(2/20) Village Diary Read online

  The supporting film was of later vintage, but, if anything, heavier going. Played by Irish actors, in Irish countryside in Irish weather, and spoken in such a clotted hotchpotch of Irish idiom as to be barely intelligible, it dealt with the flight of a young man from the cruel English. Bogs, mist, mountains, girls with shawls over their heads and bare feet splashing through puddles, open coffins surrounded with candles and keening, wrinkled old women, all flickered before us for an hour and a half—and then the poor dear was shot in the end!

  We emerged into the grey London twilight with our eyes swollen. Drawn together by our emotional afternoon we had tea in a much more relaxed mood than lunch, and drove back in a pleasantly nostalgic atmosphere of ancient memories shared.

  It was good of Amy to take me out. A day away from Fairacre in the middle of January is a real tonic. But I was sorry to see her so unhappy. I hope that I am not so wrong-headed as to blame Amy's recent affluence for her present malaise. As anyone of sense knows, money is a blessing and I dearly wish I had more—a lot more. I should have flowers in the classroom, and my house, all the year round, buy a hundred or so books, which have been on my list for years, and spend every school holiday travelling abroad—just for a start. I think the truth of the matter is that Amy feels useless, and has too little to do.

  She used to be a first-lass teacher and was able to draw wonderful pictures on the blackboard, that were the envy of us all, I remember.

  School has now started with a vengeance, and I have heard all Mrs Annett's infants class read—that is, those that can. She has done wonders since she came a year ago. The marriage seems ideal and Mr Annett has lost his nervous, drawn look and put on quite a stone in weight. He brings her over from their school-house at Beech Green, each morning, and then returns to his duties there as headmaster. I was glad that the managers persuaded her to continue teaching. She intended to resign last September, but we had no applicants for the post, and as the Annetts had had a good deal of expense in refurnishing she decided to work for a little longer. The children adore her and her methods are more modern than Miss Clare's were. She has a nice practical grasp of infant-work problems too, as an incident this morning proved. I was sending off for more wooden beads for number work. 'Make them send square ones,' she said. I looked surprised. 'They don't roll away,' she added. Now, that's what I call intelligent! Square they shall be!

  Joseph Coggs appeared yesterday morning with a brown-paper carrier bag. Inside was a tortoise, very muddy, and as cold and heavy as a stone. It was impossible to tell if it were dead or only hibernating.

  'My mum told me to throw an old saucepan on the rubbish heap at the bottom of our place,' he told me, 'and this ere was buried under some old muck there.' He was very excited about his find and we have put the pathetic reptile in a box of leaves and earth out in the lobby—but I doubt if it will ever wake again. The children, I was amused to hear, were hushing each other as they undressed.

  'Shut up hollering, you,' said Eric in a bellow that nearly raised our urpaulin, 'that poor snail of Joe's don't get no rest!'

  The weather is bitterly cold, with a cruel east wind, which flaps our accursed urpaulin villainously. (The frame 'has been a bit held-up like, miss. Funny, really.') Scotland has had heavy snow, and I expect that Fairacre will too before long.

  The vicar called in just before the children went home to check up numbers for our trip to the Caxley pantomime on Saturday. Two buses have been hired as mothers and friends will come too, as well as the school managers who generously pay the school-children's expenses. It is the high-light of dark January.

  Mr Annett called to collect his wife—she won't be coming with us to the pantomime—and the vicar remarked to me on their happiness, adding that, to his mind, a marriage contracted in maturer years often turned out best, and had I met that very pleasant fellow—a retired schoolmaster, he believed—who had come to live at Miss Parr's?

  An almost irresistible urge to push the dear vicar headlong over the low school wall, against which he was leaning, was controlled with difficulty, and I was surprised to hear myself replying politely that I had not had that pleasure yet. Truly, civilization is a wonderful thing.

  I met Mr Bennett as I walked down to the Post Office the other evening. He is the owner of Tyler's Row, four thatched cottages at the end of our village. The Coggs live in one, the Waites next door to them, an old couple—very sweet and as deaf as posts—in the next, and a tight-lipped, taciturn woman, called Mrs Fowler lives in the last.

  Mr Bennett had been to collect the rent from his property.

  Each tenant pays three shillings a week and parts with it with the greatest reluctance.

  'I gets to hate coming for it,' admitted poor Mr Bennett. He is beginning to look his seventy years now, but his figure is as upright and trim as it was when he was a proud soldier in the Royal Horse Artillery, and his waxed moustache ends still stand at a jaunty angle. He has his Old Age Pension and lives with a sister at Beech Green, who is ailing and as poor as he is.

  'Every door's the same,' went on the old soldier. '"Can't you set our roof to rights? Can't you put us a new sink in? Come and look at the damp in our back scullery. 'Tis shameful." And what can I do with twelve bob a week coming in? That's if I'm lucky. Arthur Coggs owes me for three months now. He's got four times the money coming in that I have, but he's always got some sad story to spin.'

  The old man took out a pipe and rammed the tobacco in with a trembling finger.

  `I shall have to give this up, I's'pose, the way things are. I went to get an estimate from the thatcher over at Springbourne about Tyler's Row roofs. Guess how much?'

  I said I imagined it would cost about a hundred pounds to put it in repair.

  'A hundred?' Mr Bennett laughed sardonically. 'Two hundred and fifty, my dear. There's nothing for it, it seems, but to sell 'era for about a hundred and fifty while I can. Mrs Fowler would probably buy 'em. She's making a tidy packet at the moment. Pays me three bob, my dear, and has a lodger in that back bedroom who pays her three pound!'

  'But can she?' I asked. 'Didn't you have a clause about sub-letting?'

  'No. I didn't. When Mrs Fowler first come begging, all pitiful as a widder-woman, to have my cottage, I was that sorry for her I let her have the key that day. Now the boot's on the other foot. She earns six pounds a week up the engineering works in Caxley, gets three off her lodger, and greets me with a face like a vinegar bottle. "Proper hovel," she called my cottage, just now, "I sees you don't give me notice though, my dear," I says to her, "and, what's more, that's a real smart TV set you got on the dresser there." Ah! she didn't like that!'

  The old man chuckled at the thought of his flash of wit, and blew out an impudent dart of smoke from under the twirling moustaches.

  'I've just met Mrs Partridge,' he added. 'She asked me if I'd like to give something towards the Church Roof Fund. I give her a shilling, and then I couldn't help saying: "If I was you, Ma'am, I'd call along Tyler's Row for donations. There's something in the nature of forty or fifty pounds going in there each week. You should get a mite from that quarter."'

  He leant forward and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper.

  'And you know what she said to me? "Mr Bennett, I'm afraid their hearts don't match their pay packets!" Ah, she sees it all-she and the vicar! Times is topsy-turvy. There's new poor and new rich today, but one and all has got to face responsibility, as I see it. You can't take out of the kitty and not put in, can you, Miss?'

  The bus to Beech Green and Caxley drew up with a horrible squeaking of brakes. The driver, a local boy, from whom no secrets are hid, shouted cheerfully to Mr Bennett above the din.

  'Been to collect them rents again? Some people has it easy, my eye!'

  The old soldier cast me a quizzical glance, compounded of despair and amusement, mounted the steep step, and vanished among the country passengers.

  I have been inflicted with a sudden and maddening crop of chilblains and can scarcely hobble around the ho
use. No shoes are big enough to hold my poor, swollen, tormented toes and I am shuffling about in a pair of disreputable slippers which had been put aside for the next jumble sale, but were gratefully resurrected. A very demoralizing state of affairs, and can only put it down to the unwelcome appearance of snow.

  The pantomime was an enormous success. Both buses were full, and Cathy Wakes, looking very spruce in her new High School uniform, sat by me and told me all about the joys of hockey. 'I'm right-half,' she told me, eyes sparkling, 'and you have to have plenty of wind, because if you're right-half you have to mark the opposing left-wing, and she's usually the fastest runner on the field.' There was a great deal more to the same effect, and in answer to my query about her prowess in more academic subjects, she said: 'Oh, all right,' rather vaguely, and went on to tell me of the intricacies of bullying-off.

  Jimmy, her little brother, who sat by his mother opposite, was eating a large apple as he entered the bus, and in the six miles to Caxley consumed, with the greatest relish, a banana, a slab of pink and white nougat, a liquorice pipe, a bar of chocolate cream, and a few assorted toffees. This performance was only typical of many of his companions.

  Joseph Coggs sat by me when we settled in the Corn Exchange. The pantomime was 'Dick Whittington,' and he was over-awed by the cat, whose costume and make-up were remarkably realistic.

  'How does he breeve?' he asked, in a penetrating whisper.

  I whispered back. 'Through the holes in the mask.'

  'But he don't have no nose,' objected Joseph.

  'Yes he does. It's under the mask.'

  'Well, if it's under the mask, how does he breeve?'

  We were back where we started, and I tried a different approach.

  'Do you think he's holding his breath all this time, Joseph?'

  'Yes, he must be.'

  'Then how can he talk to Dick?'

  Still not persuaded of the cat's 'breeving,' or half-believing it to be a real cat all the time, Joseph subsided. He loved every minute of the show—which was an extraordinarily good amateur performance—and nearly rolled out of his seat with excitement, when I pointed out Linda Moffat to him on the stage. She was a dazzling fairy queen, in a creation of her clever mother's making, and her dancing was a pleasure to watch. I was glad that Mrs Moffat, with her friend Mrs Finch-Edwards, had been able to come with us this afternoon to witness Linda's success.

  Several of the cast were known personally to the Fairacre children and storms of clapping greeted the appearance of anyone remotely known.

  'Look,' said Eric, on my other side, clutching me painfully, 'there's the girl what drives the oil-van Tuesdays.' And he nearly burst his palms with rapturous greeting.

  When we emerged, dazzled with glory, into the winter twilight, the snow was falling fast. Queen Victoria, on her lofty pedestal wore a white mantle and a snow-topped crown. The lane to Fairacre was unbelievably lovely, the banks smooth as linen sheets, the overhanging beech trees already bearing a weight of snow along their elephant-grey branches, while the prickly hawthorn hedges clutched white handfuls in their skinny fingers.

  St Patrick's clock chimed half-past five when we stepped out at Fairacre, after our lovely afternoon. Our footsteps were muffled, but our voices rang out as clear as the bells above, in the cold air.

  Mrs Pringle asked me as we got off the bus if I had ever tried Typhoon tea? I successfully curbed an insane desire to ask her if it brewed storms in tea-cups? I enjoyed this ban mot all through my own tea-time.

  ***

  A most peculiar thing happened today. A very loud knocking came at the door of my classroom, while we were chanting the pence table to 100, in a delightful sing-song that would make an ultra-modem inspector's hair curl—and when I opened it, a strange young man tried to push in. I manoeuvred him back into the lobby, shut the classroom door behind me, and asked what he wanted. He was respectably dressed, but unshaven. He said could he come in as he liked children? Thinking he was an eccentric tramp on his way from the Caxley workhouse to the next, I told him that he'd better be getting along, and shooed him kindly into the playground.

  An hour later Mrs Annett came in from P.T. lesson, somewhat perturbed, because the wretched creature had hung over the school wall throughout the lesson making inane remarks. At this, I went out to send him off less kindly. By now, he had entered my garden and was drawing patterns on the snowy lawn with a stick.

  When I asked him what he was supposed to be doing, he flummoxed me by whipping out a red, penny note-book and saying he'd come to read the gas meter. As we have no gas in this area, this was so patently silly that I made up my mind at once to get the police to cope with the fellow.

  As I opened my front door he tried to come in with me, whining: 'I'm so hungry—so hungry,' and grinning vacantly at the same time. By now I was positive I had a madman on my hands, and very devoutly wished that I had not seen a gripping film about Jack the Ripper in Caxley recently, the horrider parts of which returned to me with unpleasant clarity.

  'Go to the back porch,' I ordered him, in a stern school-marmish voice, 'and I will give you some food.' Luckily he went, and I sped inside, locked front and back doors, and rang Caxley police station in record time. A reassuring country voice answered me, and I began to feel much better as I described the man, until the voice said, in a leisurely manner: 'That'd be the chap that ran ofF from Abbotsleigh yesterday'^ur local mental home.

  'Heavens—!' I began, squeaking breathlessly.

  'He wouldn't hurt a fly, miss,' went on the unhurried burr, 'he'll be scared stiff of you. Just keep him there if you can and we'll send a car out—it'll be with you in a quarter of an hour.'

  I didn't know that I cared to be told that the man would be scared stiff of me, but I cared even less for the suggestion that I cherished him under my roof. Nor did I like the thought of the forty children, of tender years, for whom I was responsible, not to mention Mrs Annett, whose husband I should never dare to face, if aught befell her. All this I babbled over the telephone, adding: 'I'm just going to give him a drink and some bread and cheese, in the back porch, so please try and get here while he's still eating.'

  'Car's gone out already. Never you fear, miss. Treat him like one of your kids,' said my calm friend, and rang off. I handed a pint of cider, half a loaf, and a craggy piece of hard cheese through the kitchen window, and with subtle cunning of which I was inordinately proud, supplied him with a small, very blunt tea-knife which should slow up his progress considerably. I couldn't make up my mind whether to dash back to the school and warn Mrs Annett, or whether to hang on in the house until the police car came. In the end I stayed in the kitchen, watching the meal vanish all too swiftly and edging my mind away from that pursuing film.

  After the longest ten minutes of my life, the car drew up. Two enormous, cheerful policemen came to the back porch, and asked the man to come for a ride with them.

  He went, without a backward glance, still clutching the plate and mug. Once inside the car he finished his cider, and I emerged from the front door and collected his utensils, wishing him a heartfelt good-bye into the bargain.

  The policeman said: 'Thank you, miss, thank you!' and drove off, still beaming.

  When I caught sight of myself in the mirror in the lobby I was not surprised. The most scared schoolmistress in the United Kingdom crawled thankfully back to her noisy class, and never breathed a word of reproach to the dear souls.

  I really believe that my chilblains have finally gone, and wish I knew what had cured them—if anything particular, apart from Time-the-great-healer, I mean.

  The various suggestions for their rout have ranged from (i) calcium tablets (Mr Annett); (2) painting with iodine (Mrs Annett) which I tried, but found tickly to do and so drying that the poor toes started to crack as well as itch; (3) treating with the liquid obtained from putting salt in a hollow dug in a turnip (Mr Willet, the caretaker); and (4) thrashing with a sprig of holly until the chilblains bleed freely (Mrs Pringle). Needless to say
I did not attempt the last sadistic assault on my suffering extremities.

  I am very worried about Joseph Coggs. His mother was taken to hospital last week with some internal trouble connected with the recent baby. Mrs Pringle, who usually describes any ills of the flesh in the most revolting detail, has seen fit on this occasion to observe an austere reserve about Mrs Coggs' symptoms, taking up the attitude that there are some things that the great army of married women must keep dark from their less fortunate spinster sisters. The twins, who usually adorn the front desk in Mrs Annett's room, and a toddler brother, have been sent to Mrs Coggs' sister in Caxley; but as she has no room for Joe he is living a hand-to-mouth existence with his father (who is completely useless) and with Mrs Waites, the next-door neighbour, 'Keeping an eye on him.'

  It all sounds most unsatisfactory to me. The child is not clean, has not had his clothes changed since his mother's departure, and looks frightened. Mr Willet told me more this morning when he came to fill the two buckets for the school's daily drinking-water, from my kitchen pump.

  'I don't say nothing about Arthur Coggs' drunkenness,' announced Mr Willet, with heavy self-righteousness. 'Nor don't I say nothing about his Jutting of his wife now and again—that's his affair. Nor don't I say nothing about an occasional lift round the ear for his kids—seeing as kids must be brought up respectful—but I do say this. That's not right to leave that child alone in that thatched cottage with the candle on, while he spends the evening at the "Beetle and Wedge." Why, my wife and I we hears him roaring along home nigh on eleven most nights.'