The family came and went to its head's caravan a dozen times a day, and it would be the easiest thing in the world to abstract money from the drawer in Mrs. Curdle's absence. Sam made bets almost daily, and lately they had been heavier, Ben knew.

  St. Andrew's Church chimed the half-hour and Ben stirred himself. Half-past eleven already! He leaped to his feet stretching his arms luxuriously above his head. His corduroy trousers slipped, cool and comfortable, around his bare waist and the light breeze played across his naked shoulders refreshingly.

  He thought, with sudden joy, of his Molly. By half-past one he hoped to see her again. As soon as he had had his dinner with Gran, he would set off alone, through Lulling Woods to "The Drovers' Arms." She would be in the bar then, and with any luck would be free from two o'clock. He could hardly believe his good fortune in finding her again.

  He became conscious that Sam was calling to him to give a hand with the bell tent, which housed the small menagerie. Another hour's hard work would see the fair ready and waiting for the evening's fun. And then, Ben told himself, he had two more jobs ahead. To find Molly—that was the first and all-important one; and to keep a sharp eye on the movements of his cousin Sam to confirm his suspicions.

  "Coming, Sam!" he called, and went methodically about the first of the tasks ahead.

  After coffee the four ladies had returned together up the hill from Lulling. It was soon after twelve as they stood making their farewells on the corner of Thrush Green near the church. The sun was now overhead in a cloudless sky of powdery blue. The rooks were wheeling above the clump of elm trees by the path which led to Dotty Harmer's cottage, the dew had vanished from the grass and the shadows of the trees in the horse chestnut avenue lay foreshortened, like dark pools, at the foot of the trunks. Later they would creep, longer and longer, across the grass until they almost reached the edge of the green opposite Dr. Bailey's house, and that, Mrs. Bailey knew from many years' experience, meant that it was almost time for the music of the fair to begin.

  The heat shimmered above the caravans and along the white road to Nod and Nidden. The schoolchildren were skipping and darting home to their dinners.

  Dotty Harmer, her half-loaf clutched against her chest and the bulging string bag dangling at her side, was the first to leave the group and vanish down the narrow passage between the Piggotts' cottage and "The Two Pheasants."

  "And I wonder what her lunch is!" said Miss Bembridge. "Fried frogs with dandelion sauce, I expect. Poor old Dotty!"

  The mention of lunch threw Dimity Dean into extreme agitation.

  "We simply must fly," she said to Mrs. Bailey. Her watery eyes, screwed up against the sunshine, turned to St. Andrew's clock, which gave her small comfort.

  "Darling," she squeaked, in horror. "Look, ten past twelve and the fish still to be done!" She tugged ineffectually at Ella Bembridge's bolster-like arm. So might a fluttering fledgling have attempted to pull off a branch.

  Miss Bembridge gave a sigh that rustled the tissue paper over the lettuce in Mrs. Bailey's basket.

  "Needs must, I suppose, when the devil drives!" she boomed, and the two friends set off to their cottage leaving Mrs. Bailey to cross the grass to her own home.

  A piquant smell of fried pork chops and onions wafted from Mrs. Curdle's caravan as the doctor's wife passed nearby. The old lady was preparing lunch for herself and for Ben. Mrs. Bailey thought wryly of the bouquet which no doubt already lay in the matriarch's home, awaiting its bestowal, and she remembered, with a pang, that this might well be the last time that she would smell Mrs. Curdle's midday meal and receive a bunch of flowers, garish and gaudy, but made with love and in a spirit of steadfast gratitude, from those gnarled dusky hands.

  Mrs. Bailey paused with her hand on her gate and looked back at the morning glory of Thrush Green. Would it ever look like this again on the first day of May, so blue, so golden, so breath-takingly innocent?

  She looked with affection at the cheerful bustle of the little fairground, the tents, the flapping canvas, the blue smoke spiraling from a camp fire, and the brightly clad fair folk moving among it all. They were as gay as butterflies, thought Mrs. Bailey, and as ephemeral. By tomorrow the fair would be over, and only a ring of cold ashes and the ruts made by wooden wheels would remind them of their visitors. The mellow enduring houses, which sat like sunning cats, foursquare and tranquil, around the wide expanse of Thrush Green would have it to themselves again after tonight's brief bonfire-blaze of glory.

  "A pity!" said Mrs. Bailey, with a sigh, looking across at Mrs. Curdle's caravan, blooming like some gay transient flower against the gray background of St. Andrew's. "We've weathered a lot together."

  PART TWO

  Afternoon

  7. Noonday Heat

  THRUSH GREEN drowsed under the growing heat of the midday sun. It was that somnolent time, soon after one o'clock, when everything lay hushed. In cottage kitchens, where the midday dinner had been served an hour before, the plates had been washed and returned to their shelves, the tables had been scrubbed, the checked cloths spread upon them and the potted plants placed to the best advantage. After the hubbub of the morning the kitchens showed their peaceful afternoon faces, while their owners dozed in the armchairs by the hob or settled down to enjoy a quiet cup of tea.

  The steady ticking of a clock, the sizzle of a kettle, or the rustle of a slowly read newspaper were the only sounds to be heard in that tranquil haven of time between the two tides of morning and afternoon.

  But in the big sunny kitchen at the Bassetts' Ruth and Paul had only just finished their meal. Much to Paul's joy Dr. Lovell had said that he could get up, and providing that he had an hour's rest later in the day, he could go to the fair for a short while.

  "And you'll be fit for school on Monday," he had pronounced. Paul, young enough still to dote on this institution, was energetic in his thanks.

  He had eaten well, demolishing a plate of cherries, bottled earlier by his mother, and now rattled on gaily as he counted his stones.

  Ruth sat beside him still in a state of bemusement at the inner peace which now engulfed her. Her gaze was fixed upon the sunlit garden, and she hardly heard the little boy.

  "Mummy says girls count their stones to see who they'll marry, and boys count to see what they'll be," chattered Paul, busily. "So I'll tell you what I'm going to be."

  He counted slowly, nodding his way through the rhyme:

  "Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor

  Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief,

  Tinker, tailor—"

  He paused and sighed heavily.

  "A tailor, Aunt Ruth! Hear that? A tailor! I wouldn't want to be a tailor, would you?"

  Ruth roused herself.

  "I'll tell you another rhyme," she said, taking the spoon from her nephew. She leaned over the plate and recited slowly:

  "Soldier bold, sailor true,

  Skilled physician, Cambridge blue,

  Titled noble, squire hale,

  Portly rector, curate pale.

  Soldier bold, sailor true—"

  "How's that?" she inquired, looking at him.<
br />
  "Sailor true." Paul nodded with immense satisfaction. "Much better. I'd like that!"

  Ruth put down the spoon and was about to collect the plates but Paul stopped her.

  "Your turn, Aunt Ruth. I'll see who you're going to marry. Say it with me."

  Together they chanted slowly, pushing the wine-colored stones along the rim of the blue and white plates.

  "Soldier bold, sailor true,

  Skilled physician, Cambridge blue,

  Titled noble, squire hale,

  Portly rector, curate pale,

  Soldier bold, sailor true,

  Skilled physician—"

  Ruth put down the spoon hastily as she came to the last of the stones.

  "What's that?" inquired Paul.

  "A doctor," said Ruth, brushing the stones into one plate.

  "Like Dr. Lovell?" asked the child.

  "Or Dr. Bailey," said Ruth evenly. She rose and took the plates to the sink.

  "He's too old," objected Paul, "and Mrs. Bailey might not want you. But Dr. Lovell would do."

  "If I'd had one less cherry, Paul, I might have married you," said Ruth, smiling at him. But the child was not to be put off his train of thought so easily, Ruth noticed wryly.

  "Dr. Lovell's very nice," persisted the child. "Would you marry him?"

  "Of course not!"

  "Why not?"

  "For one thing he hasn't asked me." Ruth said lightly. "Now, would you like to play in the garden while I wash up?"

  The child ignored this suggestion and fixed his remorseless blue gaze upon his aunt. Ruth could not help feeling like a mother bird who has trailed a wing before some particularly dogged hunter only to find her wiles are of no avail.