Susan Wittig Albert

by The Tale of Applebeck Orchard (v5)

  But others pointed out (quite reasonably) that land development would also have brought employment, which would have meant steady money in everyone’s pockets, and when this was said, many people found themselves nodding. A few more shillings a week would not be amiss, would it, now? I regret to say that the villagers, like most of us, wanted both the penny and the bun.

  Beatrix, however, was not troubled by the villagers’ opinions, for she was simply doing what she most wanted to do. She had paid for both farms from the royalties of her children’s books, among them Peter Rabbit, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle , Jemima Puddle-duck, Ginger and Pickles, and the latest, recently published, The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse. Her little books were very inexpensive (Peter had sold for just one-and-six) so that children could buy them from their pocket money. She found it hard to believe that all these tiny purchases had brought her enough money to buy not just one but two—two!—beautiful old farms, and some other small fields besides. She couldn’t help thinking that the whole thing had happened entirely by magic, a feeling that possessed her every time she returned to Hill Top Farm, as she was doing this morning.

  She got down from Mr. Heelis’ gig and bade him goodbye. She watched him drive off, then stood for a moment on the path and surveyed the house, thinking once again how much she loved it and how astonishing it was that this magical place, on such a magical morning, actually belonged to her.

  When you go to visit Hill Top (as you certainly may, since the house now belongs to the National Trust, which opens it almost daily to the public), you might not see immediately why Beatrix Potter loved it so much. The house is a traditional seventeenth-century, two-story North Country farmhouse, plain and unadorned by any kind of architectural fripperies. It had been long neglected when she bought it, and she put quite a lot of effort into restoring its original appearance, as well as building an addition for Mr. Jennings (the farmer who managed her animals) and his family. Like the other houses in the village, the exterior was plastered with a pebbly mortar painted with gray limewash. The eight-over-eight windows were lined up symmetrically, bottom and top, the sashes painted white. The house was roofed with local blue slate, and the chimney pots, like well-tutored schoolboys standing in a row, wore peaked slate caps. The porch was constructed of slate, four enormous blue slabs, two vertical pieces at the sides and two more for the peaked roof. The slate itself came from Outgate, just north of Hawkshead. It pleased Beatrix to know that her house—its timbers and slates and stones and mortar—was made entirely of materials that came from the land all around, and that her quarry also provided rock for road and bridge repair.

  Just now, the front door was open—left so by Mrs. Jennings, who had been airing the place for her landlady’s expected arrival. So Beatrix picked up her satchel and her hamper, went onto the porch, and through the door. And since I’m sure you want to know what the interior looks like, we will follow her. (Or you can go and see all the furniture and curtains and pictures and curios for yourself, for when Beatrix bequeathed Hill Top Farm to the National Trust on her death in 1943, she asked that it be kept exactly as she left it.)

  At Beatrix’s heels, we step directly into the main living area—the “hall,” as it was called by the North Country folk. When she bought the house, there was a partition here that formed a dark hallway, but she pulled it down, bringing in light and opening the room to its original generous size. Looking over her shoulder, we can see that the walls and ceiling are papered in a flowery green print, and that the room is furnished with a gate-legged table and rush-seated chairs, and two dressers, one a dark antique with a date of 1667, the other a pale oak dresser that displays a collection of blue and white ware and two portrait bowls. (If you look closely, you can see that one bowl pictures George III and Queen Charlotte, while the other depicts Lord Nelson.) Next to the dresser, facing the front door, is a tall oak clock, its dial painted with pretty flowers.

  Along the west wall is a cast-iron range that fits neatly into the fireplace alcove, and a kettle steams quietly on the range. The floor is dark slate, with a red-bordered sea-grass rug and a smaller, shaggy blue one. The curtains at the deep-set window are red, and there is a pot of red geraniums on the window seat. A row of brasses hangs under the mantel, an old spinning wheel stands beside the fireplace, and a rocking chair is waiting for Beatrix to take a moment and sit down. Her leather clogs, made for her by a cobbler in Hawkshead, are waiting for her to put them on and go out to the barn to see the cows and chickens and pigs—but they will have to wait for a while, for she has other things to do.

  Beatrix smiled at the room, which seemed to smile back, as excited and pleased as she was that she had come home again. The other rooms in this small house smiled, too, and chuckled and said how glad they were to see her and hoped that she would be able to stay for a very long time. Downstairs, there was the parlor with its marble Adam-style fireplace, oriental carpet, and richly paneled walls. Upstairs, her very own bedroom, with its stone fireplace and a window overlooking the garden; and the treasure room where she kept her collections of favorite things—porcelain, pictures, miniatures, embroideries, everything arranged just the way she wanted it.

  Indeed, as she stood still in the hall, taking deep breaths of the tranquil air, filled with country scents of summer-warm dust and fresh-cut hay and blooming flowers, Beatrix felt that the house was perfect in every way. Her parents’ elegant home at Number Two Bolton Gardens might be filled with angry squalls, London might be bleak and gray and chilly, and all of England might be peering into an anxious and unsettled future, with labor strikes and rising prices and war clouds gathering on the horizon. But none of that troubled her here. Hill Top was a refuge, a sanctuary, a haven from every storm.

  Because of this, when she came to Hill Top, Beatrix always tried her best to put everything out of her mind except the tasks immediately before her. She focused all her attention on enjoying the present and keeping as contented and busy as possible, and in my opinion, she was doing exactly as she should. Wouldn’t you agree? The past was full of unhappiness. More important, it was the past. It was over and done with, so why make herself miserable by thinking about what could not be changed? It had been the best of times and the worst of times, both together. She had loved Norman Warne with all her heart, but he had died suddenly, too young, too soon, just a month after she had accepted his ring.

  And even that short month had not been the happy time it should have been. Instead, every day had been a tempest. Norman was certainly respected and respectable—his family was well-known in the London publishing world—but he didn’t belong to the Potters’ social class. He worked for a living, and that, in Mrs. Potter’s phrase, was “wretchedly vulgar.” Marrying him would be an appalling mistake, and Mr. and Mrs. Potter simply would not allow it. (I wonder if Queen Alexandra said something like that to Princess Victoria, when Lord Rosebery offered. “Oh, but my dear, he’s only an earl! We won’t speak of it.”) When the worst happened, and Norman had died, the Potters could scarcely hide their relief. Their daughter was no longer in danger of marrying the fellow.

  Well. All that ugliness was in the past, and Beatrix was determined that she would not trouble herself by thinking of it. But now she was confronted by a present conundrum, and she could not put it out of her mind. Opening her satchel, she took out a paper-wrapped parcel and put it on the table. Then she went up the stairs to her bedroom to take off her travel things and change into her farm clothes. As she did this, she made herself think about Mr. Heelis, although she would really rather not. She was going to have to decide how to deal with the situation.

  It was clear to her that he was beginning to care for her, not in a friendly, affectionate way, but more deeply. She had suspected this the last time they were together. Now, after this morning, she was sure about it. And since Mr. Heelis was the kind of man he was, honest, straight, and true, he deserved something honest, straight, and true. She was going to have to confront the issue directly. And soon, no matter how painful it
might be.

  Beatrix went into her bedroom, took off her blouse and skirt, and put on the simpler costume she always wore around the farm. She picked up her comb and glanced into the mirror to tidy her flyaway hair, pausing for a moment to wonder what Mr. Heelis—a handsome, eligible bachelor, who could have his pick of all the women in the entire district—saw in her. The mirror told her the truth: that she was plump, round-faced, and plain-featured, with a nose that was too big (that, at least, was what her father’s friend John Millais, the famous painter, had said of her when she was a girl) and cheeks that were too pink. Her blue eyes were her best feature, and her mouth turned up naturally at the corners, but her brown hair was rather thin, the result of illness when she was younger. She gave the mirror an ironic smile. If Mr. Heelis cared for her, it was certainly not because of her great attractiveness.

  But he did care for her, she was sure of that. Oh, not because he had told her in so many words, for he was a gentleman (although not in her parents’ definition of that word) and extraordinarily shy. If it hadn’t been for what had occurred between them when they were alone together one day last winter, downstairs in this very house, Beatrix might not herself have a very clear idea of what was going on.

  If you and I had been there when it happened, we might not even have noticed, because it had happened so fast and seemed such a small thing, although certainly not to Beatrix. Mr. Heelis had been teasing her, in a friendly, light-hearted way, about solving mysteries. Then, fearing that he had offended her, he had reached out impulsively and taken her hand, as if in apology.

  And instead of pulling her hand away with a laugh, as she should have done (as any other woman with a brain in her head would have done), her eyes had stupidly filled with tears, a choking sob had risen in her throat, and her fingers had tightened on his. She hadn’t intended any of this; she simply couldn’t help herself. She was remembering the moment when Norman had taken her hand in that way and what it had meant to both of them, both for good and for ill. She was torn between desperately wanting it to happen again, with Mr. Heelis, and not wanting it to happen again, ever, with anyone—especially not with Mr. Heelis.

  No, not Mr. Heelis, of all people, for he could only be hurt by the inevitable consequences. At that very moment, she knew she should do something to stop it.

  But she hadn’t. She and Mr. Heelis had been together only twice more, and briefly, in public. A few days later, she had gone back to London, thinking (hoping, really) that by the next time she saw him, he would have forgotten all about what had happened between them and become interested in someone else. But when she got off the ferry this morning and saw him waiting, it was as if no time at all had passed. Certainly nothing had changed. One glance at his face told her that he felt the same way, and one look into her heart told her that her own feelings had not changed.

  And therein lay the problem, the conundrum. Her attraction to Mr. Heelis felt to her like disloyalty to Norman. Of course, Norman had been dead for five years now—five years this very month—and he would be the first to tell Beatrix to go on with her life and be happy in any way she could. But Norman’s sister Millie was a very dear friend, and Beatrix’s books were published by Norman’s brothers, Harold and Fruing. Norman’s mother was dead now, but the entire Warne clan, down to the nieces and nephews, treated her as a cherished member of the family. How would they feel if she became involved with someone else? Wouldn’t they be hurt?

  But these feelings of loyalty and disloyalty, painful as they were, were not the chief barrier to a friendship, or something more, with Mr. Heelis. No. There was one thing worse, a hundred times worse, for Beatrix knew with a sad, sick certainty that her parents would react to Mr. Heelis exactly as they had to Norman. And it would be even more terrible this time. Her father was in ill health and extremely irritable. Her mother was maddeningly determined to keep her with them. Any suggestion that Beatrix might be inclined to care for someone, might even consider marriage, would send them into paroxysms of anger and fear.

  Beatrix could just imagine it, the shrill arguments, the shouting and pouting and weeping. “You are a selfish, thoughtless girl,” her mother would sob bitterly, and require to be put to bed with lavender and salts. Her father would turn turkey-red and wave his arms and stamp around like a furious gorilla—funny, if it weren’t so sad. And they would both point out, loudly and repeatedly, that they would be dead in just a few years, and surely she could manage to postpone her own selfish pleasures for a little longer. (Beatrix’s father did die just four years after the time of this story, although her mother lived on for nearly a quarter of a century longer.)

  And leave them for what? For whom? For a country solicitor?

  “A country solicitor?” her father would growl with profound sarcasm. “A man who spends his time handling other people’s real estate transactions instead of his own? A man who rides about the countryside surveying property and writing people’s wills? It’s out of the question, Beatrix. Out of the question, my girl! I will hear no more about it.”

  And her mother would snap, “Don’t be ridiculous, Beatrix! Just look at you. You are too old to make a silly, romantic fool of yourself. And over a country solicitor, too.”

  And if she had been foolish enough to suggest that Mr. Heelis might be invited to tea so that they could meet him and see what a fine man he was, what an upstanding—

  “Ridiculous!” her father would exclaim, and her mother would put her hand to her forehead and cry, “Beatrix, you are making me ill. You know you are, and you’re doing it on purpose. I will not have that man in this house and that’s all there is to it. Now, stop being such a goose and get me a cup of tea.”

  Oh, dear. I am sure I wouldn’t want my mother and father saying things like that to me, and if they did, I would probably storm out of the house, and slam the door behind me. But that would not be Beatrix’s way—at least, not yet. And if it seems to you that Beatrix’s ideas of loyalty are far too limiting and idealistic (she has mourned for Norman for five years? five years?—really, isn’t that long enough?), and that if Will Heelis really cared for her, he would come straight out and tell her so, well, do please remember that Beatrix and Will live in a world where people do not talk about such things with our readiness and ease. We speak of matters of the heart, our hearts and our friends’, with a freedom that they would have found incomprehensible, and our willingness (should I say eagerness?) to trade touches and embraces and even kisses with people whom we barely know would have seemed cheap and immoral. This does not mean that Beatrix Potter and Will Heelis do not feel passion or deep emotion, for of course they do. It only means that they are not as quick to express it.

  And if you think about it, perhaps the social conventions that keep them from falling into each other’s arms might have an important result. Perhaps their feelings are the deeper and more passionate because they are stopped up, as with a cork in a bottle of champagne, and when those feelings can no longer be denied and must burst out, they are all the more powerful.

  But it’s not up to us to judge, is it? Miss Potter and Mr. Heelis are products of their time and place, just as you and I. If we want to understand them, we shall simply have to take them as they are: Mr. Heelis hopelessly shy and reserved (inhibited, we might say); Miss Potter impossibly tangled in a sticky spiderweb of obligations.

  There was a knock on the door downstairs. Beatrix put down her comb. She hoped very much that it wasn’t Mr. Heelis come back again. For if that was who it was, she was going to have to tell him that their friendship could never be anything more than just that—a friendship. Anything else, any kind of romantic attachment, was quite out of the question, now and in the future.

  6

  Bosworth Badger Is Perplexed

  Miss Potter was not the only one to feel the magic of this beautiful morning.

  A little distance away, on Holly How, Bosworth Badger had taken his midmorning tea out to the front porch of The Brockery, where he could sit quietly in
his rocking chair and enjoy a wide view of green meadows and fell-sides.

  The Brockery, one of the oldest badger setts in the Land Between the Lakes, is an animal hostelry known far and wide for its hospitality and good cheer. To keep the place in good order, there is a staff of six, including four badgers (Bosworth, the owner and manager; Primrose, the housekeeper; Hyacinth, Primrose’s daughter and assistant; and Parsley, the cook), as well as two rabbits, Flotsam and Jetsam. There are several permanent residents, like the pair of orphaned hedgehogs and quite a few spiders and beetles, most of whom come and go as they please and don’t bother to sign the guest register.

  And of course, there are a great many wayfarers, like the fox who likes to pop in for a day or two, or the trio of long-tailed mice that spent a full week recovering from an attack by a vagrant cat. There’s also the odd weasel and stoat, who are politely asked to please sleep at the far end of the burrow, close to an exit, because of the odor, you know. Most guests pay in kind, with services and food and other useful items, like the bar of soap brought by the fox (pilfered from the storeroom at the Tower Bank Arms), which Primrose immediately cut up into smaller bars and distributed among the guest rooms. But Bosworth is a softhearted fellow. Animals temporarily down on their luck—the red fox with a leg injured in a game-keeper’s trap, and the family of rabbits whose burrow had been flooded—are permitted to stay at The Brockery even when they cannot pay their bill. (The Fifth Badger Rule of Thumb suggests that, since badgers usually inherit dwellings that are much too large for them, they should practice a generous hospitality and welcome all those who have temporarily fallen on hard times.)

  Bosworth’s morning work (reviewing the guest registry, going over Primrose’s housekeeping accounts, and making an entry in the History) was finished, and he was glad to spend a few moments out of doors. The sun was smiling cheerfully, the breeze was of an easygoing temperament, and the sky was unambiguously blue, with only a few feathery clouds brushing the fells to the west and north. It was a fine time to be a badger, Bosworth thought as he poured himself a cup of tea and helped himself to a scone. And The Brockery at Holly How was undoubtedly the very best spot in all the world to be a badger in.