The owner turned slowly to the speaker. The smile had left his face and his mouth drooped in distaste. ‘Really?’ he said.
‘I can’t say as ’ow I found t’food to my likin’,’ continued Councillor Smout. ‘Far too fancy an’ not my cup o’ tea at all. I din’t know what I was eatin’ ’alf o’ t’time an’ I ’ave to say that t’portions were not over-generous and, I might add—’
‘Please do,’ said the owner. ‘I cannot wait to hear.’
‘That we was sat there for a long time before we was served.’
‘You know, sir,’ the owner said, a wry smile on his face, ‘were I to challenge you to a duel, I should choose English grammar as my weapon.’ With that he departed.
‘T’thing is wi’ foreigners,’ the councillor confided, bending down to speak into Elisabeth’s ear, ‘foreigners allus ’ave problems gerrin their ’eads around our language, don’t they?’
Dr Stirling and Elisabeth looked at each other and then burst out laughing.
Chapter 2
‘Does anyone know who the father is?’ asked Mrs Sloughthwaite, proprietor of the Barton-in-the-Dale village store and post office, leaning over the counter with her great bay window of a bust supported comfortably on the top. She was a round, red-faced woman with a large fleshy nose, pouchy cheeks and bright inquisitive eyes resting in small hammocks of flesh. It was surprising that she was ignorant as to the parentage of the child in question, for there was no one in the village with such an extensive knowledge as she had of all the goings-on. The shopkeeper and postmistress made it her business to know about everything and everybody, and no customer left her premises without being subjected to a thorough interrogation. Once gleaned, the information was quickly circulated throughout the village.
There were two customers in the shop that Monday morning: Mrs Pocock, a tall, thin woman with a pale, melancholy, beaked face, and Mrs O’Connor, the local GP’s housekeeper, a dumpy, smiling individual with tightly permed hair the colour of copper-beech leaves and the huge, liquid brown eyes of a cow.
‘Well, it could be anyone’s,’ observed Mrs Pocock, her lips twisting into a sardonic smile. ‘I mean, without putting too fine a point on it, she puts it about a bit that Bianca. No morals at all if you ask me – like a lot of young people these days. Mrs Widowson who lives next door to the family is forever seeing the girl at the gate to her house, skirt barely covering her backside, kissing and carrying on with no end of boys. She attracts them like wasps around a jam dish. I mean, it was bound to happen.’
‘It’s like history repeating itself,’ observed the shopkeeper.
‘In what way?’ asked Mrs O’Connor, patting her hair.
‘Well, young Danny Stainthorpe’s mother had him when she was barely out of school uniform,’ continued Mrs Sloughthwaite, leaning over the counter. ‘She was a tearaway, was young Tricia, and no mistake. It’s amazing how well the lad has turned out.’
‘And she was another unmarried mother,’ added Mrs Pocock sanctimoniously, ‘and not a father in sight. It astonishes me how these youngsters get pregnant at the drop of a hat and other women try for years to have children and then have to resort to this VHF treatment.’
‘’Course, Tricia’s own mother was no better than she should be,’ observed the shopkeeper. ‘Do you remember her, Mrs Pocock, that big brassy blonde who served behind the counter at the Blacksmith’s Arms in a skirt as short as a drunken man’s memory?’
The customer shook her head and gave a bleak smile. ‘Maisie Proctor,’ she said.
‘Who could forget that madam? All kid gloves and no knickers, as my mother would say. You recall her, don’t you, Mrs O’Connor? Set her cap for Les Stainthorpe, who, as you know, was a good few years older than her, spent all his money and then ran off.’
‘With that brush salesman from Rotherham,’ added the shopkeeper, ‘leaving the husband to bring up the daughter.’
‘And a lot of people think the baby wasn’t Les Stainthorpe’s,’ added Mrs Pocock.
‘Then the lass goes and gets herself killed and he has to bring up her child,’ said the shopkeeper.
‘But fancy pushing a pram with a kiddie in it down a dark country road,’ said Mrs Pocock. ‘I mean, she was asking to get knocked down and killed.’
‘The boy’s grandfather did a good job bringing up young Danny.’
‘He did,’ said Mrs O’Connor. ‘He’s a lovely wee fella, so he is, and as happy as Larry since he’s come to stay at the doctor’s.’
‘It was very good of Dr Stirling to foster the boy after the lad’s grandfather died,’ said Mrs Pocock. ‘He could have ended up in a children’s home. I certainly wouldn’t want to look after another adolescent. I have enough trouble with my Ernest.’
Knowing the Pocock boy as she did, Mrs Sloughthwaite was not going to argue with that observation, but she kept her thoughts to herself.
‘And I hear Dr Stirling is thinking of adopting the lad,’ continued the customer.
‘He is,’ said Mrs O’Connor. ‘Just needs to sort the paperwork out.’
‘Well, good luck to him,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘He’s a nice lad, is Danny, and he deserves a good home.’
‘What surprises me is that she didn’t have a termination,’ remarked Mrs Pocock.
‘Who?’ asked the shopkeeper.
‘Bianca. You would have thought—’
‘I don’t hold with that sort of thing,’ interrupted Mrs O’Connor, giving a small shiver. ‘A life is precious, that’s what my owld grandmother Mullarkey used to say. “Every child is a gift from God and should be treasured”.’
‘Well, you want to see some of them “gifts from God” hanging about the war memorial of an evening, making a racket and up to no good,’ said Mrs Pocock. ‘I’d “treasure” them and no mistake.’
Mrs Sloughthwaite rested a dimpled elbow on the counter and placed her fleshy chin on a hand. She’s a one to talk, the shopkeeper reflected. Mrs Pocock wants to put her own house in order before she starts commenting on the behaviour of others. Take her son Ernest, for example, that most disagreeable and sullen-faced boy. Give him a few more years and he’ll be in the centre of the gang of unruly teenagers congregating around the war memorial. Mrs Sloughthwaite smiled to herself but said nothing.
‘It’s still wrong to take a life,’ the doctor’s housekeeper was saying. ‘And you can give it all the fancy words you want, in my books it’s murder.’
‘Each to their own views, Mrs O’Connor,’ retorted Mrs Pocock, ‘but in my opinion it would have been best for the lass not to have had it. There’re too many children being born to irresponsible parents. I mean, what sort of life can that child expect? Teenage mother with not much up top, feckless grandfather who’s never done a day’s work in his life, loose-living grandmother who spends most of her time playing bingo or in the pub, and all crammed into that small terraced house with I don’t know how many children and you can bet that the lot of them are on state benefits.’
‘’Course, nobody knew she was having it, you know,’ added Mrs Sloughthwaite, divulging a juicy titbit. ‘She kept it a secret right until the very end.’
‘No!’ gasped Mrs Pocock.
‘Mind you,’ said the shopkeeper, ‘knowing Bianca, she probably didn’t know herself until it arrived. She’s not the brightest button in the box.’
‘Nobody knew she was expecting!’ exclaimed Mrs Pocock. ‘I find that hard to believe.’
‘Well, that’s what I’ve heard,’ said the shopkeeper. ‘Fred Massey was in here yesterday and he was told it in the Blacksmith’s Arms by the girl’s father. She’s a big girl is that Bianca, and lately she’s been wearing all those baggy pants, loose tops and that big grey overcoat. I mean she’s come in here looking like the Abdominal Snowman. She didn’t say a thing to anybody, by all accounts. It wasn’t until she went into labour and her younger sister, that Chardonnay, went to fetch Mrs Lloyd and then phoned for the ambulance, that anyone knew anything about it. Her parents were
at the pub at the time.’
‘Well, that figures,’ said Mrs Pocock, shaking her head and sniffing self-righteously.
‘And by the time they got back,’ continued Mrs Sloughthwaite, ‘they were told Bianca had been taken to Clayton Royal Infirmary with a baby. Mrs Lloyd called in the shop yesterday and she said their faces were a picture. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall.’
‘Her parents got a Christmas present they weren’t bargaining for and no mistake,’ remarked Mrs Pocock, giving another small cynical smile.
‘Christmas afternoon it was,’ continued Mrs Sloughthwaite. ‘It’s a blessing that the girl’s sister had the good sense to fetch Mrs Lloyd. She arrived when the baby was well on its way.’
‘I blame all this on that sex education they get in school nowadays,’ remarked Mrs Pocock, screwing up her face as if the room was filled with an unpleasant odour. ‘It gives them ideas. Keep them in the dark as long as you can or they’ll be up to all sorts of hanky-panky.’
‘I knew nothing about that sort of thing when I was at the Notre Dame Convent,’ mused Mrs O’Connor wistfully. Mrs Pocock rolled her eyes and exchanged a glance with the shopkeeper. ‘The thought of Sister Pauline Thérèse talking to us about such things would never be countenanced. The only thing she ever mentioned regarding the opposite sex, as I recall, was when she told us if ever we went to a dance, never to sit on a boy’s knee unless there was a telephone directory between us, and never to wear black patent leather shoes because they reflected your underwear.’
‘It was all the same in those days,’ agreed Mrs Sloughthwaite. ‘We knew nothing. When I was a lass, Brenda Merton once told me in the playground that her next-door neighbour was having a baby just through having a bath after the lodger and I believed her. Then I remember hearing at school that some other girl who worked in the pickle factory on Tennyson Street was in the pudding club. I had no idea what she really meant. I went home and asked my mother if I could join this pudding club, having a partiality as I did for jam roly-poly and spotted dick. My mother washed my mouth out with carbolic soap. But I beg to differ with you there, Mrs Pocock. I think it’s a very good idea for youngsters to have sex education lessons. If Bianca had have had them she might not be in the predicament she now finds herself in.’
‘Well, I don’t agree,’ replied her customer, holding her body stiffly upright. ‘When Mrs Devine said at the governors’ meeting that she’d invited Dr Stirling into school to talk to the children about such matters, I was none too pleased and I told her so, not that any of the other governors agreed with me.’
‘How is Dr Stirling by the way, Mrs O’Connor?’ quizzed the shopkeeper, deftly changing the subject so she could begin her interrogation.
‘Oh, he’s fine,’ replied Mrs O’Connor, being deliberately evasive. She knew Mrs Sloughthwaite’s tactics of old and only told her what she wanted her to hear.
‘So he spent Christmas alone then, did he?’
‘There were the two boys,’ Mrs O’Connor told her.
‘I would have thought Mrs Devine might have joined him, her being by herself as well.’
‘I wouldn’t be knowing anything about that,’ lied the housekeeper. ‘And, as you know, I spent Christmas over in Galway with my sister Peggy.’ She knew that Dr Stirling and Mrs Devine had indeed spent most of Christmas Day together, but she was not going to divulge this to the shopkeeper.
‘They seem to be getting on like a house on fire these days,’ observed Mrs Sloughthwaite casually.
‘They’re very good friends, so they are.’
‘Nothing more?’
‘I wouldn’t be knowing.’
‘They seem to see a lot of each other.’
‘It’s a small village.’
‘’Course, if it had been up to Dr Stirling,’ Mrs Pocock said suddenly and much to the shopkeeper’s annoyance, interrupting the cross-examination, ‘Mrs Devine would never have been appointed. He was dead set against her at the interviews for the headship at the school.’
‘That’s all water under the bridge now,’ said Mrs O’Connor.
Before Mrs Sloughthwaite could resume her questioning, the bell above the door of the shop tinkled and a customer entered.
Major Cedric Neville-Gravitas, late of the Royal Engineers and Chairman of Governors at the village school, strode purposefully to the counter, smiling widely. He was a striking-looking man of military bearing with a carefully trimmed moustache and short cropped hair which shot up from a square head. He was dressed in a bright, tailored Harris tweed suit and matching waistcoat and sported a colourful bow tie.
‘When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?’ he said jovially.
This greeting was met with three blank faces.
‘From Macbeth,’ he explained.
‘I am aware of that, major,’ said Mrs Pocock. ‘Was it intended to be amusing?’
‘Beg pardon?’ asked the major, the smile leaving his face.
‘Comparing us to the three witches?’
‘Just being whimsical, my dear Mrs Pocock,’ replied the major. ‘No offence intended.’ He rubbed his hands vigorously and tried a conciliatory smile.
‘Well, it’s about as whimsical as a slipped disc,’ said Mrs Pocock.
‘What a lovely bright January day it is,’ continued the major, attempting to defuse the tension by quickly changing the subject. ‘Quite mild for the time of year, don’t you think?’
‘What can I get you, major?’ asked Mrs Sloughthwaite, rising from the counter and clearly unwilling to be infected by his cheery goodwill. She disliked the man. In her opinion he was shallow and two-faced and she wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him.
‘I would like a loaf of your excellent crusty bread, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ said the major cheerily, ‘and four of those delicious-looking scones and a jar of your special raspberry preserve. I have a visitor for tea.’
The shopkeeper resisted the urge to enquire who this visitor might be. She would no doubt find this out later from another source. She busied herself with the major’s order.
‘I trust I shall see you at the next governors’ meeting at the village school on Friday, Mrs Pocock?’ said the major.
‘Yes,’ she replied brusquely. ‘You will. I’ve not missed one yet.’
‘I should have thought,’ began Mrs Sloughthwaite, placing the various items in a plastic bag, ‘that you would have done the right thing, major, and resigned as Chairman of Governors after the hoo-ha over the closure of the school.’ She enjoyed being provocative.
‘Done the right thing?’ repeated the major sharply. ‘I don’t follow your drift.’
‘Well, you were all for closing the school, weren’t you?’ remarked the shopkeeper nonchalantly.
‘I most certainly was not!’ he replied, rather taken aback. ‘I exercised discretion. As I have explained to countless people in the village, I felt it appropriate in the first instance to abstain from the vote.’ He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot and twisted his moustache.
‘Yes, well, if you had joined the rest of us governors when we voted against the closure,’ Mrs Pocock told him with a hard, stern expression on her pale face, ‘instead of sitting on the fence, we would have had a much stronger case.’
‘My dear Mrs Pocock!’ exclaimed the major, ‘I did not sit on the fence, as you term it! As Chairman of Governors I took a neutral position, and having assessed the situation and seen how successful the village school had become and how well-regarded its head teacher was, I campaigned vigorously in favour of keeping the school open.’ He breathed through his nose like a horse.
‘Well, you were last in the village to do so,’ said Mrs Sloughthwaite, resting her substantial bosom back on the counter.
The major tugged angrily at his moustache and an unfortunate twitch appeared in his right eye. ‘I shall collect my provisions later on, Mrs Sloughthwaite,’ he said, the jovial smile gone from his face, ‘since I am in rather a hurry. B
ut before I go, I should just like to say that I resent such slurs circulating about me around the village. They are quite unfounded and not a little hurtful, and I should like to add that Mrs Devine was very insistent that I remain as chairman of the governing body. With that, I shall depart.’
The major strode for the door, leaving his purchases on the counter.
‘He’s a dark horse, is that one,’ observed Mrs Pocock.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the father of Bianca’s baby,’ remarked Mrs Sloughthwaite, chuckling. ‘Wandering hands he has, and I’ve seen him ogling anything in a skirt.’
‘You must be joking,’ Mrs Pocock told her. ‘Him, the baby’s father? He’s old enough be the girl’s grandfather.’
‘Well, as my owld grandmother was wont to say,’ observed Mrs O’Connor, ‘“there’s a dreadful sting in a dying bee”.’
Her two companions stared at her blankly but didn’t say a word.
As the three women in the village store considered other possibilities with regard to Bianca’s unexpected Christmas present, Mrs Devine, head teacher of Barton-in-the-Dale village school, surveyed the bright-faced pupils who sat before her in the classroom that morning. She recalled when she had first met these children on the day of the interviews for the headship, and how she had thought to herself what a motley group it was: large gangly boys, lean bespectacled boys, dark-skinned boys, pale-faced boys, boys with freckles and spiky hair, girls with long plaits, girls with frizzy bunches of ginger hair, girls thin and tall, dumpy and small, and all forty plus of them sitting uncomfortably at old-fashioned hard, wooden desks. The class had filled the hot stuffy room on that summer day, serious and silent and regarding her with not a little suspicion. Now the children looked very different: bright-eyed and happy and chattering away excitedly.
Elisabeth felt a great sense of satisfaction at what she and the teachers had achieved in the short time since she had taken over as head teacher. The appearance of the building, the morale of the staff and the behaviour of the children had improved beyond measure. She had invited visitors into the school and organised sports teams, after-school clubs, lunchtime activities and trips out of school. She had stemmed the declining numbers and had fought a vigorous and ultimately successful campaign to keep the school from closing.
Trouble at the Little Village School Page 3