Linnets and Valerians Page 3
WHERE THEY WENT 33
then I do not wish to hear a chirp out of any of you until the morning.”
He led the way out of the room and they followed him exactly as the children had followed the Pied Piper. He was even more severe with them than Grandmama and the Thunderbolt yet they would have done anything he told them and followed him anywhere. And so would Absolom, who flopped along keeping as near him as he possibly could. Out in the hall the elderly gentleman lit the two brass candlesticks that stood on the table, took one himself and gave the other to the children. “That's Ezra Oake’s candle,” he said. “He is my gardener and general factotum and sleeps in the house. When you appropriated Jason and the cart he was in the Wheatsheaf and I must warn you that when he returns, having no doubt strengthened himself with strong drink for the walk home, it is possible that he may create a considerable disturbance. If so, do not be alarmed.”
“How will he go to bed if we have his candle?” asked Nan.
“In the dark,” said the elderly gentleman. “Give me the child. She is too heavy for your strength. This way to the kitchen.” He took Betsy from Nan, settling her in the curve of his free arm in a way that seemed to Nan very handy for a man who did not like children, and led the way down the passage. It was a glorious house. It had not been spring-cleaned for years. Delicate festoons of spiders’ webs swayed beautifully in the draft all the way down the passage and when they reached the big stone-
34 LINNETS AND VALERIANS
floored kitchen it was the most wonderful place they had ever seen. Apart from the settle by the hearth and the black kettle murmuring gently on top of the range, everything was in the wrong place. A basket full of a cat and six kittens was on the drain board, the dishes and plates and two pairs of boots were stacked on the table, the cuckoo clock was in the sink, the saucepans were on the floor, and the mantelpiece, windowsills and cupboard were crowded with plants in pots, sacking and string and seedboxes. Some women, but no men or children, might have considered this a dirty kitchen but they would have been wrong. It was not dirty because it smelled right. It smelled of onions, herbs, geraniums and good earth, but not dirt. Cobwebs were spun between the rafters but the washing-up had been done before the cat and the cuckoo clock had been put on the drainboard and into the sink, and the copper saucepans on the floor were so bright that you could see your face in them. Nan, Robert and Timothy sighed with delight and wanted to look at the kittens but the elderly gentleman would not let them linger. Handing his candle to Robert he picked up the steaming kettle and led them all out again. “I’ll not have Andromache disturbed,” he said. “Her kittens were born only last Wednesday.”
He led them up a staircase, down a passage and into a room full of moonlight so bright that its reflection in the polished oak of the old wavy floor was almost dazzling. There was a four-poster bed with maroon curtains and a
WHERE THEY WENT
35
flight of steps leading up to it, a bow-fronted chest of drawers and a vast washstand with two sets of willow- patterned jugs and basins.
“My spare room,” said the elderly gentleman. “It has never been slept in, for if there is one thing I dislike more than paying visits it is receiving them. As to the condition of the bedding, if any, I am unable to inform you.” He set down the steaming kettle on the washstand and lifted the patchwork quilt which lay on the bed. Under it was a pile of feather pillows and blankets but no sheets. “Are they damp?” he asked a little anxiously. “I should not like the child to catch cold.”
He did not so much as glance at Betsy as he spoke but yet Nan knew he liked Betsy, and liked her. What he felt about the boys she was not so sure.
“Betsy never catches cold,” she reassured him. “Timothy does but I’ll make him keep his combinations
99
on.
“Combinations of what?” asked the elderly gentleman.
“Just combinations,” said Nan. “What we wear next to our skins.”
“Ah,” said the elderly gentleman. “Combinations. I must behold them at some future and more suitable occasion, for the extension of knowledge has always been of prime importance to me. Good night.”
Laying Betsy down on the bed, he took his candle from Robert and walked out of the room without a backward glance. Yet they looked at each other with dancing eyes,
%6 LINNETS AND VALERIANS
for if he had really intended to turn them adrift tomorrow he would not have expressed a wish to see their combinations.
“We’ll do everything he tells us,” said Robert. “We’ll wash. Come on.”
Robert hated washing, and he hated doing what he was told, so it was all the more extraordinary that it was he who poured hot water into one of the big basins, rummaged out a bath towel from under the bedding, a piece of hard yellow soap from a cupboard under the washstand, and fell upon Timothy. There was no washcloth but he soaped Timothy’s face and neck good and hard with the soap in direct contact with the skin, ducked his head in the basin and then rubbed him dry. Timothy yelled once, kicked twice and then submitted. Nan woke up Betsy, washed her face, took off her smock and petticoat and tucked her back into bed again. Then she washed her own face and hands, took off her smock and helped the boys with their sailor suits. Followed by Absolom they climbed up the little flight of steps and settled themselves joyously in the big bed. With the girls at the top, the boys at the bottom and Absolom in the middle there was plenty of room for all of them. It was cozy and soft with all the feather pillows and a featherbed, and about eight blankets. Their combinations, excellent garments but as out of fashion now as the kind of grandmother Grandmama was, clung warmly. The moonlight lay in benediction upon the bed and they were immensely happy and presently immensely sleepy.
WHERE THEY WENT
37
Yet suddenly Nan raised her head from the deep hollow in her feather pillow and asked, “Robert, did you wash?"
There was no answer. He was asleep and so were Timothy, Betsy and Absolom. For a moment Nan felt annoyed, then she dropped her head back onto the hollowed pillow again. What did it matter? She was too warm and happy to mind. It was nice sleeping in blankets, with no chilly sheets. She gave a sigh of contentment and closed her eyes.
A few hours later she suddenly woke up again, and in a moment she was sitting bolt upright with trickles of fear running down her spine. She had been awakened by a tremendous crash, followed by a piercing yell and then yowling and hooting. She was so terrified that for a moment or two she forgot about Ezra Oake, and then she heard a tenor voice caroling out a rollicking song that was like a spring wind, and the sea on a fine day and suet pudding with treacle. It was punctuated by the sound of castanets, and an extraordinary thumping sound, and was so exciting that her fear vanished and she woke the others so that they could hear it too. “It’s Ezra Oake," she said. “He’s come home and fallen into the saucepans. But now he’s singing and I think Hector and Andromache are singing too. And he’s dancing. Come on."
All four children had the gift of waking instantly from the deepest of sleeps if there was anything exciting going on. They rolled out of bed onto the floor without bothering to go down the steps, picked themselves up
LINNETS AND VALERIANS
and made for the door. Nothing except being picked up and dropped woke Absolom and so he remained in bed and asleep. They raced down the passage and down the stairs to the kitchen, where a glorious sight met their eyes. A man with a wooden leg was dancing in the bright moonlight, two saucepan lids held in his hands as castanets, singing as he danced. Hector was perched on a flowerpot on the mantlepiece hooting like mad and Andromache was yowling melodiously on top of a pile of dishes on the kitchen table. To complete the perfection it only needed the cuckoo clock to join in, which it immediately did, cuckooing twelve times down inside the sink, and after the cuckooing came the sound of a great bell tolling far up in the sky. The children only paused for a moment a
t the door and then they leapt in and began to dance too, stamping their feet and clapping their hands and trying to join in the song that was like a spring wind and the sea on a fine day and suet pudding with treacle. They did not get the words properly that night but they caught the tune. They could have sung and danced forever only suddenly the man tripped over a saucepan, fell on his back on the settle, stretched out his legs and was instantly asleep.
Andromache returned to her box, where she could be heard purring contentedly to her kittens, Hector flitted away into the passage and back to the library and the children gazed in adoration at the man.
He was a little man, not much bigger than Robert, and he lay with his brown gardener’s hands placidly folded on
WHERE THEY WENT
39
his chest. His rosy wrinkled face was even in sleep extraordinarily kind. He had a short gray beard but there was not a single hair on his acorn-colored head. His brown corduroy trousers were fastened below the knee with string on his real leg but on the wooden leg they were folded back to show the fascinating bee that was carved and painted upon its round polished surface. He had a mustard-colored waistcoat, a full-skirted beech- brown coat and a scarlet handkerchief knotted around his throat. In the moonlight all these wonderful colors were muted and the moon lent them mystery. With a sigh of satisfaction the children tiptoed out of the kitchen and up the stairs and back to their room. One by one they climbed the flight of steps that led up into the big bed, fell among the blankets and pillows and Absolom and snuggled down. They were asleep at once and did not see the fading of the moonlight and the growing of the dawn, or hear the morning chorus of the birds and the sound of the sheep bleating on the hills.
They woke up to a smell of fried sausages and were quickly dressed and pursuing it. Just at first, after they had caught up with it in the kitchen, they wondered if that wonderful interval of song and dance in the middle of the night had been a dream, because the man who was frying the sausages, turning them over and over in the huge iron pan with a long two-pronged fork, was wearing a shepherd’s smock tied around the waist with string. But when he turned his head it was Ezra Oake all right, and
40 LINNETS AND VALERIANS
when he saw them he smiled. He had the most wonderful smile, which seemed to run up into all the wrinkles on his face. His eyes were bright blue.
“Lucky us weren’t out of sausages,” he said. “Nor bread. If it had been pickles and cheese you was wanting for your breakfast you’d have had none.” And he winked one eye and chuckled. He had a deep rumbling chuckle and a husky voice. The children gathered around him fascinated by the interior of the frying pan which contained not only satisages but bread, eggs and kidneys, all sizzling gloriously.
“Nothing like a good fry for breakfast,” said Ezra. “And a nice strong cup of tea. Settles the stomach.”
The cuckoo clock in the sink struck ten.
“Ten?” gasped the children.
“Aye,” said Ezra. “Ten. The Master he had his breakfast and he was off in the cart two hours ago.”
“Where to?” said Robert, and fear clutched at their hearts.
“Down to town,” said Ezra.
“Why?” whispered Nan.
“Us be short pf cheese, pickles, biscuits, ham, sugar and marmalade,” said Ezra, and again he winked. “But I reckon us should be .thankful Hector has his sardines. He takes the huff if he don’t get his breakfast.”
The children now saw that Hector was sitting at the open window above the sink with an open can in front of him. As they watched he stretched out a claw and delicately removed a sardine. It went down at one
42 LINNETS AND VALERIANS
swallow and he removed another. Andromache was looking at them over the top of her basket, a tortoiseshell cat with apprehensive green eyes.
“Better put the dog out,” said Ezra.
Nan grasped Absolom’s collar and pulled him past Andromache’s basket and out into the garden. The back door opened right into the little yard behind the house, where there was a well and a clothesline. Opposite the back door four steps led up to a small walled kitchen garden on the slope of the hill. At the top of the garden under the wall were four beehives, and beyond the wall was an old gray church with a tower that soared so far into the sky that it took Nan’s breath away. A door in the wall beside the beehives led from the garden to the churchyard. There was a jumble of whitewashed thatched cottages grouped around the church, and on the other side of the lane, and smoke was curling lazily up from their crooked chimneys. She shut her eyes and smelled flowers, woodsmoke and sausages and heard a real cuckoo calling and the sheep bleating, and what she heard and smelled matched what she had seen. Yet it seemed too good to be true.
“Be you hungry, maid?”
She opened her eyes and it was true and Ezra was beside her. She looked up at him and smiled and he smiled back and again she felt that the midnight dancing had been a dream, for this Ezra did not seem quite the same as the other. That had been a many-colored, gay, fantastic creature; this was a kindly, earthy, sober man
WHERE THEY WENT
43
who moved slowly on his wooden leg, and this morning his corduroy trouser leg was pulled down to hide the bee that was carved and painted on it. But perhaps the bee was no longer there. Perhaps there were two Ezras, a midnight one and a daytime one, for anything was possible in a place like this. The daytime Ezra was looking tired and old and she was filled with remorse.
“Because we took Rob-Roy, I mean Jason, and the cart, you had to walk all the way home from the Wheat- sheaf on your wooden leg,” she said.
He laughed and lowered his voice to a husky whisper. “As I be now, maid, I couldn’t have done it,” he said. “But as I were then I done it easy.”
And with this cryptic remark he led her back to the kitchen where the other three had already started their breakfast. Ezra had put everything that was on the kitchen table on the floor and pushed the settle up to it, with four piles of sacks of varying heights on it so that each child would be at exactly the right height for comfortable eating. He himself sat opposite them behind a large black teapot and presided with a wonderful benignity. When breakfast was over they helped him to wash up, a process which involved the removal of the cuckoo clock and Andromache and her kittens to the floor, the placing of the frying pan and crockery and knives and forks in the sink, the turning of the cold water on full blast, the emptying of the kettle of boiling water on top of the resultant whirlpool, the stirring of the mixture as though it were a Christmas pudding and then
44 LINNETS AND VALERIANS
its removal to the drainboard where it was left to dry by itself, because Andromache had all the drying-up cloths to make the basket soft for her kittens.
When they had finished, Ezra asked, “Will you be staying for dinner?”
“What’s for dinner?” asked Timothy.
“Fried steak and onions and rhubarb pie,” said Ezra.
“Yes,” they said in chorus.
“Then be off with you and let me get to me pastry,” said Ezra. “And don’t speak to them bees. Not yet.” They obeyed him instantly because obedience, which had seemed so difficult at Grandmama’s, came easily here, and they were out in the yard before they realized they had got there. But Nan came back to ask, “Will the elderly gentleman be back to dinner?”
“Couldn’t say,” said Ezra. “Over and above that little matter of the groceries the Master had a call to make in town.”
Nan ran back to the others feeling uneasy and found them grouped about the well looking uneasy too. Though they had brazened it out about dinner the mere suggestion that they might not be staying for it had upset them terribly. “I shall stay here until Father comes home,” said Betsy suddenly. “And then I shall go on staying here, with Father.”
“Sh!” the others hissed at her. It seemed to them dreadfully dangerous to put it into words like
that, for lately the things they didn’t want to happen were the things that happened and the logic of this was that if you
WHERE THEY WENT 45
pretended not to want what you really wanted dreadfully you would be more likely to get it.
“But I think it would be all right to explore the garden,” said Nan. “Only not to want too much to play in it every day.”
“Come on,” said Robert.
It was a wonderful garden, quite different from Grandmama’s. Hers had been a sort of continuation of the house, dreadfully tidy and a place where you had to step carefully and not touch things. This garden was also a continuation of the house but untidy, unexpected, comfortable and homey. They explored the kitchen garden first and it seemed made for them. The grass paths between the miniature box hedges were just the right width for children running in single file, and the tangle of apple trees, currant and gooseberry bushes, flowers, weeds, vegetables and herbs that the paths intersected was so wild that leaping through it couldn’t make it much wilder than it was. Betsy, who loved picking flowers, picked a bunch of periwinkles and primroses but there were so many that no holes were left. When the children reached the top of the garden they stood at a little distance from the beehives and surveyed them with awe but they did not speak. Even if Ezra had not forbidden them to do so they would not have presumed, for there was a strangeness there. It was like standing on the frontier of a foreign country. You would have to know something of the customs and a few words of the language before you dared to go over.
46 LINNETS AND VALERIANS
An exciting tunnel of yew trees beside the house led to the front garden. At the lower end of the sloping lawn was a mulberry tree, its lower limbs held up by stakes of crotched wood. Its branches grew out from the main trunk in such a way that to climb the tree would be as easy as running upstairs. Timothy, who loved climbing trees, dared not look too long and they all ran determinedly past it to the part of the garden down below that they had not seen properly last night. They found it now to be a rough grassy slope planted with rhododendrons and azaleas and flaming with glorious colors. The path, with steps here and there, descended steeply among them and as they came down they could look right over the wall of the stableyard and see the river and the bridge and the stretch of the moor beyond. The road down which they had driven last night was looped like a ribbon around the shoulder of a hill that was blue and green with bluebells and ferns. Stone walls divided the wilderness into fields in which sheep were feeding, and cows and a few ponies.