Thrush Green (6 page)

The birds were clamorous. Blackbirds alternately fluted and scolded as they bustled about in search of food for their nestlings. Thrushes ran to and fro upon the tender grass, which bent beneath their fragile claws, stopping abruptly every now and again, to peer intently with a topaz eye at the ground before them. From gardens, woods and parkland a dozen cuckoos called to one another with thrilling liquid notes.

The buds of the trees had cracked imperceptibly during the last week or so. Already the sycamores had frothed into yellow leaf and the elms, until recently covered with a rosy haze of tight buds, now showed a curdy mass of pale breaking leaves. Only the beeches, it seemed, were loath to emerge from their winter sleep, for still the long slender buds remained furled, upthrust and glinting in the sunshine, like the bronze tips of spears.

On Thrush Green life was now well astir. Little Paul, still in his bedroom, and pajama-clad, had finished his breakfast of boiled egg and bread and butter, and had watched his schoolfellows running to school. Some had waved and called to him, and he had shouted back that his spots were gone but the doctor was coming, so he wouldn't be at school today.

Bobby Anderson, a lumpish child with a perpetually damp nose, pointed to the end of the green where the fairground men were erecting scaffolding.

"Comin' tonight?" he bawled up at the window.

Paul nodded.

"Who said? Doctor?"

Paul nodded again.

"You better then?"

Paul nodded a third time.

'Oughter be over school then," said his fellow-pupil severely, and terminated this one-sided conversation by leaping upon a friend of his, knocking him to the ground and pom-meling him in an affectionate manner. The school bell rang out, the boys got up, dusted themselves down in a perfunctory way and ambled across to the playground with their arms across each other's shoulders, with never a backward glance at the little figure watching from the bedroom window.

Dr. Bailey too was still pajama-clad and had just finished his breakfast in bed. The remains of toast and marmalade lay on the tray on the side table.

The sound of the school bell floated across Thrush Green and Dr. Bailey put aside
The Times,
pushed his reading glasses up on to his forehead and gazed through the window at the blue and white morning.

He could see a spiral of smoke from the chimney of Mrs. Curdle's caravan and a few gaunt spars as the men began to erect the framework for the swing boats. He could hear their cheerful voices and the creak of timbers being hauled and strained. There were heavy thuds as mallets rammed supports into place, and the occasional, high-pitched squeal of a fairground child. Dr. Bailey sighed and drew up his thin legs between the sheets.

If the rumors were true then this would be the last time that he would hear the sounds of the fair. It seemed unthinkable that the first day of May should find Thrush Green as empty and quiet as on the other mornings of the year. What must the old lady be feeling, he wondered, as he watched her smoke curling delicately against the background of the fresh lime leaves. Where would she be next May? And where, for that matter thought the doctor, would he be?

He faced this nagging problem afresh. For months now he had lived with it and he knew that he must find a solution, and the sooner the better. He knew, only too well, that he would never recover the strength and health which he had rejoiced in for seventy years. Well, he told himself, he had had a good inning, and he supposed he should give up the practice and go and live in some confounded cottage where the roof was too low, and play bridge with other old dodderers every Wednesday afternoon, and do a bit of fishing when the weather allowed, remembering to wear a Panama hat in case of sunstroke!

Pah! The doctor tossed his legs rebelliously and
The Times
slid to the floor. He'd be damned if he'd give up! Give him another fortnight and he'd be back taking his surgeries and paying a few visits. There was still plenty he could do—it was just that he tired easily. No doubt about it, if he intended to continue in practice he must take a partner.

He heard the bang of the surgery door. It always caught the wind if there was a sou'wester. He wondered how many patients young Lovell would have calling today. Dr. Bailey looked approvingly at the small silver clock on the mantle-piece. Only five past nine and that young man was well down to it! Yes, if a partner was needed then he would be quite content to have young Lovell in harness with him. He had watched him closely for six weeks, and he had listened to the gossip about his work. He was liked, not only for his youth, but for his quiet and sympathetic manner. The older patients were delighted to find a new audience for their complaints, describing their symptoms with a wealth of nauseating detail which old Dr. Bailey would have cut short ruthlessly, as well they knew.

"Proper nice chap, that new assistant," they said to each other.

"Hope he stops. Listened to me 'eart and that 'orrible rumbling in me stomach, as nice as pie, and what's more give me a good bottle of medicine. Ah! A proper nice chap!"

A twittering, and a flash of black and white across the bedroom window, roused the doctor from his ruminations. The house martins were up and doing, and so must he be, he told himself. It was going to be a perfect day. He would potter about in the garden and get some sunshine. Nothing like fresh air and exercise for giving you strength! He had told enough people that in his time, and he knew that it was true. He would follow his own advice and he would try and come to some decision about this proposal to young Lovell. He believed he would jump at the chance and somehow he felt that Thrush Green would suit him.

He thrust his long thin legs out of bed and stood up. Now he could see the bustle of fairground preparations and the sight wanned him.

The first of May again! There was always excitement in the air on Thrush Green then—and a bunch of flowers to come, he thought wryly, looking with affection at Mrs. Curdle's caravan. As good a day as any to make a decision. Who knows, he might even ask that young fellow today.

With a light heart Dr. Bailey donned his dressing gown and went, whistling, to the bathroom.

Mrs. Bailey, sitting downstairs in the sunny little back room which had once been their dining room, heard her husband whistling, and smiled. It was good to hear him so cheerful. He was getting stronger daily.

The whistling changed to singing and Mrs. Bailey listened attentively.

"I think that we shall have
A very, very lovely day:
Very, very warm for May.
Eighty in the shade, they say
Tra la la..."

With an uprush of spirits Mrs. Bailey remembered that night, over forty years before, when she and her husband had gone up to London to see
The Arcadians.
A visit to town was a rare treat in those days and they had enjoyed every minute. She had worn a lilac chiffon frock, she remembered, bought specially for the occasion, and shoes to match with
diamanté
buckles. What a shining, glorious time of life that had been, when everyone had seemed as young and as happy and hopeful as themselves!

Mrs. Bailey set down the shopping list she was engaged upon and looked out into the sunny garden. An early butterfly was abroad, hovering among the velvet wallflowers. They were so very lucky, Mrs. Bailey told herself for the thousandth time, to have had their lot cast in such a pleasant place. Just suppose that the doctor's practice had been in one of the great industrial cities! She would have been looking upon a small soot-blackened garden, or—dreadful thought—upon no garden at all, and instead of Lulling's sleepy tranquillity they would have had to face the clamor and killing pace of life in a large town.

She had loved Thrush Green from the first moment that she saw it, and had grown fonder of it as the years passed; but she wished at times that it were easier to get to London, for she missed the theater and the gay restaurants sorely. Had London really been as wonderful as she remembered it just before the first world war, or was it the natural nostalgia, born of passing years, which made it appear so enchanting in retrospect? People nowadays seemed too busy for gaiety, and what was worse, appeared to frown upon innocent enjoyment. Life was too dreadfully real and earnest these days, thought Mrs. Bailey, and all the young people were middle-aged at twenty. And look at the dreary and revolting books and plays they wrote, about the most brutal and depraved creatures who didn't know their own minds, even when they had them!

The strains of
The Arcadians
floated from the bathroom strongly. Ah, there was fun for you! thought Mrs. Bailey. If only people would realize that light-hearted and gay things were not any
less
significant than the violent and brutish, what a step forward it would be. Because a song, a book, a play, a picture or anything created was gay it did not necessarily follow that it was trivial. It might well be, mused Mrs. Bailey gazing into the moving sunshine with unseeing eyes, a finer thing, because it had been fashioned with greater care and artifice; emotion remembered and translated to give pleasure, rather than emotion remembered and evincing only an involuntary and quite hideous howl.

The gurgle of water from the bathroom pipes brought Mrs. Bailey back to her duties. She looked again at her shopping list. Should she add liver, and make a casserole of liver and tomatoes for the doctor's lunch? It would be particularly nourishing, and she could put baked potatoes into the oven, which he loved. And while the oven was on she might as well make an egg custard, and perhaps she would put in a plum crumble top to go with it. In which case, Mrs. Bailey told herself, it would be sensible to make a really large amount of shortbread mixture so that she could make two tins ready for teatime.

At this point in her housewifely maneuvers Mrs. Bailey caught sight of a wood pigeon on the lawn, its opal feathers glinting in the sunshine and its coral feet wet with the dew. All Mrs. Bailey's good intentions dropped from her.

She would go out into this glorious morning. To salve her conscience she would walk down to Lulling and take her frock to the cleaner's, and she would buy some ham and tongue and salad for lunch. It was far too wonderful a morning to spend in a hot kitchen, and against all natural laws on the first of May.

Despite her sixty-odd years, she ran upstairs with the agility of a girl, singing as she went:

"Very, very warm for May,
Eighty in the shade, they say,
Tra la la..."

And to the doctor, drying himself in the bathroom, she sounded as youthful and happy as when they had first heard that light-hearted ditty so long ago.

Across the green, in the infants' room, Miss Fogerty was trying to teach the words of "There Is a Green Hill Far Away" to an inattentive class.

"But
why
hadn't it got a sitting wall?" persisted Bobby Anderson, his youthful brow crisscrossed with perplexity.

Above the noise of scuffling feet and the scraping of diminutive wooden armchairs Miss Fogerty attempted to explain that "without" here meant "outside," but before she could make herself heard, another child tugged at her arm and whispered urgently in her ear.

"But had all the other green hills
got
sitting walls? And
why
had all the other green hills got sitting walls?" clamored Bobby Anderson vociferously.

Miss Fogerty clapped her hands for silence, the urgent child was dispatched hurriedly across the playground, the clock on the wall said nine-thirty and Miss Fogerty took her noisy rabble to the door in readiness for a physical-training session.

And thus it was that Bobby Anderson was doomed to go through life with the hazy impression that the green hills of the Holy Land have, in the main, walls built around them—walls, moreover, not of the usual standing variety, but of a mysterious type called "sitting."

Old Mr. Piggott leaned over the iron railings of St. Andrew's and surveyed the activity of the fair with a morose countenance.

"Goin' to keep fine?" inquired a brawny man, wielding an oily rag over the traction engine. He jerked a massive black thumb at the shimmering view behind him.

Mr. Piggott was not to be wooed by honeyed words. He didn't hold with the fair and he didn't care who knew it.

"Can pour down for all I cares," grunted old Piggott sourly. "Might drown some o' your durned racket later on!"

"'Ere, 'ere! 'Oo's 'urtin' you!" began the oily man truculently. He doubled his great fists, stepped down from the wheel of the engine and advanced threateningly toward Piggott.

Mr. Piggott stepped farther back from the railings, out of arm's reach, but he did it in a carefully casual manner to show that he was not intimidated. From a safe distance he replied.

"Two churchings at six-thirty," he grumbled, "and all that blaring racket goin' on outside. 'Tisn't reverent, I tell 'ee!"

And spitting forcefully into the laurel bushes, making a swift, flashing arc over the remains of one Ann Talbot, Virtuous Wife, Devoted Mother and Esteemed Friend, he retired toward the protection of the church while the going was good.