And then suddenly their drowsy peace was shattered by the sound of a quickly trotting horse coming from the direction of the village. The rider came past the house, slowing down where the hill was steep, crossed the bridge at the bottom and then urged his horse to a canter up the long slope beyond. The sound of the hooves died away in the distance and the children looked at each other in dismay. There were no telephones in those days, and only rich people had cars, so urgent messages were often carried on horseback.
‘Has he sent a message to Grandmama?’ gasped Timothy.
‘How could he?’ asked Nan. ‘He doesn’t know where she lives.’
‘Don’t be such a fool, Tim,’ said Robert.
Yet in spite of the impossibility of a message being sent to Grandmama, they all felt a little uneasy, and still more so when the elderly gentleman returned looking grimmer than ever and capable of anything. ‘I see nothing for it but for you to stay the night,’ he growled. ‘Dog and all. Merciful heavens, what an infliction! Since nothing is left of my groceries except marmalade and soap and Hector’s sardines, I presume you are not hungry. You are, however, extremely dirty and one of you is smelling abominably of violet scent. I dislike scent. That is why I am a bachelor. You must wash and get to bed. I know nothing of the routine of getting children to bed, but you, I presume,’ and he pointed a long forefinger at Nan, ‘can superintend the horrid business. I’ll show you where the bed is and provide you with hot water, and then I do not wish to hear a chirp out of any of you until the morning.’
He led the way out of the room and they followed him exactly as the children had followed the Pied Piper. He was more severe with them even than Grandmama and the Thunderbolt, yet they would have done anything he told them and followed him anywhere. And so would Absolom, who flopped along keeping as near him as he possibly could. Out in the hall the elderly gentleman lit the two candles that were on the table, took one himself and gave the other to the children. ‘That’s Ezra Oake’s candle,’ he said. ‘He is my gardener and general factotum and sleeps in the house. When you appropriated Jason and the trap he was in the Wheatsheaf, and I must warn you that when he returns, having no doubt strengthened himself with strong drink for the walk home, it is possible that he may create a considerable disturbance. If so do not be alarmed.’
‘How will he go to bed if we have his candle?’ asked Nan.
‘In the dark,’ said the elderly gentleman. ‘Give me the child. She is too heavy for your strength. This way to the kitchen.’ He took Betsy from Nan, settling her in the curve of his free arm in a way that seemed to Nan very handy for a man who did not like children, and led the way down the passage. It was a glorious house. It had not been spring-cleaned for years. Delicate festoons of spiders’ webs swayed beautifully in the draught all the way down the passage, and when they reached the big stone-floored kitchen it was the most wonderful place they had ever seen. Apart from the settle by the hearth, and the black kettle murmuring gently on top of the range, everything was in the wrong place. A basket full of a cat and six kittens was on the draining board, the dishes and plates and two pairs of boots were stacked on the table, the cuckoo clock was in the sink, the saucepans were on the floor, and the mantelpiece, windowsills and dresser were crowded with plants in pots, bast and string and seed boxes. Some women, but no men or children, might have considered this a kitchen, but they would have been wrong. It was not dirty because it smelt right. It smelt of onions, herbs, geraniums and good earth, but not dirt. Cobwebs were spun between the rafters, but the washing-up had been done before the cat and the cuckoo clock had been put on the draining board and into the sink, and the copper saucepans on the floor were so bright that you could see your face in them. Nan, Robert and Timothy sighed with delight and wanted to look at the kittens, but the elderly gentleman would not let them linger. Handing his candle to Robert, he picked up the steaming kettle and led them all out again. ‘I’ll not have Andromache disturbed,’ he said. ‘Her accouchement took place only last Wednesday.’
He led them up a staircase, down a passage and into a room full of moonlight so bright that its reflection in the polished oak of the old wavy floor was almost dazzling. There was a four-poster bed, with maroon curtains and a flight of steps leading up to it, a bow-fronted chest of drawers and a vast washstand with two sets of willow-patterned jugs and basins.
‘My spare room,’ said the elderly gentleman. ‘It has never been slept in, for if there is one thing I dislike more than paying visits, it is receiving them. As to the condition of the bedding, if any, I am unable to inform you.’ He set down the steaming kettle on the washstand and lifted the patchwork quilt which lay on the bed. Under it was a pile of feather pillows and blankets but no sheets. ‘Are they damp?’ he asked a little anxiously. ‘I should not like the child to take cold.’
He did not so much as glance at Betsy as he spoke, but yet Nan knew he liked Betsy, and liked her. What he felt about the boys she was not so sure.
‘Betsy never takes cold,’ she reassured him. ‘Timothy does, but I’ll make him keep his combinations on.’
‘Combinations of what?’ asked the elderly gentleman.
‘Just combinations,’ said Nan. ‘What we wear next to our skins.’
‘Ah,’ said the elderly gentleman. ‘Combinations. I must behold them at some future and more suitable occasion, for the extension of knowledge has always been of prime importance to me. Good night.’
Laying Betsy down on the bed, he took his candle from Robert and walked out of the room without a backward glance. Yet they looked at each other with dancing eyes, for if he had really intended to turn them adrift tomorrow, he would not have expressed a wish to see their combinations.
‘We’ll do everything he tells us,’ said Robert. ‘We’ll wash. Come on.’
Now Robert hated washing, and he hated doing what he was told, so it was all the more extraordinary that it was he who poured hot water into one of the big basins, rummaged out a bath towel from under the bedding, a piece of hard yellow soap from a cupboard under the washstand, and fell upon Timothy. There was no flannel, but he soaped Timothy’s face and neck good and hard with the soap in direct contact with the skin, ducked his head in the basin and then rubbed him dry. Timothy yelled once, kicked twice and then submitted. Nan woke up Betsy, washed her face, took off her smock and petticoat and tucked her back into bed again. Then she washed her own face and hands, took off her smock and helped the boys with their sailor suits. Followed by Absolom, they climbed up the little flight of steps and settled themselves joyously in the big bed. With the girls at the top, the boys at the bottom and Absolom in the middle there was plenty of room for all of them. It was cosy and soft with all the feather pillows and a feather bed, and about eight blankets. Their combinations, excellent garments, but as out of fashion now as the kind of grandmother Grandmama was, clung warmly. The moonlight lay in benediction upon the bed and they were immensely happy and presently immensely sleepy. Yet suddenly Nan raised her head from the deep hollow in her feather pillow and asked, ‘Robert, did you wash?’
There was no answer. He was asleep and so were Timothy, Betsy and Absolom. For a moment Nan felt annoyed, then she dropped her head back in the hollowed pillow again. What did it matter? She was too warm and happy to mind. It was nice sleeping in blankets, with no chilly sheets. She gave a sigh of contentment and closed her eyes.
A few hours later she suddenly woke up again, and in a moment she was sitting bolt upright with trickles of fear running down her spine. She had been awakened by a tremendous crash, followed by a piercing yell and then yowling and booting. She was so terrified that for a moment or two she forgot about Ezra Oake, and then she heard a tenor voice carolling out a rollicking song that was like a spring wind and the sea on a fine day and suet pudding with treacle. It was punctuated by the sound of castanets, and an extraordinary thumping sound, and was altogether so exciting that her fear vanished and she shook the others awake so that they could hear it too. ‘It’s Ezra
Oake,’ she told them. ‘He’s come home and fallen into the saucepans. But now he’s singing and I think Hector and Andromache are singing too. And he’s dancing. Come on.’
All four children had the gift of awaking instantly from the deepest of sleeps if there was anything exciting going on. They rolled out of bed on to the floor without bothering to go down the steps, picked themselves up and made for the door. Nothing except being picked up and dropped woke Absolom and so he remained in bed and asleep. They raced down the passage and down the stairs to the kitchen, where a glorious sight met their eyes. A man with a wooden leg was dancing in the bright moonlight, two saucepan lids held in his hands as castanets, singing as he danced. Hector was perched on a flowerpot on the mantelpiece hooting like mad, and Andromache was yowling melodiously on top of a pile of dishes on the kitchen table. To complete the perfection it only needed the cuckoo clock to join in, which it immediately did, cuckooing twelve times down inside the sink, and after the cuckooing came the sound of a great bell tolling far up in the sky. The children only paused for a moment at the door and then they leapt in and began to dance too, stamping their feet and clapping their hands and trying to join in the song that was like a spring wind and the sea on a fine day and suet pudding with treacle. They did not get the words properly that night, but they caught the tune. They could have sung and danced for ever, only suddenly the man tripped over a saucepan, fell on his back on the settle, stretched out his legs and was instantly asleep.
Andromache returned to her box, where she could be heard purring contentedly to her kittens, Hector flitted away into the passage and back into the library and the children gazed in adoration at the man.
He was a little man, not much bigger than Robert, and he lay with his brown gardener’s hands placidly folded on his chest. His rosy wrinkled face was even in sleep extraordinarily kind. He had a short grey beard, but there was not a single hair upon his acorn-coloured head. His brown corduroy trousers were fastened below the knee with string on his real leg, but on the wooden leg they were folded back to show the fascinating bee that was carved and painted upon its round polished surface. He had a mustard-coloured waistcoat, a full-skirted beech-brown coat and a scarlet handkerchief knotted round his throat. In the moonlight all these wonderful colours were muted and the moon lent them mystery. With a sigh of satisfaction the children tiptoed out of the kitchen and up the stairs and back to their room. One by one they climbed the flight of steps that led up into the big bed, fell among the blankets and pillows and Absolom, and snuggled down. They were asleep at once and did not see the fading of the moonlight and the growing of the dawn, or hear the morning chorus of the birds and the sound of the sheep bleating on the hills.
They woke up to the smell of fried sausages and were quickly dressed and pursuing it. Just at first, after they had caught up with it in the kitchen, they wondered if that wonderful interval of song and dance in the middle of the night had been a dream, because the man who was frying the sausages, turning them over and over in the huge iron pan with a long two-pronged fork, was wearing a shepherd’s smock tied round the waist with bast. But when he turned his head it was Ezra Oake all right, and when he saw them he smiled. He had the most wonderful smile, which seemed to run up into all the wrinkles on his face. His eyes were bright blue.
‘Lucky us weren’t out of sausages,’ he said. ‘Nor bread. If it ’ad been pickle an’ cheese you was wantin’ for your breakfast you’d ’ave ’ad none.’ And he winked one eye and chuckled. He had a deep rumbling chuckle and a husky voice. The children gathered round him fascinated by the interior of the frying pan, which contained not only sausages but bread, eggs and kidneys, all sizzling gloriously.
‘Nothin’ like a good fry for breakfast,’ said Ezra. ‘An’ a nice strong cup o’ tea. Settles the stomach.’
The cuckoo clock in the sink struck ten.
‘Ten?’ gasped the children.
‘Aye,’ said Ezra. ‘Ten. The master ’e ’ad breakfast an’ ’e was off in the trap two hours ago.’
‘Where to?’ said Robert, and fear clutched at their hearts.
‘Down to town,’ said Ezra.
‘Why?’ whispered Nan.
‘Us be short o’ cheese, pickles, biscuits, ’am, sugar an’ marmalade,’ said Ezra, and again he winked. ‘But I reckon us should be thankful ’Ector ’as ’is sardines. ’E takes the ’uff if ’e don’t get breakfast.’
The children now saw that Hector was sitting at the open window above the sink with an open tin in front of him. As they watched he stretched out a claw and delicately removed a sardine. It went down at one swallow and he removed another. Andromache was looking at them over the top of her basket, a tortoiseshell cat with apprehensive green eyes.
‘Better put the dog out,’ said Ezra.
Nan grasped Absolom’s collar and pulled him past Andromache’s basket and out into the garden. The back door opened straight into the little yard behind the house, where there was a well and a washing line. Opposite the back door four steps led up to a small walled kitchen garden on the slope of the hill. At the top of the garden under the wall were four beehives and beyond the wall was an old grey church with a tower that soared so far into the sky that it took Nan’s breath away. A door in the wall beside the beehives led from the garden to the churchyard. There was a jumble of whitewashed thatched cottages grouped round the church, and on the other side of the lane, and the smoke was curling lazily up from their crooked chimneys. She shut her eyes and smelt flowers, wood-smoke and sausages, and heard a real cuckoo calling and the sheep bleating, and what she heard and smelt matched what she had seen. Yet it seemed too good to be true.
‘Be you hungry, maid?’
She opened her eyes and it was true and Ezra was beside her. She looked up at him and smiled and he smiled back, and again she felt that the midnight dancing had been a dream, for this Ezra did not seem quite the same as the other. That had been a many-coloured, gay, fantastic creature; this was a kindly, earthy, sober man who moved slowly on his wooden leg, and this morning his corduroy trouser-leg was pulled down to hide the bee that was carved and painted upon it. But perhaps the bee was no longer there. Perhaps there were two Ezras, a midnight one and a daytime one, for anything was possible in a place like this. The daytime Ezra was looking tired and old and she was filled with remorse.
‘Because we took Rob-Roy, I mean Jason, and the trap, you had to walk all the way home from the Wheatsheaf on your wooden leg,’ she said.
He laughed and lowered his voice to a husky whisper. ‘As I be now, maid, I couldn’t ’ave done it,’ he said. ‘But as I were then I done it easy.’
And with this cryptic remark he led her back to the kitchen where the other three had already started their breakfast. Ezra had put everything that was on the kitchen table on the floor and pushed the settle up to it, with four piles of sacks of varying heights upon it, so that each child should be at exactly the right height for comfortable eating.
He himself sat opposite them behind a large black teapot and presided with a wonderful benignity. When breakfast was over they helped him to wash up, a process which involved the removal of the cuckoo clock and Andromache and her kittens to the floor, the placing of the frying pan and crockery and knives and forks in the sink, the turning of the cold tap on full blast, the emptying of the kettle of boiling water on top of the resultant whirlpool, the stirring of the mixture as though it were a Christmas pudding and then its removal to the draining board where it was left to dry by itself, because Andromache had all the drying-up cloths to make the basket soft for her kittens.
When they had finished Ezra asked, ‘Will you be stoppin’ for dinner?’
‘What’s for dinner?’ asked Timothy.
‘Fried steak an’ onions an’ rhubarb pie,’ said Ezra.
‘Yes,’ they said in chorus.
‘Then be off with you an’ let me get to me pastry,’ said Ezra. ‘An’ don’t speak to them bees. Not yet.’ They obeyed him instantly bec
ause obedience, which had seemed so difficult at Grandmama’s, came easily here, and they were out in the yard before they realised they had got there. But Nan came back to ask, ‘Will the elderly gentleman be back to dinner?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ said Ezra. ‘Over and above that little matter o’ the groceries, the master ’ad a call to make in town.’
Nan ran back to the others, feeling uneasy, and found them grouped about the well looking uneasy too. Though they brazened it out about dinner, the mere suggestion that they might not be stopping for it had upset them terribly. ‘I shall stay here until Father comes home,’ said Betsy suddenly. ‘And then I shall go on staying here, with Father.’
‘Sh!’ the others hissed at her. It seemed to them dreadfully dangerous to put it into words like that, for lately the things they didn’t want to happen were the things that happened, and the logic of this was that if you pretended not to want what you really wanted dreadfully, you would be more likely to get it.
‘But I think it would be all right to explore the garden,’ said Nan. ‘Only not to want too much to play in it every day.’
‘Come on,’ said Robert.