The Caxley Chronicles (11 page)

The other course was a much more drastic one. Tenby's had approached him with a tentative offer. If he ever decided to part with the business would he give them first offer. He would of course be offered a post with the firm who would be glad of his experience. They were thinking of housing their agricultural machinery department on separate premises. North's, in the market square, handy for all the farmers in the district, would suit them perfectly. They asked Bender to bear it in mind. Bender had thought of little else for two days, but had said nothing to Hilda. He knew well enough that she would be all in favour of the action, and he wanted to be sure that it was right before making any final decisions.

Hilda, for years now, had been pressing Bender to move from the shop to one of the new houses on the hill at the south side of the town.

'It's so much healthier for the children,' asserted Hilda. 'You know how chesty Mary is—she takes after you, you know-and it's so damp right by the river here.'

'She looks all right to me,' Bender said.

'Besides,' continued his wife, changing her tactics, 'everyone's moving away from the businesses—the Loaders, the Ashtons, the Percys—'

'The Howards aren't,' pointed out Bender. Hilda tossed her head impatiently.

'Don't be awkward, Bender! Who cares what the Howards do anyway? It would be far better for Bertie and Winnie, and Mary too, later on, to have a place they can ask their friends to without feeling ashamed.'

'Ashamed?'
echoed Bender thunderously. 'What's wrong with this place?'

'We could have a tennis court if we had a bigger garden,' said Hilda. Her blue eyes held that far-away look which Bender had come to realize was the prelude to some expense or another. 'The children could invite all sorts of nice people to tennis parties.'

'They're free to invite them here to parties—boating and otherwise—as far as I'm concerned,' said Bender. 'Don't tell me that it's the children who want to move. It's entirely your notion, my dear, and a mighty expensive one too.'

Hilda had fallen silent after that, but returned to the attack many times until Bender had begun to wonder if there was something in the idea after all. It was not social progress, though, that caused Bender to give the matter his attention, but the financial possibilities of the move.

If Tenby's made him the substantial offer he expected, he could well afford to buy Hilda the house of her dreams. There was no doubt about it that the market place living quarters were rambling and far too large for their needs. Bertie and
Winnie, it was reasonable to suppose, would be married and away before long. It would be more economical, in every way, for those who were left, to live in a smaller and more up-to-date house where repairs and upkeep would probably be less than half the present sum. Also, Hilda was right in saying that they would find it healthier. Not only would they be on higher ground; it would be a good thing to leave the business behind, at night and get right away from its responsibilities.

He presumed that he would be offered the managership. In that case there would be a steady income, with no worries attached. Bender, gazing unseeingly across the snowy fields, lulled almost into slumber by the rhythmic swaying of the trap, began to feel that selling North's might be the best way out of his many difficulties. But not yet, he told himself. He would hang on as long as he could, and who knows? Something might turn up. He'd been lucky often enough before. There was still hope! Bender North was always an optimist.

He put Billy into the shelter of a stable and tramped across the snowy yard to the Miller's back door.

He was greeted warmly by the family, and he was put by the fire to thaw out. The usual vast tea was offered him, but Bender ate sparingly, with one eye cocked on the grey threatening sky outside.

'I mustn't be too long,' said Bender, his mouth full of buttered toast. 'There's more snow to come before morning, or I'll eat my boots.'

They exchanged family news. Ethel's youngest was running a temperature, and was upstairs in bed, 'very fretful and scratchity', as his mother said. Jesse's pigs were not doing as well as he had hoped, and he had an idea that one of his men
was taking eggs. 'Times were bad enough for farmers,' said Jesse, 'without such set-backs.'

He accompanied Bender to the stable when he set off.

'And how are your affairs?' he asked when they were out of earshot of the house. Bender gave a reassuring laugh, and clapped the other man's shoulders.

'Better than they have been, Jesse, I'm glad to say. I hope I shan't have to worry you at all.'

The look of relief that flooded Jesse's face did not escape Bender. It certainly looked as though Tenby's would be the only possible avenue of escape if the business grew worse.

Ah well, thought Bender, clattering across the cobbled yard, we must just live in hope of something turning up! He waved to Jesse and set off at a spanking pace on the downhill drive home.

The snow began to fall as Bender turned out of Jesse's gate. It came down thickly and softly, large flakes flurrying across mile upon mile of open downland, like an undulating lacy curtain. It settled rapidly upon the iron-hard ground, already sheeted in the earlier fall, and by the time Billy had covered half a mile the sound of his trotting hoofs was muffled. He snorted fiercely at the onslaught of this strange element, his breath bursting from his flaring nostrils in clouds of vapour. His dark mane was starred with snow flakes, and as he tossed his head Bender caught a glimpse of his shining eyes grotesquely ringed with glistening snow caught in his eyelashes.

His own face was equally assaulted. The snow flakes fluttered against his lips and eyes like icy moths. It was difficult to breathe. He pulled down the brim of his hard hat, and hoisted
up the muffler that Hilda had insisted on his wearing, so that he could breathe in the stuffy pocket of air made by his own warmth. Already the front of his coat was plastered, and he looked like a snowman.

A flock of sheep, in a field, huddled together looking like one vast fleece ribbed with snow. The bare hedges were fast becoming blanketed, and the banks undulated past the bowling trap smoothly white, but for the occasional pock-mark of a bird's claws. The tall dry grasses bore strange exotic white flowers in their dead heads, and the branches of trees collected snowy burdens in their arms.

And all the time there was a rustling and whispering, a sibilance of snow. The air was alive with movement, the dancing and whirling of a thousand thousand individual flakes with a life as brief as the distance from leaden sky to frozen earth. At the end of their tempestuous short existence they lay together, dead and indivisible, forming a common shroud.

There was a grandeur and beauty about this snowy countryside which affected Bender deeply. Barns and houses, woods and fields were now only massive white shapes, their angles smoothed into gentle curves. He passed a cow-man returning from milking, his head and shoulders shrouded in a sack, shaped like a monk's cowl. He was white from head to foot, only his dark eyes, glancing momentarily at the passing horse, and his plodding gait distinguished him from the white shapes about him.

Bender turned to watch him vanishing into the veil of swirling flakes. Behind him, the wheels were spinning out two grey ribbons, along the snowy road. He doubted whether they would still be visible to the fellow traveller, so fast were they being covered from above.

He turned back and flicked the reins on Billy's snow-spattered satin back.

'Gee up, boy!' roared Bender cheerfully. 'We both want to get home!'

Sep Howard watched the snow falling from his bedroom window. His hair was rumpled from a rare afternoon nap on the bed, and he had awakened to find the window darkened with flying flakes.

He judged that it was two or three inches deep already. The steps of St Peter's and the Town Hall were heavily carpeted. The snow had blown into the cracks and jambs of doors and windows, leaving long white sticks like newly-spilt milk. A mantle of snow draped Queen Victoria's shoulders and her bronze crown supported a little white cushion which looked like ermine. Snow lay along her sceptre and in the folds of her robes. The iron cups, in the fountain at her feet, were filled to the brim with snow flakes, and the embossed lions near by peered from snow-encrusted manes.

There were very few people about for a Sunday afternoon. An old tramp, carrying his belongings in a red-spotted bundle on a stick, shuffled disconsolately past St Peter's, head bent, rheumy eyes fixed upon the snow at his feet. Two ragged urchins, no doubt from the marsh, giggled and barged each other behind him, scraping up the snow in red, wet hands to make snowballs.

Sep watched them heave them at the back of the unsuspecting old man. At the moment of impact he swung round sharply, and raised his bundle threateningly. Sep could see his
red, wet, toothless mouth protesting, but could hear no word through the tightly-shut bedroom window. One boy put his thumb to his nose impudently: the other put out his tongue. But they let the old man shuffle round the corner unmolested before throwing their arms round each other's skinny shoulders and running jubilantly down an alley-way.

Momentarily the market square was empty. Not even a pigeon pattered across the snow. Only footprints of various sizes, and the yellow stain made by a horse's urine, gave any sign of life in that white world. Snow clothed the rosy bricks and sloping roofs of Caxley. It covered the hanging signs and the painted nameboards above the shops, dousing the bright colours as a candle snuffer douses a light.

What a grey and white world, thought Sep! As grey and white as an old gander, as grey and white as the swans and cygnets floating together on the Cax! The railings outside the bank stood starkly etched against the white background, each spear-top tipped with snow. There was something very soothing in this negation of colour and movement. It reminded Sep of creeping beneath the bedclothes as a child, and crouching there, in a soft, white haven, unseeing and unseen, all sounds muffled, as he relished the secrecy and security of it all.

There was a movement in St Peter's porch and a dozen or so choirboys came tumbling out into the snowy world, released from carol practice. The sight brought Sep, sighing, back into the world of Sunday afternoon.

He picked up a hair-brush and began to attack his tousled locks.

'Looks as though the weather prophets are right,' said Sep to his reflection. 'Caxley's in for a white Christmas this year.'

T
HE WEATHER
prophets were right. Caxley had a white Christmas and the good people of the town walked to church and chapel through a sugar-icing world sparkling in bright sunshine.

Edna, wrapped warmly in a new black coat trimmed with fur at the neck and hem—Sep's Christmas present to her—felt snug and happy, as she composed herself to day-dreaming whilst the minister delivered his half-hour's exhortation. Even his stern countenance was a little softened by the joyous festival, she noticed.

'New hope, a new life, a New Year,' declaimed the minister, and Edna thought how queer it would be to write 1914 so soon. It would be a relief too, in a way. She had felt a little uneasy through 1913. It was an unlucky number. Gipsy superstitions played a larger part in Edna's life than ever her husband suspected.

Yes, there was something reassuring about the sound of 1914. She was going to enjoy this beautiful Christmas and her beautiful new coat, and look forward to an even more prosperous New Year than ever before!

'Peace on earth, goodwill toward men,' the minister was saying, one finger upraised for attention.

Edna stroked her new fur trimming and sighed contentedly.

***

Hilda North also welcomed the New Year, hi its early months Bender, with his mind now clear, told her of Tenby's offer and the possibility of buying the house of her dreams on Caxley's southern slopes.

Hilda was joyful and triumphant.

'Have you told Bertie?' was her first question. 'He ought to know. After all, this would have been his one day.'

Bender promised to speak to his son that evening. It was a mild spring day with soft rain falling, straight and steady over Caxley and the countryside. In his waterside garden, Bender watched the rain collecting in the cups of his fine red tulips, and dripping, drop by drop, from leaf to leaf, down the japonica bush against the workshop wall. The Cax was dimpled with rain, the rustic bridge glistened. There was a soft freshness in the whispering air that soothed, and yet saddened, the watching man. He was going to miss all this, after so many years. Would Bertie miss it too?

Bertie, at that moment, was also watching the rain. He was at Fairacre where he had been summoned by old Mr Parr whose automobile refused to start. Bertie had spent the morning repairing it, and now sat in the thatched barn which housed the car, munching a sausage roll which was his lunch. A robin splashed in a puddle near by, flirting wings and tail, bobbing its thumb-sized head, as it gloried in its bath.

A veil of drops fell steadily from the thatched roof, splashing on to the washed gravel surrounding the building. In the field next door Bertie could see sheep moving slowly and unconcernedly, their wool soaked with rain. Steam gently rose from their backs as they cropped. An old cart-horse, streaked with the wet, nodded under a horse chestnut tree, its back
as shiny as the sticky buds bursting from the branches above it.

It was a good life thought Bertie, looking across at the motor-car restored to usefulness. He hoped he might never leave this absorbing occupation. It would be a sad day for him if his father decided that he should take over the family business! No—motor-cars were his own choice!

He brushed the crumbs from his clothes, stood up, and decided to visit the 'Beetle and Wedge' for a drink, before returning to Caxley.

It was a relief to the young man when Bender spoke of his affairs that evening, and he said so.

'I haven't liked to question you, Father, but I guessed things were getting more and more difficult. That business of Bob's seems to have put the lid on it.'