Mothering Sunday by Noel Streatfeild

Author:Noel Streatfeild
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2018-07-24T10:14:01+00:00

TONY

Dusk was creeping over Anna’s garden. She could, though the last flare of sunset was fading, still see the outline of her trees. She went quickly from room to room pulling the curtains together; only in her drawing-room did she linger, leaning against her French windows. It seemed a pity to shut out the last of so delicately beautiful a day. She was tired and it relaxed her to watch the grey tones of the evening dropping slowly. She never allowed her body to sag; her mother’s training and, even more, Miss Macintosh’s scorn in her schoolroom days of any form of flabbiness held her upright. The feeling of spring in the air was tiring, and her afternoon had of itself been exceptionally exhausting. The motor bus route she had planned had seemed simple enough in the time-table, but she had come to realise a country bus could not be governed by a time-table. The motor bus, or at least regular travel by the motor bus, was new to Anna, and she was filled with admiration that they arrived as near to the times stated in the time-tables as they did. People were so slow climbing on to them; she often was herself, especially when, as to-day, on the homeward route she had a heavy shopping bag to lift. In a period when she was much alone and had a great deal to worry her she found her spirit constantly refreshed by the kindness of bus conductors. “Come on, Ma, give us that bag.” “What you up to? This is ’eavy, this is. Black marketin’?” They were so patient and understanding with those passengers who sat down only to bob up again immediately. “Just a moment, conductor. I left me downstairs window open,” or “Drat that dog, he’s followed me. One moment while I run and fasten him up.” Anna was often very tired waiting in bus queues, but never out of patience, for she knew any bodily fatigue she suffered would be more than outweighed when the bus arrived by common human warmth and kindness, which was better for tiredness than a glass of wine and far more lasting.

It was not only late buses, a heavy shopping basket and spring in the air which had tired Anna. “Doe” had been most aggravating. Anna knew it was good-heartedness which had made her hang about long after she should have gone to her old Mr. Cord. The kind creature had thought she needed consoling because she had not received her Mothering Sunday parcels, but in Anna’s experience the fact that you knew somebody was being kind-hearted did not, if their good-heartedness happened to be the exasperating sort, make that person less exasperating. It had been a strain to keep on smiling and saying, “No, really there is nothing more I want.” “No thank you, I can manage perfectly. You have done everything,” and even more of a strain not to say “Do run away, my dear, good woman. I have a bus to catch.

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