The Flowering Thorn Read online

  “Well, as it’s got to be done again, perhaps they’ll have a change,” Lesley heard one of them say hopefully.

  “I wish they’d have a George and Dragon.…”

  “Let’s come and watch the man doing it.…”

  “I wish they’d let us paint it. It hasn’t got to have shading, or anything.” The speaker—it was the eldest Pomfret boy—stretched out a small dirty hand and passed it over the weather-beaten surface. “I can’t think why everybody doesn’t paint on wood. It’s ever so much nicer than canvas.”

  “I don’t want to paint pictures, I want to paint doors,” said his brother yearningly. And then, as though suddenly pulled by the same string, they all turned round and watched Lesley coming towards them.

  A trifle self-conscious, as usual, in the matter of juvenile small-talk, she nodded over her shoulder and halted by the bench. The Three Pigeons, thus magnified into a close-up, revealed no unsuspected beauties: the man who drew them—not even the landlord knew how many years ago—had evidently known what a pigeon looked like and been content to reproduce.

  “We’ve got a cousin who’s an artist,” said a Pomfret child suddenly. “He painted a zebra, a teeny wee one. He did it—”

  “And some sheep he painted,” added another child quickly, “with two dogs and a shepherd.”

  Lesley’s lips curved. How well she could imagine them! Woolly and twilit in a highland glen …!

  “Only they weren’t so good as the zebra. That was lovely, all stripes,” said the eldest Pomfret. “Mother took me to see it when we went about my teeth.”

  “At the Academy?” hazarded Lesley.

  “Oh, no. That’s lovely, isn’t it? This was quite a small place, with hardly any people. But we had tea at the Corner House.”

  “And now Pat must come and have tea at home,” said Lesley. Suddenly, between one breath and the next, she was bored beyond endurance. With his usual docility, Pat stepped out of the ranks and fell in by her side: and from the boredom of the road they returned to the boredom of the cottage.

  4

  About ten days later a sudden unnatural hush settled snowlike over the orchard; for a man had turned up at the Three Pigeons and was repainting the fallen sign. His studio was an empty stable, and according to Mrs. Sprigg he was likely to take his time: the terms of the bargain being five bob down and his keep while working.

  “And from the amount ’e put away yesterday,” added Mrs. Sprigg cheerfully, “I lay old Povey wishes ’e’d only got one pigeon instead of three. Eat! ’E’s worse nor the Walpole pigs.”

  “Well, I hope he doesn’t mind an audience,” said Lesley. “The children spend half the day there.”

  “Mind! Not ’im. ’E told Florrie Walpole ’e once used to ’ave a pitch in Trafalgar Square, till the Police moved ’im off it. ’E said they’re terrible hard men, them London bobbies.” The shrew-mouse eyes flickered with alarm; like a proper weasel-run it must be, or a field under the reapers! And suddenly the shrew-mouse squeaked with laughter.

  “I’d like to see young Arnold move anyone along!” said Mrs. Sprigg. “The only thing ’e can move’s ’is vittles.”

  “If you want any water, there’s some in the barn,” said Lesley; and having finished clearing the table went out into the orchard.

  The change was scarcely for the better. Here and there, under the apple-trees, an occasional tussock of grass heaved itself through the slush: but wherever, in summer, there had been a path, the mud was stretched smooth and undisturbed.

  It was a cloak under which a good deal of rural beauty might safely lie hidden, and Lesley’s was scarcely the eye of faith. From the sky downwards, moreover, all was grey: the smoke from the chimney, the bark on the ancient trees; the wood of the gateposts, the bucket by the well: even her own soft tweeds, in which she had so successfully decorated, at one time or another, so many different cars. Toby’s yellow, and Bryan’s scarlet, and the great green Packard that had belonged to that American …!

  “… And as cars go, they went!” said Lesley aloud; but no ripple of appreciation arose above the cocktail-glasses. The cocktails were all in Town, with their drinkers and shakers and cherry-stick-makers: with Elissa and Toby Ashton and Hugo and Tommy Bliss: with the people who made witty remarks and the people who appreciated them: and all at once, under those bare and colourless trees, an unendurable homesickness drove the tears to her eyes. ‘The wind!’ thought Lesley, ‘the wind’s like a knife!’ and knotting her scarf higher she turned blindly through the gate and out into Pig Lane.

  5

  And curiously enough—for of the three alternative routes it was by no means the cleanest—she presently found herself in a narrow pathway skirting a disused stable. The door was open, but completely blocked by a handful of children, among whom, however, neither Pat nor the Pomfrets were for the moment discernible; and suppressing her normal impulse to hurry by, Lesley moved a pace or two nearer and stared frankly over their heads.

  The screever was at work.

  Familiar as Hyde Park Corner, shabby as the Strand, he squatted on the floor with the sign flat before him: and neither Bond Street on a fine morning, nor the theatres emptying at night were as much a part of the Town as the dusty and upturned cap that lay so conveniently to hand. Lesley thought,

  ‘If those little brutes would go, I could ask him how he got here.’

  And as though only waiting for that concrete and hostile thought, the children, who had already stopped their chattering, now began to turn and drift away. Lesley waited until they were all gone, then took out a sixpence from her bag and tossed it neatly into the centre of the cap. The screever turned.

  “Good luck, lady!”

  His face was like his voice, his voice like his greeting—all three pure cockney.

  “This is a long way from Trafalgar Square,” said Lesley.

  “I sh’d say it is, Miss. You from Town too?”

  Lesley nodded: the man put down his brush.

  “Ah! Kensington, would it be?”

  “No, Baker Street. Do you know it?”

  “Do I know it! I once ’ad a pitch there, along o’ the church railings. It’s a nice part, Baker Street, but the people in too much of an ’urry. Not enough shops, y’see, though I believe they’re putting ’em up.”

  “If you want shops, you should try Bond Street,” said Lesley.

  He looked at her compassionately.

  “Shops? Yes. Shops wiv commissionaires. Give me Baker Street, any day. D’you ever know the ‘Field of Hops,’ Miss, in the Marylebone Road?”

  “Only from the outside. Did you ever know—”

  “Ah, that’s a fine pub, that is!” said the screever. “What wouldn’t I give to be there now!” He spoke with passion: like Lesley’s Bond Street, his ‘Field of Hops’ had taken on the unearthly beauty of mirages. “And St. Martin’s Church—you know St. Martin’s Church?”

  “Of course I do!” cried Lesley.

  “Best pitch in Town,” said the screever reverently. “I used to know the feller what ’ad it—not what you’d call intimately, o’ course, but enough to pass the time o’ day. I used to ’ang about just opposite, see, so’s if ever ’e was called away or took ill or anything I’d be able to nip over and look after it for ’im: but ’e never was, and the coppers they took a down on me; ’n now I don’t suppose I’ll ever get such a chance again.”

  “What about Hyde Park Corner?” said Lesley, “where the buses stop?”

  “Ah! now you’re talking. ’Yde Park Corner!” Slowly, luxuriously, his tongue caressed the enchanting syllables. “’Ave they finished that new Underground yet, Miss?”

  “They hadn’t six months ago,” she told him. “But you’ve been in Town since then?”

  “You’re wrong there, lady; I ’aven’t been in Town since Wen’sday fourth of April last.” He spoke with the ready precision of the experienced witness; and as though overcome by a sudden malaise, or at any rate by a painful memory, politely but firmly
brought the conversation to an end.

  “Well, I best be getting on with these ’ere chickens,” he said regretfully. “It’s been nice talkin’ to you, Miss, it brought it all right back: but business before pleasure, as the sayin’ is.”

  With a deep sigh he bent over his work: muttered a complaint or two over the state of the wood, then fell altogether silent: and only as Lesley was departing down the lane did she catch what might have been the voice of her own heart.

  “’N a plucky long time it seems!” said the screever.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  So the days, weeks and and months slid monotonously by, and even Christmas scarcely disturbed her trance: for the Pomfrets invited Pat not only to partake of all the Vicarage festivities, but also to sleep there. He went rejoicing, and Lesley procured from Fortnum and Mason, and sent up with his belongings, a two-dozen box of extremely expensive crackers. He was gone for five days, but though Lesley could thus have locked up the White Cottage and departed for Town, a curious lack of initiative kept her where she was. She had received, as it chanced, no actual invitations, and although nothing would have been simpler than to telephone round till she found a party, the days slipped by in deliberation until suddenly it was too late. Frocks, ’phone calls, somewhere to stay—the effort was beyond her; and her final preparations consisted of Tolstoy’s War and Peace (which she had often attacked but never read) and two hundred Russian cigarettes.

  From first to last, indeed, the White Cottage added remarkably little to Mr. Walsh’s burdens: Lesley’s being a circle which customarily celebrated Christmas by getting out of the country for as long as it could afford. Elissa sent an Algerian paper-knife, Aunt Alice a butterfly-wing pen-tray which she had probably taken out from Sutton to post on the Italian Riviera. There were also a good many cards, a number of them (self-executed) from the artists who had tried to let Lesley their cottages; but this prolific and hitherto-untapped source apart, the total bag was about one-third of that usually addressed to Beverley Court.

  Nor was the out-going post much heavier. Along with the crackers Lesley also obtained one dozen Christmas cards, and when those were disposed of bought no more. The cynicism was quite unconscious: with her customary intelligence she had simply accepted the facts. And the facts were these: that to keep any memory green in Chelsea, over a period of either four or five years, was beyond the power of an annual halfpenny stamp. And as for ‘keeping up a correspondence’—those days were over. Chelsea ’phoned, wired or cabled: dashed off a note, sent a card with some flowers: but never sat down to the writing-desk from one year’s end to the other. Letters were out, together with sentimental friendship and two-month visits: in fact, if one couldn’t run a private road-house, all other effort was a sheer waste of tissue. Better be forgotten outright, thought Lesley, than haunt the public conscience as someone who ought to be written to.…

  The facts were faced. For four more years—for that was the period of exile to which she now acknowledged herself condemned—drop out altogether: drug mind with print and body with work: wash Patrick’s vests and save on the housekeeping. Drop out altogether … and then come back with a splash.…

  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.”