it in the bookcase later.
Then Timothy dashed in, to say come and see how incredibly clever Mr. Gotobed was being. He was not only cutting down the hedge, he was weaving it into a kind of basket-work, half-cutting branches and twisting them over. Timothy’s eager look was, as ever, irresistible. Besides, she was sick of the cold and dust. Wiping her hands on her backside, she strolled out into the warm balmy afternoon air.
The first stretch of hedge had been reduced to a narrow five-foot-high barrier, as ingeniously woven as Tim had said. It made the garden look much bigger. Mr. Gotobed stood humbly panting and touching his cap, awaiting her approval and looking more like a dog than ever. It made her feel suddenly like the lady of the manor.
‘Lovely,’ she said. The wrinkled folds of his face split into a boyish grin, and she thought with a sudden tiny fear and sorrow that there was a hopeful schoolboy trapped, even inside the old leathery reptilian folds of Mr. Gotobed’s skin.
‘I’ll ha’ it all laid by tonight,’ he said. ‘That ain’t the right season for the work, really. That’s winter work, when theer’s nought else to do. But the ol’ hedge ’ll come again awright. That’s good to be hedgin’ again. In the old days, brother an’ me we could lay a hundred yards of hedge a day. But there in’t no call for them now, with them there cutters on tractors.’
‘Doesn’t it hurt your hands?’
‘Not if you’ve got the right tackle.’ He held up his hands. His huge stubby fingers stuck out of thick black ragged leather gauntlets. One hand held a glint-edged billhook of a shape so savage it made her shudder. It might have cut down a tax-collector in the Peasants’ Revolt.
‘Would you like a coffee? Or a cold drink?’ she said to the black weapons of massacre, afraid that her shudder might have given offence.
He said, ‘A cold drink would do nicely, missus.’ Then he caught himself and looked suddenly worried, as if he’d let himself be carried away too far by the general good humour. ‘If you ain’t got a beer,’ he added cautiously.
‘I haven’t got beer. We’ve got Coke?’ It seemed absurd to be offering someone out of the Peasants’ Revolt a Coke. But he beamed at her now.
‘Coke ’ll do fine, missus. I like a nice Coke.’
‘Come in, then, come in!’ She led the way into the kitchen. ‘Straight from the can, or would you like a glass?’
No answer. She turned, and found he was nowhere to be seen. Baffled, she went outside again. He was sitting in the boiling sun, on an old bench by the kitchen door.
‘Do come in! It’s cool in the kitchen! You could do with cooling off!’
‘No, missus, I’ll stop here. Sepp Yaxley allus let me sit here, when I was restin’!’ Behind his mended glasses, his face was stubborn, defiant, unknowable. Like a thick-skinned reptile’s again. But there was the slightest quaver of panic in his voice, and his hands were shaking, though that might have been just the exertion.
‘Oh, suit yourself,’ she said, a bit put out; and got the can of Coke and gave it to him. Watched those thick stubby fingers pull at the tab, and need three tries to do it. His hands really were trembling.
Oh, really, it was just age and exertion.
There seemed nothing else to say, so she went back to her dusting.
She left the mantelpiece till last. It was crammed with stuff. An American clock, that Tim had failed to get going. Several big bits of Staffordshire pottery, with whole arms and legs missing. Bundles of papers behind every one. An avalanche waiting to fall.
She started cautiously at the left-hand end. A miniature brass milk-churn with a lid. But, careful as she was, she nearly dropped it. It weighed a ton. The thin wire handle cut into her fingers. Must be full of lead . . .
She put it on the table and took the lid off and peered inside. It seemed full of pound coins; but oddly shiny new pound coins. Surely pound coins had come in less than seven years ago? She tipped them out. No, they weren’t pound coins. Too thin. A Queen’s head on them, but the wrong Queen . . . Victoria. She turned one of them over.
Dear God, they were sovereigns!
Sixty-four gold sovereigns. By the time she had finished counting them, her own hands were trembling. She had nearly ten thousand pounds under