Winter in Thrush Green Page 3

  With such matters had earnest little Miss Fogerty busied herself as she hurried along. There were very few children about, and when she reached the school only half a dozen or so were at large in the playground. Punctuality was not a strong point at Thrush Green, and Miss Watson's insistence on prayers at nine sharp was one of her methods of correction. Late-comers were not allowed in, and were obliged to wait in the draughty lobby. While their more time-conscious brethren received spiritual refreshment for the day, Miss Watson hoped that they would meditate upon their own shortcomings. In fact, the malefactors usually ate sweets, redistributed the hats and coats of the pious, for their future annoyance, among the coat-pegs, and played marbles. They were wise enough to choose a large rubber mat by the door for this purpose, for experience had shown them that the uneven brick floor made a noisy, as well as unpredictable, playing ground, and Miss Fogerty had been known to slip out during the reading of the Bible passage to see what all the rumbling was about. Hardened late-comers were prudent enough to play marbles only while the piano tinkled out the morning hymn, for then Miss Fogerty, they knew, would be at the keyboard and Miss Watson leading the children's singing. After that it was as well to compose their faces into expressions of humility and regret, and to hope secretly that they would be let off with a caution, as the congregation returned to its studies.

  The school was empty when Miss Fogerty clattered her way over the door-scraper to her room. That did not surprise her, for Miss Watson lived at the school house next door, and might be busy with her last-minute chores. She usually arrived about a quarter to nine, greeted her colleague, read her correspondence and was then prepared to face the assembled school.

  Miss Fogerty hung up her tweed coat and her brown felt hat behind the classroom door, and set about unlocking the cupboards. There were little tatters of paper at the bottom of the one by the fireplace, where the raffia and other handwork materials were kept and Miss Fogerty looked at them with alarm and suspicion. She had thought for some time that a mouse lived there. She must remember to tell Mrs Cooke to set a trap. Mice were one of the few things that Miss Fogerty could not endure. It would be dreadful if one ran out while the children were present and she made an exhibition of herself by screaming! After surveying the jungle of cane, raffia and cardboard which rioted gloriously together, and which could well offer a dozen comfortable homes to abundant mice families, Miss Fogerty firmly shut the door and relocked it. The children should have crayons and drawing paper this afternoon from the cupboard on the far side of the room, she decided. Mrs Cooke must deal with this crisis before she approached the handwork cupboard again.

  The clock stood at five to nine, and now the cries and shouts of two or three dozen children could be heard. Miss Fogerty made her way to the only other classroom, and stopped short on the threshold with surprise. It was empty.

  Miss Fogerty noted the clean duster folded neatly in the very centre of Miss Watson's desk, the tidy rows of tables and chairs awaiting their occupants, and the large reproduction of Holman Hunt's 'The Light of the World' in whose dusky glass Miss Fogerty could see her own figure reflected.

  What should she do? Could Miss Watson have overslept? Could she be ill? Either possibility seemed difficult to believe. In the twelve years since Miss Watson's coming she had neither overslept nor had a day's indisposition. It would be very awkward if she called at the house and Miss Watson were just about to come over. It would look officious, poor Miss Fogerty told herself, and that could not be borne. Miss Fogerty was a little afraid of Miss Watson, for though she herself had spent thirty years at Thrush Green School, she was only the assistant teacher and she had been taught to respect her betters. And Miss Watson, of course, really was her better, for she had been a headmistress before this, and had taught in town schools, so large and magnificent, that naturally she was much wiser and more experienced. She was consistently kind to faded little Miss Fogerty and very willing to show her new methods of threading beads and making plasticine crumpets, explaining patiently, as she did so, the psychological implications behind these activities in words of three or, more often, four syllables. Miss Fogerty was humbly grateful for her goodwill, but would never have dreamt of imposing upon it. Miss Fogerty knew her place.

  While she hovered on the threshold, patting her wispy hair into place with an agitated hand and looking distractedly at her reflection in 'The Light of the World,' a breathless child hurried into the lobby, calling her name.

  'Miss Fogerty! Miss Fogerty!'

  He rushed towards her so violently that Miss Fogerty put out her hands to grasp his shoulders before he should butt her to the ground.

  The child looked up at her, wide-eyed. He looked awestricken.

  'Miss Watson called me up to her window, miss, and says you're to go over there.'

  'Very well,' said Miss Fogerty, calmly. 'There's no need to get so excited. Take off your coat and hang it up. You can go to your room now.'

  The child continued to gaze at her.

  'But, miss,' he blurted out, 'Miss Watson–she–she's still in her nightdress and the clock's struck nine.'

  Miss Watson's appearance when she opened the side door alarmed Miss Fogerty quite as much as it had the small boy.

  Her nightdress was decently covered by a red dressing-gown, but her face was drawn with pain and she swayed dizzily against the door jamb.

  'What has happened?' exclaimed Miss Fogerty, entering the house.

  Miss Watson closed the door and leant heavily against it.

  'I've been attacked–hit on the head,' said Miss Watson. She sounded dazed and vaguely surprised. A hand went fumbling among her untidy grey locks and Miss Fogerty, much shocked, put her hand under her headmistress's elbow to steady her.

  'Come and sit down. I'll ring Doctor Lovel. He'll be at home now. Tell me what happened.'

  'I can't walk,' answered Miss Watson, leaning on Miss Fogerty's frail shoulder. 'I seem to have sprained my ankle as I fell. It is most painful.'

  She held out a bare leg, and certainly the ankle was misshapen and much swollen. Purplish patches were already forming and Miss Fogerty knew from her first-aid classes that she should really be applying hot and cold water in turn to the damaged joint. But could poor Miss Watson, in her present state of shock, stand such treatment? She helped the younger woman to the kitchen, put her on a chair and looked round for the kettle.

  'There's nothing like a cup of tea, dear,' she said comfortingly, as she filled it. 'With plenty of sugar.'

  Miss Watson shuddered but made no reply. Her assistant switched on the kettle and surveyed her headmistress anxiously. Her usual feeling of respect, mingled with a little fear, had been replaced by the warmest concern. For the first time in their acquaintanceship Miss Fogerty was in charge.

  'The door-bell rang about half-past five, I suppose,' began Miss Watson hesitantly. 'It was still dark. I leant out of the bedroom window and there was a man waiting there who said there had been a car crash and could he telephone.'

  'What did he look like?" asked Miss Fogerty.

  'I couldn't see. I said I'd come down. I put on my dressing-gown and slippers and opened the front door—' She broke off suddenly, and took a deep breath. Miss Fogerty was smitten by the look of horror on her headmistress's face.

  'Don't tell me, my dear, if it upsets you. There's really no need.' She patted the red dressing-gown soothingly, but Miss Watson pulled herself together and continued.

  'He'd tied a black scarf, or a stocking, or something over his face, and I could only see his eyes between that and his hat brim. He had a thick stick of some kind–quite short–in his hand, and he said something about this being a hold-up, or a stick-up or some term I really didn't understand. I bent forward to see if I could recognise him–there was something vaguely familiar about him, the voice perhaps–and then he hit me on the side of my head—' Poor Miss Watson faltered and her eyes filled with tears at the memory of that vicious blow.

  The kettle's lid began rattling merril
y and Miss Fogerty, clucking sympathetically, began to make the tea.

  'I seem to remember him pushing past me. I'd crumpled on to the door mat and I remember a fearful pain, but whether it was my head or my ankle, I don't really know. When I came round again the door was shut and he'd vanished. It was beginning to get light then.'

  'Why didn't you get help before?' asked Miss Fogerty. 'It must have been about seven o'clock then. He will have got clear by now.'

  'I was so terribly sick,' confessed Miss Watson. 'I managed to crawl to the outside lavatory and I've been there most of the time.'

  'You poor, poor dear,' cried Miss Fogerty. 'And you must be so cold, too!'

  'I couldn't manage the stairs, otherwise I should have got dressed. But I thought I would wait until I heard you arrive, and then I knew I should be all right.'

  Miss Fogerty glowed with pleasure. It was not often, in her timid life, that she had been wanted. To know that she was needed by someone gave her a heady sense of power. She poured out the tea with care and put the cup carefully before her patient.

  'Shall I lift it for you?' she asked solicitously, but Miss Watson shook her head, raising the steaming cup herself and sipped gratefully.

  'The children—' she said suddenly, as their exuberant voices penetrated the quietness of the kitchen.

  'Don't worry,' said Miss Fogerty with newly-found authority. 'I'll just speak to the bigger ones, then I'll be back to ring the doctor.'

  'Don't tell them anything about this,' begged Miss Watson with sudden agitation. 'You know what Thrush Green is. It will be all round the place in no time.'

  Miss Fogerty assured her that nothing would be disclosed and slipped out of the side door.

  The children were shouting and playing, revelling in this unexpected addition to their pre-school games time.

  Miss Fogerty leant over the low dry-stone wall which separated the playground from the school-house garden. She beckoned to two of the bigger girls.

  'Keep an eye on the young ones, my dears. I'll be with you in a minute, then we'll all go in.'

  'Is Miss Watson ill?' asked one, her eyes alight with pleasurable anticipation.

  Miss Fogerty was torn between telling the truth and the remembrance of her promise to her headmistress. She temporised wisely.

  'Not really dear, but she won't be over for a little while. There's nothing for you to worry about.'

  She hastened back to her duties.

  Her patient had finished her tea and now leant back with her eyes closed and the swollen ankle propped up on another chair. She opened her eyes as Miss Fogerty approached, and smiled faintly.

  'Tell me,' said Miss Fogerty, who had just remembered something. 'Did the man take anything?'

  'He took the purse from my bag. There wasn't much in it, and my wallet, with about six pounds, I believe.'

  Miss Fogerty was profoundly shocked. Six pounds was a lot of money for a schoolteacher to lose even if she were a headmistress.

  'And I think he may have found mv jewel box upstairs, but of course I haven't been up there to see. It hadn't much of value in it, except to me, I mean. There was a string of seed pearls my father gave me, and two rings of my mother's and a brooch or two–but nothing worth a lot of money.'

  'We must ring the police as well as Doctor Lovell,' exclaimed Miss Fogerty.

  'Must we?' cried Miss Watson, her face puckering. 'Oh dear, I do hate all this fuss–but I suppose it is our duty.'

  Miss Fogerty's heart smote her at the sight of her patient's distress. It reminded her too that she should really get her into bed so that she could recover a little from the shocks she had received. She sprang to her feet, with new-found strength, and went to help her headmistress.

  'Back to bed for you,' she said firmly, 'and then I'm going to the telephone. Up you come!'

  Five minutes later, with her patient safely tucked up, Miss Fogerty spoke to Doctor Lovell and then to Lulling Police Station. That done, she went over to the school playground to face the forty or more children for whom she alone would be responsible that day.

  Normally the thought would have made timid little Miss Fogerty quail. But today, fortified by her experiences, feeling six feet high and a tower of strength, Miss Fogerty led the entire school into morning assembly and faced a host of questioning eyes with unaccustomed composure and authority.

  For the first time in her life Miss Fogerty was in command, and found she liked it.

  As Miss Watson had feared, the word had flown round Thrush Green with exceptional rapidity. It was too much to hope that the visit of Doctor Lovell, and later, the sight of a policeman walking up the path to the school-house, should pass unnoticed, on a fine Monday morning, in Thrush Green. Neighbours shaking mats, pegging out the week's washing or simply gossiping over the hedges, saw the signs and spread the tales.

  'Probably got a touch of this 'ere flu that's going round,' said one, as Doctor Lovell strode briskly towards the school-house door. 'It's gastrical this year,' she added, airing her medical knowledge.

  'Hasn't looked well for weeks,' said another. 'Very tiring life, that teaching. Everlasting bawling at the kids–must knock you up in the end.'

  'Poor Miss Watson, wonder what ails her? At a funny age, of course, for a spinster,' commented a third matron, taking a swipe at her screaming ninth and youngest, and feeling unaccountably superior at the same time.

  Within ten minutes of Doctor Lovell's appearance Thrush Green had burdened Miss Watson with every ill from ear-ache to epilepsy, and felt for her an all-embracing sympathy.

  Within half an hour the policeman arrived. He was hot and breathless, having pushed his bicycle up the steep hill from Lulling. He vanished inside the house and the temperature rose again on Thrush Green.

  'If it weren't that Doctor Lovell's so very particular I'd say she'd been assaulted,' said one neighbour earnestly to another, damning in one breath the morals of the rest of the medical profession and Miss Watson's modest charms.

  'Could be attempted suicide,' said another, her eye brightening. 'Teaching's enough to turn your head at times. You can't wonder with children round you all day.'

  'That's true,' agreed her crony, nodding her head sagely. 'Poor Miss Watson's probably come over violent and Doctor's sent for the police. Unless, of course, she's done something real bad and just confessed it to the doctor—'

  The tongues wagged gaily. By the time the children came out to play at ten-thirty Thrush Green had Miss Watson convicted of every crime from forgetting to renew her television licence-this was the most charitable suggestion–to slitting young Doctor Lovell's throat with the bread-knife whilst in the grip of a violent brainstorm brought on by twelve years' non-stop teaching. This was the opinion of those who allowed their thoughts to be coloured by the recent reading of their Sunday newspapers. There was certainly enough to keep Thrush Green pleasurably amused for many happy days, and by the time Doctor Lovell had departed, and the policeman had stowed away his pocket-book with poor Miss Watson's statement in it and a detailed description of the missing purse, wallet–and, alas–the jewel case and a small gilt alarm clock, there were enough rumours flying round the green to last a year.

  As Ella Bembridge said afterwards: 'It never rains but it pours,' for before the children returned to school at ten forty-five prompt, another momentous happening shook Thrush Green.

  A large Daimler car glided to the gate of the corner house. Out stepped a tall military figure who stood looking about him, just long enough for the watchful eyes of his future neighbours to notice his sunburnt face and white moustache, before taking out a door-key, hurrying up the path and letting himself into his new home.

  For a brief moment Miss Watson's blaze of glory was extinguished in the dazzling light of this new event.

  At last, the corner house was occupied.

  4. Plans for a Party

  SOME days after this excitement, Ella and Dimity sat at the dining-room table writing invitations. It would be more truthful to say that
Dimity was doing the writing, while Ella conned a list and occasionally thumped a stamp on the addressed envelopes.

  'About time we did this,' commented Ella, watching Dimity's careful pen inscribing sherry in the left-hand corner. 'How long since we gave a blowout, Dim?'

  'Quite two years,' said Dimity, selecting an envelope. 'I know it was in the summer, soon after Mrs Curdles fair came. The last time we saw her,' added Dimity, her eyes beginning to look misty.

  Ella stirred herself to be bracing. Much too sympathetic, poor old Dim! Ought to have had a husband and six children to lavish all that affection on, thought Ella, not for the first time.

  'Grand old girl,' agreed Ella heartily. 'Well, she had a good run for her money, you know, and the fair's still going strong under young Ben. I hear he's coming to Thrush Green for Christmas with Molly, to see old Piggott.'

  As she had intended, this diverted Dimity's attention.

  'That will be nice. I'd like to see Molly Piggott again–Curdle, I mean.' Dimity smiled at the thought and attacked the stack of cards again.

  'Who have we done now?' she asked Ella, who was ticking the list.

  'The Baileys, the Youngs, the rector, the Lovells, Dotty, and the three Lovelock sisters. Only four more to do. I can't see where we're going to put them anyway in this cottage.'

  'People shrink at cocktail parties,' Dimity assured her. 'It's because they stand up and are packed together neatly. At tea parties their legs are spread all over the floor.'

  'Awful lot of women,' mourned Ella surveying the list.

  'I wouldn't say they're awful,' said Dimity, sounding shocked.

  'No, no,' replied Ella testily. 'They're not awful. There's just too many of them.' Her face brightened.

  'Dim, we've forgotten to put down the new man. Write one quickly."

  'But we don't know him,' objected Dimity. 'We haven't called yet.'