Winter in Thrush Green (11 page)

There was no movement from the house as the cackling of
hens made itself heard. In fact, Dotty was busy shopping in Lulling at that moment, and the house was deserted except for Mrs Curdle, Dotty's black cat.

Within a few minutes the man emerged carrying a brown-paper carrier bag. He latched the hen-house door, and departed up the hill again with swift easy strides. The boys could see his face quite clearly as he vanished over the brow of the hill towards the lane.

'That was Sam Curdle,' said Paul. 'Do you reckon he was taking things? Eggs, say, or even a chicken?' He looked rather shocked and alarmed. Christopher, who did not know the history of the Curdle family as well as his friend did, was less impressed.

'He didn't look as though he was doing anything wrong. P'raps someone asked him to feed the chickens for them.'

'Might have,' admitted Paul doubtfully. 'But he's an awful thief, Chris. Everybody says so. D'you reckon we ought to tell somebody?'

'If we do,' pointed out Chris, 'they'll ask us what we were doing here, and that's the end of the camp for us.'

'I hadn't thought of that,' confessed Paul unhappily. They sat in silence for some time turning the problem over in their minds. Paul felt sure that Sam had been up to no good; but Chris was right in saying that they could not afford to disclose what they had seen. Of course, Paul told himself, Dotty might have asked Sam to look at her chickens, as Chris had said. It might all have been above-board. He hoped it was–more for the sake of keeping their hiding place secret than from anxiety on Dotty's behalf.

But he was far from happy about the matter. He watched the white mist thickening in the distant hollow and saw that it was beginning to seep along towards their own valley. Suddenly the afternoon seemed chilly and wretched. Everything had been horrid. The transfers had failed, Chris had hit him far
harder than was necessary for real friendship, he felt slightly sick with too much chocolate, and sicker still at the thought of keeping all he had seen a guilty secret from his mother.

All at once he wanted to be at home with her–to be warm and dry, to see the fire dancing and to hear his parents talking. A great distaste for the camp, for old Shoelace, and for the wet mustiness of the decaying tree suddenly suffused the boy.

'I'm going home,' he said abruptly, and slithered rapidly to the ground.

Chris, astonished and silent, followed him.

'See you Monday,' said Paul shortly, setting off for home on the west side of the copse. Without answering, Christopher plunged down the hill in the opposite direction through the thickening mist. As he ran he became conscious of a stickiness on the back of his hand. Exasperatedly he clawed the remains of the unsuccessful transfer from it with his finger-nail.

Altogether, he thought bitterly, it had been a beast of an afternoon.

As the melancholy month of November wore on Dimity and Ella found themselves getting to know the newcomer quite well. As well as meeting him at the occasional bridge party, and coming across him on their walks abroad, the rector, who had always been a frequent visitor to their cottage, now often came accompanied by his new friend.

Both ladies were delighted. As Ella said, there were far too few unattached men about Thrush Green and their company was quite refreshing after all their single women friends.

Harold Shoosmith went at first with some reluctance to the cottage, but had been pressed to do so when returning with the rector from a country walk on one or two occasions. He was welcomed so warmly that his shyness deserted him. He found too that the two women held an attraction for him. He
was sorry for Dimity, considering her outrageously treated by her domineering friend. It needed the rector's wise words to point out that Dimity's life of service was also her crown of glory, and that she was completely happy.

Harold Shoosmith's feelings towards Ella were mixed. Her outspokenness half-shocked and half-amused him. Her physical clumsiness revolted him. Her generosity and warm-heartedness compelled his admiration. But overriding all these feelings was one of fascinated horror at her artistic creations. He was a man who liked recognisable patterns. His shirts were striped or checked. His ties were plain, striped or of a traditional paisley design. His curtains carried fleurs-de-lis and his chair-covers matched them.

Ella's strong blobs of colour, irregularly placed on a background of nobbly black broken checks, appalled his sense of order. The very idea of letting her loose on the memorial to Nathaniel made him quake.

It was this preoccupation with the possibility that led Harold Shoosmith to visit the cottage so often. So far he had heard no more about Ella's part in the project. A meeting had been held in the school to see what Thrush Green felt about the plan. Wholeheartedly the inhabitants had agreed to mark the occasion of Nathaniel's centenary with a suitable memorial. They had, furthermore, voted that the proceeds of that year's Fur and Feather Whist Drive be devoted to the fund. The rector had then exhorted them to go home to put their minds to work on the best type of memorial to their greatest son, and to put their suggestions in the box provided in the church porch. Another meeting to vote on the results was to be held early in December.

Harold Shoosmith found the suspense almost unbearable. The two ladies never spoke about it, and he found that he could not bring himself to broach so painful a subject. He comforted himself with the thought that Ella must surely have
mentioned the matter if she had been approached. It was too much to expect that such a forthright person would be so delicately reticent.

Meanwhile he made a point of being particularly kind to timid little Dimity. His attentions were much appreciated by that modest lady and did not go unnoticed by Ella Bembridge–nor, for that matter, by the good rector.

Even sour old Mr Piggott felt a certain warmth towards Thrush Green's latest resident, for he was the means by which the sexton resumed his role of detective.

On the last day of the month he went to the corner house to cut back the laurel hedge that grew just inside the communicating wall between the school-house garden and Harold Shoosmith's.

He slashed lustily with a small bill-hook, for the laurels were grossly overgrown. The glossy green leaves fluttered to the ground around him. After one particularly vicious onslaught a small object, which had lodged in a crook of a bough, fell at his feet. Bending painfully, old Piggott retrieved it and held it up in the waning light.

Joy coursed its unaccustomed way through his hardening veins. It was a wallet–and without a doubt it was the one which Miss Watson had lost on the night of the burglary. It was empty, but that was only to be expected.

'The first clue!' chortled old Piggott, pocketing it carefully. I'll get 'im yet!'

And, much encouraged, he bent to his task again.

Christmas at Thrush Green

T
HE
meeting to decide upon Nathaniel Patten's memorial was well attended. The infants' room at the village school was almost uncomfortably full. Small thin people squeezed into the desks at one side of the room, and the more portly sat sedately on the desks themselves or on the few low tables upon which the babies usually pursued their activities. A pile of minute bentwood armchairs remained stacked in the corner, for not even Dimity could have folded her small stature into such a confined space.

The rector sat at Miss Fogerty's desk as he was chairman. Harold Shoosmith found himself sharing a desk top with Ella and wondered, somewhat unchivalrously if it would bear their combined weight.

As the latecomers drifted in, to prop themselves against the partition or the ancient piano, Harold gazed idly at the notices pinned to the wall. They were written in large black letters and were obviously the work of Miss Fogerty. 'M
Y
B
IRTHDAY
,' said one, 'I
S
T
ODAY
.' Below this dramatic announcement two names, Anne and John, had been inserted into a slot provided for the purpose.

'M
ONITORS
T
HIS
W
EEK
,' said another, 'John, Elizabeth, Anne.'

'W
E
F
ORGOT
O
UR
H
ANDKERCHIEFS
,' the third confessed frankly. Only John appeared to be culpable.

'That chap John seems to lead an active life,' observed Harold to Ella. 'And Anne for that matter,' he added.

'They're all called Anne or John,' explained Ella kindly. 'Unless they're Amanda or Roxana or Jacqueline or Marilyn or Somesuch.'

'I see,' said Harold, light dawning. 'Seems a pity the old names aren't used,' he mused. 'My sisters had friends with good old names like Bertha and Gertrude.' He paused, and appeared to rack his brain for more, but failed to add to the list. 'What's wrong with Bertha and Gertrude?' he added rhetorically of his neighbour.

'Plenty,' said Ella simply.

At this point the rector banged the desk with Miss Fogerty's safety inkwell and the meeting began.

'I must thank you for the excellent suggestions which have been put into the box,' began the rector. 'We have had five put forward–well, four, really, I suppose. I'll just read them out and if there are any more ideas wc can then add them to the list.'

He adjusted a pair of half-glasses upon his snub nose and peered at the back of
The Quarterly Letter to Incumbents
upon which he had written his notes. The glasses gave his chubby face an oddly Pickwickian look. His hearers watched him with affection.

'What about putting up the suggestions on the blackboard?' suggested a bright youth perched on the nature table beside the winter berries.

'An excellent notion,' agreed the rector. Miss Fogerty hurried forward from the side of the piano.

'Oh, do let me put it up for you,' she fluttered, beginning to tug the easel from its nightly resting place against a map of the Holy Land.

Harold Shoosmith and the bright youth politely disengaged Miss Fogerty from the unequal struggle and she returned, pink with pleasure, to her place by the piano to watch the men's efforts with the board pegs.

'If I might suggest—she began timidly, as the youth exerted all his pressure upon a peg too large for the hole, 'the one
above
is easier.'

The board leant at a drunken angle as the boy adjusted the awkward peg. He and Harold hoisted it one jump higher and stood back to admire their handiwork. Miss Fogerty's neat printing told a simple but poignant tale upon the blackboard's face.

NED IS IN BED
HIS LEG IS BAD
NED'S PET TED BIT NED'S LEG.
BAD TED TO BITE NED'S LEG!

All eyes were riveted upon the board with an attention which must have warmed Miss Fogerty's heart had she been less flustered. One or two enchanted members of her elderly class read the words aloud with slow absorption.

The rector, seeing his parishioners' attention deflected so wholeheartedly, sighed resignedly and took off his spectacles, preparing to wait.

'There's a case in point,' observed Harold to Ella. 'Ned! You simply never hear of a Ned these days.' He scrutinised the blackboard carefully.

'Or Ted, even. Used to be dozens of Teds when I was a boy. Proper names, I mean, not hooligans.'

Ella did not reply as she was trying to attract Dimity's attention. Dimity had found a resting place on a low table beneath the window and was idly unscrewing the bone acorn attached to the window blind.

The rector coughed apologetically and called his wayward flock to the business in hand.

'May we rub out your lesson, Miss Fogerty?' he enquired kindly.

'Oh, yes, indeed. Please do,' quavered the lady. The bright youth eagerly accepted the proffered blackboard cleaner and dashed away at the writing amidst clouds of chalk and general regret.

'The first suggestion," said the rector resuming his glasses, 'is a sundial.'

'Shall I put it up?' asked the boy, fingering a lovely long stick of chalk handed to him from Miss Fogerty's store.

'If you please,' said the rector.

Rather crookedly the word was written in a passable copper plate. As an afterthought, the boy added the figure I in front of it.

'Secondly,' said the rector, 'a fountain. I suppose that means a drinking fountain," he added doubtfully.

'Not at all,' said the oldest Miss Lovelock. 'I envisaged plumes of water flashing in the sunlight. Like Versailles, you know.'

'I see," said the rector gravely.

'Be the devil of a job laying the water across the green,' observed someone in the front row.

'Remember them a-laying of them electric light wires?' reminisced his neighbour. 'Cor! That were a proper Fred Karno affair, that were! Best part of the summer—"

'Please!'
said the rector beseechingly. 'We must get on. Discussion later, please.'

There were apologetic growling' and the vicar consulted his list again.

'A Celtic cross comes next.'