Winter in Thrush Green (15 page)

'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 crumpets. 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.

M
ISS
F
OGERTY
, 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.

'Terrible hot in here,' began Nelly, throwing off a small fur tippet but lately released from its moth-balls. 'I'd say that stove of yours draws too strong.'

'Indeed, not always,' responded Miss Watson. 'The wind has a lot to do with it. It must have gone round to the north, I think, to pull the stove up like that. Unless the caretaker has put too much on, of course.'

Mrs Tilling permitted herself a perturbed clucking noise.

'Need a lot of knowing, those stoves,' she replied. 'Want several trips a day really to see they're all right!' This was a master stroke as Nelly knew quite well that the present caretaker lived at Nidden and could only attend to the stove once a day. She was delighted to see a pang of anxiety cross Miss Watson's face.

'Can be real dangerous, you know,' she continued smugly, following up her attack. 'I knew a man once as was blown to smithereens by one of them things exploding. He was never the same again.'

'I can imagine it,' said the headmistress.

'And, of course, with children,' Nelly went on forcefully, 'you simply can't be too careful. Especially,' she added, as a
happy touch, 'when they're not your own.' She spoke as though the sudden disintegration of one's own offspring could be borne comparatively lightly.

'Oh, I really don't think that would ever happen—' began Miss Watson, a shade doubtfully.

'How often does the caretaker get in?' asked Nelly, with assumed concern. 'I can see by the floors and the paint and that it can't be very often.'

Miss Watson bridled slightly, and Nelly wondered if she had gone too far. Best tackle it slowly, she told herself, if she wanted this job in a month or two.

'Mrs Cooke comes in for an hour or so every evening,' said Miss Watson with a touch of
hauteur,
'and works very well.'

'Mrs Cooke?" queried Nelly, with wonder. 'Would that be Ada Cooke I was at school with? She used to be in service at Lady Field's place. Always worked well, I heard. Leastways she did before she had that row of children. Must tie her-can't do what you used to with a gaggle of kids under your feet, of course.'