“ ‘The garden is well known locally,’ he remarked. ‘Are you a member of these parts?’
“ ‘No,’ I answered, ‘I come from London,’ and it seemed to me his gaze grew more intent.
“ ‘I am only a bird of passage, too,’ he said easily. ‘Are you just down for the day?’
“I informed him that I had come down to write up the local fête; being young and foolish, I rather think I implied that only the earnest request of the organiser for me in particular had persuaded the editor to dispense with my invaluable services even for a few hours. And all the time his eyes, black and inscrutable, never left my face.
“ ‘The show is being held in a field about a quarter of a mile farther on,’ he said when I had finished. ‘Good morning.’
“He turned abruptly on his heels and walked slowly away towards the house, leaving me a little annoyed, and with a feeling that not only had I been snubbed, but, worse still, had been seen through. I felt that I had failed to convince him that editors tore their hair and bit their nails when they failed to secure my services; I felt, indeed, just that particular type of ass that one does feel when one has boasted vaingloriously, and been listened to with faintly amused boredom. I know that as I resumed my walk towards the agricultural fête I endeavoured to restore my self-respect by remembering that he was merely a glorified yokel, who probably knew no better.”
The Writer leant back in his chair with a faint smile.
“That awful show still lives in my memory,” he continued after a while. “There were swing boats, and one of those ghastly shows where horses go round and round with a seasick motion and ‘The Blue Bells of Scotland’ emerges without cessation from the bowels of the machine. There were coco-nut shies and people peering through horse-collars to have their photographs taken, and over everything an all-pervading aroma of humanity unsuitably clad in its Sunday best on a warm day. However, the job had to be done, so I bravely plunged into the marquees devoted to the competing vegetables. I listened to the experts talking around me with the idea of getting the correct local colour, but as most of their remarks were incomprehensible, I soon gave that up as a bad job and began looking about me.
“There were potatoes and carrots and a lot of things which I may have eaten, but completely failed to recognise in a raw state. And then suddenly, through a gap in the asparagus, I saw a vast yellowy-green object. It seemed about four times the size of an ordinary Rugby football, and a steady stream of people circled slowly round it and an ancient man, who periodically groomed it with a vast coloured handkerchief. So I steered a zigzag course between a watery-eyed duck on my right and a hand-holding couple on my left, and joined the stream. At close quarters it seemed even vaster than when viewed from the other side of the tent, and after I’d made the grand tour twice, I thought I’d engage the ancient man in conversation. Unfortunately, he was stone deaf, and his speech was a little indistinct owing to a regrettable absence of teeth, so we managed between us to rivet the fascinated attention of every human being in the tent. In return for the information that it was the largest pumpkin ever produced in Kent, I volunteered that I had come from London specially to write about it. He seemed a bit hazy about London, but when I told him it was larger than Appledore he appeared fairly satisfied that his pumpkin would obtain justice.
“He also launched into a voluble discourse, which was robbed of much of its usefulness by his habit of holding his false teeth in position with his thumb as he spoke. Luckily a local interpreter was at hand, and from him I gathered that the old man was eighty-five, and had never been farther afield than Ashford, forty-eight years ago. Also that he was still gardener at Cedarlime, a house which I must have passed on my way from the station. Standing well back it was: fine flower gardens—‘but not what they was. Not since the new gentleman come—a year ago. Didn’t take the same interest—not him. A scholard, they said ’e was; crates and crates of books had come to the house—things that ’eavy that they took three and four men to lift them.’