The Flowering Thorn

by Margery Sharp

  “You couldn’t get it in London,” said Lesley. She had just remembered a perfectly genuine reason for leaving him at once and returning to the cottage. It was the day for going to Aylesbury, and Mrs. Pomfret would be calling for her.…

  “And there’s another thing I’ve thought of,” said Mr. Povey, “it’s getting on to be summer. Summer and autumn.… And after autumn you get the winter. And in the winter time what’ve you got, in a garden like yours? You got nothing at all, Miss Frewen.”

  The dying fall of his rhetoric affected her in spite of herself.

  “I don’t suppose I have,” admitted Lesley weakly.

  “Whereas with a nice piece of statuary,” continued Mr. Povey, pressing home his advantage, “you’d have something to look at—something to fill the eye as you might say—the whole year round. And you can have it, Miss Frewen, for six-pound-five.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Lesley, “I’ll think it over. Only just now, Mr. Povey, I’ve got to hurry home.”

  He looked at her reproachfully, for he had just been getting into his stride. But Lesley had no illusions: it was a choice, and she knew it, between buying the bird-bath and taking to flight. She took to flight. She ran all the way back to the cottage (she quite often ran, nowadays) and entered by the kitchen door. Mrs. Sprigg was not there, but on the flap by the door stood a plate of freshly-chopped scraps suitable to a puppy six or eight months old.

  With a feeling of being surrounded by secret and hostile forces, Lesley returned to her writing-desk and faced the situation. It was an extremely simple one. The animal Pincher, however long she might continue to disown him, was in fact already a member of the household: in which case the sooner they got him into carbolic the better for all concerned.

  3

  “You’re perfectly right, my dear,” said Mrs. Pomfret, observing this last item at the bottom of Lesley’s shopping list. “People say dogs don’t need washing, but they do when they’re in the state your animal is.” She looked about her, while Lesley put on her hat, and thought that the whole room seemed somehow brighter. There were new curtains!

  “You’ve got the same stuff as the Alfred Walpoles!” exclaimed Mrs. Pomfret. “How nice it looks.”

  “And unlike Mrs. Alfred, I can have a chair-cover as well,” said Lesley. “I bought four yards too much.”

  “My dear! But chintz always comes in useful.… Why can’t Mrs. Alfred have them?”

  “Because her husband’s too mean,” said Lesley.

  Gathering basket, list and bag, she followed Mrs. Pomfret out. The Aylesbury ’bus stopped on the main road, a bare quarter-mile or so beyond High Westover proper, but in the early days of her taking it Lesley used to double the distance by going across the fields. Mrs. Pomfret, however, automatically turned down Pig Lane; and walking through the village beside her Lesley suddenly realised that she no longer minded doing so. The thought was an odd one, and she completed it aloud.

  “Do you know,” said Lesley, “for months and months I used to avoid coming to the Post Office, because I fancied people looked at me. Just people in the street, you know. They were probably thinking exclusively about the crops, but somehow I always felt they were … hostile.” She glanced sideways at her companion, fully prepared for amused astonishment; but Mrs. Pomfret, though perfectly cheerful, was not in the least surprised.

  “But, my dear, they were hostile!” she exclaimed. “You got all your things from Town. Oh, I know it all evens up in the Balance of Trade, but here they can’t see it. Going to Aylesbury is all right, because they all know each other, and half of them are related: the big draper there, for instance—Walpole, where you got your curtains—is a cousin of old Horace’s.”

  “I know,” said Lesley. “He offered Florrie a job there, but now of course it’s no good.”

  Mrs. Pomfret sighed.

  “Oh, dear! I do hope it won’t mean more unpleasantness. Henry always christens them, you see, just like—like ordinary children, and then half the other mothers lie in wait for me and complain.”

  “I hope you pitch into them,” said Lesley indignantly.

  “Oh, no, my dear, it’s very natural. They don’t think it’s fair, you see, when they’ve been through all the trouble of getting married, and putting up with their husbands, and slaving day and night—”

  “— Keeping themselves respectable, in fact,” said Lesley.

  “Exactly, my dear—they don’t feel it’s fair. Like the parable of the Prodigal Son,” added Mrs. Pomfret vaguely. “Henry never can make them see it. Martha and Mary, too—that’s another difficult one. But you mustn’t think they’re brutes, Miss Frewen, because they’re not. They’re just a little jealous of their rights. It won’t make a scrap of difference to the child really, or to Florrie either. Why, look at you and Pat—”

  Her voice suddenly ceased: her earnestness had run away with her. With extreme ingenuity, she began to explain.…

  “That’s all right,” said Lesley. “Of course they do. I don’t know who Mrs. Sprigg fathered him on, but she’s very resourceful.”

  “I don’t know either, my dear, but I expect we’re the only two in the village. And he does do you credit, you know: they all think he’s a splendid little boy.”

  “So he is,” said Lesley, signalling to the ’bus. “If I stay here much longer I shall join the Mothers’ Union.”

  They climbed in and found themselves seats, suspending, in deference to Mrs. Pomfret’s position, all further references to Lesley’s potential bastard; and so proceeded to Aylesbury to buy Garibaldi biscuits; lard, bacon and corn-flour; two tins of shoe-polish; and carbolic soap for Patrick’s dog.

  4

  He was a good dog. Within a couple of weeks regular feeding and carbolic baths began to do their work, appearance and manners improving together. His coat grew thicker, though no less carrotty, the search for fleas became daily less urgent. He developed, moreover, into an intelligent watchdog, learning to know and pass all regular visitors, and holding the rest gently at bay until further orders. Towards Lesley he displayed a respectful attitude, towards Pat the unconscious intimacy of a twin-soul. Their characters were complementary. Pat walked, thought, inquired, considered: Pincher ran, rejoiced, cavorted, leapt. Crossing a meadow, Pat invariably took the straight line between two gates, while Pincher raced round in circles chasing the birds: but they arrived within a yard of each other. A yard, indeed, was apparently the maximum distance they could bear to be separated by; and the two days Patrick lay up with a bruised knee Pincher never left the orchard.

  He was a good dog; but he was never an Airedale.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  All through the summer Lesley’s household consolidated itself. It now included, besides Patrick, Mrs. Sprigg and Pincher, a fine ginger cat who was sometimes called Alice; and of this tiny universe—as variously inhabited, for all its size, as the island in The Tempest—Lesley herself was the natural and undisputed centre. Within it, whatever she said or did was of extreme importance: goddess-like in her meanest activities, she dispensed food, favour, justice and protection. She had scraps for a dog, milk for a cat, bread for a child, a wage for an old woman: she had a roof and a fire and a door to shut or open. She was beginning to be beloved, and she was already essential.

  2

  In her relations abroad, the outstanding factor was perhaps this, that she liked the Vicar.

  She even liked the Vicar’s wife.

  The shock to a young woman of Lesley’s temperament and habits was naturally great, and it must be allowed to her credit that—as in the case of Pincher—she kept her head and faced the facts. She liked the Vicar (and the Vicar’s wife) because they asked no questions, genuinely loved music—on Mr. Pomfret’s gramophone, indeed, Lesley was now hearing more Bach, Mozart and Beethoven than ever in her life before—and made no attempt to redeem her. More positively, she liked them for a quality which Elissa would have called their technique of living, and to which Mrs. Sprigg commonly referre
d as their easygoing ways. More than any family or group Lesley had ever encountered, they let each other alone. The Vicarage was a large one, and they spread all over it. Meal-times assembled them, but not for long; and the only place where three or four consistently gathered together was the schoolroom on a wet morning.

  “The schoolroom?” repeated Lesley, when first ushered through the door. “Do they do lessons, then?”

  Mrs. Pomfret stared in astonishment.

  “But of course Alec and Joan do lessons! It’s holidays now, but they’ve been doing them all winter. Hadn’t you noticed there were only two about in the mornings, instead of four?”

  Lesley shook her head.

  “They get behind things,” she explained. “Trees, and so on. It’s only at meal-times, don’t you think, that children can really be checked?”

  “But didn’t Pat tell you?”

  “I don’t think so. But it’s only lately, you know, that Pat’s begun to talk.”

  Mrs. Pomfret gave her a sudden clear glance. Henry, as usual, had been quite right. There was a change. Aloud she said:

  “You don’t make Pat do any, then?”

  It was Lesley’s turn to look surprised. The idea of giving Pat instruction had never entered her head; and indeed, now that it had, she could scarcely see herself bending above the infant scholar. And yet Pat was now six: with his new-found boldness he had no more than a fortnight ago, on August 12th, directed her attention to the fly-leaf of the Tailor: ‘To Pat on his birthday,’ it said, ‘August 14th.’ And Lesley had pulled herself together and bought him a cake and given a party for the four young Pomfrets.…

  “Who teaches yours?” she asked.

  “Why, Henry and I between us. Henry teaches them Latin and Arithmetic and French and History, and I teach them writing and spelling and easy things like English. But Alec’s going to school in the autumn.”

  ‘School!’ thought Lesley. There was school ahead of Pat too, and at the moment he didn’t know a thing! She looked at Mrs. Pomfret’s face: it was kind, intelligent, patient and firm. She could teach any child its alphabet.

  “If I promise not to pay more than about fourpence a week,” said Lesley persuasively, “would you possibly consider taking Pat on as well?” And she braced herself in advance for the inevitable argument, during which Mrs. Pomfret was slowly beaten up from twopence to threepence by way of twopence-ha’penny. She gave in at last, however; and at a monthly cost slightly below Lesley’s old cigarette bills, Patrick Craigie started his education.

  3

  Complementary, as it were, to Lesley’s intercourse with the Vicarage, was her intercourse with the Hall. It was a phenomenon in its way almost as strange as the first, the opening stages of their acquaintance having been characterised on the one side by acute disappointment, and on the other side by acute malease. After the first unforgettable meeting Lesley’s one desire, with regard to Sir Philip, was never to see him again; yet within a space of about four months she had somehow formed the habit of dining at the Hall, and often alone, no less than two or three times a week.

  It was odd, it was inexplicable; but between the first meeting and the second—which Lesley, after dodging as long as possible, was at last forced into by a thunderstorm—something had evidently occurred to alter Sir Philip’s attitude. (The unknown factor, indeed, was neither more nor less than a sound talking-to from the Vicar’s wife; and therefore much too simple for Lesley to guess it.) He was charming, intelligent, and slightly formal: displaying even, in momentary glimpses, the tender and delicate respect with which age sometimes pays homage to the youthfulness of the young. Lesley had never met such urbanity. Wooed in spite of herself, she instinctively responded, and all unaware presented a change of personality at least as striking as the one she marvelled at. For if Lesley wondered, so did Sir Philip: and though with both on such super-best behaviour the acquaintance was naturally slow to ripen, the mutual sympathy when they both fell from grace—when Lesley swore again and Sir Philip told the wrong story—seemed to carry them at one stride into the easy territory of life-long friendship. It was not, however, until considerably later that Lesley received, in the course of one of their long after-dinner sessions, a clear-cut exposition of Sir Philip’s attitude towards women in general and herself in particular.

  They had been discussing, as not infrequently happened, the peculiar awfulness of Mrs. Sprigg.

  “Every time she opens her mouth,” complained Lesley, “I have to send Pat on an errand. She gets bawdier and bawdier.”

  Sir Philip threw up his hands.

  “You can’t do anything about it, my dear. All the Spriggs are bawdy, and always have been. They got set in their ways under the Georges.”

  “And you?” said Lesley.

  “Under Victoria the Good.”

  “She really was, then?”

  “Good? As good as gold: we’ve gone off the standard,” said Sir Philip. “Everyone was good in those days—either good or wicked. Things were a lot less streaky.”

  Lesley looked at him with interest.

  “I keep forgetting how long it is since you were young,” she said thoughtfully. “Were there still demi-reps?”

  Sir Philip shifted in his chair.

  “There were,” he said, “and a young woman like you wasn’t supposed to know about them.”

  “A young woman like me would probably have been one,” said Lesley. “What were they like?”

  “They were excellent company, and they never met one’s wife. Some of them were also extremely expensive.” He broke off, coffee-spoon suspended, and in his eyes the unmistakable expression of a man who is going to boast. “My dear Miss Frewen, I’ve spent fifty pounds and more on one day’s entertainment of one young woman. We wound up, I remember, with a genuine champagne supper—champagne in the flower-vase, champagne in the finger-bowls: not a drop of anything else allowed on the table. It caused quite a sensation. And there’s another thing I remember: the flowers were camellias, and after an hour or so in the champagne they went a deep ivory yellow. I’m possibly the only man in England,” said Sir Philip, “who can give you that first-hand information.”

  “I should say it’s extremely probable,” agreed Lesley.

  He looked at her over his coffee-cup.

  “It strikes you as wicked extravagance?”

  In something of a dilemma Lesley shook her head: the thing that did strike her was not the wickedness but the vulgarity. Astonishing that a man of such quick and delicate perceptions—of such wide and sophisticated experience—could still look back with pride on a leaf from a novelette! It was a vulgar period, of course, full of practical jokes and private menageries: but even so one would not have expected the illusion to last.… Aloud she said:

  “I only hope the lady was worth it. Was she?”

  Sir Philip considered.

  “Not in herself, no. Because, of course, no woman could really be worth fifty pounds for one day. But as the excuse for a glorious burst, as an incitement to throw caution to the winds—she was worth every penny of it. In my experience it’s a pretty general rule that no man can get really reckless of money unless he’s got a woman with him. Drinking is different, of course: in fact, woman’s more often than not in the way: but then drink never gave me the same feeling. I could only get it by throwing the guineas about.” He drank off his coffee and took another look into the past. Women and wine, just as the song said! Both of them expensive, and particularly the women. “But take them all round,” finished Sir Philip thoughtfully, “they gave deuced good value.”

  Lesley looked at her cigarette.

  “And you didn’t mind the—the obviousness of it?”

  “On the contrary. One knew where one was. Nowadays, I believe, there’s a fashion to have a bar in the drawing-room: personally it wouldn’t appeal to me. I don’t like to find either barmaids in the drawing-room or ladies in the bar: and under Victoria the Good one didn’t.”

  “Form at a glance, in fact,”
murmured Lesley.

  Sir Philip nodded.

  “For instance”—his old eyes glinted humorously at her—“any woman in the kind of frock you wear for dinner, my dear—”

  “Was at once assumed to have fallen from virtue.” Lesley laughed.

  “Exactly,” said Sir Philip. “Especially if she used your language as well. It would have been taken as a direct invitation to dishonourable advances. As I said before, one knew where one was.”

  “But isn’t it much more convenient,” argued Lesley, “to have me just as good company, and socially correct as well? To be able to say what you like and introduce me to your aunts?”

  “But I can’t say what I like. I’m what you probably describe as inhibited,” said Sir Philip. “My dear Lesley, let me explain. The first time you came to dinner I was completely at my ease: in fact I had only one regret, which was that you hadn’t turned up a year or two earlier. That’s what I thought you were. But now I know you’re not—and in spite of your truly appalling language, I did know it very quickly indeed—that particular kind of ease is completely gone. And the other sort—the drawing-room sort—can’t take its place; you won’t let it.”

  Lesley nodded intelligently.

  “You mean the things that amused you when you thought I was a pros—”

  “Please!”

  “— A light woman, then—no longer amuse you now that you find I’m not?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But why not?”

  “Because knowing that you really are a lady, I’d like you to behave like one,” said Sir Philip.

  4

  Purely out of regard for his feelings, Lesley did so. It came more easily than she would have thought; it came almost as easily as being bright. For the qualities required by Sir Philip, in his definition of a lady, approximated very closely indeed to the qualities required by herself as the essentially modern characteristics of a young woman of the world; an intellectual integrity, the custom of polite intercourse, and in temper the aristocratic habit of never giving a damn. Their only real divergence was on the definition of polite, which to Lesley meant cultivated, amusing, or, quite simply, modish, and to Sir Philip unexceptionable. Unexceptionable, that is, to a person of slightly more than average intelligence. No more than Lesley had he an appetite for bread-and-butter; he only did not like raw meat.