(7/13) Affairs at Thrush Green by Miss Read Page B

year it was no animals fats, and the year before that no sugar. I s'pose we'll all be on hay or silage this time next year. Funny folk, doctors, I reckon.'
    'Who told you that Mrs Piggott was seriously ill?' said Isobel, trying to stem the tirade against the medical profession.
    'Why, Percy Hodge! He was just coming out of The Two Pheasants as I was leaving the school yesterday. Been in to get his courage up to face that Doris of his, I don't doubt. Now, there's a fine how-do-you-do. She's real sharp with poor old Perce. He has to take his shoes off outside the back door, and then she hands him a clothes brush to have a clean-up in case he's got any bits of straw and that on him. You'd hardly credit it, would you? And she once a barmaid. '
    'But Nelly—' broke in Isobel.
    'Ah yes! Well, Perce said Mr Jones had told him he'd read a letter of Albert's that said she was at her last gasp.'
    'Oh dear!'
    'One thing, I bet she ain't calling for Albert, ill though she is. And I wonder what she'll say when the old misery turns up at her bedside? Enough to give her a prolapse.'
    'I think it's "relapse",' said Harold.
    'That as well, I shouldn't wonder,' conceded Betty. 'I'll get that vacuum cleaner. Standing here listening to you running on won't buy the baby a new frock, will it?'

    She vanished through the door, and the Shoosmiths exchanged conspiratorial glances.
    'I think I could do with a second cup of coffee,' said Harold handing over his cup.
    'I'll join you,' said his wife.

    April was at its loveliest that year, the first spring that Charles and Dimity had enjoyed in their new home at Lulling.
    Charles woke early one April morning and lay quietly watching the changing sky. The first apricot warmth faded slowly to pink and then to a clear shade of lemon yellow.
    Charles watched the young leaves fluttering in silhouette against their changing background. A dove cooed. A blackbird poured forth a liquid stream of bird music, and the metallic call of a nearby wren added to the dawn chorus.
    As the day brightened into silvery light the birds became more active, swooping from trees to earth, from hedge to further hedge, in their search for food and nesting material. The air seemed full of their activity, and the flutter of wings and the varied cries brought the morning to life.
    Charles lay beside his sleeping wife savouring this joyousness of spring. Truly, his lot had been cast in pleasant places, he thought, as he watched the sun burnishing the eastern side of the ancient cedar tree.
    It was good to have a quiet contemplative time now and again. He recalled one of Wordsworth's sonnets learnt long ago at school:
The world is too much with us: late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
    His own day, Charles knew only too well, was a succession of activities which kept him busy mentally and bodily. Somehow one was always looking ahead, planning the next move, trying to cut down time. And in all this bustle the present was lost. The daisy opened, closed and died. The chaffinch threaded the last shred of moss into its nest before sitting. The sun reached the point in the heavens when the weathercock turned to gold. And all these wonders passed unremarked, because the clock on the mantelpiece gave stern reminder of the service at three-thirty, the visit to a sick parishioner at five o'clock, and the meeting of the Parochial Church Council at eight sharp.
    Charles Henstock was the first to honour his duties towards God and his neighbours. But what a bonus it was, he told himself as he stretched his toes luxuriously in the warmth of the bed, to have these precious moments of just being , of becoming aware of all the other lives impinging on one's own, and of having time to give thanks for such revelation.
    He sat up, being careful not to disturb his wife, and gazed out of the window. There was a heavy dew. It looked more like