The Dearest and the Best by Leslie Thomas

Author:Leslie Thomas [Leslie Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2013-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

BINFORD VILLAGE HALL, browed with thatch, was under the elms, a little apart from the houses, church and inn, across the cricket and football field, so that it fulfilled both the functions of sports pavilion and meeting-place. When Hob Hobson, the grocer, who was also the parish clerk, walked over the grass on the early June evening, the cricket team were practising their bowling and batting at the makeshift practice net. There had been showers that afternoon and the sky was washed and pale, with late creamy clouds in the east.

‘When you’ve finished fooling about, are you coming to the meeting?’ Hob demanded, shouting across the field. He had little patience with games. ‘It’s important. There’ll be no playing sports if the Jerries get here.’

Cat-calls floated across the pitch, for Hob was not popular, but he guessed the men and boys would leave their bats and be there.

Almost as soon as Hob had unlocked the pavilion and, grumbling, clattered away half a dozen fold-up tables left standing from the last whist drive, people began to arrive. There had been no time to place seats in rows. Hob called to the first-comers to take a chair from the concertina pile near the door and to begin making formal rows, close together.

Across the evening green they straggled, the inhabitants of the small place, anxious, puzzled, wondering why they had been summoned so importantly. The farmers and their workmen, the foresters, those who went by bus each day to work in the shops and businesses of Lyndhurst and Lymington, the elderly who had retired to the mild south and those whose families had been there for hundreds of anonymous years.

Lennie Dove came heavily across the grass carrying a bulky wooden radio set. ‘Mr Lovatt told me to bring it,’ he puffed at Hob. ‘So’s we can hear the news and Mr Churchill at nine. Some might not get home in time.’

‘Got batteries?’ asked Hob typically. ‘I have to account to the parish for the electricity, you know.’

‘Peter’s got the juice,’ sighed Lennie, nodding over his shoulder to his brother coming with a crowd of others across the grass. Their laughter drifted in the evening light. The cricketers were putting away their bats and pads in a long leather bag. Peter arrived with the radio batteries.

‘Soon get her fixed up, Hob,’ he assured the grocer. ‘Won’t be using a penny of the parish money, don’t you worry your brains about that.’ He glanced slyly at his brother. ‘Not charging us for the use of the table, I s’pose?’

Hob grunted and motioned them to put the radio set on the green-clothed table on the stage at the front of the hall. Already all the chairs were occupied, people sitting doggedly, as they always did whether it was a parish meeting or the Christmas pantomime, guarding their seats. At the rear others were standing three deep. Hob realized, with annoyance, that he had not provided for those who would be at the top table conducting the

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