The Flowering Thorn Page 14

  “I just put them out in case,” she explained, “but maybe you won’t need ’em, not after the Hall. Did you get a good dinner, Miss Frewen?”

  “Very,” Lesley told her, advancing into the warmth. “I won’t eat anything, but you have one yourself, Mrs. Sprigg.”

  The old woman shook her head.

  “Oh, I won’t neither, thanks, I’ve just taken me teeth out.” She was looking, indeed, about a hundred years old; but her powers of speech were quite unaffected, and after a moment or two’s silence—

  “I seen old Povey trying to sell you ’is bird-bath,” she observed conversationally. “I was right next door at the Coxes, lookin’ out of their window. But don’t you have it, Miss Frewen, it’s not worth the money.”

  “I’m not going to,” said Lesley, with a suppressed shudder. “Where on earth did he get it?”

  “At a house over to Tring, nigh on three years back. It was the last day of the sale, and old Povey ’e bought ’er for fifteen shillings. Seems a lot for the money, don’t it? But they couldn’t get rid of ’er nohow, d’you see; and now ’e can’t get rid of ’er neither,” said Mrs. Sprigg relishingly.

  She picked up her hat and began skewering it on with the two long hat-pins which were also employed, as need arose, for probing the insides of cakes. Miss Frewen too bestirred herself, drew back the curtains, opened a window: she felt unusually tired, as though after prolonged mental effort. Mrs. Sprigg scuttled off home, the fire was out: but still Lesley lingered, glancing round the room with more than usually friendly eyes. It was small, ugly, inadequate, but it was also safe.

  It wasn’t exactly a drawing-room, but at least there were no spittoons.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Even in the first few days at Yellow House Lesley had never actually purchased a blue suede album with ‘What Baby Says’ in repoussé-work; and this was fortunate, for in all the years she was to know him young Patrick Craigie never said anything in the least worth repeating about either God or the fairies.

  He was an ordinary child.

  He would probably have to go into the Police.

  In the meantime, however, they were getting on quite well, and about the middle of the month an incident occurred which finally dissipated the last of their constraint. It arose, superficially at least, out of the simple human fact—which Lesley had nevertheless taken about six months to assimilate—that children really do need something to eat in the middle of the morning. A glass of milk, with two plain biscuits, was accordingly instituted for the hour of eleven; and the biscuits were Lincoln Creams, a brand chanced on by hazard, but proving so much to Pat’s taste that he ever after resisted all talk of change. A natural conservative, he presumably saw no need to strive after the better when the good lay already at hand.

  On the fifteenth of June, however, the tin was bare, the grocer’s van overdue, and eleven o’clock striking: so Lesley cut instead a piece of currant cake and bore glass and plate into the orchard. There was no Patrick in sight, and setting them on the wooden table she sat down herself to finish the paper.

  When she glanced up again, Patrick was there. He stood staring silently at the plate, his hands in his pockets, and on his usually placid face an expression of extreme stubbornness. He was holding it, Lesley felt, until she looked and saw him.

  “Where are my biscuits?” asked Patrick.

  “They haven’t come yet,” Lesley answered calmly, “so you’ve a piece of cake instead. Drink your milk, Pat.”

  He looked at her sulkily, but still without any overt sign that he had definitely stopped being good and was now going to be bad.

  “I don’t want cake. I want biscuits.”

  “I’m afraid you can’t have them,” said Lesley.

  “Then I don’t want anything,” said Pat.

  Lesley picked up her paper again. It was the first time in all their acquaintance that he had ever really been naughty; and she hoped to goodness she would be able to deal with him. She said quietly,

  “You needn’t eat the cake, but you must drink your milk. At once, please, Pat.”

  Slowly, very slowly indeed, he began to walk away. Lesley lowered the paper.

  “Pat!”

  He stopped. (‘Thank God for that!’ thought Lesley.)

  “Drink your milk at once, please.”

  With a quite disproportionate relief she saw him stretch out his hand to the table. He picked up the glass, advanced it half-way to his lips: then with a sudden change of motion emptied it on the grass.

  The next instant he was over Lesley’s knee being soundly spanked with the flat of the hand.

  How exactly it happened she could never afterwards make out; but for a lifelong opposer of corporal punishment her reactions must have been in surprisingly good condition. Nor did she, the spanking over, feel in any way brutalised: with Patrick, of course, it was harder to tell, for he merely gave one good loud bellow and then went off over the fence to play again with the Walpole pigs. It seemed highly probable, in fact, that should necessity arise she would spank him again; and with this knowledge in both their minds the relations between them took on a new ease. They knew exactly where they stood with each other, and got on a good deal better in consequence.

  2

  A day or two later, Lesley went over to Aylesbury and bought new curtains. She acted on pure impulse; had she stayed to consider, the curtains would not have been bought. For the original and hideous rep had been retained for two definite reasons: firstly, because it was amusing, and secondly, because the whole outfit—cottage, curtains and all—was a mere temporary perching-place on which it would be foolish to spend money. Both these reasons still held good, though time had certainly elapsed since Lesley laughed aloud while opening the windows; but indeed she made not the slightest attempt to question their validity. The curtains remained established, so to speak, as adequate and amusing; she merely felt, as she sat over her coffee, that she could no longer stand the sight of them.

  “I’m going into Aylesbury, Mrs. Sprigg,” called Lesley through the hatch: “which is the best draper’s?”

  “Alfred Walpole, by the ’bus stop,” Mrs. Sprigg called back; and before Alfred Walpole’s chintz counter, about thirty minutes later, Lesley stood staring hopelessly at a bunch of pale-pink rosebuds on a Cambridge blue ground. It was all very difficult.

  There was only one design that at all appealed to her, a broad diagonal stripe in black, white and red, which Mr. Walpole (though this of course Lesley did not know) had rashly stocked for the fancy-dress season and then been unable to get rid of. She could have had it, moreover, for sixpence ha’penny a yard; but a natural integrity of taste restrained her. At Toby’s Yellow House, yes; in a genuine cottage in the actual country, no; the clash of styles would have been almost audible. Deliberately shifting her viewpoint, therefore, Lesley turned back to the pile of her first weeding-out—the pile of the frankly pretty; and from it selected, not without a certain perverse humour, the very prettiest of all. It had a pattern of blue and pink delphiniums.

  “Ah, you’ll like that,” said Mr. Walpole approvingly. “I’ve got it up myself in my own drawing-room.”

  Lesley opened her mouth to countermand the purchase: but too late, for he had started to cut. As a sort of antiseptic, however, she bought a copy of the Tatler and a bottle of Cointreau, which latter, in her passage down the ’bus, she unfortunately dropped plump into the lap of Florrie Walpole.

  “I’ll take that for you, Miss Frewen,” said Florrie obligingly; and since she had already got it Lesley was reluctantly obliged to sit down beside her. Florrie Walpole, with her masses of red hair, her beautiful, slightly dirty skin, was overwhelming enough at the best of times: in her present state of—of fecundity, it was like sitting next to a Venus Genetrix.

  “I see you been to old Alfred’s,” she remarked, indicating Lesley’s parcel. “I hate that nasty thin paper ’e uses, but ‘What’s the good?’ ’e says, ‘they only throw it away.’”

  For t
he first time Lesley connected the names.

  “Is he a relation of yours?”

  “Rather! ’E’s my father’s cousin. ’E’s offered me a job in the shop, too, but of course I can’t just now take it.” She broke off rather delicately, and changed the subject. “What sort of stuff you been getting, Miss Frewen? Chintz?” Lesley nodded. “Ah! Everyone goes to Alfred for chintz, ’e gets such lovely designs. Which one did you take?”

  “Pink and blue delphiniums,” said Lesley.

  “Why, I believe that’s what Alfred ’as in ’is own drawing-room!” exclaimed Florrie. “Pretty, ain’t it?”

  “Very,” said Lesley, unfurling her Tatler. “That’s why I bought it.”

  “The Walpoles ’ave got theirs with a plain border,” proceeded Florrie. “But then of course it was all done in the shop, so you don’t wonder. Mrs. Walpole she wants chair-covers as well, but the old man’s too mean. You going to make it up yourself, Miss Frewen?”

  Lesley hesitated. Curtains—curtains meant a sewing-machine: or at any rate needles and scissors, tape-measures and pins, all the impossible set-out of the home-dressmaker.…

  “Because,” said Florrie helpfully, “if you should want Milly Cox, she’ll be over at our place this very afternoon.”

  “Milly Cox?” repeated Lesley, playing for time. “Isn’t that the sister of Mrs. Pomfret’s maid?”

  “That’s right, Miss Frewen, but it wasn’t sore throat really, not the bad kind. If it was,” said Florrie earnestly, “I wouldn’t make the suggestion, not with your little boy there. But you’d find her satisfactory, that I do know. She makes for Mrs. Povey.”

  Lesley closed her paper again and prepared to employ, through the serviceable Miss Walpole, the efficient Miss Cox. The conversation lasted all the way to Westover, where, seeing her companion turn towards the road, Lesley at once announced her intention of cutting across fields. It was the longer way round, but she said she needed exercise.

  (“I’d come with you myself,” said Florrie, “if it wasn’t for the stiles.…”)

  Once out of sight of the road, however, Lesley sat down under a tree, disposed of her parcels, and opened the Tatler: where the first thing that met her eye was a photograph of Elissa. ‘Seen at Ascot,’ she was captioned; ‘Another of the many striking toilettes.’ There were seven on that page alone, but Elissa’s was easily the best. Long, exquisitely-moulded, dead-white piqué—(Was it piqué? Or something else, stiffened?) tiny black-and-white tippet, long black gloves; hat out of a French Noah’s Ark. And under that hat, so perfect that it must have been made up specially for snap-shots, Elissa’s profile at its most successful angle.

  For perhaps five minutes, while the cows grazed all about, Lesley’s eyes took their fill of elegance. Then without looking further she put the pages together again and collected her parcels. It was a quarter to one, nearly time for dinner; and as she continued her path she thought how there was at least this to be said for landscape, that it didn’t continually reflect the figure after the manner of shop-windows.

  3

  Late that same night, in obedience to the natural law of coincidence, Elissa telephoned. The time she chose was shortly before twelve, so that both Lesley and Pat were awakened out of their sleep.

  “Lesley darling”—high and shrill as ever, against a background of dance music, Elissa’s voice floated cajoling over the wire—“Lesley darling, it’s just occurred to me—could Natasha come and stay with you while she’s having a baby?”

  “No, she couldn’t,” replied Lesley, with the uninhibited candour of the imperfectly awake.

  “But, darling, why not? Would it shock the village?”

  Herself only recently inured to the everyday conversation of Mrs. Sprigg, Lesley was forced to admit that it would not.

  “But there’s no room, my dear, and she’d have nothing to do. Why can’t she have it in Town?”

  “Oh, no actual reason,” replied Elissa vaguely. There was a short pause, rhythmic with far-off saxaphones. “She’s very amusing, you know.”

  “It was sweet of you to think of me,” said Lesley appreciatively. “Aren’t they playing that Tango too fast?” And her feet being by this time unpleasantly cold, she hung up the receiver and went back to bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Inevitably, Patrick acquired a dog.

  Its name was Pincher, and he acquired it by sheer determination. For a dog was one of the things Lesley had consistently set her face against, and she did not attempt to conceal her sentiments when Pat and the Pomfrets returned one afternoon with what they confidently alleged would soon be a thoroughbred Airedale. But theirs was the eye of faith, for they had found him in the road and he had at once licked all their hands; to the eye of reason he was a mangy, carrot-coloured, six-months mongrel: flea-bitten, pugnacious, remarkably loud-voiced. Said Lesley from the doorway:

  “Put that dog outside, Pat, and come and wash your hands.”

  And immediately, from the expression on his face, she knew there was going to be trouble.

  “But, Frewen—”

  “Outside, Pat. I’ve said before you can’t have a dog, and you shouldn’t have brought it.”

  There was a long, horrified pause. The children looked at each other, faith, hope and charity tottering under the blow. ‘But over the lambs,’ that look seemed to say, ‘she was quite reasonable!’ And Lesley, interpreting, consolidated her position.

  “Outside, Pat.”

  “But he’ll die!” cried all the children together.

  Acutely conscious that she was about to be blackmailed, Lesley advanced a step from the doorway to take matters into her own hands. Pat shifted his grip from the pseudo-lead to the handkerchiefs round the animal’s neck. Behind him the children seemed to close their ranks.

  “Let go, Pat,” said Lesley.

  And then, looking down from her superior and adult height, she saw that he was in agony. There were no tears, but his face was somehow twisted and wrenched, as though a mask should try to express more than its designer intended. Lesley thought, ‘It’s no good. You can’t force a child to turn out a starving animal. It’s wicked;’ and the adjective, so long a stranger to her mind, fell so naturally into place that she hardly noticed it.

  “Very well, then,” said Lesley, “you may get it some scraps from Mrs. Sprigg, and then you must put it out.” She kept her eyes fixed on Pat’s face; all at once it was round and childish again. The device had worked, then. He would feed and fondle the creature, see it go on its way relieved, and so leave his mind free to forget all about it.

  But the five children exchanged glances. They knew, and the dog knew, that it was the thin end of the wedge.

  2

  In the morning the dog was still there; and for the next two days the blackmail continued. Not a word was uttered, not a tear wept: but like a brooding thunderstorm the sorrows of Pincher filled the air. He was not on the premises, for in obedience to her edict he had been ruthlessly put out: but Lesley had a strong suspicion that he was just on the other side of the fence. There was a disused wood-shed of Mr. Walpole’s, backing on to the cottage tool-house, which had suddenly begun to exert a magnet-like influence: and Pat, for the first time in his life, developed the extraordinarily messy habit of concealing food about his person.

  “If you haven’t finished, don’t ask to get down,” said Lesley, the second time she saw him.

  “I have finished,” said Pat, uneasily clasping the jersey over his stomach.

  “Then don’t take food away with you. It’s rude and greedy,” said Lesley, on whom the didactic was now beginning to sit quite naturally.

  “I’m not,” said Pat.

  It was quite true; he wasn’t greedy: but without admitting the existence of Pincher (at present still a sort of open diplomatic secret) the injustice could hardly be remedied. The situation, in fact—the ridiculous, childish situation—was rapidly becoming impossible; and seated that morning at her writing-table Lesley suddenly and fant
astically wondered whether she had at last stumbled on the secret of that brooding Russian melancholy which has so long puzzled the Anglo-Saxon. Were the children of the Treplevs, the Voynitskys, the Karamozovs, all being denied a dog? Lesley looked out of the window. They were all there, Pat and the four Pomfrets, grouped in attitudes of listless despair under the biggest apple-tree. The strength of the June sun was like a personal gift, something undeserved and lavish from a bachelor uncle: beneath it the backs of their necks were warm but bowed.

  Unable to bear it a moment longer, Lesley picked up her hat and went out for a walk. She wanted a long period of solitude in which to examine and reaffirm her already considered position; but in this she was not indulged, for hardly had she left Pig Lane than her way was effectually barred by the figure of Mr. Povey leaning thoughtfully on a gate.

  “Warm, ain’t it?” said Mr. Povey.

  Lesley agreed. The dog-days!

  “But not,” said Mr. Povey, “close.”

  She agreed again. Looking inquiringly towards the gate, she added that however hot, the weather was probably not stormy.

  “Ah! you’re right there,” said Mr. Povey, making no attempt to move. “You never had a storm here, not a really bad one. They get inside the hills, d’you see, and they can’t get out. Just go round and round. My wife she gets all ’ysterical.” He slightly shifted his position. “Now, about that bird-bath, Miss Frewen—”

  “I’ve decided not to have it,” said Lesley quickly.

  “You haven’t thought what it would look like, I s’pose, picked out in green?”

  Lesley admitted that she had not.

  “Well, I have,” said Mr. Povey. “I’ve an eye for these things, and I can tell you, Miss Frewen, that it would look very natty.”

  With a tremor of apprehension she braced herself to resist.

  “But I don’t think—”

  “Wait,” said Mr. Povey. Extending his right forefinger he described an airy circle. “Just the beading round the rim, d’you see, and the bodies of the frogs, and the vine-leaves in ’er air. A piece like that in London, Miss Frewen, would cost you a ten-pound note.”