The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories by Joan Aiken

Author:Joan Aiken
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf, azw3
Publisher: Big Mouth House

“If she bain't a pal to me

What care I whose pal she be?”

“Oh, blimey!” said Weaver. “I never can hear that song without crying.”

“Why?” asked the other man.

“It reminds me so of the missus.”

“Well, she's at home waiting for yer, isn't she?”

“Yes, that's just what I mean!” Sure enough, his face was all creased sideways, like a cracker that is just going to be pulled, and as the song went on its gloomy way, he fairly burst out boohooing.

“Here, shall I turn the perishing thing off?”

“Oh, no, Fred, don't do that. It's lovely—makes me feel ever so sad. Put in another sixpence and let's have it again. You don't hear it often nowadays.”

“Lumme,” said Fred, “there's no accounting for tastes.” But he kindly put in another sixpence and started the tune again when it ended, while Weaver sat happily crying into his eggs.

Harriet went quietly out.

“It's all right,” she said to Mark, who was waiting round the front. “They're good for another twenty minutes.”

“That should do us; come on quick, Ken's waiting. He filled the tank and we had a look inside (lucky that that twig stuck out, it stopped the lock from engaging properly) and it's our tree all right.”

They ran. Ken was in the cab of the van already, and his son Laurie was in the back; Harriet and Mark piled in with Laurie. As Ken pulled out, his other son Tom ran a tractor across the forecourt with a deafening roar that effectively drowned out the noise of their own departure. It seemed queer to be riding along in a van with a quince tree. A few of the quinces had fallen off, but not so many as might have been expected.

“Must be a very well-sprung van,” Mark said.

“Proper shame, though, to take your Granny's quince tree like that,” Laurie said. “Why not tell the police?”

“Oh, I expect those men were just hired to do the job. The main thing is to get it back before Granny notices.”

“Ar,” Laurie said, “it's going to be a rare old fetch-me-round getting her out and back in the ground. Lucky there's this here crane on board.”

They could feel the bumpy, slower progress as Ken edged the van up the lane, and the occasional swish of a branch against the sides. Then he stopped, turned, and backed into Granny's orchard.

Laurie stood up and prepared to jump out. “Cor,” he said, “a blooming pusscat. Where did she come from?”

They all noticed the cat for the first time. She was sitting in the quince tree looking at them somewhat balefully—a big tortoise-shell with pale green eyes. Harriet was rather upset to notice also that the red flowerpot hat that had so much attracted her attention to Miss Eaves’ head was lying at the foot of the tree.

“Do you think it's her?” she asked apprehensively. “Miss Eaves? Now I come to think of it she did look as if she might be a witch.”

“If so, why go to the trouble of hiring a van to steal the tree?” Mark answered.

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