Great Meadow by Dirk Bogarde

That’s a kindness, Mrs Daukes, to be sure,’ she said.
    â€˜Well, I ‘eard the door a’slammin’. That’ll be the Rectory people, I’ll be bound, I said to Mr Daukes, sat there in his chair. And so t’were! Out I come, and there you was.’
    She was swinging her hurricane lamp about like a censer in St Catherine’s, which was all right for her because she was leading, and in the front, but / couldn’t see anything. I was humping the Weekend in one hand and Flora’s boring bag of presents in the other. Jolly heavy they were, but I almost felt cheerful because whatever they were this time, they couldn’t be just books or boxes of Edinburgh rock. They were round. But there were just little slits of light from Mrs Daukes’s lamp and spots from Lally’s torch which waggled about on the dead grasses along the path. Flora moaned about how much further it would be, and my sister started whining about wanting to ‘go’ pretty quickly, which reminded me that I wouldn’t mind myself. Then I saw the bobbly stalk of some old Brussels sprouts and I knew we were going through the vegetable garden and that meant the front door was near.
    â€˜Mr Daukes poorly, then, is he? I mean, him in a chair and not in the pub?’ said Lally, stepping over a broken cloche.
    â€œE took a nasty fall last week.
Very
nasty it was. Tripped on them cobbles down by the Cross. Caught ‘im on the head something cruel. All bloody he were, and Dr Wilmott had to give him a couple of stitches.’
    We had reached the front door, and Lally was fumbling in her bag for the key and her torch was sticking up in the air like a searchlight. So that wasn’t much good.
    â€˜I’m sure he’ll be right as rain shortly,’ said Lally. ‘Thank you for the hurricane lamp, it’ll see you home again.’
    Mrs Daukes bobbed about and then we were all in the lean-to and the lovely smell of winter onions and paraffin was everywhere, and I knew we were back at the cottage.
    â€˜If you ask me,’ said Lally, taking off her gloves in the darkness and starting to light one of the lamps, ‘Dr Wilmott could have obliged us all by putting a couple of stitches in his lips. Stop him imbibing. Now, look sharp, Mr Head-in-the-air, light up some candles.’
    They were all set in a neat row, just as we had left them last time, ranged along the work-bench, little white enamel candlesticks with red and blue bands round them. I knew my one quickly, because it had a bad dent on it where I had dropped it years ago, and the white all came off and there was a scabby place like a map of Australia.
    Flora said that she thought it was very dark and witchy, and had I got her presents, and my sister started whining away, and Lally said, ‘Outside, my girl, if you can’t wait, or fetch yourself your potty. Take a candle with you.’
    And then she shrugged off her best check coat, and started to take off the halo-hat with the ivy leaves. And that was the sign that we had really arrived.
    It was very nice indeed sitting round the big table in the kitchen in the lamplight. The fire was crackling in the range, there were two kettles hissing quietly on the Primus stoves on the top of the copper getting ready for the washing up part, and we had all had a ‘delicate sufficiency’, as Lally said, of a Melton Mowbray pie, cut in four chunks, pork and beans, tinned (which was not allowed by our father, who said we’d get ptomaine poisoning from things in tins). Lally had hidden this one away in her bag because it was an emergency.

    The only rotten part was that she gave wretched Flora the lovely bit of pork because she was the Guest. Well, you might have guessed that. Guests were always favourite. There were some apples from last year, for afters, and Lally had a big piece of cheese with some pickled onions which were on the shelf in the lean-to.
    â€˜At least we didn’t