Winter in Thrush Green (22 page)

'Hospital job,' said Doctor Lovell, crashing downstairs. 'Can I use your phone?'

'Carry on,' said Harold and waited unI'll all was arranged before making more enquiries.

'Bronchitis, perhaps pneumonia,' said the doctor. 'Basically, of course, it's malnutrition. I shouldn't think she's eaten a square meal for years. But she'll be all right. Keeps fretting about her pets.'

'Tell her I'll go down myself while she's away,' said Harold. 'It's no great distance.'

'You're what's known as a good Samaritan,' said the doctor, making for the door. 'And one who was just in time, I may say. She wouldn't have lasted much longer without attention-and then where would all the pets have been?'

The arrival of the ambulance broke short their conversation. Curtains twitched at several windows on Thrush Green, and one or two bolder spirits emerged from their cottages the better to see who might be the victim. The arrival of Doctor Lovell had not gone unnoticed. The sight of the ambulance increased the excitement. What could have happened to Harold Shoosmith?'

It was with considerable mystification that the watchers saw Harold himself striding beside the stretcher a few minutes later. Who could he have been harbouring in his house all these years? Must be a deep one–that newcomer.

After the tedium of several house-bound days it was delightful to speculate about the drama unfolding before their eyes. Here was mystery, here was excitement, here was food for endless gossip! Thrush Green was agog.

Harold Shoosmith was a good Samaritan in more ways than one.

S
NOW
shrouded Thrush Green for over a week and throughout that time Harold trudged daily to Dotty's cottage to care for the animals. People were heartily sick of the snow. Travelling was difficult, supplies were getting scarce, influenza spread alarmingly and tempers were sorely frayed.

It was with the utmost relief that the good folk of Lulling and Thrush Green saw their barometers rising and the weather-vanes veering towards the south-west. Soon a warm wind enveloped the Cotswolds and within two days little rivulets ran down the hill to Lulling, the snow slithered with a heartening rushing sound from the steep tiled roofs, and the green grass could be seen again.

People emerged from their houses as joyfully as children let out from school. It was wonderful to smell the earth and grass again, and more wonderful still to feel a gentle warmth blowing instead of the withering east wind.

Dotty Harmer had recovered, and was able to sit up in bed at Lulling Cottage Hospital and receive visitors bearing flowers and little home-made cakes and fruit. Once she had been made to realise that all the animals were being cared for, to the point of cosseting, she had taken a turn for
the better. She could not get over Harold's kindness and was delighted to think that her father's sledge had proved so useful.

'I always say,' she told her visitors, more times than they cared to count, 'that it is wise to keep
everything!
There's always a time when one finds a use for things. Father's sledge is a case in point.' To be proved right did more to help Dotty's progress than all the pills which she was persuaded to swallow.

Betty Bed came to see her as soon as the weather released her from her distant cottage, and she resumed work at Dotty's and Harold's again. Another released prisoner was Nelly Tilling who went back to 'The Drover's Arms' as soon as possible, and flung herself, with joyful abandon, into scrubbing the traces of the weather from the brick floor in the bar. It was the reward of her zealous labours which was to give Albert Piggott the greatest moment of his life.

Nelly set out to see how he had fared during the snow-storm, with a basket on her arm. She earned it carefully, through the darkening afternoon, and looked forward to making a pot of tea for herself and Albert when she reached Thrush Green. It was wet and muddy along the field path past Dotty's cottage and her shoes were soon soaking. She was glad to reach the shelter of Albert's kitchen and take them off. Albert seemed almost pleased to see her, and the kettle was already humming on the hob.

They exchanged news of the storm. Albert described the horrors of the mess he had had to clear up in the church, the ordeals he had undergone to get the coke free from snow and the difficulty he had found in keeping the larder even moderately filled.

Nelly countered with her own privations and–a sly stroke–how much she had worried on Albert's account.

'There I was,' she told him, rolling her dark eyes at him, 'wondering how you was managing without someone to cook you a bite or clean the place up. Kept me awake at nights, it did, hoping you was looking after yourself.'

Albert appeared a little touched by her solicitude, and gave a kindly grunt as she poured his tea.

'I brought something for you to have a look at,' she went on. 'Mrs Allen give it to me for doing a bit extra. It's a little clock she bought cheap, but it won't go. You mended my mother's wrist watch a rare treat, and you might be able to see to this. It's real pretty.'

She fished in the basket at her feet and produced a newspaper parcel. Albert undid it gingerly and set a little gilt clock on the kitchen table.

'I've seen one like this afore,' said Albert ruminatively. 'Can't think where for the minute.' He turned the pretty thing about in his horny hands.

'It's French,' he said, still musing.

'Mrs Aden bought it off Bella Curdle, you know, Sam's wife—' began Nelly conversationally, but was cut short by a thump of Albert's fist on the kitchen table which made the teacups rattle.

'That's it!' cried Albert. 'This is Miss Watson's clock, I'll wager.'

'Never!' gasped Nelly. 'Are you trying to tell me that this is the clock that got stolen? And that Sam was the chap as done it?'

'That's right!' chortled Albert gleefully. 'That's it!'

'But why should Bella sell it if she knew Sam had pinched it? It'd be bound to be found out.'

'Don't suppose Sam told Bella,' pointed out Albert. 'And I bet Bella never told Sam she'd sold it to Mrs Allen. How did it happen, anyway?'

Nelly said that Mrs Allen had told her that Bella was worried because she was behind with her payments for the clothing club. The young woman occasionally helped to dress poultry or do piece-work on the farm and was a frequent visitor to 'The Drover's Arms.' She had brought the clock one day to Bessie Allen and asked her if she would give her a pound for it. Although Bessie did not want it, she had taken pity on the feckless Bella and had given her a pound and kept the clock. Later, touched by Nelly's arduous efforts after the snow, and knowing that she admired the gilt clock, she had made her a present of it.

'Well, it's Miss Watson's by rights,' insisted Albert. 'Give it here, my gal, and I'd walk along and show her. She'll know well enough.'

'Wait for me,' said Nelly, drawing on her wet shoes again. I'll come with you.'

This seemed an admirable opportunity to consolidate her position with the headmistress. For who knew, thought Nelly, shrugging on her coat, how soon she might be living at Thrush Green, conveniently placed to take over the cleaning of the village school?

Unaware of the visitors who were about to descend upon her, Miss Watson sat before her fire pondering upon a most upsetting incident. A pile of history test papers lay on the hearthrug, a red pencil across the top, but Miss Watson could not bring herself to begin marking.

It had happened only an hour or two before, as the children were dressing to go home. The two little Curdle girls were struggling into their coats when their father appeared. He had the van outside, he said, and as the lane was still awash with melted snow he thought he would pick them up as he was passing.

Miss Watson rarely saw Sam. Occasionally Bella met the children, trailing the toddler behind her, but Sam seldom showed his face at the school. He seemed a little disconcerted to see Miss Watson in the cloakroom. Normally Miss Fogerty saw the children off, but today she had left early to keep an appointment with the local dentist.

He bent down to help his younger daughter tie her shoelace. Something in his movements gave Miss Watson a shock. A moment later she had a second shock. Unable to feel the laces properly with his gloves on, Sam had tossed them on the floor beside the child's feet. Miss Watson had seen those gloves before. They were knitted grey ones, bound with leather and they had gripped a heavy stick.

Miss Watson had felt so sick and so faint that she had been unable to speak. Sam had departed with his offspring, wishing her good afternoon civilly. Since then her mind had been in turmoil.

Should she ring the police on this shred of evidence? Was it, in fact, evidence? There must be thousands of pairs of gloves like that. But she was sure that she had recognised Sam as he had bent suddenly in the cloakroom. Was she justified in confiding her suspicions to the police? If only dear Agnes were here, how helpful she could be!

As her agitated thoughts coursed through her throbbing head the bell rang at the front door, and she went to answer it.

'Why, come in, Mr Piggott,' she cried. 'What brings you here?'

That evening a police car splashed along the watery lane to Nod and Nidden and stopped outside Sam Curdle's caravan.

The next morning Sam appeared before the magistrates and was told that he would be called before Quarter Sessions at the county town to answer his serious charge.

That same day Albert Piggott was treated to so many pints by the regular customers at 'The Two Pheasants' that he fell asleep in the stoke-hole of St Andrew's at half-past two and did not wake unI'll the great clock above him struck five. It was as well, he thought muzzily, as he stumbled homeward, that Nelly Tilling was spending the day at her sister's.

If Nathaniel Patten's memorial were to be erected in rime for his birthday on the fifteenth of March, then haste was needed, said Edward Young, who had been in communication with the young sculptor whom he much admired.

Consequently, a meeting was called of Thrush Green Entertainments Committee, when the design was to be approved and the sculptor definitely commissioned.

The meeting was to have been held, as usual, in the village school, but the tortoise stove had developed a mysterious crack which let out fumes and smoke in the most unpleasant manner. Miss Watson, in some perturbation, had mentioned this to Harold Shoosmith when he called to return three balls, a rubber quoit and a gym shoe which had landed in his garden.

'We'll have it at my house,' he said, with secret relief, for the thought of being wedged into the infants' desks for an hour and a half on a bleak January evening had cast its shadow before. 'There's plenty of room, and I'll send a message round.'

He rang the rector last of all.

'Come and have supper here first,' he said. 'The meeting's not until 8.15, and as far as I can see there will only be about half a dozen of us.'

The rector was delighted to accept. Mrs Butler had just told him that she thought there would be enough of yesterday's corned beef hash left for his evening meal, and he had been resigned to his lot. Although he was not a greedy man, the
thought of good food and good company greatly cheered him.

He arrived at a quarter past seven and the two men had a splendid steak and kidney casserole and apple tart which Betty Bell had come back specially to cook. The rector thought wistfully how competently Harold managed his domestic affairs, and remembered his own meagre fare and dismal surroundings which he seemed unable to alter.

'Do you know anything about this young man of Edward's?' enquired Charles Henstock later, as they toasted their toes and waited for the rest of the committee members. 'You know, I'm devoted to Edward, and have the greatest admiration for his work–they tell me he has a wonderful flair for domestic detail in his housing plans. But, just occasionally, I wonder if he is not a trifle too advanced in his ideas for the rest of us. Those walls of his–all different colours–and that pebble dash square he has let into his doorstep 'for excitement of texture,' I think it was, seem a little out of this world sometimes. The Thrush Green world, I mean. I suppose we're rather stick-in-the-mud, but we really don't want a jagged piece of metal that looks like a heron with the stomach-ache put up for ever on the green, do we?'

'We certainly don't,' said Harold forcibly. 'But I don't think you need to worry. After all, it's for that very purpose that the committee is meeting tonight. To protect Thrush Green from dyspeptic herons, or–worse still–a bunch of bladders of lard in stone all lumped together and called "Bounty," is
exactly
what we're here for, my dear Charles.'

The rector appeared somewhat comforted and sipped his excellent coffee.

'I must confess,' he said, expanding under the influence of shared confidences, that I am relieved that Ella wasn't asked to tackle the job. She is a most gifted person, believe me,
most
gifted. But I find that strong rugged effect in her work a
little overpowering. I fear I'm stall at the stage of admiring flowered chair covers, and liking water-colours on the wall.'

'And what's wrong with that?' responded Harold sturdily. 'But I agree with you that Ella's well out of it. She would have "had a bash," as she so elegantly put it, I feel positive. She's a brave woman and I can quite see why Dimity relies upon her.'

The rector looked up quickly.

'I sometimes think it is the other way round,' he said. 'Beneath that timid manner of Dimity's there's a very strong and fine character. For all that Ella bullies her–or appears to–I think she feels a deep affection for Dimity, and takes more notice of her gentle suggestions than we realise.'

'You're probably right,' agreed Harold. 'You're a better judge of character than I am.'

'I've known them both for many years now,' replied the rector. 'I have the greatest respect for them,' he added, with a careful preciseness which reminded Harold of one of Jane Austen's heroes.

'I gather it's reciprocated,' commented Harold drily, 'even if Ella doesn't go to church more than twice a year.'