(2/20) Village Diary Page 5

  'What will you do with it now?' I asked.

  She looked across at me with her wise calm gaze.

  'I shall finish it,' she said composedly. 'A lot of work has gone into it, and I shall finish it as well as I can and give it to the cricket club.' She smoothed it lovingly. 'It will make a nice prize for their Whist Drive next winter when they raise money for the club.'

  This eminently sensible and realistic approach I could not help but admire. So, surely, should all life's buffets be met—with dignity and good sense, but how many of us have Miss Clare's courage?

  'I can't think what to call this kitten,' I said, to lighten our solemnity a little. 'What do you suggest?'

  Miss Clare addressed herself to this problem with as much thought as she had to the right disposal of Peter's pullover.

  'I have always called mine one after the other, plain "Puss",' she admitted, frowning with concentration, 'but you could think of something more interesting.'

  I went on to enlarge on the difficulties of naming a cat. I abhorred the idea of anything—as dear Eric Blore (in 'Top Hat,' I think) said with a divine exhalation of breath—'too whimsical: None of your 'La Belle Fifinella' or even 'Miss Bertha Briggs' for my respectable Fairacre cat!

  'And because he's black and white I'm not sinking to such obvious nonsense as "Whisky" or "Magpie,"' I went on, now well launched. 'Nor do I like Tom, Dick, Harry, Jane, Peggy, Betty, or anything, for that matter, which sounds as though I'm talking about a lodger, to people who don't know my circumstances.'

  'It certainly is difficult,' Miss Clare agreed, and let her knitting needles fall into her lap.

  We lapsed into silent thought. By the firelight I could see that Miss Clare was deep in meditation. Her face was so wistful that I imagined that her mind had strayed back to the all—pervading sadness of young Peter's death. Perhaps she too, I thought, is feeling the penetrating truth that Donne summed up for us.

  She raised meditative eyes and looked earnestly at me.

  'Come to think of it,' she said slowly, 'I did have one cat called Tom.'

  Oh lovely, lovely life that can toss us from horror to hilarity, without giving us time to take breath! No matter how dark it may be, yet, unfailingly, 'Cheerfulness breaks in.'

  MARCH

  MARCH has come in like a lion, with a vengeance, this year. The wind has whipped round to the east again, and had—storms have been frequent and heavy. A number of the children were caught in one on the way to school and Joseph Coggs and his two small sisters were in tears with the painful rapping they had taken. Their clothes were quite inadequate—not a thick coat between them, and the two little girls in skimpy cotton frocks and layers of dirty jumpers and cardigans on top. Of course their legs are mauve with cold and they look chilled to the marrow.

  It always surprises me to see how many of the mothers fail to clothe children consistently. The little things come to school in the winter with, perhaps, a snug woollen bonnet and scarf, a thick coat, and then there comes a long expanse of cold mottled legs, terminating, more often than not, in minute white cotton socks. Mrs Moffat makes Linda neat tailored leggings, and of course a few of the children go into sensible corduroy dungarees for winter wear, but the common feeling seems to be that if they are muffled up above the waist, their legs can take care of themselves. The number of messages I get in the cold months explaining absences due to 'stummer-cake' or a 'chill inside' does not surprise me.

  The battle of the Wellingtons continues to rage through this bad spell. I will not allow the children to wear them all day in school and insist that a pair of slippers, or failing that, a thick pair of old socks, are brought to school to wear indoors.

  'But my dad wears his all the time,' they protest. 'My mum says what's good enough for my dad's good enough for me!' One can hardly retort that the anti-social condition of dad's feet is only one of the reasons for insisting on changing one's rubber boots, but gradually, by dint of hygiene lessons and fulsome praise for those good children who do bring slippers as requested, we are slowly getting an improvement in this direction.

  Mrs Annett has given in her notice, which means that she leaves Fairacre School at the end of April. We shall all miss her sorely. The vicar has already started drafting an advertisement for insertion in The Teachers World, and is almost in despair about finding suitable lodgings for the new teacher in the village.

  'I shouldn't cross that bridge yet,' I told him. 'We may not get any applicants for the post.'

  'Oh my dear Miss Read! Please, please!' protested the poor man, beating his leopard-skin gloves together and creating a light shower of moth-eaten fur in the classroom. 'I cannot bear to think what the future holds for Fairacre School. Whatever happens it must not close! It shall not close!' Here the vicar looked and sounded as militant as Uncle Toby in Tristram Shandy when he too faced the extinction of a body much-beloved. 'But, sometimes, I wonder—poor Springbourne, you know. I hate to pass that little empty school, with its dreadful blank windows. And dear Miss Davis, they tell me, is finding that large school in Caxley much too much for her, and is struggling with nearly fifty six-year-olds!'

  I said how sorry I was for her. She is an elderly gentle woman, who smoothed the path of her little flock at Springbourne for many years. The bustle of Caxley, as well as a tiresome bus journey must exhaust her considerably.

  'And I have heard,' added Mr Partridge, with horror darkening his benevolent countenance, 'that some of those children-young as they are—as Openly Defiant!'

  He looked round at our own meek lambs who were busy colouring border patterns in a somnolent way, and his expression softened. I hoped that he would not notice the pronounced bulge in Ernest's cheek, which, I guessed, harboured a disgusting lump of bubble-gum. His eye travelled lovingly over the class, and he sighed happily.

  'How fortunate we are here!' he said, 'they are dear, good children, all of them!' And, heavy with bubble-gum guilt, as some of them obviously were, I could not help but agree with him.

  It would indeed be a tragedy if Fairacre School were to close, but I do not think it will happen here, as we maintain a steady number of about forty, which makes a good workable two-teacher school, with Mrs Annett taking the infants, and the juniors being taught by me, until the age of eleven. But alas! Springbourne's fate has been shared by several others in the neighbourhood, and more are scheduled to close within the next few years.

  This closing of small village schools is a controversial and debatable problem. There is no doubt that some of the really small schools of, say, eighteen, or fewer, children on rod, under the sole charge of the head teacher, should be closed for several very good reasons. The biggest difficulty in these one-teacher schools is the age-range from babes of five years old to children ready for secondary education at the age of eleven. Conscientious teachers who have tackled this type of school single-handed, year after year, realize how impossible it is to do justice to every child. A newly admitted baby of five, homesick and mother-sick, can demand vociferously, urgent and immediate attention, for perhaps a week or more before he really settles in to his new environment. It is disconcerting, to say the least of it, to the rest of his schoolmates, some of whom may have the added anxiety of the eleven-plus examination hovering over them.

  It is well-nigh impossible too, to organize team games, which junior children so much enjoy, and which will play so great a part in their later school life. Stories, poems and songs, broadcast programmes, films and classroom pictures must be chosen with the interests of five as well as eleven-year-old children in mind; but perhaps greater than all these teaching problems is the human one. It can be a very lonely life for a teacher, and the care of even such a tiny band of children can be a responsibility, which in some cases becomes too heavy to be borne. It is small wonder that these lonely women, devoted and conscientious, are often the prey of nervous disorders such as rheumatic pains, headaches and neuralgia. Maybe the cross-draughts that play so merrily between Gothic doors and ecclesiastical window
s have something to do with it, but the mental strain is always there, and it takes a particularly robust and cheerful woman to cope successfully, and alone, for years on end, with these fascinating but exacting little schools, that are so much a part of our English village life.

  The upkeep of some of these tiny places is, of course, out of all proportion to the number of children taught, which accounts for the transfer of pupils to one nearby, but it seems to me equally improvident to overcrowd one school by bringing busloads of children from others, and this may well happen.

  Probably the ideal rural school is the three-teacher one, with a teacher for the infants, one for the younger juniors of seven to nine, and the head teacher taking the rest up to the age of eleven. (Though why the head teacher should not take the infants, I don't know. The longer I teach, the more positive I am that it is the first three years of the child's school life that ready matter most). But village populations are not made to order, and local education authorities are not to be envied as they deal with children, parents, managers, rate-payers, the church and the Ministry of Education.

  However, at a time like this, when harassed and nerve-wracked individuals rush to the countryside at every opportunity, there to revive their flagging energies and to find that 'balm of hurt minds,' fresh air and country sounds and scents—it seems decidedly odd to do away with village schools which are the very essence of country education. What a child may learn on his daily walk to school along a country lane will never be forgotten; and to know intimately the changes that come to plants and trees, to birds and insects, as the full cycle of the four seasons turns, is a source of joy and wonder to the child who is the father of the man.

  I have seldom had a more exasperating day. I began by smashing a Wedgwood coffee-pot, as I tried to hurry with the washing-up, which I had left in the most slatternly way, from last night, before going over to school.

  At play-time Patrick fed heavily, took the skin from both knees, and worse still, a corner off a front tooth—his second, naturally. I was washing his knees in the school-house when the telephone rang, and an underling at the Caxley Education Office peremptorily demanded the return of a form with no delay.' This asinine document was devoted to the number, size, material, age, etc. of the various types of desk in Fairacre School, and as we have a motley collection it took me the rest of the morning, crawling round, ruler in hand, to measure the wretched things.

  Mrs Crossley, 'the dinner lady' left two canisters of swedes, which the children abominate, and no gravy. I wonder what Beech Green School thought of two lots of gravy and no swedes! Mrs Pringle, rather more disgruntled than usual, reminded me so often of the combustible nature of her leg—'proper flared up last night, no better today' that I would have welcomed her resignation, and said so. She retaliated by crashing the cutlery about in a deafening manner, all through my geography lesson.

  I was thankful to get back to the peace of the school-house at tea-time, and decided to make some grape-fruit marmalade. Just as I was engrossed in a tricky bit of mental arithmetic about pounds of sugar and the weight of three grapefruit, and waiting for my tea-kettle to boil, a knock came at the front door. A strange man stood on the doorstep holding a sheaf of tracts. I could hear the kettle's lid rattling in the kitchen, and knew, from bitter experience, that the floor would be swamped.

  The strange man asked me, in a sepulchral tone, if I had found the Lord, thrusting a tract into my hand at the same time.

  'Thank you, thank you! Yes indeed!' I answered, backing inside and shutting the door firmly. I returned to my swamped kitchen and began to mop up the floor in a very bad temper.

  Really, Fairacre people must have a name for utter godlessness, judging by the number of earnest souls who present themselves at our doorsteps! Nothing puts me into a more unchristian state of mind than these unsolicited visitors, and yet I haven't the heart to tell them not to come again.

  While I was regaining my composure over the tea-tray I noticed with horror that the tract was priced at sixpence. I could only hope that my cavalier and grasping behaviour would discourage further attentions; but, on the other hand, would not have been surprised to hear the stranger returning to demand his payment.

  I was very glad indeed to climb into the sanctuary of my bed, and shelve life for nine hours.

  The postponed tea-party at the Vicarage has taken place and I have at last met John Parr's tenant, about whom I have heard so much.

  His name is Henry Mawne—'"H. A. Mawne,"' the vicar enlarged, and smiled hopefully at me. Seeing that I was still unenlightened, he added, 'Of the Caxley Chronicle; and I remembered then that the Nature Notes have appeared recently over this name. I told Mr Mawne that I cut his notes out and put them up in the classroom for the children to read, and he was obviously delighted.

  He is tall and very thin, and seems a pleasant, unassuming man. Since his retirement he has spent most of his time fishing and bird-watching, and is collecting material for a book about downland birds. He seems very well able to look after himself, and will no doubt continue to do so, despite village gossip to the contrary.

  'What I particularly like about Fairacre people,' he said to the vicar, 'is their acceptance of a newcomer without a lot of unnecessary comment. I've found everyone so friendly, but not a bit inquisitive.'

  I could not help feeling that Mr Mawne's ear must have been singularly far from Fairacre's bush telegraph, which has fairly hummed with such pertinent questions as:

  Is Mr M. a widower? If so, what did his wife die of? And when? Is he a bachelor? How old is he? Who will he marry? And when? How much would his pension be from teaching? Would he have an old-age pension as well? How long has he known Mr Parr? What does he do with those field-glasses? Why is he always 'skulking about up the downs'? And much more, to the same effect.

  He was very interested in the village school, and asked if he might call in to see the children. I said that we should love to see him, and if he would like to give us a nature talk sometime, we should look forward to it immensely. It is good for our Fairacre children to hear someone else speaking in their classroom—heaven knows they have little enough variety. It is equally good for me to sit back and see a lesson taken by an expert in his subject.

  At six o'clock Mrs Partridge took me upstairs to her bedroom for my coat. There is a wonderful view from the windows there, of the gentle swell of the downs beyond and the wooded hollow where Fairacre shelters. The spire of St Patrick's dominates the foreground, with the stubby little bell-tower of my school thrusting bravely up beside it.

  On the bedside table lay a red leather-bound copy of the Bible and a photograph of an elderly man, with a mop of white hair, who smiled vaguely from his silver frame.

  'Gerald's father,' said Mrs Partridge following my gaze, 'Gerald always says "He was a saint—if only I could do half as well!"'

  The thought of our good vicar, whose life is as blameless as is humanly possible, sorrowing for his shortcomings, made me wonder in what adverse light my own behaviour is thrown. I looked back, in that one swift moment, on innumerable child-slappings, hard words, black thoughts and a thousand back-slidings, and went downstairs in a sober mood.

  Mr Mawne was examining a light horse-whip on the had wall.

  'My father used one like that on us on special occasions,' he said cheerfully.

  'Really?' answered the vicar. 'Now, my father always shut us up in a dark cupboard under the stairs—'

  I decided that values are strictly relative, and felt much more hopeful of my own shaky claims to divine mercy.

  I decided to let the children write a poem about the spring. They have learnt Robert Bridges' 'Spring Goeth All in White' and Thomas Nashe's 'Spring, the Sweet Spring' recently, and I thought it would be interesting to see what sort of attempts these most unbookish children would make. Their faces, when I suggested this mental exercise, were studies in stupefaction.

  'What—rhyming and that?' asked Eric, appalled.

  'Yes, rhyming,' I answered
ruthlessly. There was a shocked silence. Linda Moffat was the first to find her breath.

  'How many verses, Miss Read?'

  'As many as you can think of.'

  Patrick then piped up.

  'Do us have to make it go thumpety-thumpety like that "Haifa league, half a league" bit you read us?'

  I said that rhythm would be expected, and they delved into their desks for their pens and English exercise books, with the doomed look of those that face the firing squad.

  For half an hour the room was quiet, broken only by the solemn tick of the ancient wall-clock, and the sighs and groans of spirits in poetic travail. After the first few minutes, I had softened so far as to suggest that they could begin with:

  In the Spring

  and go on from there. As drowning men clutch at straws, so did these Fairacre children clutch at these three words which could be copied from the blackboard.

  After thirty minutes I collected their efforts and sent them tottering out to play. Never had their young minds been so sternly exercised, and the results were highly entertaining.

  For sheer brazen effrontery and gross idleness, I think Ernest's takes the prize. He had shamelessly lifted, intact, a verse from one of the tombstones in the neighbouring churchyard. In his painstaking copperplate he had written:

  In the spring

  She drooped and died.

  Now she sleeps

  By Jesu's side

  There is not one spelling mistake. Nor should there be, considering that we pass and repass this inscription a dozen times a day.

  Linda Moffat had very cunningly covered the maximum of paper with the minimum of effort. Her poem ran:

  In the spring

  The swallows wing

  In the spring