"Yes. Very convenient," agreed Homily politely. For some reason, she did not explain to Lupy that they never carried meals "all this distance" but ate them comfortably at the tiled table in front of the kitchen fire.
"And in winter," went on Lupy, "they light up that big coke stove in the corner of the vestry. And what's more, they keep it on all night."
"Very cozy," said Homily.
"And useful, for soups and stews and things like that."
"Well, you were always a good manager, Lupy."
By this time, they had reached the steps, and Homily paused for a moment. Pod had gone ahead to light the candles, and she wanted to give him time. Lupy was staring up the steps, mystified and very curious. "It looks very dark up there."
"Not really," said Homily: she had seen the gleam of candlelight. "Come along, I'll show you..." and she led the way up into the chimney.
Lupy looked around with something like horror: the great draft space, the soot-darkened walls. She could not think of anything to say. Was this really their kitchen? Ah, there was a glint of light in the far corner...
"Better take my hand," Homily was saying. "Careful of the sticks. The jackdaws drop them down..." Stooping, she picked up two recent ones and threw them onto the neater pile.
When at last they reached the little door with the title Essays of Emerson, Homily held it aside for Lupy to enter first. There was no mistaking the pride on her face, lit up as it was by the glow from two bright candles: the fire burning merrily (remade by Pod), the shelves, Miss Menzies's cooking utensils, the spotless cleanliness...
"It's very nice," Lupy said at last. She sounded rather breathless.
"It is, rather," Homily agreed modestly. "No drafts in here ... just a bit of fresh air from above."
Lupy looked up and glimpsed the distant sky. "Oh, I see, we're in some kind of chimney."
"Yes, a very large one. Sometimes the rain comes in. But not in this corner. But sometimes below that far wall, there's quite a little pool."
"You should keep a toad," said Lupy firmly.
"A toad! Why?"
"To eat up the black beetles."
"We have no black beetles," retorted Homily coldly. How like Lupy to mention such a hazard! She felt deeply affronted. All the same, as they made their way back towards the entrance, she glanced a little fearfully at the pile of wood on the shadowy floor.
Chapter Twenty
"Where are you going, Sidney?" asked Mrs. Platter as Mr. Platter got up from the breakfast table, making his way rather lackadaisically towards the back door.
"To catch the pony," he said in a bored voice. (Once they had employed a boy to do these chores.) "I'll need the cart this morning. I'm not going to bicycle all the way to Fordham: that hill coming back just about kills you."
"What are you on to at Fordham?" There was a note of hope in Mrs. Platter's question. They had not been doing so well lately: people were not dying as often as they used to, and, now the Council estate was finished, they did not seem to be building many houses. She hoped he was on to a good job.
"It's that Lady Mullings," he told her, "and hardly worth the journey. Some of her windows got stuck with the rain last winter—wood swelled up, like. And she's locked herself out of the attic and lost the key ... We had a box of old keys somewhere. Where did you put it?"
"I didn't put it anywhere. It's where you always keep it: on one of the bottom shelves of your workshop." She stood up suddenly. "Oh, Sidney!" she exclaimed.
He looked surprised at the sudden emotion in her voice. "What is it now?" he asked.
"Oh, Sidney!" she exclaimed again. "Don't you see? This may be our last chance ... Lady Mullings might get her feeling. Take the little apron!"
"Oh, that," he said uncomfortably.
"You ought to have taken it weeks ago. But there you were—going on about not knowing quite what to say to her, feeling foolish, and all that. You should have taken it when you did her gutters."
"It's not my line, Mabel—psychic or physic, or whatever they call it. It's such a silly little bit of a shred of a thing—who was I going to say it belonged to? It takes a bit of thinking about. I mean, how to bring the subject up, like, when all we was talking about was gutters. And I've got to bring up gutters again: she hasn't paid my bill yet..."
Mrs. Platter went to a drawer in the dresser and drew out a small beige envelope. She laid it firmly on the table. "All you have to say to her, Sidney, is: 'Lady Mullings, if it isn't too much trouble, could you find out who the owner of this is and where they are living now?' That's all you have to say, Sidney, quite casual like. They are only words, Sidney, and what are words with our whole future at stake! Just hand it to her, as though it was your bill, or something. That's all you have to do."
"I'll hand her my bill, too," said Mr. Platter grimly. He picked up the envelope, looked at it distastefully, and put it in his pocket. "All right, I'll take it."
"It's our last chance, Sidney, as I said before. It was you yourself who told me she was a finder and all about the church candlesticks and Mrs. Crabtree's ring. If this fails, Sidney, we might just as well go to Australia."
"Don't talk nonsense, Mabel!"
"It isn't nonsense. And I don't see much future for us here, unless—I say, unless—we can get back those tiresome creatures and display them in the showcase just as we had planned. As you have always said, there was money in them, all right! But your brother's getting on now, and in the same line of business. And you remember what he said in his last letter? That he wouldn't have minded taking on a partner? That was a broad hint if ever there was one. And—"
"All right, all right, Mabel," Mr. Platter interrupted. "I said I'd take the envelope," and he made, more hurriedly this time, for the outside door.
"It's all washed and ironed and folded," Mrs. Platter called after him. But he did not seem to hear.
The door was opened for Mr. Platter by Lady Mullings's stiff and starched old house-parlormaid, and he was ushered into the hall. "Her Ladyship will be down in a minute," he was told. "Pray take a seat." Mr. Platter sat down on one of the straight-backed chairs beside the oak chest, took off his hat, and placed it on his knees and his tool bag beside him on the floor. Mr. Platter had always been a "front-door caller," by reason of his status as undertaker and comforter of the bereaved (no common handyman he!), but he was always willing to oblige his more favored clients with small repairs in the hope of another funeral or a building contract to come. When at last Lady Mullings appeared, she seemed to be in a hurry. She flew down the stairs, hatted and veiled and pulling on her gloves. At the same moment, her gardener appeared from the back premises carrying two large buckets filled to overflowing with a variety of spring flowers.
"Oh, Mr. Platter, I am so relieved to see you. We are in a dreadful pickle here—" Mr. Platter had risen, and she was shaking him warmly by the hand. "How are you? And how is Mrs. Platter? Well, I hope. We can't get into the attic, and it's so tiresome. All the stuff for the jumble stall is locked up in there, and the church garden party is on Easter Monday. And those new windows you put in last spring seemed to have hermetically sealed themselves during the winter. And there are one or two other things—" She was opening the front door. "But Parkinson will explain to you..." She had turned to the gardener. "Those look wonderful, Henry! Are you sure you can manage them as far as the church? We don't want any more bad backs, do we?" As the buckets were being carried through on to the pavement, she turned back to Mr. Platter. "I am so sorry, dear Mr. Platter, to be in such a rush. But yesterday being Good Friday and tomorrow Easter Sunday, we have only this one day in which to decorate the whole church. It's always like this, I'm afraid. It's the fault of the calendar."
Mr. Platter almost leaped forwards to catch her before she closed the door. "One moment, my lady—"
She hesitated. "Only one, I'm afraid, Mr. Platter. I'm late already."
Mr. Platter almost gabbled as he brought two beige envelopes out of his pocket. "Should I take th
e liberty of adding the account of today's little jobs on to the account for the guttering?"
"Didn't I pay you for guttering, Mr. Platter?"
"No, my lady, it must have slipped your memory."
"Oh, dear, I am so sorry. What a juggins I am getting in my old age! Yes, yes. Add today's account on to the other one. Of course, of course. Now, I really must be—"
"It just occurs to me, my lady, that I might not be here when you get back from the church." He only just stopped himself from holding on to the door.
"Then send it through the post, Mr. Platter. Oh, no, I have my checkbook. When you've finished here, why not come along to the church? I shall be there most of the day. It's only a step—"
"Very well, I'll do that, my lady." He was pushing one beige envelope back into his pocket, but the other one he was holding out towards her. This was the difficult moment, but he was determined to get it over with: you never knew with these people. By the time he got to the church, she might have gone off somewhere else—to tea with Miss Menzies or something. He couldn't go chasing her around the village. "There's just one thing, if you'll forgive me detaining you just a bare second longer..."
Lady Mullings looked down at the envelope. "Not another account, Mr. Platter?"
Mr. Platter tried to smile—and almost managed it, but the hand that held the envelope was trembling slightly. "No, this is something quite different, something I promised my wife to do." He had rehearsed this approach all the way down to
Little Fordham: it was a maneuver he had once heard described as "passing the buck," and he had decided to use it.
Lady Mullings seemed to hesitate. She liked men who tried to please their wives, and in all the long years she had known Mr. Platter, he had always been so kind, so tactful, so obliging. She glanced up the road and was reassured to see her gardener plodding along towards the church with the buckets. She turned back to Mr. Platter and took up the envelope. It felt soft. What could it be? Perhaps. Mrs. Platter had sent her a little present? A handkerchief or something? She began to feel touched already.
"It is something my wife cares very much about," Mr. Platter was saying. "She knows your great gift, my lady, of being a finder, and she begs you that, when you have time and it isn't too much trouble, you might be able to tell her who is the owner of this little thing in the envelope and where that owner is living at present. Please don't bother to open it now," he added quickly as he saw Lady Mullings was about to do so. "Any time will do."
"I'll do my best, Mr. Platter. I never promise anything. Sometimes things happen, and sometimes they don't. I don't really have a great gift,' as you so kindly put it. Something just seems to work through me. I am just an empty vessel." She felt in the little basket containing her picnic luncheon, took out her handbag, and placed the envelope, almost reverently, inside. "Please give my warmest regards to Mrs. Platter, and tell her I'll do my very best." And smiling very kindly at Mr. Platter, she closed the door gently behind her.
As Mr. Platter picked up his tool bag, he felt extremely pleased with himself. He felt he had "handled" Lady Mullings very successfully, all due to his own foresight and hard thinking as he had driven along in his cart. What he did not take into account (and it would never have occurred to him to do so) was Beatrice Mullings's own character: that it was one which was incapable of thinking ill of others. And that, since the death of her husband and her two sons, she had devoted her life to her friends. Any call for help, however trivial, took first priority over all the other, more mundane duties of her daily life. She would have no curiosity about the contents of the beige envelope, only that the object it contained was somehow dear to Mrs. Platter and that news of its owner's whereabouts must mean a great deal to her.
Mr. Platter was really smiling now, as he went off to the nether regions in search of Parkinson (Miss Parkinson to him), and it was as he feared. She had found a hundred extra jobs for him besides the windows and the door of the attic. Well, perhaps not a hundred, but that's what it seemed like. Would he ever get home to his luncheon? He knew Mrs. Platter was preparing Lancashire hot pot, one of his favorites.
Chapter Twenty-one
Arrietty had risen very early on that same Saturday morning. Aunt Lupy had impressed upon her that she must take Timmus off with plenty of time to spare before all the flower-arranging ladies invaded the church. "The whole place gets awash with them," Aunt Lupy had explained the night before. "Not just the ones we know: all sorts come—and they run about every which way, gabbling and arguing, strewing the place with petals and leaves, coats and picnic baskets all over the pews. Calling out to one another as if they were in their own houses. What the good Lord thinks about it, I just can't imagine. And it's a dreadful day for us: not a step dare we venture outside the harmonium. Food, water ... everything has to be got in. And there we're stuck, hour after hour, in almost pitch darkness—you dare not light a candle—until at last they decide to go. And even then you don't feel safe. Someone or other is bound to come back with an extra bunch of flowers or to collect some belonging or other they've carelessly left behind. So you must take Timmus off early, dear, and don't bring him back until late..."
The vestry was indeed a wonderful sight when Arrietty entered through the hole that morning. Flowers in buckets, in tin baths, in great vases, in jam jars—all over the floor, on the table, on the desk ... everywhere. The curtains that led into the church proper were drawn back, and even beyond these she could see pots of flowering shrubs and tall, budding branches of greenery. The scent was overpowering.
Timmus was waiting for her at the entrance to his home, his round little face alight with happiness: he had a treasure! Spiller had made him a miniature bow and a tiny quiver full of miniature arrows. "And he's going to teach me to shoot," he told her ecstatically, "and how to make my own arrows!"
"What are you going to shoot at?" Arrietty asked him. Her arm was round his shoulders, and she couldn't resist giving him a hug.
"Sunflowers. That's how you start—" he said, "the nearest you can get to the heart of a sunflower!"
Aunt Lupy came out then and drove them off. "Get along, you two—I've just heard a carriage drive up to the lychgate."
And, indeed, the evening before, Arrietty, having supper with her parents, had heard the clip-clop of horses' hooves as pony carts and carriages, one after another, had driven up to the church, delivering these flowers—flowers from every garden in the parish, she thought, as she and Timmus picked their way through the jungle of scented blooms. Suddenly the day began to feel like a holiday.
"Do you know what?" Arrietty said when once they were out and hurrying along the path—at the same time keeping an eye out for whoever might have arrived in the carriage.
"No. What?" asked Timmus.
"After we've been to the vegetable garden, we're going to have lunch with Peagreen!"
"Oh, goody," said Timmus. Peagreen had been giving him reading lessons and teaching him to write. Twice a week, Peagreen would go to Homily's parlor with sharpened pencil stubs and odd bits of paper, and being a poet and an artist, he could make these lessons a delight. He would always stay to tea, and sometimes he would read aloud to them afterwards. But Timmus had never been invited into any of Peagreen's nesting boxes: these Peagreen kept strictly for working in solitude at his painting or writing.
"Oh, goody!" said Timmus again, and gave a little skip: he had always longed to climb the ivy. And this sunny Easter Saturday, minute by minute, began to seem more and more like a holiday. He had not even brought a borrowing bag because his mother (as she had explained to Arrietty) had "got everything in."
So there was not very much to do in the kitchen garden but to play games and explore and tease the ants and earwigs and see who could get closest to a resting butterfly. The sunflowers were not out yet, so Timmus shot at a bumblebee, which made Arrietty very cross, not only because she loved bumblebees but because, as she told him, "You have got only six arrows, and now you've lost one!" She made him prom
ise not to start shooting again until Spiller had given him a lesson.
When the church clock struck twelve, Arrietty pulled up three tiny radishes and a lettuce seedling, and they began to make their way towards Peagreen's home. They had to hide once when they saw Whitlace trundling a wheelbarrow filled with rhododendrons along the path: he was heading for the church. Arrietty felt a sad little pang because she realized that her beloved Miss Menzies might be at the church by now but that she, Arrietty, would not be there—even to watch her from a distance.
Peagreen soon managed to cheer her up, however: he was delighted with the radishes, which Arrietty had washed in the birdbath, and the tiny lettuce went beautifully with the delicious cold food he had borrowed from the larder. The spring sunshine was so warm that they were tempted to eat out of doors but decided, in the end, that they would feel more at ease eating in Peagreen's dining room, with the lid of the nesting box propped open by a stick. Peagreen's dining table was made from the round lid of a pillbox, like the one Arrietty remembered at Firbank, but Peagreen had painted it carmine. For plates he had set out small-leaved nasturtiums, the roundest he could find, with a larger one in the center of the table on which he had arranged the food. "You can eat the plates, too," he told Timmus. "Nasturtium goes well with salad." Timmus thought this a great joke.
After luncheon, Timmus was allowed to go climbing among the ivy, with orders to freeze should anyone come along the path, and strictly forbidden to put even one foot inside the opened larder window. Peagreen and Arrietty just talked.
Arrietty described to Peagreen how sometimes she and Timmus would watch church services from the rood screen. Timmus, being small, had his own comfortable little perch on the carved vine leaf, with the solemn face of a mitered bishop to lean back against, and how, from below, he looked exactly like part of the carving. She herself, not wanting to brown her face, usually climbed up into the gallery, which ran across the top. Here she could squat down behind the dove and peer from out below the spread wings. Weddings she liked best: weddings were beautiful. Funerals they had liked next best: sad, but beautiful, too—except for that dreadful one at which Mr. Platter had officiated as undertaker, and her heart had gone cold at the sight of that hated face. On that occasion, having raised her face once, she had never dared raise it again. In fact, it had almost cured her of funerals.