by Miss Read
Most of the furniture had come from his own shop, but the bedside table had stood beside his parents' bed. He remembered it well, at the side of his widowed mother during her last long illness, laden with medicine bottles, books and letters, much as it looked now, he thought, with a mild feeling of shock. Well, it had served the generations loyally, and no doubt would continue to be used by his children and grandchildren. There was something very comforting in this quality of permanence. It put into perspective the brief frailty of man compared with the solid works of his hands.
Yes, here, all around him stood the silent witnesses of his life. He was glad to have had this enforced breathing space to acknowledge his debt to faithful old friends.
He slid farther down the bed, sighing happily. When his wife came with hot milk at ten o'clock, she found him in a deep sleep, and crept away again, with a thankful heart.
The last few days of April brought torrential rain to Thrush Green. It drummed on the tarmac of the roads and the school playground, with relentless ferocity, so that it seemed as though a thousand silver coins spun upon the ground.
It cascaded down the steep Cotswold roofs, gurgled down the gutters, and a miniature river tossed and tumbled its way down the steep hill into Lulling High Street.
At the village school, rows of Wellington boots lined the lobby, and mackintoshes dripped from the pegs. Playtimes were taken indoors. Dog-eared comics, incomplete and ancient jigsaw puzzles, and shabby packs of cards were in daily use, much to the children's disgust. They longed to be outside, yelling, running, leaping, fighting, and generally letting off steam, and would willingly have rushed there, despite the puddles and the downpour, if only their teachers had said the word.
Miss Fogerty, rearranging wet and steaming garments on the radiators, was thankful yet again for the comfort of her new classroom. At least her charges were able to pay their frequent visits to the lavatories under the same roof. In the old building it had been necessary to thread a child's arms into its mackintosh sleeves (invariably needing two or more attempts) before allowing it to cross the playground during a deluge. Really, thought Miss Fogerty, life was now very much simpler.
Next door to the village school, Harold Shoosmith, a middle-aged bachelor, struggled to locate a leak which had appeared in the back bedroom. He stood on a ladder, his head in the loft and a torch in his hand, while Betty Bell, his indefatigable daily help, stood below and offered advice.
'You watch out for bats, Mr Shoosmith! They was always partial to that loft. I remember as a girl the old lady as lived here then used to burn sulphur candles to get rid of them. Can you see any?'
'No,' came the muffled reply.
'You want a bucket for the drips?'
'No. I can't see a dam' thing.'
'You want another light? A candle, say?'
There was no answer, but Harold's trunk, then his thighs, and lastly his well-burnished brogues vanished through the trap-door, and thumps and shuffles proclaimed that the master of the house was surveying the highest point of his domain.
Betty Bell transferred her gaze from the gaping hole above her to the view from the streaming window. Rain slanted across the little valley at the back of the house, where Dotty Harmer's cottage glistened in the downpour. The distant Lulling Woods were veiled by rain, and the grey clouds, barely skimming the trees, told of more to come. She was going to have a wet ride home on her bike, that was sure.
'Found it!' came a triumphant call from above. 'It's running down one of the rafters. Get a thick towel, Betty, and a bucket, and I'll fix up a makeshift arrangement.'
'Right!' yelled Betty, 'and I'll put on your dinner. You'll need something hot after mucking about up there.'
She descended the stairs and caught a glimpse of a very wet Thrush Green through the fanlight of the front door.
Across the expanse of puddles Winnie Bailey was battling her way towards Lulling with her umbrella already dripping.
'Never ought to be out,' thought Betty. 'At her age, in this weather! She'll catch her death.'
But Winnie was quite enjoying herself. There was something very pleasant in splashing along under the shelter of Donald's old umbrella. It was very old, but a beautiful affair of heavy silk and whalebone, and a wide band of solid gold encircled the base of the handle. It was certainly far more protection from the rain than her own elegant umbrella, which was smaller and flatter, and which she resolved to keep-for ornament rather than use in future.
There were very few people about, she noticed, as she descended the hill to Lulling. Hardly surprising, in this weather, but what a lot they were missing! The stream of surface water gushed and gurgled at her side. Silver drops splashed from trees and shrubs, and a fresh breeze whipped the colour into her cheeks. It was an exhilarating morning, and she remembered how much she had loved a boisterous day when she was a child, running with arms thrown wide, mouth open, revelling in the buffeting of a rousing wind.
She was on her way now to visit three old friends, the Misses Lovelock, who lived in a fine house in the High Street. They were making plans for one of Lulling's many coffee mornings, and although Winnie tried to dodge as many of these occasions as she could, the proposed effort was for a cause very dear to her heart, and that of her late husband's, the protection of birds.
If the three sisters had been on the telephone, Winnie might have been tempted to ring up and excuse herself on such a wet morning, but she was glad that the Lovelocks considered a telephone in the house a gross extravagance. She would have missed this lovely walk, she told herself, as she approached their door.
The sisters were, in fact, very comfortably off, but they thoroughly enjoyed playing the part of poverty-stricken gentlewomen. Their house was full of furniture, porcelain and silver objects which would have made the gentlemen at Sotheby's and Christie's pink with excitement. A great many of these exquisite items had been begged for by the mercenary old ladies who had brought the art of acquiring other people's property, for nothing or almost nothing, to perfection. They were a byword in Lulling, and newcomers were warned in advance, by those luckless people who had succumbed in a weak moment to the sisters' barefaced blandishments.
Winnie had been invited to coffee, and was quite prepared for the watery brew and the one Marie biscuit which would be presented to her on a Georgian silver tray.
She was divested of her streaming mackintosh and umbrella in the hall, the Misses Lovelock emitting cries of horror at her condition.
'So brave of you, Winnie dear, but reckless. You really shouldn't have set out.'
'You must come into the drawing-room at once. We have one bar on, so you will dry very nicely.'
Miss Bertha stroked the wet umbrella appreciatively as she deposited it in a superb Chinese vase which did duty as an umbrella stand in the hall. There was a predatory gleam in her eye which did not escape Winnie.
'What a magnificent umbrella, Winnie dear! Would that be gold, that exquisite band? I don't recall seeing you with it before.'
'It was Donald's. It was so wet this morning I thought it would protect my shoulders better than my own modern thing. As you can guess, I treasure it very much.'
'Of course, of course,' murmured Bertha, removing her hand reluctantly from the rich folds. 'Dear Donald ! How we all miss him.'
The ritual of weak coffee and Marie biscuit over, the silver tray and'Sèvres porcelain were removed and the ladies took out notebooks and pencils to make their plans.
'We thought a Bring and Buy stall would be best for raising money,' explained Violet. 'We can use the dining-room, and Bertha took a lot of geranium and fuchsia cuttings last autumn which should sell well, and Ada has made scores of lavender bags from a very pretty organdie blouse which was our dear mother's.'
'Splendid,' said Winnie, stifling the unworthy thought that these offerings would not have cost her old friends a penny.
'And Violet,' chirped Ada proudly, 'has made dozens of shopping lists and jotters from old scraps of paper and last y
ear's Christmas cards. They really are most artistic.'
Violet smiled modestly at this sisterly tribute.
'And we thought we might ask Ella for some of her craft work. She has managed to collect a variety of things, I know, over the years. Would you like to ask her to contribute? It would save us calling in.'
'Of course,' said Winnie, 'and Jenny and I will supply all the home-made biscuits to go with the coffee, if that suits you.'
The Misses Lovelock set up a chorus of delight. Pencils moved swiftly over home-made notebooks and all was joy, and comparative warmth, within, as the rain continued to pelt down outside.
Albert Piggott, standing in the church porch with a sack draped, cowl-wise over his head, gazed at the slanting rain with venom.
He took the downpour as a personal affront. Here he was, an aging man with a delicate chest, obliged to make his way through that deluge to his own door opposite. And he had a hole in the sole of his shoe.
When Nelly had looked after him, he thought, she had always kept an eye on such things. She'd washed his shirts, brushed the mud off his trouser legs, darned his socks, sewn on all them dratted buttons that burst off a chap's clothes, and took his shoes down to Lulling to be mended when the time came.
No doubt about it, Nelly had had her uses, hussy though she turned out to be.
'I bet that oil man's found out his mistake by now,' said Albert to a spider dangling from a poster exhorting parishioners of Thrush Green to remember their less fortunate fellows in darkest Africa.
He hitched the sack more firmly round his shoulders, and made a bolt across the road. Which should it be? Home, or the Two Pheasants? The latter, of course, won.
'Lord, Albert, you're fair sopped!' cried the landlord. 'Been digging up the graves or something?'
Albert ignored the facetious remark, and the titters of the regulars.
'Half pint of the usual,' he grunted, 'and I wouldn't mind a look at the fire, if it ain't asking too much of you gentlemen.'
The little knot of customers, steaming comfortably by the blaze, moved a short distance away, allowing Albert to enter the circle.
'Terrible weather,' said one, trying to make amends for any offence given.
Albert maintained a glum silence.
'Bashing down the daffodils,' said another. 'Pity really.'
Albert took a swig at his beer. He might have been an aging carthorse taking a drink at the village pond for all the noise he made. The customers avoided each other's eyes.
'You getting your own dinner, Albert, or d'you want a hot pie here?' asked the landlord.
'How much?'
'Same as usual. And as good as your Nelly ever made, I'm telling you.'
Albert cast him a sharp look.
'There's no call to bring my wife into it. But I'll have a pie all the same, daylight robbery though it is, you chargin' that amount!'
'Daisy,' shouted the landlord through an inner door. 'Hot pie for Albert, toot-der-sweet.'
Uneasy silence fell upon all as Albert waited, mug in hand. A sudden gust of wind shook the door, and a little trickle of rainwater began to seep below it and run down the step into the bar.
'Blimey!' said one of the men, 'we're goin' to be flooded out.'
'Can't go on much longer,' said his companion, retrieving the doormat before it became soaked. 'Rain this heavy never lasts long.'
'It's been on for two days,' remarked Albert, accepting his hot pie, 'don't see no sign of it letting up either.'
The landlord bustled forward with a mop and bucket.
'Here, stand away and I'll clear up.'
He began to attack the rivulet.
'Let's hope it stops before the month's out,' he puffed, wielding the mop energetically. 'Be a pity if Curdle's Fair gets this sort of weather.'
'Always gets a change afore the beginning of May,' announced one aged regular in the corner.
'You mark my words now.' He raised a trembling forefinger. 'I never knowed old Mrs Curdle have a wet day at Thrush Green. We'll get a fine day for the fair, that I knows. You just mark my words!'
'S'pose he's forgot the old lady died years ago,' whispered one customer to his neighbour.
'No, I ain't forgot!' rapped out the old man. 'And I ain't forgot as young Ben runs it now, and pretty near as good as his grandma.'
The landlord shouldered his mop and picked up the bucket.
'Shan't see you in here next week for hot pies then, Albert. I s'pose your young Molly will be cooking your dinner for you while the fair's here?'
Albert thrust the last of his pie into his mouth, and turned towards the door.
'Ever heard of mindin' your own business?' he asked sourly. 'First me wife, and now me daughter. You talks too much, that's your trouble.'
He opened the door, and a spatter of rain blew into the room. The newly dammed river gushed joyfully over the step again, and Albert departed.
'That miserable old devil was grinning!' said the landlord, and went into action once more, sighing heavily.
5. The Coming of Curdle's Fair
THE rain was still lashing down on the last day of April, as Ben Curdle and his wife Molly, née Piggott, approached Thrush Green with the fair.
They were a cheerful young couple, happy in their marriage, and proud of their little boy George, who was now four years of age.
The child sat between them as they towed their caravan at a sedate pace through the streaming countryside. Molly's spirits were high for she was returning home, and although Albert Piggott was never a particularly welcoming father, yet she looked forward to seeing him and the cottage where she had been born.
She was well aware that she would have to set to and do a great deal of scrubbing and general cleaning before the little house was fit for them all to live in for their few days' stay, but she was young and energetic and had never feared hard work.
She was looking forward too, to seeing the Youngs again. She had worked in their beautiful house for several years, before going to the Drovers' Arms where Ben Curdle had come a-courting. Joan Young had been a great influence and a good friend to the motherless young girl, and had taken pleasure in training such a bright and willing pupil in the ways of housewifery.
Molly had also acted as nursemaid to Paul Young when he was a baby, and had treasured the postcards and letters which the boy, now at school, sent from time to time. The happiest of her memories of Thrush Green were centred on that house, and working for the Youngs had been the highlight of her life. They had provided a haven from the dismal cottage across the green, and from the continuous complaining of her sour old father.
Ben Curdle's spirits were not quite so high. For one thing, he disliked his father-in-law, and resented the fact that his wife would have to work so hard in getting the neglected house together. But he was a sensible young fellow, and kept his feelings to himself. It was good to see Molly so happy, and he was wise enough to make sure that she remained so.
But he had another cause for worry. The fair was bringing in far less than when his redoubtable old grandmother had run it. Now that petrol and diesel oil had supplanted the shaggy-hoofed horses of her day, the cost of moving the fair from one place to the next was considerable. Takings too were down.
It was not only the counter-attraction of television in almost every home. That was one factor, of course, and who could blame people for staying comfortably under their own roofs, especially when the weather was as foul as it was today? No, it went deeper than that, Ben realised.
The fact was that most people wanted more sophisticated entertainment. The children still flocked to the fair, accompanied by adults. But the number of people who came without children was dwindling fast. In his grandmother's time, everyone virtually attended the great Mrs Curdle's Fair. It was something to which farmers, shop-keepers, school teachers, as well as their pupils, looked forward from one Mayday to the next. Those grown-ups came no more, unless it was to bring their children or grandchildren for an hour's frolic.
The thing was, what should he do? He was used to travelling the country and sometimes wondered if he could ever settle down in one place, even if he should be fortunate enough to find a congenial job.
And then, he was devoted to the fair and had never known any other way of living. His grandmother he had adored. She had brought him up from early childhood, for his father had been killed and his mother had married again. The old lady's upright and staunch principles had been instilled into this much-loved grandchild, and Ben had repaid her care with loyalty and respect. Not a day passed but he remembered some word of advice or some cheerful tag of his grandmother's, and to give up the fair, which she had built up so laboriously, smacked of treachery to the young man.
But there it was. Something would have to be done, and soon. He turned his mind to an offer which had been made to him some weeks earlier, by the owner of a much larger concern.
This man had three large fairs touring the country. Over the years he had bought up many a small business, such as Ben's, and combined them into a highly-efficient organisation. He was astute, and could foresee possibilities which a slower man would not. He was not liked, for there was a strain of ruthlessness in him without which he could not have succeeded, but there was grudging respect for his ability, and it was agreed that he treated fairly those whom he employed, as long as they worked well.