Miss Clare Remembers and Emily Davis Page 9

  'It's always what you wants,' she flared at the white, silent boy. 'Thinks yourself a hero, all dressed up in this newfangled khaki to catch the girls' eyes! What about us? How's the family going to manage with your wages cut off?'

  The boy began to explain haltingly, but was overborne. Dolly's heart bled for him as his mother's wrath gradually evaporated into self-pity.

  'And what about a mother's feelings? Here I've brought you up from a baby, sat up nights when you was ailing, give you all you wanted, and what do I get in return? You fair break my heart, you do. You can't love me if you treats me like this.' She pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and mopped the hot tears that coursed down her face. It was the old man of the house who opposed her most bravely. As he shook his blackgloved fist at her, his roars overcame the furious sobbing.

  'You let 'un go. He's old enough to know what 'e wants, and you should be proud he's got the guts to want to fight. Don't I know his feelings? I went through the Crimean War—aye, and saw plenty of blood too, my own included, and would've died there but for Miss Nightingale, God bless 'er—and glad to, when we was fighting for the right thing. You women don't know half a man's mind. You try and keep 'im 'ere, tied down to your niminypiminy little ways and 'e'll 'ate you, and 'isself too, for the rest of his days.'

  The boy cast a grateful look at the old man, and he continued more softly:

  'There, gal, don't take on so. He'll be back before you knows where you are; and you can bet a fortune he won't go no further than Salisbury Plain for many a long day. Let 'im 'ave 'is fling.'

  Arguments flew for the rest of that week, but Albert was not to be deflected, and on the first day of 1900 he went to the recruiting officer in Caxley.

  Emily and Dolly thought he was a hero, and defended his action enthusiastically. Here, in real life, was a happening as exciting as those they so often read about. Their interest in the war became redoubled, and they pestered old Mr Davis to tell them about his earlier war-time memories, but all his accounts, they discovered, soon turned to eulogising Miss Nightingale, whose personality had completely ensnared him.

  'She's the most beautiful woman alive,' he told them, 'and the bravest. She never cared how rough or foul-mouthed we was to begin with—she soon altered all that. We fair worshipped her out there, and I see her once not long ago when I went to stay with a brother of mine at Claydon. There's a big house there that the Verneys own, and Miss Nightingale stays there sometimes with her sister. She was sitting with her in the garden and I stood behind a tree and looked at her, and looked at her. I thought to myself: "If ever a lady deserves a rest it's that one".'

  His old eyes grew so ardent when he spoke of Miss Nightingale and her band of nurses that Dolly seriously considered the possibility of taking up nursing as a profession as she watched him. What could be more rewarding than to see love and gratitude flashing from the eyes of a soldier? A young one preferably, of course. Perhaps Albert Davis? Though, on second thoughts she did not want him hurt at all. And how becoming a nurse's uniform was! Dolly saw herself tripping lightly up and down a long ward, a veil floating behind her, the idol of her adoring patients. She was enchanted by the idea.

  Enchantment ended a few hours later when little Frank was sick that evening and she was sent to clear up his cot. Sousing revolting bed linen in a tub of icy water, she realised, with devastating clarity, that nursing was not for her.

  CHAPTER 10

  DURING the first year of the new century, the object of prime importance at Beech Green school was a largescale map showing the area in which the Boer War was being waged.

  Each morning, before prayers, the boys would gather round it, moving the little flags to show the day-to-day progress of the troops. Great was the rejoicing when besieged Ladysmith was finally relieved on February 28th, and greater still when, after 217 days of siege, Mafeking too was relieved in May.

  Mr Finch was so infected with the national fever on this occasion that he let the children have a bonfire in the playground, and watched their wild dancing around it with an indulgent eye.

  The most envied boy in the school was one who wore a tie of the new khaki colour decorated with dozens of tiny Union Jacks. The war, it seemed, was as good as won, as the summer wore on, and when, in the autumn of 1900, Lord Roberts and Buller came home to England, Beech Green felt sure that peace was not far distant.

  'Your boy won't never get to South Africa,' they consoled Mrs Davis. 'Just a case of Kitchener clearing up the mess, and it'll all be over by harvest, you'll see.'

  At the end of the summer term another excitement occurred. It was announced that Mr Finch was leaving and would take up a new appointment in a large school in the county town. This meant promotion, and his neighbours were quick to congratulate him.

  The children were secretly glad to see him go. He wasn't a bad old stick, said some, but it would be good fun to have someone new who wasn't so strict. As one wag put it, in Dolly's hearing:

  'Talk about the relief of Mafeking! I reckons it'll be the relief of Beech Green School when old Finch goes!'

  The new headmaster came in the autumn. He was young and unmarried, but possessed a fiercely possessive mother who ruled the school house and her son as well.

  Ada and the older girls were his slaves from the start. His fair wavy hair, worn a shade too long by country standards, and his pale face made him an object of interest and reverence. His clothes were much less formal than Mr Finch's had been, and he favoured big floppy ties in delicate pastel colours.

  'Proper wishy-washy young feller', was what the men of Beech Green called the newcomer behind his back. But the women were inclined to take his part.

  'He's just up-to-date, that's all. Very good thing too, to have someone who can teach the children without waving the cane at 'em all day,' they maintained.

  His name was Evan Waterman, and he proved to be an ardent churchgoer, much given to genuflection and crossings during the services at Beech Green, which occasioned deep suspicions in the hearts of his Low Church neighbours. The vicar was delighted to have such a devout young man in charge of the school, and his visits there became more frequent and lengthy than ever.

  'Lives in the parson's pocket,' grumbled old Davis one day, in Dolly's hearing. 'Don't trust that new chap no further'n I can see 'im! Too good to live, 'e be, mark my words!'

  Mr Waterman had not been in school for a week before he told the children that he hoped he need never use the cane again, and to give emphasis to his words he threw it dramatically on to the top of a high cupboard where it lodged among a group of dusty wooden cubes, cones, spheres, and other geometrical shapes which had been undisturbed for years.

  The rousing cheer which greeted this display might have warned a wiser man of perils to come, but Evan Waterman simply flushed with pleasure and told himself that he had won a place in his pupils' grateful hearts. Had he known it, it was not gratitude that enflamed those savage breasts, but the thought of a rollicking future where impudence and laziness would go unpunished. The boys winked merrily at each other, quivering with secret mirth. The girls gazed at their new headmaster with rapt devotion. In any case, they had seldom felt the cane, and had nothing to lose.

  He told the children that he hoped they would look upon him as a friend, and would tell him of anything that perplexed or frightened them.

  'I am here to help you,' he said earnestly, leaning forward in his desk with his pale blue tie napping dangerously near the inkwell. The red faces of the older boys, choking with suppressed laughter at such antics, he attributed to natural bashfulness. He was determined to put into practice the new ideas in education, and to throw out the repressive methods which he saw had been those used by Mr Finch. To see the children curtseying and bowing to their elders shocked Mr Waterman seriously. The military precision with which the classes stood, turned and marched from the schoolroom to the playground appalled him. In the future, he told himself—and his astonished pupils—all would be freedom and light, and work would
be done for the joy of doing it, not because he said so.

  He might have known, poor fellow, that such drastic changes take time, and are bound to be accompanied with much trial and tribulation. Certainly the younger children benefited from this easier régime, and the fear that Mr Finch had aroused in them was never inspired by Evan Waterman's presence in their classroom.

  The new infants' teacher, who had taken the place of Mrs Finch, was a robust young woman who cycled from Caxley daily on her new safety bicycle. She was a rosy-cheeked young Amazon, called Jenny North, and the village was quite sure that she would soon conquer Evan Waterman's heart and install herself as mistress of the school house in place of the dragon who lived there at present. This topic kept the village gossips engrossed for quite a fortnight, but—alas for their hopes!—the young woman was 'going steady' with a respectable draper in Caxley, and had eyes for no one else. She looked upon her headmaster's methods with a tolerant eye, but did not hesitate to administer a sharp slap upon her young sinners' legs, when her classroom door was safely closed. She and her charges understood each other well enough, and Beech Green parents soon realised that their young ones were getting on steadily under their new teacher.

  About the older children they were less happy as the weeks went by. Gales of laughter and a few shouts could be heard from the schoolroom, where only Mr Finch's stentorian tones had been heard before. Rude rhymes were written on stable walls beginning:

  Old Milk-and-Waterman

  Lost the cane ...

  and the little girls came home, bright-eyed, with tales of kind Mr "Waterman patting their hands and telling them they were growing up to be very pretty.

  Francis Clare was present one day when Ada burst in from school and threw her books so carelessly on the table that they slid across the surface and crashed to the floor.

  'Look out, my girl,' remonstrated Francis. 'That's your school books, you know.'

  'Don't matter,' responded Ada carelessly, tossing back her bright hair. 'Mr Waterman says we can do some arithmetic or learn poetry, whichever we like. And he told me not to sit up too late over it, or I'd spoil my pretty eyes.'

  She smirked as she repeated the words, and Francis looked at her steadily. Now, at fourteen, in her last term at school, she certainly was pretty, but it wasn't Mr Waterman's place to tell her so, thought Francis with rising anger.

  'You don't want to listen to such foolishness,' said Francis. 'And your headmaster should know better than to encourage vanity. Pick your books up, and then go and help your mother.'

  When the girls were safely in bed Francis spoke openly to Mary.

  'I don't like that chap and I never shall. He's no business to lead them girls on so, and I shall have a word with the vicar about the way he's going on. The best tiling we can do, my dear, is to get our Ada settled in a good job and let her leave as soon as it's fixed. No need to wait till Christmas. She's fourteen now and big enough to find a place.'

  Mary Clare agreed.

  'Mrs Evans was asking for her,' she said. 'It'd be nice to have her handy, and she'd be happy at the manor, I'm sure. I'll have a word with the child.'

  'You do that, Mary,' said Francis, 'and I'll give that young feller a straight word or two. There's plenty of talk about him in the village—the work at school is going downhill fast, they say, and the boys just play the goat and get away with it. If you ask me,' continued Francis sturdily, 'a bit of straightforward soldiering wouldn't hurt that young Waterman.'

  The next day Mary broached the subject of going into service with Mrs Evans at the manor. To her surprise, Ada was vehemently against it.

  'I'm not being maid to no one,' said the girl violently. 'Why should I be at everyone's beck and call! I knows what it'd be! All the greasy cooking pots would be left for me to wash. All the back corridors and stone floors would be mine to scrub. I'd do the vegetables, and clean the mud out of the sinks, and squash the black beetles, and do the flues! Well, I'm not going to, then. I'm going to work in a shop—that's what I want to do!

  'But you'd still be at everyone's beck and call,' pointed out Mary. 'And there's only one shop in Beech Green, and that don't want anyone to help.'

  'It's Caxley I'm thinking of,' said Ada. 'I don't want to be buried alive in Beech Green all my life. I want to see things going on. There's plenty of shops in Caxley that'd take me on.'

  'Well, we'll think about it,' said Mary, taken aback at the assurance of her firstborn. 'I'll talk to your dad tonight and we'll see if we can hear of something.'

  Meanwhile, Francis had called at the vicarage and had a few words with the vicar about his new headmaster. To tell the truth, the good vicar himself was beginning to have some misgivings about the new appointment, and agreed to speak to Waterman that week.

  'I'm taking my two girls away as soon as I can arrange it,' said Francis as he said his farewells on the vicarage doorstep. 'And you'll find that other folk in Beech Green will be doing the same, sir, unless things alter.'

  And the vicar, watching the thatcher's broad back vanish between the Wellingtonias that lined the vicarage drive, sighed heavily. He recognised righteous wrath when he saw it.

  To Dolly, now twelve years old, that autumn seemed a time of upheaval and change. She was amazed to hear from her father that he was making plans to transfer her to Fairacre School next term. For her part, she quite liked Mr Waterman, though not with the ardour that the older girls felt for him. Already gaining the cool wisdom that was to be her mainstay in life, the younger child recognised the headmaster's folly as well as his good intentions, but felt sorry that his overtures were so rudely flouted by the boys. She enjoyed his lessons, appreciated his love of poetry and nature, and was beginning to wonder if she too might be a teacher one day.

  She knew little of Fairacre except that the school was much the same size as Beech Green's and that it stood near the church. The headmaster had been there for a year or two, had a grown-up family, a jolly, bustling wife who took the needlework lessons, and shared her husband's passion for the local hunt. They always walked a pair of hounds, which frequently burst joyfully into the schoolroom, and on the days when the hunt met near Fairacre, the schoolchildren were allowed to follow on foot. It all sounded happy enough, but it was strange, and Dolly did not like changes.

  From her father's manner, though, she realised that the affair was settled, and she made no demur. Ada was found a modest post in the draper's shop in Caxley owned by Jenny North's young man and his father. This stroke of good fortune was brought about by Jenny herself, who recognised a quick bright assistant when she saw one, and knew that Ada's pretty face would attract more business.

  It was arranged that the girl should live with Francis's parents and walk daily to the shop in the High Street, not far from the school which she and Dolly had first attended. Sunday was the only day of the week when she could get home, and the grandparents promised to bring her in their old trap or send her with an obliging neighbour.

  'But what I really want,' said Ada, eyes shining, 'is a new safety bicycle like Miss North's. Then I could go from here each day, couldn't I, mum?'

  'Ah well,' said Mary indulgently, 'you save your wages and see how it goes. I reckon you're a lucky girl to have everything fall out so nice for you.'

  The house seemed very quiet without Ada's boisterous presence, and little Frank was promoted to her empty bed in Dolly's room. Dolly was glad of his company, although he was usually fast asleep when she crept up at night, a pink and white cherub with tousled dark curls.

  He woke early, and Dolly first discovered her ability to weave stories to amuse the little boy. He liked best one about a naughty child called Tom whose adventures continued in serial form for weeks on end. Years later, Dolly Clare revived Tom's adventures for the amusement of many schoolchildren.

  Frank, at nearly four years of age, was increasingly dear to Dolly. She took him with her wherever she could, and was already looking forward to taking him to school at Beech Green after Christmas, when
the ultimatum had been given about the move to Fairacre. Now someone else would have to be found to take Frank to school, for Fairacre was too far away for his short legs, and in any case, the teaching which he would get with Jenny North perfectly satisfied Francis and Mary. Time enough to think of Fairacre for young Frank, they told each other, when he was big enough to go into the headmaster's class.

  'And if I knows anything about it,' said Francis, 'there'll be a different headmaster sitting in that chair by that time!'

  Both parents thought a great deal about their son's future, and Francis was delighted to find that, young as the child was, he already showed an interest in the straw, the knives and hazel spars which one day, Francis hoped, would be the tools of his honourable trade.

  They were all glad of the child's gay prattle during that period of autumn gloom, for, besides Ada's absence, other circumstances cast a shadow. The war, which had seemed all but won in September, now took a turn for the worse, and fighting flared up again, on a scattered front, and with renewed bitterness.

  As Christmas approached, anxiety grew. On December 22nd it was announced that thirty thousand more mounted men would be sent overseas. Among them, this time, was young Albert Davis, and there was much sadness in the little home. It looked as if the Christmas of 1900 was to be as gloomy as the year before.

  The sight of her friend Emily, her face mottled with crying and her eyes puffy and red, brought home suddenly to young Dolly the widespread wretchedness of war, in contrast to the excitement and glory which had so enthralled her a year earlier. She pondered on this new revelation of war's grim side one morning in the Christmas holidays, as she stood by the kitchen copper, watching the clothes boiling gently, the suds sighing up and down like someone breathing. Death was a fearful thing and an ugly one. She remembered the horror of the corpses in the butcher's shop at Caxley, and shuddered. Only that morning she had come across a squashed wren on the road outside their gate—a small round pile of flattened feathers with its tail neatly erect upon it. She had watched that wren, for many weeks, running up and down and in and out of the thorn hedge, and rejoiced in its perky two inches of feathered vitality. And now it lay, stilled for ever, a pathetic scrap, as neat and tidy in death as in life.