(8/20) Mrs. Pringle of Fairacre Read online

  It was on the occasion of a local jumble sale that the clash between Mrs Pringle and Mrs Jarman was observed by some dozen or so Fairacre ladies who were sorting out the contributions ready for the Saturday afternoon sale.

  Mrs Jarman and Mrs Pringle had entered the hall together. Mrs Pringle deposited a large bundle on the floor before making her way with ponderous dignity to her stall, marked 'Junk', and starting to arrange chipped vases, moulting cushions, lidless saucepans and innumerable objects of china or tarnished metal to which no one could give a name.

  Meanwhile, Mrs Jarman had fallen to her knees beside the bundle dropped by her neighbour, and was holding up threadbare underpants, cardigans washed so often that they resembled felt, and a number of men's shirts. She kept up a running commentary as she sorted out the garments. Some of the comments were ribald enough to shock a few of the Fairacre folk, but on the whole there was secret delight in seeing Mrs Pringle discomfited.

  'Look at these then!' shrieked Mrs Jarman, scrabbling among the shirts. 'Not a button between them. Who's pinched them, eh?'

  Mrs Pringle's voice boomed from her corner. 'I cut them off to use again, as any one would in wartime. There's such a thing as thrift which a lot of people not a hundred miles from here don't ever seem to have heard of!'

  This lofty speech did nothing to curb Mrs Jarman's spirit.

  'How mean can you get!' she yelled back.

  'Nothing mean about it,' returned Mrs Pringle, putting a headless garden gnome to best advantage on the stall. 'I simply collect shirt buttons. They're bound to be needed.'

  'I'll remember that,' cried Mrs Jarman, unearthing a moth-eaten strip of fur. 'Ah, I wonder what sort of skin disease this ratty old collar would give you!'

  'Now that's enough,' said Mrs Partridge, the vicar's wife, who had just arrived. 'Time's getting short, and we must get on.'

  Even Mrs Jarman took some notice of Mrs Partridge, and curbed her tongue. Work continued apace, with considerably more decorum, and all the stalls were ready by half past twelve.

  The helpers returned to their homes to dish up spam, whale meat, a piece of unidentifiable fish or some other wartime delicacy, before returning to the fray at two-thirty.

  ***

  The open warfare between Mrs Jarman and Mrs Pringle was a source of much pleasure to all who witnessed it, and each skirmish was noted with interest.

  It was generally felt that the Battle of the Buttons would have some repercussions, probably on that same day, but there was no sign of anything other than disdain on Mrs Pringle's side and raucous laughter on Mrs Jarman's. Both ladies, in any case, were kept busy with the throng of customers snapping up old shoes, stained waistcoats and cracked crockery throughout the afternoon. Those who had witnessed the earlier exchange were slightly disappointed.

  Over the months the shirt button incident was forgotten, and it was not until after Christmas that the sequel to the quarrel became general knowledge in Fairacre.

  One of the uses to which the village hall's large copper was put during war time was the communal boiling of the village's Christmas puddings. Each basin was clearly labelled with its owner's name, and all were lodged securely in the capacious boiler.

  Naturally, the water had to be topped up at intervals, and a list of ladies was pinned up on the wall. The afternoon session was designated thus:

  2.30 Mrs Pringle

  3.30 Miss Parr (only that would really be her maid carrying out her elderly mistress's orders)

  4.30 Mrs Jarman

  5.30 Everyone welcome

  This was when the puddings would be claimed by their owners, the boiler turned off, and the village hall locked for the night. The precious puddings, of course, were then carefully stored away in Fairacre larders to await Christmas Day.

  It was innocent little Mrs Morgan, unwilling hostess to the Jarman family, who spread the news of Mrs Pringle's remarkable Christmas pudding about the village of Fairacre.

  It so happened that Mrs Pringle had invited her sister and niece to share the Christmas festivities with her son John and herself. Corporal Fred Pringle was on military duty, and so was Jane Morgan's husband.

  The Jarmans had invited a horde of relatives and friends to spend the day with them, and Mrs Pringle, prompted more by malice against the Jarmans rather than neighbourliness to Jane Morgan, hastened to invite that lady to share their Christmas dinner. As Jane and Mrs Pringle's sister were old friends, the invitation was gratefully accepted.

  The roast duck was delicious, the vegetables beautifully cooked, and everyone was most complimentary.

  The Christmas pudding, steaming and aromatic, awaited Mrs Pringle's knife. It was apparent, as soon as the first slice was removed, that a number of foreign bodies mingled with the glutinous mixture.

  'Threepenny bits!' shouted John.

  'Sixpences!' squeaked his cousin excitedly.

  Mrs Pringle's bewilderment was apparent. 'I don't hold with metal objects in a pudding,' she said austerely, passing plates.

  'Quite right,' agreed Jane. 'My mother always said the same, but she did put little china dolls in when we were small. We used to wash them afterwards and put them in the dolls' house.'

  But no one was listening to her reminiscences. Forks and spoons were busy pushing the pudding this way and that, and on the rim of each plate a pile of assorted shirt buttons grew larger.

  'Someone,' said Mrs Pringle with a face like thunder, 'has been playing tricks on us, and I know just who it is!'

  At that moment, a particularly loud yell of half-tipsy laughter could be heard through the wall.

  Mrs Pringle rose majestically and went to open the last precious tin of pineapple chunks to augment the despoiled Christmas pudding.

  Boxing Day had hardly passed before the sequel to the Battle of the Buttons was known to all Fairacre. But Mrs Jarman denied any knowledge of it.

  It was Mrs Willet who told me this tale. She and many other Fairacre folk had happy memories of the evacuees, and the relationship was kept fresh by an annual reunion in our village hall each summer.

  Soon after I had settled in Fairacre, I was invited to help in getting preparations ready for the visitors. As you can imagine, I looked out for Mrs Jarman, and there she was, a little sharp-faced woman with unnaturally blonde hair and lots of make-up. Her shrill laugh rang out over the general hubbub, and I saw Mrs Pringle sail by with face averted. Mrs Jarman made some comment which was greeted with half-scandalised tittering from the cronies around her. Could it have been some quip about shirt buttons, I wondered?

  I could quite understand the affection which had grown up between our country women and their town guests during the dark days of war. Mrs Jarman epitomised the cockney effervescence which had survived the blitz, and defied threats and even death itself.

  Mrs Willet and I walked home together when the party was over and our visitors had boarded their coaches.

  Mrs Willet spoke wistfully. 'I always liked those Londoners. They were a real larky lot!'

  I had just arrived home, and was sitting on the couch with my feet up, wondering if I had the strength to switch on the kettle after my labours, when Amy arrived looking as chic as ever.

  'You look terrible,' she said in that downright tone old friends use when making wounding remarks. 'Honestly, you look ten years older than when I saw you last.'

  'So would you,' I retorted, 'if you had spent the day coping with evacuees.'

  'Good grief! Don't say another war's started!'

  'No, just a hang-over from the last,' and I went on to explain.

  'I expect you'd like a cup of tea,' I added, suddenly remembering my duties as hostess, and wondering if I could ever move from the couch.

  'Well ...' began Amy, and then stopped as I began to laugh. 'What's the joke?'

  'Do you remember a wartime cartoon in Punch? The hostess is saying: "If you do take milk in your tea, it is absolutely no bother for me to get out my bike and cycle three miles to the farm." Well, I feel a bit like th
at.'

  'I'll put on the kettle,' said Amy kindly, and went to do so.

  I stirred myself to follow her after a few minutes, and found her peering into three tins, each containing tea.

  'Which do I use? You really should have these labelled, you know.'

  'Well, I know which is which, so it would be a waste of time and labels. That blue one has Earl Grey, the red one holds Indian, and the black one has Darjeeling in it - I think, but I'm not sure, so I hardly ever use it. Anyway it takes ages to get to the right colour.'

  'You really are hopelessly disorganised,' said Amy, spooning Indian tea into the teapot. 'I'll write you three labels myself when we've had this.'

  'Wicked waste of paper,' I told her, 'cutting down all those forests to make labels.'

  We carried our mugs into the sitting room and smiled at each other over the steam.

  'How's James?' I asked.

  'Off to Amsterdam at the end of the week.'

  'He might bring you back some diamonds,' I said.

  'An Edam cheese, more likely,' responded Amy. 'He can eat it by the pound, but I find it too rubbery.'

  She began to look about her in an enquiring way. 'Have you got a mat, or a tile, or something for me to put this hot mug on? I don't like standing it on the table. Even yours,' she added unnecessarily.

  'Oh, don't be so fussy!' I retorted. 'Bung it down on the corner of the newspaper.'

  'Well, it may mark the television programmes for this evening, but I don't suppose that's any great loss. I pine to have a play about ordinary normal people instead of all these programmes about unfortunates who can't see, or can't hear, or have other disabilities.'

  'I know. I'm getting tired too of having my withers wrung every time I switch on. If it isn't flood or famine, it's more sophisticated ways of killing each other.'

  Amy moved her mug to the edge of the newspaper and studied the evening's offerings.

  'There's an hour of medical horrors, including a blow-by-blow, or perhaps cut-by-cut might be a better description, of a hip replacement operation. On another channel there's a jolly half-hour entitled "How to Succeed despite Degenerative Diseases", and there's a discussion on the radio about "The Horrors of our Geriatric Wards"!'

  'Mrs Pringle should be all right tonight then,' I said. 'She told me she loves a good operation on the telly.'

  'And how is the lady? Is her leg still in a state of spontaneous combustion?'

  'It's fairly quiescent at the moment, although she did roll down her stocking yesterday, when the children were out in the playground, to show me her varicose veins.'

  'I hope you studied them with due reverence.'

  'One glance was more than enough,' I confessed. 'I think she thought me very callous not to spend longer poring over them. Her parting shot was to the effect that Veins Come To Us All, and that my time would soon come.'

  'Ah well,' said Amy, 'she may be right at that. Now, are you going to let me label those tea tins before I go?'

  'No, Amy dear. I'll just muddle along as usual.'

  'You know,' she remarked, flicking a dead leaf from the window sill, 'having Mrs Pringle once a week might be a good thing in this place. Why don't you think about it?'

  'I have. Nothing doing. You know yourself what a pain in the neck she is.'

  'Yes, but sometimes this house..." She let her voice trail away into something like despair.

  I put my arm comfortingly round her shoulders as we went out to the car. 'Don't worry about me. I'm managing perfectly well on my own,' I told her.

  Later I was to remember this conversation.

  As time passed I began to realise that Mrs Pringle was slightly more approachable during the summer months than the winter ones. I put this down to the fact that her cleaning duties were considerably lighter. For one thing, the treasured stoves were not in use, and so less mess was caused by the carrying of coke to and fro.

  Naturally, a certain amount was scrunched into the school floor-boards by miscreants who had disobeyed rules and had run up and down the coke pile in the playground. Mrs Pringle's eagle eye soon noticed any traces of the offending fuel and complained bitterly.

  I sometimes thought too that she missed her cosseting of the stoves during the summer months. A flick with a duster night and morning was all that was needed, and it seemed to me that, in some perverse way, she regretted the ministrations with blacklead and brush which dominated the winter months.

  Nevertheless, on the whole, she appeared marginally more cheerful in the summer. The light evenings gave her more scope in arranging her cleaning activities, and I frequently heard her singing some lugubrious hymn as she went about her work when I was in the garden after school hours.

  It so happened that one particular April was unseasonably warm, and I decreed that the stoves could be allowed to go out.

  'Well, I'm not arguing about that,' said Mrs Pringle. 'Dear knows I've got enough to do in this place, and it'll be a treat not to have coke all over the floor.'

  She walked quite briskly about the classroom, dusting energetically without a trace of a limp, before the children came into morning prayers.

  'I'll put the stoves to rights this evening,' she told me as she departed. 'See you midday.'

  She always returned in the early afternoon to wash up the school dinner things. Usually our paths did not cross then, for I was teaching and she was alone in the lobby.

  On this particular day I heard her at her labours. At the same time, the bell of St Patrick's church next door began to toll. The children looked up from their work and there was some whispering.

  I went out to the lobby to see if Mrs Pringle could enlighten me. Obviously, someone of local importance had died. Mrs Pringle was standing in the steamy lobby, her hands red and puffy from her task. To my amazement she was trembling and there were tears in her eyes.

  'It's Miss Parr,' she said, before I could make any enquiry, 'went sudden about five this morning.'

  'It has upset you,' I replied, as much in wonderment as in sympathy. This was the first time I had seen Mrs Pringle in a weak condition. I was much moved.

  'She was good to me. I was in service with her before I married.'

  'I did know that.'

  'Gave me this and that quite frequent, but that weren't all.'

  'What else?'

  'She took my word against others when I was in trouble once. I never forgot that. I might have lost my job, but she stood by me.'

  Two tears rolled down her cheeks, and I found myself patting her substantial shoulder.

  'Well, this won't do,' she said, sniffing loudly, 'can't bring back the dead, can you? Best get on with my job.'

  She sounded much more like her tough old self, and I left her smoothing the tea towels over the still-warm boiler to dry.

  But I noticed that her puffy hands still trembled.

  Later that evening I pondered over this surprising episode. I remembered Alice Willet's account of the row over the chauffeur and his fierce denial of any interest in the lovelorn Maud, and his consequent departure to foreign parts.

  It looked as though Mrs Pringle still had feelings of guilt over her part in the proceedings. Did she regret her faults as poignantly as she mourned the loss of the dashing Henry in his bottle-green uniform? And had Fred Pringle, the next best thing, ever given her any comfort in the years between?

  So much must remain conjecture, but one thing was certain. Mrs Pringle, my arch enemy, had some human feelings after all. Those few sad minutes in the steamy lobby had been a revelation to me, and I felt a new regard for her.

  CHAPTER 6

  Joseph Coggs and Mrs Pringle

  Every community has its problem families. At Springbourne, our neighbouring village, the black sheep was Fred Pringle's brother Josh and his unfortunate relations.

  In Fairacre we had the Coggs family. As in the case of Josh Pringle, all blame for the situation lay squarely on the shoulders of Arthur Coggs, the father. By nature he was lazy and of low intellig
ence. Added to that was his addiction to drink which made him boastful and belligerent when in his cups. It also made him a petty thief for he could not do without his beer, and was very seldom treated; Arthur Coggs, it was soon discovered, never stood his round.

  He had various jobs, none of which lasted very long. He occasionally found casual work as a labourer on a building site, or as a roadman for the Caxley council. But absence, arriving late, and taking time off to visit the nearest pub soon ended his employment.

  Mr Roberts, the Fairacre farmer, had done his best to give him work. He pitied Arthur's poor down-trodden wife, and the fast-growing family, but Arthur's feckless ways soon exhausted his employer's patience, and apart from a little spasmodic field work at the appropriate time, Mr Roberts could do no more.

  The village folk looked upon the Coggses with mingled pity and exasperation.

  'If that gel of Arthur's had taken the rolling pin to him early on,' said Mr Willet roundly, 'she'd have done the right thing.'

  'But he could easily have killed her,' I cried. 'She's a poor wispy little thing and must be terrified of him.'

  'Bullies is always cowards,' replied Mr Willet trenchantly. 'Arthur's got away with it too easy, that's his trouble.'

  Naturally, Mrs Pringle was the loudest in her condemnation of the slatternly ways of Mrs Coggs and her husband. As a strict teetotaller she also deplored Arthur's drunken habits.

  'I know for a fact he signed the pledge, same as dozens of us years ago. A fat lot of good that done him. He's a proper waster, and we're all sorry for his poor wife. Not that she does much to help herself or that row of kids. She may be short of money, I give you that, but soap and water cost nothing, and those children and the house are a disgrace.'

  'She doesn't have much of a chance,' I observed, opening the register and looking pointedly at the wall clock which said ten to nine.

  'Those as behaves like doormats,' quoth Mrs Pringle, 'gets treated like 'em!'