Like a man too in other ways, in her indifference to her appearance, even in her appearance itself. In the small crowded kitchen her size and her mannishness were exaggerated; it was as though one saw her through a magnifying-glass. Perhaps the disappointment of the wet morning had affected Miss Selbourne, who was so accustomed to Miss Garrett’s company that usually she could hardly be said to see her at all. But now Tiger’s bulk, her massive chest and shoulders, her big thick legs, made bigger and thicker by corduroy trousers, her square strong hands and square weatherbeaten face seemed for a moment quite overpowering. It was only for a moment; the next instant Miss Selbourne got her back into focus.
Tiger was a big woman; she looked strong and hearty, but she had a weakness—she looked able to take care of herself, but she needed love and attention. She needed to be petted and cared for, like the dogs, and like them, she needed to be groomed. I must remember to see that Tiger washes her neck before the show, thought Miss Selbourne. Her ears, too, and her fingernails.
“Well, Bunty, we can’t sit here all day,” Tiger said breezily. She stood up, giving herself a good shake as if she were a dog that had been out in the rain. “Gosh, what a day, she remarked. “I bet you the Hanson girl cries off.” But in spite of these gloomy words it was plain she was in a good humour, for she continued:
“I’ll do kennels.”
“Oh, no, you’ve got a long day ahead of you. I’ll do them this morning.” In these small contests in unselfishness Miss Selbourne was usually the winner, but today Miss Garrett prevailed.
“So have you, old thing. Besides, I’m dressed and you’re not, and I think it’s my turn.” Miss Garrett remembered that it was her turn only when she was quite willing to undertake a task, so Miss Selbourne was able to let her go without misgivings. She herself picked up the kettle and went upstairs to dress. From her bedroom window the day showed some improvement. The rain had lessened, the clouds looked higher, and a breeze was stirring the larches on the hillside. “Bank Cottage is so sheltered,” Miss Selbourne used to say when people commented on the curious position of her little house. Sheltered was a pleasing adjective; it forestalled another which did not please her. But sometimes, looking out from her bedroom window, she admitted to herself that Bank Cottage was rather shut in.
It stood in the trough of a narrow valley running north and south. The long, thin garden was bordered on one side by the lane and on the other by the railway embankment. A row of elms grew along the lane; beyond the railway embankment to the east was a rising hillside covered with larches. The embankment towered above Bank Cottage like a rampart, and when a train passed everything in the house vibrated to its passing. But fortunately there were few trains. The single line was a branch from the junction at Bramworthy to the village of Bramton; it had been built in the early days of steam’s triumph and was now almost superseded by an efficient bus service which connected Bramton more directly with the outer world.
It was the embankment, rather than the trains, that people were conscious of when they visited Miss Selbourne. It was the embankment that cut off the morning sun and made the garden appear so disproportionately narrow. In spring the embankment was gay with primroses, but in summer the dry grass was sometimes set on fire by passing trains, and then Miss Selbourne and Miss Garrett had an anxious time. Behind the house, where the garden merged into a tussocky paddock, were the kennels, wooden buildings vulnerable to fire, and more than once they had had to remove the precious dogs till the danger was over. On hot summer evenings, although both believed in early bed and early rising, they sat up until the last train had gone by.
But now, though it was summer, there was no danger of destruction by fire. The house could safely be left. It was really a good thing, thought Miss Selbourne, that it had been such a wet night. For this was the day of the show, the Bramton and District Dog Show, and although the Hanson girl was coming in to look after the dogs that were not going to the show, she was not really the person to cope with an outbreak of fire. As she reached this conclusion Miss Selbourne heard the slam of the back door, and an instant later the sharp barks and scuffling excitement of Agnes and Leo as they chased each other round the hall, and Tiger’s voice shouting, “Sit, sit! Sit down till you’re dried. Bunty, where’s the towel got to?”
At the same moment the cuckoo clock at the head of the stairs sprang into action with a whirring of wheels. The doors opened, the cuckoo popped its head out and began its seven cuckoos. A subterranean rumbling which quickly increased to a dominant roar heralded the passing of the first train. “Very punctual today!” shouted Tiger from the kitchen. She meant that the train was punctual by the cuckoo clock, not that the cuckoo clock kept good time by the train.
Miss Selbourne put a clean handkerchief in her cuff, pushed the window wide open, and went downstairs.
The train could be heard, but more distantly, from the houses that made up the hamlet of Bramton Wick. The lane crossed the little river and turned westwards up the hill. It was known as Wick Lane, and where it joined the upper road along the ridge was the commercial centre of Bramton Wick, consisting of a post office and general store, a roadside cafe, and an unobtrusive inn. It was too small to be classed as a village, and the buildings were neither picturesque nor ugly. There were a few cottages nearby, but Bramton Wick (commonly called Wick, to distinguish it from Bramton proper) was a straggling place; the newer houses which had been built between the wars were strung out along the ridge, and set back among trees, so that they hardly seemed to belong to the small settlement at the crossroads.
In one of these houses, some twenty years earlier, Major Worthy had settled down to spend the years of his retirement. Having been fortunate enough to marry a woman with a little money, he had been able to retire comparatively young.
Curtis, as his wife explained to every newcomer, had never really got over the last war (and by this she meant the war of 1914-18), and in particular still suffered from the effects of the sunstroke he had got in India. For years she had worried herself nearly demented over his delicate health, till at last she had been able to persuade him to give it up—for what was success compared to one’s health? And so they had come here—for the best doctors in London could do nothing for Curtis, but one of them suggested that in the country, somewhere really quiet, he would be as well as he could hope to be anywhere. Of course, he would never be completely fit, but that was partly his own fault. He was too active, he could not bear to be idle.
“If he would only rest more—!” Mrs. Worthy would exclaim, and from the direction of her loving, anxious glance the visitor would realize that the man digging the border or sawing up logs, whom one had judged by his clothes and wrinkled leathery appearance to be an unusually energetic hireling, must be the victim of sunstroke and World War I.
“Gwennie!” Major Worthy said peremptorily. There was a faint inaudible reply from the kitchen. “Gwennie!” he called again, and this time his wife appeared in the doorway and he was satisfied that she really had heard him.
“Breakfast ready?” he inquired. “It’s eight o’clock.” He looked at his watch and at the hall clock, and then, more gloomily, at the barometer. “Glass has gone down again,” he informed her. “Not much hope of a fine afternoon. Not a day for your best bib and tucker.”
“I know, Curtis. Isn’t it a shame? Oh, I don’t mean my clothes, but isn’t it a shame if it’s going to be wet for the dog show? I was talking to Miss Selbourne yesterday—or was it Thursday? Yes, it was Thursday—and she told me they were expecting a great many people, but I don’t suppose they’ll come if it’s wet. I’m afraid the guarantors will lose all the money they put up.”
“More fools they. Catch me putting up money for a show in a little place like this. What about breakfast?”
Major Worthy spoke abruptly, but not unkindly. Staccato remarks were his normal mode of expressing himself, and his insistence on punctuality was perhaps a relic of his army career. When breakfast was on the table he sat down wit
hout the least appearance of haste to examine his letters. Mrs. Worthy, whom a lifetime of devotion had prepared for such contingencies, produced a padded tea-cosy for the teapot and a small replica of it for the boiled egg. There were three places laid at the table, and two boiled eggs—she herself had only toast—but the other egg had to wait out in the cold. She had not foreseen, when she bought the little egg-cosy at the church restoration bazaar in the year before the war, that she would have another dilatory man at her breakfast table.
Presently Major Worthy looked up. “Where’s young Jocelyn?” he asked. This was a question which hardly needed an answer, nor did he pay much attention when his wife said, “I expect he’s still having his bath.” The short phrases that composed much of Major Worthy’s conversation were spasmodic, meaningless, a mere overflowing of his abundant energy. Like the whistling escape of steam from a safety-valve, they filled the surrounding air with noise but required no response.
Mrs. Worthy was sufficiently aware of this to know that sudden silences and abrupt changes of subject need not be ascribed to ill-humour. She waited for Curtis to finish his letters. She was placid, but alert.
“Well, don’t I get any breakfast this morning?” he said at last, and at this she unhooded the teapot and filled the cups. Then she gave him his egg, first slicing off the top and putting salt on the side of the plate. She got up and walked round the table to set the egg in front of him, and while she was up she bent over the toast-rack and selected the most evenly browned slice for his plate. Her duty was now done, since he preferred to butter the toast himself, and she returned to her place and prepared to begin her own breakfast.
Before Major Worthy had finished his egg the door opened and young Jocelyn appeared. “Good morning, dear,” said Mrs. Worthy. “Afternoon,” said Major Worthy. “We shall have to get you an alarm clock, young feller.”
Mrs. Worthy looked anxious. People did not understand Curtis, that it was only his manner, that he was not really rude, or angry, or avaricious. And young people (by this she meant Jocelyn) were so sensitive. She was sorry for young people, whom the war had deprived of money and prospects and ambition, but not sorry enough to sympathize if they annoyed Curtis.
By misunderstanding his uncle, Jocelyn had before now succeeded in annoying him to a quite unnerving degree. It was a relief when he ignored the offer of an alarm clock and simply said good morning. He took his seat at the table, she passed him his egg (restraining herself from uncapping it), and the meal continued. Major Worthy fired off remarks, Mrs. Worthy answered them, and Jocelyn ate in silence.
“Weather’s looking up a bit,” Major Worthy decided, rising to his feet and shaking crumbs of toast all over the carpet. It had stopped raining some time ago, and now they could all acknowledge it.
“Perhaps it will be fine after all. Jocelyn, I did tell you about the show, didn’t I? I don’t suppose you’ll find it very interesting but it will be—well, it will be a little gaiety, won’t it?”
A little gaiety was perhaps what Jocelyn needed.
“Yes, Aunt Gwennie,” Jocelyn agreed politely. He had the common masculine attribute of being, after a meal, better-tempered and more amenable to kind thoughts, and it was under their influence that he added: “I suppose you’re not showing Binkie?”
“I think Binkie’s too old. Of course, he doesn’t look it but actually he’s nearly ten. We’ve had him since he was eight weeks, and oh, when I think what a dear little pup he was! He came to us from some dear friends of your uncles who went in for breeding dogs after the last war—they didn’t, I’m afraid, make a great success of it and after a time they gave it up, but they still kept dogs—one does, you know, when one’s once had a dog, and of course they had had a lot of dogs. They gave Binkie to us as a Christmas present, and he arrived in a little wooden box. He was so small. I said to Curtis, he’s much too small to travel alone. Of course, by that time we’d got him out of the box and he was running all over the place. Oh, he was a dear little thing!”
“Who’s a naughty pup then?” Major Worthy interjected suddenly. Jocelyn looked round, but Binkie was not in the room.
“Yes, wasn’t he naughty? He tore everything up, he nearly drove Mabel, that was the maid we had then, frantic. Of course, he’s settled down now, he’s quite grown-up and sedate.” She paused, and Jocelyn said quickly:
“I thought of going into Bramton this morning.”
He had only just thought of it, while he was wondering how to detach himself from Aunt Gwennie without attaching himself for the whole morning to Uncle Curtis. It was so unlike him to decide on a definite action that Mrs. Worthy was surprised, and wondered if he could have made some friends in Bramton, since there seemed no other reason for his going there.
“Of course, dear.” She hesitated. Should she tell him to take the car? But apart from his using the petrol, she did not like the way Jocelyn drove the car. It was not the way the car was accustomed to being driven; too often he forgot that it was not a jeep or whatever he had learned to drive in the Army. But before prudence and kindness had finished their argument the question was settled by his saying: “I thought I’d walk in to get some exercise. Then I can come back on the bus.”
“If you want exercise I can give you plenty in the garden,” his uncle offered as he crossed to the door. “Finest exercise in the world. Nothing like it. Look at me.”
Jocelyn looked at him. Fortunately Major Worthy had his back to the room and did not notice it. But Mrs. Worthy noticed it, and decided that it would do Jocelyn no harm to walk both ways. She had been going to offer him his bus fare. Now she merely asked him if he knew the way.
“You mean across the fields?” he answered, obligingly intelligent for once. “Well, I cut off at the crossroads, don’t I, and straight down to the river? There’s a footbridge somewhere—”
“And it brings you out into the lane, and then you go under the railway, I mean the lane goes under the railway, and up the hill on the other side, and it brings you on to the Bramworthy road just by the gates of Marly House. That’s much shorter than keeping this side of the river. If you went this way—”
“But I won’t,” Jocelyn said ruthlessly. “I’ll go the other way. Down to the river. By the way, who lives in that house you pass going down to the river? A rather pretty house with oodles of creeper all over it?”
Starting mentally from the front gate, Mrs. Worthy arrived at the first cottage along the road. Thatched, decrepit, certainly ivy-covered. “Why, that’s Mrs. Trimmer’s cottage. You’re not very observant, Jocelyn”—she was still angry with him—“for, don’t you remember, we passed there the other evening when Mrs. Trimmer was just going in? You know her, she comes here twice a week to scrub the passages and I stopped that evening—was it last Tuesday?—and spoke to her. I wanted—”
“Oh, I don’t mean that old shack. I mean the big house on the way down the hill. The garden slopes down to the footpath.”
When he said “the big house,” she thought of Endbury or Cleeve Manor or Marly, all houses undeniably bigger than her own. It took her a few seconds to realize that he must mean Woodside, and then she protested that it was not a big house at all. Perhaps it only looked big because it was long and low, or perhaps the creeper made it look bigger. There were only four bedrooms and all of them quite small. And it might be pretty but it was certainly damp.
Jocelyn waited, not too impatiently, for every minute’s delay made it less probable that he would have time to walk into Bramton. Finally, when his aunt had described three different houses similarly affected by damp, he repeated his question.
“Who lives at Woodside?” she echoed. “Why, some people called Cole. They have been here for years, but somehow we don’t seem to know them very well.”
Binkie was chasing a fugitive hen across the garden. Clara was waiting to make the beds. And there was her frock to iron out for the afternoon, and the lunch to cook. So there was no time to tell Jocelyn any more about the Coles.
Chapter Two
It was fortunate that Woodside was quite a small house, and that the general shortage of servants made housework a permissible employment for gentlewomen, for they could hardly have afforded a resident maid. Mrs. Cole did not mind the housework, but she would have hated admitting that she was much poorer than her neighbours and therefore an object for their compassion or patronage.
She did not mind the housework, but she was remarkably bad at it, and could comfort herself only by remembering that after all she had not been brought up to cooking, dusting, and polishing, and that she had come to these tasks late in life. Her two daughters, who were very fond of her, made her increasing years an excuse for letting her do as little as possible, for they would not have hurt her feelings by pointing out the dust she overlooked or the dreadful solidity of her puddings.
Mrs. Cole, who was secretly aware of their true reasons for sparing her, tried to show her gratitude by praising and admiring everything they did, as though no one else had ever done it half as well. Perhaps, too, by making them out to be so wonderfully talented, she disguised her own inadequacy; it was not that she was really so incompetent, it was just that she could not reach their level.
During the war, they agreed, she had done wonders. Gillian’s marriage, Laura’s absence—first at school and then in the Land Army—had left her unprotected; like the personification of a slogan she had had to sink or swim, and she had swum. Those days were now past, and as if in reaction from their prolonged activity Mrs. Cole showed signs of becoming an old lady. She had always had a tendency to dramatize her life (with herself, of course, in the leading part), and now she had begun, as it were, to rehearse her final role, though she was not yet word-perfect.
For dramatically-minded characters costume is important, and Mrs. Cole, to her daughters’ regret, had taken to wearing soft-soled slippers, peculiar old skirts, and a large hand-knitted Shetland shawl which enveloped and concealed—or so she believed—all the deficiencies of her warm but shapeless jerseys.
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