At one point, she asked Peagreen why he never went down to the church. "Well, it's a bit of a step for me," he told her, smiling. "I used to go more often before..." He hesitated.
"Before the Hendrearys came?"
"Perhaps you could say that," he admitted rather sheepishly. "And there are times when one prefers to be alone."
"Yes," said Arrietty. After a moment, she added, "Don't you like the Hendrearys?"
"I hardly know them," he said.
"But you like Timmus?"
His face lit up. "How could anybody not like Timmus?" He laughed amusedly. "Oh, Timmus could go far—"
Arrietty jumped up. "I hope he hasn't gone too far already!" She thrust her head out through the round hole in the nesting box and looked along the ivy. At last she saw him: he was hanging upside down just above the larder window, trying to peer inside. She did not call out to him: his position looked too perilous. And, after all, she realized, he was obeying her to the letter: he had not set a foot inside. She watched him anxiously until, with a snakelike twist, he reversed his posi tion and made his way upwards among the trembling leaves. She drew in her head again. There was no need to worry. For one who could climb a bell rope with such speed and confidence, ivy would be child's play.
When at last Timmus rejoined them, the clock was striking five. He looked very hot and dirty. Arrietty thought she had better take him home. "But the church is full of ladies," protested Peagreen.
"I mean to my home. I'll have to clean him up a bit before his mother sees him." She sighed happily. "It's been a lovely afternoon."
"How long will those women stay in the church?" asked Peagreen.
"I've no idea. Until they've finished the flowers, I suppose. I thought that, at about six o'clock, I'd climb that high box tree. You can see everything from there. All the comings and goings..."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"Do you want to?"
"Yes. I'll feel like a climb by then."
When Arrietty and Timmus reached home, they found Homily bustling towards the kitchen. As they walked across it, Arrietty noticed that the long dark hearth looked curiously neat. "Somebody's restacked the woodpile," she said to her mother as they entered the bright kitchen.
"Yes, I did," said Homily.
"All by yourself?"
"No, your father helped me. I got an idea in my head about black beetles..."
"Were there any?"
"No, only a couple of wood lice. They're all right—clean as whistles, wood lice are. But your father's thrown them out of doors—we don't want a whole family. Timmus, just look at your face!"
This was something Timmus could not do. So Homily washed it gently, and his little hands as well. She had always had a soft spot for Timmus. She brushed down his clothes and smoothed back his hair. There was nothing she could do about the walnut juice.
At six o'clock, when Arrietty had climbed up the tall bush, she found Peagreen already there. "I think they've all gone now," he told her. "They've been coming out in twos and threes. I've been watching for ages..."
Arrietty put herself in a sidesaddle position on a slender branch, and they both stared down at the empty path in silence. Nothing stirred in the churchyard. After about twenty minutes, both became a little bored. "I think I'd better get Timmus now," Arrietty said at last. "He's waiting just beside the grating. I don't want him running out." She was disentangling her skirt, which had caught on a twig. "Thank you for watching, Peagreen."
"I've rather enjoyed it," he said. "I like to get a good look at a human being now and again. You never know what they're going to do next. Can you manage?" he asked as she started to climb down.
"Of course I can manage." She sounded a little nettled. "Aren't you coming?"
"I think I'll stay here and see you both safely in."
Chapter Twenty-two
When Arrietty and Timmus reached the vestry, they found it tidy and clean. The tablecloth was back on the table and the ledger on the desk, and the curtains leading into the church were demurely drawn to. But instead of the smell of stale cassocks, there was a lingering fragrance of flowers. It drew Arrietty to part the curtains slightly and peer into the church. She caught her breath.
"Come and look, Timmus," she whispered urgently. "It's lovely!"
Every window sill was a bower. But the sills being high and she so far below, she could see only the tops of the flowers—all the same, they were a riot of scent and color. Timmus pushed past her, dashed straight through the curtains, and ran sharply to the right. "You can't see from where you are," he called back at her. He was making for his perch on the rood screen. Of course! Arrietty stepped forwards, about to follow him, when something or someone touched her on the arm. She swung round swiftly. It was Aunt Lupy, a finger to her lips, and looking very alarmed. "Don't let him shout," she whispered hurriedly. "There are people still here!"
Arrietty looked down the seemingly empty church. "Where?" she gasped.
"In the porch at the moment. Another whole handcart of flowers has arrived. They'll be bringing them in in a moment. You'd better come inside with me..." She was pulling rather urgently at Arrietty's arm.
"What about Timmus? He's on the rood screen."
"He'll be all right so long as he keeps still. And he will, because he'll see them from there."
Arrietty turned unwillingly and followed her aunt under the table, whose hanging cloth gave them good cover. It was the Hendrearys' usual route when any kind of danger threatened and meant only one quick dash at the far end.
"Did Miss Menzies come?" Arrietty whispered as they passed under the table.
"She's here now. And so's Lady Mullings. Come on, Arrietty, we'd better hurry. They may be coming in here for water."
But Arrietty stood firm in her tracks. "I must see Miss Menzies!" She tore her arm away from her aunt's urgent grasp and disappeared under the hanging folds of the tablecloth, but not without having noticed her aunt's expression of dismay and astonishment. But there was no time to lose. As she sped along beside the foot of the rood screen, she was aware of the great bank of flowers edging the chancel. Plenty of cover there! She glanced up at Timmus's perch. That was all right: to all intents and purposes, he had become invisible. But even as, breathlessly, she climbed up the side of the rood screen towards the little gallery, she could hear Lady Mull ings's voice (really annoyed for once) saying, "Twelve huge pots of pelargonium! What on earth does she think we can do with them at this hour?"
Arrietty ran along the gallery and took cover under the spreading wings of the dove. She stared down. The great west door was wide open, and the sun was streaming in from the porch. She saw Lady Mullings come in and move a little aside to let two men pass her, each carrying a large pot filled with a bushlike plant, which, to Arrietty's eyes, resembled a striped geranium.
"Twelve, you say!" cried Lady Mullings despairingly. (How human voices echoed when the church was empty!)
"Yes, ma'am. We grew them special for the church. Where would you like them put?"
Lady Mullings looked round desperately. "Where do you suggest, Miss Menzies?" Arrietty craned forwards over the edge of the gallery. Yes, there at last was her dear Miss Menzies, standing rather listlessly in the doorway to the porch. She looked somewhat pale and tired, and though very slim at the best of times, she seemed to have got a good deal thinner. "Somewhere right at the back, don't you think?" she said faintly.
Then Kitty Whitlace entered in a rush, looking equally aghast. "Whoever sent all these?" she exclaimed. She must have seen the cartload outside.
"Mrs. Crabtree ... Wasn't it kind of her?" said Lady Mullings weakly. Then, pulling herself together, she added in a more normal voice, "I think you know Mr. Bullivant, Mrs. Crabtree's head gardener?"
"Yes, indeed," said Kitty. She made as though to put out
her hand but, looking down at it, saw it was far from clean. "I won't shake hands," she added. "I've just been carting all the leftover leaves and dirt and things
away in the wheelbarrow."
As the men went out for more pots, Kitty wheeled round to Lady Mullings. "Now, you two ladies sit down. You've done quite enough for one day. I've got the wheelbarrow outside and can give the man a hand with the pots. We'll have them all in in no time."
"We thought we'd put them all at the back by the belfry," said Miss Menzies as she and Lady Mullings slipped gratefully into the nearest pew, "and sort of mass them all up against the curtains."
"Mass them!" exclaimed Lady Mullings enthusiastically. "What a wonderful idea! Build them up into a kind of pyramid of glorious pink against those dark curtains..." She jumped to her feet, very agile for a lady of her somewhat generous proportions. "Now, that is what I call a real inspiration!"
Miss Menzies rose, too, though a little more reluctantly, but Lady Mullings, now in the aisle, turned eagerly towards her. "No, my dear, stay where you are. You've been overdoing things—anyone can see that—what with the model village and now the decorations. We ought not to have let you come. And yet we all know that you are the only one, the only truly artistic one, who can make such a show of the window sills. Now, my dear"—she leaned over the edge of the pew, her face alight with the prospect of her own turn at creation—"take my bag, if you wouldn't mind, and sit back there quietly in your corner. I know exactly what to do!"
Miss Menzies was not reluctant to obey. As she sank back into her corner of the pew, her head against the wall, she heard Lady Mullings, hurrying towards the back of the church, say to Kitty Whitlace, "Now, Kitty dear, the next thing is to find something to prop them up on..." Miss Menzies closed her eyes.
Arrietty, from her perch on the top of the rood screen, stared down at her pityingly. How wicked it had been of those Platters to destroy those little houses and give her so much work! Perhaps she and Mr. Pott had been up all night in their desperate attempt to be ready for Easter Monday? Then she turned her gaze towards Miss Menzies's window sills and saw (as she had not been able to see from below) what Lady Mullings had meant. Each sill had been lined with moss (perhaps with earth below?) out of which the spring flowers seemed to be growing naturally. All in their right groups and colors: grape hyacinths, narcissus, late primroses, some bluebells, clumps of primulas ... Each window sill was a little garden in itself. And what was even better, Arrietty realized, was that sprayed occasionally with water, Miss Menzies's little borders would last all week. How glad she was to have torn herself away from Aunt Lupy and reached the rood screen just in time!
There was so much to watch. There was Lady Mullings removing all the pamphlets and the collecting box from the bench in front of the far curtains, sweeping them aside, as it were, as though they were so much rubbish, and setting up plant pots along its length. Heavy as they were, she seemed to be given strength by the joy of her newly discovered talent. "Just four along here, Kitty, and a space in the middle, and two standing higher up in the space. Now, what can we find to stand them up on?" Her eyes alighted on the collecting box, and she grabbed it up from the floor. "Ah, this will do—"
"No, Lady Mullings, we can't use that. It's the tourists' collecting box, and people will be coming all next week—in the hundreds, I shouldn't wonder. What about a hassock?" She took the collecting box from Lady Mullings and set it once again on the floor. When she brought out a rather dusty, sawdust-filled hassock from the back pew, Lady Mullings looked at it distastefully.
"It's a bit clumsy," she said, "and how are we going to hide the front of it? I know," she exclaimed (it was her day for inspiration), "we can drape it with a bit of pink aubretia, hanging down. There's some round the bottom of the pulpit."
As she hurried down to the aisle to fetch it, Kitty Whitlace tried to protest again. "It's the two Misses Forbes's aubretia," she pointed out.
"It doesn't matter," Lady Mullings called back to her. "I'll only take a little bit." Nothing could stop her now.
At that moment something else caught Arrietty's eye. In the long patch of afternoon sunshine that streamed in from the west door, there lay a dark shadow. It was the shadow of a man. Why, oh, why, did she have this sudden sense of foreboding? Was it perhaps because this shadow kept so still, thrown by a figure that was neither coming in nor intending to move away? A kind of "watching" shadow? Her heart, for some reason, began to beat more heavily.
Lady Mullings came bustling back down the aisle, a clump of aubretia in her hand. Perhaps it had left rather a bald looking patch at the foot of the pulpit, but she could see to that later by spreading the rest of it along. As she passed the open door, she glanced carelessly sideways to see who was standing on the threshold. "Oh, Mr. Platter," she exclaimed, scarcely pausing in her step, "I had forgotten all about you! Do come in. I shan't keep you a minute. Take a look round the church. It's really worth it. The flowers are quite wonderful this year. And"—she called back to him gaily as she hurried on—"you're our first visitor."
Mr. Platter took off his hat and entered rather dubiously. He and Mrs. Platter were very "low church" (in fact, he had been brought up "chapel"), and he was not at all sure he approved of all these light-hearted goings-on on the eve of such a solemn feast as Easter. However, he was not a bad gardener himself, and hat in hand, he made a slow but professional inspection. He quite liked the aubretia at the foot of the pulpit but did not care much for those ashen-colored roses below the lectern. The things that took his fancy most were the two long rows of variegated plants arranged along the foot of the rood screen. Quite a herbaceous border, you might say! He sat down quietly on the front pew in order to study them better and while away the time until Lady Mullings should be ready to receive him.
Arrietty peered down at him, her heart still beating heavily. From where she was stationed, she could not see Timmus, but hoped he was keeping still. She need not have worried. Mr. Platter did not raise his eyes. He was not interested in rood screens. After a while he brought out an envelope, drew out a piece of paper, uncapped his fountain pen, and made a few jottings. He was adding to the list of extra jobs that "Miss" Parkinson had thrust upon him and wondering, in view of all the hours he had put in, whether or not he dare add a few inventions of his own.
Lady Mullings, down at the end of the church, was saying, "Now we need something to top up the pinnacle. A few hymn books would do..."
"A good idea," Kitty Whitlace replied. "I'll run and get them," and hurried up the church towards the vestry. Aunt Lupy, who at that moment had been peering out of her "front door," heard her footsteps and darted back inside.
Lady Mullings, standing back to admire her handiwork, did not notice when another person entered the church; someone who looked around vaguely for a moment, then tiptoed up the side aisle. But Arrietty noticed, and also noticed that Mr. Platter started slightly when he felt the figure take her place quietly beside him on the front pew. "Mabel!" he gasped, in a sort of whisper.
"I thought something must have happened to you," she whispered back, "so I hopped on my bicycle."
"They gave me a whole lot of extra jobs," he told her, still in a whisper. But Arrietty could hear every word.
"They would," hissed Mrs. Platter, "that Parkinson! Did they give you anything to eat?"
"They brought me something on a tray. Not much. Not what she and cook were having in the kitchen."
"I had a lovely hot pot," said Mrs. Platter. She sounded almost wistful.
"I know." He was silent a minute. "What have you done with the bicycle?"
"Put it in the back of the pony cart. I'm not going to bicy cle back all the way up that hill..." Leaning more closely towards him, she put a hand on his arm. "What I really wanted to know, Sidney, what really brought me down was, did you give that package to Lady Mullings?"
"Of course I did."
"Oh, thank heavens for that! What did she say?"
"She said she'd do her best."
"It's our only chance, Sidney. It's our last chance!"
"I know that," he said uncomfortably.
Chapter Twenty-three
/> Lady Mullings almost flung herself down beside Miss Menzies in the pew beside the west door. "Well, that's done!" she exclaimed in a voice both exhausted and satisfied.
Miss Menzies, startled, opened her eyes. "Have you finished? How splendid!" She blushed. "I'm afraid I must have nodded off..."
"And I don't blame you, my dear, after having been up all night! Would you care to take a look at it? I always value your opinion."
"I'd love to," said Miss Menzies, although it was the last thing that she felt inclined to do at that moment.
She followed Lady Mullings out of the pew and down to the back of the church. It was indeed a startling erection, a beautiful burst of color against the darker curtains and facing straight down the aisle, adding a focal point to all the lesser decorations.
"It really is quite lovely," exclaimed Miss Menzies with genuine admiration. "I can't think how on earth you've managed to prop it all up—"
"With this and that," said Lady Mullings modestly, but she was looking very pleased.
Kitty Whitlace was on her knees, tidying up the pamphlets that somehow seemed to have scattered themselves about the floor. She made a neat pile of these and another one of the post cards and set them in an orderly fashion beside her rescued collecting box. Then she sat back on her heels and looked up to Lady Mullings. "What are we going to do with this lot?" she asked.
"Oh, dear! Yes ... well, I see. Oh, I know! Just leave them where they are for the moment. I've a small card table at home, which I can bring down later. With a pretty piece of brocade on top, we could set it by the west door." She turned to Miss Menzies. "Well, my dear, I really think we've all done enough for today. Where did you leave your bicycle?"