Village School Page 7

  The night sky was thick with stars as the people dwindled away into the darkness.

  'What about them desks, miss?' said Mr Willet at my elbow. 'They might get wet.'

  'Forget them!' I said, turning the key in the school door. It had been a very long day.

  On the last Saturday of term I caught the bus to Caxley to buy presents for the children with some of the concert money. I struggled round Woolworth's buying little dolls, balls, coloured pencils, clockwork mice and decorations for the Christmas tree, and spent the next hour searching the rest of the town for more elusive toys. In the market-place I came across Mr Annett.

  'Do you want a lift?' he asked. 'I'm just off.'

  I consulted my shopping list. There seemed nothing more of extreme urgency and I gratefully climbed into the car.

  'I sometimes wonder about Christmas,' said Mr Annett meditatively, looking at my feet which I was resting, in an unlovely way, on their outer edges. We edged gingerly down the crowded High Street, demented shoppers darting before us, screaming at their children to 'Stay there—Lor' the traffic—Stay there!'

  'The thing to do,' I said as we gained the lane that leads to Beech Green and Fairacre, 'is to get absolutely everything in the summer and lock it in a cupboard. Then order every scrap of food from a shop the week before Christmas and sit back and enjoy watching everyone else go mad. I've been meaning to do it for years.'

  'Come and have tea with me,' said Mr Annett, swerving into the school playground before I had a chance to answer. His school-house was bigger than mine and also had a bathroom, but poor Mr Annett's towels were grey, I noticed, and the floor needed cleaning. The dust of several days lingered on the banisters, and it was quite obvious that his housekeeper did not overwork herself.

  His sitting-room, however, though dusty, was light and sunny, with an enormous radiogram in one corner and two long shelves above it stacked with gramophone records. In the other corner was his 'cello, and I remembered that Mr Annett was a keen member of the Caxley orchestra.

  Mrs Nairn, a wispy little Scotswoman, brought in the tea, and smiled upon me graciously.

  'Your brother rang up while you was out,' she said to Mr Annett, 'and said to tell you he'll be down next Friday tea-time, and he's bringing two bottles of whisky and a bird ready cooked.'

  This news delighted Mr Annett.

  'Good, good!' he said, dropping four lumps of sugar carefully into my cup. 'That's wonderful! He's here with me for a week or more over Christmas. He's just had a book published in America, you know, and he's expecting big sales.'

  As I knew that his brother was a professor of mathematics at one of the northern universities and occasionally brought out books with such titles as 'The Quadrilateral Theory and its Relation to the Quantitative Binomial Cosine,' I felt unequal to any cosy chit-chat about the new publication, and contented myself with polite noises at this good news.

  I did not get back until seven and spent the rest of the evening packing presents in blue tissue paper for boys and pink for girls and thanking my stars that there were only forty children in Fairacre School.

  It was the last afternoon and the Christmas party was in full swing. Lemonade glasses were empty, paper hats askew, and the children's faces flushed with excitement. They sat at their disordered tables, which were their workaday desks pushed up together in fours and camouflaged with Christmas tablecloths. Their eyes were fixed on the Christmas tree in the centre of the room, glittering and sparkling with frosted baubles and tinsel.

  Miss Clare had insisted on dressing it on her own, and had spent all the previous evening in the shadowy schoolroom alone with the tree and her thoughts. The pink and blue parcels dangled temptingly and a cheer went up as the vicar advanced with the school cutting-out scissors.

  Round the room were parents and friends, who had come to share the fun of the party and to see the presentation of a clock and a cheque to Miss Clare on this her last school day.

  The children had all brought a penny or two for a magnificent bouquet which was now hidden under the sink in the lobby, out of harm's way. The youngest little girl, John Burton's sister, was already in a fine state of nerves at the thought of presenting it at the end of the proceedings.

  The floor was a welter of paper, bent straws and crumbs, and I saw Mrs Pringle's mouth drooping down, tortoise-fashion, as she surveyed the wreckage. Luckily the vicar clapped his hands for silence before she had a chance for any damping remark.

  The room was very quiet as he spoke, simply and movingly, of all that Miss Clare had meant in the lives of those of us there that afternoon. It was impossible to repay years of selfless devotion, but we would like her to have a token of our affection. Here, he looked helplessly round for the parcel and envelope, which Mrs Pringle found for him and thrust hastily into his hand as though they were hot potatoes.

  Miss Clare undid them with shaking fingers, while a little whisper of excitement ran round the room. There was the sudden clang of the paint bucket from the lobby, and little Eileen Burton emerged triumphantly with the bouquet and presented it with a commendable curtsey, amid a storm of clapping.

  Miss Clare replied with composure, and I never admired her more than on this occasion. A reserved woman herself, I think that this was the first time that she realized how warmly we all felt towards her. She thanked us simply and quietly, and only the brightness of her eyes as she looked at the happy children told of the tears that could so easily have come to a less courageous woman.

  PART TWO

  Spring Term

  10. Winter Fevers

  THE Christmas holidays had slid away all too quickly. On the morning after we had broken up, I was busy writing Christmas cards, when a hammering had come at the front door.

  On the step stood Linda and Anne. Linda carried a small parcel with much care, and when I invited them in she put it on the table among the half-finished cards.

  'It's from both of us,' she announced proudly.

  It turned out to be a bottle of scent called 'Dusky Allure.' A female of mature charms pranced on the label, inadequately clad in what looked like a yard of cheese-muslin. A palm tree and a few stars added point to the title. The children beamed at me as I unscrewed the top.

  'It's simply wonderful!' I told them, when I had got over the coughing attack. 'And very, very kind of you.'

  I pressed biscuits and lemonade upon them, and they sat on the edges of their chairs, demure and gratified, while I finished off the cards. In the quiet room one's lemonade went down with a gurgle, and they exchanged mirthful looks and turned pink.

  We parted with various good wishes for Christmas and they skipped away taking with them my cards to post.

  On Christmas Eve I had had more visitors. The carol-singers arrived on a clear, frosty night, bearing three hurricane lamps on long poles, and pushing a little harmonium which Mrs Pratt played. Mr Annett conducted them with vigour, and in the light of one of the lamps I saw that brother Ted had been prevailed upon to bring his flute. The fresh country voices were at their best in the cold night air, and even Mr Annett seemed pleased with his choir's efforts.

  'Splendid!' he said vigorously, as 'Hark, the herald angels sing' dwindled to a close, and he beamed upon them all with such goodwill that I wondered if brother Ted's two bottles had been broached before they had set off, or whether it was indeed the spirit of Christmas that had softened him to include even Mrs Pringle in his expansive smile.

  The new term found a depleted school, for measles had broken out in the village. In the infants' room Mrs Finch-Edwards had only twelve children to teach, out of eighteen, and I had only twenty out of twenty-two.

  The weather was bitterly cold, with an east wind that flattened the grass and shrivelled the wallflower plants against the school wall. The skylight had undergone its usual repairs during the holiday, and though we had had no rain yet to test its endurance to the weather, it certainly let in a more fiendish draught than usual, which gave me a stiff neck.

  The chil
dren did not want to go out into the playground, and with the weather as it was I doubted whether they would gain much from the airing; but being school-bound made them quarrelsome and cantankerous. Tempers were short and Mrs Pringle more annoying than ever with her fancied grievances and nagging at the children.

  We all longed for the spring, for sunshine and flowers, and the thought that we were only in January made that prospect all the more hopeless.

  It was during arithmetic one morning, when I had been teaching the middle group to multiply with two figures, that John Burton came out with the astonishing remark: 'I'm done! Can't do no more!'

  He threw his pen down on to the desk, leant back and closed his eyes. He, as a top group member, had been working quietly at some problems from the blackboard, and this outburst made us all stop and stare.

  'If you can't do any more of those, John,' I said, 'try some from Exercise Six.'

  'I've said, ain't I, that I can't do no more?' shouted John, glaring at me. This was quite unlike his usual docile manner and I felt annoyed.

  'What nonsense—' I began, when, to my amazement, he burst into tears, resting his head on his arms on the desk.

  The children were much shocked that John, the head boy, the school bellringer, the biggest boy there, should indulge in such childish weakness! Their eyes and mouths were like so many O's.

  I went over to him and raised his head. It was difficult to tell from the tears and congestion if he were feverish or not, but his forehead was burning.

  'Have you had measles?'

  'No, miss.'

  'Is your mother at home?'

  'No, miss. She's got a job at Caxley this week.'

  'Anyone at home?'

  'Not till four o'clock.'

  I went to see Mrs Finch-Edwards.

  'I'll leave the door open while I take him over to the house, if you'll keep an eye on them. What about Eileen?'

  His little sister looked perfectly normal. She had not had measles, but technically she was now in quarantine if, as was fairly obvious, her brother had got it. We decided to compromise by putting her desk in the front, away from the others, for the rest of the day.

  John looked very sorry for himself as he lay on the sofa under a rug, with the thermometer protruding from his mouth.

  'Did you say your mother was serving at Sutton's the fish-shop?'

  John nodded, as he was effectively gagged with the thermometer. I looked up the telephone number as we waited, thinking, not for the first time, how sad it is when mothers with young children have to take full-time jobs, and how impossible it is to try and be a substitute.

  The thermometer stood at 102 degrees when I took it from his mouth. I tucked him up more securely in his rug, poked up the fire and went out into the hall to telephone to his mother.

  'Speak to Mrs Burton?' said a voice, which I supposed to be the fishmonger's. 'She's serving at the moment.'

  'Then I'll hang on,' I said, 'but this is urgent. Her little boy is ill and she will have to come immediately.'

  'It's most inconvenient,' said the fishmonger severely, 'but I'll tell her.'

  Mrs Burton was sensible and practical. She would be on the next bus, and intimated that if Mr'S. didn't like it he could lump it. I went back to tell John the good news, but he had fallen asleep, breathing heavily, his forehead damp with sweat, so I crept out and across to the school.

  It is this sort of occasion that makes one realize how absolutely necessary it is for every school, however small, to have two people who can take charge. Without Mrs Finch-Edwards there to superintend the children, any sort of accident might have happened; and I thought of several schoolmistresses that I knew, in the charge of perhaps twenty or more children, with no adult help within call, who might be coping at this very moment with such an emergency and with all the added mental distress of their lonely circumstances. It is a position in which no teacher should have to find herself, and yet it is, alas, a common one in our country areas.

  It was during this bleak and plague-ridden period that Mr Willet appeared one morning with his hand heavily swaddled in strips of shirt-tail.

  'We 'ad a very rough night, miss, very rough! Very rough indeed!' he said in reply to my inquiries. 'That Arthur Coggs, miss, is nothing more than a crying disgrace to Fairacre.'

  It had all begun, evidently, at Caxley during the dinner hour. It was market day, and a member of one of the more rabid and obscure evangelical sects had set up his rostrum between a fishmonger with lungs of brass, and a purple-faced gentleman who threatened to smash up teapots and repair them again, with the aid of the miraculous paste which he held in his hand.

  When twelve o'clock struck, Mr Willet told me, 'This 'ere 'eathen-jeUy was as hoarse as a crow and took his tracts and that round to the building site where Arthur Coggs and his mates had just knocked off They was setting about on wheelbarrows and such, having their grub.'

  So blood-curdling, evidently, were the ''eathen-jelly's' descriptions of the after-life that they could confidently look forward to, that Arthur was seriously perturbed. Early memories of his stern old father, who had held much the same beliefs as the earnest soul before him, came flooding back, and he resolved in a flash to give up drinking, swearing, wife-and-child beating, and to become an example of right-living to all Fairacre.

  During the afternoon, as he stacked bricks in a leisurely way, he decided that his new life might profitably begin on the morrow. This evening he would have a farewell round of drinks with his cronies at 'The Beetle and Wedge,' and tell them of his changed ways. Who knows, he might even persuade some of those lost, black sheep to return to the fold with him?

  He was, of course, chipped unmercifully by the hardened sinners in the pub that night. Spirits were high, language ripe and fruity, and beer flowed more generously than usual, as 'This was poor old Arthur's last drink!' By closing-time Arthur was decidedly drunk, and inflamed with his mission for reclaiming lost souls.

  'You better save old Wilier,' suggested one boisterous reveller, as they approached the Willets' prim cottage.

  Mr and Mrs Willet had been in what Mr Willet called 'a lovely sleep,' when the rumpus began. Afire with good works, Arthur belaboured the paint-encrusted knocker, with all the might of the righteous. His companions were divided between mirth and shame. Some egged him on, while the more sober did their best to get him away from the door.

  'What the Hanover!' said Mr Willet, creaking out of bed. He leant out of the window.

  'Get off home! Waking up sleeping folks! Get off with you!'

  'You come on down!' rejoined Arthur, 'I got something to ask you urgent!'

  Mr Willet pulled on his socks, using language that Mrs Willet had never heard him use before in all their twenty-eight years of married life and regular church-going. She followed him timidly down to the last few steps of the box staircase, holding the door at the bottom open a chink to see that no harm came to her husband.

  'Well, what is it?' asked Mr Willet testily, as he unbolted the front door. The cat, so recently put out, now streaked in, with a cry of alarm, followed by Arthur Coggs.

  His companions melted rapidly away into the darkness. It appeared to them that Mr Willet, standing there in his billowing flannel shirt that served him by night and day for six days of the week, and with his sturdy legs bristling like gooseberries in the night air, could well cope alone with his visitor.

  Arthur came very close to Mr Willet and scrutinized his unwelcoming visage.

  'Mr Willet,' he said with something between a sob and a hiccup, 'I got something to ask you.'

  'Well, git on with it,' said Mr Willet sharply. The draught from the door was cruel. Arthur Coggs looked behind him furtively, then advanced another step.

  'Willet, are you saved?' he pleaded earnestly.

  Mr Willet's patience snapped at this insult to as steady-going a churchman as the village boasted.

  'Saved?' he echoed. 'I'm a durn sight more saved than you are, you gobbering, great fool!' And he attempte
d to push Arthur through the door. But, with the strength of one who burns with nine pints of beer and religious convictions, Arthur thrust him aside, closed the door with a backward kick, and came further into the room. He leant heavily on the table and looked across at the incensed Mr Willet.

  'But 'ave you seen the light?' he persisted. 'Do your limbs tremble when you think of what's to come?'

  Mr Willet's limbs were trembling enough, as it was, with cold and fury. He opened his mouth to speak, but was shouted down.

  'Gird on your armour, Willet!' bellowed Arthur, his breath coming in beery waves across the table. He brandished his arms wildly, knocking down a very old fly-paper, that fell glutinously across the red serge tablecloth.

  'Gird on your sword! Gird on your 'elmet, Willet!' His eye lit upon two stuffed owls that dominated the dresser by the fire-place. Carefully he lifted the heavy glass cover from them, and, with a glad cry, dropped it over his own head. The stuffed owls swayed on their dead branch, and Mrs Willet gave a little wail, and came down the last three stairs.

  Like some enormous goldfish Arthur rounded on her, eyes gleaming through the cover.

  'You saved?' he bellowed suspiciously to the newcomer, steaming up the glass as he spoke.

  'Yes, thank you,' murmured Mrs Willet faintly, shrinking behind her husband.

  'Then put on your 'elmet,' advised Arthur, tapping the glass by his right ear. 'Gird your loins——!'

  ''Ere, that's enough of that!' shouted Mr Willet, enraged. He caught hold of the dome above Arthur's shoulders and attempted to force it off; but so heavy was it, and so much taller was his visitor, that he found it impossible to accomplish.

  'Sit you down, will 'ee?' screamed Mr Willet, giving the glass a vicious slap and Mr Coggs a most unorthodox blow in the stomach. Arthur folded up neatly and sat, winded, on the horsehair sofa.