Winter in Thrush Green

by Miss Read

  'Will she always look like this?' asked Ruth weakly of Tony Harding, who was busy packing his bag neatly. She did not like to seem ungrateful for his ministrations, but she was beginning to wonder, in the daze that surrounded her, whether he had not helped her give birth to a monster.

  'Heavens, no!' was the brisk reply. 'That head will have gone down in a day or two. Believe me, you're going to have a very pretty little girl.'

  Ruth smiled with relief and settled the baby more comfortably in her arms.

  'It was too bad of me to bring you out on Christmas Day,' she said apologetically. 'I'm terribly sorry.'

  'Think nothing of it,' replied the doctor, straightening up. 'All in the day's work.'

  He made for the door.

  'There's a very good precedent, you know,' he said cheerfully, and vanished.

  The red sun had dropped behind the folds of the Cotswolds, and the short winter day was done by the time Albert Piggott shuffled across to St Andrew's to ring the bell for evensong.

  Two or three bicycles were already propped against the railings, and a figure moved hastily away from them as Albert approached.

  'Who's that? asked Albert, switching on a failing torch. By its pallid light he recognised Sam Curdle.

  'Bike fell over. Just proppin' it up,' volunteered Sam, a shade too glibly. Albert looked at him with dislike and suspicion. He wouldn't mind betting Sam had been looking in the baskets and the saddlebags for any pickings, but as far as he could see the fellow held nothing in his hands. Albert grunted disbelievingly.

  'Got yer cousin staying at my place,' he said at last. Sam did not appear delighted.

  'Don't mean nothing to me,' he said spitefully. 'Ben and me never had no time for each other. He can go to the devil for all I care.'

  'Well, that's your business,' said Albert, shuffling on again. I'll say good night to you.'

  'Good night,' replied Sam shortly, and set off in the direction of Nidden. Albert, pausing on the church path, looked after his disappearing figure. A growing conviction shook his bent frame with excitement.

  'If that fellow didn't do poor old Miss Watson,' thought Albert to himself, 'I'll eat my hat!'

  And taking that greasy object from his bald head, he entered the church and made his way towards the belfry and his duty, highly elated.

  PART THREE

  The New Year

  15. A Bitter Journey

  ON New Year's Day the rector and Harold Shoosmith set out on a long journey.

  Four letters and a telegram, with a prepaid answer, had all faded to elicit any reply from Nathaniel Patten's grandson. His address had been found with the help of many people, and it appeared that William Mulloy lived in a remote hamlet in Pembrokeshire.

  'The only thing to do,' Harold said, 'is to call on the fellow and try to get some answer from him. We'll stay the night somewhere. It's a longish drive and we may as well do it comfortably.'

  After a few demurrings on the part of the conscientious rector, who had various meetings to rearrange in order to leave his parish for two days, the two men had decided that the first day of the New Year, which fell on a Friday, would suit them both admirably.

  It had turned much colder. An easterly wind whipped the last few leaves from the hedges, and dried the puddles which had lain so long about Thrush Green. People went about their outdoor affairs with their coat collars turned up and their heads muffled in warm scarves. Gardeners found that digging in the cruel wind touched up forgotten rheumatism, and children began to complain of ear-ache. In Lulling the chemist displayed a choice selection of cough mixtures and throat lozenges. Winter, it seemed, was beginning in earnest.

  The two men breakfasted very early, Harold Shoosrmth in his warm kitchen on eggs and bacon, and the rector walking about his bleak house with a piece of bread and marmalade in his hand, as he did his simple packing. It had seemed selfish to expect his housekeeper to rise so early, and she had not suggested it. She wished him a pleasant journey before retiring for the mght and said she would take the opportunity of washing the chair covers in his absence. With this small crumb of comfort the rector had to be content.

  He felt rising excitement as he crossed Thrush Green from his gaunt vicarage to the corner house. The Reverend Charles Henstock had few pleasures, and an outing to Wales, albeit in January and in the teeth of a fierce easterly wind, was something to relish. It was still fairly dark, only a slight lightening of the sky in the east giving a hint of the coming dawn. One or two of the houses around the green showed a lighted window as early risers stumbled sleepily about their establishments.

  The dignified old Daimler waited in the road outside Harold's gate. Its owner was busy wrapping chains in a piece of dingy blanket, and stowing them in the boot.

  'Just in case we meet icy roads,' said Harold, in answer to the rector's query, and Charles Henstock marvelled at such wise foresight.

  The car was warm and comfortable. After talking for the first few miles the two settled down into companionable silence, and the rector found himself nodding into a doze. He was happy and relaxed, pleased to be with such a good friend, and relieved to leave Thrush Green and its cares behind him for two days. He slumbered peacefully as the car rolled steadily westward.

  Harold Shoosmith was glad to see him at rest. Nothing had come of the protest at the Fur and Feather Whist Drive, and it had been generally decided to press on with the arrangements for the memorial. But the rector had worried about it considerably, Harold Shoosmith knew. To his mind, the rector had a pretty thin time of it, and if he himself had ever been saddled with the sort of housekeeper Charles endured he would have sent her packing in double-quick time, he told himself. There were some men who were born to be married, and who were but half-men without the comfort of married estate. The good rector, he realised, was one of them, and he fell to speculating about a possible match for his unconscious friend. It would seem, as he reviewed the charms of the unattached ladies of distant Thrush Green, that the rector's chances were slight, thought Harold unchivalrously.

  He braked suddenly to avoid a swerving cyclist and his companion woke with a start.

  'Good heavens! I must have dropped off,' exclaimed the rector, passing a hand over his chubby face as if to brush away the veils of illicit sleep. 'Where are we?'

  'Just running into Evesham,' replied Harold. 'You finish your kip.'

  'No, no indeed,' protested the rector, yawning widely. 'I'm not in the least tired.'

  He straightened himself and watched the neat bare orchards roll by. The sky above was an ominous dark grey and a wicked wind caught the side of the car now and again, making it shudder off its course. By the time they reached Hereford heavy rain, pitilessly cold, swept the streets, and here they stopped for lunch.

  'A real beast of a day,' commented Harold, as they waited for their mutton chops. Through the window of the hotel they watched the ram spinning like silver corns on the black shiny road. 'But as long as it rains it won't snow,' he continued. 'I've a feeling we'll see plenty of that later on this winter.'

  'I'm no weather prophet,' confessed Charles Henstock, 'but Piggott says we're in for several weeks of it. I hope he's wrong.'

  'Piggott's a gloomy ass,' said Harold. 'Never so happy as when he's miserable, as they say. I shouldn't take his prognostications too seriously.'

  'He's often right about the weather though,' said the rector, rubbing his cold hands. He held them to the meagre warmth of the one-bar electric fire with which the hotel hospitably welcomed its visitors to a lofty dark dining-room of tomb-like chill. Three paper roses in a tall glass vase, one pink, one red and one yellow, decorated each table, standing squarely in the middle of the frosty white tablecloth.

  'Make the most of the place, don't they?' commented Harold ironically, surveying the scene.

  'It looks very clean,' ventured the rector charitably, and indeed, used as he was to bleak surroundings, his present circumstances seemed comparatively cosy.

  Luckily, the soup was
hot and the mutton chops succulent, and the two friends continued on their journey much refreshed. Soon they were among the dark Welsh mountains, whose majesty was veded in curtains of rain.

  'We shouldn't have much trouble in finding a room tonight,' said Harold, driving through a water splash that covered the windscreen momentary. 'There won't be many people out in this lot.'

  'I hope Piggott will keep the stoves well stoked,' said the rector, his thoughts turning again to Thrush Green. 'It's choir practice tonight, and there are so many colds about.'

  'What's a cold here and there?' asked Harold robustly, stopping at a level crossing.

  'I always think my poor wife died of a neglected cold,' mused the rector, as though to himself.

  'I'm sorry,' said Harold, chiding himself. There was silence in the car. In the distance a faint whistle told of the approach of the train. 'You must miss her very much,' went on Harold, trying to make amends.

  The rattling of the train across their path prevented any response. The great gates were swung back by a fat little Welshman with a wet coat draped over his head and shoulders and the car moved over the rads to continue its journey.

  'I miss her more than I can say,' said the rector at last. He looked sadly at the road before him, but his friend had the impression that he was glad to talk of this matter which he had kept to himself for so long. He made a sympathetic noise, but no verbal comment.

  'It's a strange thing,' continued the rector, 'that one doesn't remember how the dead looked during the last months of their life. When I think of Helen it is always as a young woman.'

  His voice grew more animated.

  'She was so gay. She sang, you know, about the house. And she made it so cheerful with flowers and fires. We had a little cat too, but Mrs Butler doesn't like animals, and when it died I thought it best not to get a kitten.' His voice died away, and they drove for almost a mile before he spoke again.

  'Somehow the house too seems dead now,' he added, almost apologetically.

  'If you don't mind my saying so,' said Harold, 'you'd be better off without that housekeeper of yours.'

  'Mrs Butler?' asked the rector, astonished. 'I really think she does her best for me. Why, she's even taking the opportunity of washing the chair covers in my absence.'

  'That's as may be,' said Harold stubbornly. 'She does a bit, I dare say, but she could do a lot more. You never have a decent fire, for one thing, and it's my belief she skimps on the cooking.'

  Such plain speaking rendered the rector temporarily dumb. But on turning over the words in his mind, he admitted to himself that there was a great deal of truth in them.

  'But what can I do?' asked the rector pathetically. 'If I complain, she'll go, and it really is an appalling job to get anyone else suitable. I shudder when I think of some of the applicants I interviewed. There was the young woman with pink hair—' He stopped, arrested by the memory.

  'Don't I know,' sympathised Harold. 'I've had it too, don't forget. Enough to make me think of marrying, it was at times,' he said lightly. 'And I'm not a marrying man, I fear.'

  The words were said so cheerfully and in such a matter-of-fact tone that their full impact did not dawn on the rector for some minutes. But later he was surprised at the warm glow of delight that suffused him. Could it be possible that his friend had no matrimonial designs upon any one of the ladies of Thrush Green whose hearts he had so pleasurably fluttered since his advent?

  'Some are the marrying sort, and some not,' continued Harold, looking at three small cluldren fighting in a village street. 'Frankly, I would say that you are.'

  'I think you may be right,' agreed the rector, in a small voice. 'But I've very little to offer a woman.'

  'Don't come that modest-martyr stuff over me,' implored Harold. 'You think about it. That's my advice. And think about sacking Mrs Butler too, or at least tell her to pull her socks up.'

  'I really don't think I'm equal to it,' confessed the rector. But whether he was referring to his hopes of matrimony, or the dismissal of his housekeeper, no one could say.

  They stayed the night in a small Pembrokeshire town within a few miles of their quarry.

  'How did you sleep?' asked the rector, at breakfast the next morning.

  'Apart from some Welsh-speaking plumbing that was woven around the room, I heard nothing at all,' said Harold. 'I feel ready for the hunt. One thing, the rain's stopped.'

  It was true, but the sky sdll had a steely greyness about it, which boded no good, and the wind still blew evilly from the east. The dining-room, however, was a little more comfortable than the one in which they had lunched, and two electric bars warmed a smaller room, there was a modest carpet and a real fern on an intricately carved stand in the window. Two moth-eaten heads of deer graced the wall above the marble mantelpiece, and the rector, who abhorred blood sports, averted his gaze from the glassy eyes above him.

  By ten o'clock they were approaching the little hamlet where they hoped to find William Mulloy. The rector looked forward to the meeting with interest, but Harold Shoosmith felt considerable excitement at the thought of coming face to face with the grandson of the man he had esteemed for so long. Would there be any facial resemblance, he wondered, as the Daimler threaded its way in a gingerly manner down a narrow rough lane? He had been looking out ancient photographs and the copy of a portrait of Nathaniel for the proposed sculptor's benefit, and he had become very fond of the plump Pickwickian countenance of the good old missionary.

  'We should be there,' observed the rector, looking about him. 'We've taken the left-hand fork and gone about a quarter of a mile. Now, where is the pair of cottages?'

  They stopped the car, studying the rough sketch map that the waiter at the hotel had given them. The bare fields stretched away on each side, and from the tussocky bank near by a thrush whistled, surveying them with a bright inquisitive eye.

  A small girl with a very dirty face appeared suddenly in the lane. She was carrying an empty milk bottle.

  'Could you tell us where Mr William Mulloy lives?' asked Harold politely.

  'Behind the trees,' answered the child, in a sweet sing-song, nodding to a clump near by. Now that their attention was directed there, the two men saw a wisp of smoke rising from a hidden chimney.

  'Thank you very much,' said Harold, preparing to get out of the car. The child smiled and continued her journey towards the larger road, still clutching the milk bottle.

  'I suppose the milkman leaves milk at the top of the lane,' said the rector, genuinely interested in these domestic arrangements. 'This lane must peter out eventually. What a deserted sort of place.'

  They collected the few papers about the proposed memorial from the back of the car and made their way on foot to the cottage. It was one of a pair, both ramshackle in appearance, with every window tightly closed. Harold knocked at the front door with some difficulty, for the knocker was rusty and was stiffly encrusted with ancient paint.

  There was a sound of footsteps, then a bolt was drawn back, and a struggle began within to tug the door from its fast-clinging frame. At last a breathless voice called to them:

  'Step round to the back, will you? The door's stuck.'

  Obediently the two men traversed a narrow concrete path which skirted the house so closely that Harold had difficulty in remaining upon it.

  At the back door waited a small pale woman with hollow cheeks. She wore an overall and a pair of fawn carpet slippers.

  'Are you from the insurance?' she asked. She spoke with a strong Welsh accent and looked alarmed.

  'Indeed, no,' said Harold reassuringly.

  'We're looking for Mr Mulloy,' said the rector gently. 'Are you, by any chance, Mrs Mulloy?'

  'Well yes,' said the woman doubtfully. 'In a manner of speaking, I am.'

  'That's splendid,' said Harold heartily. 'We wondered if your husband could spare us a few minutes.'

  'He's not here,' said the woman, and for a moment it looked as though she were about to shut the door.
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br />   'Now please—' began Harold in an authoritative voice, but the rector motioned him to keep silence, and spoke instead. His experienced eye had noticed the sudden pain which had caused the woman to draw in her breath sharply.

  'We won't bother you for more than a moment,' he assured her gently, putting a plump hand on her thin arm. She looked at him and gave a small smile. The rector noticed that she had very few teeth, which accounted for the hollow pinched look of her sad face.

  'We wrote to your husband several times,' he continued, 'but I fear the letters must have gone astray.'

  'No, they're all here,' said the woman unexpectedly. 'You'd better come in out of the wind.'

  As they followed her through a small kitchen to the living-room at the front of the house, the rector became conscious of someone following him. The small girl, now holding a full milk bottle, was entering too.

  'My little girl,' said the woman. 'Put the milk in the cupboard, Dulcie.'

  'Dulcie!' exclaimed Harold. 'Named after her grandmother perhaps? That was Nathaniel's daughter's name.'

  'That's right,' said the woman, without much enthusiasm. She closed the door between the kitchen and living-room and mononed the men to sit.

  'We'd better explain,' began the rector, and gave a brief account of Thrush Green's plans.

  'So you see,' broke in Harold, 'we would like to see how your husband feels about it. Does he work on a Saturday morning? We had hoped to find him at home.'

  The woman answered dully.

  'He don't call this home any more. The truth is, he's left me.'

  'Left you?' echoed the rector, with compassion in his voice.

  'Left you?' echoed Harold, with dismay in his. What if the wretched fellow had left the country altogether? A fine wasted journey they would have had, thought Harold Shoosmith with disgust.

  Mrs Mulloy took four letters and an unopened telegram from the mantelpiece and handed them to Charles Henstock.

  'I kept them thinking he might be back. The first came the day after he went. But he's never come.'