Thrush Green (9 page)

M
AYS
W
AYS
P
AYS
A
LWAYS

And at least, thought Mrs. Bailey, snatching comfort where she could, I was never forced to see that! She turned her attention to the interior of "The Fuchsia Bush."

Apart from two elderly men in mufflers, who sipped their coffee noisily and discussed chess, Mrs. Bailey was the only customer. Two girls, in mauve overalls with cherry-colored cuffs and collars, did their best to emulate fuchsia flowers, and certainly drooped silently against the gray walls quite successfully. A stack of mauve- and cherry-striped boxes stood on the glass counter in readiness to hold the excellent home-made cakes which were already cooling in the window, adding their fragrance to that of the coffee.
A
beam of sunlight fell suddenly upon Mrs. Bailey's hand, the first real warmth for months, she thought delightedly, and her spirits rose at this token of the summer to come.

What fun Lulling was! she told herself for the thousandth time. She looked affectionately at the old men, the lackadaisical waitresses, the chapel notice, the few leisurely-moving people walking outside on the wide pavement beneath the whispering lime trees. I suppose I'm so fond of it because I'm really part of it, she mused to herself. Attached to it, she added, echoing Eeyore as he mourned his lost tail; for Mrs. Bailey's mind was a ragbag of snippets, some of which she drew out for herself to admire and delight in, and some of which fell out of their own accord, gay unconsidered trifles which she had long forgotten, as in the present case, but which afforded her infinite joy when they reappeared.

The door swung open and interrupted Mrs. Bailey's ponderings. Ella Bemsbridge blew in, her felt hat jammed low over her brow, followed by Dimity Dean bearing a laden basket. The room, which had seemed so large and peaceful, suddenly shrank to half its size and became a battleground of conflicting noises as Ella Bembridge thrust her way between wheel-backed chairs, booming cheerful greetings. It was at times like this that Mrs. Bailey had the feeling that she had at last grasped Einstein's theory of relativity, but it was always a fleeting glimpse of Olympian clarity. Almost at once the clouds would close over that bright vision and Mrs. Bailey would realize that she was still in her usual woolly-minded world of three dimensions.

"Anyone with you? Coming, I mean?" shouted Ella.

"No. No one," responded Mrs. Bailey, lifting her basket from a chair and smiling at Dimity who collapsed upon it gratefully.

"Just been to get—" began Dimity in an exhausted whisper.

"My prescription made up," roared Ella.

"The fish," added Dimity.

"For my rash," boomed Ella.

"For lunch," finished Dimity.

Mrs. Bailey was quite used to this dual form of conversation and nodded politely.

"Think that young Lovell knows what he's up to?" asked Ella, planting her sturdy brogues well apart and affording the assembled company an unlovely view of the formidable underclothes which had offended Dr. Lovell earlier that morning.

"I'm sure he does," answered Mrs. Bailey equably. She wondered how many more questions Ella would ask.

"How's your husband? Taking a partner yet?" went on Miss Bembridge, feeling in her jacket pocket.

"Much better," said Mrs. Bailey, answering the first, and ignoring the second, question. Ella produced a worn tobacco tin, undid it, took out a cigarette paper from a small folder, pinched up a vicious-looking dollop of black tobacco from the depths of the tin and began to roll a very untidy cigarette.

"Oh, do let me do it for you, darling," said Miss Dean, leaning forward eagerly.

"Don't fuss so, Dim," said her friend brusquely, raising the limp tube to her mouth and licking the edge of the paper with a thick wet tongue. She lit the straggling tobacco which cascaded from one end, inhaled strongly, and blew two terrifying blasts down her nostrils. Mrs. Bailey was reminded of the rocking horse which had lived in her nursery sixty years earlier, and would have liked the leisure to recall its half-forgotten beauties, the dappled flanks, the scarlet harness bright with gilded studs and its worn hospitable saddle. But no one mused in Ella's company.

"Hell of a time that girl takes getting the coffee," said she, in far too carrying a voice for Mrs. Bailey's peace of mind. One of the drooping fuchsias detached herself from the wall and drifted toward the kitchen.

"We oughtn't to be too long—" began Dimity timidly, hauling up a watch on a long silver chain from the recesses of her bodice.

"Doesn't matter if we fry it!" responded her friend. Dimity looked tearful.

"But you know it doesn't—"

"Agree with me?" boomed Miss Bembridge menacingly. "Of course it does! Fried fish is the only way to eat the stuff."

"But doctor said only this morning that you shouldn't touch fried food, darling, with that rash. It's for your own—"

Ella broke in mercilessly, tapping her cigarette ash forcefully into Mrs. Bailey's saucer.

"My own good! I know, I know! Well, I've said we'll have it in parsley sauce, much as I detest it, so let's forget it."

Dimity turned apologetically to Mrs. Bailey.

"I do feel fish is so much more wholesome in a mild white sauce. So pure and nourishing, and so light too. But it takes longer to cook of course. I said to Ella this morning, 'A little light fish, or perhaps a boiled egg, while you've got that rash, will be the most
wholesome
thing you can have.'"

Mrs. Bailey smiled and nodded and thought of Mr. Woodhouse, her favorite Emma's father, who also recommended boiled eggs. "An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome, Mrs. Bates, let me propose your venturing on one of these eggs." And she wondered, looking at Dimity's pathetic anxiety, if she might be driven by it to go even further and suggest "a small basin of thin gruel," which was all that Mr. Woodhouse could honestly recommend, if Miss Bembridge's rash persisted. For the sake of the friends' domestic harmony Mrs. Bailey prayed that Dr. Lovell's prescription would be speedily successful.

It was at this moment that Dotty Harmer fumbled her way into "The Fuchsia Bush." Her steel spectacles were awry, her woolen stockings lay, as always, in wrinkles around her chicken-thin legs, and her hair sprouted at all angles beneath a speckled-gray chip-straw hat.

The less languid of the attendants went forward to greet her.

"Just one of your small stone-milled loaves, please," murmured Dotty, peering into the glass cabinet that held the loaves.

The girl replied with considerable satisfaction that all the small ones had been sold, but there was, most providentially, just one large one left. This threw Dotty into the greatest agitation. She dumped her string bag on the floor, thrust her hat farther back upon head, and began to pour out her troubles.

"But I can't possibly use a large loaf! Living alone as I do a small one lasts me three days at least, and even if I make rusks of the last bit for the animals it is really more than I can manage. And in any case, now that the weather has turned warm I shan't need to light the stove and so there will be no means of making the rusks!"

The girl suggested a small white loaf. Dotty's agitation was now tinged with horror.

"A
white
loaf?" squeaked Dotty, with such repugnance that one might reasonably have supposed that she had been offered bread made from fine-ground human bones. "You should know by now my feelings about
white
bread. It never, never appears in my house!"

"D
OTTY
!" bawled Miss Bembridge, at this point, in a voice that set the crockery rattling. "Get them to cut it in half!"

The girl cast Ella a look so deadly that it was a wonder that Miss Bembridge's ample form was not shriveled to a small dead leaf. Dotty's face, however, was alight with relief.

"Dear Ella! How sensible! Yes, of course," she said, turning to the assistant, "just cut the large whole-meal one in half."

The girl flounced off to the kitchen, lips compressed, and returned with a bread board and knife. She cut the loaf in two and held the board out for Dotty's inspection.

"Oh dear," said Dotty, her face clouding again, "I wonder if I really need half. It's quite a large amount, isn't it? I mean, for one person?" She peered anxiously at the girl's face for some help, but received none.

After some tut-tutting she lifted first one piece of bread to the light, and then the other. She then sniffed at each, tasted a crumb or two which had fallen onto the board, and began to shake her head doubtfully.

Mrs. Bailey became conscious that the bread knife still remained within the grip of the silent waitress, and felt that the time had come to intervene.

"There are always the birds, Dotty dear," she pointed out. "Take the crustier half and come and have coffee."

Dotty nodded and smiled. The girl flung one half into a paper bag and handed the bread board to her colleague with a long-suffering look. The knife, Mrs. Bailey was relieved to see, she set aside on a shelf, while she stood watching Dotty fumble among a dozen compartments of a large black purse for the money. Dotty's fingers, stained with many a herb, scrabbled first here then there, and the girl's foot began to tap ominously on the shining linoleum.

At last Dotty raised a damp worried gaze from her labors and said:

"I appear to have only a coat button, my door key and an Irish sixpence. Unless," she added, drawing forth a very crumpled piece of paper, "you can change a five-pound note!"

Ben Curdle, stripped to the waist in the morning sunshine, sat on the grass with his back propped against one wheel of his caravan and a bottle of beer from "The Two Pheasants" propped between his knees.

He had been hard at work now for over four hours. The main stands were all erected and Ben had just finished helping his cousin Sam to hitch the swing boats into place. It was heavy work, for the boats were old and cumbersome, though they looked gay enough, he admitted, with the fresh paint they had put on during the winter. If he had his way, thought Ben, he'd scrap them and get some of those new light ones. Just as safe and not so back-breaking to heave about. But with Gran as she was, what was the good of suggesting it?

He watched his cousin Sam, who was sitting on the steps of his caravan with his flashy young wife. Ben had never liked either of them. He'd never trusted Sam since he had found him boasting one day of some shirts which he had stolen from a line in some cottage garden. It was not the sort of thing the Curdles did. If his old gran had ever heard about it Sam would have been given his marching orders, Ben knew. That incident had occurred many years before and Ben had made it pretty plain just what he thought of such goings-on, putting up with the tauntings of the older man in dour silence.

A few months later Sam had married. Mrs. Curdle did not approve of the match. The girl, she told Sam bluntly, "had been anyone's" in the small Thames-side town from which he had brought her, but providing she buckled-to and worked her way with the fair, old Mrs. Curdle was agreeable to her joining them. The girl, Bella, had had the sense to keep out of the old lady's way as far as was possible, but she deeply resented the matriarch's caustic remarks about her thatch of hair, as yellow and brittle as straw from frequent dosings with peroxide, and the comments on her wardrobe, to which she gave considerable thought and expenditure. Sam bore the brunt of his wife's resentment in the privacy of their small caravan, and he often thought sadly to himself that although she was a real smart bit her tongue could fair flay a man. Three children had been born to them, whining and wet-nosed, but all three dressed extravagantly in the bright and shiny satins to which their mother was addicted.

Ben watched the family now, and wondered, not for the first time, just how Sam managed to dress all that lot. There was fat old Bella in that red frock—a new one bought in the last town, he knew. And she had flaunted a watch under his nose last week that she'd told him Sam had bought for her. She'd said he'd been lucky with the horses, but you didn't have to be a wizard to know that horses let you down more often than they came home, mused young Ben.

He drained his bottle, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and leaned forward upon the warm comfort of his knees under their black corduroy covering. He felt pretty sure that Sam was getting money dishonestly, and he could guess where. He knew, as did all the great Curdle family, exactly how much each of them received each week, for on Friday night the ritual of paying-out took place.

The heads of each family and the single members, such as Ben, who were still underage and under Mrs. Curdle's direct protection, assembled in the old lady's caravan as soon as the lights of the fair had gone out. All the money from that night's stand was put into a great brass bowl ready to be transferred to a battered attaché case which was kept at the foot of Mrs. Curdle's mattress and was the Curdle Bank. Meanwhile the old lady had counted the week's takings already in the case and had allotted them with scrupulous justice to all concerned. Those with children had more, naturally, than those without. Mrs. Curdle would tell the company how much had been earned and would then call out each name in turn. The piles of money stood stacked before her on a small card table, which she had used to support her crystal in earlier days. The wages varied, of course, from week to week, according to the size of the town which the fair was visiting, the weather, rival attractions, accidents to gear and so on. But each man knew that the fierce old lady whose hawklike gaze terrified him was absolutely, ferociously, searingly honest, and if the handful of coins was pitifully small, as sometimes it was, without any doubt he had his right and proper share.

There had been one or two members of the family who had demurred at this despotism in their time. They had been given their choice—to go or to stay willingly. Two had gone, and no one had ever heard of their fortunes, nor had Mrs. Curdle made any inquiries about them. They had left the Curdle family; therefore Mrs. Curdle had no further interest in them. The others elected to stay, and they spoke no more heresy.