by Miss Read
'There we are!' said Mrs Partridge in the comforting tone of one returning a lost baby to its mother. It says much for civilization that Mr Mawne and I were capable of greeting each other with smiles, under such provocation.
'Thirty-two!' bellowed Mrs Pringle from the front. 'Thirty-two! Right?' she poked her head out of the door to shout this to the vicar, who stood on the steps of the coach in front.
`It should be thirty-three, dear Mrs Pringle!' the vicar's pulpit-voice fluted back.
A hubbub of counting began in our coach, half the travellers standing up, and the other half begging them to sit down. The dm was appalling.
'I makes it thirty-one now!' said Mr Willet in a desperate tone. He looked uncomfortably spruce in his Sunday dark-blue serge, and his face shone red above a tight white collar.
'I was on the floor,' said a husky voice, and Joseph Coggs emerged from beneath a seat, wiping his filthy hands on the front of his best jersey.
'Thirty-two!' boomed Mrs Pringle again, with awful finality. I wondered if it would be engraved on her heart when she died, and if so, would it be in letters or figures? This idle fancy was interrupted by Mr Mawne saying firmly: 'You have forgotten yourself, Mrs Pringle. Thirty-two—and you make thirty-three!'
Sourly Mrs Pringle intimated that this was, in fact, the case, waved approval to the vicar, and then puffed her way down the aisle to the seat behind Mr Mawne and me. To rousing cheers the party set off to Barrisford.
Mr Mawne had an ill-assorted collection of luggage with him, for a day's outing. Three books, in an insecure strap, he put up on the rack, together with a small fishing net, and a rather messy packet, in greaseproof paper, which presumably held his lunch, and a very large green apple, obviously intended by the Almighty for baking, served with plenty of brown sugar and cream.
His magnificent camera, housed in a leather case which gleamed like a horse chestnut, he held carefully on his thin knees, occasionally whizzing the strap round and round, in an absent-minded fashion, perilously near my face.
For the first part of the journey he seemed content to gaze about him silently, but after we had stopped for coffee at a roadside cafe and resumed our seats, he became quite talkative. Mrs Pringle leant forward behind us, the better to hear the conversation.
'Do you go out much in the evenings?' asked Mr Mawne politely. 'Or do you have school work—marking, and so on—to occupy you?'
I told him that I usually spent a little time on school affairs, chiefly correspondence with the local education office, ordering new stock, checking school accounts and so on, but that otherwise household matters and the garden filled up most of my time.
'And I read a lot,' I added.
'Excellent, excellent!' said he, 'but surely you find your life a little lonely at times?'
I was conscious of Mrs Pringle's heightened interest behind me. I was obliged to tell Mr Mawne, quite truthfully, that I had never felt lonely in my life.
'It seems, if I may say so, a very—a—restricted life, for a woman. Particularly an attractive woman.' He essayed a small bow, but was somewhat impeded by the camera. Mrs Pringle's breathing became more marked by my left ear.
'I can assure you,' I said, acknowledging the compliment with a polite smile, 'that it's a very full life. Too full at times. The days don't seem long enough.'
Mr Mawne dropped his eyes to his lap, and spoke sadly.
'I find them too long, I'm afraid. Particularly cold, long summer evenings.'
By this time Mrs Pringle's face was almost between our heads, and I could see the agitated cherries from the corner of my eye. Ignoring the pathos of poor Mr Mawne's tone, I hurled myself into an over-bright description of making jam on just such a cold, long summer evening as Mr Mawne disliked, steering erratically, and perhaps a trifle hysterically from the particular to the general, while Mrs Pringle's breathing stirred the hair on my neck.
When at last I paused for breath, Mr Mawne gave me a gentle, sad smile.
'You are very lucky,' he said slowly. 'I think, perhaps, a man needs companionship more than a woman does.' He relapsed into dreamy silence, and we both watched the outskirts of Barrisford rushing past the windows.
Mrs Pringle released the iron grip she had held on the back of our seat, and, well content with her eavesdropping, settled her bulk back on her own cushions, and gave a gusty sigh.
To my relief and, no doubt, to Mrs Pringle's disappointment, Mr Mawne bade me a kindly farewell at Barrisford and set off, with brisk, purposeful strides, along the beach, to some far distant rocks which were awash with a lazy tide. The children rushed seawards whilst we older Fairacre folk settled ourselves on the warm sand, and screwing up our eyes against the dazzle, watched the sea-gulls swooping and crying in the vivid blue sky.
Mrs Moffat watched Linda setting off to the water, clad in a dashing yellow sun-suit of her making, then sat herself down beside me. She obviously had something of importance to say.
'Do you mind?' she began. 'I wanted to speak to you on the coach, but I didn't like to interrupt your conversation with Mr Mawne. He looked so happy.' This was all very hard to bear, I thought, and could only hope that the recording angel was ready, with pencil, to note with what fortitude and long-suffering I was enduring these mortifications.
'I wanted to thank you for sending your friend to me. She's introduced several more people from Bent, and Hilda and I are making nearly a dozen costumes for the pageant.'
I said that that was wonderful, and did Hilda—Mrs Finch-Edwards—find she could manage this work with the baby?
'She's marvellous!' said Mrs Moffat with fervour. 'She's borrowed dozens of books about costume from the County Library, and Mrs Bond who is in charge of the organizing of the pageant is coming over to see us both next week to see how we're getting on. The costumes must be historically correct, of course. It's fascinating work.'
I asked her if Amy had been able yet to introduce them both to the film producer.
'Not yet,' she replied, 'but I believe Mrs Bond knows him wed. She may ted us more when we see her.'
She rose in answer to a distant shout from her daughter, who was gazing, fascinated, at something in the surf that swirled about her ankles.
I leant back against a sunny breakwater, and dozed off.
'Our Mr Edward' at Bunce's, the famous tea shop, was elegant in a light fawn worsted suit, exquisitely cut. He bowed us to our tables in an upper room, and personally supervised the serving of delicious ham and salad, swooping round with plates ranged up his arm. Mr Mawne did not appear at tea, but we found him when we returned to the coach, busily making notes in the margin of one of his three books. It was, I saw, a book about birds. His face was bright pink with the sunshine and salt air, and he greeted me almost boisterously. I was glad to see that his spirits had revived.
Mrs Pringle bared her teeth at us in a ghastly, sickly leer as she sidled by to her place.
'Now you two will be all right,' she said, as though bestowing a blessing on a bridal pair. Mr Mawne appeared not to hear, and continued with his animated account of the purple sandpiper.
'I knew it!' he said emphatically, slapping his book gaily. 'When I heard that Barrisford was the place, I thought, "Now's my chance!'"
Mrs Pringle, catching the last few words, inclined the cherries a little nearer.
'I saw quite a dozen sandpipers—the purple sandpiper—' he added, peering anxiously into my face. 'There are a number of sandpipers, you know.'
I went into a pleasant trance while he rattled on. 'The purple sandpiper,' I said silently to myself, 'and the lesser sandpiper, and the crested sandpiper, and the continental sandpiper, and, of course, the English speaking sandpiper...'
The coach roared on, and we must have been half-way to Fairacre before he finished, triumphantly.
'And I've taken twenty-three photographs, both wading and on the wing, so I've ready accomplished more than I set out to do today! I shad set this fellow Huggett to rights!' Here he slapped the book again.
'A pompous ass! We were at school together, and what he knows about the purple sandpiper could be written on a pin head!'
And with this charitable remark he settled back with the evening paper, and read, with the closest attention, a very sordid account of a young girl drug-addict who had been found murdered on one of the ugliest divans ever to find its way into the photographs of the evening press.
The Monday following an outing often brings some absentees from school, and today was no exception. The twins, Helen and Diana, were reported to have nettlerash and colds—which sound suspiciously like chicken-pox to Miss Clare and me. Several others look decidedly mopey, and Ernest, in my room, has spent most of his school day rubbing his back against the desk behind him, in order to gain relief from 'an itching sunburn, miss, done Saturday.'
Miss Clare confessed over her morning tea that it was a relief not to have the twins in her classroom.
'There they sit,' said she sadly, 'breathing away through their mouths, eyes glazed, and nothing in their heads after five terms! They still choose a penny instead of sixpence, because it's bigger—although I've put out six pennies for sixpence, and explained it time and time again.'
I sympathized with her.
'And, mark my words,' continued their far-seeing teacher, 'they'll both have anything up to six children apiece, and as dull as they are themselves! Just you wait and see!'
In the evening I drove Mrs Annett to Springbourne to see if Minnie Pringle would come daily to Beech Green school-house when Mrs Annett is confined.
'There just seems to be no one else to ask,' she said as we wound along the narrow lane from Fairacre. 'There are no nice spare women these days—no kind single aunts to step into the breach, and I've no sisters who might spare a few days.'
She looked rosy and cheerful despite it ad, and trotted very nimbly up the brick path to the thatched cottage which housed Minnie, her three illegitimate children and her virago of a mother. I drove up the cart track, just off the narrow road, to wait till the business was over.
It was an oppressive evening, with a stillness that held the threat of thunder. The trees were beginning to look over-heavy, and shabby, and, in the field beside the car, there spread into the hazy distance, the suden khaki shade of July wheat.
It was so quiet that small sounds, usually unheard, were quite clear. A dead bramble leaf, swinging brown and brittle on a thread nearby, cracked dryly as it touched a twig. A pigeon rocketed over the hedge, and clapped its wings shut, with the hollow, bony snap of a closing fan.
I felt as though I had been worlds away by the time Mrs Annett returned to the car, ad her arrangements as satisfactorily made as would ever be possible with such a scatter-brained creature as Minnie Pringle. We drove home together under the lowering sky, and were safely indoors before the storm broke.
A spell of fine weather, following the storm, has kept us all happy and indolent in the village. Apart from the growing frenzy of pageant preparations—the great day is only a few weeks distant—everyone agrees that it is too hot to do any gardening, or to go shopping in Caxley, or to wash the blankets, or to do the outside painting, or, in fact, to cope with any of the jobs which we have been postponing for weeks 'until we get a fine spell.'
My garden is looking lovely, and the new potatoes and peas are at their best. There is nothing I enjoy more than turning up a root of pale golden potatoes, in the warm crumbly earth, secure in the knowledge that treasure so freshly dug will mean easy skinning.
The peas have done well, and I sit on the lawn shelling them for my supper, and enjoying the scent of a freshly popped pod, packed with fat moist peas, as much as the delicious eating later.
The new teacher, who has been appointed straight from college to take up her post in the infants' room here next term, called to see us yesterday. Her name is Hilary Jackson, and she is nearly twenty-one. She seemed a conscientious, rather earnest young woman, squarish in build, with a shaggy hair-cut and horn-rimmed glasses. She was dressed in a crumpled blouse and a gathered skirt of glazed chintz, and she wore aggressively tough sandals.
I hope she settles down with us, but at the moment she is well above all our heads.
'Have you read A Little Child's Approach to Relativity?' she asked me. I admitted that, so far, I had not met this work.
'But you should!' she insisted, looking rather shocked. 'It's the text of the Heslop-Erchsteiner-Cod lectures, which he gave last autumn.'
'Who?' I asked, with genuine interest.
'Why, Professor Emil Gascoigne,' she replied, eyes wide behind the glasses. 'He gave the Heslop-Erchsteiner-Cod series at Minnesota—no, I'm wrong!' She stopped, appalled at her own mistake, and stared fiercely at Ernest and Patrick in the front desk, who were supposed to be pasting a geometrical pattern, but had done very little, I noticed, preferring to read one of Mrs Waites' magazines which had been spread on their desk lid to catch the paste drops.
'Could it be Minneapolis?' she asked, turning a distraught face to me.
'Or Minnehaha perhaps,' I returned, beginning to get a little tired of it all, in this heat.
'Oh no!' she assured me earnestly, 'not Minnehaha. I think you're confusing it with Longfellow.'
Suitably and deservedly crushed, I bore her off to Miss Clare's room, where her new class surveyed her, round-eyed.
Miss Clare greeted her very kindly and took her to the large cupboard in the corner to show her the number apparatus.
'But surely,' I heard Miss Jackson remark, in ringing tones, as I returned to my own class, 'those out-of-date old bead frames aren't still in use. Child psychologists everywhere have agreed for years, that the inch-cube is the only possible medium for basic number...'
I left them to it, closed the dividing door gently behind me and walked round my own desks, where the children snipped and pasted with unusual industry now that my eye was upon them.
The reason for Ernest and Patrick's paucity of work was readily apparent when I saw the page at which Mrs Waites' favourite weekly was opened. Scissors held idly in their laps, mouths open and eyes bursting from their heads, they sat engrossed—Ernest in an article headed 'How To Wean Baby,' from which no intimate details were spared, and Patrick in an outspoken dissertation on family-planning, on the opposite page.
The vicar called in, as is his custom on a Friday afternoon, and after his talk with the children, asked me if I thought that Mrs Moffat would be able to give Miss Jackson accommodation next term, as she had once done for Mrs Annett, then Miss Gray.
I knew that she was now so busy with her needlework that the chances were slight. The spare room, which had been Miss Gray's, was an enchanting mass of rich costumes, at the moment, in preparation for the pageant, but after that great day, it was doubtful if Mrs Moffat would be any less busy, for her name, as an excellent and imaginative dressmaker, was getting widely known, thanks to Amy's recommendation.
We discussed again the difficulties of obtaining suitable lodgings for young women in a village. The cottages are crowded, and often have no bathroom. The people with large houses, like the vicar, seem strangely averse to letting a room, and as most of them are elderly, it would not be easy for them or for their lodger. On the other hand, I sometimes think that perhaps this possibility never enters their heads. I have been present when the managers have met together, cudgelling their brains for somewhere to put an innocuous and respectable young woman—who would be delighted to do for herself, and quite probably be away every week-end—and have been amused to hear them suggesting that Mrs So-and-So (who has a husband, four children and no help whatsoever), might be delighted to let that little slip room of hers that looks out on to the wall of the village bakehouse; whilst large empty rooms in their own houses, inhabited by a moth or two and a stray mouse, cry out for a bit of fire and an airing.
There was no other hope but Mrs Moffat, as we both wed knew, and as the vicar's land old face began to pucker into ever-growing anxiety, I rose to the occasion and said that Miss Jackso
n could stay in my spare room for the time being, until she found somewhere that she ready liked. It is not an ideal arrangement, but it is the only way out of the difficulty; and the vicar, breathing relief and thanks, departed a much happier man.
As we suspected, it was chicken-pox which reared its ugly head just after the outing, and nearly half the school is down with it. Dr Martin, whom I met at the school gate, said that the attack was very mild.
'As I hope it is!' I rejoined, waving a hand to a bunch of my spotty pupils, playing near the church gates. 'What's the point of excluding them from school, if their mothers let them mix with all and sundry?'
'Won't hurt them,' responded Dr Martin, with that fine careless rapture with which so many present-day doctors dismiss children's infectious diseases. He drove off hastily, before the tart remarks that trembled on my tongue had time to fall.
It was the day after this encounter that Miss Clare and Arthur Coggs crossed swords. I had driven into Caxley during the dinner hour, to drop in some forms at the Education Office. Unfortunately I had forgotten that it was market day, and the town was jammed with traffic. Cattle vans jostled farmers' cars, while my battered little Austin tried to nose along in their wake. Country ladies, indistinguishable in their marketday uniforms of grey flannel suit, white blouse, marcasite clip, dark glasses and classic grey felt hat (jay's feather at side), gave tongue to each other across the traffic, and exchanged news of their families in tones which would have filled the Albert Hall comfortably.
The children were already in school when I returned. My pox-free few were busy with a spelling game, the infants with bricks and jig-saw puzzles. Miss Clare told me of her adventure as they worked.
We had sent Joseph Coggs home again, on his arrival at school that morning, for he was obviously suffering from chicken-pox. Arthur Coggs, who had elected to have the day off work, was furious about this, and had marched him up again for afternoon school, breathing fire and threats. School was compulsory, wasn't it? he had blustered at Miss Clare, the children, half-frightened, half-thrilled gazing on. Soon complained if the kid was kept away, that there office, and now here young Joe was packed off home. There was much more to the same effect, while poor Joe drooped beside him, shaken with fever and fear.