The Flowering Thorn (15 page)

The facts were faced: or at any rate as many as Lesley had noticed.

2

Of the others, the ignored, the chief was this: that for the first time in ten years she was getting a steady eight hours' sleep. Her body moved, though ungraciously, in clean air, was adequately fed, had almost ceased to ask for alcohol. And with the gradual return of physical poise the bitter mental irritation of the autumn passed into something so much less positive that it might almost be termed acquiescence. It was like a hibernation, a hibernation of all the faculties, in which even her relations with Patrick lost much of their bitterness. She no longer hated him. Occasionally, at the sight of his steadily increasing sturdiness, she even felt a faint satisfaction. But in general their intercourse continued to be marked by an oddly formal politeness: a dispassionate attention, on Lesley's side, to food and clothing, and on Pat's an almost startling exhibition of best behaviour. He was not an unhappy child: he spent too much time with the young Pomfrets for that: but he was silent, self-contained, and with Lesley at least, extremely undemonstrative. The society of one adult and four bigger children was making him older than his years, a boy instead of a baby; whatever he did was rational, and he had Scots blood on both sides.

3

His return from the Vicarage was naturally a cause for regret, which an increasing equanimity, however, enabled Lesley to bear with rather less annoyance than she anticipated. Her own simple festivities had passed off without a hitch: she had smoked her cigarettes, read
War and Peace
in a little under three days, and was now fully prepared to defend her original estimate. Some of her points, indeed, were so remarkably good that she was almost tempted to waste them on Mrs. Sprigg: but common sense prevailed, and the small-talk at the cottage continued as laconic as ever. Pat and Mrs. Sprigg, indeed, used to converse with each other in the kitchen, where they exchanged detailed lists of everything they had eaten for the last five days: but this Lesley did not know, and as far as she was concerned Patrick brought back from the Vicarage exactly as much conversation as he had taken with him. He did occasionally, however, volunteer some clean-cut statement of fact, especially at luncheon, where Mrs. Sprigg's waiting made the pace a trifle slow: and a day or so after the New Year broke a post-pudding silence to say that the Three Pigeons' signboard was once more in position.

“They put it up this morning,” he explained gravely, “with Mr. Walpole's ladder. But the man's gone away.”

From the other side of the hatch an aged voice hastened to corroborate.

“That's right, Miss Frewen. Went off last night, 'e did, and Florrie Walpole crying 'er eyes out.” Mrs. Sprigg sniffed contemptuously. “‘You just wait another nine months,' I said to 'er, ‘and then you may 'ave something to cry about.' But they're a leaky lot, them Walpole's, an' always 'ave been.”

“If you look under the bureau upstairs, Pat,” said Miss Frewen swiftly, “you'll find a pair of heavy outdoor shoes.”

4

For another odd habit which had imperceptibly grown on her was that of going for long solitary walks. The weather was abominable—Pat and the Pomfrets spent most of their time in the barn—but despite a permanent treacly slush, and often in the face of a heavy rain, Lesley set out day after day to tramp across to Wendover, turn by the church, and fight her way up to the slope of the Chilterns. They gave her no pleasure, these excursions: it was simply that her healthy body now needed more to pit itself against than the handle of the well-crank, and in this daily battle with the wind found a deep animal satisfaction. Her mind, on these occasions, rarely wandered farther than the puddle beneath her foot or the bramble catching her coat: she thought from minute to minute of a rut to be avoided, of shelter under a hedge. Pausing only for extreme fatigue, she had grown familiar with the road while knowing nothing of the country; and it was a rare chance indeed that held her, that afternoon, just long enough motionless to observe, with a faint stirring of disapproval, how far Nature was lagging behind the modern landscapist. Everything in the Vale was pure Royal Academy: all dark intersecting hedges and snow-coloured sky.

“Pure Academy! Pure Jigsaw!” said Lesley aloud; and continuing for another five yards or so came upon a heavy bucolic figure leaning over a gate. It was Mr. Pomfret.

He had not heard her, however, but appeared to be lost in contemplation. A long and oddly-cut overcoat muffled him against the wind, a soft grey fisherman's hat descended well over his ears: in their big woollen gloves his hands gripped resolutely at the wood. He might have been praying, or thinking, or composing his next sermon; but in spite of his stillness he was almost certainly not asleep.

The molten slush deadening her footsteps, Lesley moved cautiously on until the broad stooping back was safely rounded and she could once more quicken her pace. At that moment the Vicar turned.

“Good-afternoon,” said Lesley at once. His children took Pat off her hands for six hours a day.

“Miss Frewen?” For a moment he stared at her almost stupidly. Then turning back to the gate, and with a wide, clumsy gesture, he said,

“Come here and look at this.”

Still thinking of Pat, Lesley picked her way through the deeper mud till she stood beside him. The field before them dropped sharply down: below lay the Vale of Aylesbury. It was flat, dun-coloured, and just as she had seen it a few moments earlier.

“I could stand here all day,” said the Vicar.

He was staring straight ahead of him, as though at something beautiful; and sideways glancing at his rapt and stubborn face, Lesley decided not to waste the simile of the jigsaw.

“My God!” said the Vicar suddenly. “If I could paint!”

Lesley glanced again. In spite of the oath, it sounded almost like a prayer.… And all at once, her perfect social memory, so many months unemployed, supplied the right tag.

“Haven't you a nephew who paints, Mr. Pomfret? You should get him down here.”

The Vicar detached his gaze and turned to face her.

“I see the children have been telling you about Hilary. He once painted a zebra which they've never forgotten.”

“It ranks,” Lesley assured him, “with a visit to the dentist. By the way, where
is
it he exhibits?”

“Somewhere off Cork Street, I believe, with a group of several other young persons. They call themselves the London Reds.”

Involuntarily Lesley looked her surprise. The London Reds! But wasn't that Hugo Dove's gang, and really rather brilliant? Exclusive, too, which was more than most of them were! And aloud she said,

“Then you certainly ought to get him here. It would be terribly interesting to see what he'd make of it.”

“A mess,” said Mr. Pomfret.

For a moment the placid stupidity of it exasperated her beyond words. Everything was a mess, no doubt, in his view, that did not closely resemble a tinted photograph! Controlling her voice to a decent civility, Lesley took up the cudgels.

“I thought you said he had a picture in the London Reds?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Vicar simply, “but it was done on lavatory paper.” And turning back to the gate he resumed his contemplation.

Lesley, however, remained where she was, experiencing to the full a most curious sensation. It was almost—(
God
, what a fool!)—as though she hadn't been quite quick enough.…

A second later her face changed: amusement had surprised her. So
that
was why the zebra lived so long in infant memory! And as a sidelight on the London Reds—really at least as entertaining as anything one picked up at Elissa's.…

With lips still curved she glanced towards the gate: he was still absorbed, she could easily get by. Directly before her, in a series of wide and winding sweeps, the Westover road descended to the Vale: there was a wind at her back if she wanted to take it. And then suddenly, inexplicably, her lips moved and the words formed themselves:

“Do you know Tolstoy's
War and Peace?
” asked Lesley of the Vicar.

CHAPTER EIGHT

With the first days of spring, like some busy little animal, Patrick began to dig. He dug squatting on his behind, patching with brown the seats of two pairs of knickers before Lesley observed and restrained him: but since it was beyond all others his preferred position, and since he must apparently dig or burst, she gave him an old square of carpet that was lying in the barn and made him carry it about like a Mohammedan his prayer-rug.

It was while he was thus engaged that he found the crocuses.

One was yellow and one was white, and they were growing far down the orchard at the foot of a pear-tree. Called out to wonder, Lesley emerged from behind
The Times
and picked her way distrustfully over the still-damp grass.

“They're crocuses, Pat,” she said, one eye still on the Foreign News.

“Can I pick them?”

“I shouldn't. They'll only die in the house.”

“Alec has them,” said Pat. Alec was the eldest Pomfret.

“I think Alec's are in bowls,” said Lesley.

“Can I have them in bowls?”

“No,” said Lesley, “it's too late. And don't sit down on the wet grass, Pat; if you must kneel, get your mat.”

It was still, for them, quite a long conversation; but he had lately grown far more communicative. This change Lesley attributed solely to the influence of the young Pomfrets, and never for one moment connected it with herself; but an impartial observer would possibly have hesitated. It was almost as though, in some way or other, she had become slightly less forbidding to the young. For the Pomfrets had begun to talk to her too. They told her what they had for dinner, and when they were going to have their hairs washed, and many other details of an increasingly intimate nature. And they also, sometimes indirectly, told her a good deal about Pat.

“He wishes his name was Frewen too, you know,” a Pomfret child once observed casually.

The prettiness of the sentiment took Lesley aback. It sounded more like little Lord Fauntleroy than her stolid young Scot.

“But his own name is such a nice one!” she exclaimed.

“Not so nice as yours. Yours is
lovely
,” said the Pomfret child enthusiastically. “It's almost like Bruin.”

Lesley was struck by a sudden notion.

“Did Pat think of that too?”

“Oh, yes. For a long time, you know, he thought it
was
Bruin. Like Bobby Bruin the Bad Bear,” said the Pomfret child.…

Such flights of imagination, however, were comparatively rare. By far his most outstanding trait was an extreme tenacity. Whatever he undertook—the digging of an earth-plot, the unknotting of a string—he carried through to completion. What he had not finished at bedtime, he returned to in the morning. In the matter of crocuses, though, he bided his time and returned in two days.

“Alec,” he observed at breakfast, “says it isn't too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“Crocuses,” said Pat. ‘You get a bowl, 'n fill it with fine earth, and you put the bulbs just underneath.”

“Pat,” said Lesley.

He stopped at once. She wasn't cross, like Mrs. Sprigg sometimes got, she was just … up there.

“I'm not going to have any bowls,” said Lesley, “they're too much nuisance.” She spoke purely by instinct, her previous experience of domestic horticulture being limited to the couple of window-boxes at Beverley Court. But her tone was final.

Patrick ate some more bread-and-butter and shifted his ground.

“If I had a penny, d'you know what I'd do?”

“No,” said Lesley.

“I'd buy some nasturtium seeds.”

Fully expecting to feel exasperated, Lesley drew up the paper and erected it into a screen; it was against her principles to be constantly scolding, especially at breakfast-time. But to her natural surprise, no irritation arose. Instead of annoying, Pat's wary and indefatigable hopefulness suddenly amused her. It was so very Scotch! With the flicker of sympathy, moreover, came a flicker of understanding. After all, what could be more natural? He had dug, now he wanted to sow. And moved by one of the oddest impulses of her life, Lesley took him down to the Post Office and spent a shilling on seeds.

They bought nasturtium, mignonette, sweet pea, sunflower, variegated candytuft, and the irresistible coryopsis.

2

The weather towards Easter was so exceptionally good that Lesley was forced to notice it. Her emotion, to be sure, was purely amateur: no pasionate nature-worship suddenly filled her heart. She merely observed with appreciation that a series of clear sunny days had made everything green. Even the Walpoles' oak was coloured, and her own exhausted apple-trees, while the chestnuts in Pig Lane would have done credit to May. The air was warm and sweet, the grass in the orchard showed every blade brand-new: from the south side of the cottage, where Pat had planted his seeds, came the clean and definite odour of newly-dug earth. He had made the bed himself, with the help of the eldest Pomfret. Alec cut the sods, Pat dug, stoned and sifted: but Pat alone put in the seeds. It was a good big bed, and he put them all in together, sunflowers at the back, then sweet peas, descending through coryopsis and mignonette to the lowly but variegated candytuft.

“A fine sight it'll be!” said Mrs. Sprigg, when they told her what they had done. She had seen Pat bury his sunflowers a good six inches down; but she never went out to meet trouble.

The need to plant things at least temporarily assuaged, the need to feed things now took its place. He turned to live stock. The Walpole farm lay conveniently at hand, the Walpoles themselves offered no resistance, and for days together the orchard lay silent. It was almost like the sign-painter time, thought Lesley, the time when everything—how to put it?—when everything had seemed so much worse.