(5/20)Over the Gate Read online

  The snow was certainly 'laying'. It was coming down thick and fast, large snowflakes whirling dizzily and blotting out the landscape as effectively as a fog. It was nearly six inches deep by midday, and the dinner van was remarkably late. Surely there were no drifts yet, I thought to myself, to hold up Mrs Crossley on her travels? She was usually at Fairacre between half past eleven and twelve, having only Beech Green's dinner to deliver before returning to her depot.

  At twelve the children who go home to dinner departed. There was still no sign of the van and I was beginning to wonder if I should telephone the depot when Patrick came running back to school, followed by the rest of the home-dinner children, all in a state of much agitation.

  'Mrs Crossley's slipped over,' shouted Patrick.

  'And spilt all the gravy,' shouted another. He seemed to think that the loss of gravy was more important than Mrs Crossley's accident.

  'She's hurt her leg,' volunteered a third.

  By this time all my pupils, clad and unclad, were out in the snowy waste of playground. I made a valiant attempt to restore order, banishing the unclad indoors and telling the others to accompany me to the scene.

  The dinner van had pulled up just out of sight of the school, and Mrs Crossley had started to walk bearing a pile of large tins propped against her chest. When we reached her she had struggled back to the van and was sitting sideways in the driving seat, massaging an ankle. I could see by the look of pain on her face, and the swelling of the joint that she had a severe sprain.

  A pool of brown gravy stained the snow, but that was the only culinary casualty. Two of the bigger boys carried Fairacre's food into school while poor Mrs Crossley hobbled to my house supported by half a dozen anxious children and me. She lay on my sofa looking very woebegone.

  'So silly of me,' she said, near to tears. 'I must have stepped awkwardly on a hard lump of snow. I couldn't see over the tins.'

  'You stay there,' I said, 'and I'll give you first aid in two shakes. In the meantime, drink this.'

  I poured out a tot of brandy. Mrs Crossley shuddered.

  'Knock it back!' I said firmly, tucking a rug over her. 'I'll just see that the children aren't throwing the dinner all over each other and I'll be back.'

  As is so often the case in a crisis, the children were behaving in an exemplary manner. They had served themselves, said grace, and were eating with the utmost decorum when I called in. I gave them much well-deserved praise, begged them to keep it up, and left them smug with self-righteousness.

  'I simply must get Beech Green's dinner to them,' was Mrs Crossley's greeting on my return.

  'I'll ring Mr Annett,' I assured her, 'and he can come and collect it. But let me see to this ankle.'

  'Oh please,' begged Mrs Crossley, 'do ring Mr Annett and the depot! I shan't have an easy moment till it's done!'

  You won't have an easy moment for some time with that ankle, I thought, watching it turn from red to mauve as I listened to Beech Green school's telephone bell.

  Mr Annett answered promptly. Yes, he would come at once. Could he take Mrs Crossley to her doctor or her home or fetch her husband? I was full of admiration for Mr Annett's rapid grasp of the situation and practical help. But Mrs Crossley, from the sofa, preferred to rest for a little and to stay where she was.

  I then rang the depot who promised to send someone to collect the van, and only when that was done would Mrs Crossley put her poor swollen ankle into my amateurish hands. By the time I had strapped it firmly, made her some tea, and promised to run her back after school, it was time to go back to school.

  The classroom was beautifully quiet. The dinner things had been cleared away; but on the tortoise stove stood a dinner plate, carefully covered by another.

  Ernest lifted it from the stove with the folded duster and placed it reverently before me on my desk.

  'Bin keepin' it hot for you, miss,' he said. And it was only then that I realised that I had missed my meal.

  I lifted the lid. The gravy had dried to a papery skin, and the slices of meat were curling with the heat. It all looked horribly daunting, but touched by the children's kindness I bravely took up fork and knife.

  Watched by their solicitous eyes I ate my dinner thankfully.

  The snow did not cease all day, and I drove Mrs Crossley home after tea through a positive blizzard. Luckily the roads were passable and I was soon home again. There was still no word from Mrs Pringle and I could hear Mr Willet manfully filling the coke buckets as I put the car away. What would Thursday hold, I wondered, as I ploughed through the snow to my front door?

  It held, I discovered next morning, three more cases of mumps and no word from Mrs Pringle. It was still bitterly cold but the snow had stopped during the night. I crunched it underfoot as I crossed the playground and could imagine the snowballing that would delight the children at playtime.

  The stoves had resumed their sulky behaviour and filled the two classrooms with smoke. We tried the damper open, shut, and halfway open with exactly the same result. At length we resigned ourselves to the inevitable and resumed our interrupted work on fractions in the midst of an acrid blue haze.

  The vicar called during the morning. The Reverend Gerald Partridge is as near a saint as it would be possible to find in any village. His mild sweet face usually wears a vague benign smile, but today he appeared much agitated. At the sight of the smoke, his alarm grew.

  'Good heavens!' he cried aghast. 'Are you on fire?'

  'I wish we were,' I replied. 'We're only smouldering. The stoves object to a north-east wind.'

  'It all looks very uncomfortable,' said the vicar, approaching the tortoise stove warily, as though expecting it to explode. 'I gather that Mrs Pringle is not with you at the moment,' he added delicately. I told him why.

  'Yes, yes; I heard that there had been a little upset,' nodded the vicar understandingly. He is much too wise and diplomatic to take sides; and in any case I suspect that he thinks 'our little upsets' are six of Mrs Pringle's making and half a dozen of mine. And he is probably right.

  The vicar now began to twist his leopeard-skin gloves together unhappily.

  'I have a really dreadful confession to make, Miss Read,' he began. 'I simply cannot put my hand on that pamphlet you lent me about religious books for the young from the Oxford University Press.'

  'It doesn't matter in the least,' I assured him. 'I had quite finished with it.' But he seemed too sunk in self-mortification to hear.

  'You see, I put it most carefully on the hall table, and this morning my wife and the two girls began spring-cleaning.' The two girls, incidentally, are two buxom Fairacre matrons of sixty-two and sixty-five.

  'And not only had the pamphlet gone,' continued the poor man, 'but the hall table and the rugs and chairs—and to tell you the truth, every room in the house is completely upside down.'

  Knowing his wife's vigour and the matching energy of'the two girls' I could imagine the state of the vicarage only too clearly. This visit, I suspected, might be in the nature of a brief escape.

  I did my best to calm his fears and accompanied him out to his car.

  'Just look at that splendid bullfinch!' exclaimed Mr Partridge, his face lighting up.

  'Splendidly picking off my plum buds,' I responded grimly, though I had to admit that the vivid little creature was a cheering sight on that bleak day.

  The vicar climbed into his car, and looked at me anxiously through the window.

  'Don't hesitate to close the school, my dear, if the stoves prove too intractable. It can't be good for your lungs, or the dear children's, to inhale those fumes. What a pity Mrs Pringle is away! She is the tiniest bit difficult, I realise, but she has a wonderful way with stoves.'

  Before I could reply, he gave me a disarming smile, let in the clutch and shot erratically away down the lane.

  During the dinner hour I consulted Mr Willet about my little cat.

  For several days he had been off his food, and I had supposed that a diet of local mice
had been preferred to the delicacies offered by me. But this morning he looked wretched, sitting four-square with paws tucked under him, and his eyes half-closed.

  'Fur balls,' pronounced Mr Willet.

  'I'll get the vet.,' I said at once.

  'Ain't no need to get him out from Caxley,' said Mr Willet. 'You give of Tib a spoonful of liquid paraffin to oil the works. He'll be as right as rain tomorrow.'

  'Are you sure?' I asked doubtfully.

  'Positive!' Mr Willet assured me. 'This time of year they loses their winter coats, see, and keep all on a-licking their-selves tidy, and swallering great 'anks of'air. It all gets twizzled up inside 'em. Liquid paraffin's the stuff.'

  I thanked him and watched him return to his daily coke-sweeping. What a tower of strength and information Mr Willet was!

  I poured out a dessertspoonful of liquid paraffin and approached the unsuspecting cat. It is not easy to open a cat's mouth in order to administer medicine, as everyone knows. It is harder still when you are attempting it alone, and particularly when you have been foolish enough to pour out the dose beforehand and are trying not to spill it. Somehow or other I got most of it into the side of Tibby's mouth, and was just beginning to congratulate myself, when he gave his head a violent shake and ejected at least half the oil over my beautiful new suede shoes.

  I returned, growling, to afternoon school, recounting my luck to Mr Willet en route.

  'I'll give you a hand after school,' he said cheerfully. 'You alius wants two to cope with a cat, and then the cat nearly alius wins.'

  He looked at my stained shoes sadly.

  'It do seem to be one of those weeks, don't it?' he observed. And I agreed, with feeling.

  There was still no word from Mrs Pringle on Friday morning. Although it was delightful to be without her presence, the school was beginning to look a little the worse for wear despite my own efforts and Mr Willet's.

  The snow, luckily, was melting fast, but plenty managed to find its way into the building. With it were the usual flotsam and jetsam of school life, and a plentiful sprinkling of additional matter from the workmen at the Blundells' new home.

  'If anyone brings any more nails, putty or shavings into this school,' I said threateningly, 'I shall ring up the builders and tell them what is happening.'

  The putty in particular was a sore trial. It seemed to be the thing to have a small lump under one's desk, or about one's person, and the children's hands had never been so filthy. By dint of constant nagging I was beginning to make a little headway against this infiltration.

  We were all glad that it was Friday. It had been a trying week for everyone. By the afternoon I was beginning to feel a little more hopeful. The stoves were emitting only half as much smoke as before, only one more case of mumps had occurred overnight, Tibby appeared to be on the mend, a new pane of glass had replaced the broken one, and I had decided to find a substitute for Mrs Pringle if I did not hear from the lady during the weekend.

  But Fate still had one more blow in store for us. Jimmy Waites, on returning from play, set up a wail.

  'I bin and lost my halfcrown!'

  'Where was it?'I enquired.

  'Under my desk. Someone's pinched it!'

  Now, if anything makes me cross, it is this kind of glib accusation. I spoke sharply.

  'Rubbish! And in any case, you know you should have given it to me to mind. What was it for?'

  'Half of cheddar, two boxes of matches and a pricker for the Primus,' gabbled Jimmy. Obviously he had been repeating this to himself all the afternoon.

  Then began the search. We turned the whole place upside down. We shifted desks, turned out likely cupboards, and completely wrecked the room. It was not to be found.

  Our Friday afternoon story had to go by the board. By now I was beginning to wonder if someone perhaps had succumbed to temptation. The half crown had been seen by Jimmy's neighbours. It was there at playtime. Jimmy had been in and out of the room himself during that time.

  It was a mystery that must be solved.

  'We'd better look in our clothes,' I said. It is a job that I hate doing, but things looked suspicious. Pockets were turned out, socks rolled down, children jumped up and down to see if any coins would emerge from jerseys and trousers. But nothing was forthcoming.

  By now it was time to say prayers and go home. In the middle of the hubbub the door opened and in stumped Mrs Pringle, complete with black bag.

  She surveyed the chaos grimly.

  'Seems this place wants a bit of doing-up,' she boomed, but made no move to discard her coat and hat.

  'Sit down for a moment, Mrs Pringle,' I said. 'We're in rather a pickle.'

  'That,' said the lady with emphasis, 'is plain for all to see!'

  She folded her arms across her capacious bosom and watched the scene majestically.

  'We'll have one last look,' I said desperately to the children. 'It must be somewhere in this room. If it doesn't turn up now I shall have to think about keeping you all here until it is found.'

  There was something in my tone that made them realise the seriousness of the occasion and they began to look frenziedly about them, bending under desks, running their hands along the high window sills and scrabbling in the dusty comers of the classroom. Quite rightly, they resented being suspected, and I hated, just as much, the feeling that I was suspecting them.

  It was Mrs Pringle who discovered the halfcrown. The only calm person in the room, she had perhaps a clearer eye than the rest of us.

  'If it's a coin you're looking for,' she shouted above the din, 'it's there!'

  She pointed at the back view of Jimmy Waites himself. The child was kneeling under his desk, and cleaving to the instep of his Wellington boot was a glutinous lump of the ubiquitous putty. There, embedded in it, was the missing halfcrown.

  After we had congratulated Mrs Pringle and each other, I improved the shining hour bv pointing out the absolute necessity of leaving putty severely alone, and then dismissed them.

  There was genuine relief in their farewells. The dark shadow of distrust was lifted, the halfcrown was restored and Fairacre school could relax again.

  'The vicar told me you was in trouble,' said Mrs Pringle austerely, when the children had gone. 'And though I doubt if my knee will ever be the same again, I knows where my duty lies.'

  She advanced, limping, towards the stove.

  'Been letting it smoke, have you?' she said. I felt that this was hardly the correct expression, but was not given time to reply. To my amazement, Mrs Pringle lifted a mighty hand and smote the pipe about a foot above the stove itself The smoke, which had been dribbling gently from the crack in the lid, ceased emerging immediately.

  'Gets a bit out true sometimes,' observed Mrs Pringle with satisfaction. 'Well, I'll get the place to rights while I'm here, so's we can be straight for next week.'

  'Thank you, Mrs Pringle,' I said meekly, bowing my head, with secret relief, to the inevitable.

  7. The Fairacre Ghost

  THE Easter holidays are probably more welcome than any other, for they mark the passing of the darkest and most dismal of the three school terms and they herald the arrival of flowers, sunshine and all the pleasures of the summer.

  At this time, in Fairacre, we set about our gardens with zeal. Potatoes are put in, on Good Friday if possible, and rows of peas and carrots, and those who have been far-sighted enough to put in their broad beans in the autumn, go carefully along the rows, congratulating themselves, and hoping that the black fly will not devastate the young hopefuls in the next few months.

  We admire each other's daffodils, walk down each other's garden paths observing the new growth in herbaceous borders, and gloat over the buds on plum and peach trees. We also observe the strong upthrust of nettles, couch grass and dandelions, among the choicer growth, but are too besotted by the thought of summer ahead to let such things worry us unduly.

  It is now that the vicar gets out his garden furniture—a motley collection ranging from
Victorian ironwork to pre-war Lloyd-loom-and arranges it hopefully on the vicarage veranda. Now Mr Mawne, our local ornithologist, erects a hide at the end of his lovely garden in order to watch the birds. He weaves a bower of peasticks, ivy-trails and twigs, upon the wood and sacking framework, as intricate as the nests of those he watches.

  Now the cottage doors are propped open with a chair, or a large stone, and striped cats wash their ears or survey the sunshine blandly through half-closed eyes. Tortoises emerge, shaky and slower than ever, from their hibernation, and sometimes a grass snake can be seen sunning itself in the dry grass.

  This is the time for visiting and being visited. For months we have been confined. Bad weather, dirty roads, dark nights and winter illnesses have kept us all apart. Now we set about refurbishing our friendships, and one of my first pleasures during this Easter holiday was a visit from my godson Malcolm Annett, and his father and mother.

  It was a perfect day for a tea party. The table bore a bowl of freshly-picked primroses, some lemon curd made that morning, and a plentiful supply of egg sandwiches. Mr Roberts, the farmer, has a new batch of Rhode Island Red hens who supply me with a dozen dark brown eggs weekly. These are lucky hens, let me say, garrulous and energetic, running at large in the farmyard behind the house, scratching busily in the loose straw at the foot of the ricks, and advancing briskly to the back door whenever anyone emerges holding a plate. No wonder that their eggs are luscious compared with the product of their poor imprisoned sisters.

  After tea we ambled through the village, greeting many old friends who were out enjoying the air. Mrs Annett used to teach at Fairacre before she married the headmaster at our neighbouring village Beech Green so that she knows a great many families here. Mr Annett is choirmaster at St Patrick's church at Fairacre, so that he too knows us all well.