(5/20)Over the Gate Page 12

  At ten to two we were all back in the hall awaiting the arrival of the coach. Our hair was freshly brushed, our noses powdered, our handkerchiefs sending out wafts of lavender water or Chanel Number 5 according to taste and income. The sun had come out, the tea urns hissed merrily, rows of blue-banded tea cups covered the trestle tables, and the air was filled with happy expectancy. When the coach drew up in the lane the tea ladies rushed to the urns, and those with less responsibility surged out to meet the visitors.

  They were a cheerful crew and dressed much more gaily than we country mice were. Little hats with eye-veils, mauve coats and pink coats, stiletto heels, lots of patent leather, green and blue eyeshadow, flashing earrings and, above all, the high-pitched rapid twang of racy Cockney voices, made us feel that a flock of some exotic birds had suddenly descended upon us, and that we were as drab and unremarkable as our Fairacre hedge sparrows.

  There were hugs and kisses, and much bonhomie and badinage as they were ushered into the hall. Over their tea cups the voices rose higher and higher. The noise was deafening. Carrying cups and saucers back and forth to the trestle table I marvelled at the snippets of conversation that came my way.

  'Rosie got married last May and they've got a lovely flat at Ruislip, so he's a computer.'

  'And our Janice—what was born here, you remember—well, a gentleman's got a very good job for her up the West End, with a flat and all. Makes anything up to sixty pounds a week, she does.'

  'Dad's retired now, of course, and all for buying a bungalow at Peacehaven, but I say: "What's wrong with Hackney? Done us all right all these years, and you do see a bit of life!'"

  Mrs Willet pointed out Mrs Jarman to me. She was a tiny bird-like woman with sparkling eyes. Her face was as wrinkled as an old apple, but her lips were a vivid orange and her crepy eyelids were thick with blue eye shadow. A tiny black velvet hat was lodged jauntily on her yellow hair, and a cigarette dangled between her fingers. She was telling a tale with great animation, her Fairacre audience registering half-shocked delight. She certainly looked 'a larky sort', as Mrs Willet had described. She seemed to epitomise the very spirit of Cockney effervescence and one could guess at her courage and example during the dark days of war.

  As I watched her, Mrs Pringle passed bearing a tray. Mrs Jarman's face lit up with devilment and she called out some quip which was drowned in the general hubbub. It was not lost upon Mrs Pringle, however, for that lady's face grew redder than ever and an expression of deep disgust curved her mouth downward. She cast a look of outraged dignity towards the gay party and continued majestically with her tray. Mrs Willet nudged me.

  'No love lost there,' she hissed behind her hand. 'There's no forgiving and forgetting about Mrs P. They fair 'ates each other—she and Mrs Jarman.'

  Before long we all set out for a walk round Fairacre in the sunshine, and I had no chance to hear more. But when the massive tea was over, and the coach was packed again with visitors bearing daffodils and farm eggs and hundreds of messages to those left behind in London, and Fairacre W.I. had cleared up the debris, 'switched of the light,' and locked the hall door, my chance came.

  Wearily, Mrs Willet and I walked down the village together and paused by my gate.

  'No, I won't come in,' Mrs Willet said, shifting her basket from one arm to the other. 'I've got some flower seeds to pat in before it gets dark; but I just wanted to tell you about Mrs Pringle and Mrs Jarman now you've seen 'em together.'

  We propped ourselves amicably one on each side of the school house gate. A clump of nearby narcissi sent up wafts of fragrance into the evening air, and Tibby rubbed himself round my tired legs as Mrs Willet unfolded her tale of a wartime feud.

  Mrs Jarman and her family arrived in Fairacre in the early summer of 1941. They had endured the air raids which had made their days and nights hideous from September 1940 onwards, sleeping most of the nights in a Tube station and doing their best to carry on a normal life during the day. In May, however, their home was demolished, Mr Jarman was killed, and Mrs Jarman brought her four children to the comparative peace of Fairacre.

  The eldest, Clifford, was fifteen, a tousle-headed lad whose rubbery hps seemed constantly glued to a mouth organ. Doreen, known as Dawreen, who was twelve, already ogled the boys, and was affronted when she was made to wash off her lipstick at Fairacre school. Nigel, two years younger, spent his time machine-gunning with outstretched fingers, and Gloria, aged six, was the baby. All four had their mother's blonde hair, but none had quite the vivacity of that irrepressible widow.

  The family was billeted in the cottage next door to Mrs Pringle. It was owned by an elderly woman, now dead, called Jane Morgan. Mrs Morgan's husband, like his neighbour, Fred Pringle, was serving overseas. Mrs Morgan looked upon the Jarman family as the price one has to pay in wartime, and was unhappy about their presence, but resigned to it. Mrs Jarman, for her part, thought Jane Morgan 'a stuffy old party, dead from the neck up, but never meaning no harm.' They shook down together fairly well.

  It was Mrs Pringle, of course, who really caused the trouble. Her evacuees were an elderly couple who did for themselves in one room of her house. They were a self-effacing pair and were careful to give no cause for annoyance. They crept in and out like mice, giving scared little smiles to their formidable landlady and offering her such small tributes as clothing coupons or morsels of margarine in order to 'keep her sweet,' as Mrs Jarman said.

  Before long, the Jarman children fell foul of Mrs Pringle. It was their habit to retire to the end of the garden, climb upon the roof of the empty pig sty and there watch the activities of their next door neighbour.

  They had a foreign Cockney impudence which Mrs Pringle abhorred. Fairacre children might have called names or even thrown a clod or two of earth over the hedge. The Jarman children were much more subtle.

  'You ever seen anyone what's as broad as she's high?' one would shout to the next. The result would be tempestuous giggles on one side of the hedge and much bridling on the other. The children watched their neighbour pegging out voluminous nether garments on the line and made rude comments to each other in voices calculated to carry well.

  'Never knew Fairacre'd got a barrage balloon, did you?' and so on.

  To give Mrs Jarman her due, she corrected the children whenever she found them at fault, administering a brisk cuff or letting fly with a vocabulary as lively as their own. But she needed to work long hours charing at various large houses in the neighbourhood, and the children had a good deal of rime on their own.

  Mrs Pringle brought matters to a head one day by making a formal call next door to complain. She had donned a hat and gloves to add more dignity to the occasion, and registered majestic disapproval from the cherries nodding on her brim to the steel tips on her war-time heels. Mrs Jarman, just home from work, frying chips on an oil stove and enduring the clamour of four hungry children around her, was not in any mood to be conciliatory.

  'What did you say to Mrs Pringle?' she demanded of her innocent-eyed offspring.

  'Never said nothin',' said Dawreen glibly.

  'Never said a word,' quoth the two younger ones, raising limpid blue eyes to their mother. Mrs Jarman, brandishing a fish slice, turned to the massive figure in the doorway.

  'That's your answer,' she said flatly. 'My kids don't tell lies. Take yourself off!"

  Mrs Pringle drew in a long outraged breath.

  'They not only tell lies, they're rude, pert little monkeys. And if they was mine they'd get a jolly good hiding for it.'

  'Say that again!' yelled Mrs Jarman, advancing menacingly, much to the delight of the juvenile onlookers. Mrs Pringle took a step or two backward, but did not retreat completely.

  'Not that they've had any chance,' boomed the lady, 'as anyone with half an eye can see, looking at you. But if I has any more of their old buck, Mrs Jarman, I shall go to the police—and the Caxley police, at that!'

  Mrs Jarman, eyes blazing, now rushed upon her neighbour and would have dragged the fruit-
laden hat—and the hair beneath it—from her adversary's head, but Mrs Pringle, with a dexterity surprising for one of her bulk, nipped smartly down the garden path and put the gate between them. Mrs Jarman's furious shrieks, punctuated by Mrs Pringle's booms, caused several curtains to twitch in neighbouring windows. Mrs Pringle had just managed to shout something about 'East End scum!' above the din, when the four children, who had been watching the fun from their doorstep, screamed in unison: 'Fat's on fire! Mum, the fat's on fire!' and this diversion brought the ladies' immediate hostilities to a close.

  From then on a state of constant warfare existed between Mrs Pringle and the Jarman family. If the children's ball went over the hedge, Mrs Pringle impounded it with smug satisfaction. When Mrs Pringle's tea towel blew off her line, into the next door garden, it ended up flying like a flag from the topmost branch of the Jarmans' greengage tree, a position for which the gale was not responsible, despite the assurances of the children.

  'We can't reach that, Mrs Pringle,' they said with mock regret, and dancing eyes. 'Ain't it a shame? Must have blowed there in the wind, see?'

  And there it fluttered, for several weeks, before being ripped to pieces by the elements and an inquisitive pair of jackdaws who used strips for the adornment of their nest.

  The two women never let the opportunity of a verbal brush pass, without making full use of it. In a way, each enjoyed the situation. They were well-matched. Mrs Jarman might be quicker and more prolific of vocabulary, but Mrs Pringle had a native malice, and an incalculable capacity for taking umbrage, which stood her in good stead. She moved like a tank into battle, heavy, slow and apparently indestructible. But, now and again, a burst of deadly fire came from that implacable front to score a hit upon Mrs Jarman, the resdient sniper.

  One Saturday a jumble sale was arranged in Fairacre. It was to take place, as always, in the Vfflage Hall, and on the morning of the day in question a few women went there to set up the tables and sort the jumble into the time-honoured categories of Men's, Women's, Children's, Hats and Shoes, and General Junk.

  Mrs Pringle set out laden with a large bundle. All was held together with a faded mackintosh, tied securely round the bulk by the sleeves. Mrs Jarman watched her struggle up the road in a high wind before collecting her own parcel and setting forth.

  'Don't want to catch up with that old tartar,' she said to Dawreen, who was dreamily picking at the flaking paint of the mantel shelf. 'And give over that lark, will you?' she added ferociously, giving the girl a swift box on the ear.

  'Don't forget,' she continued, as she whirled about the room for her possessions, 'spuds on at eleven, two large whites from the baker, tell the milkman it's six and fourpence and none of his old buck, keep the cat off of the custard and expect me when you see me.'

  The door slammed behind her and, despite her desire to let Mrs Pringle arrive first, she found herself entering the narrow doorway with her. Mrs Pringle drew aside with marked distaste.

  'Don't mind me breathing the same air, I hope?' commented Mrs Jarman tartly, pushing in first. Mrs Pringle maintained an affronted silence.

  About half a dozen women were already at work sorting a mountain of assorted garments on the floor. Back and forth hurried another two taking the articles to the right table. Mrs Pringle, by ancient custom, was in charge of'General Junk.' As Mrs Jarman had never been forgiven for saying on an earlier occasion, 'it seemed just right, somehow, to see Mrs P standing by that label!'

  Hers was a comparatively simple task. Saucepans, chipped vases, lidless casseroles, faded pictures, lop-sided toast racks, stone hot water bottles, riding boots stuffed with beautiful boxwood trees, archaic lawn mowers, and many unidentifiable objects found their way to Mrs Pringle's table. Sometimes large pieces of ancient furniture flanked her counter; wash stands, fire-guards, sagging wicker armchairs, and dilapidated bamboo tables. Once there was the ugliest three-piece suite in Christendom among 'General Junk.' Competition for this had been fierce, as well I knew, for on that occasion I had been Mrs Pringle's feeble assistant and had watched her masterly handling of the sale. It had gone eventually for two pounds to Mrs Fowler of Tyler's Row. She was going to present it to her mother in Caxley, and I must say I felt the greatest sympathy for that unsuspecting old lady.

  Now Mrs Pringle deposited her mackintoshed bundle with the other clothes and made her way to her stall. Mrs Jarman fell on her knees with the other sorters and began to work with spirit.

  'Lor'!' she cried, holding up a moth-eaten moleskin waistcoat. 'Who'd buy this stuff? Talk about "Granny's little old skin rug"! Gives you the creeps, don't it?'

  'My husband's,' said one of the helpers shortly. Mrs Jarman seemed not a whit abashed. She began rummaging in the bundle which Mrs Pringle had brought, making disparaging comments on her discoveries, much to the embarrassment of the Fairacre women who knew full well how important it was to guard one's tongue on such occasions.

  'Look at this,' cried Mrs Jarman, 'three shirts and never a button among 'em! Who's pinched the buttons, eh?'

  Mrs Pringle, wreathed in sea-grass from the unravelling footstool she was carrying, paused by the group and replied loftily.

  'I took the trouble to remove those shirt buttons. They'd do for another day.'

  'How's that for meanness!' commented Mrs Jarman, twinkling at the others. 'The poor chap who buys this will have to go about with his shirt flapping, I s'pose.'

  'Some people,' began Mrs Pringle, 'knows their duty to their country in war time, and saves every possible penny, not like some I could mention, not a hundred miles from here, as buys pineapple chunks when there's rhubarb in the garden.'

  This side-swipe simply had the effect of bringing Mrs Jarman's usual high spirits to bubbling point. Her blue eyes flashed with the joy of battle joined. The onlookers were half-fearful and half-delighted to see Mrs Pringle in combat with such a worthy adversary.

  'Well, I never!' crowed Mrs Jarman. 'Ain't we high and mighty? But I wouldn't stoop to pinching shirt buttons and then giving the rest to the jumble. About as low as you can get, I reckon.'

  'It's nothing short of patriotism, I tells you,' boomed Mrs Pringle, her neck flushing an ugly red. '"Save aU you can!" they keeps telling us. Well, I'm saving shirt buttons!'

  She marched heavily towards her stall somewhat impeded by the strands of sea-grass trading behind her. Mrs Jarman let out a peal of derisive laughter, and continued with the sorting. But she did not forget Mrs Pringle's last remark.

  The jumble sale itself passed off without further incident between the two antagonists. In fact, Mrs Jarman covered herself with glory at the men's stall by her shrewd bargaining with customers. Her clients were kept in spasms of laughter by her barrage of raillery and Cockney patter. At the end of the sale it was discovered that her stall had taken by far the largest amount, and it was generally acknowledged that Mrs Jarman's cheeky approach to the customers was the reason.

  'Not much good living near the Caledonian Market all your life, if you can't pick up a few tips!' was Mrs Jarman's reply to those who congratulated her. Needless to say, Mrs Pringle was not among them.

  Some months after the sale, at the beginning of November, the good ladies of Fairacre Women's Institute decided to make their Christmas puddings together. They worked out that the whole process would be much cheaper if they made the mixture in one batch and cooked all the puddings in the large electric copper.

  The recipe, cut from a daily paper, made grisly reading to those used to the normal ingredients of pre-war puddings. No brandy, stout, fresh eggs or butter appeared in the 1943 recipe. Instead, such dreadful items as grated carrot, margarine, dried-egg powder and—the final touch of horror—'a tablespoonful of gravy browning to enrich the colour,' figured on the depressing list of ingredients. But times were hard, and years of privation had blunted the sensibilities of even the most fastidious. With much cheerfulness the ladies set about their preparations for making 'An Economical and Nutritious War-Time Christmas Pudding.'

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bsp; Dozens of pudding basins, each bearing their owner's name on adhesive tape stuck on the base, waited on the long tables. Little paper bags bearing treasured ounces of currants and sultanas, mixed spices, breadcrumbs and two precious fresh lemons, jostled each other near the enormous yellow mixing bowl from the Vicarage. By ten o'clock the ingredients were being stirred zealously by half a dozen helpers, most of them elderly women, for the majority were doing war work of some sort or other. Mrs Willet busdy greased the basins with carefully-hoarded margarine papers, listening to the chatter about her.

  'We'll set the copper to Very Slow,' said the vicar's wife, 'and then it should be perfectly safe until tea time. Mrs Willet's staying until eleven-thirty, to make sure it's simmering properly and then the rota begins.'

  It had been arranged that one or other of the W.I. members should look in every hour to see that all was well, and to top up the water in the copper if it was getting too low. Christmas puddings were too precious to be left entirely to themselves for such a length of time.

  By eleven, the puddings were ready for immersion. Every household in Fairacre had one, and some had two or three, standing in the water. This was the Women's Institute's practical help towards Christmas, and very well planned the organisation had been.

  'Here's Mrs Pringle's,' said Mrs Willet, bearing a stout two-pounder to the copper. She peered underneath the basin to read the big black capitals on the tape, before letting it down gently beside the others.

  'Then that's the last,' said the vicar's wife thankfully. 'Just time to have a cup of tea before we knock off.'

  It was very quiet when they had gone. Mrs Willet took out her knitting and sat by the humming copper. The clock said twenty past eleven and she had promised to stay untd half past. As she knitted, she read the list of names pinned on the wall by the copper. During the afternoon she saw that Mrs Pringle and Mrs Jarman were due to call in. Both worked in the mornings and had been unable to stir their own puddings this year.