Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Page 30

  'And then you'll plunge into a deeper pool still, if you go to a university,' said Emily, 'and probably nearly drown when you dive into the world of work after that! But you'll survive, Billy, you'll see, and be able to help a great many other young people who are busy jumping from one pool to the next and floundering now and again!'

  It was all said so light-heartedly that it was not until many years later that Billy realised how skilfully the lesson had been imparted. At the time, he was only conscious of comfort and the resurgence of his natural high spirits, and put both down to energetic sawing in the open air, and Emily's excellent fruit cake.

  At the gate, Billy turned and surveyed the old familiar playground next door.

  'I wish I were back,' he said impulsively.

  Emily shook her head, smiling.

  'You don't really. You're much too big a fish for that little pond now, and I think you are beginning to know it.'

  She looked at Billy thoughtfully.

  'What was the name of that prefect?'

  Billy told her. She was silent for a minute, and then seemed to come to a decision.

  'I'm going to tell you something which you must keep to yourself, but I think you can do it, and I think it will help you.'

  'I can keep a secret,' promised Billy.

  'That boy went from Fairacre School to Caxley. The family moved later, but this is what I want you to know. Miss Clare told me that he was so upset in his first term that his parents thought he might have to leave. From what you tell me, he seems to be keeping afloat in his bigger pond now.'

  'He's unsinkable!' commented Billy ruefully.

  'Well, think about it. I've only told you because I believe it might help you to understand people. But not a word to anyone, Billy.'

  'Not a word,' he echoed solemnly, and ran home with half a crown as wages in his hand, and new-found hope in his heart.

  Wisps of white mist were drifting in from the sea as Billy Dove drove his Land-Rover over the rutted site to his office.

  The sun was almost blotted out now, faintly discernible now and again, riding moon-like through the ragged clouds. Billy hated this sea-mist, which local people called 'the haar', which swept in unpredictably and wrapped the countryside in icy veils.

  He shivered as he entered the small granite house where his office was situated on the ground floor. He was the first to arrive. His colleagues would be coming within the next quarter of an hour, but now he had the little house to himself, and had time to think.

  He took out the letter and read it again. Taormina! And Mary! Gazing into the swirling whiteness outside, he longed to return to the sunshine, the flowers, the cypress trees—and, above all, to the warmth and love of Mary. It would be so easy to return, and have a week or two of utter happiness in the sun. The work here could go on under young Bannister's eye without much effort. God, it was tempting!

  He stood up suddenly, hands in pockets, and went to the window. Coins jingled as he turned his loose change over and over in his nervousness.

  This was a situation he must face alone. No wise old Miss Davis to turn to now.

  He gave an impatient snort of derision. What would Emily Davis know, anyway, of a man's feelings? Much use she would be to him with a problem like this. Her advice would come out ready-made, as automatically as a packet from a slot machine.

  'Your duty, my boy, is to your wife and children! The rest is temptation. It is SIN, put before you by the devil himself.'

  How simple life must have been to those old Victorians with their rigid rules of conduct! But how much they must have missed!

  He faced about, turning his back upon the blank whiteness now shrouding the hill side in impenetrable clammy fog.

  Nevertheless, it was the only course to take. He had made up his mind to stay in Scotland as soon as he read the letter. Temptation, the devil, Emily Davis and all the other faintly ridiculous issues which clouded his mind, at the moment, as confusingly as the mist outside, made no difference to his decision. He had made the break with Mary. He would not go back.

  He had a sudden memory of Sarah that morning, laughing in her blue and white cotton frock, and of John's conspiratorial wink across the playground.

  He smiled as he drew a piece of writing paper towards him. Young Bannister would see Sicily for the first time. He would remain in Scotland.

  He banged on the stamp as his assistant's car drew up outside, and went outside to meet him. It was like stepping naked into a wet mackintosh. God, what a climate!

  Some men, thought Billy Dove, would say he was out of his mind to turn down the opportunity of leaving it. Perhaps he was. Who knows?

  Ah well, the decision was made and, bitter though it was, it was the right one. He began to smile.

  'What's the joke?' said his assistant.

  'I'm trying to decide if I've come to my senses—or lost them completely,' said Billy.

  The assistant raised his eyebrows, and Billy laughed ruefully.

  'One thing, Miss Davis would approve.'

  He clapped his bewildered colleague on the shoulder.

  'Come along, son. We've work to do.'

  13. Mrs Pringle Disapproves

  THE village of Fairacre is some two miles from Beech Green, but news—particularly bad news—travels swiftly in the country, and Emily's death was heard of within a few hours of its happening.

  The people of Fairacre knew Emily well, but their first concern was for Dolly Clare who had taught them, and their children, for so many years at Fairacre School.

  As children, Emily and Dolly had attended Fairacre School, and later had taught there as pupil teachers. Dolly had remained there for the rest of her teaching life, whilst Emily had gone first to Caxley and then to Springbourne. When Springbourne School closed, as a result of the 1944 act, Emily was transferred to a Caxley school, and lived with a younger brother for whom she kept house. She was glad when he married, and she was free to join Dolly Clare. In the last happy years of their shared retirement, the two old ladies had frequently visited Fairacre, and indeed they were as well known there, by young and old, as in Beech Green.

  'I'd have taken a bet on Dolly Clare going first,' observed Mr Willet to Mrs Pringle. Mr Willet is a man of many parts. He is school caretaker, sexton, verger, local nurseryman and a pillar of strength to all needing practical advice on such matters as faulty plumbing, pruning roses, tiling a roof and coping generally with a householder's problems.

  Mrs Pringle is as gloomy as Mr Willet is sunny. She acts as school cleaner, is the bane of her headmistress's life, and a terror and scourge to all those with dirt on their shoes. Mrs Pringle is one of this world's martyrs, but one who certainly does not suffer in silence.

  On this mellow afternoon of autumn sunshine, Mrs Pringle encountered Mr Willet as she made her way homeward from washing up the school dinner plates and cutlery.

  St Patrick's clock had struck two, and Mr Willet was perched on a ladder picking early black plums from a tree in his front garden. He was suitably impressed with the gravity of Mrs Pringle's news of Emily Davis's going, and dismounted the ladder to converse over the gate.

  Mr Willet knew what was fitting. One could not carry on a conversation on such a serious matter when engaged on plum-picking, ten feet above ground. It would be disrespectful to the dead, and an affront to Mrs Pringle.

  'Yes, I'd have taken a bet on Dolly Clare going first,' he repeated, pushing back his cap. 'She'll miss her, you know. Anyone with her?'

  Flattered by his attention, Mrs Pringle launched into her narrative. It was not often that Mr Willet treated her words with such respect. She made the most of this rare occasion, and propped her black oil cloth bag against the gate, at her feet, as if she intended to be some time imparting her news.

  Mr Willet, anxious though he was to hear it, watched the gesture with some foreboding. He had some hoeing to do, after the plum-picking, and some seeds to water. Mrs Pringle, launched upon the tide of her story, could take an unconscionable time gett
ing to its end, as he knew well.

  'I thought, the last time I saw Miss Davis,' began Mrs Pringle lugubriously, 'as she was on the wane. Funny how you gets to know. There's a look about folks, as no doubt you've noticed, Mr Willet.'

  'Can't say I have,' replied Mr Willet shortly, his eyes roving to the plum tree.

  'Ah well!' conceded Mrs Pringle, with a certain ghoulish smugness, 'there's some of us more in tune with the Other World. You gets to recognise the Hand of Death, before it's even fallen. Miss Davis had that look—just as though she was seeing the Farther Shore.'

  'Stummer-cake, more like,' said Mr Willet sturdily. He did not hold with morbid fancies, and in these realms of psychic fantasy Mrs Pringle could lose herself for a good ten minutes, if not checked. Dear knows when he'd get the seeds watered, at this rate!

  Mrs Pringle ignored his coarse interjection. It was not often that she had such a valuable captive audience. She returned to her theme with all the concentration of a terrier with a rat.

  'I saw the same look on my poor mother's face the night before she died. "She won't last another day," I told my husband. "She got that hollow-cheeked look".'

  'You should have put her teeth in again,' observed Mr Willet.

  'And next morning I found her cold,' continued Mrs Pringle undaunted. 'She looked a young woman. At Peace. We had them words put on her stone actually.'

  'I might get my bike out later on and see if I can do anything for Dolly Clare,' said Mr Willet.

  'With Emily Davis still in the house?' cried Mrs Pringle, scandalised. 'Where's your sense of fitness?'

  'Dolly Clare might be glad of a hand. You can do with an old friend when you've taken a knock like that.'

  'They say the Annetts are keeping an eye on her,' said Mrs Pringle. 'Very good thing too. She's none too strong, is Dolly Clare. A shock like this could be the death of her.'

  There was a glint of pleasurable anticipation in the old terror's eye which riled Mr Willet.

  'Don't start thinking of double funerals,' he said tartly. Mrs Pringle bridled. Her thoughts had indeed strayed into this delectable and dramatic field. She changed her tactics swiftly before Mr Willet escaped from her clutches and returned to his plum-picking.

  'The very idea!' she protested, her double chin wobbling indignantly. 'As a matter of fact, I was recalling how good Miss Davis was to my brother-in-law—the one at Springbourne. She often found him a little job when times were hard. You knows what a family he had.'

  Mr Willet began to despair of ever getting his jobs done. He was about to make a firm break, and risk Mrs Pringle's displeasure, when he saw help at hand.

  A large shabby pram, squeaking to high heaven, approached from the Springbourne direction. A slatternly girl, with dishevelled red hair, pushed it, a toddler clinging to her skirts.

  Mr Willet's spirits rose.

  'Here's one of the family now,' he said joyfully. 'I'll get back to work.'

  With remarkable speed for one so thickset, he remounted the step ladder.

  It was Minnie Pringle who approached. She was still known to the neighbourhood as Minnie Pringle, although she was now a married woman. A feckless body, 'not quite all there', as people said, she had produced three children before marriage, and two since. Her husband was much older than she was, a dour widower with a number of young children of his own. The combined families occupied a dilapidated semi-detached villa on the outskirts of Springbourne and seemed to thrive under Minnie's erratic care.

  The house reeked permanently of neck-of-mutton stew, which was the only dish which Minnie had mastered over the years. This, with plenty of potatoes, innumerable sliced white loaves from a Caxley supermarket, and pots of strong sweet tea, constituted the household's diet. They all seemed to thrive on it.

  Their clothes were given to them by kindly neighbours or bought for a few shillings at local jumble sales. Minnie's husband reckoned that his wages as a road-sweeper paid the rent of their shabby house, provided the food and left him ten shillings a week for beer and cigarettes.

  Minnie found the arrangement perfectly satisfactory. After her haphazard upbringing it all seemed a model of household efficiency.

  She greeted her aunt boisterously, sniffing the while.

  'We've bin in your place, but you wasn't there.'

  'Not surprising, is it?' said Mrs Pringle.

  Sarcasm was lost upon Minnie.

  'Just going to the Post Office to get me family.'

  Mrs Pringle rightly translated this as 'family allowances', and snorted. This was a sore point.

  'It's people like you, Minnie, as keeps people like me poor! About time you stopped having babies and expecting us hardworking folk to keep 'em for you.'

  'I don't ask 'em to come,' replied Minnie, tossing her unkempt head.

  'You don't do much to stop 'em as far as I can see,' boomed her aunt. She looked with disfavour upon the toddler who was wiping his nose on his coat cuff.

  'I'll drop in on my way back,' said Minnie cheerfully. She was not one to harbour grudges. Mrs Pringle sighed heavily, picked up her black oil cloth bag, and faced the inevitable.

  'I'll go and put the kettle on,' she said resignedly. 'Don't dilly-dally now, Minnie. I've plenty to do when I get home, so don't keep me hanging about.'

  Mr Willet, high among the branches, echoed this sentiment, and watched Mrs Pringle's squat figure stumping homeward into the distance.

  ***

  What a family! What a disgrace to decent people! thought Mrs Pringle, setting out the cups and saucers on a tin tray. Of course, they were only relations by marriage, but even so!

  Mrs Pringle shuddered at the thought of her husband's younger brother Josh. Nothing but a byword, as far as Caxley, and further. The police of three counties had been after him, for one thing or other. If it wasn't petty thieving in the market, it was breaking and entering, or being picked up dead drunk. Or else it was poaching, thought Mrs Pringle, putting out a few broken biscuits for the children.

  Yes, poaching. And Miss Davis knew a bit about that too, come to think of it. It wasn't the sort of story you would tell to Mr Willet, say, but it just showed you that Emily Davis had her head screwed on, and her heart in the right place too.

  The sight of that dratted girl Minnie had brought back the memory very sharply. Mrs Pringle shifted the kettle to the side of the stove, picked up her crochet work, and sat down, with a sigh, to await her niece's coming with what patience she could muster.

  It had all happened when Minnie was eight or nine years of age—the scruffiest and most scatter-brained pupil in Emily Davis's class at Springbourne.

  The child's work was atrociously done. Her writing always appeared to have been executed with a crossed nib dipped heavily in black honey. The pages bore the imprint of dirty fingers, despite Emily's insistence on frequent washings in the lobby.

  After super-human efforts by Emily, Minnie had begun to read. Figure work seemed to be completely beyond her. Numbers to five had some reality for the child, and Emily had hopes of her comprehending those up to ten in the future. A realist, Emily faced the fact that double figures would probably always be beyond Minnie's ken. In this she was to be proved right.

  Emily concentrated on Minnie's newly-acquired reading ability, substituted a pencil for the pen with the permanently crossed nib, and began to see the child making some headway.

  It was not surprising that she was so backward. Her father, Josh Pringle, was the black sheep of his family, constantly in trouble, easily led by his dubious companions, and a mighty consumer of beer whenever he could afford to buy it. Occasionally he obtained work as a labourer, but his income was mainly derived from petty thieving, or from keeping a watch for the police whilst his cronies were 'doing a job'.

  Minnie's mother was a brow-beaten wisp of a woman, prematurely grey, who looked twice her age, and had long since given up the struggle to keep her home and children tidy.

  Meals were erratic. Sometimes she cooked a rabbit stew for the family, or
a simple pie or pudding. More often, the children were told to help themselves to bread and jam from the cupboard. There was no money to buy meat, but Josh's poaching supplied them with a certain amount of nourishment in the form of snared rabbits and hares. Now and again, he took his old gun and picked off a roosting pheasant on Sir Edmund Hurley's estate. Bob Dixon, the gamekeeper, was Josh's implacable enemy.

  One night, in October, Bob Dixon sat in 'The Crown' at Springbourne. He had a pint of draught bitter on the table in the corner, and his companion was the local policeman, Danny Goss, off duty.

  Bob was a taciturn individual, and made few friends. He was not particularly fond of Danny Goss, but at least they had a common enemy—poachers. And another thing, Danny Goss played a hard game of dominoes, and this Bob relished. They were in the middle of a game when old Tim Ryan came in and sidled up to them.

  'Evening, Dan. Evening, Bob.'

  They acknowledged his greetings with grunts, resenting interruption of the game.

  Tim watched a few moves in silence, and then spoke in a low tone.

  'There's some shootin' going on up Narrow Copse. Thought you should know.'

  Bob stood up immediately. Danny finished Ins drink, put back the dominoes into their greasy box, and followed suit. Bob put a florin on the counter and nodded towards Tim.

  'Give the old boy a drink,' he said to the barman.

  The two men emerged into the cold night air. It was a light night, for it was full moon. Clouds covered its face, but a silvery diffused brightness made visibility easy. A shot rang out as they emerged, and without speaking they ran, one behind the other, along the grass verge which muffled the sound of their footsteps.