by Miss Read
Mrs Fowler looked suspicious.
'Don't know those, but if there's any over there it'll be in here by now.'
'I'm glad to see you, anyway,' said Peter. 'I was going to knock to tell you we're going to make a bonfire of this lot, in case you had washing hanging out, or wanted to close the windows.'
Mrs Fowler drew in her breath in a menacing manner, but said nothing. She nodded, and retired to her house. A few sharp bangs told the toilers that the windows were being slammed shut.
'What an old bitch she is!' remarked Peter conversationally, slashing at a clump of nettles.
'Peter, don't!' begged Diana. 'She'll hear you.'
'Do her good,' he said, unrepentant. 'Pass the rake, and we'll get the bonfire going before it rains.'
At that moment they heard a loud cough. Sergeant Burnaby's sallow face loomed above the other hedge like a harvest moon.
'Good afternoon, sir. Just made a pot of tea, and hope you and the lady will do me the honour of takin' a cup.'
'How kind,' said Diana. 'I'd love one.'
Peter looked less pleased. He was a man who liked to finish the job in hand.
'I want to get the bonfire started before the storm breaks.'
'Let me take the green stuff over the hedge for my fowls,' urged Sergeant Burnaby eagerly. 'They dearly love a bit to pick at, and it'll help you get rid of it.'
'Fine,' said Peter, brightening. He gathered an armful of grass, docks, hogweed and sow thistle and staggered with it to the hedge.
There was a flustered squawking as Sergeant Burnaby flung it over the wire, and then a contented clucking as the hens scattered the largesse with busy legs.
'May as well let them have the lot,' observed their master, after the fourth load had been deposited.
Peter obediently scraped together the last few wisps, and as he did so, a crack of thunder, immediately above, made them jump. A spatter of raindrops fell upon them.
'Come straight in, ma'am,' called Sergeant Burnaby, retreating up the path.
'Run for it!' shouted Peter, snatching the tools together, and within two minutes they were in the old soldier's kitchen, shaking the rain from their clothes.
Everything looked remarkably clean and tidy, thought Diana, when one considered that the lone occupant was approaching eighty.
There was a kitchen range identical with their own in the next cottage, against one wall, but this one was glossy with blacklead, and on the mantelshelf above were several brass ornaments, including a large round clock, all shining.
Among them Diana saw a little embossed box, and following her gaze, the old man took it down for her to handle. It was quite heavy, and bore a medallion showing the heads of George V and Queen Mary.
'Sent to us in the Great War,' said the sergeant, with pride. 'We was in the trenches at the time. Christmas present, it was, filled with tobacco. We all thought a lot of that, I can tell you. My old pal, Jim Bennett, he treasured his too. It gets a rub-up every Saturday.'
'I should think that all your lovely things get a rub-up weekly,' said Diana, handing back the box. 'Does anyone come to help you?'
'Not a soul,' said Sergeant Burnaby proudly. 'I don't want no help. That Mrs Fowler come once, early on, but it was only to snoop round. I sent her packing.'
He stirred his cup with a large teaspoon, and looked fierce.
'I'm not one to speak ill,' he continued. Diana waited for him to do just that, and was not disappointed.
'But that old besom needs watching, sir. Tongue like a whip-lash, and not above nicking anything that's going. Why, the moment the Coggses and Waitses left, she was in them gardens diggin' up what she fancied! They come back, a week after they'd moved, to dig up a row of potatoes, but they was gone. "Next door," I told'em! "You have a look in the shed next door. You'll find 'em all right. Sacked up for the winter!"'
He sniffed at the remembrance.
'Them Waitses never done nothing about it. Too easy-going by half. Always was. But good neighbours to me. I miss 'em.'
Diana exchanged a glance with her husband. Peter's face bore the impatient look of a schoolmaster suffering taletelling, and about to take retaliatory action.
'Your flowers are so pretty,' said Diana hastily, rising to look out of the window.
The rain drummed down relentlessly, spinning silver coins on the flagstones and the seat of the wooden armchair outside the back door. The bright patch of marigolds, cornflowers and shirley poppies, was a blur through the streaming window, but Diana's comment had succeeded in stemming the old man's venom and in soothing her husband's irritation.
'I like a bit of colour,' said Sergeant Burnaby. 'I dig over a bit near the house and fling in packets of seeds—annuals, you know, all higgledy-piggledy. Don't take a minute, and there's a fine bright sight for the summer.'
He turned to Peter.
'You plannin' to do anything about the thatch?' he asked. Peter looked cautious.
'Not at the moment,' he replied. 'The architect is still studying things.'
He did not care to tell the sergeant that the thatch would probably be renewed, or at least repaired in stage two, after the demise of his host.
'The window frames are rotten,' continued the sergeant. 'And my chimney don't look too healthy.'
'They'll be seen to,' said Peter, more frankly. These things were included in stage one, he seemed to remember. 'Can't do it all at once, you know, but we'll put things ship-shape as soon as we can.'
'You see,' said Sergeant Burnaby, filling Peter's cup again before he could refuse, 'my end of this row gets all the weather. You'll find that's true, sir. Now, old Mrs Vinegar-Bottle up the other end, she'll worry the guts out of you—pardon me, ma'am—about what wants doin', but her place is a king to this. Sheltered, see, from the westerlies. And her old man kept things up together, so I'm told, when he was alive.'
He spooned sugar briskly from a glass bowl into his cup.
'One, two, three, four,' he counted under his breath. Diana suppressed a shudder. It must taste like thin golden syrup.
'Poor devil!' commented the sergeant. 'He's better off, wherever he is. That old cat must have helped him to the grave, I don't doubt.'
Peter drained his cup, and stood up.
'Time we were off. Very kind of you to give us tea.'
'Very kind,' echoed Diana.
The old man looked suddenly old and pathetic.
'Must you go? Don't see much company, you know. No need to hurry away on my account. I've got some old photos of this place you might like to see.'
He began to open the table drawer, in a flustered way. Diana's heart smote her.
'We'd love to, some other time. We really must go now, and pack up our tools.'
'But it's still raining,' protested the old man, trying in vain to keep his guests.
'Can't be helped,' said Peter firmly. 'We'll have another go at the garden as soon as we can. And there's plenty of marking waiting for me at home too which I must go and tackle.'
He held out his hand, and smiled at Sergeant Burnaby.
'I know you'll forgive us for hurrying away,' he said with sudden gentleness. 'But you'll be seeing quite a lot of us in the next few weeks. Too much probably.'
They escaped into the pouring rain, collected their things, and drove home through the storm to Caxley.
The Hales spent the grey, wet evening in their armchairs. Diana's hands were busy with knitting a pale-blue coat for a god-daughter's baby. Her head was busy with thoughts of their two tenants.
What on earth had they taken on?
Peter's thoughts were engaged with his history marking. His red pencil ticked and slashed its way across the pages. Every now and again he gave a snort of impatience.
'Sometimes I wonder if Lower Fourths can take in American history,' he said, slapping shut one grubby exercise book. 'Young Fellowes here informs me that the Northern Abortionists—a phrase used five times—were extremely active in the nineteenth century.'
'Northern Abortionists?' echoed
Diana, bewildered.
'"Abolitionists", to everyone else in the form,' explained Peter, reaching for his pipe. 'But not to young Fellowes, evidently. He's the sort of boy who writes the first word that enters his head. It might just as well have been the Northern Aborigines, or Abyssinians, or anything else beginning with Ab.'
He patted the books into a neat pile.
'That'll do for tonight,' he said firmly. 'They don't have to be returned until term starts.'
'Only another fortnight,' said Diana, 'and so little done at Tyler's Row.'
'What's the hurry? Look upon it as a hobby. It's no good fretting about delay, and we're in the hands of Bellamy and the builder anyway.'
'But nothing seems to be happening.'
'It will soon enough,' Peter assured her.
He spoke more truly than he knew.
6. The Problem of Tyler's Row
WORK began at Tyler's Row towards the end of September, and Diana and Peter grew quite excited when they saw how much had been accomplished after ten days.
Everything movable, the old kitchen range, the light fittings, the worm-eaten dresser—even some of the wallpaper—had gone, and the two cottages appeared to be stripped for action.
What they failed to realise, in their innocence, was the fact that the first stages of any building work are rapid and quickly apparent. It is the last stages which are so maddeningly prolonged, when plasterers wait for plumbers, and plumbers wait for electricians, and decorators wait for the right paint and wallpaper, and the owners wait to get into the place, with the growing conviction that the mad-house will claim them first.
Those despairing days were still in the future, but already things were becoming complicated for the Hales in the early part of the term. The headmaster, knowing that Peter was intending to move, asked if he might buy his present house.
'My son John comes back from Singapore before Christmas. They've three children now, and another on the way, and your house would be ideal.'
'We shan't be out of it until well after Christmas,' said Peter.
'Surely a couple of cottages won't take all that time to put to rights?'
'They're doing pretty well at the moment,' replied Peter, 'but Bellamy Croft won't be hurried, and I think John will have to look elsewhere if he wants to bring the family straight into a house.'
'He might get temporary accommodation,' mused the headmaster aloud. 'Until you're ready, I mean.'
And a very pleasant situation that would be, thought Peter, with a harassed family man breathing down his neck, urging him into a half-finished Tyler's Row. He was not going to be hustled into anything, he told himself sturdily.
But this was only the beginning. It was amazing how many people decided that Peter Hale's house was exactly what they, or their relations, had been waiting for, and he found himself accosted in Caxley High Street on several occasions by would-be buyers. He had two stock answers. The house was not on the market yet, and wouldn't be until Tyler's Row was ready. Masters and Jones would be the people to approach. He was not handling it himself.
It was all a trifle wearing, although it was some comfort to know that it looked as though the house would sell easily.
And then there was the architect. Peter had said that Bellamy Croft would not be hurried. He was beginning to wonder if he went to Tyler's Row at all. There were several things he wanted to talk to him about, but he never seemed to be in the office, and his secretary was a past-master in covering up for him. Always, it appeared, Bellamy was at work in some remote village, or had gone to consult someone at Oxford or London or Cheltenham.
'I'll ask him to ring you,' was the nearest Peter ever got to seeing the elusive fellow, but he waited in vain for the telephone to ring. And when, after several frustrating weeks, it did, Bellamy's apologies were so profuse and disarming that Peter's ire evaporated.
However, it was soon revived by discovering that Bellamy had returned to his fight for a mock-Gothic porch in the centre of Tyler's Row.
'I'm not having it!' he told Diana firmly. 'I'm not being saddled with a Chinese-Chippendale porch, with a pointed lead roof, costing about two hundred smackers, when I want a simple affair with a thatch on top!'
'You did ask him to do the job,' pointed out Diana.
'If I asked the butcher for two pork chops,' replied Peter heatedly, 'I'm damned if I'd accept a saddle of mutton just because he wanted me to have it. My God, what a battle it all is!'
As term progressed, the outlook grew steadily gloomier. Peter began to get headaches—a most unusual thing for so healthy a man.
'Nothing that exercise won't cure,' he insisted, setting out on a four-mile walk whenever he was so afflicted.
'Perhaps you need new reading glasses,' suggested Diana solicitously.
'No, no. These are perfectly adequate. A spell in the fresh air and plenty of muscle-work's the answer.'
And he would vanish for an hour or so, and return rather more exhausted than when he set out; certainly in no mood to tackle the piles of marking which always stand about a schoolmaster's sitting room.
It was at this stage that Diana found their roles reversed. She, who had been so full of doubts about the move, now did the comforting.
'It will sort itself out. There are bound to be set-backs. All progress goes in fits and starts—two steps forward, and one back—and if you think of Tyler's Row a couple of months ago, and then today, it's really quite heartening.'
Peter refused to be consoled.
'The time they take!' he stormed, raising fists to heaven. 'You'd think three men plus an architect would get the place done in a month! When I think that this is only stage one of Bellamy's plan, I wonder if I'll ever live to see stage two. Or even if I want stage two, or will be able to raise the money for it. As far as I can see, we'll be looking for a nice little Even-tide Home for the Aged by the time stage one's done.'
Autumn gales, of unprecedented ferocity, ripped away tarpaulins fixed over empty window frames and created more work at Tyler's Row. Copper piping and bathroom fittings, left overnight in the empty cottage, disappeared in the small hours and had to be replaced, with infuriating difficulty. Mr Roberts' cows, in a field adjoining the property, pushed their way into the garden and helped themselves to the freshly-planted perennials which Diana had spent three afternoons arranging carefully in a newly-dug border. The garden was pock-marked with large holes where they had browsed undisturbed for hours.
At one point, Bellamy Croft, in an expansive mood, had said that there was a possibility of moving in by Christmas. In January lie said, somewhat more cautiously, that it might be possible at the end of the month.
In February he said what a trying winter it had been for builders ('And for schoolmasters!' Peter had snarled), and he was truly surprised to find how much there still needed to be done. Perhaps, in early March...?
In the middle of that month, with the end of term in sight, Peter issued an ultimatum.
'We're moving during the Easter holidays, come hell or high-water,' he told Bellamy. 'My own house is sold, and the chap wants to move in. Put some dynamite behind old Fairbrother and his minions, or they'll find themselves having to work round us. They've got three weeks to finish.'
Bellamy Croft professed himself pained and astonished at such impatience, though, in truth, he met with it often enough with his clients. However, Peter's forbidding detention-for-you-boy look had some effect, and a slightly brisker pace of progress began at Tyler's Row.
Although there were cupboards still to be fitted, some topcoat painting to be done and the lavatory window was still missing, Peter and Diana pressed on with their preparations for the move, and named the day as the twentieth of April.
'The relief,' sighed Diana, 'at having something settled at last! Who was it kept saying his patience was exhausted, Peter?'
'Hitler.'
'Are you sure?' Diana sounded startled.
'Positive. His patience was exhausted just before he snapped up yet another count
ry.'
'Well, I never expected to ally myself with that man, but at the moment I can sympathise with his feelings.'
Fairacre, of course, had watched the progress of conversion with unabated interest. The theft of the copper piping was attributed at once to Arthur Coggs, although no one had a shred of evidence to prove the charge. It was noted, however, that Mrs Coggs was unusually free with her money at the Christmas jumble sale, even going so far as to expend a shilling on a fur tippet, once the property of Mrs Partridge's mother. This, said some, proved that there was more money than usual in the Coggs' household and where had it come from? Funny, wasn't it, they said, that the copper piping had vanished only a few days earlier?
Others pointed out that any proceeds from the sale of the stolen goods would have been poured promptly down Arthur Coggs' throat in 'The Beetle and Wedge'. Mrs Coggs would have been the last person to receive any bounty from her husband.
Sergeant Burnaby enjoyed every minute of the builders' company, sitting in his old armchair in the garden and carrying on a non-stop conversation with anyone available. He had never had so much excitement and company before. Every day brought another enthralling episode in this living serial story, and he delighted in regaling Peter and Diana with a blow-by-blow account of all that went on between their visits.
Mrs Fowler, on the other hand, behaved with mouth-pursed decorum.
She knew, however, quite as much about the doings next door as did Sergeant Burnaby, and kept a watch upon the workmen as vigilant as his, but more discreet.
The schoolchildren were equally interested, shouting to the builders as they passed on the way to school, begging for pieces of putty, nails, strips of wood, pieces of wallpaper, broken tiles and anything else to be treasured.
Mrs Pringle and I were in rare unity in trying to discourage them from pillaging in this way, and from bringing their loot into the school. Well-worked putty leaves finger-prints on exercise and reading books, and the children's fingers were grubbier than ever with handling their newly-found possessions.
I tried to convey to them the fact that they were stealing, with small success.