(1/20) Village School Page 11

  We sat down on the desks to get our breath and surveyed our filthy hands.

  'Miss Clare's coming to tea,' I said, 'she's helping with the jumble sale. Can you stop for tea with us?'

  'I'd rather not, many thanks. I must collect my violin and music; and I shall need to change. Which reminds me … It looks as though I shall have to leave Mrs Pratt's, I'm afraid.'

  'Isn't it working out well? I know it's not ideal, but digs are hopeless in a village.'

  'It's partly that; although I hadn't thought of complaining.' She gave me a sidelong smile, 'I hang a towel over the nymph in the river each night, and my petticoat over the dying dog—I really haven't the heart to say anything to Mrs Pratt about removing them.'

  'Is it the food?'

  'Lord, no! I get more than I want. No … Mrs Pratt's mother has just died over at Springbourne and they'll want my room for her father. He's evidently going to make his home with them. In a way, it solves my problem—but what on earth shall I do about other digs? I feel I can't live too far away. I can't afford a car and the buses from Caxley just don't fit in with school hours.'

  'You can have my spare bedroom until you find somewhere that you really like. I'll make more inquiries, but don't worry unduly. If Mrs Pratt wants you out quickly, come to me for a time.'

  Her thanks were cut short by the arrival of Miss Clare who was propping up her venerable bicycle in its old accustomed spot by the stone sink in the lobby. She looked well and rested and greeted us in her gentle voice.

  'We don't begin pricing until five o'clock,' I told her, 'so we've plenty of time to go and build our strength up with tea!'

  Miss Gray made her farewells and hastened off to Mrs Pratt's to get ready for Mr Annett, and Miss Clare and I dawdled, arm in arm, in the playground to watch the rooks as they wheeled about the elms, sticks in beaks, busily furbishing up their nests for the arrival of the new young occupants.

  Mrs Pringle and the vicar's wife, Mrs Partridge, were already shaking out vests and sorting out shoes when Miss Clare and I went over to the school. We each carried a blue marking-pencil, shamelessly purloined from the school stock cupboard, paper, scissors and pins.

  'Good evening, good evening!' Mrs Partridge greeted us, bustling along the line of desks with a pair of antique dancing shoes in her hand. They were pale grey in colour, with a strap and two buttons. The toes were sharply pointed with heels of the Louis type, and they looked about size two. It would be interesting to see who bought them.

  'Such lovely things,' continued Mrs Partridge, with professional enthusiasm, 'so very good of people to give so generously.' Mrs Partridge, from years of experience, knew the necessity of praising everything sent to a jumble sale, for, to be sure, any adverse comment is bound to be overheard, if not by the donor, then by some dear friend who feels impelled to impart the tidings. Life in a village demands a guard on the tongue, and none knows this better than the vicar's wife.

  'Now shall we put the things out first? Men's clothing here, women's there, and children's at the end? We thought shoes on this form near the door, and hats—such an attractive collection, don't you think?—in the far corner.'

  'What about admission money?' asked Mrs Pringle. 'Who's taking that?'

  Mrs Partridge looked a little flummoxed. 'The posters haven't said anything about admission. I think we must let the people in free.'

  'A great mistake, in my opinion,' rejoined Mrs Pringle heavily. Her mouth began to turn down ominously. 'At Caxley last week the Baptists charged threepence, and no ill-feeling. But there, if you don't want the money——' Mrs Pringle shrugged her massive shoulders, as one who washes her hands of the whole affair, and began worrying at the tape that bound several pairs of men's corduroy trousers together.

  'Well, well, well, well!' clucked Mrs Partridge in a conciliatory way, 'and this shall be the junk stall—china, you know, and jewellery and any odds and ends. Mr Willet has very kindly offered to sell raffle tickets for this basket of eggs. Mr Roberts sent them over—so kind, so kind!'

  We all trotted to and fro, carrying everything, from derelict footstools to babies' binders, to their appointed places. A particularly hideous table, with three and a half legs and a top so mutilated with Indian carving as to render it quite useless, impeded us seriously in our movements.

  'Who on earth,' said Mrs Partridge, shaken from her normal caution, 'sent that dreadful thing?'

  Mrs Pringle's breathing became more stertorous than usual and her eyes glittered dangerously. Trembling, our fingers fluttering with the price tickets and our heads down bent, Miss Clare and I awaited the breaking of the storm.

  'That table,' began Mrs Pringle, with awful deliberation, 'that beautiful table, was a wedding present to Pringle's mother, from her mistress that she worked for from the age of twelve. And as loyal a girl her mistress could never have wished for!'

  Mrs Partridge was beginning her apologies, but they were brushed aside.

  'And furthermore,' went on Mrs Pringle, very loudly indeed, and with one hand upraised as though taking the oath, 'the dear old lady had it stood by her bedside till her dying day. She had her Bible on it, close to her hand, and all her other needs.' She paused for breath, and Mrs Partridge hastened in with:

  'I'm sure, Mrs Pringle, I meant nothing derogatory——'

  'Such as,' continued Mrs Pringle in a fearsome boom, 'her indigestion tablets, her teeth, her glasses and a very fine clock given her by Pringle and myself on the occasion of her eightieth birthday, and much admired by all her visitors. As well it might be, considering the shocking price that shark in Caxley asked for it!'

  'Well, I'm sorry that you should be upset,' persisted Mrs Partridge, 'and I hope you will accept my apology.'

  Mrs Pringle bared her teeth for a moment and inclined her head graciously.

  'It has associations, that table, and I don't like to hear ill spoke of it. A friend of the family, you might say.'

  'Quite, quite!' said the vicar's wife in a final kind of way, and she and Mrs Pringle continued in silence to pin tickets along the men's stall, while Miss Clare and I, who had retired in a cowardly way with our blue pencils to the hat department, tried to appear unconcerned and efficient, and failed, I fear, to look either.

  At seven o'clock the door was opened and a gratifyingly large crowd swarmed in. Capacious shopping bags of every shape and colour dangled from the women's arms. The first rush, as always, was for the children's clothes.

  'Do nice for mv sister's youngest.'

  'Ah, that's just right for our Edna for next summer! Always liked a bit of frilling on knickers for little girls, myself!'

  'Hold up, Annie, and let's try this for size! Pull your stummick back, child! How's a body to tell, else?'

  The clothes were churned over by busy hands, snatched from one to the other, admired, deprecated and subjected to close and searching scrutiny. Pennies, sixpences, shillings and half-crowns changed hands, and the pudding basins provided by the vicar's wife on each stall were soon filling with contributions to Fairacre Church Roof Fund.

  Prominent in the mob of women jostling for position was Mrs Bryant, a tall, imposing gipsy, wearing a man's trilby hat squarely upon her coiled greasy plaits. Heavy gold earrings gleamed against her dusky cheeks and she carried a formidable ebony stick. Behind hovered the lesser fry of her family, daughters, young wives and a bevy of dark-eyed children who watched everything in solemn silence. Mrs Bryant was known to strike a hard bargain and when she approached the men's stall, where Miss Clare and I were struggling to find change for a pound note and sell waistcoats and socks at the same time, we girded ourselves for the fray.

  With the end of her ebony stick Mrs Bryant lifted a pair of grey flannel trousers. She gazed at the dangling objects with contempt, and then said:

  'Give you sixpence for these.'

  'The price is marked on them, Mrs Bryant,' replied Miss Clare, without looking up from her counting.

  'They's only rubbish! Not fit for nothing but dusters!' per
sisted Mrs Bryant.

  'In that case I advise you not to buy them,' answered Miss Clare politely, handing change to a customer and not bothering to glance in the gipsy's direction.

  'Shillun!' snapped Mrs Bryant. Several of the women had paused in their buying to watch with amusement and also with some admiration for Miss Clare's handling of the situation.

  'What price are they?' asked one, looking aloft at the suspended garments. In one swift movement Miss Clare twitched them free, surveyed the ticket, and handed them over to the questioner, saying, 'Half a crown.' There were sly smiles all round at this neat manoeuvre. Mrs Bryant said, 'Some folks buys any old rags, I sees!' and strode off with a face like thunder.

  Mr Roberts towered above the throng and his mighty laugh could be heard above all the hubbub. He was present in his triple role of school manager, churchwarden and donor of the raffle prize.

  'How are you doing, Mr Willet?' I heard him shout cheerfully. Mr Willet was laboriously writing out the counterfoil of a raffle ticket, licking his pencil frequently, and, as it was an indelible one, gradually dyeing the edge of his ragged moustache a sinister purple. His tongue, by now an awe-inspiring sight, would have done credit to a prize chow.

  'Made ten shillings already,' answered Mr Willet, with some pride.

  'Fine, fine! You'll be able to buy one of my tickets for the Derby draw. Come on now, Mr Willet,' said Mr Roberts tugging a book from his pocket. 'All in a good cause—Caxley Old Folks' Outing.'

  'Mr Roberts,' he answered with dignity, 'you should know I'm not a betting man! It's the devil's work! I promised my poor old mother, years ago—and I hope she can hear me now wherever she may be—that I would never have no hand in betting and lottery!'

  'Then what the blazes are you doing with the raffle tickets?' demanded Mr Roberts, trying to control his mirth.

  Mr Willet's purple mouth opened and shut once or twice.

  'As a sidesman, Mr Roberts, I hope I know my duty to the church,' he answered with fine illogicality, 'I'm putting my personal feelings on one side. The church must come first!'

  'Well said!' replied Mr Roberts, 'and I'll have two tickets for my own eggs.' Mr Willet's pencil returned to his mouth as he settled the book of tickets more conveniently on the basket-handle.

  'In that case, sir, I'm sure my poor old mother would wish me to contribute to the Caxley Old Folks,' said Mr Willet as he tore out the tickets. And fishing in their pockets the two men found each a shilling and exchanged them with due civility.

  One blue and white spring morning, soon after the jumble sale, the sunlight streamed so temptingly through our high Gothic windows and the rooks cawed so encouragingly from the elm trees, that I decided that it was cruelty to children—and teachers—to coop ourselves up any longer.

  'Put your books away,' I told the delighted class, 'and we'll go out for a nature walk and see how many exciting things we can find.'

  They hustled into the lobby, chattering busily, while they put on their coats. I went through to Miss Gray's room.

  'This is too good to miss,' I said, indicating the window. 'Would you like to bring them out for half an hour?'

  We buttoned coats and tied shoelaces amidst cheerful confusion; then two by two, with John Burton and Cathy Waites as leaders, we took our excited family out into the spring sunshine.

  Mr Roberts was laying a hedge with expert strokes of a chopping knife. He straightened up and smiled at the procession as it dawdled by him. There was a chorus of greeting.

  ''Morning, sir. Hello, sir. We's out for a walk! Too good to stop in, Miss Read says!'

  'Never heard of such a thing!' said Mr Roberts, trying to appear deeply shocked at this news. 'No slipping out of school when I was a boy! Where are you going?'

  'I thought I'd take them down to the wood to see if there are any early primroses and violets. We should get some catkins; but I don't want to be too long in case the managers find out!'

  Mr Roberts' mighty laugh at this mild sally made little Eileen Barton run to the side of her big brother in alarm, and we left him, still smiling, to continue his work.

  Our progress down the village street was greeted by cries and friendly shouts from windows and gardens. Mothers, making beds and dusting window-sills, called to us, the toddlers, fingers in mouths, watched us round-eyed. Mr Willet, who was inspecting a row of young broad beans, waved to us from his garden, and we all bounded along quite heady with this unwonted freedom, feeling devil-may-care at having escaped from school and revelling in the surprise we were occasioning by our incursion into the morning life of Fairacre.

  We turned left at 'The Beetle and Wedge' along a narrow lane that led to a small copse at the foot of the downs. Beyond the copse the lane rose, becoming narrower and grassier, until it petered out into an indistinct footpath on the bare heights. A fresh wind tossed the children's hair and the catkins that streamed, like banners, from the hazels in the hedge.

  In the dry fine grass of the banks, the violets' heart-shaped leaves were showing, and the little girls searched industriously for the blue and white blossoms, holding their thread-like stems tightly in their small cold fingers, and sniffing at their bunches hungrily. Starved of flowers through the long winter months, now the full joy of this sensuous feast broke upon them.

  High above us, in a fold of the windy downs, we could see the shepherd's hut and the lambing pens made from square bales of straw set together to make a shelter from the weather. Now and again we could hear the distant tinkle of a sheep-bell, and the children would stop short, heads cocked sideways to listen.

  'It's my grandpa, up there with the sheep,' John Burton told me. 'I takes his tea up sometimes after school. He give me this yesterday.' Fishing in his pocket he drew out a little boat fashioned from half a cork. By its odour, the cork had once served to seal a bottle of sheep disinfectant. Three masts adorned it and sets of paper sails, and rigging contrived, I guessed, from unravelled binder twine, completed the ship.

  'He give Eileen the other one,' went on John, 'but she floated hers out in the road last night and it went down the drain.' His voice was full of scorn.

  By now we had reached the copse, and some of the children sat in the shelter of the trees to rest, while others picked early primroses and anemones, or found other treasures … birds' feathers, oak-apples, coloured stones, or the large, pale-grey shells of the Roman snails that frequent the downlands.

  I leant against a post and watched a tractor, looking like a toy in the distance, creeping slowly across a field. Half the field was already ploughed, and behind the tractor wheeled and fluttered a flock of hungry rooks, scrutinizing the fresh-turned ribs of earth for food. They were too far away to hear, but their black shapes rose and scattered like flakes of burnt paper from a bonfire.

  Reluctantly, we returned bearing our trophies with us, with flushed faces and tangled hair. As we turned the bend of the lane I saw the school nurse's car outside our gate.

  Nurse Barham, a plump motherly woman, with a Yorkshire brogue, calls periodically to inspect heads and keep an eye open for any other infection.

  I watched her as she parted locks and ruffled the boys' hair, keeping up a comforting monologue the whole time.

  'Beautiful hair, dear, keep it brushed well. Now your hands. Spread out your fingers. Nice nails, not bitten, I see. Don't forget to wash them before dinner.'

  The children do not seem to mind being subjected to this examination. Only the nail-biters look rather fearfully at Nurse's face as they proffer their stubby fingers for inspection. Nurse's main concern, when she looks at hands, is for scabies, but she is also a foe to nail-biters.

  'You don't know of anyone who could put our new young teacher up, I suppose?' I asked her, as she worked. Nurse Barham knows the neighbourhood well and realizes the difficulty of getting digs. 'Miss Clare suggested Mrs Moffat—a newcomer here. I don't know whether she will be able to, I'm sure.'

  'I can't think of anyone suitable,' said Nurse thoughtfully, 'but I'll remember to
let you know if I come across anyone. I've met Miss Gray at music practices. She seems very nice indeed. Mr Annett seems to think so, anyway,' she added mischievously and whisked off to her duties in the infants' room.

  I felt vaguely annoyed by this last remark. Really, village gossip is downright irritating, I thought. The poor girl has only to be given a lift home by a neighbour and the village has them wedded, bedded and all the children named for them. It was too bad, and I was a little cool with Nurse when she bustled back.

  'Only the new little boy, Joseph Coggs,' she informed me, Til go and call on his mother now if she'll be in.'

  I glanced at the clock. Mrs Coggs would be back from her floor-scrubbing at 'The Beetle and Wedge,' I told Nurse.

  'What sort of home?' she asked. I told her what I knew of the Coggs family and she departed to Tyler's Row to see what advice and help she could give, and to leave a large bottle of noxious-smelling liquid for the anointing of Joseph's head.

  Miss Gray had liked the idea of going to Mrs Moffat's bungalow if it could be arranged. Miss Clare, with true village caution, had advised us against going to Mrs Moffat too precipitately.

  'Let me mention it to Mrs Finch-Edwards,' she had said, 'and let her sound Mrs Moffat. Then we can follow her lead.'

  I was glad about this arrangement, for although I was willing to have Miss Gray at my house, I realized that it was not an ideal plan. We had to work together during school hours and I felt it would be better for both of us to have our leisure times apart. Our relationship at school could not be happier, and I did not want to subject it to too rigorous a trial.

  Mrs Finch-Edwards had approached the subject of Miss Gray's future occupation of the spare bedroom with some wariness, but Mrs Moffat welcomed the idea.

  'It would be a help with the housekeeping,' she said gratefully, 'and I only use that room for my needlework and the machine. All those things could easily go in the dining-room cupboard.' She pondered for a while. 'And she's a real lady-like girl,' she added, 'set a good example to Linda, and that sort of thing. I'll talk it over with Len tonight and let you know tomorrow.'