(10/13) Friends at Thrush Green (12 page)

'Oh, that will do, dear. I really don't mind it slightly cheesy. After all, the Tibetans always use rancid milk in their tea—
and jab's
milk at that.'

'I think I'll have mine black,' said Betty, and the two settled happily at the kitchen table for ten minutes' gossip about the newcomers to Thrush Green.

It so happened that Isobel saw nothing of her neighbours for several days as she and Harold had an unexpected invitation to have a few days with friends in Wales.

On their return, Isobel rang the Lesters to enquire how things were going. Alan answered the telephone.

'We're settling in nicely,' he said cheerfully. 'We shall be pretty straight indoors before term starts next week.'

'That's good,' replied Isobel, 'and how's the building getting on?'

'Far too slowly, but I'm not sorry really as poor Margaret is under the weather again.'

'Oh dear! Can we help?'

'No, no, it's just this wretched migraine. She gets an attack now and again, and bed's the only place until it passes.'

'I expect she's been doing too much,' said Isobel. 'Let us know if there's anything we can do.'

'You are kind. She'll soon be over it, I'm sure. We're quite geared to this sort of thing.'

'I wonder,' said Isobel to Harold some time later, 'if they've decided to move here because of these migraine attacks?'

'Maybe,' said Harold engrossed in the crossword. 'Have you ever heard of "Taxonomy"?'

'Never.'

'Nor me. These crossword setters must be born in the knife-drawer, as my mother used to say. Far too sharp for me.'

Term began at Thrush Green school and Alison and Kate Lester were enrolled as new pupils, along with half a dozen new five-year-olds who were escorted to the classroom which had once been the domain of little Miss Fogerty.

On the same day, far away at Barton-on-Sea, Agnes was watching a little knot of children making their way to school. She was moved to see the small ones, obviously new entrants, clutching their pristine school bags and wearing school blazers which were rather too large, 'to allow for growth'.

'Do you ever wish you were back at Thrush Green, Dorothy?' she asked.

Dorothy was poring over a form which had just come in the post. 'Well, of course I do,' she replied. 'But not at the school.'

She had heard children's voices, and knew from neighbours that this was the first day of term. She also knew, from her long association with Agnes, exactly what was going on in that kind lady's heart.

'Not at the school?' echoed Agnes, somewhat surprised.

Dorothy put down the form.

'Pure gobbledegook this is! Why these so-called communications can't be expressed in plain English I cannot understand.'

She surveyed Agnes with sympathy.

'No, I can assure you, I would not want to return to teaching. I did over forty years, as you did too, and I am very happy to have retired.'

'Yes, of course,' agreed Agnes. 'It's just that seeing the new babies going along just now, so trusting and
dean,
you know, it brought it all back.'

'It should also bring back the memories of tears and tantrums and puddles on the floor, which marked the first morning of term,' said Dorothy briskly. 'And do you remember that terrible boy who bolted home? We caught him half a mile up the Nidden road. Wretched child!'

'He was a Cooke,' said Agnes.

'That,' replied Dorothy, 'does not surprise me. Now, about this form. I think you have to sign it too, but I'll slip along to Teddy later on and read it to him. He's bound to know what it means.'

She was as good as her word, and in her absence Agnes busied herself in the garden. The dahlias were making a fine show of scarlet and gold, and the roses still showed a few late blooms, but there were signs of autumn already. The new pyracantha, pushing its way valiantly up the wall by the porch, was a mass of berries just beginning to turn orange. The birds would be grateful, thought Agnes, watching some blue-tits squabbling over the peanut-holder nearby.

She sat down on the seat to enjoy the sunshine, and hoped that Dorothy would not be too long with Teddy. It was so difficult to time the potatoes exactly when she went out in the morning. She ruminated again about Dorothy's attitude to this new friend. He certainly seemed to take up a great deal of her time, but she remembered Isobel's sensible words. Dorothy was a wise person, and would not be likely to do anything rash. It would be quite dreadful if she let her kind heart rule her head though, and succumbed to Teddy's pleas to marry him.

At this alarming thought Agnes pulled herself together. Now, who on earth had said anything about Teddy proposing marriage? Or about Dorothy accepting him? It really was unfair to either of them to think this way. Teddy, after all, was a good, decent, well-educated man, with beautiful manners and a voice not unlike dear Anthony Bull's of Lulling. Perhaps, thought Agnes, with a return of the flutters, that was what made him all the more dangerous! Anthony Bull had often been called a charmer; was Teddy equally irresistible?

What rubbish! Agnes rose from the seat and set about deheading pansies with unusual violence. And one really must trust Dorothy's judgement in this situation. She was simply being kind to an afflicted neighbour. The fact that he was
male
was beside the point.
Any
neighbour, Eileen say, who had been blind, would have been treated by Dorothy with the same selfless kindness which was one of her great qualities.

But Eileen? The ubiquitous, noisy, laughing Eileen, who also called so frequently upon Teddy?
Would
Dorothy do as much for Eileen?

Agnes dismissed the doubt from her mind and deheaded an innocent yellow pansy with such violence that the whole plant came up in her hand. She decided it was high time to put on the potatoes.

At Lulling that same morning, Ella Bembridge and her old friend Dimity Henstock were enjoying coffee together at The Fuchsia Bush.

'And how goes the new extension?' asked Dimity. 'I keep meaning to come up and have a look, but Charles keeps me informed about its progress.'

'It's taking shape well,' responded Ella. 'It didn't take the men long to erect the glass part, and it will be marvellous for the old folk when it's done. I've just been to see about the curtains.'

'So it is to be curtains after all?'

'Yes. Muriel and I had a word about it with the committee. It would have been rather bleak, we thought, just with those blinds Edward wanted. Sometimes I find Edward's ideas a trifle
Scandinavian.'

'Scandinavian, Ella? Well, what's wrong with that?'

'Cheerless,' asserted Ella, helping herself to a piece of Nelly Piggott's gingerbread. 'Angular, cold—not right for us anyway.'

'What did Edward say?'

'Nothing. We told him that old people living in the chilly Cotswolds would want something cosier than just glass all round them in the winter.'

'I expect he wanted the blinds because he was thinking of the heat in the summer,' said Dimity, feeling rather sorry for Edward Young who had obviously met his match in Ella and Muriel.

'More fool him,' pronounced Ella rather indistinctly through the gingerbread. 'We have far more cold days than hot ones. Anyway, top and bottom of it is that Muriel and I are coping with the small curtains at the side, and the main ones, which are enormous, are being made by Prouts. I've just been over there to check the headings and fixtures.'

She went on to such technical matters as pulleys and pinch-pleating which meant nothing to Dimity, but she was brought back to earth by hearing Ella say that Muriel had called on the headmaster's wife.

'She was looking very poorly,' Ella said. 'Red-eyed and rather snuffly. Probably getting a cold. Muriel didn't stay long in case she caught it.'

She dived into her handbag, producing several keys, a man's handkerchief of red-and-white spotted cotton, and a large sheaf of booklets which she deposited on the table.

'Raffle books,' she announced.

'What for?' enquired Dimity, feeling for her purse and about to do a vicar's wife's familiar duty.

'The extension, of course. The money's coming in quite well, but the autumn is going to be a mad whirl of whist drives, concerts, jumble sales and the usual things. How many can you manage, Dim?'

'Ten, I think,' said Dimity. 'I'm still coping with RSPB, Save The Whales, RSPCA and Blue Cross raffle books.'

'But they are all
animals
,' protested Ella.

'I prefer them,' replied Dimity simply.

When Dimity returned home that morning she found Charles searching for a box of tissues.

'I think I have a cold hanging about,' he said. 'I'll go and gargle. Such a nuisance so near to Sunday.'

Dimity remembered Ella's remarks about Mrs Lester's cold, and became extra solicitous.

At eight o'clock that evening Charles confessed that his head ached, and he thought that he should go to bed. He slept in fits and starts, and Dimity heard him tossing and turning in the other bed, occasionally mumbling incoherently.

At first light he awoke to find Dimity standing beside him, thermometer in hand.

'It's John Lovell for you,' she said firmly on reading the result.

'But I have to take a funeral,' protested Charles.

'It will be your own,' Dimity told him, 'if you don't do as you are told.'

Charles knowing when he was beaten, put his aching head back on the pillow.

Within three hours, of course, it was known that the rector was seriously ill, with complaints ranging from a heart attack, a fall downstairs, appendicitis and pneumonia to tonsilitis and influenza.

John Lovell's diagnosis was a combination of the two latter afflictions, but knowing how easily Charles contracted severe and painful chest troubles, he pumped a good measure of antibiotics into his victim, left a list of medicaments with Dimity, and strict instructions to see that his patient remained in bed.

'And as for that funeral he is fretting about, it will have to wait,' said the doctor, his mind naturally full of his duties towards the living rather than the dead.

Dimity, secretly shocked, said that she had already been in touch with Timothy Pratt, the clergyman at Nidden, who had kindly offered to stand in.

She closed the front door behind John, and made her way into the kitchen before going upstairs to assure her husband that everything was arranged, and that he could now relax and concentrate on his own affairs for a change.

But John Lovell's single-minded attitude still troubled her. Fancy saying that the funeral could wait! What about the relatives' unhappiness, and such practical matters as the catering for all those people who might have come from a distance? And think of all the flowers being made into beautiful sheaves and wreaths, and all the cards and letters? Really, men were so thoughtless, so inconsiderate!

Putting off a funeral
, indeed!

Full of righteous wrath, Dimity set about making a jug of lemon barley water for the invalid. Thank goodness Charles was such an exceptional person, so unlike the usual run of men.

Thus dwelling on her good fortune, Dimity's rage gradually simmered down, and she was able to bear aloft the soothing drink in her usual gentle frame of mind.

Harold Shoosmith was one of Charles's first visitors.

'Well, I must say you look pretty comfortable up here,' he remarked, looking down at the sunny garden and his old friend propped up on the plump pillows enjoying the view. 'Far better than the first time I visited you as an invalid, when you were in the clutches of that ghastly housekeeper at Thrush Green rectory.'

'Oh, really,' protested Charles, 'poor Mrs Butler did her best.'

'Well, it wasn't good enough,' maintained Harold. 'I remember her martyred expression as she puffed into your bedroom with a couple of water biscuits and a wizened apple for your lunch. I wonder you didn't succumb with malnutrition as well as bronchitis.'

'I must say Dimity is a first-class nurse, and I'm being thoroughly spoilt.'

'Now, what can I do? Any errands to run? Messages to deliver? Parish magazines to take round? Just say.'

'I think Dimity has most things in hand, but I am supposed to be introducing things at Joan and Edward's coffee morning later this week. It's for the old people's extension. Could you do that?'

'Of course.'

'Otherwise I'm just having to put things aside until I'm out and about again. It's the visiting which worries me; I have met Alan Lester, of course, but when I called to see his wife she was upstairs with a severe headache.'

'That's often the way,' Harold told him. 'I feel very sorry for Alan.'

'Indeed, yes,' said Charles, his face puckered with concern. 'It must be dreadful to have an invalid wife.'

'I'm not sure myself,' said Harold slowly, 'that she is an invalid in the sense you mean.'

Charles looked mystified. 'Not an invalid? But if she is so often prostrate upstairs what else can it be?'

But at that moment, Dimity came in with a tea tray, and Harold was spared the necessity of answering.

9. Family Affairs

CHARLES Henstock was confined to his bed for over a week. Both Dimity and John Lovell saw to that, despite protests from their patient who kept remembering parish duties of the most urgent nature which, so he maintained, could only be undertaken by himself.

His pleas fell on deaf ears.

'Do you want me to send you to hospital?' threatened the doctor.

'Do think of yourself for a change,' pleaded Dimity.

In the end it was simpler to give way, and the good rector had to admit to himself that it was really pleasant, apart from some aches, to loll back among the pillows and look forward to appetizing meals being brought at regular intervals and, even better, the visits of old friends.

Among them, to Charles's delight, was his predecessor Anthony Bull, who blew into the bedroom like a breath of sea air, and laughed to see Charles's astonishment.

'I'm on my way to Bath for a conference,' he explained, after enquiries about the patient's progress, 'and I couldn't pass so near without calling. Dimity has kept me in touch. Tell me the news.'