Read Online The Flowering Thorn by Margery Sharp - Free Book Online Page B

invention of cottage architecture, someone built the White Cottage. That there were ever any ground-plans is extremely doubtful: rather is it to be supposed that one day in the late sixteen hundreds a man and a boy went with spades, paced their distances, and began to dig without further deliberation. They dug well: like oak-trees the outer walls took surface-level at scarcely less than their middles. But it also seems probable that the boy paced the south side and the man the north, for the rectangle they drew was not a true one; all the floors ran together a little, and no corner was absolutely square. By the great brick chimney, of course, they cannot be judged: it bears unmistakable signs of rebuilding, and indeed could scarcely have smoked so badly for three centuries without someone laying a hand to it. The barn, too, dated from a good deal later, wood-built throughout and beamed with quartered tree-trunks: men had worked on the place from generation to generation, until when Lesley Frewen took it the amenities included an outside lavatory and a substantial tool-house. But none of the builders, one felt, had been professionals; they were all just men who could build a bit, and with an amateur’s self-distrust they had each of them made sure and built solid. From without at least the effect was not unpleasing: the cottage squatted down like a hare in its forme, close-pressed against the earth and friendly to the apple-trees.
    Once over the threshold, one might have been in Brixton.
    â€œ Brixton , darling?” echoed Elissa, making her first call over the new telephone.
    â€œBut exactly , darling,” Lesley assured her. “The wallpapers have chrysanthemums on them.” With a conscious effort she flicked her voice to irony. “And there’s a lot of stuff I think must be rep—it’s got bobbles all round the edge.”
    â€œDarling! How terribly funny! Is there an aspidistra?” asked Elissa greedily.
    Lesley glanced over her shoulder.
    â€œNo, but there’s a coloured picture of two cats sitting under an umbrella. And a china mug—this is perfectly true, darling—with ‘A Present from Margate’ on it.”
    â€œMy dear, you mustn’t alter a thing ,” said Elissa, audibly impressed.
    â€œI’m not going to. It’s only temporary, thank God. When are you coming down to the house-party?”
    â€œDarling, but the minute you invite me! Only not perhaps this week or next, because I’ve rather a lot on.… And then of course it’s June, which is always hopeless. But I’ll see you soon, darling.…”
    Lesley hung up the receiver and went to the window. Outside in the orchard a couple of Walpole pigs were grunting round the apple-trees, but the technique of chasing them away was utterly beyond her. Patrick was out there too, thumping up and down with a bean-pole between his knees: she looked at him with an intensity of dislike so nearly bordering on hatred that her own features, could she have seen them at that moment, would have seemed completely strange to her. And even without seeing, it was as though she guessed: for in all their enforced companionship she never once spoke to him without consciously masking her face. It was a hatred to be ashamed of, ignoble and unjust: but she did not love him the more for making her ashamed.
    Nor was there anything endearing—for so variously does hatred feed—in the fact that half-an-hour later it would be time for his bath: which meant that water would have to be drawn from the well, poured into the copper, bailed out again, and finally thrown away. With a deep and passionate conviction she reflected that it wasn’t worth it.
    â€˜In any case, it’s only his face and hands,’ thought Lesley. ‘There’s enough for that in the kettle.…’
    As once before, her spirit wavered. To give in, to let things slide, to be ruled, if only for an hour, by the