Tales of the Unexpected

since, and I know every inch of it. Each day I grow to love it more.’
    ‘It must be wonderful in summer.’
    ‘Oh, but it is. You should come down and see it in May and June. Will you promise to do that?’
    ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘I’d love to come,’ and as I spoke I was watching the figure of a woman dressed in red moving among the flower-beds in the far distance. I saw her cross over a wide expanse of lawn, and there was a lilt in her walk, a little shadow attending her, and when she was over the lawn, she turned left and went along one side of a high wall of clipped yew until she came to another smaller lawn that was circular and had in its centre a piece of sculpture.
    ‘This garden is younger than the house,’ Sir Basil said. ‘It was laid out early in the eighteenth century by a Frenchman called Beaumont, the same fellow who did Levens, in Westmorland. For at least a year he had two hundred and fifty men working on it.’
    The woman in the red dress had been joined now by a man, and they were standing face to face, about a yard apart, in the very centre of the whole garden panorama, on this little circular patch of lawn, apparently conversing. The man had some small black object in his hand.
    ‘If you’re interested, I’ll show you the bills that Beaumont put in to the old Duke while he was making it.’
    ‘I’d like very much to see them. They must be fascinating.’
    ‘He paid his labourers a shilling a day and they worked ten hours.’
    In the clear sunlight it was not difficult to follow the movements and gestures of the two figures on the lawn. They had turned now towards the piece of sculpture, and were pointing at it in a sort of mocking way, apparently laughing and making jokes about its shape. I recognized it as being one of the Henry Moores, done in wood, a thin smooth object of singular beauty that had two or three holes in it and a number of strange limbs protruding.
    ‘When Beaumont planted the yew trees for the chess-men and the other things, he knew they wouldn’t amount to much for at least a hundred years. We don’t seem to possess that sort of patience in our planning these days, do we? What do you think?’
    ‘No,’ I said. ‘We don’t.’
    The black object in the man’s hand turned out to be a camera, and now he had stepped back and was taking pictures of the woman beside the Henry Moore. She was striking a number of different poses, all of them, so far as I could see, ludicrous and meant to be amusing. Once she put her arms around one of the protruding wooden limbs and hugged it, and another time she climbed up and sat side-saddle on the thing, holding imaginary reins in her hands. A great wall of yew hid these two people from the house, and indeed from all the rest of the garden except the little hill on which we sat. They had every right to believe that they were not overlooked, and even if they had happened to glance our way – which was into the sun – I doubt whether they would have noticed the two small motionless figures sitting on the bench beside the pond.
    ‘You know, I love these yews,’ Sir Basil said. ‘The colour of them is so wonderful in a garden because it rests the eye. And in the summer it breaks up the areas of brilliance into little patches and makes them more comfortable to admire. Have you noticed the different shades of green on the planes and facets of each clipped tree?’
    ‘It’s lovely, isn’t it?’
    The man now seemed to be explaining something to the woman, and pointing at the Henry Moore, and I could tell by the way they threw back their heads that they were laughing again. The man continued to point, and then the woman walked around the back of the wood carving, bent down and poked her head through one of its holes. The thing was about the size, shall I say, of a small horse, but thinner than that, and from where I sat I could see both sides of it – to the left, the woman’s body, to the right, her head protruding through. It was very much like one of those jokes at the seaside where you put your head through a hole in a board and get photographed as a fat lady. The man was photographing her now.
    ‘There’s another thing about yews,’ Sir Basil said. ‘In the early summer when the young shoots come out…’ At that moment he paused and sat up straighter and leaned slightly forward, and I could sense his whole body suddenly stiffening.
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘when the young shoots come out?’
    The man had taken