(9/20) Tyler's Row Page 18

  'I'm glad to hear you are going. It's the best way for all of us. The sooner you can go the better, Mrs Fowler. Meanwhile, I expect you to return the sergeant's property today. If there's any hanky-panky, I fully intend to inform the police, and they can make further enquiries.'

  He made his way towards the door, feeling that, although he may have had the last word, Mrs Fowler had come out of the conflict with considerable success.

  But any slight chagrin was overwhelmed by the flood of relief which this news brought. She was going! The cottage would be empty!

  Tyler's Row, at long last, would be all their own.

  20. Double Victory

  THE school holidays, as always, sped past at twice the speed of term time, and it was with horrible shock that I realised that only one week remained of freedom.

  Two applicants only had appeared for the advertised post of infants' teacher, and both had failed to get the job. I was beginning to brace myself for tackling the whole school single-handed next term, when the vicar called.

  'Good news!' were his first words. 'I've just been to see Mrs. Annett, who has agreed to come for the whole of next term, unless we can get someone. Isn't that splendid?'

  I agreed wholeheartedly.

  Mrs Annett taught at Fairacre School before her marriage to a neighbouring headmaster. She was a first-class infants' teacher, knew the families, and we had always got on well together.

  'Such a pity we could not make an appointment,' went on the vicar, looking distressed. 'But they were both hopelessly unsuitable. One was not a Christian, in fact, she boasted, there is no other word for it, about being an atheist! "Why apply for a post in a church school?" I asked her. And she had the impertinence to say that even atheists had to live.'

  'What about the other one?'

  'A most admirable character, but she had an invalid husband, a mother of ninety-two living with her, and six children, some quite young. We were much touched by her case, but in fairness to the children at Fairacre School, and to you too, Miss Read, we felt we could not possibly appoint someone with so many commitments already. We feared that there were bound to be periods when she could not get to school. A sad case, a very sad case. I made it my business to get in touch with her parish priest—a new fellow evidently. I think he may be able to help.'

  I had no doubt that our good Mr Partridge had already sent help via the said parish priest. His stipend is small, for the living of Fairacre is not a rich one, but those in need never go away from the vicarage empty-handed. The poor woman may not have secured the post, but she had made a staunch friend in our vicar, and some lightening of her burden would assuredly be forthcoming.

  'I wondered whether to call on Miss Clare yet again,' went on the vicar, 'but she is really so frail, particularly since dear Emily's death, that it seemed hardly fair to suggest it. But Mrs. Annett was a brainwave of my own!'

  He looked as pleased as a child who has put the last piece into an intricate jig-saw puzzle. I congratulated him warmly.

  'Well, there it is,' he said happily, collecting his things together. 'That's all settled. Mrs. Annett can be here for a whole term, if need be.'

  'But only for a term,' I pointed out. 'We must still advertise for a permanent teacher.'

  His face puckered with dismay.

  'Yes, yes. Of course we must. I suppose we shall get someone?'

  'We'll live in hope,' I said firmly, leading him to the gate.

  That evening Amy called to deliver some plants.

  'I promised you these,' she told me, depositing several large, damp newspaper parcels on my nicely scrubbed kitchen table.

  'What are they?'

  Amy swiftly poured out a torrent of dog Latin which meant nothing to me, and I said so.

  'What sort of flowers do they have?'

  'Fairly insignificant. It's the foliage which is the chief attraction.'

  'No real flowers?' I cried in dismay. 'I like nice, bright things like nasturtiums and marigolds.'

  'So anyone can see from your primitive flower garden,' said Amy. 'You really haven't progressed from the mustard-and-cress stage of horticulture.'

  'Well, thank you anyway,' I said nobly, remembering my manners. 'I'll put them in before I go to bed.'

  'James and I are going off for a week in Scotland,' Amy said, lighting a cigarette from an exquisite gold lighter. 'Vanessa's up there already, incidentally. A friend of her mother's runs a hotel near Aberdeen, and she's gone up to help. I must say, she's a changed girl. I tell Gerard it was largely his doing.'

  'How's the Bolivian heart-throb?'

  'In prison, I hope. Thank God that phase is over. In fact, she's met a Scotch—or is it Scots or Scottish?—boy, who is being very attentive. He's very handsome, according to Vanessa, and wears the kilt. Now, why THE kilt? It sounds as though the whole male population only owns one garment between the lot of them, doesn't it?'

  'Do you think she might be serious?'

  'Well, she's sent a photograph of him, and he has quite beautiful knees above those long woolly socks with tags sticking out at the top. And he's six-foot-three, and sturdily built. "Braw", I suppose, is the word. I must say he's a very personable young man, and has some money too, which always helps.'

  'I hope something comes of it. She looked ripe for matrimony, to my eye.'

  Amy looked at me speculatively.

  'You don't feel drawn that way yourself?'

  'No, Amy dear, I don't. I'm really too busy to get married, even if anyone wanted me.'

  'It was a pity about Gerard—' began Amy.

  'No, it wasn't,' I broke in. 'Gerard Baker no more wants to marry than I do. If only people like you would face the fact that there are marrying folk and non-marrying folk, the world would be a much simpler place.'

  'I suppose so,' admitted Amy. She blew a smoke ring, and watched it float through the French window and across the despised marigolds outside.

  'He has a rather interesting bachelor friend—' she began dreamily.

  'Amy!' I shouted. 'You are absolutely incorrigible! Have some coffee?'

  'An excellent idea!' said Amy, swiftly abandoning her match-making.

  Mr. Willet came up to the school to mend the refractory skylight.

  'Love's labour lost,' he commented, gazing up at it. 'It's the one job in this 'ere village as gives no satisfaction. Gardening, cuttin' hedges, diggin' a grave, painting the house—they all gives you some reward, but this 'ere skylight leaks again as soon as it's done. Still, 'ere goes!'

  He began to climb the ladder, but paused on the third rung.

  'Heard the news from Tyler's Row? That Mrs Fowler's leaving. Goin' to live with her niece and nephew at Caxley, she says. Makes out it was all arranged afore the fuss about old Burnaby's things, but I bet that's all my eye and Betty Martin.'

  'So both cottages are empty then?'

  'That's right. Sergeant Burnaby's bits and pieces went over to Beech Green the day before yesterday. He'll be a sight better off with the Bennetts than scratching along on his own, poor old fellow, and I bet the Hales will be glad to get the place to theirselves at last. They done wonders with the middle bit, my wife says. Be a treat to see that place pulled up together. It's years since anyone took an interest in it.'

  'Maybe it will become a shrine for Loyshus when Mr Baker's book comes out.'

  'Been plenty of other funny souls dwellin' under that roof,' commented Mr Willet. 'Remember Sally Gray, as took to flying? I told you about her one day. Got a nice headstone, Sally has, in the churchyard. Don't make 'em like that any more.'

  He climbed up two rungs and looked towards the village.

  'Here comes that Mrs Johnson. I'll get started.'

  He scampered up the ladder with the agility of a ten-year-old, and left me to face my visitor alone.

  'I come on a sad errand,' began Mrs Johnson, looking anything but sad I thought.

  'Not the children? They are well, I hope?'

  'Perfectly, thank you, and out on their Holiday
Project at the moment.'

  'What's that?'

  '"The Conditions of the Rural Poor. Are we still Two Nations?" It involves a certain amount of calling at the cottages, of course, and asking people about their incomes, and how they manage their housekeeping, and so on.'

  I was staggered. The thought of the three Johnson children laying themselves open to lashing tongues and well-aimed cuffs appalled me.

  'People have been so co-operative,' went on Mrs Johnson. 'It's amazing how wages differ, and some of the men spend over five pounds on beer, and their wives often buy steak and oysters.'

  This was so patently outrageous that I saw that Fairacre was positively enjoying its leg-pulling. Trust a countryman to have the last laugh.

  The wind began to blow fragments of old paint and splinters of wood from Mr Willet's handiwork.

  'Come inside,' I said, 'out of the mess.'

  The school had its chilly holiday stillness about it, the smell of Mrs Pringle's yellow soap and black-lead. The nature table, the cupboard tops, the window sills were all uncannily bare. The whole place seemed derelict despite its tidiness. For one moment—a very brief one—I longed for the beginning of term, for voices and laughter and the school bell ringing high above.

  'The fact is, Miss Read,' said Mrs Johnson, seating herself on a desk lid, 'we are moving back to London. It's promotion for my husband, and frankly we shall all be glad to get back to civilisation. It's been an interesting interlude in our lives—I don't think any of us quite realised how primitive conditions still were in some parts of this country, but we shall be glad to get back to some intelligent and cultured society.'

  'Of course,' I said politely.

  'I do regret having to give up my part in the Parent-Teacher Association, but it's nice to know that the good work will go on.'

  'I suppose so,' I replied, trying not to sound regretful.

  'Mrs Mawne has been briefed, and I think the autumn programmes I have sketched out will carry you through until you can manage for yourselves.'

  At this moment, I was spared replying by the advent of Mrs Pringle, who entered carrying an interesting-looking parcel wrapped in a snowy teacloth.

  'Brought you a fowl. It's one of my brother's, and I've got it ready for the table, knowing you. I'd be ashamed to admit I couldn't draw a bird and dress it for the table, but there it is—If you can't, you can't.'

  I thanked her sincerely, and said I would go and get my purse.

  'I would've left it in the porch but for that cat of yourn. I didn't know you was busy.'

  She cast a dour glance upon Mrs Johnson.

  'Those desks,' she said heavily, 'have been polished.'

  Mrs Johnson rose hastily, and followed me to the door. Mrs Pringle brought up the rear.

  I was about to go across to the house when Mr Willet called me. The next few minutes were spent in shouting to each other about the state of the skylight, but I could hear Mrs Johnson's and Mrs Pringle's conversation much more clearly than our own.

  'I must say,' said Mrs Johnson, after explaining that her family were moving, 'it will be a relief to get the children into proper schools again. With the help we've been able to give them at home, they have just kept their heads above water in this backward place. But it's certainly been a great struggle.'

  Mrs Pringle's face was as red as a turkey-cock's. She seemed to have swollen to twice her size. I began to tremble for Mrs Johnson's safety.

  'Let me tell you,' boomed Mrs Pringle, prodding Mrs Johnson's chest with a fore-finger like a pork sausage, 'that you won't find a better school than this one in the length and breadth of the land! Nor a better teacher'n our Miss Read. I've seen plenty of teachers come and go over the years, and though she may not be Tidy, she can learn them children better'n any of 'em. I won't hear a word against her.'

  I clung to Mr Willet's ladder with shock. Feeling the tremor he looked down at me anxiously.

  'You all right? You gone a bit pale.'

  'I'm fine,' I croaked. And I felt it.

  Mrs Johnson set off in silence, away from her adversary, and I found my voice in time to shout after her.

  'Goodbye, Mrs Johnson. Good luck!'

  She acknowledged my farewells with a stiff nod, and vanished round the corner of the lane.

  Mrs Pringle, still bearing the snowy parcel, accompanied me across the playground to the school house.

  'Cheek!' she muttered under her breath, still smouldering. 'The sauce! The upstart! Good riddance to bad rubbish! London, indeed! It's welcome to her!'

  I fetched my purse and put money into her hand. Her face was still rosy with wrath.

  'Thank you, Mrs Pringle,' I said. 'Thank you for everything.'

  Mrs Fowler moved out of Tyler's Row three days before Peter returned to school. The shabby van made several trips back and forth to Caxley. Sergeant Burnaby's treasures had been returned, and were now with their rightful owner at Beech Green.

  Mrs Fowler left the cottage spotlessly clean. Nothing which she had bought was left in place. Even the electric light bulbs had been taken.

  Diana was the last person to see her. Mrs Fowler brought the key, and was about to slip it through the letter box and depart, but Diana, who felt that she could not let the old lady go in such a mood, opened the door and spoke to her.

  'Goodbye, Mrs Fowler. I hope you'll be happy in Caxley.'

  'A fat lot happier than I've been here,' replied Mrs Fowler viciously. 'I'm glad to see the back of Tyler's Row.'

  She thrust the key at Diana, and stalked away to the waiting van, her back as straight as a ramrod, registering malice to the last.

  'She enjoys it, my dear,' Peter said when Diana told him later. 'What you won't understand is that some people thoroughly enjoy a fight. They're hawks by nature. You're a dove, and a particularly soft-hearted one. Rather a rare bird, in fact.'

  He smiled affectionately at his wife.

  'Shall we go out and celebrate our freedom?'

  'No, I'd sooner stay here and enjoy the wonderful feeling of peace,' said Diana. 'I can't really believe that at last Tyler's Row is our own.'

  'Not for long,' Peter warned her. 'Soon it will all begin again—the bricklayers, the plumbers, the electricians, the painters, the plasterers. Cups of coffee for old Fairbrother and those transistor-mad maniacs of his. Chaos all over again!'

  'I can face it,' said Diana. 'I can face anything at the moment.'

  Later that evening she went into the garden to pick some mint. Darkness was falling, and a light mist veiled the downs. Early Michaelmas daisies starred the border, and the last few yellow roses on Sergeant Burnaby's wall were dropping their petals. Autumn was in the air. Soon it would be time to light bonfires, to stack logs and to prepare for their first winter at Tyler's Row.

  Holding the cool stalks of the mint, she looked at their home. There it stood, as it had done for generations, silvery thatched, ancient and snug, melting into the shadowy background of trees and downland. How many men and women who had lived there, thought Diana, had stood as she did now, looking upon their home, and finding it good?

  The windows glowed from the dark bulk of the building. Diana, shivering with the first chill touch of autumn, went thankfully towards the warm haven of Tyler's Row.

  Peter was telephoning when she opened the door. There was a look of utter contentment on his face.

  'Any time you like, Bellamy,' he was saying. 'Any time you like.'

  He held out his free hand to Diana, and they stood there, hand in hand like two children. His voice became triumphant.

  'Stage Two can begin!'

  * * *

  MISS READ is the pen name of Mrs. Dora Saint, who was born on April 17, 1913. A teacher by profession, she began writing for several journals after World War II and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, but she is especially beloved for her novels of English rural life set in the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green. The first of these, Village School,
was published in 1955 by Michael Joseph Ltd. in England and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Miss Read continued to write until her retirement in 1996. In 1998 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. She lives in Berkshire.

  * * *