Village Centenary Read online

  We all felt ten years younger, and the children were as happy as sandboys now that they could play outside. Even Mrs Pringle looked a little less dour and sported a new flowered overall.

  'Minnie give it to me for Christmas,' she said, when I admired it. 'I was keeping it for best, but what with the sun and this nice bit of spring, I thought why not wear it?'

  'Why not indeed,' I agreed.

  'Besides,' she added, 'what's the good of hoarding things? I mean, for all we know we may be knocked down by a bus before we have a chance to use our good stuff.'

  This sounded more like Mrs Pringle to me. 'Always merry and bright,' as someone sang lugubriously in The Arcadians, but at least she had shown herself momentarily in tune with the spring sunshine around her. One must be thankful for small mercies.

  1 took advantage of this blessing of early warmth and ushered the children out for an afternoon walk. The rooks were wheeling about the high trees, and one or two little birds flew across our path, trailing dry grass and moss in their beaks, intent upon their nest building. There was even a bold bumble bee investigating the ivy on the churchyard wall, and someone said the frogspawn might be starting in the pond. Of course we had to go and see, but there was none there.

  I looked at my watch. It said almost three-thirty, and we set off for school at a brisk pace. There were several things to put away before Mrs Pringle appeared, and grace to be sung before the end of school at a quarter to four.

  As we approached the school gate, Miss Briggs's little car appeared. The children scattered to left and right, but I stood my ground. The church clock said three-thirty exactly, and so did my watch.

  Miss Briggs peered from the side window.

  'Can you spare a minute?' I said. She looked a little annoyed, but duly reversed into the playground.

  The children and I entered the school, tidied up, sang: Now the day is over and wished each other good afternoon.

  Miss Briggs came into the room as the last of the footsteps died away. It was not quite ten to four.

  No time like the present, I thought, and invited her to sit down.

  'I oughtn't to stop,' she said. 'I'm picking up a friend at four o'clock.'

  'This won't take a minute,' I promised her, and began to point out the necessity of staying until all her children were accounted for at the end of the day.

  'But the hours are nine till three-thirty,' she protested.

  'Not in teaching, they aren't,' I assured her. 'The children are in your care. What would have happened if one had injured himself before I got back? There were seven or eight infants under seven left to their own devices.'

  She did not appear particularly contrite, or even fully aware of having been at fault, but I made it clear that she must not leave until my children had collected their younger brothers and sisters, and she went off looking more irritated than chastened.

  Well, I had said my piece, I told myself, locking my desk drawers. Now it was up to my assistant to profit from it.

  3 March

  The 'soft weather', as the Irish say, remained with us, and March came in like the Iamb rather than the lion. I was pottering about in the garden after tea, admiring the swelling buds on the lilac bushes, when a car stopped at the gate, and out stepped Miss Quinn.

  The little I know of Miriam Quinn I like. She is an extremely hard-working and efficient secretary to an eminant industrialist whose offices are in Caxley. So far, she has managed to stay fairly clear of the multitudinous activities in the village, and one rarely sees her.

  She and Joan Benson, her landlady at Holly Lodge, are good friends despite their difference in temperament. Joan, since her husband died recently, has taken on all kinds of public work in Fairacre, and her good humour has endeared her to us all.

  This visit from Miriam, I surmised, was something to do with the Caxley Festival. I took her indoors with pleasure and offered her a drink, but she shook her head.

  'We've just had a farewell party for one of our staff at the office,' she told me, 'and I've had quite enough for one evening, I think.' She went on to explain her visit which, as I had guessed, was about the festival.

  'I hope you aren't going to ask me to open my garden,' I said. 'Not that people might be delighted to see more weeds than in their own, but I can't compete with real gardeners.'

  She laughed, and I thought how attractive she was when her usually serious expression was lit by laughter.

  'Don't worry! It's something far less arduous. We're going to have teas in the village hall, and I'm trying to find out who would be willing to help. Joan's in charge, but would need about a dozen people to make a rota.'

  'Oh, I'll willingly help,' I cried, much relieved. 'And if you want a cake, I am rather a dab hand at an almond one.'

  'Splendid!' she said, producing a notebook and pencil. I noticed how neat the list was, and how quickly she made her notes. Obviously a treasure in the office at Caxley. No wonder she had been importuned by all the local clubs for help.

  'Joan will be so grateful. We've got four names so far, including Mrs Willet who is marvellous, I hear.'

  'You couldn't do better,' I assured her.

  'What a pretty house this is,' said Miriam.

  'I love it,' 1 said, 'but the snag is, of course, that it's a tied house and I really ought to look for somewhere else for my old age. I keep putting it off, which is quite mad, as house prices get more impossible each week.'

  'It's not easy to find a place,' she agreed.

  'Would you like to see the rest of it?'

  'I'd love to. Houses are a great interest of mine. I was so lucky to find the annexe at Holly Lodge. Nothing in Caxley could compare with it.'

  She followed me through the few rooms of the schoolhouse and seemed enchanted with all she saw, pausing at the bedroom windows to exclaim at the superb views which I am lucky enough to enjoy.

  'I find this downland country marvellously exhilarating,' she said. 'When I get back from Caxley I feel pretty jaded,

  but ten minutes in this air, and with these views, and I'm a new woman. The thought of leaving it fills me with despair.'

  'But you don't have to leave it, do you?' I asked, puzzled.

  She made a grimace.

  'I don't know. It will soon be common knowledge, I expect, so that I don't think I'm betraying confidences. Joan is probably moving nearer her daughter whenever anything suitable turns up. She will sell Holly Lodge then, of course. I suppose I could stay on, but I shouldn't care to live at such close quarters with strangers, and in any case Joan would get a much better price without a tenant in the place.'

  'She'll be missed,' I said. 'Let's hope she won't have to go for some time. Isn't she happy here?'

  'Very happy. But she's about seventy, and getting less and less fond of driving, and I think her daughter feels she should be at hand if her mother were ill. It's all very sensible and understandable, but I dread her going, and dread house-hunting all over again even more.'

  'Well, it was nice of you to tell me, and I won't say anything until I hear from other people that it's known in the village. Not that that will take long, knowing Fairacre,' I added.

  Miriam laughed and made for the door.

  'No secrets in a village!' she agreed, and departed down the path to the car.

  One morning, soon after Miriam Quinn's visit, Reg Thorn appeared again with two men from the education office. They wanted to inspect the skylight again, and to see if the roof would stand a more solid structure built upon it.

  This sounded hopeful to me. Could Fairacre School really be getting a proper dormer window to replace our temperamental skylight after a hundred years? I readily gave my permission for them to clamber about on the roof, and they departed.

  Luckily, the weather was still fine, and apart from a good deal of thumping overhead which produced a light shower of flaked paint, dead leaves and an assortment of defunct wasps, spiders and earwigs upon my desk, we managed to continue our lessons in comparative peace.
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  The three vanished just before playtime, and I listened to the children's comments as they imbibed their morning milk.

  'I bet them two men was telling oP Reg the best way to do it'

  'What's a dormer anyway?'

  'Do it have curtains like a proper window?'

  'My auntie up Caxley says dormers lets in the draught something cruel.'

  'D'you reckon we'll get it by the summer?'

  'You'll be lucky! What with ol' Reg doin' it?'

  It was like hearing their parents talking. Fairacre loves a new topic. The replacement of our skylight was going to keep everyone happy for a long time to come.

  But not too long, I fervently hoped. I had a feeling that the fine weather would break the minute the glass was removed.

  Mr Willet was of the same opinion. He was surveying the school roof when I went across to my house during the dinner hour.

  'That'll never stand nothin' stronger than a skylight, that roof,' he asserted. 'Stands to reason, all that was gone into when this place was built. If it wouldn't bear the weight then, when them beams was new, what chance will it have now?'

  'Perhaps it was too expensive to have a proper window put in then,' I hazarded.

  'What, with all the money the Hurleys put up to help pay for it? They'd not grudge a few more quid to make the school ship-shape and Bristol fashion. Always had to be the best for the Hurleys.'

  'Come and look at my broad beans,' I urged, anxious to change the subject, and to collect a book of Greek myths to read to the children in the afternoon.

  He followed me obediently as I led the way.

  He studied my two rows of beans with a serious expression.

  'You got blackfly comin' on,' he said. 'And them weeds is doing all right too. I better come up for an hour this evening.'

  'Thank you,' I said. 'I'd be glad of your help. Have a look round while I nip in to fetch a book.'

  He was still plodding morosely round the vegetable patch when I returned. It was unlike him to look so depressed. Could it be the state of my garden? I had been thinking that it looked unusually tidy. Not that it could hold a candle to Mr Willet's own plot, which was always a miracle of neatness and fertility, but not at all bad by my lowly standards.

  'See you this evening then,' I said to the pacing figure.

  'Any time suits me.'

  'Ah!' answered Mr Willet absently, kicking a stone from the grass on to the garden bed. 'I tell you, Miss Read, that skylight was right for that roof. The Hurleys would've known, and I'll wager old Reg don't. It's not going to be as simple as they makes out.'

  So it was the skylight that was casting this unaccustomed gloom upon Mr Willet! I felt mightily relieved.

  'Well, cheer up,' I said, making my way towards the playground. 'That's Reg's look-out, isn't it?'

  'It'll be mine before the pesky thing's been up a month or two,' forecast my caretaker. 'I'm the mug as always has to clear up other folk's mess!'

  As he was still eyeing my weeds, I forebore to comment, but carried my Greek myths across to school in prudent silence.

  News of Joan Benson's departure from Holly Lodge was very soon common gossip in the village, as Miriam had forecast.

  The first to tell me was the vicar. 'A grievous loss!' he said. 'We were all so delighted when she and her husband and mother arrived, but now we must lose the last of the three. I wonder when she is moving?'

  I was unable to tell him, but Mrs Pringle told me an hour or two later.

  'Getting down to her daughter's as soon as she can,' she informed me. 'Going to look out for a little place down there. A bungalow, I don't doubt. Stairs get somethin' cruel as you get on, and she's got a touch of arthritis already.'

  I said, somewhat shortly, that it was the first I had heard of it.

  Mrs Pringle continued undismayed: 'Holly Lodge ought to fetch a good price on the market. Nice garden and that, and you can call your soul your own with that holly hedge all round. Don't get no busybodies peering in like I do at home.'

  This was a side swipe at her immediate neighbour, and I was careful to make no comment. It would soon have got back in Fairacre, and I do my best to steer a steady course.

  'I wonder what Miss Quinn will do?' was her next surmise. 'She won't find it easy to find as quiet a place as that little flat of hers, and I don't suppose she earns enough to buy anything outright, do you?'

  'I have no knowledge of Miss Quinn's income nor of her future plans,' I said stiffly. Was there no way of stopping this gossip? Evidently not, for the lady continued.

  'That little hovel near Miss Waters is in The Caxley Chronicle this week for thirty thousand pounds. I ask you! Who'd buy that shack anyway? I can remember when old Perce Tilling bought it for three hundred pounds, and then we told him a fool and his money was soon parted. Not that Perce cared. He'd just won a packet at Caxley races, and his old auntie who kept the shop at Beech Green had just died, and they found over four hundred under the mattress when they lifted her into her coffin, so Perce got that as well. Not fair really, as that daughter of hers, although no better than she should be when it came to American soldiers, did do her best by her mum, and kept her lovely and clean, right to the end.'

  'You got a minute?' shouted Mr Willet from the door. Once again he was my saviour, and I escaped thankfully from Mrs Pringle's reminiscences.

  Within the week I had been told by Mr Lamb at the post office that it was a great shame Mrs Benson had got to give up. The place was too big for her, no doubt, now her husband and mother were dead. Still, it should fetch a tidy sum these days. He reckoned anything between thirty and forty thousand.

  The butcher, cleaving lamb chops, told me between hacks that it was a pity Mrs Benson's daughter was in trouble of some sort, and such a nice old lady had got to sell up and go to help. On the other hand, this was the right time to sell, and she would probably clear forty or fifty thousand.

  Mr Roberts, the farmer, said that we should miss Joan Benson. She'd been a nice body to have in the village, and he was sorry to hear her health was obliging her to leave Holly Lodge. Nevertheless, that was a tidy little property and on a nice bit of rich soil, as his father had always said, a fair treat for root crops. To his mind it should fetch somewhere round fifty thousand.

  The price of property in our village has always occasioned the greatest interest. It was obvious that the amount finally given for Holly Lodge would provide Fairacre with an enthralling topic in the future.

  It so happened that I met Joan Benson returning from the grocer's shop about this time. She was hurrying along, as round and cheerful as a robin, and put down her basket to talk to me.

  'I've just been told,' she said, looking amused, 'that my house should fetch between fifty and sixty thousand pounds. As it isn't even on the market yet, I'm rather tickled. Does Fairacre always rush ahead like this with conjectures?'

  'Always,' I told her. 'It's all part of the fun!'

  Amy rang up one evening to invite me to dinner to meet the poets who were to take part in the Caxley Festival in May.

  'I thought it would be a good idea for them to see where it would be held, and perhaps to meet each other.'

  'How many are there?'

  'Well, I'm sorry to say I can only rustle up a couple. There were going to be four, but one is having a nervous breakdown, poor thing, and the other is touring the United States with his poetry programme. What stamina!'

  'Americans are noted for their strength and energy,' I told her.

  'Not the Americans I The poet, I meant. He looks such a weed too, as though walking up the steps of Caxley Town Hall would finish him off, but there he is - all eight stone of him - bouncing about all over America. I can't get over it. Not that Tim Ferdinand, who will be coming, is much sturdier.'

  'How's your weight going?' I asked, reminded of Amy's slimming efforts by these poets' obvious fragility.

  'Don't speak of it. I seem to have put on three pounds in the last week.'

  'The scales have g
one wrong.'

  'Do you really think so?' Amy sounded wonderfully cheered. 'I hadn't thought of that. I'll try yours when I come over.'

  'Please do, but I warn you that mine are almost half a stone too much, and friends come tottering downstairs looking demented until I explain it to them.'

  'I'll remember. By the way, as the poets are so thin on the ground I've found a nice pianist as makeweight, and I'm just wondering if I could ask that marvellous singer Jean Cole who sang at the Fairacre festival some years ago.'

  'It's flying rather high,' I said doubtfully. 'I think she only came because she was a relation of Major Gunning's, and he left some time ago.'

  'Do you know where he went?'

  'I could find out. I've an idea he's in a nursing home or private hotel somewhere not too far away. The vicar might know.'

  'Be a lamb and see what you can do. Two poets, a pianist and Jean Cole should fill the bill beautifully.'

  I promised to do my best.

  'See you on Thursday week then. Long skirt to do honour to my four-course dinner, and make yourself as smart as possible.'

  1 blew a raspberry down the line to my bossy old friend.

  I spent the rest of the evening looking out bottles and books for Joan Benson's bazaar. The bottles presented no problem. I had three bottles of tomato ketchup, a comestible of which I partake sparingly, so two of those went into the basket, and a bottle of homemade lemon essence.

  The upstairs cupboard yielded a bottle of shampoo, and another of pungent scent, called Dusky Allure which had been given me by one of the children. As the said child had now moved from the district, I felt I could safely donate it. One has to be careful in a village; reputations have been ruined over just such little matters. Not a bad haul, I thought, surveying my five bottles. I only hoped I did not win any of them back again.