The Tale of Briar Bank Page 4

  Of course, if you know anything about villages and village gossip, I am sure you will not be surprised at Mrs. Llewellyn’s peek-a-boo curiosity nor Mrs. Lythecoe’s reluctance to linger at her window. Sarah Barwick, however, had lived in the city of Manchester before she came to Sawrey. She knew something of the wider world and was of the opinion that the villagers—whose world was distinctly narrow—were far too interested in other people’s business. I daresay Sarah is right, although it is true that she herself likes to pass on the news whenever she feels like it (and never thinks of this as “gossip”). Anyway, neither Sarah’s opinion, nor mine, nor yours, for that matter, will keep the villagers from saying and doing anything they please, so we might as well save our breaths.

  With a smile and a coy wave at the nosy Agnes Llewellyn, Sarah went on her way up the street. She passed George Crook’s smithy, where in fine weather George and his helper, Charlie Hotchkiss, worked out front, shoeing a horse or repairing a wagon wheel. Next came the joinery, where through the window she saw Roger Dowling (husband to Lydia Dowling, who ran the shop), putting the finishing touches on Hugh Wickstead’s coffin. Mr. Dowling, the village’s only joiner, was always called on when a coffin was required, which was rather infrequently, since the villagers were generally a healthy lot.

  Sarah sighed, reminding herself that tomorrow was Mr. Wickstead’s funeral and the funeral luncheon at Briar Bank House, to which Miss Wickstead had invited the village. ’Twas a pity that her brother had died so soon after the two of them—separated for many years—had at last been reunited. The villagers blamed his death on a curse, having to do with some treasure he was supposed to have found. But Sarah, an altogether sensible person without a superstitious bone in her body, dismissed such silly talk straight off. The question that bothered her practical brain was how she would manage to get to Briar Bank House, considering all this snow, and especially considering all her bundles and boxes. She was providing baked goods for the lunch.

  With a wave at Roger, Sarah went on. Her next stop was Belle Green, at the top of Market Street, where she always left six hot cross buns, with two extra today because the Crooks had a boarder. But in the lane in front of Croft End Cottage, where Constable Braithwaite lived with his wife and children, Sarah met Mathilda Crook, on her way to the post office in Low Green Gate Cottage.

  Seizing the opportunity to avoid a few extra snowdrifts, Sarah handed over the buns and took the path to Castle Cottage, her next port of call. But Mathilda Crook has some information that is important to our story, so we shall follow her instead. This is the advantage of being invisible spectators, isn’t it? We can follow people without saying hello or bidding goodbye, and without giving any offense at all. Sarah will never know that we have chosen to accompany Mathilda. And Mathilda, that greedy creature, will never know that we watched her gobble down one of those six irresistible buns before she got to the post office, where she has gone to purchase a stamp.

  “There,” Mathilda said, pasting the stamp on the envelope and handing the envelope to the postmistress. She added the unnecessary instruction, in an officious tone of voice: “See that this gets into t’ afternoon post, Lucy.”

  Lucy Skead, as everyone is aware, has never been able to let a letter pass under her nose without remarking to whom it is sent. She squinted at the address. “Howard Peasmarsh, Queen Anne’s Gate, Lon’on,” she read aloud. “Why, Tildy, I didn’t know tha hast kin in Lon’on.”

  “Nae, not I,” Mathilda replied, and lifted her chin. “’Tis me gentl’man boarder, Mr. Adams. It’s his letter I’m postin’.” She leant forward over the counter and lowered her voice, although there’s no one else in the room except for you and me, and we’re standing behind the penny postcard rack where we’re not noticed. “Mr. Adams has just come over from t’ King’s Crown, in Windermere, y’see, where he was stayin’ last week.”

  “T’ King’s Crown,” Lucy said, raising her eyebrows. “That’s a smart hotel, it is. Belle Green ’ud be a bit of a come-down fer him, I’d say. What’s he doin’ here?”

  “He’s a famous photographer,” Mathilda replied, putting Lucy in her place. Mr. Adams was clearly a cut above her regular boarders, like Charlie Hotchkiss, who worked at the forge with her husband, or the occasional cyclist and fell-walker who came to the Lakes on holiday. “He’s here to take pictures.”

  “Oh, aye,” said Lucy, nodding. “Pictures of what?” she added curiously. “S’pose he’ll take a picture o’ Lady Longford’s burnt barn?”

  “I doan’t know, now, do I?” Mathilda frowned. Tell Lucy a thing, and it’d be around the village twice before teatime—although it wouldn’t hurt for folks to know that the Crooks were entertaining a Famous Photographer who sent letters to his London business associates. “Be sure t’ letter makes t’ post. Mr. Adams was most urgent about it.”

  Lucy pressed her lips together. “Tell Mr. Adams that t’ last post has already went fer t’ day. For t’ week, likely,” she added in a significant tone. “T’ ferry’s shut down wi’ a bad boiler. T’ road above Aldgate was took out by a rockslide last night. And t’ steam yacht that carries t’ mail down Coniston Water is docked fer repairs.”

  Mathilda’s eyes widened at this unexpected news. “Why, we’re marooned!” she exclaimed. “As ’twere a desert island.”

  Mathilda is right, more or less. For if the road through Aldgate is closed, you cannot easily go north to Ambleside, and if the steam yacht isn’t sailing, it will be difficult to go south—unless you go by the road, which you won’t want to do in bad weather. The great mountains block the way west when the pass is filled with snow, and when the ferry isn’t operating, there is no way across Lake Windermere to the east—although I daresay you might hire a sailboat if you are really determined. That is, as long as the lake isn’t covered with ice, in which case even a sailboat won’t serve you. You shall have to walk the mile across it, and risk the thin ice in the middle.

  Lucy nodded agreeably. “Cut off from t’ outside world, as ’twere,” she said, adding, “I s’pose Mr. Adams’ll be stayin’ a few more days at Belle Green. Since he can’t get away, I mean.”

  “I s’pose he will,” Mathilda agreed, this happy thought having occurred to her at the same moment. Mr. Adams had paid in advance for only three days, but he might be forced to stay for a week or more, depending on the weather. She began to mentally inventory her larder. There was plenty of bacon for breakfast and apples for pie and the hens might be coaxed to lay an egg or two, but she should have to stop in at Lydia’s shop and see about a few sausages.

  Deirdre Malone and the Young Suttons

  Mathilda was still tallying the contents of her cupboard when the door opened.

  Lucy looked up. “Deirdre Malone,” she said sternly, “tell that gaggle o’ young Suttons to stay outside. I doan’t need boots trackin’ snow on my clean floor. Come in and be sharp about it. Tha’rt lettin’ in t’ cold.”

  Deirdre bit her tongue, wanting to say that the three older Suttons were not a “gaggle.” She closed the door, handed over her package, and got in return a biggish bundle of post. Deirdre, who had just celebrated her fifteenth birthday, is Irish, which I am sure you have already guessed from her green eyes, freckles, and tendrils of red hair escaping under her brown knitted cap. She is in the employ of Mr. and Mrs. Sutton, whose many children (eight at last count) require a great deal of looking after.

  “T’ letter on top is t’ third in three weeks from t’ Kendal Bank,” Lucy remarked in a meaningful tone. She leaned forward. “Our Mr. Sutton’s not in trouble wi’ t’ bank, is he, Deirdre?” To the villagers, Mr. Sutton was always “our Mr. Sutton,” quite understandably, too. He was a dedicated veterinarian, and they never hesitated to summon him when their animals were sick or injured, no matter whether it was midnight or broad day. They were not, unfortunately, quite so quick with their payments.

  “In trouble wi’ t’ bank?” Mathilda exclaimed. Her eyes widened. “Folks’ll be that sorry to hear it
, they will!”

  “Mr. Sutton is not in trouble!” Deirdre exclaimed tartly. “And it wouldn’t matter if he was. His private affairs are nobody’s business but his own.”

  “Mind thi tongue,” snapped the postmistress, stung. “Tha’s no call to come all over haughty-like, as if tha was a lady.”

  “And you’ve no call to go spreadin’ rumors,” Deirdre retorted, “as if you was a gossip.” Her green eyes flashed fire as she turned to Mathilda. “Nor you neither, Mathilda Crook. I’ll thank you both to keep your tongues in your mouths.”

  “Well!” Mathilda exclaimed, trying not to show that she was rattled by Deirdre’s reprimand. “This is a pretty business, my girl.”

  “I am not your girl,” Deirdre said, and left, closing the door smartly behind her.

  Safely hidden behind the penny postcard rack, you and I may smile admiringly, for even though Lucy Skead and Mathilda Crook are reputed to be the worst gossips in the village, they are rarely rebuked for it—let alone by a girl, and Irish at that. But Deirdre Malone is an unusual young person, and often displays a remarkably spirited independence. She is used to fending for herself, and while she knows her place, she is not always known for keeping to it. What’s more, she is fiercely protective of the Sutton family, mostly because she loves them, but also because she is very grateful to Mrs. Sutton for choosing her, out of all the other girls in the orphanage, to come to live and work at Courier Cottage.

  We shall leave Lydia and Mathilda to speculate about that letter from the bank (and of course they will talk, rebuked or no) and follow Deirdre and the three older Suttons waiting outside the post office door. Barely visible beneath their mufflers and pulled-down hats, they turned out to be Lydia, twelve; Jamie, eleven; and Nan, nine, affectionately known to all as Mouse. They were at loose ends this morning, Miss Nash having dismissed Sawrey School because of the snow and being likely to dismiss it again tomorrow, to the despair of the mothers in the village and the great delight of the children.

  Lydia, Jamie, and Nan celebrated their unexpected holiday with a running snowball fight. Deirdre might have joined in (she was, after all, only three years older than her oldest charge), but she was too troubled by the uncomfortable weight of the bank’s letter in her coat pocket. For Lucy Skead had hit the mark. The letter was indeed the third in a month, and Deirdre—who had overheard Mr. and Mrs. Sutton discussing the dreadful situation—guessed that it must contain a final ultimatum. She was reluctant to hand it over, for fear of seeing Mrs. Sutton burst into tears again.

  The children, unaware of this rising tide of difficulties, were delighting in the magic of the fresh, deep snow. Their noisy, good-natured battle raged from the top of Market Street nearly to the bottom—until Jamie’s snowball hit the front window of the joinery, and Roger Dowling, in a fury, jumped up from Mr. Wickstead’s coffin and yanked the door open.

  “What dost tha young urchins think tha’rt doin’, breakin’ people’s winders?” he roared. “Dost tha want me to tell thi father? He’ll warm thi bottoms reet good, I’ll warrant.”

  But thankfully, the snowball had not broken the window, just rattled it a bit. Deirdre made Jamie take off his hat and apologize like a man, then hurried her unruly charges in the direction of Courier Cottage. And while I am as eager as you must be to learn the contents of the letter from the Kendal Bank and to hear what Mrs. Sutton said when she read it, we shall have to leave that scene until later and turn our attention to Miss Potter.

  She has just woken up on her first full day at Hill Top, and we don’t want to miss a moment of her pleasure.

  3

  Miss Potter Entertains at Breakfast

  At home in London, Beatrix was in the habit of rising an hour before breakfast. There were a great many household matters to supervise, as well as her mother’s and father’s needs to attend to. She often felt like lingering in bed, but if she didn’t get an early start, she would never have time for her own drawing and painting.

  At Hill Top Farm, however, Beatrix got not only an early start, but an eager one. She was always out of bed and dressed before the sun peered hopefully over Claife Heights, holding its breath until it saw that the village had survived the long, dark night and was fully prepared to rise to a new day. This morning, however, exhausted after the long railway journey, she slept late, and when she woke at last, she was not quite sure where she was. The light reflected on the beamed ceiling seemed brighter than usual, and the familiar farmyard sounds were strangely muted.

  But when she heard Chanticleer greet the sun with a jubilant crow and Kitchen, the cow, give a tender, chuckling moo to her calf, she realized with a shiver of delight that, yes, truly, she was at the farm. The day that lay ahead of her could be filled with all the country pleasures that she loved. She could draw and paint and write letters or bake something sweet or finish the mitten she was knitting, or practice spinning her own Herdwick fleece at the old spinning wheel she’d bought at a farm auction. And of course, there was the letter she’d promised to write to her mother—a chore that had to be finished before the afternoon post went.

  But before she did anything else, she had to see the snow. Was it really as deep as it had seemed last night? Was it even deeper? She climbed out of bed, threw a paisley shawl over her flannel nightgown, and hurried to the window that looked out over the garden and the barnyard.

  The magical sight made her want to reach straightaway for her paintbrush and watercolors. It was as if an energetic and magical Jack Frost—surely a painter at heart, don’t you think?—had transformed the world into a fairyland, just for her. The clean, spare landscape below and beyond was a canvas brushed with a thousand shades of white, smudged with gray-blue shadows, and accented with sketchy charcoal lines of bare black trees and the occasional bright green and red of a holly bush. Snow frosted the branches of all the trees, covered the lane, and drifted over the garden wall. The white blanket across the barnyard was cross-stitched in brown by the narrow path Mr. Jennings had shoveled so he could feed the farm animals—the cows, pigs, and pony, the chickens and ducks—sheltering in the cozy stone barn. Tibbie and Queenie and their lambs, warm and dry in their wooly winter coats, stayed out in the meadows in all kinds of weather. They were Herdwicks, an ancient, hardy breed of sheep whose thick wool was coarse and wiry, perfect for long-wearing garments like the tweed skirt Jane Crossfield had woven for her.

  Beatrix put on the skirt now, since it was the warmest thing she owned, and added a white cotton blouse, a green woolen jumper with handy pockets, green woolen stockings, and her serviceable leather clogs—pattens, they were called by the farm wives who wore them. She left her city shoes (leather, with inch-high heels and thin soles) in the closet. They weren’t sturdy enough for the country, and besides, they reminded her of London. There, she was Mr. and Mrs. Potter’s unstylish and unattractive spinster daughter, who supervised her parents’ household and had managed to achieve some small measure of fame with her books for children.

  But when she came to Hill Top and put on her tweeds and clogs, she was transformed as if by some mysterious, elemental magic into Miss Potter, countrywoman, farmer, shepherd. This was who she really was. This was where she truly belonged. And someday (how soon or how that might happen, she could not imagine), she dreamed of living here the year around.

  Now, if you or I were as old as Beatrix and wanted to live in a house of our own, we wouldn’t stand it for a moment, would we? We would pack our things, promise to write, and fly out the door to follow our hearts or seek our fortunes or whatever else we had in mind to do. But in Beatrix’s time, an only daughter—especially if she had no suitable prospects for marriage—was expected to stay at home and take care of her parents. When she bought her own farm, Beatrix was attempting something very difficult. She was trying to do what her parents wanted and what her heart wanted. I daresay you will agree that this is not an easy task.

  Downstairs, Beatrix poked up the fire in the grate, added several lumps of coal to the range,
and filled the cast-iron kettle with water. She fed Nutmeg and Thackeray, put some fresh newsprint in the bottom of their cage, and moved it a little closer to the fire. In the chilly dairy-room at the back of the house she found what Mrs. Jennings had put out for her: a half-dozen fresh eggs in an earthenware crock, a bowl of fresh butter, and a pitcher of milk topped with a layer of thick yellow cream. She was measuring coffee into the coffeepot and wondering whether Mrs. Jennings might have some bread and bacon to spare, when she heard a knock at the door and Sarah Barwick’s husky voice.

  “Yoo-hoo!” Sarah called, and knocked again. “Bea, are you up yet? Spuggy Pritchard told me you’d got here last night, late. I’ve brought you some breakfast.”

  Beatrix opened the door and happily greeted Sarah, who was holding a packet of buns and a sausage wrapped in paper. “Well, you’re a welcome sight,” Beatrix said with a laugh. “I was just wondering what I should have besides eggs, and here you are, sausage and buns in hand. A fairy godmother.”

  “A fairy godmother with snow all over her boots,” Sarah said ruefully, unfastening her galoshes and stepping out of them. She brushed the snow from her corduroy trousers. “It’s quite some morning out there, I’ll tell you. No bicycle deliveries for me today. The lanes are clogged with snow, and everybody who owns a shovel is using it. Margaret Nash has dismissed school, and the ferry is out and the steam yacht has shut down. Oh, and the roads north and south of Hawkshead are closed.” And having delivered all of this information in one breath, she took a fresh one. “We’re marooned, or as good as. Not even the post can get through.”

  “Not even the post!” Beatrix exclaimed, dismayed, thinking that she could not write to her mother.