The Flowering Thorn

by Margery Sharp

  ‘And towels,’ added the housekeeper, ‘those big new coloured ones.’ Pat would love a pink towel! The picture was enchanting! And with grave, considerate eyes Lesley looked through one wall more to the boarded-off section of the barn that was now known as the bathroom. It was not very showy, for Sir Philip, while by the loudness of his complaints giving the impression that he was facing the walls with marble, had actually managed to make do at very small expense. The white enamel bath was fed by a pipe and tap from the copper, and unaffectedly voided itself into a flower-bed: nor was the simplicity of material, or the still greater simplicity of construction, in any way concealed. Though without frills, however, the place served its purpose; and in a smaller subdivision still the genius of Messrs. El-San had made possible an indoor lavatory.

  ‘Really,’ thought Lesley, ‘I could have anyone to stay now.…’ And as the gate creaked open she smiled quite hospitably, though on no more of a visitor than the morose Mr. Walsh.

  Taciturn as ever, and walking a little too straight, he advanced across the grass and placed the letters in her hand. Lesley felt suitably flattered, for he did not usually put himself out, even by so little as an extra ten paces. Her vanity, however, was not long in action before it gave place to surprise; for between the couple of seed-merchants’ catalogues, and looking remarkably out of place there, was a letter from London.

  Elissa? The last time Elissa wrote she was just going to Cairo, but that was—how long?—almost a year ago. And Elissa hadn’t—or usen’t to have—a typewriter. Aunt Alice, then, or old Graham Whittal? Except for the annual ninepenny Christmas card—to which Lesley now replied with a fourpenny—they held no communication with her.… And still childishly turning the envelope, Lesley’s eye was suddenly caught by the extraordinary difference in appearance between her two last addresses. Miss Frewen, Flat J16, Beverley Court, Baker Street, N.W.1—it used to straggle from corner to corner; whereas Miss Frewen, High Westover, Bucks, sat squarely in the middle and gave the impression of someone far more important than the Miss Frewen of Baker Street. Lesley laughed, slipped a finger under the flap, and found herself in cordial communication with a gentleman called Teddy Lock.

  ‘… Your kindness to me that summer,’ he exclaimed, ‘has always been one of my happiest English memories!’ and after a good deal more in the same strain went on to announce that he now had with him a wife, for whom he was naturally desirous of procuring similar joys. They were in London, at Claridges, they were staying a fortnight, and on any day Miss Frewen might select would just love to run down and renew old acquaintance.

  Lesley stared at the signature, repeated it aloud; and casting her mind back and back to a long-ago summer, she did seem to remember, along with Elissa and Toby Ashton, a tall young American with very good manners. And he had a car, and there was another girl … and wasn’t Bryan Collingwood somehow mixed up in it? But not the new Mrs. Lock, for the letter specially mentioned that this was her first visit to the real home-country of the American people.

  ‘Bless their hearts!’ thought Lesley. “They’re on their honeymoon.’ Well, she wished for a visitor, her wish had been answered: and not only answered but multiplied by two. Lesley smiled. For if Providence could be lavish, so could she: and returning to the house she wrote a brief but cordial note inviting Mr. and Mrs. Lock to come down on Saturday and stay the night.

  2

  Walking down Pig Lane on her way to the Post Office, Lesley met first Florrie Walpole and then Arnold Hasty. They were not exactly together, nor yet exactly apart: they were separated, that is to say, by a distance of about six yards, but there was also present Florrie’s infant son, who strayed to and fro as he listed and to whom remarks were being shouted by both parties. He was a handsome child, the pride of his mother’s heart, and at two years old had stout brown legs, gipsy eyes, and hair as dark as Lesley’s own. “Looks like we got the wrong ones, don’t it?” Florrie had said, the first time she saw him and Patrick together; and the remark striking her as particularly happy, she had gone on making it ever since. She made it now.

  “It does, doesn’t it?” agreed Lesley. Politer than her cat, she even raised a smile; but her impulse was to go back and offer Alice an apology.

  CHAPTER TWO

  They answered by wire. They would arrive on Saturday, they were evidently in an ecstasy, and there was a reply prepaid form on which Lesley could think of nothing better to put than a meagre ‘Delighted.’ She was suffering, indeed, from a slight reaction in favour of peace and quiet, which the exuberance of the telegram did nothing to lessen: they seemed to be just the sort of people (reflected their hostess in alarm) who would want to see cathedrals.

  With a shake of the head for her own folly, Lesley picked up a tape-measure and slowly unrolled it. One thing in any case the visit had settled: if she were going to have new curtains at all, she might just as well have them now.

  ‘I’ll get Mrs. Pomfret,’ she thought, noting down the total measurements, ‘and we’ll go over to Aylesbury and find something with sprigs’! Sprigs! Very English! As English, in their way, as any cathedral! Well, she would do her best, and Sir Philip would have to help: he should invite the Locks to dinner and talk about Queen Victoria. And Mr. Pomfret, what could he be? An old county family, or the Vicar of Wakefield? With spirits a little risen Lesley picked up her bag, put on her hat; and was half-way across fields before the suddenly remembered (what nothing but approaching honeymooners could ever have made her forget) that her appearance at the Vicarage would almost exactly coincide with the arrival of a resident pupil and an electric gramophone.

  Lesley paused. That meant Mrs. Pomfret would be busy—at any rate too busy to come jaunting; but having already turned aside from the straight route to the ’bus stop, it seemed a pity not to go and see what was to be seen. So Lesley continued along the path at a good swinging pace, heard a church clock strike eleven, and arrived pink-cheeked with hurrying to find Mr. Cotton and the gramophone five minutes before her. They had come, it appeared, by the same train, a happy coincidence which enabled the instrument and its fixtures to be surreptitiously conveyed on Mr. Cotton’s cab. Mr. Cotton himself had no more than a rucksack and a suitcase, and but for the porter’s promptness would undoubtedly have walked: which all went to show (as Sir Philip afterwards remarked) how the love of music can stimulate employment.

  “How long are you going to keep him?” asked Lesley, when the young man had vanished upstairs.

  “Until the gramophone’s paid for, of course,” replied the Vicar, rapidly unrolling a ball of flex. “If you’ll wait one moment, my dear, I’ll have this thing fixed. Put on the Brandenburg, and sit down.”

  With the fleeting reflection that she had just missed a ’bus in any case, Lesley obeyed. From the spare room overhead came the thump of Mr. Cotton’s baggage, and she said idly,

  “What are you going to teach him?”

  “Modern Greek, Turkish, and the rudiments of sol-fa. He’s still up at Oxford, with an eye on the Consular. Now shove that plug in, my dear, and let the old man rip.”

  Like a glorified harvest festival the first movement rushed joyfully upon the air: his knees white with dust, the Vicar stood translated.

  2

  In the ordinary course of events not a day could have passed without leaving Lesley in full possession of Mr. Cotton’s personal appearance and general characteristics; but such were the exigencies of curtain-making that for the next forty-eight hours she never stirred from the cottage save on errands of domestic necessity. The Pomfrets came over, of course, and once Dennis Cotton accompanied them; but what with her billows of sprigged chintz and a wind that was blowing through the orchard, Lesley gathered merely a vague uncritical impression of extreme youth and fair hair. Mrs. Pomfret seemed to like him, and Lesley was of course glad to hear it: but what really gave her pleasure was the unexpected discovery of two dozen new curtain-rings. She stitched quite placidly, however, comfortably aware of the cottage in apple-pie order and tw
o white piqué frocks hanging immaculate on their hooks. The visitors would have her room, now permanently furnished with the big double bed—a remarkably good one, its origin wrapped in mystery—that used to be in the barn; so that apart from putting the divan in with Pat there was really nothing that needed attention. Even the weather seemed almost reliable, displaying red skies at night and on Saturday morning the fine shimmering mist that means a day to be proud of.

  And such a day it was, blue overhead, green underfoot, and all washed over with unlimited gold: a day, felt Lesley, to lie on the grass and read Hans Andersen—or, better still, to lie on the grass and read nothing at all. She did not, of course, really hope that the Locks would meet with an accident; but there was a spot under the pear-tree, just lightly dappled with shade, where one would almost wish to take root.

  It was not to be. Punctual to the minute—she had vaguely mentioned noon and the cuckoo slammed its door as their car crawled up Pig Lane—the visitors arrived. They were out and at the gate as Lesley hurried across the orchard—Teddy just as she remembered him, tall, broad and handsome: a wife as high as his shoulder, dark-eyed and pretty: and every stitch they had on was brand and shining new.

  “Miss Frewen!” cried Teddy joyfully. Emotion was too much for him, he shook her violently by the hand, and for the next few minutes all was joy and introductions. Joy unalloyed, moreover, for at the very first sight of them—both so pleased and happy in their beautiful new clothes—all Lesley’s churlishness had melted like the mist. They were charming! And quite carried away, she said impulsively,

  “Don’t go to-morrow! Can’t you stay till Monday?”

  Their eyes started; from the look that passed between them she knew that they had been discussing just that possibility all the way down. Was there a chance, or wasn’t there? Would she, or wouldn’t she? And now she had. Teddy drew a deep breath.

  “Do you really mean it?” he asked anxiously. “You’re sure we shan’t be in the way?”

  “I do and you won’t,” said Lesley. “I shall make you draw all the water.”

  They did not actually kiss each other; but it was a very near thing.

  3

  In the face of such strong temptation, Mrs. Sprigg behaved rather better than might have been expected, neither mingling with the gentry in the orchard nor joining in their conversation through the dining-room hatch. This restraint, however, was less a matter of delicacy than a friendly concession to the short-sighted prejudices of her employer.

  “All the same, it’s a great waste,” she lamented after Lesley had expounded those prejudices at some length. “I could ha’ told her a lot of things that I only wish someone would ha’ told me. Why, I remember plain as anything—”

  “In any case, she probably knows them already,” interrupted Lesley.

  “Not she!” said Mrs. Sprigg. “She’s a nice little thing.…”

  The young Locks, meanwhile, were behaving rather as though they were in heaven, stepping cautiously over the grass and standing mute with admiration before all the commonplaces of Lesley’s life. The thick old walls of the cottage, the thick new thatch on the roof, the well with the bucket you had to wind by hand, and from which they rapturously drew more water than Mrs. Sprigg could cope with—from all these things they got what can only be described as a holy kick. (Gina also got a blister, which she evidently intended to preserve as long as she could—unto New York, if possible, but certainly as far as the boat.) On the Saturday afternoon Lesley walked them across country to buy buns at Wendover: Gina carried the basket, Teddy opened the gates; and the mere fact of going on foot seemed to give them one kick more.

  “You’re the nicest guests I’ve ever had,” said Lesley, during a momentary halt to admire the view. “You like everything.”

  “Like!” they echoed, one on either side of her on top of the gate. “We just adore it. It’s the loveliest thing that’s ever happened to us.”

  A cow in a field turned and looked at them; but for once Gina did not remark her. She had seen something else.

  “Look behind you, Teddy!”

  Lesley looked too, and beheld the placid figure of old Horace Walpole approaching slowly along the path. He wore, as usual, a grey flannel shirt without a collar, a check waistcoat, and very old breeches.

  “My!” breathed Gina. “Isn’t he just too cunning?”

  Her eyes shone with enthusiasm, her husband’s no less. If they’d only got a camera, lamented Teddy, what a picture they could have taken!

  “It’s Horace Walpole,” said Lesley, “we’ll have to get out of the way.”

  They climbed respectfully down, he touched his hat and passed through.

  “Fine afternoon, Miss Frewen.”

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” said Lesley.

  “Ah!” said old Horace.

  As to the language of Shakespeare, the Locks listened spellbound; and observing their expressions Lesley was conscious of a slight dismay. Such joy was gratifying indeed, but how was it to be kept up? Having begun with the superlative, to what could one proceed? So Lesley, in her innocence; but she need not have troubled. Her guests had reserves of enthusiasm as yet untouched: they were barely out of the positive, and for the next three days Lesley was to watch with steadily increasing wonder while they scaled peak after peak of genuine rapture. For they stayed until Tuesday, in order to dine on the Monday night with Sir Philip at the Hall, where they let off behaving as though in heaven and behaved instead as though in the British Museum. That they were actually allowed to sit on the sofas was more than a treat, it was an experience; one could see them (said Sir Philip afterwards) absorbing culture through their behinds.…

  But Sir Philip liked the Locks all the same, and having learnt his lesson from Lesley made no attempt to pay Gina’s appearance the tribute of a kiss on the stairs. She wouldn’t have minded: she would probably have thought it an old English custom, like God Save the King or left-hand driving; but Teddy was not so liberal.

  “He’s going all Southern on me,” Gina complained proudly. “Would you believe it, Sir Philip, when we were in London a boy from home wanted to take me dancing, and Teddy just would not let me go. He just put his foot right down.”

  “And it’s there still,” growled Teddy. “It feels like it’s taking root.” He looked at Gina severely: she was the first wife he had ever had, and he was making the most of her.

  “Young man,” said Sir Philip, “you’re perfectly right. The woman’s place is in the home, if not in the harem.” He watched them with benevolence; like Lesley, he found them extremely engaging, as though a couple of love-birds should ruffle up their feathers and pretend to be tough old owls; and for the sake of Gina’s great eyes talked all evening long about more Princes of Wales than she had ever known existed.

  He did even more: when the time came to go, he gave her a wedding-present. A little eighteenth-century Shakespeare, very difficult to read in, and with the Kerr dove and dagger emblazoned on the back.…

  The pinnacle was reached.

  4

  Late the next afternoon, when at last they tore themselves away, Gina stood powdering her nose before the bedroom mirror. She had thanked and thanked again, and so had Teddy; but a final rush of gratitude was not to be denied.

  “You’ll never know, Miss Frewen—you just can’t know—how much we’ve loved being here. It’s what we’d both just longed for.”

  “I’m glad you weren’t disappointed, then,” said Lesley. (That reply-paid telegram!).

  “Disappointed!” Gina stared in amazement. “Why, I didn’t think it was going to be a bit like this! From what Teddy told me, I expected one of those rackety week-end places like we have sometimes, with a lot of drink around.”

  ‘Dear me!’ thought Lesley: how wild that sounded! And with a wrinkle between her brows she tried to remember back to a summer four years ago, a summer—how extraordinary!—when she was hardly into the place, and Teddy Lock had come dangling after—who was it?—after Natasha!
A dreadful week-end! And hadn’t someone been rude to the Vicar?

  “Dear me!” said Lesley aloud.

  “I hope you didn’t mind me saying that?” asked Gina a little anxiously. “Teddy’s great on getting hold of the wrong story.…”

  “On the contrary,” said Lesley, “he was perfectly right. It’s nicer now.”

  Her guest nodded.

  “I think it’s just wonderful. And—and about the little boy too, Miss Frewen.” (Lesley at once looked apologetic: for Pat, without being exactly rude to the visitors, had rather pointedly dodged them. Gina had kissed him on arrival, and he was afraid she might do it again.) “We think you’re being just wonderful about him. And as for the place—it’s what we read about all our lives, and then go back disappointed because we can’t find it. You’ve no idea what your hospitality has meant to us, Miss Frewen.”

  The great dark eyes, so charming and earnest, gazed reverently out of the window; and indeed in the scene below—the old green apple-trees, the young green grass—there was something special, something—how to define it?—one didn’t get out of England. And what an English time of day!—five in the afternoon, the heat of the sun already gone, but a soft golden light making all clear and luminous. From the thatch above their heads a soft grey feather floated slowly down; and Gina sighed.

  “Wouldn’t it be just perfect,” she said softly, “if one could be here when … when …”