20. Coming Home

THE rector, as he had intended, found Dimity alone at the house, for he too had observed Ella striding towards Lulling Woods, basket in hand, and had remembered that this was the day on which the eggs were collected.

'Why, Charles!' cried Dimity. 'How lovely to see you! I didn't know you were allowed out yet.'

'This is my first walk,' admitted the rector. 'But I wanted to come and thank you properly for ad that you have done.' How convenient, at times, thought the rector, was the English use of the second person plural!

'Ella's out, I'm afraid,' said Dimity, leading the way to the sitting-room. 'But I don't think she'd be very long.'

The rector felt a little inner agitation at this news, but did his best to look disappointed at Ella's temporary absence. He handed Dimity the flowers with a smile and a small bow.

'Freesias!' breathed Dimity with rapture, thinking how dreadfully extravagant dear Charles had been, and yet how delicious it was to have such treasures brought to her. 'How very, very kind, Charles. They are easily our favourite flowers.'

The rector murmured politely while Dimity unwrapped them. Their fragrance nungled with the faint smell of wood smoke that lingered in the room and the rector thought, yet again, how warm and full of life this small room was. Ella's book lay face downward on the arm of a chair, her spectacles lodged across it. Dimity's knitting had been hastily put aside when she answered the door, and decorated a low table near the fire. The clock ticked merrily, the fire whispered and crackled, the cat purred upon the window-sill, sitting foursquare and smug after its midday meal.

A feeling of great peace descended upon the rector despite the preoccupations of the errand in hand. Could he ever hope, he wondered, to have such comfort in his own home?

'Do sit down,' said Dimity, 'while I arrange these.'

I'll come with you,' said Charles, with a glance at the clock. Ella must have reached Dotty's by now.

He followed Dimity into the small kitchen which smelt deliriously of gingerbread.

'There!' gasped Dimity, 'I'd forgotten my cakes in the excitement.'

She put down the flowers and opened the oven door.

'Could you pass that skewer, Charles?' she asked, intent on the oven's contents. Obediently, the rector passed it over.

'Harold is coming to tea tomorrow,' said Dimity, 'and he adores gingerbread." She poked busily at the concoctions, withdrew the tins from the oven and put them on the scrubbed wooden table to cool.

The rector leant against the dresser and watched her as she fetched vases and arranged the freesias. His intentions were clear enough in his own mind, but it was decidedly difficult to make a beginning, particularly when Dimity was so busy.

'I must show vou our broad beans," chattered Dimity, quite unconscious of the turmoil in her old friend's heart. 'They are quite three inches high. Harold gave us some wonderful stuff to keep the slugs off.'

Fond as the rector was of Harold Shoosmith, he found himself disliking his intrusion into the present conversation. Also the subject of slugs, he felt, was not one which made an easy stepping-stone to such delicate matters as he himself had in mind. The kitchen clock reminded him sharply of the passage of time, and urgency lent cunning to the rector's stratagems.

'I should love to see them sometime,' said Charles, 'but I wonder if I might sit down for a little? My legs are uncommonly feeble after this flu.'

Dimity was smitten with remorse.

'You poor dear! How thoughtless of me, Charles! Let's take the freesias into the sitting-room and you must have a rest.'

She fluttered ahead, pouring out a little flow of sympathy and self-reproach which fell like music upon the rector's ears.

'Have a cushion behind your head,' said Dimity, when the rector had lowered himself into an armchair. She plumped it up with her thin hands and held it out invitingly. The rector began to feel quite guilty, and refused it firmly.

'Harold says it's the final refinement of relaxation,' said Dimity, and noticed a wince of pain pass over the rector's cherubic face. 'Oh dear, I'm sure you're over-tired! You really shouldn't have ventured so far,' she protested.

'Dimity,' said Charles, taking a deep breath. 'I want to ask you something. Something very important.'

'Yes, Charles?' said Dimity, picking up her knitting busily, and starting to count stitches with her forefinger. The rector, having made a beginning, stuck to his guns manfully.

'Dimity,' he said gently, 'I have a proposal to make.'

Dimity's thin finger continued to gallop along the needle and she frowned with concentration. Inexorably, the little clock on the mantelpiece ticked the precious minutes away. At length she reached the end of the stitches and looked with bright interest at her companion.

'Who from?' she asked briskly. 'The Mothers' Union?'

'No!' said the rector, fortissimo. 'Not from the Mothers' Union!' His voice dropped suddenly. 'The proposal, Dimity, is from me.' And, without more ado, the rector began.

'Oh Charles,' quavered Dimity, when he had ended. Her eyes were full of tears.

'You need not answer now,' said the rector gently, holding one of the thin hands in his own two plump ones. 'But do you think you ever could?'

'Oh Charles,' repeated Dimity, with a huge happy sigh. 'Oh, yes, please!'

When Ella came in, exactly three minutes later, she found them standing on the hearthrug, hand in hand. Before they had time to say a word, she had rushed across the room, enveloped Dimity in a bear-hug and kissed her soundly on each cheek.

'Oh Dimity,' said Ella, from her heart, 'I'm so happy!'

'Dash it all, Ella,' protested Charles, 'that's just what we were going to say!'

Harold Shoosmith heard the good news from the rector himself, that same evening, and was overjoyed.

'I can't begin to tell you how pleased I am,' he said delightedly, thumping his friend quite painfully in his excitement. 'And now you can get rid of that wretched Mrs Butler.'

'Upon my soul!' exclaimed the rector, his smile vanishing, 'I had quite forgotten all about her. What a dreadful thing!'

'Think nothing of it,' Harold assured him. 'She'll be snapped up in no time by some other poor devil in need of a house-keeper.'

He took a letter from his pocket.

'By the way, I've heard from the bishop.'

'Ours?' asked Charles.

'No–theirs. He says hell be delighted to unveil the memorial.'

The rector's face glowed happily.

'Isn't that wonderful? I'm most grateful to you, Harold, for arranging ad this. Without you Thrush Green would never have remembered Nathaniel at all, I fear.'

'I suggest the bishop stays here overnight,' said Harold, 'and I'll get Betty Bed to cook for a small supper party. Ella and Dimity, of course, and one or two more who would like to meet him.'

'Thank you," said the rector, 'that would be very kind.' He looked across the green towards Dimity's house. 'It will be a great pleasure to be able to entertain again. The house has been so cheerless I haven't liked to invite anyone to stay. I'm afraid Ella will miss Dimity very much.'

He looked with a speculative eye at his companion.

'I suppose you don't feel towards Ella—' he began.

'Charles, please!' protested Harold faindy, closing his eyes.

Thrush Green wholeheartedly rejoiced in the news of the engagement. The rector's sad plight had been a source of great pity, and Dimity, for ad her timid and old-maidish ways, was recognised as a woman of fine character and sweet disposition. Some said that Ella had 'put upon' Miss Dimity too long, and not a few hoped that Ella would regret her past bullyings, and realise that she was at fault.

In actual fact, Ella's spirits were high. Now that the blow had fallen she found that the changed circumstances invigorated her. That Dimity should have chosen the rector still surprised her, for although in the last week or two she had suspected that the rector's feelings were warmer than before, yet she had for so long envisaged Harold Shoosmith as the only real claimant of Dimity's affections that it was difficult to dismiss him from her conjectures.

Within a week of the announcement Ella had decided to move her workbench from the kitchen to the sitting-room and to have a cupboard fitted on the landing for her painting materials. Dimity was equally engrossed in planning her new abode.

The wedding was to take place quietly in the summer, and meanwhile the rectory was to be completely refurbished and decorated as Dimity thought best. It gave the two friends a common interest, and lessened the inevitable pangs of parting after so many years, as they threw themselves wholeheartedly into their preparations.

'It was good while it lasted, Dim,' said Ella philosophically one evening, as they packed some china to be taken across to the rectory. She was thinking of the little house which they had shared.

'It will go on lasting, Ella,' said Dimity. But she was thinking of the friendship which they had shared.

As the fifteenth of March drew near, the inhabitants of Thrush Green turned their attention to the approaching ceremony. The workmen had finished their task in good time, and three fine steps of York stone formed a pleasant cream-coloured plinth for the statue which was due to arrive at any moment.

'The only thing that worries me,' confessed Harold to Charles, is whether it will be worth looking at. It would be dreadful to find it looked all wrong on the green after so much effort.'

'The thing that worries me,' answered the rector, 'is finding the rest of the money.'

'But you know—' began Harold, and was cut short.

'Yes, I do know. You're much too generous. But at the moment the fund is only just over a hundred pounds, and I shudder to think of the final cost.'

Harold Shoosmith put his hand on his friend's shoulder.

'Don't you realise that this is the culmination of almost a lifetime's ambitions?' said Harold, with conviction. 'I've dreamt about this for years. Nathaniel Patten meant a great deal to me when I was in Africa. His life and work brought me to Thrush Green–and I hope I'll never leave it. Don't rob me of a very real pleasure, Charles. This statue may be Thrush Green's memorial, but it's also a thank offering on my part for hope when I needed it abroad, and happiness at finding myself in Nathaniel's birthplace.'

'I understand,' said Charles Henstock. 'And thank you.'

The statue arrived two days before it was to be unveiled. It was a perfect spring day, warm and sunny, with a great blue and white sky against which the black rooks wheeled and cawed. In the gardens of Thrush Green the velvety polyanthus was in bloom, and a few crocuses spread their yellow and purple petals to disclose dusty orange stamens.

A little knot of people gathered round the lorry to watch the sacking wrappings being removed from the swathed figure. The young sculptor watched anxiously as his masterpiece emerged. He was a well-dressed thickset young man, red of face and bright of eye, and a source of some amazement to various Thrush Green folk who had been expecting someone looking much more pallid and artistic with, possibly, a beard, a beret and sandals.

He helped his workmen hoist the bronze figure upright on the grass and seemed pleased to hear the little cries of pleasure which greeted the life-size figure. It was indeed a fine piece of work. He had caught exactly the benevolent facial expression and the Pickwickian figure in its cut-away coat There was something lovable and friendly about its size and its stance, and Thrush Green prepared to welcome Nathaniel warmly.

It took several hours to put the bronze figure securely upon its plinth and by that time ad Thrush Green had called to see its new arrival.

'Do you think it should be covered?' asked the rector anxiously of the artist.

'I don't think we need to worry,' smiled the young man. 'He's going to stand on Thrush Green in all weathers for many years, I hope.'

Very early, on the morning of March the fifteenth, before anyone was astir, Harold Shoosmith leant from his bedroom window and looked upon the fulfilment of his dreams. Later in the day, the unveiling would take place, and there would be speeches, cheers and crowds. But now, in the silence of dawn he and his old friend were alone together. Exactly one hundred years ago, on just such a March morning, Nathaniel had been born in a nearby cottage.

A warm finger of sunlight crept across the dewy grass. At last, thought Harold, the long winter at Thrush Green had ended and, exiles no longer, both he and Nathaniel Patten were home again.