“Run along and join them.”
“I want to stay here with you and him.”
“I bet you do,” said Basil. “No such luck, I’m going to find you a nice billet miles and miles away.”
“I want to stay with you.”
“You go and help muck up the snowman.”
“That’s a kid’s game. I’m not a kid. Mister, why wouldn’t you pull my hair last night? Was it because you thought I had nits? I haven’t any more. The nurse combed them all out at the institution and put oil on. That’s why it’s a bit greasy.”
“I don’t pull girls’ hair.”
“You do. I saw you. You pulled hers. He’s your boy, isn’t he?” she said, turning to Barbara.
“He’s my brother, Doris.”
“Ah,” she said, her pig eyes dark with the wisdom of the slums, “but you fancy him, don’t you? I saw.”
“She really is an atrocious child,” said Barbara,
Basil set about the problem of finding a home for the Connollies with zeal and method. He settled himself at a table with an ordnance map, the local newspaper and the little red-leather-covered address book which had been one of old Mrs. Sothill’s legacies to Barbara; in this book were registered all her more well-to-do neighbours for a radius of twenty miles, the majority of whom were marked with the initials G.P.O. which stood for Garden Party Only. Barbara had done her best to keep this invaluable work of reference up to date and had from time to time crossed out those who had died or left the district, and added the names of newcomers.
Presently Basil said, “What about the Harknesses of Old Mill House, North Grappling?”
“Middle-aged people. He retired from some sort of a job abroad. I think she’s musical. Why?”
“They’re advertising for boarders.” He pushed the paper across to her, where she read, in the Accommodation column:
Paying Guests accepted in lovely modernized fifteenth century mill. Ideal surroundings for elderly or artistic people wishing to avoid war worries. All home produce. Secluded old world gardens. 6 gns weekly. Highest references given and expected. Harkness, Old Mill House, North Grappling.
“How about that for the Connollies?”
“Basil, you can’t.”
“Can’t I just. I’ll get to work on them at once. Do they allow you extra petrol for your billeting work?”
“Yes, but…”
“That’s grand. I’ll take the Connollies over there this morning. D’you know, this is the first piece of serious war work I’ve done so far?”
Normally, whenever the car left the garage there was a stampede of evacués to the running boards crying “Give us a ride.” This morning, however, seeing the three forbidding Connollies in the back seat, the other children fell back silently. They were not allowed by their mothers to play with the Connollies.
“Mister, why can’t I sit in front with you?”
“You’ve got to keep the other two in order.”
“They’ll be good.”
“That’s what you think.”
“They’ll be good if I tell them, mister.”
“Then why aren’t they?”
“Cos I tell ‘em to be bad. In fun you know. Where are we going?”
“I’m finding a new home for you, Doris.”
“Away from you?”
“Far away from me.”
“Mister, listen. Micky ain’t bad really nor Marlene isn’t silly. Are you, Marlene?”
“Not very silly,” said Marlene.
“She can be clean if she wants to be, if I tell her. See here, mister, play fair. You let us stay with you and I’ll see the kids behave themselves.”
“And what about you, Doris?”
“I don’t have to behave. I’m not a kid. Is it on?”
“It is not.”
“You going to take us away?”
“You bet I am.”
“Then just you wait and see what we give them where we’re going.”
“I shan’t wait and see,” said Basil, “but I’ve no doubt I shall hear about it in good time.”
North Grappling was ten miles distant, a stone-built village of uneven stone-tile roofs none of which was less than a century old. It lay off the main road in a fold of the hills; a stream ran through it following the line of its single street and crossing it under two old stone bridges. At the upper end of the street stood the church, which declared by its size and rich decoration that in the centuries since it was built, while the rest of the world was growing, North Grappling had shrunk; at the lower end, below the second bridge, stood Old Mill House. It was just such a home of ancient peace as a man might dream of who was forced to earn his living under a fiercer sky. Mr. Harkness had in fact dreamed of, it, year in, year out, as he toiled in his office at Singapore, or reclined after work on the club verandah, surrounded by gross vegetation and rude colours. He bought it from his father’s legacy while on leave, when he was still a young man, meaning to retire there when the time came, and his years of waiting had been haunted by only one fear: that he would return to find the place “developed,” new red roofs among the grey and a tarmac road down the uneven streets. But modernity spared North Grappling; he returned to find the place just as he had first come upon it, on a walking tour, late in the evening with the stones still warm from the afternoon sun and the scent of the gillyflowers sweet and fresh on the breeze.
This morning, half lost in snow, the stones, which in summer seemed grey, were a golden brown; and the pleached limes, which in their leaf hid the low front of the Old Mill, now revealed the mullions and drip-stones, the sundial above the long, centre window, and the stone hood of the door carved in the shape of a scallop-shell. Basil stopped the car by the bridge.
“Jesus,” said Doris. “You aren’t going to leave us here?”
“Sit tight,” said Basil. “You’ll know soon enough.” He threw a rug over the radiator of the car, opened the little iron gate and walked up the flagged path grimly, a figure of doom. The low winter sun cast his shadow before him, ominously, against the door which Mr. Harkness had had painted apple green. The gnarled trunk of a wistaria rose from beside the door-jamb and twisted its naked length between the lines of the windows. Basil glanced once over his shoulder to see that his young passengers were invisible and then put his hand to the iron bell. He heard it ring melodiously, not far away, and presently the door was opened by a maid dressed in apple green, with an apron of sprigged muslin and a starched white cap that was in effect part Dutch, part conventual, and wholly ludicrous. This figure of fancy led Basil up a step, down a step and into a living-room where he was left long enough to observe the decorations. The floor was covered in coarse rush matting and in places by bright Balkan rugs. On the walls were Thornton’s flower prints (with the exception of his masterpiece, “The Night-Flowering Cereus”), samplers and old maps. The most prominent objects of furniture were a grand piano and a harp. There were also some tables and chairs of raw-looking beech. From an open hearth peat smoke billowed periodically into the room, causing Basil’s eyes to water. It was just such a room as Basil had imagined from the advertisement and Mr. and Mrs. Harkness were just such a couple. Mrs. Harkness wore a hand-woven woollen garment, her eyes were large and poetic, her nose long and red with the frost, her hair nondescript in colour and haphazard in arrangement. Her husband had done all that a man can to disguise the effects of twenty years of club and bungalow life in the Far East. He had grown a little pointed beard; he wore a homespun suit of knickerbockers in the style of the pioneers of bicycling; he wore a cameo ring round his loose silk tie, yet there was something in his bearing which still suggested the dapper figure in white ducks who had stood his round of pink gins, evening after evening, to other dapper white figures, and had dined twice a year at Government House.
They entered from the garden door. Basil half expected Mr. Harkness to say “take a pew” and clap his hands for the gin. Instead they stood looking at him with enquiry and some slight distaste.