(2/20) Village Diary Page 12

  I decided to take the key with me, and walked home thinking of all the hiding places in Fairacre that I knew for our village keys.

  Mrs Willet puts hers under the outside doormat. Mrs Pringle, who has a weighty monster which looks as though it belongs to Canterbury Cathedral, lodges hers on a beam under her front thatch. Miss Clare hangs hers by a loop of string inside her coal shed. Mrs Waites, in Tyler's Row, hides hers under a large white shell beside her front door; while slatternly Mrs Coggs next door puts hers under the old bucket that serves for a dustbin. Mrs Partridge drops hers inside the left gumboot of a pair that stand in her porch as a challenge to the weather, and my own is lodged on a jutting brick by the back door.

  We all know each other's key places and it says much for Fairacre's honesty that there is remarkably little pilfering. If anyone's house were to be broken into the first cry would be: 'A stranger must've done it!'

  The day of the Scripture examination dawned hot and cloudless. The children arrived looking fresh and expectant. Their mothers always take especial pains to dress them well for 'the Bishop's exam,' which they remember as an important event from their own schooldays. In many a Fairacre home the 'Bishop's Bible,' presented so many years ago, has pride of place on the front parlour table.

  The boys had smoothed down their locks with wet brushes, and even Erie's crew-cut shone with some strange unguent. His normally vivid shirt had been exchanged for one of dazzling whiteness, and he presented a sober and sedate picture of American childhood. Even the Coggs family appeared to have met soap and water in a rather less perfunctory manner than was usual, and I felt sure that our visitor, even if he found our godliness a little deficient, could not find fault with our cleanliness.

  At ten o'clock footsteps were heard and men's voices. Mr Partridge ushered in his friend, the Reverend James Enderby, the children leapt to their feet, and introductions were made.

  Our examiner was in exact contrast to Mr Partridge, who is tall, thin and very gentle. Mr Enderby was a stocky man, short necked and red faced, and walked about the room, with impatient strides. The children watched, fascinated.

  Mr Partridge made his fareweds, regretting that he could not persuade his friend to stay to lunch, and assuring him that the eleven-thirty bus to Caxley would connect comfortably with the twelve-fifteen bus, which was to carry him to a ruri-decanal conference at the other end of the county.

  'Now,' said Mr Enderby briskly, as the door closed behind the vicar's linen summer jacket, 'we'd put this where we can see it.' He pulled a large silver watch, with a fussy tick, from his pocket, and propped it up against the inkstand.

  After a short prayer, during which I noticed many a half-shut eye peeping at this unusually business-like visitor, the children were settled in their seats, I retreated to a chair in the corner, and the Scripture examination began.

  Our syllabus had included the story of Joseph in the Old Testament and John the Baptist in the New, and it was these two particular stories that Mr Enderby concentrated on.

  He gave an admirably lucid and terse résumé of Joseph's history to refresh his hearers' memories, and then began more detailed questioning. It was doubtful to me if many of the children had followed his swift account clearly, for they are used to a much slower tempo, and in any case were somewhat over-awed by the visitor and becoming drowsy with the growing heat. Ernest and Eric, however, struggled nobly with the questions, and I wished that Linda Moffat had been present to answer with her quick intelligence, instead of being far away on the sunny beach at Bournemouth. Several of the younger ones slid lower in their seats and allowed the fire of questioning to go over their heads.

  The door, propped open with Mr Willet's flower-pot, gave a glimpse of the summer world outside. The distant downs shimmered in a blue haze, and the air was murmurous with a myriad insects' wings. From my garden came the scent of pinks, and on the desk, hard by Mr Enderby's watch, a rose dropped fleshy petals now and again, with a little pattering. I watched Tibby swing indolently across the playground and collapse in the cool grass beneath the elm trees. A blackbird, motionless nearby, with beak half agape, watched him too, with no fear—confident that such heat killed all enmity.

  Meanwhile the rapid questioning continued.

  'And who was it ruled in Egypt at this time?'

  There was a sluggish silence.

  'Come now!' Mr Enderby glanced at his watch. 'Come along. Who ruled in Egypt?'

  Patrick, in the front row, stirred uneasily.

  'God?' he hazarded.

  'No, no, not God," said Mr Enderby with firm kindness. Silence fell again, and with a second glance at his timepiece, Mr Enderby was obliged to answer his question himself.

  'Pharaoh. The ruler of Egypt was called Pharaoh. Who remembers that?'

  As one man, Fairacre School raised sticky, and untruthful, hands.

  'Good, good! Well, who remembers the name of the Egyptian man that Joseph worked for?'

  Silence fell again. In the far distance a cuckoo called, and another rose-petal fluttered to join the pink sheds on the desk.

  'It begins with the same letter as "Pharaoh,"' urged Mr Enderby. Joseph Coggs let out a mighty yawn.

  Ernest, who really was trying, said in a perplexed voice:

  'Farouk, sir?' He was, very properly, ignored.

  Mr Enderby's questing finger roamed around the class like a searchlight, but no one ventured any further revelation. He pounced again on poor Patrick.

  'God?' said Patrick once more, with doubt, this time.

  'Potiphar,' said Mr Enderby loudly. 'Joseph worked for Potiphar: He cast me a look, more in sorrow than in anger, and started afresh with the New Testament.

  The clock crept on to eleven-fifteen.

  The questions were as brisk as ever, but the answers came with increasing languor. Joseph Coggs had given up ad attempts at listening, and with his head pillowed on his arms, and his eyes half-shut, hummed a tuneless lullaby to himself.

  Ernest was our only mainstay, supported at times by Erie who was treating the occasion with unaccustomed solemnity, like some chance sightseer who, thrusting cheerfully at a cathedral door, finds himself in the midst of choral eucharist.

  'And what sort of man was John the Baptist?' enquired Mr Enderby, of this freckle-faced listener.

  'I guess he kinda reckoned the people needed noos, and he was the one who brought 'em the noos,' said Erie sagely. Mr Enderby smiled his approval.

  'And who was he bringing news of?' persisted Mr Enderby.

  Ernest opened his mouth to speak and shut it again. Erie was now grovelling under his desk for a dropped pencil. The rest of Fairacre School would have been better off in their beds for all the interest they were taking. Poor Patrick again fell prey to that probing finger. Jerked back from some private daydream, he gave his only answer.

  'God?' he repeated.

  Mr Enderby curbed his exasperation laudably and said: 'In a way. Yes, in a way.' Ernest, emboldened, gave the right answer, and all was well. I felt rather sorry for Patrick. His stock answer, so safe and so often right, had not stood him in good stead this morning.

  At two minutes before the half-hour Mr Enderby congratulated the children and me on a good year's work, on their alert answering and their courteous behaviour. He promised to send the Bishop's Bible to Ernest, who was pink with delight, and stammered polite thanks. Mr Enderby then hurried away to catch his bus.

  'Please, miss, can I have a drink of water?' pleaded Joseph Coggs, as the footsteps died away.

  His cry was taken up by a thirsty chorus. The long-awaited Scripture examination was over for another year and Fairacre School looked forward after ad its exertions, to a glorious half-holiday, amidst ad the country delights of a June afternoon.

  JULY

  ARTHUR COGGS has been in trouble again, and the village is having a great deal of secret enjoyment at his expense. Mr Willet was my informant, punctuating his account with so many guffaws that I found myself roaring with laughter, long before the
point of the story had been told me.

  It appears that Jim Waites had been missing chicken food from his store at the end of the garden at Tyler's Row, on several occasions, and he strongly suspected that Arthur Coggs helped himself, under cover of darkness, to a few handfuls of corn and bran for his own bedraggled hens, that led a miserably-confined existence in a ramshackle run next door.

  Jim Waites kept the chicken food in an old air-raid shelter. In the musty darkness bicycles jostled garden tools, ropes of onions swung overhead, firewood was stacked in one corner, and other awkward objects, too cumbersome to find a home in the little cottage, here found a resting place.

  The shelter had been erected at the beginning of the war by a don from Cambridge who had taken over the cottage for his wife and young family. Two things keep his memory fresh in Fairacre—the incredible speed with which he had completed this air-raid shelter, and the looks of his progeny.

  'Never seed a chap rush at a job so,' Mr Rogers, at the forge, told me once. 'Skinny little bit he was too, all teeth and glasses, but his arms was like flails waving round. One minute there was an ol' 'edge there—next minute this 'ere contraption. Cor! 'E fair flung 'isself at work, that chap!'

  Mrs Pringle supplied details of his family.

  'Four of them under six, all as thin as scarecrows, with braces on their teeth—those as 'ad 'em—and their clothes! Them open sandals, all weathers, and skirts and jerseys you'd have thought twice about sending to the jumble. Fed on health foods they was—and no advertisement for them neither. And she was a funny lot too. Said she'd been to an Economical School up in London somewhere, and she didn't have no objection to her kids playing with the village ones.' Mrs Pringle bristled at the memory, her three chins wobbling aggressively.

  'I sorted her out proper. "Perhaps our village women," I says to her haughty, "has some objection to our kids playing with yours." She didn't like that, I could see! Why, if she washed once a month it was a miracle, and then the whites was as black as a crow—and I know for a fact she never done no boiling! Shameful, she were!'

  One night recently, Jim Waites had been on the look-out for his shady neighbour. He had settled himself comfortably on an upturned wheelbarrow, behind the ivy-covered privy at the end of his garden, and patiently surveyed the stars above, as he listened for any suspicious sounds. In his pocket, the heavy key of the shelter door, which he had looked out, lay against his thigh.

  The regulars, including Arthur Coggs, had returned from 'The Beetle,' when, about half an hour later, Jim Waites heard some furtive rustlings among the elder bushes which now overhung the building, and the soft clanking of a pail, which, presumably, was to carry home the stolen goods. Jim heard the scrape of the door on the stone floor, and cautiously peered round the corner of the privy. A flickering torchlight hovered about inside the shelter.

  Swiftly, Jim Waites ran down the three rickety steps, drew the door to, and locked it securely. The torch had been switched off hastily, and there was no sound from the dark interior. Whistling jauntily, swinging the key round and round on his finger, Jim Waites made his way to bed.

  He said nothing to his pretty wife about the matter until three o'clock in the morning. She had woken him saying: 'Jim, Jim! There's someone trying to get in! Listen!'

  From a distance came the sound of heavy thumping, an occasional crash and outburst of invective. Arthur Coggs was getting belligerent and having thought up a story—thin enough, but he hoped plausible—was ready to bluff his way back to everyday life.

  'Go to sleep,' counselled Jim Waites. 'It's only that fool Arthur Coggs. I've left him to cool his heels in the shelter.' He told his wife the story, and although she was worried about the poor wife next door, she recognized the rough justice of her husband's action, and even began to enjoy the distant rumblings from the end of the garden.

  'Serves him right,' said Mrs Waites, plumping up her pillow, 'Cathy and me took a week to glean that corn. That'd teach him a lesson.' She slept again.

  Mrs Coggs next door had also heard the rumpus, and knew instantly that her husband was the cause. She had known of these illicit excursions, although no words had passed, and she wondered now what she should do. The idea that Jim Waites had purposely trapped Arthur did not occur to her. She imagined that the door had blown to, imprisoning the malefactor, and she trembled at the thought of the Waites next door being awakened, and investigating the disturbance.

  Should she creep down and release him before the Waites discovered him? A proper wife wouldn't think twice about it. A distant roar, as of a caged tiger, prompted a more prudent course. Many a bruise on poor Mrs Coggs' unlovely and neglected person had been bestowed there by her husband's heavy fist, when in just such a temper as he was now. Best let him cool off, thought Mrs Coggs, with seven years of married wisdom behind her. He put himself in there, didn't he? Wed then, he could get himself out! Meanwhile, she stretched herself luxuriously amidst the frowsy blankets, enjoying the unwonted pleasure of plenty of room in the bed. Time enough to face the trouble when it came, she told her uneasy conscience grimly. There would always be plenty of that as long as she was Arthur Coggs' wife. She fed into a troubled sleep.

  At half-past six she rose. Ad was quiet, and the summer sun warmed the dilapidated thatch of the cottages in Tyler's Row. She crept down the creaking stairs, lit the primus stove to heat the kettle for tea, put a packet of cereal on the table for the children's breakfast, and was about to set off for the shelter, when she heard the kitchen door of the Waites' house slam, and Jim Waites' cheerful voice.

  `I'll feed the hens for you. Got to go down!'

  Mrs Coggs was torn between fear and curiosity. The latter won. Snatching up a bowl of kitchen scraps, she too hurried down the garden to feed her own chickens. Unseen by Jim Waites, who was descending the steps to the shelter, she prudently hid behind her own hen-house, where she could hear what transpired.

  Jim Waites pushed back the door, and stood, key in hand, smiling at his suden prisoner.

  'Had a good night, Arthur?' he asked. A torrent of abuse greeted this mild opening. Arthur Coggs had had ample time to think up his story, and he presented it with ad the righteous indignation of the born liar.

  `I'll 'ave the law on you!' he blustered. 'I come round 'ere last night to see if my Leghorn had strayed in. Didn't want her eating up your corn.'

  'Did you find her?' queried the unruffled Jim.

  'No, I never!' said Arthur shortly, 'but her's missing. Only Leghorn I got too. Bet that ol' dog fox that's bin around has 'ad 'er.' He warmed again to his original theme, all the more annoyed because of this side issue which had distracted hun.

  'But you've no cad to lock folks up ad night—innocent folks too. What about me poor wife?'

  'Glad to see the back of you for a bit, I daresay,' rejoined the other equably. The listener behind the neighbouring hen-house concurred silently. 'What did you bring that pad for? To carry your hen in?'

  'If you must know,' said Arthur with cold dignity, 'I brought a bit of corn round to try and tempt her home!'

  Jim Waites burst into loud laughter.

  'You're the biggest bar I've ever met! Why didn't you tell me this yarn last night, when I turned the key? You was mighty quiet then! Hoping you could sneak out when I'd hopped it, eh? Found you couldn't, and worked up this rigmarole. There's not a soul in Fairacre will believe that lot of nonsense, Arthur Coggs, and you know it. Clear off home, will 'ee, and don't come in here pinching again, or I'll have the law on you next time!'

  Still muttering dark threats, his tousled neighbour emerged into the sunlight, and pushed through the ragged dividing hedge, to his own cinder path.

  'And take your rubbish with you,' shouted Jim Wakes, who had just glimpsed his wife at the back door, and decided he must put on a more masterful display. The bucket sailed over the hedge, landing with a clatter among the squawking hens. Jim Waites saw the flutter of Mrs Coggs' crumpled skirt among the flying wings.

  'Got your Leghorn there safe
ly, Mrs Coggs?' he bellowed mischievously.

  'Yes, thank you,' said Mrs Coggs timidly.

  'You keep your trap shut!' growled her husband furiously, and stumped towards the kitchen door.

  The Coggs entered together. The kettle had boiled over. The primus poured forth a hissing cloud of noxious paraffin vapour. Joseph Coggs stood by the table, his fist inside the cereal packet. He watched his father stamp blackly up the stairs.

  'Where's dad bin?' he asked his grim-faced mother.

  'Making a fool of himself,' said she, giving herself the satisfaction of raising her voice so that it could be clearly heard above. It was one of her rare moments of triumph.

  The first Saturday in July was set aside for Fairacre's combined Sunday School and Choir Outing, as usual. Miss Clare was unable to come with us this year as she had promised to go with her sister to visit an old friend, who had come from Scotland to spend a few days in the neighbourhood.

  The vicar fluttered round the two coaches, which were drawn up in front of the church, like a mother-hen with straying chicks. Mrs Pringle, swollen with majesty as head-counter-for-the-day, had taken up her stance at the top of the steps inside the coach, and seriously impeded the entrances and exits of the party.

  'If,' she boomed heavily, the cherries on her straw hat trembling, 'you was to sit quiet and steady in your own seats, it would be an insistence to me counting.' This reproof was ignored, as squeaking children changed places, excited parents bobbed up and down to put things on the rack, and relatives and well-wishers from the other coach constantly appeared, vanished, reappeared, and generally made themselves as ubiquitous as possible. As Mrs Partridge had foreseen, when bestowing this office on Mrs Pringle, it was going to keep that lady very busy.

  Mr Mawne, looking vaguely about him, was the last to appear, and Mrs Partridge led him triumphantly along our crowded coach to the empty seat beside me. The hum of noisy chattering stopped suddenly, a pregnant silence taking its place, while knowing looks and nudges were exchanged.