by Miss Read
Occasionally, of course, I ran into her and we would share a pot of tea before she set off for home.
It was on one of these tea-drinking sessions that she first told me about her niece, Minnie Pringle, daughter of the black sheep of the family, Josh Pringle of Springbourne.
'She come up this morning to see if I'd got any jumble for their W.I. sale next week. At least, that's what she said she'd come for, but it was money she was after for herself.'
I knew that the girl had two small children, so enquired innocently if her husband was out of work.
'Work? A husband?' cried Mrs Pringle. 'Minnie never had a husband. These two brats of hers is nothing more than you-know-what beginning with a B but I wouldn't soil my lips with saying it.'
'Oh dear,' I said feebly. 'I didn't realise...'
'And another on the way, as far as I could see this morning. One is one thing, most people give a girl the benefit of the doubt. But two is taking things too far, especially when the silly girl can't say for sure who the father is.'
'She must have some idea.'
'Not Minnie, she's that feckless she just wouldn't remember. Not that she's entirely to blame. That father of hers, our Josh - though I'm ashamed to claim him as part of the Pringle family - he's an out and out waster, and his poor wife is as weak-minded as our Minnie. Nothing but a useless drudge, and never gave Minnie any idea of Right and Wrong.'
'But surely -' I began, but was swept aside by Mrs Pringle's rhetoric. Mrs P. in full spate is unstoppable.
'I told her once, "If you can't tell that girl of yours the facts of life, then send her to church regular. She'll soon find out all about adultery."'
It seemed a somewhat narrow approach to the church's teachings but I did not have the strength to argue.
'More tea?' I asked.
Mrs Pringle raised a massive hand, rather as if she were holding up the traffic. 'Thank you, no. I'm awash. Must get along to fetch my washing in. It looks as though there's rain to come.'
I accompanied her to the gate. A few children were still in the playground taking their time to go home.
'Mind you,' said Mrs Pringle, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper in deference, I presumed, to the innocent ears so near us, 'if there is another on the way, I shan't put myself out with more baby knitting. Minnie don't have any idea how to wash knitted things. It's my belief she boils them!'
As Christmas approached that term, the school began to deck itself ready for the festival.
In the infants' room a Christmas frieze running around the walls kept Miss Briggs's children busy. Santa Claus, decked in plenty of cotton wool, Christmas trees, reindeer resembling rabbits, otters, large dogs and other denizens of the animal world, as well as sacks of toys, Christmas puddings, Christmas stockings and various other domestic signs of celebration were put in place by the young teacher's careful hands, and glitter was sprayed plentifully at strategic points.
At least, the stuff was supposed to be at strategic points such as the branches of the Christmas trees, but glitter being what it is we found it everywhere. It appeared on the floor, on the window sills, in the cracks of desks, and sometimes a gleam would catch our eyes in the school dinner, blown there, no doubt, by the draught from the door. The stoves suffered too, much to Mrs Pringle's disgust.
In my own room, glitter was banned on the grounds that we had quite enough from the room next door, but we had a large picture of a Christmas tree, on which the children stuck their own bright paintings. We also made dozens of Christmas cards for home consumption, and some rather tricky boxes to hold sweets.
I bought the sweets, a nice straightforward approach to Christmas jollifications. The construction of the boxes, which appeared such a simple operation from the diagram in The Teachers' World, was not so easy. Half the boxes burst open at the seams whilst being stuck together. The rest looked decidedly drunken. By the time we had substituted a household glue for the paste we had so hopefully mixed up, the place reeked with an unpleasant fishy smell and I was apprehensive about the sweets although they were wrapped.
However, nothing could quell the high spirits of the children, and the traditional Christmas party for their parents and friends of the school was its usual jubilant occasion on the last afternoon.
We all wished each other a happy Christmas as our guests made their way out into the December dark. I waved goodbye until the last figure had disappeared, locked the school door upon the chaos within - plentifully besprinkled with glitter - and returned thankfully to the peace of the school house.
Tomorrow, I had told Mrs Pringle, would be soon enough to tackle the clearing up, and I would give her a hand.
Meanwhile, I was content to sit down in my armchair and to let the blessed quietness of my home surround and soothe me.
I slept like a log, and then ate a hearty breakfast, much cheered by the thought that it was the first day of the holidays.
Amy had invited me to her house at Bent for Christmas, and as it fell conveniently on a Sunday this year I should have a wonderful weekend amidst the luxury of Amy and James's home.
Meanwhile, I remembered my duty to Mrs Pringle, and hurried across the playground to the school to set about taking down the decorations and putting away some of the Christmas pictures.
I half expected to hear Mrs Pringle's morose singing as I approached. Instead, I heard her scolding someone, and thought that she might have surprised a child returning to collect something it had forgotten in the excitement of the Christmas party.
But it was not one of my schoolchildren who was being harangued. A little boy of three or four years was sucking his thumb and gazing at the school cleaner. He did not appear to be at all upset.
'Ah, Miss Read,' cried Mrs Pringle, 'I'm sorry to be burdened with this, today of all days, but our Minnie has had to catch the Caxley, and there was only me to mind this 'un.'
'The Caxley' is the term used in our downland villages for either the bus which goes to Caxley, as in this case, or for the local newspaper The Caxley Chronicle.
'You must have seen it in the Caxley,' we say. 'There was a wedding photo in the Caxley,' and so on.
'Our Min's taken the other child to hospital,' continued Mrs Pringle, giving full weight and reverence to the last word. 'There was an accident!'
'Oh dear! What happened?'
Mrs Pringle eyed the little boy who was idly wiping his wet thumb along the edge of my desk.
'Give over!' bellowed Mrs Pringle, nearly making me jump out of my skin. The child appeared unmoved.
'I'll give him something to do,' I said hastily, always the teacher, and went to the cupboard for paper and crayons. We settled the child in a distant desk, and I prepared to listen to Mrs Pringle's account.
For the sake of appearances I took a few drawing pins out of the pictures pinned to the wooden partition, and dropped them back into their tin.
'That Minnie,' said Mrs Pringle in a wrathful whisper, 'brought these two in first thing this morning with some cock-and-bull story about collecting evergreens and ivy and that for Springbourne church. As if Springbourne hasn't got ivy enough without coming all the way to Fairacre!'
'Quite,' I said.
'Well, I'd just put some dried peas to soak for tomorrow's dinner, and before you could say Jack Robinson that dratted first kid of hers had the bowl over and was fiddling about on the floor, getting in everyone's way as we started to pick up the mess. Then what?'
She stopped dramatically. The silence was split by the sound of an appalling sniff from our visitor. Automatically I handed him a tissue from my permanent store, and returned to Mrs Pringle.
'We'd hardly got the peas back in the bowl and put fresh water on 'em, when that child started grizzling, and fidgeting with his ear-'ole. D'you know what that little varmint had done?'
'Stuffed a pea in his ear,' I said, 'it often happens. With beads too, if they are small enough. And I once had a child push a hazelnut up its nose, from the nature table—'
&nbs
p; But my tale was cut short by my fellow storyteller. She disliked having her thunder stolen.
'One in each ear!' roared Mrs Pringle. 'And I daresay he would have put more in his nose, and elsewhere, if we hadn't caught him. And could we get them out?'
I guessed correctly that this was only a rhetorical question intended to heighten the dramatic effect.
'With them being wet, you see,' resumed the lady, 'they was beginning to plump up - the peas, I mean, not his ears - and we tried everything, fingernails, pen knife, even a skewer -'
I must have shuddered.
'Well, we had to try,' said Mrs Pringle grumpily.
'Of course, of course.' I began to roll up a picture of a sleigh pulled by reindeer.
'So I said to Minnie, "It's no good you standing there hollering. Get on the Caxley with him and cut up to the Casualty. They'll have instruments for getting peas out of ear-'oles." Must be at it daily up there.'
'The best thing,' I agreed, still envisaging a meat skewer being twisted in the child's ear.
'So here I am, ten minutes late, and hampered, as you see.'
She cast a malevolent glance at the silent child who was now engrossed in scribbling energetically with his crayons. As far as I could see, he was drawing a tangle of multi-coloured wool, but it kept him quiet.
'I told Minnie I'd keep him till she got back, but there isn't another Fairacre till midday, unless she gets the Beech Green and walks the rest.'
She gave a sigh which rustled the pictures still on the wall. 'Children!' she groaned. 'D'you want them wash basins done too?'
'Yes please,' I said.
She pushed herself up from the desk where she had seated herself during the recital of her woes, and limped towards the lobby.
We continued our labours in silence.
It was good to go to Amy's. Dearly as I love my own home and the village of Fairacre, it is exciting to have a change of scenery and company.
Tibby, my spoilt cat, was in the care of Mr Willet who had promised to come up night and morning to see that all was well.
'Strikes me,' he had said, on being shown the pile of tins left for Tibby's sustenance, 'that that cat of yours eats a damn sight better than we do.'
'Well, it is Christmas,' I said weakly.
'I'll bring him up a slice of turkey,' replied Mr Willet, 'or ain't that good enough?'
I was not sure if he were being heavily sarcastic, or meant what he said, so I contented myself with sincere thanks, handing over a jar of stem ginger at the same time. I had once heard Mrs Willet say that they were 'both very partial' to ginger.
As always, it was bliss to stay at Amy's. Her house is quiet and beautiful, and looks out upon a southern-sloping garden and the Hampshire hills in the distance. My bedroom had the same aspect, and a bowl of early pale pink hyacinths scented the room.
'How clever of you to get them in bloom by Christmas!' I said. 'Mine are only an inch high, and they were planted at the beginning of term.'
'Choose Anne-Marie,' advised Amy, 'and leave them in the dark for at least two months. Then they roar ahead once you get them into the light.'
They obviously did for Amy, I thought, but would they for me?
Bent church, where Amy and James were regular attendants, was splendidly decorated on Christmas Day with arum lilies as well as Christmas roses and the usual evergreens. There was an air of opulence about the building which our modest St Patrick's lacked at Fairacre. A rich carpet covered the chancel, and the vicar's vestments were embroidered in gold thread, so much more ornate than the simple white cassock, laundered by Mrs Willet, which clothed Gerald Partridge.
But Bent church itself had a cathedral-like splendour, with side chapels and a roof of fan-vaulting. The choir was twice the size of our own, and obviously more musically proficient. The processional hymn had a beautiful and intricate descant which soared to the equally beautiful and intricate roof above, and raised all our spirits with it. Altogether, the service was gloriously inspiring, and I said so to Amy as we walked back.
'Our vicar,' said James, 'always excels himself at the major church festivals, and puts on a good show.'
It was said quite seriously, but I was rather taken aback by the last few words. Was there something theatrical about the service? Was there a display of pomp and ceremony which would not have been in order at St Patrick's?
And what if there were? The whole service had been to the glory of God and surely, I thought, it was only right and proper for the finest music and the most splendid flowers and vestments to be used to heighten the impact of the best-loved of all church festivals.
We needed a rest after our Christmas dinner, but as soon as we could move again Amy suggested that we all went for a walk before it grew dark.
James was always at his gayest in the open air. As a young man he had been a great sportsman, and even now had the litheness and spring of a twenty-year-old. He was a handsome fellow, and I quite understood how he had appealed to Amy.
He had the knack of making any woman feel that she was the only person in the world that interested him. He had a way of gazing intently into one's face, and although I was pretty sure that it was because he was short-sighted and too vain to wear spectacles, the result was still very pleasant.
The countryside south of Caxley was more wooded than that around Fairacre, and we scuffed our shoes amongst drifts of dead leaves as we threaded our way through a nearby copse. The bare branches creaked and rustled in a light breeze above us, and on the ground the rosettes of primrose leaves were already showing. It was heartening to see that the honeysuckle was already in tiny leaf, and blackbirds were calling to each other as if this mild weather were really spring.
We emerged from the wood into a wide meadow where sheep grazed. The grass was pale and dry, but the animals ate steadily, only raising their heads briefly to survey us as, jaws rotating methodically, they gazed at us without interest.
There was a stile before us which James vaulted in fine fashion, but Amy and I rested our arms upon it and gazed at the view. The horizon was the sort of blue one sees in Japanese prints, and beyond that, we knew, was the sea some seventy miles away. It was so peaceful and quiet that we might have been looking at a landscape by John Constable, all thought of towns, traffic and the madness of men left far behind.
'Are you coming?' called James from the distance.
Amy looked at me questioningly.
'As you like,' I said.
'We're going back,' she shouted.
James nodded and retraced his steps. He made another gallant attempt to clear the stile, but caught his foot on the top bar and fell.
He was unhurt, and lay on the ground laughing.
'You shouldn't show off at your age,' said Amy sternly.
But she was kind enough to haul him upright.
On Boxing Day Amy announced that a few old friends were coming for a midday drink.
'Everyone will be having cold turkey anyway,' she said, 'so that no one will have to worry about rushing back to see if all's well in the oven.'
'But they might have mince pies,' I pointed out.
'That's their lookout,' replied my friend, filling up delectable little silver receptacles, which my grandmother used to call 'bonbon dishes', with roasted almonds, cashew nuts and minute cheesy morsels.
'Do I know any of them?'
'John and Mary from next door. Bella and Bob from down the lane, and two very nice bachelors I wanted you to meet.'
My heart sank. Amy is an inveterate matchmaker, and after years of patient - and impatient - explanations on my part, she still harbours the hope that she will one day turn me into a middle-aged bride.
I forbore to question her more on the matter, but carried the little dishes into the sitting room and disposed them in strategic positions, only to watch Amy positioning them elsewhere when she came in.
The guests duly arrived. The married couples I had met before, and we greeted each other affectionately. We all agreed that the weat
her was unseasonably mild - and quoted: 'a green Christmas makes a full churchyard' - but what a blessing there was no snow! (Who, apart from Bing Crosby, we said, wanted a white Christmas?)
Both bachelors were of a suitable age to be married to me one day should any of the three of us feel inclined, but they were cheerful company, and prattled away about ski-ing and cheese dishes.
I was not much help to the one who was going ski-ing, but his companion, who had been given nearly three pounds of cheese for Christmas, was given a few recipes from my memory.
'Would you like some?' he asked eagerly. 'I could easily run over to Fairacre with a lump of Cheddar or Stilton - no bother at all.'
'It's terribly kind of you,' I replied, 'but I've been given quite a lot of cheese too, and shall have the deuce of a time eating it up.'
Afterwards, when all our guests had gone home to their cold turkey, and possibly over-cooked mince pies, Amy chided me for turning down Osbert's kind offer.
'It would have been so nice for you to meet again,' she said, 'I'm sure he was hoping to see you in the New Year.'
'He'll probably be giving a bumper cheese and wine party,' I said.
'That's possible,' agreed Amy, looking pleased. 'Good! You're bound to be asked.'
***
I left James and Amy after lunch on Wednesday so that I could drive home in the light.
I found Mrs Pringle just about to go home after putting my house to rights.
'And you had a good Christmas?' I enquired.
'A bit of an upset early on,' said she, 'but Christmas Day and Boxing Day went well, considering.'
I did not ask about the 'bit of an upset' in case it took too long to recount, but turned to wider issues.
'And all's well in Fairacre?'
'You'll be sorry to hear that Mr Mawne has gone to hospital.'
'Oh dear! What's wrong?'
A mulish look came over Mrs Pringle's countenance. 'That,' she said, 'I am not prepared to say.'