soon as he saw Brookside he knew the bungalow would suit him. ‘You’re quite sure?’ the agent said; imagining the screeches and caterwauling drifting over from the school, the brickbats and thievings, the general uproar. But George had made up his mind.
Now, on this glorious summer day he was deadheading the roses when the bell rang at the end of afternoon school. The two little girls from Mayfield Cottages stopped as usual to chat to him. Pretty little girls, ten, rising eleven. Jill Bryant with her wide smile and long blonde hair tied back with blue ribbon, and her inseparable friend, Heather Abell from the cottage next door, with her gentle look, soft brown eyes in a heart-shaped face, short black hair cut in a fringe. They were both in the top class, taught by Mr Lloyd.
‘My Dad’s going to bring me home a kitten soon,’ Jill told Mr Pickthorn. Her father worked at Mayfield Farm and Mrs Slater, the farmer’s wife, had promised him the pick of the latest litter.
‘My mother won’t let me have a kitten,’ Heather said with stoic acceptance. She was the only child of a widow and accustomed to a certain amount of domestic austerity. He father had worked at the farm until his death a few years ago and her mother still did occasional domestic work in the farmhouse, as well as helping with fruit-picking in the season.
The cottage the Abells lived in was tied, and in the ordinary way Mrs Abell would have had to vacate it when her husband died. But Mrs Slater thought this a harsh practice and pressed her husband to find some alternative. After careful thought Oswald Slater decided that as a replacement for Abell he would in future engage a single man, who could be accommodated in the farmhouse. This would allow Abell’s widow and daughter – Heather was at that time five years old – together with Mrs Abell’s mother, who lived with them, to stay on in the cottage.
The arrangement worked well. The man who replaced Abell was a quiet, middle-aged bachelor. He stayed a good four years at Mayfield and gave excellent service; his presence in the farm household was never obtrusive. He left when one of his nephews bought a smallholding twenty miles from Longmead and asked him to go into partnership. Slater had taken on a younger man as his successor.
‘I’m going to let Heather share my kitten,’ Jill told Mr Pickthorn.
‘That’s right,’ he said approvingly. ‘It’s good to share.’ He took a bag of sweets from his pocket and all three of them dug into the bag with pleasure.
The girls went off a few minutes later with their arms round each other’s shoulders. The curve of the lane took them out of George’s vision before they reached the cottages.
There was the sound of a vehicle approaching along the Hayford road and George glanced towards the school. Prompt as always at half past four Rachel Lloyd, the headmaster’s wife, drove up in her old blue station wagon to collect her husband. As she turned into the playground George gave her his usual wave and Rachel waved back at him in friendly fashion.
This was George’s customary signal for tea. He went round to the rear of the bungalow and put down his secateurs and gardening gloves on the seat in the back porch. In this fine sunny weather he liked to come out again for an hour or two in the evening, after he’d cleared away his tea-things and listened to the news.
Inside the school Henry Lloyd heard the station wagon and at once began to lock up. In the classroom next door Janet Marshall also heard the car. She had already finished her own locking up and she came out of her classroom and handed her keys to Mr Lloyd.
‘On your way home,’ he said, ‘I wonder if you’d be kind enough to call in at Mrs Abell’s cottage and give her a message from me?’ In addition to her other activities Heather’s mother acted as school cleaner and caretaker; neither job occupied a great deal of time.
‘Yes, of course,’ Janet said.
‘Ask her if she’ll be sure to give the cloakroom a good turn-out this evening.’ The headmaster’s face looked strained and weary. ‘Please don’t imply any criticism of her work, she can’t be expected to perform miracles in the time she’s allowed – but the cloakroom has got rather grubby and it makes a bad impression.’
‘I’ll be suitably diplomatic,’ Janet promised. She went back to her classroom to pick up her things. As she came out of the front door a moment later she gave Mrs Lloyd – sitting waiting in the station wagon – a little wave and spoke a word of greeting. Mrs Lloyd nodded and smiled in reply.
Rachel Lloyd was a large, vigorous-looking woman, a couple of years older than her husband but looking somewhat younger than him. Her thick chestnut hair, lightly streaked with grey, was drawn back into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck; she had the fresh complexion and clear skin of a countrywoman.
Janet walked unhurriedly out of the playground and turned right, in the direction of Rose Cottage. As she passed Brookside she saw that Mr Pickthorn had gone in as usual for his tea. She paused for a moment to admire his delphiniums. They were very fine, a dozen or more delicate shades of blue, a colour she particularly liked in a garden; she must definitely try to grow some at Rose Cottage.
She walked on up the lane and turned in at the gate of the first of the pair of cottages. These were a good deal more modern than Rose Cottage, they had been built shortly after the First World War.
No. 1 was an exact twin of its partner except that it sported a magnificent white jasmine clothing the end wall and a blue ceanothus in full flower in the front garden. The late Mr Abell had been a keen gardener and had taken many prizes at local shows. He had tended the garden up at Mayfield Farm in addition to his duties there as stockman.
The light drifting fragrance of the jasmine greeted Janet as she walked up to the front porch. Mrs Abell’s mother, Mrs Perrin, kept a large rocking-chair on the porch in summer, she liked to sit out there knitting on warm afternoons. The chair was empty now, the knitting laid down on the cushions. The front door stood propped open by a large stone and Janet could see Mrs Perrin in the kitchen, standing ironing at the table in the middle of the room. She glanced up at the sound of footsteps and saw Janet coming up the path.
‘Do come in, Miss Marshall,’ she called out. She was a short, heavily-built woman in her middle sixties with coarse grey hair pulled up into a great bun on top of her head. She was solid and unflappable, healthy and active enough in spite of some trouble with her legs, stout tree-trunk legs encased even in the summer heat in thick stockings, to disguise the veins knotted and corded from years of standing over ironing-boards, cookers, sinks. She more than pulled her weight in the household.
‘I expect you want to see my daughter,’ she said as Janet stepped across the threshold. The kitchen smelt of warm ironing and ancient horsehair upholstery – from the two huge sagging black armchairs standing one at each side of the hearth. ‘She’s out in the garden, picking peas.’ Mrs Perrin nodded towards the long back garden carefully planted in geometric rows of vegetables, bordered by sternly disciplined bushes and fruit trees. ‘Heather’s next door, playing with Jill Bryant.’
‘I’ll go out and speak to Mrs Abell, if I may,’ Janet said after a civil enquiry after Mrs Perrin’s health. She went out through the kitchen door.
A belt of tall, thickly-grown trees encircled the far end of the two gardens, completely screening them from Rose Cottage. Halfway down the garden Janet could see Mrs Abell kneeling among the onions and carrots. She stood up suddenly and darted off to a row of peas, she stooped and began filling her wooden trug with plump young pods.
She was a little scuttling, sideways-glancing woman, colourless and careworn, full of anxieties about life, about managing, averting trouble and disaster. Bad
