(3/13) News from Thrush Green
| News from Thrush Green | |
| Thrush Green [3] | |
| Miss Read | |
| Academy Chicago Publishers (1970) | |
| Rating: | ★★★★☆ |
| Tags: | Historical Historicalttt |
Product Description
Tullivers, the former home of old Admiral Trigg and his sister Lucy, had stood empty for many months. Then, one bright April day, two newcomers move in -- an attractive young woman and her son -- and the villagers begin to show their interest and attention, especially several bachelors.
About the Author
Miss Read is the pseudonym of Mrs. Dora Saint, a former schoolteacher beloved for her novels of English rural life, especially those set in the fictional villages of Thrush Green and Fairacre. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955, and Miss Read continued to write until her retirement in 1996. In the 1998, she was awarded an MBE, or Member of the Order of the British Empire, for her services to literature. She lives in Berkshire.
News from Thrush Green
Miss Read
Table of Contents
3 The Priors Meet Their Neighbours
6 A Dinner Party at Thrush Green
17 Richard Contemplates Matrimony
18 Harold Entertains an Old Friend
Illustrated by J. S. Goodall
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
Boston • New York
First Houghton Mifflin paperback edition 2008
Copyright © 1970 by Miss Read
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce
selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South,
New York, New York 10003.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 70-143325
ISBN
978-0-618-88440-7 (pbk.)
Printed in the United States of America
DOC
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For
Marjorie and Glen
with love
'You are now collecting your People delightfully, getting them exactly into such a spot as is the delight of my life; 3 or 4 Families in a Country Village is the very thing to work on.'
J
ANE
A
USTEN
in a letter written to her
niece Anna who was then writing novels
Contents
1 For Sale—Tullivers
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2 Who is She?
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3 The Priors Meet Their Neighbours
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4 A Shock For Dotty
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5 A Problem for Winnie
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6 A Dinner Party at Thrush Green
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7 A Question of Divorce
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8 Gossip and Gardening
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9 Sam Curdle Tries His Tricks
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10 Harold is in Trouble
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11 Albert has Suspicions
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12 Albert is Struck Down
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13 Christmas Preparations
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14 Sudden Death
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15 Harold Takes Charge
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16 Harold Thinks Things Out
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17 Richard Contemplates Matrimony
[>]
18 Harold Entertains an Old Friend
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19 Richard Tries His Luck
[>]
20 An Engagement
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1 For Sale—Tullivers
IF you live at Thrush Green you can expect your morning post between 7.30 and 8.15 a.m.
If it is Willie Bond's week to deliver the letters, then they will be early. But if Willie Marchant is the postman then it is no use fretting and fuming. The post will arrive well after eight o'clock, and you may as well resign yourself to the fact.
'It just shows you can't go by looks,' Thrush Green residents tell each other frequently. Willie Bond weighs fifteen stone, is short-legged and short-necked, and puffs in a truly alarming fashion as he pushes his bicycle up the steep hill from the post office at Lulling. His eyes are mere slits in the pink and white moon of his chubby face, and his nickname of Porky is still used by those who were his schoolfellows.
Willie Marchant, on the other hand, is a gaunt bean-pole of a fellow with a morose, lined face, and a cigarette stub in the corner of his mouth. He scorns to dismount at Thrush Green's sharp hill, but tacks purposefully back and forth across the road with a fine disregard for the motorists who suffer severe shock when coming upon him suddenly at his manoeuvres. He was once knocked off his bicycle as he made a sharp right-hand turn from one bank to the other, but escaped with a grazed knee and a torn trouser leg.
Dr Bailey, whose house was nearby, had treated both postman and driver, and found that the motorist, though unscarred, was by far the more severely shaken of the two. But despite this mishap, the violent remarks of later motorists and the advice given unstintingly by his clients on Thrush Green, Willie continues to proceed on his erratic course every other week.
The fact that both men have the same Christian name might, at first sight, seem confusing, but there are distinct advantages. As Ella Bembridge remarked once at a Thrush Green cocktail party, in a booming voice heard by all present:
'It's jolly useful when you're upstairs coping with your bust bodice or bloomers, and you hear whoever-it-is plonking down the letters on the hall table! I just shout down: "Thanks, Willie", and you know you'll be all right.'
There had been a sudden burst of animated conversation as Ella's fellow-guests, embarrassed or simply amused by Ella's unguarded remarks, sought to tell each other hastily of their own arrangements for receiving and disposing of their mail.
'I have had to install one of those wire cage things,' said Harold Shoosmith, the bachelor who lives in one of the handsomest houses on the green. 'Since the puppy came, nothing's safe on the floor. He ate a cheque for six pounds ten, and the rates' demand, all in one gulp last Thursday. I didn't mind the latter, naturally, but I hated to see the cheque going down.'
'We leave our letters sticking out of the flap,' said the rector, 'and Willie takes them!'
'Not if it's a north wind,' his wife Dimity reminded him. 'The rain blows in and drenches them. He has to open the door then, and take them from the window-sill.'
Winnie Bailey, the doctor's wife, said she tried to put hers in the post-box on the corner of the green. It made her go for a walk, for one thing, and she sometimes wondered if Willie Bond read the postcards.
'Why not?' said Harold Shoosmith. 'I
always
read postcards; other people's as well as my own. Damn it all, if you don't want a thing to be read you put it in an envelope!'
Someone said, rather coldly, that was exactly why she
never
used postcards. One was at the mercy of unscrupulous busybodies. Her letters were left, neatly secured with a rubber band, on the hall table to be collected by whichever Willie was on duty.
Her companion said he left his in a box in the porch. Dotty Harmer, an elderly spinster as erratic as her name implied, vouchsafed the information that she hung hers on the gate in a string bag, and that they hid blown away once or twice. Significant glances were exchanged behind the lady's back. What else would you expect of Dotty?
'My new next door neighbour,' remarked Winnie Bailey, 'leaves hers pinned under the knocker, I see. It must weigh seven or eight pounds. It's that great brass dolphin old Admiral Trigg fixed up years ago, you know. Nothing could get blown away from that thing!'
Suddenly, the subject of letters was dropped. Here was something of much greater importance. Who was Winnie Bailey's neighbour? Where did she come from? Would she be staying long?
The party turned expectantly towards Winnie, avid for the latest news from Thrush Green.
The house where the newcomer had recently arrived had been empty for two years. Tullivers, as it was called, had been the home of old Admiral Josiah Trigg and his sister Lucy for almost thirty years, and when he died, suddenly, one hot afternoon, after taking the sharp hill from the town at a spanking pace, his sister continued to muddle along in a vague, amiable daze, for another eighteen months, before succumbing to bronchitis.
'If it's not the dratted hill,' pronounced old Piggott the sexton gloomily, 'that carries off us Thrush Green folks, it's the dratted east wind. You gotter be tough to live 'ere.'
You certainly had to be tough to live at Tullivers after the Admiral had gone, for Lucy Trigg, in her eighties, could not be bothered to have any domestic help, nor could she be bothered to light fires, to cook meals for herself, nor to clean the house and tend the garden.
Winnie Bailey, the soul of tact, did what she could in an unobtrusive way, but knew she was fighting a losing battle. The curtains grew greyer, the window-panes misty with grime, the door-step and path were spattered with bird-droppings, and the docks and nettles rioted in the borders once tended by Lucy's brother and kept trim and shipshape with pinks, pansies and geums neatly confined within immaculate box hedges.