by Miss Read
He gradually approached Thrush Green. The sun had set, and dusk was falling over the wintry scene.
' "Light thickens," ' said the rector aloud, ' "and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood." '
He savoured the sonority of the phrase. What a comfort it was to have a retentive memory! He corrected himself quickly. His memory, he reminded himself, was certainly not retentive when it came to practical matters, as Dimity frequently told him. Where on earth, for instance, had he left the key to the vestry? And what had he done with that slip for the cleaners which Dimity had given him only that morning?
Nevertheless, he comforted himself, it was a never-failing joy to find a happy phrase surfacing to add to the pleasures of daily life.
He looked approvingly at the white landscape against a darkening sky. In the distance he caught a glimpse of Lulling Woods, black against a steely-grey background.
'Rooky, indeed!' said the rector aloud. Who but Shakespeare could have thought of a crow making wing to a rooky wood, thus adding blackness to blackness?
He drew up outside Ella's cottage. The light glowed from her windows, shining a welcome, but the good rector sat still for a moment or two remembering his afternoon.
He would visit Robert again within the next day or two. Meanwhile he proposed to read some of the poems, which they both loved, before he slept that night. He wanted his old friend to know how much this last gift had meant to him.
But now he had other duties. He emerged into the chilly owl-light, and hurried up the path to collect his wife.
3. Unknown at The Fuchsia Bush
THE SNOW lasted for a full week. For the first three days the pristine purity which had so delighted Charles Henstock continued to enchant most of the inhabitants of Lulling and Thrush Green. The trees glittered in the frosty sunshine. Walls and hedges, capped in white, reflected the radiance of the clear sky. Underfoot the snow crunched to hard ice, and skaters were out in force on the shallow reaches of the River Pleshey and local ponds.
But overnight the weather changed, and by the fourth day a slow thaw had begun.
Snow fell from the outstretched branches of the vicarage cedar tree with soft flumps and clouds of snow dust. It slithered from walls and hedges. It dropped dramatically from the roofs of the houses and shops in Lulling High Street, much to the disgust and discomfiture of those walking below about their proper occasions. Two respectable ladies, about to enter The Fuchsia Bush in search of morning coffee, were engulfed in a miniature avalanche which descended from the guttering, and were obliged to spend their coffee break hatless and coatless as these garments were dried on the cafe's radiators.
At Thrush Green, Mr Jones's ancient spaniel, dozing peacefully in its kennel, was completely covered and had to be rescued by its alarmed owners from a four-foot fall of snow off an outhouse roof.
In the playground next door little rivulets ran from under the slush, much to the children's pleasure and their teachers' annoyance. Shoes and socks were rapidly soaked, and hardened delinquents of six and seven years of age had to be taken to task for throwing the last of the snowballs at their smaller brethren.
Nathaniel Patten's mantle slipped from his shoulders. The chestnut trees shed their loads, and the cars threw up a shower of watery slush as they passed.
It was, as the landlord of The Two Pheasants remarked to his neighbour, 'a dam' uncomfortable spell of weather.'
'Might freeze,' Albert replied morosely, 'and then we'll all break our legs, I shouldn't wonder.'
'That's right!' commented Mr Jones. 'Cheer us all up!'
And he bustled back into the snugness of the bar.
On that same morning, Charles Henstock planned to visit Robert Bassett but decided that he would telephone Joan Young first to see if a visit would be welcome to the invalid. He had seemed so frail a few days before, and the rector could not help wondering if the doctor might have vetoed any such excitements as visitors.
The bell seemed to ring for an unconscionably long time, and the good rector was filled with the usual doubts of one in his situation. Should he put down the receiver? No doubt, if he did so, then Joan Young would arrive, panting from the garden, just in time to find the instrument silent. On the other hand, the poor girl might be prostrate with a splitting headache, and lying abed praying for the noise to stop, with her hands over her ears. Really, thought Charles, even the simplest operation is fraught with worry, and one could quite understand how nervous people succumbed to all sorts of dreadful mental strain.
He was about to return the telephone to its cradle when Joan spoke.
'My dear,' said the rector, 'I trust I haven't brought you from the garden?'
'No indeed,' she replied. She sounded breathless nevertheless. 'In fact I was about to ring you. About Father.'
A sudden chill gripped Charles.
'How is he?'
'I'm sorry to tell you, Charles, but he has gone. Mother found him only ten minutes ago.'
The rector murmured his sympathy.
'He spoke to my mother about six o'clock when she gave him some tea, and then said he would go off to sleep again.'
The voice, so well-controlled, suddenly broke.
'I'm going to ring off,' said Charles, gently taking command. 'You have enough to do now, but let me help in any way. Who is with you?'
'Ben and Molly are coping,' replied Joan, 'and have gone to fetch John.'
'I'll call again later,' said the rector, adding his sympathy again.
He found that his knees were uncommonly shaky as he made his way to his study. Poor Milly and the family! How Robert would be missed! And how regrettable that he himself had not called to see his old friend yesterday! But there it was. The old sad cry of 'Too late, too late!' with which most mourners scourge themselves, rose to the rector's mind with bitter poignancy.
But such remorse was fruitless. His duty now was to the living who had so much to face at a time when their distress was at its most acute. Thank goodness, thought Charles, that the young Curdles lived in the same house! Both Molly and Ben would be of practical help and inestimable comfort to the Youngs, and to Joan's sister Ruth who was married to Doctor Lovell, and lived nearby.
There was a great deal to be said for living in a close community, mused the good rector. Irritating though it was at times to find that one had little or no privacy, yet when death or disaster struck how comforting to have the support of friends and relations close at hand.
Sighing, Charles went to break the news to Dimity.
Within a few hours, the news of Robert Bassett's death was general knowledge. Although he had been in ill health for several years, as always the news of his going came as a shock to Thrush Green and Lulling.
His contemporaries remembered him well as a young man at Thrush Green. Joan and Edward Young's fine house had originally been Robert's, but he preferred to live in Ealing where he carried on his furniture business, only visiting his daughters and the lovely Cotswold house two or three times a year.
When at last he had been obliged to retire he and his wife Milly had no desire to turn out the Youngs, nor in fact did they want to cope with such a large establishment. It was then that Edward, a sound architect, had so successfully converted the old coach house in the garden into an attractive bungalow, and where Milly and Robert had spent the last few years very happily.
Winnie Bailey was one of the first to hear. She was the widow of Donald Bailey who had been the seniorpartner of the Thrush Green practice when young John Lovell had come to join him, had settled in successfully and later found Ruth Bassett for a wife.
It was John who broke the news to Winnie as he left the surgery to hurry across the green to his father-in-law. Winnie watched his departure with a heavy heart. One of the saddest things about growing old was the inevitable loss of contemporaries. It was some comfort to know that Robert's widow was surrounded by her family at this sombre time, but nothing, as Winnie herself knew, could mitigate the loneliness of the partner left behind.
She went into the kitchen to tell Jenny, her maid and friend who lived in the same house. Jenny was busy breaking a handsome cauliflower into its separate florets at the sink when she was told the news.
To Winnie's alarm, her serene Jenny, who always seemed to face a crisis with exemplary placidity, burst into tears, and sat down heavily on the kitchen chair.
'But Jenny,' said her mistress, much bewildered, 'we all knew the poor man had very little time left. Why are you so upset?'
Jenny raised a wet and woebegone face.
'He was kind to me once. It was when I first came to Lulling as a little girl. I was sent to the big house with a message, and I was a bit scared. Mr Bassett answered the door, and must have seen I was frightened, and he took me round the garden and asked me all about where I was living and that.'
She gave a violent hiccup, and Winnie patted her back as though she were curing a baby of the wind.
'And he picked me a bunch of flowers—pinks and roses, I remember—to take back to the old people, and he gave me a shilling for myself. I never was so rich in my life. And best of all, you see, I had something to give my pa and ma which I'd never had before. They thought the world of those flowers, and I thought the world of Mr Bassett, and always did.'
A mighty sniff terminated the tale, but Winnie could see that the telling of it had eased poor Jenny's grief and that now she would recover her habitual calm.
'That's a very fine memory to have of a very fine man,' she said gently. 'Typical of dear Robert.'
Jenny rose to her feet, and mopped her face vigorously.
'Well, now I must get back to the cooking. Poor old gentleman, but there—it's time the vegetables were put on.'
And Winnie, returning to her own duties could not help being reminded of one of the entries in James Woodforde's Diary which she had been reading.
'Found the old gentleman almost at his last gasp. Totally senseless with rattlings in his throat. Dinner today boiled beef and Rabbit rosted.'
Life is just such a jumble of tragedy and everyday chores. Robert himself would have appreciated warmly the confrontation of death and the preparation of Jenny's cauliflower, in the same hour.
The funeral was at St Andrew's church a week later. It was a still day, mild and grey, with only a few tattered shreds of snow under the hedges to remind the mourners of the bitter weather.
The rector took the service for his old friend and gave a short and simple address. The two hymns chosen by the family were Robert's favourites, 'Ye holy angels bright' and 'God be in my head'.
After the service, when the congregation had gone home and Robert rested alone beneath a canopy of bright flowers, Charles and Dimity went with Ella to her nearby cottage and had tea there. Dotty Harmer and her niece Connie had been persuaded to join them.
Naturally, most of those present were in a subdued mood, grateful for the comfort of a bright fire and a cup of tea among friends, on a sad occasion.
Dotty was the exception. She was at her most chirpy, chattering of her memories of Robert in his younger days, and scattering cake crumbs as she waved her claw-like hands about.
'He had a most dreadful old bicycle he kept here in the coach house. D'you remember, Connie? It had an acetylene lamp. So smelly. No, of course, dear, it was before, your time. He ran into my father's flower bed with it once. Father was most upset.'
'Oh dear!' commented Dimity nervously. Old Mr Harmer had been a fierce martinet, dreaded by all, and such an encounter must have had dire consequences.
'Of course,' went on Dotty, 'Robert had such charming manners, and was so truly contrite, that Father let him off with only a slight kick on the shin. Very good of Father, we all thought.'
Charles caught Ella's eye and looked away hastily.
'I liked the hymns, didn't you?' continued Dotty, wiping her fingers on the hem of her skirt. 'He was always musical, and I'm so glad he didn't ask for "ER-bide with me". So lugubrious, don't you think? I mean, if someone is bound straight for heaven, as I'm sure dear Robert is, then why not have something cheerful to speed him on his way?'
'May I have another cup of tea, Ella?' asked Charles, looking a little pinker than usual.
'Personally,' said the irrepressible Dotty, 'I should like the Hallelujah Chorus, though it does take some time to get through, of course, and one would need a full choir. But it's so rousing, isn't it? Triumphant, and yet sacred. Do bear it in mind for me, Connie dear. Or failing that I rather like a pretty little song called "I Like Life", but perhaps if one were lying there dead, as presumably one would be if the doctors had examined one efficiently, then to ask for life might be a little presumptuous, in the circumstances. What do you think, Charles?'
The rector put his cup down.
'I think, Dotty, that you should sit back quietly and enjoy Ella's excellent tea. We've all had a sad afternoon, and need a little rest, I'm quite sure.'
'Well,' said Dotty, 'speaking for myself I feel quite perky, but no doubt there is something in what you say.'
And after Charles's gentle chiding she sat back in her chair and sipped her tea like an obedient child, much to the relief of her companions.
The still grey days of February continued. The sky remained overcast. The leafless trees stood with no stirring of branches. It seemed as if all Nature slept.
The roads were damp. The hedges were beaded with minute drops, and even the birds seemed silent.
In Lulling High Street the pavements gleamed wetly. The pollarded lime trees, bristling with leafless twigs, were streaked with lines of moisture. The air was heavy, and Lulling folk looked across the water meadows of the nearby River Pleshey and longed for relief from this oppressive humidity.
' 'Tisn't natural,' said one waitress to another in The Fuchsia Bush. 'Not a bit like spring. And as for getting a polish on these tables, well, it's love's labour lost, I say.'
'Never mind, love,' responded her fellow worker, Gloria Williams, who was busy arranging iced buns in a glass cabinet and licking her fingers noisily the while. 'Be March in a day or two, coming in like a lion, no doubt, and we'll have all the old biddies coming in grumbling about their hair being messed up.'
Her companion, Rosa, flicked a duster idly over an improbable collection of plastic flowers with daffodils nuzzling red geraniums above some fiercely autumnal leaves, all set precariously in a tub which had once held margarine.
'I was thinking of giving the windows a clean,' she said, with a yawn. 'But there, old Mrs Peters isn't coming in today, and it don't hardly seem worth it.'
Mrs Peters was the present owner of The Fuchsia Bush, and was possessed of an energy which would galvanise any but such obdurate employees as those at the café into action. When she was present, even the lethargic waitresses were stirred into semi-activity. In her absence, they reverted to their usual apathy.
'I wouldn't trouble,' agreed her colleague. 'Not this weather. Get all smeary, wouldn't they? You take it easy, dear. We'll have the elevenses lot in any minute now, and we'll be fair rushed off our feet.'
The two sat down at a table at the back of the empty room, and Rosa began to tell Gloria about the disco she had attended the night before when the door bell gave its mighty ping, and in came an elderly man. Rosa sighed.
'Here we go, then. I'll take him, dear. You do the next.'
She allowed the stranger to settle at a table near the window where he had a good view of the High Street, and had time to buff her nails on her apron while he studied the menu.
Slowly she approached.
'What can I get you?'
'Some coffee, please. Oh, and one of those iced buns.'
'White or black?'
The stranger look temporarily nonplussed.
'Surely you will bring me a pot of coffee and one of hot milk?'
it's usually just a cup.'
'Well, today will you please bring me a pot of each, as I have asked you.'
His eyes were very blue, Rosa noted, and flashed when he was cross. Pr
oper old martinet, she reckoned. A general or admiral or something awkward like that, and used to having his own way, that was sure.
'It'll be extra,' she shrugged.
'I've no doubt I can stand the expense,' he said shortly. 'And I'm in a hurry, so look sharp.'
Rosa ambled into the kitchen at the rear.
'Got a right one in there,' she informed the kitchen staff. 'Wants a pot of coffee and one of hot milk. I ask you!'
She cast her eyes aloft as if seeking divine aid for such recalcitrance.
Old Mrs Jefferson, chief cook for many years at The Fuchsia Bush, and a staunch upholder of long-forgotten principles of service, gave one of her famous snorts.
'Then get what he's asked for. It ain't your place to query a customer's order. Do as you're told, and keep a civil tongue in your head.'
'You don't have to face the customers,' grumbled Rosa.
'I have in my time,' reminded Mrs Jefferson, 'and given satisfaction too, my girl, which is a lot more than anyone can say about you. Now, get your tray ready, and see if you can manage a smile on that ugly mug of yours. Enough to turn the milk sour looking like that.'
She whisked back and forth from stove to the central table, nimble as ever despite her impressive bulk.
Rosa took the tray without a word, but if looks could have killed, Mrs Jefferson would have been a substantial corpse on the kitchen floor.
***
Half an hour or so later, the stranger emerged from The Fuchsia Bush into the muggy air of Lulling High Street.
The shoppers were in action now, and the tall figure had to circumvent perambulators, dogs on leads, and worst of all, two ladies having a lengthy gossip with their baskets on wheels spread behind them across the width of the pavement.
'Excuse me!' said the man firmly, pushing aside one of the baskets with a well-polished brogue.