The Flowering Thorn Page 12

  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.

  Seduced by the charm of solitude, she strolled idly between the trees and reflected on nothing in particular. Odd shreds and pieces floated through her mind: the sad case of Florrie Walpole, to which Florrie herself seemed so remarkably indifferent: Mrs. Sprigg’s partiality for whist-drives: that extraordinary walk home with Mr. Pomfret, and its no less extraordinary culmination in Vicarage tea and toast. The oddest part of all, of course, being that she had actually enjoyed herself. One day, in the distant future, she might even go again. Being so long cut off from civilisation had doubtless made her less critical, but she had also intelligence to realise that
even at Elissa’s Mr. Pomfret would have held his own. After two hours’ conversation there was nothing Lesley could think of as being in the least likely to shock him. She had also discovered (though without for the moment regarding it as anything but an independent fact) that he was a great reader of Smollett.

  Lost in these musings, she made a leisurely circuit of the orchard and at last came to a pause at the corner by Pig Lane. A great bough of chestnut swung down across the path, thrusting itself proudly upon her attention; and looking more closely Lesley saw that at the end of each long and upward-springing branchlet had sprouted either a clean white bud or a green and fawn tassel. Every miniature leaf was exquisitely and crisply pleated, the buds were like magnolia buds in their first week; and each most delicate line of tassel, bud, and branch contributed its part to the vigorous upward movement of the whole aspiring tree.

  Involuntarily as a blackbird, Lesley sang.

  3

  The five children in the lane heard her and looked at each other. ‘She’s in a good temper!’ the look said, and they hurried their steps. But even so the pace remained slower than usual, for the eldest were carrying between them a couple of February lambs; and by the time they reached the orchard gate Lesley had broken off her song and was walking back past the well, where, at the sight of the caravan, she came to a sudden halt.

  “Look at the lambs, Frewen!” shouted Pat, clasping the nearest round the neck like an Infant St. John.

  Lesley looked.

  They had long legs, black noses, and were in fact just like the creatures she had seen photographed in The Times every February or March. Set down upon the grass they at once began to frisk, also in a very conventional manner, with much kicking up of their black legs and a tendency to come down in the middle of a jump. Without really seeing anything very funny in it, Lesley laughed.

  The eldest Pomfret child at once took a step forward.

  “If you don’t want to have them, Miss Frewen,” she said politely, “we’re to take them back.”

  “Have them?” echoed Lesley, for the moment uncomprehending.

  In spontaneous antiphon the children explained.

  “Have them here, Miss Frewen, for a month, for Pat and us to look after. They have to be fed out of bottles, because their mother’s dead, and Florrie Walpole has all the poultry, so she’d be only too glad. Pat’s got the bottles.”

  “And they’ll leave the milk every morning, with yours, Miss Frewen, so it won’t cost anything, and they have to be fed five times a day—”

  “Six—”

  “Or else six, but we’ll go back and make sure, and the milk has to be at blood heat, just a minute or so, and they can live in the shed, Miss Frewen, with netting over the door at night—”

  “And they are not destructive like goats, Miss Frewen—”

  “They don’t dig up bulbs—”

  “They get awfully affectionate—”

  Lesley clasped her hands over her ears and retreated into the doorway. An inexplicable lightheartedness still possessed her, so that for the moment the inevitable nuisance of the thing seemed almost unimportant. Really they were rather charming! She said,

  “If I let you—you’ll have to look after them. The first time you don’t I shall send them straight back.”

  They agreed passionately. They would have agreed to anything on earth: and scrutinising their five faces, Lesley saw that they all looked slightly startled, as though bliss had taken them by surprise.

  And so indeed it had, for they never expected her to be so reasonable. With youthful adaptability, however, they adjusted themselves to the new and pleasing situation, jettisoning in the process a whole cargo of arguments. Nor were the lambs far behind in nous or savoir faire: without a moment’s hesitation they frisked off through the orchard and displayed in the most natural manner possible their willingness to feel at home.

  “They’re not to come in the house, mind!” cried Lesley. “I won’t have them. You understand, Pat?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Pat radiantly. Always a little slower than the rest, his astonishment still lingered. But the excitement, the joys and fears of the afternoon, had quickened his spirits beyond their usual flow. Gratitude overwhelmed him, and seeing Lesley so near he flung himself at her knees and hugged them hard. It was all over in an instant, so that she scarcely realised what was happening; but when he had run off, she became aware of a curious silky sensation just fading from her palm. Instinctively she put up a hand to smooth her own smooth locks: they gave just the same feeling.

  ‘Very odd!’ thought Lesley.…

  The rest of the afternoon was spent in christening the newcomers (rather arbitrarily, perhaps) with the names of Alice and John; in airing the tool-shed (which fortunately contained no more than an old spade or two and a broken mangle); and in constructing a detachable wire door from the remains of a Pomfret rabbit-hutch. Mrs. Sprigg, with her usual resource, also acquired a couple of sacks and a double armful of straw, under which she scurried up the lane like a mouse with a wheat-ear.

  “I’ve never seen better lambs in my life,” she said cordially. “That John’ll turn out a proper champion.”

  Like Pat and the Pomfrets, she at once began calling them by name, and moreover displayed a most reassuring familiarity with their habits and requirements. Not all her observations, however, were equally welcome; it was she who first pointed out that in spite of all promises the last feed of the day must inevitably fall to Lesley. It was due at ten o’clock, and though the eldest Pomfret honourably proposed that he should slip nightly out of bed, the offer could scarcely be accepted.

  “You’ll soon get used to it, Miss Frewen,” prophesied the old woman cheerfully. “Meself I like a breath of air before I go to bed, same as I like a bite o’ cheese or something before I take me teeth out.”

  But Lesley listened unconvinced. Already she was a little regretting her impulse: and that night, in the pleasant fireside warmth, she regretted it even more.

  4

  ‘Those blasted lambs,’ thought Lesley, hearing the cuckoo slam his door.

  The fire glowed, the clock ticked; she had never in her life felt less desire to move. A lamb, however, was obviously a highly perishable object: one which might easily be found dead in the morning; and for all Lesley’s knowledge to the contrary such would be the fate of both Alice and John unless she now took them their milk.

  With a final sigh of resentment she pushed back her chair, went into the kitchen, and there found both milk and bottles put ready by Mrs. Sprigg. Blood heat, they said—and what the hell was that? Mrs. Sprigg, earlier in the day, had simply dipped her finger after about a minute’s heating: she said thermometers were too tricky.… Lesley waited about the same length of time, then filled the bottles and put in the rubber teats.

  Outside it was so dark that she had to take a candle, sheltering it with her fingers against the soft fresh-smelling airs. In the crook of her arm the milk-bottles generated a faint warmth, almost as though she were carrying a child: it was impossible, so lighted and so burdened, to move un-gently.

  And mind following body, her humour changed. Night, motion, errand, all combined to soothe her. From the little outhouse, black and ark-shaped among the apple-trees, a tiny cry now came to guide her, and over the half-door, quilted by the netting, two soft rough muzzles pressed up against her hand. Lesley bowed her head under the lintel and thrust a way in.

  An importunate nose pushed gently under her elbow. It was Alice, with the ribbon. Lesley seated herself on an upturned box, the candle beside her, and offered the first bottle. At once John came nuzzling too, so that she had to hold him off with her free hand. His wool felt thick, springy, just touched with grease, but not unpleasant. Alice was drinking in short steady pulls, never shifting for an instant her grip on the teat.

  ‘Just like Pat,’ thought Lesley.

  Through the open door she could see the cottage, compact and dark and with a line of light showing under the rim of the barn
thatch. It was the effect Toby or someone had likened to badly-joined scenery, but she was not just then thinking of him. The first lamb moved away; it was John feeding now, the lamb that was going to be a champion.

  Mechanically Lesley tilted the milk to his needs. The atmosphere in the shed—of candlewax, old sacking, earth and growing wool—was making her sleepy. Rhythmic between her knees came the steady pull at the warm bottle: close above her head bent the shadowy curve of the roof. She felt quiet, protected: solaced of her troubles; acquiescent; assuaged.

  Part III

  CHAPTER ONE

  The early summer opened eventfully. Half-way through May, Lesley dined with Sir Philip, and on the very same date Mr. Povey began trying to sell her his bird-bath.

  “You want a bird-bath, with an orchard,” explained Mr. Povey, waylaying her one morning outside the Three Pigeons. “It’s just where the birds come. Once you get ’em into the habit, they dabble about all day. Your little boy ’ud like that, Miss Frewen.”

  “Thank you, but they dabble about already,” Lesley told him, “in an old seed-pan.”

  He looked at her with pity.

  “A seed-pan?” said Mr. Povey. “A seed-pan? You come in here, Miss Frewen.” He moved majestically down the path; and fascinated as always by the sheer spread of his personality—the whale-like form and small hypnotic eye—Lesley too turned aside and followed him into the yard.

  “Look there,” said Mr. Povey.

  With unwilling astonishment, Lesley looked. It was a piece ‘of importance,’ as the collectors say. Birds could have bathed in it, and babies as well. The nucleus of the thing was a shallow rectangular trough, very much resembling a small kitchen sink, but enriched here and there with a good deal of fancy beading. It was supported at one end by a rock, at the other by a Bacchante: but as though to preserve the balance of interest, the rock was covered with frogs. There were also frogs along the rim of the trough, and one frog, rather unfairly, at the Bacchante’s feet, the whole being executed, with unbelievable persistence, in some sort of Aberdeen granite.