(16/20)Summer at Fairacre

by Miss Read

  'He certainly keeps busy,' I said accompanying her to the door.

  'Too busy at times,' replied Amy, getting into her glossy car. 'I've told him not to be surprised if I take a leaf out of his book and have a break myself one day.'

  It was said lightly, but there was an underlying grimness which disconcerted me.

  She blew me a kiss and drove off, and I returned to the fireside with food for thought.

  The chilly weather continued for the rest of March. A few hardy primroses had braved the elements in the garden, and knotted bluebell flowers crouched in their glossy leaves, obviously unwilling to do more until the weather grew warmer.

  The leaves were still tightly furled on the trees. The winter silhouettes of the beeches and limes still showed up starkly black against the grey sky.

  At night, I was glad of my comforting fire, and still put a hot water bottle in my bed halfway through the evening. The frosts were severe, and it would be many weary weeks before the geranium cuttings on my window sill could be put out in the garden.

  I remembered Mr Willet's words about the Marchs of old, and I knew that he was right. Somehow, nowadays we seemed to get no real spring, none of those balmy tender days when one could walk in the woods admiring the rosettes of primroses, noting the glutinous stalk of a trampled bluebell, with the whole vista lit by a spangle of young leaves.

  The children coughed and sniffed as they had done all the winter, yet would still attempt to go out into the bleak playground without their coats until bullied into them by their elders. Winter ills were rife in the village at large, and the March meeting of the Women's Institute, a hardy collection of souls, was cancelled as the village hall stove had gone on strike, and no one could brave the arctic conditions there with the windows glazed, both inside and out, with thin ice.

  One frosty evening when I was settled by the fire marking essays, and getting rather tired of correcting 'brids' and 'grils', someone rang the front door bell.

  As I crossed the little hall I remembered all the warnings about opening doors to strangers, particularly if one was alone in the house. I am always advising people to go upstairs and find out who the caller is from an upstairs window, but naturally I never do this myself, as I don't remember such things until the door is wide open.

  Luckily, tonight's visitor was only Henry Mawne with some draw tickets to sell, and he seemed glad to come in.

  'I shouldn't really,' he said, wiping his perfectly clean shoes vigorously on the mat, 'but to tell the truth, it's a good deal colder than I bargained for when I set out, and I shan't call anywhere else.'

  I nobly stumped up fifty pence for a book of tickets to support some wild bird project dear to Henry's ornithological heart, and offered him a drink which he refused.

  He stretched his legs out to the blaze, and looked settled for the evening.

  I stacked the exercise books away and fetched a block of mint sweet.

  'Well, indulge yourself with this,' I said, breaking it with some difficulty. 'It says it is as supplied to uccessful polar expeditions. I suppose the unsuccessful ones were foolish enough to forget to pack the stuff.'

  'Ah! My favourite sweet,' said he, taking the largest fragment. 'Where do you get it?'

  'Mr Lamb at the Post Office keeps it.'

  'I never knew that!' He crunched happily, and I wondered if he proposed to stay for some time. I had two telephone calls to make, and had planned to wash my hair, but obviously a host's duties came before these things.

  Why is it, I wondered, surveying my guest's relaxed attitude, that people generally imagine that a single woman is dying for company? After all, a woman living alone hasjust as many chores to do as her married counterpart. In fact, she is probably busier, as she has to do them all herself.

  When I return from the school I still face my household tasks, correspondence - far too much of it - and the ever-present washing, ironing and mending. Gardening, shopping and modest entertaining have also to be fitted in, and I do what I can to help in various village activities, even if it only involves minding the Hat and Shoe stall at the W.I. jumble sale while the chief stall-holder slips off for a tea break. I am also fair game for anyone collecting contributions to various bazaars, and keep a supply of home-made jam and marmalade for instant largesse to these worthy causes.

  It is not that I am an unsocial person, but having spent the best part of the day with a host of demanding children, my fellow-teacher, not to mention Mrs Pringle, Mr Willet and various callers of educational complexion, I am really very content to gain the blissful solitude of the school house, and a few hours of peace.

  'How's Elizabeth?' I asked politely. Mrs Mawne is an energetic member of the Fairacre community, and keeps her husband up to his duties as the vicar's right hand, as well as his numerous commitments as an authority on birds.

  'Oh, she's in Ireland,' said Henry. 'Gone to see an old aunt of hers. The poor thing has always been difficult, and has gone through companion after companion since her husband Roderick died.'

  'You make her sound somewhat cannibalistic,' I replied.

  'She is, my dear, she is!' Henry sat up, scattering a few fragments of mint sweet on the hearth rug. I was amused to watch him collecting them carefully on a licked finger and transferring them to his mouth.

  'Elizabeth's gone over to see if she can persuade her into a nursing home. Fat chance of that, as far as I can see. Nothing short of dynamite will get her out of that barn of a place she lives in.'

  'Has she always lived there?'

  'Ever since she married some sixty years ago. It's one of those mouldering old Victorian castles, all pepper-pot turrets and cross-draughts, and the most peculiar fungi growing in the attic bedrooms. Still, it does give shelter to some rare owls and bats, and for that reason I should be sorry to see the place pulled down.'

  'Is that likely to happen?'

  'Very likely, I should think, if she can be persuaded to sell. My chief concern is that Elizabeth doesn't bring her back to stay with us. The position would be quite impossible. We really have enough to do looking after ourselves these days, and I can't think how we'd manage with dear old aunt Thora in our midst.'

  'How old is she?'

  'Ninety-three, and good for another ten years.'

  He sighed heavily, and put two logs thoughtfully on my fire. I watched him in amused silence.

  'And when do you expect Elizabeth to come back?'

  'God knows,' he said morosely. 'The house is deathly quiet without her. It's one of the reasons I came out tonight, to see a bit of company.'

  He rose suddenly from the chair.

  'Nice of you to have me in like this,' he said, struggling into his coat. 'I'll pop in again, if I may. You always cheer me up and I'm sure you are as lonely as I am.'

  I smiled politely as I took him to the door.

  'Bang goes my hair wash,' I said to Tibby on my return.

  2 Minor Irritations

  MUCH to my annoyance, I found that I could not sleep after Mr Mawne's visit.

  I had forgotten to put my hot water bottle in the bed, disturbed from my comfortable routine by my guest, and this may have been the reason for my unusual wakefulness.

  After tossing and turning for two or three hours, I realised that I was ravenously hungry, and decided to go downstairs for sustenance. While some milk was heating on the stove, I collected an assortment of goodies on a tray. What, I thought, would a dietician make of a banana, a digestive biscuit and a spoonful of stewed plums? It should keep me going until breakfast-time anyway.

  It was unusually quiet in the kitchen at one o'clock in the morning. Moonlight had been flooding in when I entered it, silvering the plates in the rack over the sink, and throwing squares of light over the brick floor. In the distance I could hear the wavering cry of an owl, and I stood relishing this rare night-time beauty before switching on the electric light and turning all to prosaic normality.

  For years, Fairacre had been without the boon of electricity. When
finally it was brought into the school house I welcomed it rapturously, and never cease to marvel at the transformation it has made to my everyday living.

  Nevertheless, it is good to be reminded now and again, as in those few silent moonlit minutes, of how things were when I first came to live here, and how they had been for generations of Fairacre folk before me.

  I carried my bounty back to bed and enjoyed it whilst reading my ever-present bedside book, The Diary of a Country Parson. This good man of the eighteenth century never fails to amuse, teach and enchant me. I felt quite abstemious about my modest trayful as I read that for dinner on November 24, 1795, Parson Woodforde enjoyed 'Hashed-Calf's Head, a boiled Chicken and some bacon, a Leg of Mutton rosted, and a Norfolk batter-Pudding and drippings, after that we had a Duck rosted, Maccaroni and Tarts. By way of Desert, we had white Currants, Pears and Apples, and Filberts.'

  In February of the next year he gave 'to an old decayed Fisherman O.I.O.' (This was one shilling.) He goes on to remark:

  'He was the Man that brought me once some very indifferent Spratts.'

  This last entry made me laugh so much that I finished my snack, switched off my ever-blessed bedside lamp, and was asleep in ten minutes.

  Before school the next morning, I was alarmed to see that Mrs Pringle's limp was much in evidence. What could have happened? Had I inadvertently spilt something vicious such as red ink on her immaculate floor boards? Had the sink overflowed, the plug stopped up with that cursed ubiquitous bubble gum beloved of Fairacre's children? Had the stove gone out? All these hazards flashed before me like the drowning man's swift summary of his life, or so we are told.

  Luckily, for once it was not my fault that Mrs Pringle's leg had seen fit 'to flare-up'. As had happened many times before, the cause of her discomfort was her niece, Minnie Pringle.

  Minnie's I.Q. is extremely low. She cannot read, has difficulty in signing her name and is virtually incapable of doing the simplest work, as I know to my cost. In a weak moment once, I let her help in my house, and it would need a stronger pen than mine, and far more time than I could spare, to catalogue the appalling list of damages she managed to inflict. I will give just two instances. She thought that a cushion cover looked grubby, and put it to soak, complete with its contents, into neat bleach in the sink. I must say, in all fairness, that the sink had never looked so pristine, although the smell in the kitchen was enough to choke one.

  Her second effort was to dismantle the electric cooker in order to give it 'a good going-over'. Fortunately Mrs Pringle arrived in time to switch off the current at the main, or doubtless I should have found Minnie electrocuted on the kitchen floor amidst the debris. It took Mr Willet and me all the evening to put the thing together again, and I have never heard so many whispered curses, from that upright churchman, on any other occasion.

  This time, it appeared, Minnie had been obliged to take one of her children to hospital, and had deposited the rest with Mrs Pringle at a moment's notice.

  'Called in as bold as brass with them four little varmints, just as I was getting down to give the kitchen floor a nice wash-over with some suds I had left from rinsing out the tea-clorths.'

  'What had happened to the fifth?'

  Minnie's children are by a variety of fathers. True, she is married, not all that long ago, but that is to an elderly man, called Em, with children of his own. The marriage is a stormy one, which is hardly surprising, and Bert, an earlier paramour, always seems to be bobbing up and distracting Minnie's scatter-brained attention from her wifely duties.

  'Well, Em went up to the Potters' to see if the lawn mower was in good nick for the summer, and he took young Basil with him. Why, don't ask me!'

  I had no intention of asking, especially as it was almost time to let in the children, and Miss Briggs, my assistant, was hovering around as if waiting for something.

  'Anyway, Em left the thing running while he went for the oil can and that little faggot put his hand in. Took the tops off of three fingers.'

  'Oh no!'

  'Oh yes! And that stupid Ern and Minnie hadn't got the plain common sense to take the tops with 'em to the hospital to be sewn on again.'

  Miss Briggs emitted a small yelp. I sat down quickly in my chair and concentrated my attention on a rather wispy late hyacinth growing over water. I cannot take gory details, and Mrs Pringle spares one absolutely nothing.

  'I think it's time for the bell,' I said cravenly to Miss Briggs. She hurried away.

  'And don't tell me any more,' I begged Mrs Pringle. 'Not about the injuries, I mean. I'm very sorry for the child. Is he staying in hospital long?'

  'No, more's the pity. Minnie gets him this afternoon and I've said they can all have tea with me, and she can take 'em home straight to bed.'

  'Well, that's very good of you,' I said. 'You must be a tower of strength to that little familyy.'

  A horrid thought struck me.

  'You're not thinking of keeping any of the school-age ones with you?' This has happened in the past, and of course they attend my school temporarily and a sore trial they are.

  'Not likely,' said my cleaner succintly.

  She rose from the front desk and made her way to the lobby. I think my tribute to her had pleased her.

  Her limp had vanished.

  At playtime, while the children swarmed happily outside, Miss Briggs broached the subject which she had been trying to bring to my notice, without success, as Mrs Pringle's horrendous account of young Basil's mishap was then in spate.

  She has been engaged to a cheerful young builder called Wayne for some time now. He was working for Reg Thorn, a local builder, when he replaced our leaking skylight - not altogether successfully, as it is becoming apparent - and that is how the two young people first met.

  The wedding is planned for the summer, soon after the end of the school year, and Miss Briggs' urgent problem was the fitting of her wedding dress. Could she possibly, she implored me, go half an hour earlier tomorrow to go to the dressmaker in Caxley who had just heard that she must go into hospital and wanted to make a start on the dress before she took to her hospital bed?

  'That's no problem,' I assured her. 'The whole school can play Fox and Geese and Grandmother's Steps and I Sent a Letter to my Love. We don't get enough games altogether.'

  'It might rain,' said she anxiously.

  'I can still read,' I told her.

  She returned to her class much relieved, and I remembered her early days with me when I had been obliged to point out to her that it was her duty to remain until all the infants were accounted for at the end of the afternoon, and that the fact that the clock said three-thirty was not the signal for instant departure. She had improved considerably, whether mellowed by love or simply by discovering that she could do her job quite well, was a matter for conjecture.

  Mr Willet's summing up had been that she was 'a fair old lump of a girl' when she first arrived at Fairacre. It had been difficult to talk to her, and I had found her downright surly at times. However, we now hit it off very well, and I thought that Wayne's influence had been all to the good. She proposed to continue teaching after her marriage, and for this I was grateful. New appointments are always hazardous, and in a two-teacher school such as ours it is absolutely essential that the pair can work happily together.

  Of course, I pondered, there might be babies coming along, but she could always have maternity leave and then come back if she wanted to.

  It then occurred to me that, as usual, I was allowing my mind to run well ahead. After all, we had not had the wedding dress fitted yet. It was rather early to be counting chicks.

  Furthermore, through the lofty windows I could see a row of moving heads. Obviously, a procession of children was running along the coke pile, and it was high time that that little caper was stopped.

  Seizing the hand bell, I made my way into the playground.

  That afternoon the first mild breeze began to blow. The weathervane on St Patrick's steeple had veered to the
south-west, the clouds scudded along at a merry rate, and here and there the sunshine broke through, gilding the bare branches and raising our spirits. Could spring be here at last?

  The children sniffed the air as appreciatively as eager dogs out on a walk, and I let them go to play five minutes earlier than usual, although with stern threats about the consequences of going near, let alone on, the coke pile.

  When I went to call them in I saw that Gerald Partridge, our much-loved vicar, was among the crowd, his venerable cape, green with age, billowing from his shoulders in the breeze.

  'My dear Miss Read,' he said, clasping my hands in his. The leopard-skin gloves of winter were not in evidence today, a sure sign that the weather was warmer.

  'Come into school,' I said.

  'No, no! It's so lovely to welcome a mild breeze. Let us enjoy the air out here. I've brought a letter from my wife. No need to answer it immediately. You may want to consider your reply. That's why she decided not to telephone you.'

  'What's it about?' I asked, alarm raising its ugly head.

  Was another pot of marmalade needed for some good cause?

  Was I being invited to one of Mrs Partridge's cheese and wine parties to meet some eminent divine? If so, a simple telephone call had always been considered fitting, so what hidden complications were inside the envelope?

  'Look at it in the peace of your own home,' advised the vicar. Perhaps my consternation was writ large upon my face. In any case, Gerald Partridge, though vague in many ways, is remarkably sensitive to other people's feelings. I stuffed it into my jacket pocket.

  'I always think,' said the vicar, changing the subject with aplomb, 'that you have one of the finest views in Fairacre.' He gazed across Mr Roberts' young corn to the massive bulk of the downs on the sky-line.

  'So do I,'I told him.