(7/13) Affairs at Thrush Green (15 page)

The hawthorn hedge, which bordered the dusty lane, bristled with fresh red sprigs and was laced with sticky young goosegrass clambering up it from the ditch below. A number of black and white cows were clustered by a farm gate and surveyed him pensively from black eyes beneath a fringe of eyelashes. Their jaws worked rhythmically as they chewed the cud, and Kit thought how soporific it all was, the slow movements, the gentle heat on one's back, the fragrance of bruised grass and the distant hills veiled in a blue haze.

For two pins he would have settled himself under a hedge, and had a snooze, but he dismissed the temptation and went dutifully onward.

He found the house, a pleasant square Georgian building which had once been a farmhouse, and knocked at the door. A red admiral butterfly opened and shut its wings on the path beside him, and everywhere was very quiet.

He began to wonder if anyone were at home, or if perhaps he should have gone round to the back door, when he heard sounds within and Mrs Jenner stood before him with a middle-aged man beside her.

'Mrs Jenner? I'm Kit Armitage. The rector suggested you might be able to help me.'

'Please come in,' said Mrs Jenner.

'Well, I'll be off,' said the man.

'Please don't hurry away on my behalf,' began Kit.

'I was just off anyway,' said the man. He waved a general farewell and made for the gate.

'I hope I didn't interrupt,' said Kit, following his hostess into the hall.

'My brother,' explained Mrs Jenner. 'He farms next door. Percy Hodge. Perhaps you've heard of him?'

'I think maybe the rector may have mentioned him.'

'He's going through a bad time at the moment,' confided Mrs Jenner, leading the way upstairs. 'His wife is giving him trouble.'

'I'm sorry to hear that,' said Kit, surprised at such confidences from a stranger.

'Second wife, you know. Not a patch on the first. And a bit flighty between you and me.'

She threw open the door of the main room upstairs, and Kit, like the Henstocks before him, felt a glow of pleasure. Sun streamed through the large sash windows. The fruit trees were in bud below, and the scent of late narcissi from clumps in the orchard wafted about the room.

'What a lovely room!' exclaimed Kit. it is nice,' agreed Mrs Jenner equably. 'Gets all the sun that's going. Come and see the bedrooms. One is quite big, next to this room, and there's a smaller one at the back.'

She showed Kit everywhere, even opening cupboards and drawers. Everything shone and Kit wondered if he would ever be able to keep the place in the apple-pie order now before him.

In the kitchen he made a confession.

'I'm not much of a hand at cooking, I'm afraid, Mrs Jenner. I've lived abroad a great deal and been rather spoilt in that direction.'

Mrs Jenner surveyed him kindly and then smiled.

'I could cook you something most evenings, if you like,' she offered. 'Wouldn't be anything special, you understand, and not on Tuesdays or Thursdays when I go to Choral and Bingo, but we could come to some arrangement, I feel sure.'

Kit, much touched, began to thank her. But she cut him short.

'Any friend of the Henstocks is a friend of mine, Mr Armitage. That man is a born saint, and I've just been telling Perce to go and have a talk with him about his married troubles.'

Poor Charles, thought Kit. Still, no doubt he was accustomed to such problems.

'Well,' he began diffidently, 'if you'll have me, Mrs Jenner?'

'With all the pleasure in the world,' said his new landlady.

11. Problems At Thrush Green

AS THE weeks passed, and high summer embraced Lulling and Thrush Green, Albert Piggott's fears of the return of his Nelly grew less painful.

He regretted the journey to see her. It had been a complete waste of time and money, in his opinion, and it looked as though that confounded Charlie Wright still reigned supreme in his wife's fickle heart.

She must have been out of hospital for weeks now, he told himself with some relief, and that silly threat of hers to spend her convalescence at Thrush Green could safely be ignored.

In fact, Albert was living in a fool's paradise, and things were far from harmonious at Nelly's present address.

It was true that the lady had recovered with remarkable rapidity from the operation, although the surgeon had been quite ferocious about Nelly's superfluous fat and had practically ordered her to lose three stones in weight as soon as she had come round from the anaesthetic. He gave her to understand that it was only his consummate skill which had enabled him to get to the vital parts on this occasion.

Nelly, too weak to argue, agreed to take home a diet sheet which she had no intention of reading, and there the matter rested.

Charlie had called regularly at the hospital, and Nelly had looked forward eagerly to returning home. She could hardly wait to get back to a bed without a horrible piece of plastic sheeting over the mattress, and to some windows which she could have open all night instead of enduring the enveloping hot stuffiness of the ward throughout the hours of darkness.

Charlie took her home and she went straight to bed. In the days that followed, she got up for a few hours and enjoyed cooking Charlie's evening meal and cleaning the house again.

In the midst of her relief at being at large again, she hardly noticed that Charlie was somewhat subdued.

He came home later than usual too, and one evening smelt strongly of chypre perfume. It was a cloying scent that Nelly had always disliked, being an eau-de-Cologne woman herself, and she was alert at once. However, she had the sense to say nothing.

When Charlie had driven to work the next day in his oil van, Nelly began a systematic search through Charlie's drawers and the small desk where he kept his papers. She found nothing, but the smell of the chypre was faintly on the air when she came to the wardrobe.

Only Charlie's clothes hung there. Nelly had appropriated the bedroom cupboard on her arrival, and had little occasion to open the wardrobe. When she did, on this day, she went swiftly through all the pockets, and found a crumpled note in the jacket of his best blue serge suit. It said:

'Will be at the usual 6.30. If you can't make it, give the
Grand a ring. 2946.

Best love—
Gladys'

Nelly knew at once who was this correspondent. Gladys and her husband Norman were a couple who lived on the other side of town and whom they met frequently at various pubs where small, but incredibly noisy, bands played, and the customers joined in hearty singing which grew louder as the air grew bluer with cigarette smoke and dubious stories.

It came back to Nelly now, that chypre was the perfume which always engulfed Gladys. Her mouth grew grim as she folded the note and put it into her handbag as evidence of Charlie's misdoings.

Strangely enough, although she was angry at this deceit, she felt sorrier for Norman than she did for herself. He was a poor fool, she had always thought, no match for his boisterous wife with her thick lipstick and over-blacked eyelashes. Still, despite being something of an old stick, Nelly had found him very polite and always thoughtful for his wife's welfare. It was a rotten trick to play on poor old Norman, to carry on with Charlie like this.

Not that she imagined that Gladys was solely to blame. Nelly knew her Charlie's winning ways all too well. Six of one and half a dozen of the other, she told herself, whirling furiously about the house with a duster.

She would tackle him the minute he had finished the plate of bacon and liver prepared for him. No point in wasting that. Food was important to Nelly. And as soon as he'd apologised properly she would let him understand that it was never to occur again. She would leave it to him to inform Gladys that all was off. And naturally, there could be no more convivial evenings at the pub with that pair. No, forgive and forget would be the best way to tackle this problem, she decided, but Charlie must eat humble pie first.

The possibility of any other reaction on Charlie's part did not occur to Nelly, strangely enough. It was all the more shocking that evening when the note was smoothed out beside Charlie's empty plate, and Nelly stood, arms akimbo, awaiting his apologies and explanations.

'Oh, tumbled to it at last, have you?' said Charlie, grinning maddeningly. 'Well, now you know, what are you going to do about it?'

Nelly's wrath rose.

'It's what
you
are going to do about it that matters! You can tell that Jezebel to clear off pronto.'

'And suppose I don't intend to?'

'Then you can do without me.'

'Too right I can,' responded Charlie with spirit. 'I reckon I took you in when you'd fallen out with that misery Albert, and now it's time you went back.'

Nelly was flabbergasted. For two minutes she stood there, the superfluous fat so denigrated by her surgeon, quivering with rage and shock. Things were not turning out at all well. She decided to change her tactics.

'And what if I tell Norman what's going on behind his back?'

'You needn't try. He knows all right, and he won't stand in Gladys's way.'

'But what about me?' Nelly wailed, becoming tearful. 'What about all I've done for you, looking after this place, and cooking meal after meal? Haven't you got a shred of decent feeling left?'

'Now look here,' said Charlie pushing her down into a chair and facing her across the table. 'Let's get this straight. You came here of your own accord. Well, I was sorry for you, and let you come. Now it's my turn to want a change. Gladys is coming here any day now, so you've got notice to quit.'

'But where shall I go?' cried Nelly, now sobbing noisily. 'You know I haven't got no money, and there's no one round here I know well enough to take me in.'

'Look, girl! You've got Albert. He's still your husband. You may not get on like a house on fire, but my advice to you is to go back, and try and make a go of it this time. I warn you, there's no room for you here now. Gladys and I are going to marry as soon as we can. Norman's agreeable—well, perhaps
agreeable
ain't the right word—but he says it suits him.'

At this, Nelly put her head down upon the table by the greasy liver-and-bacon plate, and howled alarmingly.

Charlie, a kindly man at heart, patted the massive heaving shoulders comfortingly.

'Oh, come on! Don't take on so! You knew it wouldn't last. You go and have a good wash and go to bed early. You'll feel better then, and I'll bring you a nice cup of tea in bed. How's that?'

After some minutes, Nelly rose, snuffling heavily, and made her way to the bathroom. She was speechless with shock at the way things had turned out, and numbed with misery.

True to his word, Charlie brought in a cup of tea. He was wearing his outdoor jacket.

'I'm off to Gladys's. See you first thing before I go off to work.'

'Oh Charlie!' wailed Nelly, the tears beginning again.

'Cheer up,' said her faithless lover. 'I'll give you a hand with your packing tomorrow.'

And he vanished before Nelly had time to answer.

Nelly was not alone in her matrimonial troubles. Percy Hodge was equally unhappy. His second wife, Doris, who had seemed the ideal companion when he had wooed her at The Drovers' Arms at Lulling Woods, had changed considerably after becoming his wife.

He thought of his dear Gertie, now dead some three years. What a hand with pastry! What a manager on the five pounds a week he had allowed her for housekeeping! How he missed her.

Well, they said: 'Marry in haste and repent at leisure.' Not that he had rushed into this second marriage. He had courted Mrs Bailey's Jenny long enough before approaching Doris, but she'd refused him. Strange, thought Percy, straightening his back from hoeing between the rows of peas. You would have thought she would have been pleased to exchange domestic service for married bliss, and after all, he was still an attractive chap, he believed, otherwise why had Doris snatched at his offer?

Women were odd creatures. The smell of pastry burning floated from the back door. His Doris was no hand at cooking, that was a fact. When he thought of the meals that Gertie used to cook, and the stuff that his present wife put before him, he grieved afresh. If only he had been able to persuade Jenny to share his hearth and home!

There was no doubt about it. Marriage to Doris had been a sore mistake. Without the company of The Drovers' Arms crowd, she had grown peevish. Occasionally, she took herself off to Bingo with his sister MrsJenner, but that was only because she was pressed to go.

There were constant rows, mainly about money. As Percy told her often enough, Gertie had managed for years on five pounds a week, and he did not see why Doris could not do the same. Farmers weren't made of money, he had said only that morning.

And what answer had he had? A stream of abuse which had shocked him. She must have picked up such language from The Drovers' Arms. Not from Ted and Bessie Allen, who had run it for years now, but there were some pretty rough types that came into the public bar of an evening and were too free with their expressions. Percy had been forced to walk out of the kitchen in the face of such a verbal assault.