Winter in Thrush Green (2 page)

'I really don't think anything could ever part them,' commented the doctor's wife, addressing the tabby cat who minced past her,
en route
to the kitchen from the Doctor's bed.

But, for once, Winnie Bailey was wrong, as the oncoming winter would show.

'Well, tell us all the news,' said Ella, half an hour later. She leant back in the sagging wicker armchair, which creaked under her weight, raised her coffee cup and prepared to enjoy her old friend's company. 'First of all, how's your husband?'

'Very well really. Rather tired from yesterday. Old Mrs Hoggins wanted him to see a grandchild who is staying with her, and he insisted on going as she's such an old friend, but it rather knocked him up.'

Dimity fluttered between them, proffering first the sugar, then biscuits. From Winnie Bailey she received smiles and thanks; from Ella a fine disregard.

'And what have you heard about the corner house?' queried Dimity, settling at last in her chair, after her moth-like restlessness. 'Who's taken it? Have you heard?'

'Only in a roundabout way from Dotty Harmer,' said Winnie. She stirred her coffee serenely, as though the matter were closed.

Ella snorted, drew out a battered tobacco tin from her pocket and began to roll a very untidy cigarette. The tobacco was villainously black and Mrs Bailey knew from experience that the smoke would be uncommonly pungent. She noticed, with relief, that the window behind her was open.

Ella lit up, drew one or two enormous breaths and expelled the smoke strongly through her nostrils.

'Well, come on,' pressed Ella impatiently. 'What did Dotty say?'

'Nothing actually,' said Winnie, enjoying the situation.

'Then who did?' boomed Ella, jerking her shoulders with exasperation. The coffee cup tilted abruptly and spilled the rest of its contents into Ella's lap.

'Darling,' squeaked Dimity, rising to her feet. 'How dreadful! Let me get a cloth.'

'Don't fuss so, Dim,' snapped her friend, taking out a grubby handkerchief, and wiping the liquid from her lap to the rug with perfunctory sweeps. 'It's your fault, Winnie, for being so perfectly maddening. Do you or do you not know who is coming to the corner house?' She pointed a tobacco-stained forefinger at her guest.

'No,' said Winnie.

Ella threw her handkerchief on the floor with a gesture of despair and frustration. Dimity, anxious to placate her, hastened in where angels would have feared to tread.

'Winnie dear,' she began patiently, 'do you mean "No, you
don't
know" or "No, you
do
know who is coming"?'

'For pity's sake,' roared Ella, 'don't you start, Dim! If Winnie sees fit to drive us insane with her mysteries, well and good. One's enough, in all conscience. For my part, I don't wish to hear who is coming, or not coming, or what Dotty said or did not say, or anything more about the corner house
at all.'

Exhausted with her tirade she leant back again.

'Any more coffee left?' she asked in a plaintive tone. Dimity hastened forward.

As she filled the cup, Winnie Bailey relented.

'Then I'll just tell Dimity what I've heard, dear, and you need not listen,' she said gently. Ella growled dangerously.

'Betty Bell, who helps Dotty, as you know, has been keeping the corner house aired since the Farmers left, and she has seen most of the people who have looked over it. Three men with families have been, someone from the B.B.C.—'

'Television or sound?' asked Ella eagerly. 'Our television's appalling lately. Everything in a snowstorm or looping the loop. I must say it would be jolly useful to have someone handy to see to it.'

'Oh, not that sort of
useful
person,' exclaimed Winnie, just a producer of programmes or an actor, I think.'

'Pity!'said Ella, losing interest.

'Well, who else called?' asked Dimity.

'Several middle-aged women who all found it too large and inconvenient—'

'Which it is,' interrupted Ella. 'D'you remember that ugly great wash-house place at the back? And the corridor and stairs from the kitchen to the dining-room? The soup was always stone cold at Mrs Farmer's parties.'

'And two middle-aged young men, as far as I can gather, who had something to do with ballet,' continued Mrs Bailey, closing her eyes the better to concentrate, 'and then this last man.'

'And what did he do?' pressed Dimity.

'Nothing. I mean he had retired,' said Winnie hastily, as Ella drew a deep breath ready for a second explosion.

'From what?' asked Ella, ominously. 'The army, the navy, the church or the stage?'

'None of them, so Mrs Bell says. I think he's been abroad. Hong Kong or Singapore or Ghana. Maybe it was Borneo or Nigeria, I can't quite recall, but
hot
evidently. He was worried about getting his laundry done daily.'

'Done daily?' boomed Ella.

'Done daily?' quavered Dimity.

'The man must be mental,' said Ella forthrightly, if he thinks he's going to get his washing done
daily.
In Thrush Green too. What's wrong with once a week like any other Christian?'

'I don't suppose he really expects to have it done daily
now,'
explained Winnie carefully. 'I imagine that he may have mentioned this matter–the habits of years die hard, you know–and it just stuck in Betty Bell's memory because it seemed so outlandish to her.'

'Seems outlandish to me too,' said Ella. 'When's he coming?'

Mrs Bailey raised limpid eyes to her friend's gaze. She looked mildly surprised.

'I don't know that he is. Betty Bell only told Dotty about the different people who had looked at the house. He was the last, but there may have been more since then. I haven't seen Dotty since last Thursday when I called for my eggs.'

Ella uncrossed her substantial legs, set her brogues firmly on the stained rug and fixed her friend with a fierce glance.

'Winnie Bailey,' she said sternly, 'do you mean to say that you have been going through all this rigmarole–this balderdash–this jiggery-pokery–this leading-up-the-garden–simply to tell us
in the end
that you don't know who is coming to the corner house?'

In the brief silence that followed, the distant cries of children, released from school, floated through the open window. It was twelve o'clock. Winnie Bailey, not a whit abashed, rose to her feet and smiled disarmingly upon her questioner.

'That's right, Ella dear. As I told you at the start, I simply do not know who has taken the corner house. You'll probably know before I do, and I shall expect you to let me hear immediately. There's nothing more maddening,' continued Winnie Bailey serenely, collecting her rush basket from the window-sill, 'than to be kept in suspense.'

'You'd have been burnt for a witch years ago, you hussy,' commented Ella, accompanying her to the door. 'And deserved it!'

E
LLA
and Dimity were not the only ones interested in the fate of 'Quetta,' the official name of the empty corner house. Built at the turn of the century for a retired colonel from the Indian army, the house had its name printed on a neat little board which was planted in one of the small lawns which flanked the gates. Apart from young children, who delighted in jumping over it, the name was ignored, and the residence had been known generally for sixty-odd years as 'the corner house.'

The Farmers had lived there for over twenty years and moved only when age and illness overtook them and they were persuaded by a daughter in Somerset to take a small house near her own. Their neighbours on the green missed them, but perhaps the person who mourned their disappearance most wholeheartedly was Paul Young, the eight-year-old son of a local architect who lived in a fine old house which stood beside the chestnut avenue within a stone's throw of the Farmers'.

Ever since he could walk Paul had been free to call at the corner house and, better still, free to roam in the large garden. Old Mr Farmer was a keen naturalist, and finding that the young child was particularly interested in birds and butterflies he encouraged him to watch their activities in his garden and the small copse which adjoined it. Beyond the copse the fields dropped away to a gentle fold of the hills where Dotty Harmer, an eccentric maiden lady much esteemed in Thrush Green and Lulling, had her solitary cottage and flourishing herb garden.

In the distance lay Lulling Woods from whose massed trees many a flight of starlings whirred, or jays called harshly. Paul loved to stand in the little spinney gazing at the fields below or the wooded slope beyond them. His own garden was large, a
flat sunny place with trim lawns and bright flower-beds, with here and there a fine old tree which his grandfather had enjoyed. But there was no mystery there. It was all as familiar and everyday as his own pink hands, and although he loved it because it was his home, his growing imagination and delight in secret things made his neighbour's domain far more attractive.

He had said good-bye to the Farmers with much sadness, waving until their car had sunk below sight down the steep hill to Lulling. The sight of Betty Bell closing the gates and returning to the empty house gave him a sense of desolation which he could scarcely endure. He went home dejectedly.

'It's no good fretting, Paul,' his mother said gently, observing his pale face. 'We must hope that the next people will be as nice as the Farmers.'

'It isn't just that,' answered Paul. 'It's the garden, and the birds. There were eleven nests in their copse last spring, and there's red admirals galore on their buddleia. We never get red admirals in our garden.' He kicked morosely at the leg of the kitchen table.

His mother, who was peeling carrots, put one silently before him and watched her sorrowing son find some comfort in its bright crispness. She spoke briskly.

'Well, you know, Paul, you mustn't go into the Farmers' garden now. It's bad luck, but there it is. Perhaps the new owner will let you watch the nests next year, if he sees you don't do any harm. But you mustn't trespass while the house is empty, you understand?'

Paul nodded unhappily. He told himself afterwards that he had not given his word to his mother. He hadn't opened his mouth, he protested to his guilty conscience. Nodding didn't really count, he was to tell himself fiercely many times in the next few weeks.

But Paul was not at ease. For despite his mother's embargo, Paul intended to visit the garden as often as he could. There was more to the Farmers' garden than the red admirals and the birds. There was Chris Mullins.

Christopher Mullins had first burst into Paul's small world in the early summer. At Easter, Paul had left his adored Miss Fogerty who taught him at the village school, and in May began to attend a reliable preparatory school in Lulling.

The new school was much the same size as his earlier one, but to wear a uniform, to carry a satchel, to be taught by masters, and to know that the headmaster was a very great man indeed, impressed Paul considerably.

He knew many of his fellow pupils, for Lulling was a friendly little town and his mother's family and his father's had lived there for many years. In consequence he was not unduly awed, and addressed the bigger boys with less ceremony than some of the newcomers did. When one has shared garden swings, Christmas parties and chicken pox, in a small community, the ice is for ever broken.

But with Christopher Mullins it was different. He had only just arrived from Germany when term began and the attraction of foreign things hung about him. He was bigger, better-looking, older and altogether more interesting than the other boys in Paul's form, and he made it understood that he was only with them because he needed to accustom himself to English methods of education before rising rapidly to the form above–or even the form above that-where he would find his rightful sphere.

Most of the boys treated his superior airs with complete indifference or mild ribaldry, but Paul found them enchanting. He admired Chris's sleek dark hair, his unusually tidy clothes
and his superb wrist-watch which had a large red second hand which swept impressively round its shining face. Paul was dazzled by this sophisticated stranger, and the older boy, lacking friendship, was secretly grateful for such homage. When, one day, Paul offered him half his ginger biscuits at morning break, the friendship was sealed and Paul's happiness soared.

Christopher's father was in the army and the family lived in part of an old house on the main road from Lulling to the west. Their garden ran down to the fields near Dotty Harmer's cottage, and it was easy for Christopher to approach Thrush Green from this direction. A path ran through the meadows from Lulling Woods which emerged on to Thrush Green by the side of Mr Piggott's cottage near 'The Two Pheasants.' Sometimes the boy came this way, but more often than not he climbed the grassy hill to the Farmers' copse and there met his jubilant friend.

They had kept their meetings secret, partly because Chris was trespassing, but largely because it made the whole affair deliciously exciting. Between the spinney and the herbaceous border was a thick growth of ox-eyed daisies which formed a background for the lower-growing plants. Here, in this hidden greenness, the two boys had made their headquarters. There was nothing to show that it was a place of any importance, only two small chalked letters on a tree trunk–a C and a P side by side–which would escape the Farmers' old eyes or the occasional glance of Mr Piggott when he 'obliged' two or three times a year.

Their activities were innocent enough. They exchanged news of nests, animals, friends or relatives, in that order of importance. Sometimes they sat amicably in the damp green hide-out and ate liquorice boot-laces or a fearsomely sticky hardbake which was sold in one of the back streets of Lulling
and was much prized for its staying qualities. Once they smoked a cigarette which Paul had brought from home, but they did not repeat that experiment.

They met in all that summer about six times, and the place had grown very dear to young Paul. At school, before the other boys, they said nothing about their secret meetings. It was this delicious intimacy which Paul mourned on the departure of the Farmers.