Thrush Green (2 page)

It was in the middle house of the five that Ruth Bassett was staying this spring. She had known and loved the house all her life for it had belonged to her grandparents, and she and her sister Joan had always spent as much time as possible at Thrush Green, escaping from their parents' home at Ealing whenever they could.

It had been wonderful as children to exchange the small garden, the neat tree-lined streets and the decorous walks in Ealing parks for the heady freedom of Thrush Green and the big untidy garden that lay behind the old house. Sometimes they traveled with their parents, for their father visited his mother and father as often as his work would allow. But sometimes the two girls traveled alone from Paddington in charge of the guard and it was these journeys that they loved best. Their spirits rose as the train rattled westward leaving the factories and rows of houses behind. Whatever the season the country enchanted them. They would stand in the corridor of the lurching train, in the springtime, watching the broad fields of buttercups whirling by, glittering like the Field of the Cloth of Gold in the May sunshine. In the summer they kept watch for the gay boats on the river, the sunshades, the punt poles flashing with drops in wet hands and the trailing plumes of weeping willow ruffling the surface. During the autumn the glowing beeches, gold, bronze and red, flared across the hills like a forest fire; and in the Christmas holidays the bare, quiet stillness of the sleeping countryside formed the prelude to the cheerful domestic bustle of Christmas which they knew would welcome them at their grandparents' home.

Their grandfather had died first. Ruth remembered him pottering about in the garden, a little doll of a man with fluffy white hair and a complexion as softly pink and white as a marshmallow. He had taken a great interest in Lulling's affairs, and the people of Thrush Green were reputed to set their watches and clocks by the old gentleman's punctual appearance at his gate each morning as he set off for his daily walk downhill to the town. He had been a fine cricketer in his day, and during his long retirement he had attended the modest matches at Thrush Green and those more important ones at Lulling's playing field, and those at the neighboring towns.

One sunny June morning he had returned from his walk a little more breathless than usual after the stiff uphill climb. He had lowered himself into the sagging wicker chair in the shade of the lime tree and had surveyed the fresh beauty of the flaunting oriental poppies and irises which he loved so well. From the house came the welcome smell of lunch being prepared. He had nodded off in the drowsy sunshine, and when they had come to tell him that lunch was ready, he lay there, beneath the lime tree murmurous with bees, in his last sleep.

In the following autumn his widow had died, too, and the house had been left to Ruth's father. By this time Joan had become engaged to Edward Young, a Lulling architect in partnership with his father. The two families had been friends for many years and, as a boy, Edward had always been at Thrush Green to welcome the two girls on their visits. He had been a stolid child, even-tempered and quite impervious to the Bassett girls' quips. Ruth had secretly thought him rather dull, but she had had to admit that he had developed into a kindly, reliable man, devoted to Joan and their one little boy Paul, and possessing a remarkably dry sense of humor.

The house on Thrush Green was offered to the young couple by Joan's father, who was compelled to stay in Ealing to be near to his business.

"But the day I retire," he had threatened his young tenants with a smile, "you are turned out into the snow on Thrush Green, don't forget! And I move in!"

Meanwhile the house remained much as it had been in the grandparents' day. Joan and Edward had changed the dark paint to light and had removed the lace curtains which had shrouded all the front windows in their grandmother's time, but little else had altered. When Ruth came down to stay, she still felt the same uplift of spirits as she stepped inside the cool hall, and still half-expected to see the pink and white old gentleman and his bustling little wife approach to welcome her.

She always slept in the same bedroom, the one which she had shared as a child with Joan, and the view from its window across Thrush Green never ceased to enchant her. If she looked left she saw the wider road to Lulling, with a few comfortable houses standing well back in leafy gardens. The tallest one belonged to old Dr. Bailey, who had attended to Lulling's ills for almost fifty years, and who had known the Bassett girls since they were babies.

To the right, on the narrow dusty lane, lay the village school behind a row of white palings. A stretch of mown grass lay between the palings and the road and on hot days the children left their stony playground and lay and rolled on the grass just outside. Only if their teacher were with them were they allowed to cross the dusty lane to play on the greater green, for Miss Watson was a timid woman and had no doubt at all that each and every pupil would be run over and either maimed or killed outright if she were not there to keep an eye on their movements.

Beside the school stood the teacher's house, and beside that a row of small cottages. In the last lived old Mr. Piggott, the sexton of St. Andrew's. As "The Two Pheasants" stood next door to his house, he was handy not only to his work at the church on the green, but also to his only pleasure. He had been a source of fear to the Bassett girls when they were small. Always grumbling, he had threatened them with all kinds of dreadful punishment if he caught them walking in St. Andrew's churchyard or sheltering in the porch. Now that he was bent and rheumaticky and crosser than ever, Ruth and Joan found him a figure to be pitied rather than feared, but both agreed that he was an evil-tempered old man and they felt very sorry for his only daughter Molly who kept house for him.

"It's a good thing she's got a job in that pretty little pub in Lulling Woods," Joan told her sister. "At least it gets her away from her wretched old father for most of the time. I can't think how she puts up with him. She's so sweet and so terribly pretty—she's bound to get married soon, I suppose."

And then she had stopped short and had cursed herself fiercely for mentioning marriage to Ruth just then. In the silence which fell upon the room that dusky April evening Joan had cast a swift look at her sister's drawn face and had hastily changed the subject to the plans which she and Edward were making for a few days' holiday. Ruth had offered to mind Paul while they were away, and secretly looked forward to having the peace and comfort of the old house with only the little boy for company. Joan and Edward couldn't have been kinder, she told herself, since the blow had fallen upon her. They had offered hospitality, rest, companionship and the tranquillity of Thrush Green, all combining to act as balm to a hurt mind and heart; but yet she craved, now that the worst was over, for a little solitude in which to make plans for a timid, sad return to life.

They had driven off on a sparkling April morning and within two days Paul had developed a high temperature and a rash on his chest. Old Dr. Bailey, who had just lately begun to spend most of his time in bed, had sent his young assistant Dr. Lovell across to see the little boy, and Ruth, who had met him soon after her arrival earlier in the spring, had grown to like this quiet young man who had slipped so easily into the ways and the affections of the people of Lulling and Thrush Green. Even Mr. Piggott had spoken a grudging word in his favor.

"Pity he don't stop," he had said to Ruth, nodding across the green at the departing figure. "The old 'un ain't too good these days. But there—he won't give up till his knifing arm drops off. Still keeps an eye on some of the old patients, ill though he be himself."

A tapping at the bedroom window above had interrupted this conversation. Paul's woebegone face was pressed to the glass and Ruth had hurried back to the patient.

"All that's troubling him," old Piggott had called after her, "is whether he'll be fit to go to the fair!"

When Ruth awoke on the first day of May her first thought, as always, was of that nightmarish scene which had changed her life. The old accustomed horror engulfed her as her mind fought to turn itself away from such bitterness. But, to her surprise, the feeling was not so sharply cruel on this particular day. True, her mind shied from its remembrance like a terrified horse, but it did not plunge and toss, this way and that, in grief-maddened panic, in its efforts to shake off the devil that possessed it. It was as though a veil had been dropped between the dreadful picture and her mind's eye. She could see it all, down to the smallest detail, but the picture was dimmed, the impact was gentler, and her own feeling less agonized.

Could it really be true that time healed everything? Ruth wondered. For six weeks now she had awakened daily to a sickening sense of loss and humiliation, and this was the first time that she had felt any lessening in the misery that engulfed her.

The clock of St. Andrew's struck seven and she could hear movements from Paul's room across the landing. The first of May! The day of Thrush Green Fair! No wonder that he was awake early. If the rash had gone and his temperature remained normal she felt sure that he would be allowed to go to the fair. Dr. Lovell would be along as soon as possible, she knew, to put the little boy out of his suspense.

She sat up and reached for her slippers. The sun was already striking rainbows from the dewy grass and gilding the roofs of the caravans on Thrush Green. As Ruth thrust her feet into her slippers she was struck once again by a second marvel. The thought of seeing young Dr. Lovell again had sent the faintest flicker of warmth into her sad heart. She sat on the side of the bed and considered this phenomenon dispassionately. To have the searing pain lessened at all was remarkable enough for one morning, but to find a little warmth among the dead ashes of her day-today existence was even more extraordinary.

Wondering and bemused, shaken with a vague sense of gratitude for mercies received, she went to the bedroom door. And clutching this crumb of comfort to her she made her way across the sunlit landing to see Paul.

2. The Great Mrs. Curdle

M
RS
. C
URDLE
heard St. Andrew's clock strike seven as she lifted the boiling kettle from her diminutive stove. She had been up and about for over an hour, moving slowly about her caravan, straightening the covers on the bunk, shaking the rag rug and even giving the brass on her beloved stove an early rub with metal polish.

The stove was the delight of her heart and had been built especially by a friend of her late husband's to fit neatly into the end of her tiny home. The top was of gleaming steel which Mrs. Curdle rubbed up daily with emery paper, hissing gently to herself like a groom to a horse, as her busy hand slid back and forth, back and forth across the satin of the surface.

A circular lid could be lifted off and the fire then sent up its released heat to Mrs. Curdle's kettle, stewpot or frying pan. When the food was cooked, or the teapot filled, it could be kept hot by standing it farther along the hob, and frequently the top of the little stove was filled with a variety of utensils each giving off a rich aroma, for Mrs. Curdle was a great cook.

The front of the stove was black but decorated with a great deal of brass. The knobs and hinges of the tiny oven door gleamed like gold against the jet-blackness. Another door, covering the bars of the fire, could be let down and formed a useful ledge. It was here that Mrs. Curdle heated her great flatiron, propping it up on its back with the ironing surface pressed to the glowing red bars.

But this morning the stove, despite its comforting warmth and beauty, failed to cheer Mrs. Curdle's troubled heart. She had known, as soon as she awoke, that this was going to be one of her bad days, for the burning pain in her back and stomach had already begun to torment her.

"Dear, oh dear!" had muttered poor Mrs. Curdle, heaving her back painfully from the narrow bunk. She had sat there breathing heavily, for a full ten minutes, rubbing her enormous stomach as rhythmically as she did the gleaming stove top, and talking aloud to herself as was her custom.

"And only a morsel of fried liver and onions for me supper! Never touched the cheese and never wetted me lips with nothin' stronger than tea all yesterday. An' there's no doubt about it—I'll have to turn it all in—turn it all in!"

She had gone slowly about her toilet, wiping her strong brown face with a damp cloth and giving her neck and magnificent bosom a perfunctory wipe afterwards. She dressed herself in her black stuff dress, put on a dazzling flowered overall and pulled on a red and grubby cardigan. Her hair she combed through carefully with soapy water and braided it into shiny sticky bands, with two loops hanging at each side of her head, each encircling an ear. Gold drop earrings, the wedding gift of her husband, had glittered against Mrs. Curdle's weather-beaten cheeks for over fifty years and these, with the exception of a gold brooch with the word
Mizpah
embossed upon it, were the only ornaments that the old lady wore.

She had been a handsome girl, tall and beautifully proportioned, with plentiful black hair and lustrous dark eyes. And now despite her seventy-odd years and her great girth she was still a fine-looking woman, with her jutting haughty nose and compelling gaze beneath the thick arched brows. She had treated her husband as an equal, in business affairs, in their domestic life, and as the father of their eight children. She had been as strong physically as he, for he was a slight man, and they had shared the heavy manual work needed in setting up and taking down the equipment of their business. When he had died, as the result of a fall from the framework of his own swing boats, at the age of fifty, Mrs. Curdle had mourned him deeply. She had lost, not only a husband, but her dearest companion and partner in a flourishing concern.

But Mrs. Curdle had not mourned for long. The three oldest children were of an age to help in the fair, but there were five smaller ones, the youngest hardly able to walk and still needing the board across the doorway of the caravan to protect her from falling headlong down the three wooden steps that led precipitously to the great world beyond her tiny home.