Fire in the Thatch

by E. C. R. Lorac

  “I’ve told you Tommy will look after it. He’s got a lovely garden at his Surrey place.”

  “Then he doesn’t need another garden down here. I’m sorry, June, but I don’t want to let Little Thatch as a wealthy man’s plaything, to be used for week-ends and kept for a toy. Little Thatch is a good house and a valuable small holding, and I want a tenant who will live in it and cultivate the land and be a responsible neighbour to me and to the farmers.”

  “And what about me?” she burst out. “You talk about what you want. You don’t think about anyone else. Can’t you see I’m bored and miserable to the verge of giving up? My husband’s a prisoner, and God knows if I shall ever see him again. I’m poor and I can’t live the life I’ve a right to expect—the life I was brought up to. I’m stuck down here in this ghastly place, miles from my own friends, with nothing to do and no one to care about me. I ask you for this one small thing, so that some of my own friends can be near me, and you talk a lot of hot air about cultivating—even though I’ve told you the Gressinghams will improve the place. You’re only refusing me out of obstinacy, because you hate me and hate all I stand for. It’s mean and beastly and cruel.”

  Colonel St Cyres stood aghast. He was a reticent man and June’s outburst horrified him. Something inside him told that the right way of dealing with his daughter-in-law was to administer a stern rebuke and to tell her plainly that she was a self-indulgent lazy-bones, but he was too kind-hearted to follow such a course. He protested gently:

  “Come, come, my dear. You are being unreasonable. I am indeed sorry to learn your opinion of this place. We wanted you to be happy here, and we have done our best to make you comfortable and to give you a real home—to make you feel you belonged—”

  “I don’t belong, and I never shall. You’re always criticising me and everything I want, and Anne looks down her nose at me. You don’t care that I’m miserable. You all hate me. I loathe being here, and I loathe your beastly country with its mud and smells and beasts.”

  She was working herself up into an even fiercer temper and St Cyres felt alarmed, but his slow-working mind was beginning to resent June’s unfairness. His voice was sterner as he replied:

  “While I am sorry that you are unhappy with us, it is only common sense to point out that you are under no compulsion to remain here, June. I suggested your coming in the hope that you would find our home a refuge where you and Michael would be welcome to make your home—but if you are miserable here—”

  “You don’t care how miserable I am,” she broke in. “You’re just content to live like cows or cabbages, without any ideas or any society or anything that makes life worth living, and when I tell you I’m wretched you just say clear out—as though I’ve got anywhere to go. I can’t bear it! I wish I were dead,” and with that she flung out of the shed running furiously over the frosty ground—running clumsily, too, for her high-heeled slippers were not made for frosty tussocks or cobbled yards.

  Colonel St Cyres took out his handkerchief, mopped his forehead and blew his nose vigorously. “God bless my soul” was all he could find to say, and he was still saying it when Anne came into the wood-shed.

  4

  Anne St Cyres was very much like her father. She was tall and squarely built—too solid for elegance, but built for endurance. Her face was square, too, with a resolute jaw, low forehead and nondescript nose. Her eyes were her best features, wide-set, grey-blue eyes, happy and steady, and her mouth was full-lipped and kindly, but resolute like her chin. Her hair was long, drawn back into a plaited bun, waving prettily over her shapely ears. Anne wore an old heather mixture tweed suit—it was a good suit, but old enough to have lost its lines and become baggy. With her chestnut brown hair, russet cheeks and heather mixture tweed she looked almost part of the landscape, an appropriate sturdy figure, strong and competent. When Colonel St Cyres saw her, he said, “Thank God.” He always did thank God for Anne.

  She came straight into the wood-shed and straight to the point. “June been having high strikes? I’m sorry for you, Daddy, but it had to happen. She’s been boiling up her grievances for quite a long time. All the same, don’t let Little Thatch to her friend Gressingham.”

  “I’m not going to, Anne. I don’t like the sound of the fellow.”

  “You’d like the reality even less. I’ve met him. He was in the Cocktail Bar at the Courtenay Hotel in Exeter when I was there with June the other day.”

  Her father cut in: “Cocktail bar? That’s a new port of call for you, Anne.”

  “Oh, I know,” she replied. “I ran June in to Exeter when I had to go to see about new tyres, and nothing would please her but cocktails and an expensive lunch. I loathe wasting money like that—but I’m sometimes sorry for June. She’s a fish out of water here. However, I was going to tell you about her friend, Mr. Gressingham. He’s just the type you and I dislike—oozing money, very pleased with himself, and inclined to be familiar on a moment’s acquaintance. Oh, I loathed him. He’s facetious and he called me Anne in the first five minutes—but I shouldn’t have minded that so much—we can’t all like the same people—only I wouldn’t trust him an inch, least of all with June. He’s got a wife, and June’s got a husband—and I just couldn’t bear the way he behaved with her. It made me hot all over.” Anne’s honest face had flushed deep rosy red, and her voice was distressed as she went on: “I hate myself for saying all this, and I shouldn’t have said a word to you about it if it hadn’t been that I know June is set on getting Little Thatch for Mr. Gressingham, so that she can be in and out of the place any time she likes. I just can’t bear the idea of it. You and I were both sorry when Denis married her, but since they are married—well, I don’t want any Gressinghams down here.”

  Colonel St Cyres nodded, but he looked very glum.

  “You’re quite right, Anne. I feel exactly as you do, and I want to do everything we can for Denis, poor chap—but it’s going to be difficult. If June takes this attitude about hating us all and being miserable we can’t very well keep her here.”

  “Don’t take any notice of her. Leave her to me,” replied Anne. “It’s all very well for June to say she’s going away because she can’t stand us any longer—I’ve been hearing that for some time—but June likes her comforts, and comforts are costly these days. Let her simmer down again. Take no notice of what she’s said—you’ll find she’ll think better of it.” Anne laughed, a little bitterly. “I’ve no doubt she’s lying on her bed at the moment, raging furiously. I shall take her up a hot-water bottle and a jug of coffee, sympathise with her over her appalling headache, draw the curtains, murmur something about chicken for lunch, and retire tactfully.”

  Colonel St Cyres chuckled, but he quickly sobered down, adding: “All very well to laugh, my dear, but it’s deuced hard on you. You get the brunt of it.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Daddy. I’ve got a broad back and I can manage. Provided you and Mother aren’t made miserable in your own home I don’t mind dealing with June. She’s an idiot—according to our ideas—but I’m still sorry for her, partly because she is an idiot. She’s never done an honest hard day’s work in her life: she misses everything that seems worth while to me, and she doesn’t seem to have a friend in the world who values her for herself. I love Michael, you know. He’s a darling, for all that he’s a spoilt little brat, and he is beginning to improve. He doesn’t yowl nearly so much as he did, and he’s healthier. Look!” She opened the door of the shed and motioned to her father.

  Michael, aged five, was playing by the pump in the stable yard, throwing bits of ice about, as George, the gardener’s boy, broke the crust of ice on the stone trough. Michael was very fair, with scarlet cheeks and blue eyes; muffled up in an old fair-isle scarf of Anne’s, tied over his head and round his neck, he was a picture of healthy childhood, very different from the white-faced little lad of a year ago.

  “That seems to make it worth while, do
esn’t it?” said Anne. “Denis will come back one day—I hope—and we’ll show him a son to be proud of. Don’t you bother about June. I’ll cope with her. Now I’m going to Leighs to look at those two heifers he wants to sell. They’re good stock, and we’ve lots of winter feed. Bye-bye, Daddy. Don’t worry—and get a good sound hard-working tenant for Little Thatch, and see he gets it into decent cultivation again.”

  And with that Anne hurried off, shutting the door of the shed behind her.

  Chapter Two

  1

  Just as Anne St Cyres shut the door of the wood-shed and ran over the frosty cobbles towards Michael, a very old car drew up in the lane outside the gate of Little Thatch, and the driver got out and stood by the gate, looking at the neglected garden. He was a big fellow, over six feet tall, with such broad shoulders that his height seemed less than it was. He stood with his arms folded on the gate and stared thoughtfully at Little Thatch. The house was a long, low building—more spacious than the usual Devonshire cottage. None of its corners was a right angle, none of its walls quite vertical. The ancient cob walls seemed to crouch a little, their curves denoting strength, not weakness: the thatch over the long roof seemed like a blanket, comfortably overhanging the walls in deep eaves which cast lilac shadows on the rose and ochre of the freshly washed walls. The long, low sturdy house pleased the observer at the gate: (Anne St Cyres said later that the man resembled the house, because his heavy powerful shoulders reminded her of the thick cob walls of Little Thatch). He noted the excellent condition of the thatch, with its comely patterned ridge and plaited “dollies” at the gable ends, the tall sturdy brick chimneys bestriding the thatch, and the stonework showing through the colour wash in the squat buttress at one end. An old house but a worthy one, he meditated, thick walled, deep thatched, with good mullioned windows all facing south. To the north towards the lane, the house presented a dead wall without a window in it, an inscrutable uneven solid wall, squatting beneath its thatch, as though to snub an inquisitive observer.

  When Colonel St Cyres first saw Nicholas Vaughan leaning patiently on the gate of Little Thatch, the older man said to himself, “Fine big chap: he ought to be able to dig. Shoulders like a bull…”

  When Vaughan turned to face him, the Colonel had a shock of surprise, for one of Vaughan’s eyes was covered by an eye-shade, and the livid unlovely line of a recently healed scar marred the left side of his face. One grey eye looked steadily at the Colonel.

  “Good-morning. I hope I’m not inconveniently early. My name’s Vaughan.”

  “Good-morning. I’m glad you took the opportunity of coming. Wilton’s an old friend of mine and I value his judgment. He gave you some idea of what this property is like? Come along in.”

  He opened the gate and preceded Vaughan down the cobbled path, and the latter turned his back on the house and studied the garden.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Commander Wilton gave me a very fair idea of it. This was a small holding once, I take it? That’s a shippon among the outbuildings, isn’t it?”

  “Shippon?” queried St Cyres. “Oh—you mean the cow shed. Our folks call that a linhey. Yes. Twenty years ago this was a flourishing small holding—twenty acres went with the house including the two orchards. Now the land’s let or I farm it myself. As it stands, it’s the house, garden, and orchard, with another small orchard across the road if you want it—about an acre, all told. The garden’s been neglected for years.”

  “Yes,” said the tall man, and his tone spoke volumes. There was a fork sticking in a half-dug trench in one of the weed-covered beds, and Vaughan took it and turned over a few spits of earth, bending to the job as though he loved it. “That’s good soil,” he said tersely. “It was well cultivated—once.”

  “You’re right there,” replied St Cyres. “Ten years ago this garden was famous in the district—and the land hereabouts is the most fertile in the county.” He walked along the unkempt cobbled path the full length of the house and stopped at a small gate which gave access to the orchard. “Mostly cider apples,” he said, “a few Bramleys and Coxes, some damson plums and Victorias—well worth having…”

  “And some pasture…good for geese and ducks,” said the other. “Now what about water?”

  “None laid on. Two pumps: this well here is a deep one—forty feet. The other’s a surface well, but the pump’s close to the kitchen.”

  “I’ve got to make sure of the water question,” said Vaughan. “If I take this place, I mean to cultivate. I can put an old petrol pump on the well if the water’s there.”

  “It’s there all right. I can give you my word you’re safe over that.”

  “Good…I could put some glass up against that linhey or whatever you call it. I’ll just look at those outbuildings.”

  “Like to see the house first?”

  “No. The house is all right, I’ll see that later. It’s the land I’m thinking of. I’ve got my living to earn, by and large, and I’m going to earn it on the land.”

  St Cyres listened to him with a mixture of sympathy and amusement: an earnest young man, with a very pleasant deep voice—“a gentleman” St Cyres postulated in his old-fashioned way, but a gentleman who loved the soil, loved it enough to pick up the frosted loam and crumble it in his fingers. St Cyres let him poke round in the long row of outbuildings—pig sty, cattle shed, wood-shed, coal house, wash house, earth closet. Let him see it as it was, sturdy buildings suited to a working man’s needs, no frills or comforts. Stark toil was what this place needed—but the chap had big shoulders and big capable hands.

  “That’s all right—the fabric’s sound enough,” said Vaughan placidly as he finished surveying the ancient sheds. “Look here, sir. This garden wants some muck on it before it’ll be fit for much. I don’t want to buy manure, and I hate chemicals. What about the pasture below there, across my hedge? Is it yours?”

  “It’s mine all right. D’you want to keep a horse?”

  “Lord, no. Not enough work to justify it. I should like to raise some bullocks or heifers—just a few. A bit of pasture and an acre or so of hay—it’d be the making of this place. I was brought up on a farm, and although it’s market gardening I’m out for, I know the value of a few beasts. Can’t keep up fertility without beasts.”

  “Something in it,” agreed St Cyres. “My daughter swears by cow dung and she raises the best tomatoes in the district. I wouldn’t mind letting you have some pasture and a small meadow, but think of the work involved. Labour’s next to impossible to get. You might get a boy—but not a skilled one.”

  Nicholas Vaughan grinned. A grin which showed fine white teeth in a wide mouth, and did away with the sinister expression caused by eye-patch and scar. “Do I look the sort of bloke who can’t work?” he asked. “I’m thirty: fit as a fiddle and strong as two horses. This” (pointing to his eye-shade) “isn’t permanent. It’s protecting a healing wound and the sight is still there. The light hurts it at present. One of our guns turned nasty on us and back-fired. Never mind that. I’m not afraid of work, and I like beasts. A bunch of yearling heifers won’t tire me out, I promise you.”

  “Good for you,” said St Cyres. “Leigh, down in the valley there, has some promising beasts for sale, and I might let you have some hay. Very heavy crop this year. Come and see the house. It’s a good house for all the muck it’s in. I’d do it up for you, but I can’t get the labour.”

  “We do our own walls where I come from,” replied Vaughan, and St Cyres enquired,

  “Yorkshireman? North Riding?”

  “Pretty close. Borders of Westmorland. I say, this isn’t at all bad.”

  St Cyres had unlocked the kitchen door, and the two men had stepped inside and turned to survey the cottage through the open kitchen door. The kitchen was at the west end of the cottage, and from a door in its eastern wall it was possible to look through the length of the building. The kitchen opened int
o a long, beamed sitting-room—twenty feet long at least, Vaughan estimated; beyond that came a small entrance hall with the front door, and beyond that another small square room. All the windows, which had deep window seats, faced south, with a good view across the valley of the river Mallow.

  Vaughan walked into the sitting-room and studied it: the floor was of the mixture of lime and ash peculiar to the county: the cob walls bulged and curved, and were colour washed a particularly hideous shade of Pompeian red beloved by Devonians, but the proportion of the long low room was beautiful, as was the panelling of the ancient doors (now painted, like all the woodwork, a revolting chocolate colour). Three great beams crossed the ceiling transversely—their surface plastered and whitewashed.

  “I say, this is a damned fine room,” said Vaughan. “How came a small holding to have a great room like this?”

  St Cyres came in and stood beside him. “Local history has it that this is an ancient ‘house of refreshment,’ to use the old term,” he replied. “In short, it was the Cider House, and a bar once divided this room, with a compartment behind it for the cider barrels. The partition was taken down in my father’s time. I can’t tell you the exact history of the place, but I believe the kitchen end is very ancient, the further end of later date. I should say it’s Tudor in origin, with Jacobean additions and Georgian improvements. Those panelled doors are Jacobean, and the stairs, too—they’re oak, and as hard as iron.”

  “Gad, I like it…You could make a gorgeous room of this: the fireplace is decent, too.” They wandered on, up the little twisting stairs, and examined four bedrooms, small sunny rooms, and Vaughan sniffed appreciatively. “It’s warm in here,” he said. “Surprising to find a dry house in Devon.”

  “This one’s always dry except for surface condensation,” replied St Cyres. “The fabric is sound and the thatch waterproof. The garden slopes away to the valley, as you can see and there’s good drainage—the conduits are square oak pipes, probably the original ones, but they’re still sound. If you listen you can hear the water running away merrily under that drain by the kitchen door. The only trouble is this: owing to the thick cob walls and heavy thatch the cottage maintains an almost even temperature inside, summer and winter. If you come inside on a scorching summer day you’ll find the big room cold; now it’s frosty outside and the house seems warm. The temperature is probably an even fifty degrees, but when there’s a sudden change of temperature outside you’ll get surface condensation on the stone floors and you’ll probably think the floors are damp.”