(19/20) Farewell to Fairacre Page 6

  As always, the parents rallied splendidly to help us with costumes and props for the play.

  The new Cotton girl was chosen to play Mary, and very good she was too, having natural grace, a sweet face and a clear voice. Mrs Cotton, her foster mother, sent over a blue frock which she hoped, in the little note attached, would be suitable for Mary's robes.

  Unfortunately, it was heavily besprinkled with a flower pattern, and I was obliged to take it back after school.

  To my surprise, she seemed unusually agitated about this.

  'It's all I have,' she told me. 'Do you want me to buy some plain blue material?'

  I assured her that it would not be necessary, as I thought that I might have a plain blue curtain at home which had once hung in Dolly Clare's bedroom, and would be ideal for draping round Mary.

  She seemed mightily relieved, answered my inquiries about the children in a rather distracted way, and we parted amicably. As I returned, I told myself that she was probably anxious about a saucepan on the stove, or the toddler left sitting on an unseen chamber pot, and dismissed the matter from my mind.

  The property box furnished us with a considerable amount of the costumes required. Mr Roberts, the local farmer and a school governor, provided hay for the box which represented the manger. The ox and the ass had been cut out of heavy cardboard years before, and had weathered their sojourn stuffed behind the map cupboard with remarkable endurance. Once dusted, and an eye redrawn, they were as good as new, we told each other.

  The shepherds were clothed in dressing gowns, but here again it was quite a job to find suitably subfusc attire. Gaily patterned bath robes were paraded before us, sporting dragons, Disney characters and a panda or two. Where, I wondered, were the old-fashioned boys' camel-coloured numbers which I remembered from my youth?

  After much searching we found one or two, and reckoned that the wardrobe and properties were at last complete.

  We gave our first performance one afternoon in the last week of term. I was very grateful to the vicar for letting us have the beautiful chancel for our stage. Usually, any end of term function takes place in Fairacre school, and we are obliged to force back the wooden and glass partition between the two classrooms to make one large hall. Then there is the usual scurrying about for chairs from the school house and public-spirited nearby neighbours, not to mention some rickety benches from the village hall and the cricket pavilion which arrive on a trailer of Mr Roberts', and have to be manhandled into place for the great event, and manhandled back again to their usual home.

  On this occasion our audience sat in the ancient pews and had a clear view of the chancel. Mr Bennett, the foster-father at the first Trust's home, had emerged as an electrical wizard, and had volunteered to arrange temporary lighting. This threw the stage into sharp contrast with the dimness of the surrounding building, and gave the performance a wonderfully dramatic setting.

  The play went without many hitches. At one point, the cardboard ox fell down in a sudden draught from the vestry door, and Joseph's crêpe beard came adrift from one ear. This, however, was replaced swiftly by one of the shepherds, hissing 'stand still, stand still!' whilst adjusting the wire over his classmate's left ear, and we all waited for the performance to continue.

  It would not have been right to have a school affair like this without some minor mishap, and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

  The vicar closed the proceedings with a suitable prayer, and we filed out into the misty afternoon feeling all the better for celebrating, in our homespun way, the birth of Jesus.

  The last afternoon of term was given over to our own school tea party. It has been the tradition at Fairacre for the pupils to entertain parents and friends. Amy and James were present.

  Mrs Willet, who has the largest square baking tin in the locality, always makes the Christmas cake, and it is a job to get her to take the money for the ingredients. But this we insist on doing from the school fund, although I have never been allowed to pay her for the many eggs which go into it.

  'I wouldn't dream of it,' she always says. 'They are our own hens' eggs, and it's our contribution to the party.' And so I am obliged to submit.

  The cake usually has two robins, a church about the same size as the robins, and four Christmas trees, one at each corner, all standing in the snowy icing. Birds, church and Christmas trees are old friends and warmly welcomed each year, but on this occasion we had six attractive choirboys, about three inches high, all holding hymn books and obviously making the rafters ring from their open mouths.

  'My neighbour brought them back from Austria,' said Mrs Willet proudly. 'I thought they'd make a nice change.'

  Everyone agreed, although I think some of us rather agreed with Joseph Coggs who was heard to remark, 'Them robins was nicer!'

  ***

  On Christmas Eve I drove to Bent to spend the Christmas holiday with Amy and James.

  They were as welcoming as ever. The house was looking very festive with holly and ivy, and plenty of scarlet satin ribbon everywhere.

  The three of us spent the first evening on our own, all of us glad of a few quiet hours after our Christmas preparations and before the busy day ahead.

  Amy enquired anxiously about my welfare and I told her that I was now as fit as a fiddle, as right as a trivet, at the top of my form, and all the other descriptions of perfect health. She did not appear to be satisfied.

  'Honestly, Amy,' I said, 'there's no need to worry about me.'

  'Well, I do. I don't like the idea of your living alone. Anything might happen. By the way, I met your nice John Jenkins last week.'

  'He's not mine,' I pointed out tartly, 'and I don't know him well enough to say that he is nice, but how did you come across him?'

  'At a Caxley Society meeting. He gave a talk about an Elizabethan house he knew well, somewhere in Somerset. I was most impressed, and if it hadn't been such short notice I would have invited him to supper on Boxing Day.'

  I knew that Amy had arranged this festivity for a few old friends, but was relieved to hear that John Jenkins was not to be present. Amy's match-making efforts are well meant, but decidedly obvious.

  'What did you think of our nativity play?' I enquired.

  Amy was enthusiastic, and I congratulated myself on steering her mind to another subject.

  'And now tell me how you think the new families are settling,' said James, and I was able to give him an encouraging report on school progress.

  We went early to bed, and I was asleep before half-past ten.

  Christmas Day passed in the usual familiar pattern of present-opening, church service, turkey, plum pudding, siesta and a therapeutic walk after it.

  We listened to the Queen, we agreed that a cup of tea was all that could be faced at four thirty, and Amy and I did a little desultory preparation ready for the next day's buffet supper.

  I must say that twenty-four hours later, it looked remarkably elegant, spread out on a long table with a poinsettia in the middle of the starched white cloth.

  Horace and Eve Umbleditch were there from Fairacre and two couples from near by in the village of Bent. We all moved about, plates in hand, catching up with the local news.

  'Mrs Pringle called the other evening,' Eve told me. 'She was collecting prizes for the Fur and Feather Christmas whist drive, and practically asked me to show her over the school house.'

  'And did you?'

  'I didn't have much option. She approved of most of our alterations, and said that it was a lot cleaner than when you lived there. Horace said that I was not to tell you, but I knew you would relish a typically Pringle remark like that.'

  I said she was right.

  'What an old faggot she is,' went on Eve. 'She wanted to know how much the alterations had cost, and various other more personal matters such as had I been able to breastfeed my baby at my advanced age. Really, she takes one's breath away! On parting, she said she could always "help me out" if I wanted a cleaner.'

  'I hope you put
a stop to that offer.'

  'I did!'

  At that juncture Amy came round with some crackers for us to pull. The contents were unusually splendid, including pretty little brooches and key-rings and other baubles, but the reading of the enclosed riddles made the most fun.

  They were all of the 'When is a door not a door? When it's a jar,' sort of standard, taking one back to one's comic-reading days.

  Horace read his out to the assembled company, sounding mystified. 'Why is milk so quick?'

  '"Why is milk so quick?"' echoed James. 'That doesn't make sense.'

  'Neither does the answer,' said Horace, still bemused.

  No one could offer any answer to the question and we all begged to be put out of our misery.

  Horace read slowly, '"Because it's pasteurised before you see it."'

  There were some groans and some laughter. Horace still looked perplexed.

  'Pasteurised,' explained James. 'Past your eyes before you see it.'

  'Good grief!' said Horace. 'Who thinks up these things?'

  'Have another drink,' advised James. 'It'll take the taste away.'

  I returned home after the break feeling relaxed and happy.

  Tibby deigned to acknowledge me, which was unusual. Normally I have to make overtures with sardines or other acceptable peace offerings after an absence from home.

  The weather was mild, and I wandered about the garden on that Wednesday morning admiring the beauty of bare winter branches silhouetted against a pale blue sky. A blackbird was busy scrabbling for grubs in the border, and somewhere in the distance, high above the downs, a lark was scattering its sweet notes. It was good to be back.

  I went into the kitchen and put on the kettle to make coffee. Before I could put in the plug, a sharp pain shot through my head, and another through my chest.

  The kitchen shelves, the table, the sink, all began to follow each other round and round in growing darkness.

  It was almost a relief to hit the floor and give up.

  PART TWO

  SPRING TERM

  CHAPTER 6

  Should I Go?

  It would be Mrs Pringle, of course, who found me.

  She had gone to the school with a freshly washed pile of tea-towels ready for the start of term, and had found that the skylight was leaking, yet again, in my classroom.

  She was hastening to catch the Caxley bus, before returning to Beech Green for her usual Wednesday 'bottoming' of my home. But she decided to drop off on the way to give me the news, and then to beg a lift from one of her Beech Green cronies who, she knew, always drove to Caxley about twelve on a Wednesday.

  I must have lain there for about half an hour. She managed to support me to the couch in the sitting-room, and then rang the doctor.

  It really was most providential that she had called in, at this unusual time, and although I dreaded the dramatic account which would soon be circulating around Fairacre and Beech Green, I was truly grateful for my old adversary's timely help.

  I had tried to thank her but was frightened to find that my speech was most peculiar, and my tongue felt twice as large as usual. Also, the dreaded shaking had returned, and I was glad of the cup of tea Mrs Pringle held to my lips, and the rug she spread over me.

  'I shall stop with you for the rest of the day,' she told me, 'and see the doctor in.'

  She rose from the end of the sofa, and surveyed me sternly.

  'May as well get on with the brights while we're waiting,' she said. 'I've never seen them candlesticks look so rough.'

  She departed to the kitchen bearing them, and I heard drawers and cupboards being ransacked.

  I lay there, bemused and shaken, to the accompaniment of Mrs Pringle's lugubrious contralto singing:

  'Oft in danger, oft in woe.'

  Very appropriate, I thought, wondering what the future held for me.

  I must have dropped off for when I awoke I heard Mrs Pringle talking to someone in the kitchen.

  'I thought to myself, "Well, Maud, if you nip into Caxley on the eleven, you can get the slippers at Freeman, Hardy & Willis and the brawn at Potter's for Fred's tea and catch the two o'clock back to Miss Read's for the brights.

  'But that skylight was a blessing in disguise this time. "Best report that, I thought, and no time like the present," so I got off here and lucky I did.'

  'It was indeed.'

  I recognised Isobel Annett's voice.

  'And there she was laying,' went on Mrs Pringle, (eggs or bricks, I wondered?) 'and my heart turned over. I thought she'd passed over, I really did.'

  'I must see her,' said Isobel. 'Is she upstairs?'

  'On the couch,' replied Mrs Pringle, sounding somewhat offended at being interrupted in her dramatic monologue.

  Isobel came in, followed by Mrs Pringle. I had closed my eyes hastily. I could hear Mrs Pringle's breathing.

  'I think we should get her to bed,' said Isobel.

  I opened my eyes, and nodded, not daring to speak.

  'Can you manage it?' asked Isobel, putting an arm round me. I nodded again, and we tottered entwined to the stairs, followed by Mrs Pringle.

  'Could you make a little bowl of bread and milk?' asked Isobel. 'I think she might manage that.'

  Mrs Pringle, debarred from the pleasure of undressing me, retired to do her allotted task.

  She was limping heavily, I noticed, but was too concerned with my own troubles to worry much about it.

  Dr Ferguson arrived and was reassuring.

  'Luckily you haven't broken anything in the fall. And this is just another warning, like the first. It's simply hit other senses this time. I think your speech will be much better by the morning. The worst thing is this bang on the head, but it's coming up nicely.'

  He fingered a lump on the right-hand side, making me wince.

  'Stay there,' he told me, 'and I'll pop in tomorrow morning after surgery.'

  I heard his car drive away. Some time, I thought dazedly, I should have to make all sorts of decisions. But not now. I was too tired to bother.

  I turned my aching head upon the pillow, and fell asleep.

  Amy came to look after me for a day or two, and then bore me back to her house at Bent with Dr Ferguson's blessing.

  Normal speech returned within three or four days, and apart from the lump on my skull which diminished daily, and the overpowering feeling of exhaustion, I felt much as usual.

  I wrote to thank Mrs Pringle, and also spoke to the vicar, telling him that I hoped to be fit to return to school as soon as term began. According to the doctor I had suffered from mild concussion, after my headlong collision with the cooker, as well as the second stroke which had triggered off the chain of events.

  It was fortunate that all this had occurred in the holidays, but I had plenty of time, as I pottered about at Amy's, to consider the future. I had been given two 'warnings', as the doctor called them, in as many months. I had been lucky to get away with only a bump on the head as a secondary injury. As Dr Ferguson had said, I could have broken a leg or hip as I fell.

  Memories of Dolly Clare's classroom collapse so long ago, and visions of other victims of strokes, all came to haunt me. My old dread of such an attack happening at school, in front of the children, was my chief anxiety, and I admitted this to Amy one quiet evening as we sat knitting by her fire.

  I had marvelled at the way she had refrained from scolding me throughout her invaluable nursing, but now, confronting my fears, she spoke in her usual decisive manner.

  'It's time you packed it in,' she said. 'I know you've only about two years to do, but whatever's the point in knocking yourself up, and starting retirement as an invalid?'

  I said that the doctor had assured me that I should re-cover.

  'He said that the first time,' retorted Amy, 'and you say yourself that you felt quite well, and did all the things he had told you, but even so you've had this second attack. To my mind, it's a more severe one. And with your speech affected what good would you be as a teach
er?'

  The same dismal thought had occurred to me, of course.

  'Would you be terribly unhappy if you gave up your job?'

  'I'd miss the children. But no, on the whole I think I'd enjoy being a free woman.'

  'Have you got enough to live on? Would you have to wait to get your pension?'

  'I've got quite a bit stashed here and there, and I'd have to find out more about the pension. I think I might get it immediately, but in any case, I can get by.'

  'Well, James said that I was to tell you that we can tide you over, and you are not to worry.'

  'James,' I said, 'is an angel in disguise.'

  'Pretty heavy disguise too,' said Amy drily, 'when his breakfast's late.'

  We shelved the problem of my future, and had a glass of Tio Pepé apiece.

  A few days before term began I returned home. I felt strong enough to face the rigours of school and my own simple house-keeping. Tibby was somewhat stand-offish, as might be expected, but came round after an extra large peace offering of Pussi-luv.

  My first visit was to Mrs Pringle to present her with a china cake dish she had admired in Caxley, and had described to me some weeks before.

  A rare smile lit up that dour face when she undid it, and I renewed my thanks for her timely help.

  'I truly thought you'd gone,' she told me. 'Like a corpse you lay there, and I was going to straighten your limbs before they stiffened, when you gave a groan.'

  'That was lucky,' I commented.

  'It certainly was! That's when I heaved you on to the couch.'

  'You were more than kind. And now I must be off.'

  It was plain to me, as I met one or two old Fairacre friends in the village, that my stroke had been well documented.

  Mr Lamb at the Post Office shook my hand, and said it was good to see me back. He did not actually add 'from the dead', but I sensed it.

  Jane Winter, one of the newcomers, said, 'My goodness, I didn't expect to see you looking so well!'