The Flowering Thorn

by Margery Sharp

  For a moment, under their thin, very wrinkled lids, the old eyes held her in steady scrutiny. At last he said,

  “In that case—what in heaven’s name are you doing it for?”

  (‘Rotten apples!’ thought Lesley.)

  “A new experience, Uncle Graham. You will write to the land-owner, won’t you?”

  “Certainly, if you wish it. I shall write and say my niece has gone suddenly demented and needs complete seclusion.”

  “Thank you, darling. That will be perfect,” said Lesley cordially. “I suppose I can’t put you up for the Ballet Circle in return?”

  With his very natural refusal the interview came to an end. Leaving the room, a feeling that she had been definitely less than gracious made Lesley turn and look back. He was standing in the traditional attitude of ruffled authority—back to the fire, feet a little apart, brows bent upon the pattern of the hearth-rug.

  Lesley shrugged her shoulders. It was no good. He didn’t believe her. His mind ought to be in a museum.

  5

  Returning about an hour later to the Yellow House, Lesley found standing in the hall a large leather trunk. It had an old-fashioned dome lid, two stout straps, a garnish of brass nails, and by contrast with Toby’s wallpapers might just have been unloaded from the Ark. Lesley pulled off her hat and summoned the housekeeper.

  “Does this belong to Mr. Ashton?”

  Mrs. Lee looked slightly offended.

  “Oh, no, Madam, it’s for you. Carter Paterson brought it about half-an-hour ago. And it won’t go upstairs, Madam, it’s too big.”

  Advancing a step nearer, Lesley looked at the lid. There were two sets of initials; in the middle, a small N. McB. executed in brass nails: a little below, amateurishly painted, N.E.C. in white.

  “It was paid in advance,” added Mrs. Lee fairly. “Otherwise, of course, I shouldn’t have took it in.”

  In a flash of understanding Lesley remembered her Aunt’s letter. That unread third page! And sitting down on the edge of a steel chair she pulled out the crumpled sheets and spread them in the light.

  ‘Poor Mrs. Craigie’—that was it—‘Poor Mrs. Craigie’s trunk still here, so I got Denman to pack it and have sent it to you at Yellow House. There were also a few things of Pat’s which she says she has put in the tray.’

  Lesley folded the letter back into its envelope and looked again at the heavy domed lid and mighty straps. No one strapped a trunk like that unless the locks were broken, so that she felt fairly confident of being able to get in; but the business was distasteful nevertheless, and she was still debating whether or not to let Patrick’s belongings go when Mrs. Lee returned for further instructions.

  “Yes, undo the straps, please,” said Lesley, suddenly making up her mind. “And then get on to Whiteley’s and ask them to come and collect it. Say it’s for storage.” With the loosening of the buckles curiosity had at last stirred; but a vague disrelish, as at a breach of taste, still kept her motionless. When Mrs. Lee had gone to the telephone, however, Lesley knelt down on the grey carpet and slipped back the locks. As she had suspected, they were both completely useless, and without further resistance the lid gave way.

  At the very top, on a sheet of tissue paper, were several very small undergarments, half-a-dozen red bone chessmen, and a much-thumbed copy of The Tailor of Gloucester. Lesley lifted them all out on to the carpet. The vests looked much too small and would probably have to be thrown away: the Tailor and the chessmen Pat could have at once, to take down to the country if he still wanted them. But she hoped that he would not, for they represented, to her eyes, the unmistakable beginnings of Junk. Junk! The trunk was full of it. As though drawn by a morbid attraction, her hand reached out and twitched aside the blue paper.

  In one corner, a bundle of letters tied up with a white ribbon. Two hymn-books. An old chocolate box, also tied up with ribbon. Two white silk blouses, quite clean and neatly folded. A man’s glove. And in a sort of nest of paper, pinned to the stuff of the tray, a buttonhole of waxen orange-blossom.

  It was junk of the worst description.

  With an instinctive and fastidious gesture Lesley thrust down the lid. A wiser Pandora, she had no mind to release a swarm of sentimental microbes. Sentiment and junk. The two things she had all her life most sedulously avoided—only to receive them at last delivered to her door! It was almost amusing. Wholly amusing, in fact, when one remembered the hackneyed, theatrical-property contents of the tray: but for all that she was taking no risks. The trunk should go at once to Whiteley’s, there to be stored, amid all the safeguards of modern invention, until such time as Patrick was old enough to be given the receipt. About eighteen, perhaps. Though what a depressing birthday present! Meanwhile—

  “Pat!’ she called suddenly. “Where are you? Come here a minute.”

  From the room on the right came a soft thump. He had evidently been sitting on the window-sill. A moment passed, filled, for Patrick at least, with interesting endeavour. Then the door was pulled open and he stood victorious on the threshold.

  “Look, do you want these?” asked Lesley, holding up a red knight.

  “Chessmen,” said Pat.

  “Yes. Do you want them?”

  In that same instant she saw that he had recognised the trunk. Step by step, one eye still on the chessmen, he moved towards it: and with a first faint stirring of scientific interest Lesley watched for his reactions.

  They were few. He recognised; but did he associate? It was difficult to tell, for when still about three paces away his attention was completely diverted by The Tailor of Gloucester. This he fell upon literally and figuratively, with his whole heart, turning and tearing the shabby pages until he came to the picture of Simpkin the cat putting mice under tea-cups.

  “Simkin,” said Pat; and drew a long breath of satisfaction.

  ‘My God!’ Lesley thought in horror. ‘He’s used to being read to! …’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Four days later they went down to the country.

  Like an unenamoured but determined bride, Lesley was hurrying upon her fate. She would have taken the White Cottage without seeing it, if Sir Philip’s solicitor had not insisted on a meeting: and finding it small, ugly and inconvenient, she took it all the same. It was thatched, but not picturesque: there were four tiny rooms and a smallish barn, the whole standing alone in a very old orchard at the end of a pig-infested lane. This comparative seclusion, and the electric light (put in by Sir Philip in an isolated moment of enthusiasm) were its best, and only, points: but they would at least relieve the tenant of the smell of oil and of the horror of living in a row. The first of the village buildings was a small farm, also opening on to the lane, whose yard ran parallel with the bottom of the orchard: it was owned by people called Walpole, said the solicitors’ young man, whom Lesley would find very respectable and trustworthy neighbours.

  “So long as they keep their pigs on their own land,” Lesley told him coldly, “I don’t mind if they’re criminal nudists.”

  “Oh—I don’t think you’ll find them that,” said the solicitors’ young man doubtfully; and without pursuing the subject further led her gingerly across the orchard to where a primitive combination of bucket, chain and crank enabled water to be drawn from a thirty-foot well.

  “I see,” said Lesley, with her eyes on the apple-trees. They looked incredibly senile, many leaning on crutches, and all as though twisted and gnarled by a vegetable gout. A company of greybeards, she thought, gathered round a well.…

  “You won’t get much fruit, I’m afraid,” said the young man apologetically. “They’re too old.”

  “Fruit! I should hope not,” cried Lesley. The idea was positively indecent, reminding one of those dreadful Victorian old men who got children at seventy by a second or third wife. But she did not develop the simile aloud: quite a lot of clever conversation, in fact, passed wastefully through her head as she listened to the young man’s confidences. The thing in the barn, it appeared, was a
copper; the thing in the kitchen, a Primus cooking-stove. The hole in the wall was really a serving-hatch, the place like a tool-shed—well, that was an outside lavatory. There was also a hip-bath to bathe in, a meat-safe for the meat, and an unusually large quantity of first-rate clothes-line.

  “Now that,” said the young man proudly, “is what I call completely furnished.”

  Lesley looked at him in silence. He was thick, red, raw and bounding; but the mere fact of his being there—of his being actually in conversation with her—lent him a transitory interest. ‘So this is what it’s going to be like,’ she thought: ‘talking to people like this about outdoor sanitation.’ And aloud, as though to practise, she said severely,

  “As I should probably be here so long, do you think Sir Philip would add on a bathroom?”

  “Long?” said the young man, startled. “They told me about four or five years. Isn’t that what you were thinking of?”

  “Even one year,” explained Lesley patiently, “is long to go without a bath. Ask him about it, please, and let me know.”

  With a face of extreme doubt the young man took out his pocket-book and made a note in it. He wrote like a policeman, every faculty in play: and while he laboured Lesley walked back to the barn. By clearing it of lumber—and it at present seemed to contain almost as much furniture as the cottage itself—one would treble the floor-space and have somewhere to give parties. That was important. The rest of the place, of course, would hardly bear thinking of: it was hideously ugly and hopelessly inconvenient. With a shrug of her shoulders Lesley stepped outside again and took it on the spot.

  2

  By an unfortunate coincidence, the day Lesley went down to the cottage was also the day of Mrs. Carnegie’s luncheon, the Magyar Count’s cocktail-party, and a reception for a Czech pianist, to each of which entertainments Elissa had accepted an invitation. She had accepted, she would go: but she had also, with characteristic generosity, promised Lesley the use of Hugo Dove’s car, and without making the trip in person it would be almost impossible to preserve the distinction between Hugo’s lending his Minerva and Elissa lending Hugo’s car.

  “So you see, darling,” she told Lesley over the ’phone, “we won’t be able to pick you up till about six. But Hugo says we can do it in three-quarters of an hour, and my dinner isn’t till eight-thirty. You will be ready, won’t you?”

  Lesley frowned. It was then nearly half-past twelve, and she had been ready packed since ten.

  “Couldn’t Hugo run us down this afternoon? Leaving here at six means getting there practically in the dark,” she said.

  “Darling, I’m sure he would, only I’ve got a hairwave at three-thirty, and then there’s the cocktail-party.…”

  “Darling, if it’s the least bit inconvenient to you, why not let us go down by ourselves?” suggested Lesley. “You’re being most terribly sweet about it, but I’m sure we’re upsetting your day.”

  All down the line emotion quivered.

  “Let you go alone to a desolate cottage!” cried Elissa indignantly. “I wouldn’t think of it! We’ll be there at six sharp, darling, and mind you’re ready.”

  Lesley hung up the receiver and made no attempt to feel grateful. Her trunks were strapped. She had tipped Mrs. Lee; a basket of provisions stood ready to hand. Her only special preparations—the opening of an account with Fortnum and Mason, and of a double subscription with Mudies—had occupied exactly half-an-hour on the previous afternoon. And the most trying part of all, the final and bitterest drop, was that at both the luncheon and the cocktail-party she herself might also have been present. Both Mrs. Carnegie and the Count had pressingly invited her: and she had refused, rather spectacularly, with an amusing reference to love in a cottage.…

  “Damn,” said Lesley; and ringing for Mrs. Lee (she had been very well tipped indeed) ordered lunch at home.

  The period of waiting, however, was unexpectedly diversified, if not exactly shortened, by the arrival of a visitor. Shortly before three there was a knock at the door, a step in the hall: it was Mrs. Bassington in person, come all the way from Cheam to advance her crucial argument.

  “But, my dear Lesley, supposing you ever want to marry? You can’t have considered the extreme awkwardness—the impossibility—of such a situation. No man would stand for it.”

  Lesley raised her eyebrows.

  “My dear Aunt! I thought we’d gone into that once and for all about seven years ago?”

  It was quite true. Like many another wise virgin of her generation, she had early advertised a disinclination for marriage. The dangers of such a line, however, being only too obvious, she had chosen her attitude with particular care: there was nothing aggressive, nothing embittered about it: far from liking no one man well enough, it was the commonly accepted interpretation that Lesley Frewen liked too many men too well. But the root principle was there nevertheless, and properly understood should have saved Mrs. Bassington a good deal of anxiety.…

  Not unpricked by annoyance, Lesley got up and looked out of the window: Aunt Alice’s remarks were probably everything that a young girl should have heard in 1860, but their application to herself showed a certain lack of faith.

  “I’m expecting a car,” she explained untruthfully, “to run us down to the cottage. Do stay and see it, Aunt Alice, it’s the second longest in London.”

  Mrs. Bassington rose. She did it rather effectively, ruffling out her feathers like a turkey in a story-book: and her voice too was like a turkey’s—not quite so dignified as the rest of the picture.

  “If it wasn’t for your poor dead mother,” she said, “I should never speak to you again. But I’m your only living relative, my dear, and I know my duty if you don’t.”

  “I’m sure you do,” agreed Lesley politely. “You’d like me to continue to come to you, I suppose, whenever I’m in trouble?”

  The feathers quivered.

  “I was going to say, my dear, that as soon as you come to your senses again I shall be perfectly willing to see you at Cheam. But that,” said Aunt Alice finishing bitingly, “is perhaps looking too far ahead.”

  When she had gone Lesley went upstairs, turned on a hot bath, and lay there for an hour. The perfection of the appointments, however, started a series of unfortunate comparisons, and the treatment soothed her less than usually. She then had her tea, and immediately afterwards assembled Pat, the luggage and the basket of provisions, and placed them all in readiness in a room off the hall. The result was a modern genre picture—The Last Day in the New Home—of considerable authenticity: only two boxes, and only one child. Lesley looked at him curiously: on being told that he was now to live in the country he had displayed no more emotion than on being told that he was now to go for a walk: on the actual point of departure, he was displaying even less. Well, it was a comfort in a way; and settling herself in the window Lesley took up and opened the first of her Mudie’s books.

  It was fortunately quite interesting, for the car was a good deal late.

  It arrived, in fact, at exactly twenty-five past seven, when Pat had just been given his supper; but as Elissa was naturally in haste to be off, Lesley sent it away again and bundled him into his coat. The injustice, however, scarcely saved time, for he at once went into the lavatory and remained there interminably. Mrs. Lee had given him a banana, and he was eating it to make sure.

  “Darling, if you call that house-trained, I don’t,” said Elissa crossly. She was worried about her hair, which had not set as well as usual, and also about the Czech pianist, whom she had met in New York and who she feared might have forgotten her. Once on the road, however, her humour improved; she made no objection to stopping for a drink; and all the way down, with her head screwed down and her chin on Hugo’s shoulder, she gave Lesley advice.

  “The one thing that’s really important, darling, is not to know any one. Then you can do just as you like and shock the whole village. We’ll all come down and help. And be specially careful about the Vicar, darling, and th
at new kind of rat—the one that was imported and then began to burrow. Don’t you feel excited, darling, starting on your new life?”

  “Terrifically,” said Lesley.

  As well as she could in her rather coquettish position, Elissa suddenly looked intense.

  “It’s like a new incarnation,” she pointed out. “A new incarnation, going—” The car swerved violently, and also gave her an instant to think. The country and hard labour—was that up and up, or down and down? She compromised. “— Round and round. You’ll probably change enormously, one way or the other. Only do be careful of your figure, because that’s always where the country tells first. Exercises, darling—do lots of exercises on a wooden floor.…”

  In the back of the car, however, her friend repaid her with little attention. Lesley disliked inefficiency, and she disliked being made to wait: they had stopped twice already for a drink, and the daylight was steadily waning. She said,

  “What time is your party, Elissa?”

  The word, as always, produced an instant reaction: from Wendover onwards the hedges began to flash. The cars they overtook stood still, the cars they met exceeded the speed limit. Every few minutes Pat bumped over sideways and hit himself on the basket. He was three parts asleep and so fairly well armoured; but with every fresh collision Lesley half expected tears. He did not habitually weep, but nor for that matter did she; and it was from her own sensations, as they at last turned up the lane, that she gathered the clue to his.

  “Here you are, darling! How delicious it looks!” cried Elissa gaily. Out went the suitcases, out went Pat, out went the basket of food. “And now for God’s sake get a move on, Hugo, or I shan’t have time to dress.”

  3

  For a minute or two longer Lesley stood just as they had left her, motionless among the packages, young Patrick pressed close to the folds of her coat. The air felt fresh, and colder than the air of London: it was so quiet that she could quite easily follow the first mile or two of the Minerva’s progress.