(5/20)Over the Gate Page 14

  'Likely, ain't it?' said Joseph Coggs scornfully. I rose to my feet. I was glad to have some interruption to my thoughts, and it was time we were getting back.

  'I'll get the map out when we arc in school,' I promised them, 'and you shall see for yourselves. First one to reach the lane has a sweet! Off you go!'

  Shrieking and squeaking, they tumbled down the steep slope of the grassy lull leaving me to descend more circumspectly behind them.

  In the lane, where the rough track ends and the tarmac begins, Dr Martin's car waited outside Laburnum Villas. As I approached the vociferous mob awaiting me—each claiming that he had arrived first—the doctor came out of one of the ugly pair of houses and watched, with some amusement, as I quelled the not.

  'Playing truant?' he asked. I said we were.

  'Very sensible too. We none of us get enough fresh air these days. When I first came to Fairacre it was lack of decent food which gave me most of my patients. Now it's too much food, and not enough air and exercise.'

  He climbed into Ins car with a grunt of exertion, then leant from the window and laughed.

  'I need more myself,' he said. 'How's my old friend Mrs Pringle? Still suffering with her leg?'

  'When it suits her,' I replied. There are no secrets to hide from Doctor Martin. He has known us all in Fairacre much too long to be hoodwinked. Forty or fifty years, I thought suddenly, Doctor Martin has lived and worked in Fairacre! I had a sudden desire to ask him if he had ever felt like moving, but restrained myself.

  'Are you feeling quite fit?' he asked, an observant eye cocked quizzically upon me.

  'Yes, thank you,' I said hastily. 'Just thinking about something, that's all.'

  'You look a trifle pale to me,' said the doctor, twinkling. 'Is it love?'

  'No, indeed!' I said, with spirit. 'I'm too old for such capers. More likely to be advancing senility. I'm beginning to suspect that rheumatism's trying to infiltrate my old bones.'

  'You aren't the only one in Fairacre,' said the doctor, starting his car. 'Let me know if it gets any worse, that's all. We get such plaguey cold winters here, that's the trouble.'

  He waved cheerfully and drove off, hooting to shoo my children to the side of the narrow lane.

  The memory of that south-facing Devon school returned to me with overwhelming intensity, as I made my way back to Fairacre School amongst my clamorous puplis.

  'Can I get it out now?' asked John as we clanged across the door-scraper.

  'Get what out?' I asked bemused.

  'Why, the map! You said as you was going to show us Winchelsea, and all that!' He sounded aggrieved. I pulled myself together, and approached the map cupboard.

  It is called the map cupboard, and does indeed house the maps, but that is not all. Somehow, everything that has no proper home gets thrown in the map cupboard. There are cricket stumps, old tennis shoes, a pile of china paint palettes which have not been used for years, some dilapidated Rainbow Annuals adored by the children during wet dinner hours, part of a train set, a large tin full of assorted pieces of Meccano, and a rusty hurricane lamp which, we tell each other, 'might come in hanky.'

  The maps jostle together in one corner, and ever since I came to Fairacre I have meant to label them properly and hang them in some sort of order. In practice, I go through Muscles of the Human Body, The Disposition of the Tribes of Israel, The Resuscitation of those Suffering from Electrocution, the tonic sol-fa modulator and a number of maps, ranging from Greenland's icy mountains to India's coral strand, until I find the one I am searching for.

  This afternoon was no exception. At length, however, the map of the British Isles was hung over the blackboard and I began my lesson on coastal erosion. Refreshed by their outing the children gave me quite flattering attention.

  John bustled out to the map, full of importance, and pointed to Romney Marsh with his yellow ruler, and I did my best to explain the cause of the sea's retreat here. There are times when I wish fervently that I had more geographical knowledge. This was one of them. Mercifully, the children seemed to understand my halting explanations, and I was fired to go further.

  'Sometimes,' I said, 'the opposite thing happens. The sea encroaches on the land, and then die bottom of the cliffs gets washed away.' I remembered childhood holidays at Walton-on-Naze, and gave a dramatic account of a garden, and then, finally, the house belonging to it, sliding down the cliffs into the hungry sea. Perhaps I overdid the drama. There was an awed silence when I finished.

  John raised his ruler and put it shakily across the Wash.

  'It's eaten in there all right,' he commented.

  Patrick and Ernest now walked out, unbidden, to take a closer look at the map.

  'Look how it's busted its way up here!' exclaimed Patrick, his eyes on the Bristol Channel.

  'And here!' echoed Ernest, peering closely at the Thames estuary. 'Looks as though they could meet, real easy, and chop us in half.'

  'How quick,' asked Joseph Coggs nervously, 'do the water come?'

  'You remember at Barrisford!' queried John. It came in as quick as lightning, and terrible strong it was. Fair sucked us off our feet when we was paddlin' and I got my best trousers absolutely soppin'.'

  I did my best to calm their fears. If I weren't careful I could see that I should have some very cross parents coming to see me on the morrow, complaining that their children had been having nightmares.

  'Good heavens,' I said robustly, 'it only manages a few mches in a year, at the most. You've nothing to fear here, living in Fairacre. Why, we're safely in the middle,' I assured them, appropriating John's ruler, and pointing out Caxley printed in unflatteringly small letters.

  These downland children see very little water, and the sea but rarely. There is a very healthy respect for it when they visit the coast, and their apprehension about inundation was understandable. Even today, some of their grandparents have never seen the sea.

  St Patrick's chimes began to ring out through the warm limpid afternoon.

  'Time to go home,' I said. 'Don't forget, there are miles of dry land between you and the sea, here in Fairacre. Stand for grace!'

  Within five minutes the classroom was empty. I returned the map to the shameful cupboard and made my way across the hot playground. To my surprise, Joseph Coggs was swinging on the school gate. His face was thoughtful, his dark eyes fixed upon the horizon.

  'What are you doing?' I asked.

  He nodded towards the vast bulk of the downs, quivering in a blue haze of heat.

  'I was thinking,' he said huskily, in his hoarse gipsy croak, 'it'd take a tidy long time for the sea to get through all that lot, wouldn't it, miss?'

  'It would,'I agreed.

  He sighed with relief, clambered down from the gate, and set off along the sunny lane towards his home.

  The long envelope, containing the application form, was horribly noticeable, sticking out from behind the coffee pot. I resolved to tackle it later that evening, but first of all I made some tea.

  Mr Willet was busy at the bottom of my garden, erecting a fine row of bean poles. He cannot bear to see a few yards of unfilled sod, and had insisted on turning a miniature jungle of old gooseberry bushes, draped in dead grass, into a flourishing vegetable patch. The fart that I should never be able to consume a quarter of the crops he was so generously planting did not seem to occur to him, and I was too touched by his kindness to point it out.

  I took two hefty blue and white striped mugs of tea down the garden path. Balanced on top of one was a plate bearing a large hunk of fruit cake for my gardener. The heat shimmered everywhere, and some of the polyanthuses were wilting slightly already. My spirits rose at the thought of a possible fine spell.

  'Well now, that do be real welcome,' said Mr Willet, grasping the mug in a mud-caked hand. He upturned a wooden box and motioned me politely towards it. I sat down, with a sigh, and let the sunshine soak into my bones. Little rainbows played round my half-shut eyes. This was the weather! They probably had it like this
all the time in Devon, I thought.

  The sound of steady champing told me that Mr Willet had found the cake.

  'You makes a very good fruit cake,' he said indistinctly. 'Moist without being too heavy. And got your cherries well spaced. Takes a bit of doing that. My wife has a rare job with cherries. Flours 'em, or summat, to keep 'em up. You done real well with this, miss.'

  I wished I deserved his compliments but truth will out, so I replied dreamily, my eyes still closed:

  'Marks and Spencer's!'

  'Is that so?' said Mr Wilier. 'Well, they does a good job then.'

  There was silence except for the sound of mastication and the birds' singing around us.

  'You feeling all right?' asked Mr Wilier. 'You looks a bit peaky to me, and you ain't drinking your tea!'

  I sat up hastily. He was the third person this afternoon to comment on mv frail looks.

  'I'm fine,' I assured him.

  'Don't look yourself to me,' persisted Mr Willet. 'Got a sort of bilious look. You ever had the jaundice?'

  'I probably need a change,' I said briskly. 'When we get some sunshine I begin to realise what I've been missing. Perhaps I'd better take a job in France or Italy,' I added lightly.

  Mr Willet looked concerned.

  'Don't you go flinging off to no foreign parts now!' he warned me. 'Full of mosquitoes and malaria, they tells me, and not a decent drop of water to drink, even if it do come out of a tap. And the food's a proper mess—ody and that—wouldn't do your biliousness any good, you can take my word for it!'

  At this moment, Mrs Pringle appeared at the side of the house, and bore down upon us in all her black-clothed majesty. Her oil cloth bag swung upon her arm, and from it poked a corner of the flowered cretonne overall in which she performs her cleaning dunes. Obviously, these were now ended and she was on her way homeward.

  'Cup of tea?' I asked. Mrs Pringle shook her head magisterially.

  'I never drinks between meals,' she said. 'And I shall be dishing up our high tea in an hour's time.'

  Mr Willet whipped a sack from the wheelbarrow and spread it, with a Raleigh-like flourish, on the grass. Mrs Pringle lowered her bulk cautiously upon it, and smiled graciously.

  'Ah! Nice to have a set-down! Sometimes I wonder if this cleanin'job's too much for me.'

  I wondered what was coming.

  'Well, not so much the cleaning,' continued Mrs Pringle heavily, 'as the danger!'

  This was mystifying, but was obviously leading to a grievance.

  'Sweeping, I expect. Scrubbing, I expect. A certain amount of back-breaking bending and lifting, I expect' said Mrs Pringle, rising to heights of rhythmic peroration which made me suspect Welsh blood somewhere among her forebears.

  'But when,' continued the lady, turning and fixing me with a glittering eye, 'I gets hit over the head through other people's carelessness, then I thinks it's time to complain.'

  I was about to speak, but was overborne by Mrs Pringle in full spate. Mr Willet and I exchanged martyred looks, and resigned ourselves to more.

  'I don't say a word about slatternly goings-on, in the ordinary way. Some are born sluts, no matter how much schooling they've had, and if they cares to muddle along with dust under their beds and the same saucepan for soup as milk, not to mention a bread crock with mildewed crumbs in the cracks, then all I says is: "Well, let them wallow in their muck, and be forbearing." But when those slatternly ways bring damage to others, then plain speaking has to be done!'

  'Cough it up then,' I said inelegantly. I could recognise the wallower-in-muck all right. 'What hit you?'

  'Nelson's Column, by the sound of it,' commented Mr Willet, unimpressed. He dusted some grass from his corduroy trousers, and began to resume his tasks.

  'I was sweeping gentle-like by the map cupboard,' said Mrs Pringle with dignity, 'when the broom knocked against the door. It flew open—' here Mrs Pringle flung her arms dramatically apart-'it flew open, I sasy, and down crashed a good dozen maps. Gave me a cruel blow on the side of the head -most dangerous place, that is, near the temple!'

  'I'm sorry,' I said. 'That catch isn't very reliable.'

  'If the maps was hung up properly,' continued Mrs Pringle severely, 'as they always was in Mr Hope's rime— and after—we shouldn't get accidents like this. Might have had Concussion. Might have been Disabled. Might have been Laid Out!' intoned Mrs Pringle.

  'Pity you weren't,' said Mr Willet shortly. I looked away hastily.

  'You're quite right,' I said nobly to the old harridan, 'I really must tidy that cupboard. Do you want something put on your head? Witch hazel, perhaps?'

  'Very suitable,' muttered Mr Willet, who was beginning to enjoy himself. Mrs Pringle gave him a cold glance.

  'Nothing, thank you,' replied the lady, with crushing dignity. 'I shall let Nature take its course.'

  She began the herculean task of getting to her feet, swaying backwards and forwards and breathing heavily. I put both arms round one of hers and gave a mighty heave. Suddenly, she was erect, red in the face, but triumphant.

  'Thank you, Miss Read,' she puffed.

  'Here, you don't want to lift great weights like that!' cried Mr Willet, who had only just seen this manoeuvre. 'And you not very well!'

  Mrs Pringle looked at me suspiciously.

  'Not well?' she echoed truculently.

  'I'm perfectly well,' I said. Mr Willet, no doubt seeing a means of paying out his old enemy, shook his head vehemently.

  'She's just been talking about having a change. Can't blame her, either, with folks like you to plague her!'

  'A change does us all good,' conceded Mrs Pringle. She looked at me warily as though remembering something. 'As long as it don't last too long. I wouldn't think about a permanent change, if I was you. Taking it all in all, you could jump from the frying pan into the fire, and Fairacre ain't a bad place, when all's said and done.'

  She fished inside the odcloth bag and produced a brown paper one.

  'Six eggs,' said Mrs Pringle, thrusting them upon me. 'I brought 'em up when I come, expecting you'd still be in school, but seems you packed up before time today. Good job the Office don't know what goes on!'

  'It's very good of you,' I said, with sincerity. 'Especially after your accident.'

  Mrs Pringle grunted and set off up the garden path.

  'I'll do my best to put these away tidily,' I promised, patting the paper bag.

  'Hm!' commented Mrs Pringle, with one hand on the latch of the gate, 'there's some—no matter how much schooling they've had—what never learns!'

  Triumphant, as ever, she continued on her way.

  Back in the solitude of my house I found myself putting off the task of filling in the application form. I sorted the laundry, cleaned the dining-room windows, shown up in all their squalor by the bright sunshine, and generally fiddled about in a procrastinating mood.

  Should I apply or not? Now that the sun shone again, I began to shilly-shally. I remembered the peaceful view from the top of the downs. Mrs Pringle was right when she said that Fairacre took some beating. She seemed to know an astonishing amount about my present proposals, I thought, remembering her advice about making a change. There was little doubt, in my mind, that the lady had been snooping at the contents of the long envelope in the course of her dusting. I had suspected this before. Looking at it in one way, I mused, it was really rather flattering that she advised me to stay. Perhaps she enjoyed my slatternly ways after all!

  I paused in my window-cleaning and gazed at Tibby basking on the top of the rain-water butt, one of his favourite spots.

  How would he react to a move, I wondered?

  The chances of getting the job were one in a hundred, I well knew. There would be a host of applicants for such a tempting post, and a house with it meant that there would be double the number, at least. Why not send in my application form, and let the gods decide? After all, if I were lucky enough to be called up for interview, I could make up my mind then.

  I groaned
in turmoil of spirit. How truly dreadful it is to have to make a decision! No, I was sure that I could not leave this to the gods. This was something I must settle for myself, here and now. Either I applied because I really wanted the post, or I would decide to stay on in Fairacre. Having got thus far, I went over the reasons for and agamst, all over again. It was a wearing business.

  I should simply hate to leave the Fairacre children and all the friends in the village. There would be more children, and friends, in Devon, I answered myself. And this little house is extremely attractive! The Devon one is even better, said my second self. I should be leaving a job which I knew I could manage fairly competently. All the more reason for trying something more ambitious, commented my nagging half.

  Perhaps this was the secret. Perhaps I should be more adventurous, stretch myself a little, climb out of my rut. I was too fond of clinging to the present, to the things I knew, the friends about me. Amy was possibly right to urge me to make a change. Fairacre was not the only place in the world. It was time I uprooted myself.

  Now or never! I took out the application form from the envelope and spread it on the table. I must say it looked rather daunting. I whipped out my fountain pen before I weakened again, and at that moment the telephone bell rang.

  It was Amy. I was glad to hear her voice. Now I should get some much-needed moral support, I felt sure.

  'I'm just filling in that application form,' I told her, rather proudly, after the first civilities were over.

  'Only just?' asked Amy. She sounded incredulous.

  'It doesn't have to be in for a few days yet,' I answered defensively.

  'But you've had it there over a week,' answered Amy severely. 'I quite thought it had been sent off long ago.' I began to feel rather hurt.

  'I had to think about it,' I said, in an injured tone.

  'Stuff and nonsense! snorted Amy. 'We worked it all out together last week. In any case, it is your move that I've rung up about.'

  'What do you mean-my move?' I asked. 'Aren't you counting my chickens for me rather prematurely?'