(9/20) Tyler's Row

by Miss Read

  At that moment the door-scraper clanged, and Mrs Pringle appeared over the threshold.

  'Lovely morning,' I ventured, with forced cheerfulness.

  Mrs Pringle advanced, limping heavily, her head out-thrust like a bull whose patience is fast running out.

  'Not if you're In Pain,' boomed Mrs Pringle.

  'I'm sorry to hear that,' I replied mendaciously. Mr Willet looked out of the window, smirking quite unnecessarily.

  'I've tore my back muscles and my bad leg, pushing that great cupboard to one side last night. Not that it wasn't needed. That mouse must've been there for weeks. He'd got a fair collection of nuts and berries and rubbish off of the nature table. You know what I'm always saying. That nature table's an open invitation to pests. Stands to reason mice is going to come in for that stuff, spread out for them to help themselves.'

  I know quite well, and Mrs Pringle knows that I know, that it is not the mice she dislikes, but the extra debris which the nature table sheds occasionally on to the floor, and which makes more work for her. Mrs Pringle's leg was badly affected on the day some branches of blackthorn capsized, sprinkling the floor heavily with petal confetti.

  'What's more,' went on Mrs Pringle remorselessly, 'he's had the corner off of one of them map things. That one with the gentleman made of india-rubber.'

  This I rightly construed as the wall chart showing 'The Muscles of The Human Body', an alarming diagram which has not been in use very much since my arrival at Fairacre school. As far as I was concerned, the mouse was welcome to it, but I forbore to say so.

  'He's been and chewed it up to shreds so it's no good hopin' to fix it back on, or cryin' over spilt milk.'

  'I'm not,' I assured her.

  'I shall have to take things easy today,' announced Mrs Pringle, putting a large mauve hand on the small of her back—if so extensive an area of anatomy can be thus called—and limping towards the door.

  Mr Willet watched her go solemnly, turned to give me a sympathetic wink, and followed her into the lobby.

  A minute later, presumably in the lady's absence, I heard one boy call out: 'You wants to watch it! Ma Pringle's leg's 'urting 'er. You'll get the back of 'er 'and if she sees you doing that!'

  The retort was in terms more suited to the public bar of 'The Beetle and Wedge' than the playground of a Church of England primary school.

  I decided that I had not heard it.

  The days that followed were still darkened by Mrs Pringle's gloomy mood, but the limping seemed to ease a little as the days went by, and we became cautiously hopeful.

  The high spot of the week was a visit from Amy. She brought with her a niece of James's, called Vanessa, an eighteen-year-old dressed fashionably in a motley collection of shapeless woollen garments in shades of mauve, grey and black. Three sleeves overlapped, the first layer appearing to be some sort of garment which my mother would have called a spencer, then another three-quarter length one, topped by a cardigan which reached the knees but, surprisingly, had short sleeves.

  A dull brown stone on an inordinately long silver chain swung over her attire and hit her teacup, every now and again, when she tossed back a mane of long black hair. The stone reminded me of one shown me once by Mrs Pringle. She had told me, with much relish, that it came from her mother's gall bladder and was much treasured in the family. I am a squeamish woman, and have never quite got over this shattering experience. To have Vanessa's stone swinging about the tea-table was very unnerving.

  She was a silent girl, ate very little, and appeared thoroughly bored with our company. As soon as tea was over, Amy dispatched her to the village stores to buy some cigarettes.

  'Sorry about this,' said Amy, 'but she's in love. Eileen, James's sister, is at the end of her tether, and I said I'd have her for a few days.'

  'What's he like?'

  'Unsuitable.'

  'How unsuitable?'

  'Well, do you remember dear Joyce Grenfell's sketch where the bewildered mother says: "Daddy and I are delighted that you are going to marry a middle-aged Portuguese conjurer, darling. But are you sure he will make you happy?" It's rather like that.'

  'Married?'

  'Four times already. Has six children, one eye and a cork leg.'

  'You're making it up!'

  'Cubs' honour!' said Amy, drawing a finger across her throat for added measure. 'May I slit my throat, if I tell a lie, and all that. He was wounded in a war in Bolivia.'

  'This gets more unbelievable every minute.'

  'It's gospel truth, darling. He recently came as a rep. to the firm where she fiddles with the typewriter all day—one can't call it proper typing. She offered to do some letters for me yesterday, and every one began: "Dear Mr Who-ever-it-was Halfpenny".'

  'She has my sympathy,' I said.

  'Maybe. You taught yourself, but Vanessa had over a year at some ruinously expensive place in town where she met dozens of perfectly normal cheerful young men of her own generation. But no—she must fall for Roderick.'

  'I suppose Eileen's talked to her?'

  'Till she's blue in the face. So have I. It makes no difference. She eats next to nothing, dissolves into tears, has constant headaches, and threatens to do away with herself.'

  'Can't she change her job?'

  'She doesn't want to. She can see the wretched fellow this way. I've offered to take her abroad for a few weeks — James is willing — but Eileen's doubtful, and to tell the truth, I don't know if I could stand it, after having her at close quarters these last few days.'

  'What is she interested in?'

  'Roderick.'

  'I know, silly. But besides Roderick?'

  'More Roderick,' said Amy emphatically. 'I tell you, my dear, that child has absolutely no other thought in her head at the moment. Her parents, at their wits' end, have offered her a car, hoping she would find some other interest, but she's even refused that! Have you ever heard of an eighteen-year-old turning down a car?'

  'Never!'

  'That shows you. Incidentally, James pranged ours last week. He rang up to tell me, and of course I said "Are you all right?" and I couldn't think why he laughed so much. Evidently, a man in his office always maintains that wives always say this on these occasions. If the wife rings up, of course, after an accident, the husband always says: "Is the car all right?" So we ran true to form.'

  Vanessa appeared in the doorway, holding the cigarettes. She handed them to Amy without a word, and sank, exhausted, into an armchair.

  Amy and I stacked the tray and I carried it into the kitchen.

  'Come and see the pinks,' I said. 'Would Vanessa like to come in the garden?'

  'I should leave her,' said Amy, and so we wandered together down the path, enjoying the June sunlight and the heady scent from the cottage pinks.

  'I really can't see why love is cracked up so much,' I said thoughtfully. 'As the Provincial Lady once said, good teeth and a satisfactory bank balance are really much more rewarding.'

  'You always were cold-blooded,' said Amy. 'I can remember how you treated that poor young fellow at Corpus Christi when we were at college.'

  'If you mean that sanctimonious individual with a name like Snodgrass or Culpepper who was going to be a missionary, he deserved all he got. He was simply looking for someone to accompany him to the poor unsuspecting head-hunters in Africa. Anyone strong and female would have done. Of course I turned him down! So did about a dozen more.'

  'Not as flatly as you did. I think you are the most unromantic woman I've ever met.'

  'Maybe,' I said, threading a pink in her button-hole, 'but when I meet the Vanessas of this world—and many of them years older, and with less excuse for such follies—then I am sincerely thankful that I am a maiden lady, and likely to remain so.'

  Amy laughed indulgently, and we went back to the house to collect her comatose niece. She drifted to the car behind her aunt, but, once inside, remembered her manners sufficiently to thank me in a listless voice.

  As Amy searched for h
er car key, Vanessa made her first voluntary contribution to the conversation. There was even a faint hint of animation in her tone.

  'What a pretty village this is!'

  Amy's mouth dropped open in astonishment. It was good to see her smitten dumb for once. It so rarely happens.

  A few days after the visit of Amy and the lovelorn Vanessa, the next meeting of Fairacre Parent-Teacher Association took place.

  As I had feared, these monthly meetings seemed to occur much too frequently, and I had reason to dread the present one, rather more than usual, for I had agreed, in an off-guard moment, to be on the panel of a quiz game.

  'The vicar will take the chair,' Mrs Johnson told me, 'and you and I will be the female pair of the quartet. Basil Bradley and Henry Mawne are willing to come too, so I think we shall be a well-balanced team.'

  Basil Bradley is our local celebrity, a writer who produces an historical novel yearly. The plot is much the same each season: a Regency heroine, all ringlets and dampened muslin, having an uphill time of it with various love affairs and disapproving parents and guardians, and a few dashing bucks in well-fitting breeches and high stocks, rushing about the countryside at breakneck speed on barely-schooled horses, trying to win her hand, or to stop someone else from winning it.

  He sells thousands of copies, is much beloved by many women—and his publisher—and we are very proud of him indeed. He is a gentle, unassuming soul, given to pink shirts and ties with roses on them. The men tend to be rather scornful about Basil, but he is a great deal more astute than his somewhat effeminate appearance leads one to believe.

  'We're very lucky to get him,' I said to Mrs Johnson.

  'I caught him at the end of a chapter,' she said. 'He was feeling rather relaxed.' She sounded smug, as well she might. Basil Bradley is adept at eluding such invitations.

  On the great night, I put on my usual black, with Aunt Clara's seed pearls, and was glad that Amy was not there to protest at my dowdy appearance. With her words in mind, I took a second look at myself in the bedroom mirror. She was right. I did look dreary.

  I routed out a shocking pink silk scarf, brought back from Italy by a friend, and tied it gipsy-fashion round my neck, putting Aunt Clara's seed pearls back in their shabby leather case. Greatly daring, I put on some pink shoes bought in a Caxley sale, and took another look at myself. A pity Amy wasn't coming, I thought.

  Feeling like the Scarlet Woman of Fairacre, and rather enjoying it, I picked my way carefully across the playground to the school where the quiz was to be held. All the village had been invited, and the place was full.

  Mrs Pringle was just inside the door. Her disapproving gasp, on viewing my unaccustomed finery, raised my spirits still higher. Mr Willet, arranging chairs on the temporary platform, gazed at me with open admiration.

  'Well, Miss Read,' he said, puffing out his moustache, 'you certainly are a livin' doll tonight.'

  I began to have slight qualms. As someone once said: 'No one minds being thought wicked, but no one likes to appear ridiculous.' But I had no time for doubts. The other members of the team arrived, and we took our places meekly.

  Basil Bradley, who sat beside me, easily outshone me sartorially. His suit was dove-grey, his shirt pale-blue, and his colossal satin tie matched it perfectly. His opposite number, Henry Mawne, was in his church suit of dark worsted, and Mrs Johnson had on a green clinging jersey frock which could have done with a firm corset under it. The Vicar, in the chair, looked as benevolent as ever in one of his shapeless tweed suits well known to all in the parish.

  Having introduced us, 'just in case there is anyone here who has not had the pleasure of meeting our distinguished panel', the vicar called for the first question. Mrs Johnson had sternly told us that she was not letting us know the questions beforehand, which I thought rather mean of her, so we were all extremely apprehensive about the questions which, no doubt, would be hurled at us like so many brick-bats.

  We need not have worried. As with most village affairs, any invitation to speak in public, 'making an exhibition of meself', as Fairacre folk say, was greeted with utter silence and a certain amount of embarrassed coughing and foot-shuffling.

  At last, when the vicar could bear it no longer, he pointed to one of the young mothers in the front row, who was clutching a shred of paper which looked suspiciously like a page torn from the laundry book.

  'Mrs Baker, I believe you have a question?'

  The young woman turned scarlet, stood up, and read haltingly from the laundry book's page.

  'How much pocket money do the team think children should get?'

  We were all rather relieved at such a nice straightforward question to open the proceedings. Knowing Mrs Johnson, I strongly suspected her of planting a few questions about the hall on such knotty subjects as Britain's role in the Common Market, the rights of parents concerning their children's education, or the part played by the established church in village life.

  Henry Mawne was invited to speak first by the vicar. He was admirably succinct.

  'Not too much. Give 'em some idea of the value of money. I had a penny a week till I was ten. Then tuppence. Bought a fair amount of hardbake toffee or tiger nuts, tuppence did.'

  The mention of tiger nuts brought some nostalgic comments from the older members of the audience, and the vicar was obliged to rap the table for order.

  I was next and said that I felt sure it was right to grade pocket money according to age, and that as children grew older it might be a good idea to give them a quite generous fixed amount, and let them buy some of their clothes.

  Mrs Johnson felt that there should be a common purse for all the children in the family, each taking from it what was needed, thus training them in Unselfishness and General Co-operation.

  This was greeted in stunned silence, broken at last by the vicar who observed mildly that surely a greedy child might take it all in one fell swoop, which would be a bad thing?

  'In that case,' answered Mrs Johnson, 'the other siblings' disgust and displeasure would bring home to the offender the seriousness of his mistake.'

  'Wouldn't 'ave worked in our house,' said a robust voice from the hall, and the vicar turned hastily to Basil Bradley, who contributed the liveliest theory that children appreciate material things so keenly that it was vitally necessary for them to have enough to enjoy life. His passionate descriptions of the joys of eating dairy-flake chocolate stuffed into a newly-baked bun and eaten hot brought the house down.

  We were then asked if we approved of corporal punishment in schools. The men said 'Yes' and gave gruesome accounts, much embellished, I suspect, about beatings given them at school, both ending on the note: 'And I'm sure I was all the better for it!'

  Mrs Johnson abhorred the whole idea, and thought infliction of bodily pain barbaric. It simply encouraged sadism in those in authority and, she implied darkly, there was quite enough of that already.

  I said that I thought most people found that there were a few hardened sinners for whom the cane was the only thing they feared. Thus I should like to see the cane kept in the cupboard. The mere fact that it was there was a great deterrent to mischief-makers. I added that in all my years at Fairacre I had never had to use it, but that I thought the total abolition of corporal punishment was a mistake.

  There was so much interest in this question that it was thrown open to discussion, much to the pleasure of the four of us on the platform, who were then relaxed enough to blow our noses, look at our wrist watches and, in my case, loosen the shocking pink scarf which, though dashing, was deucedly hot.

  Mr Willet held the floor for a good five minutes describing his old headmaster's methods at Fairacre school.

  'Mr Hope give us a good lamming with the cane whenever he thought it was needed,' he ended, 'and it never done us a 'aporth of 'arm. Boys needs the strap to teach 'em right from wrong. Look at Nature,' he exhorted us.

  'Look at a bitch with pups, or an old stag with a young 'un playing up. They gives a cuff or a p
rod where it hurts, and the young 'uns soon learns.'

  There was considerable support for Mr Willet, and it would appear that, in our neck of the woods at least, most of us favour a little corporal punishment in moderation.

  We then romped through such questions as: 'Does the team approve of mini-skirts?' Answer: 'Yes, if the legs are all right.'

  'Are we doing enough about pollution?' Answer: 'No'—this very emphatically from Henry Mawne, who expatiated on the state of the duck-pond near his house, and the objects he had picked up in the copse at the foot of the downs, for so long that the vicar had to pass to the next question rather quickly.

  Reading methods, the debatable worth of psychiatric reports on difficult children, nursery schooling, pesticides, subsidies to farmers, the team's pet hates and where they would spend a holiday if money were no object, were all dealt with, before a halt was called, and we were allowed to totter down from the platform to be refreshed with coffee and a very fine collation of tit-bits prepared by the ladies of the committee.

  Mr Johnson offered me a plate, and a paper napkin with Santa Claus and some reindeer on it. Obviously, someone had over-estimated the number needed last Christmas. I was glad to see that they were not being wasted.

  'I was very glad to hear your remarks about corporal punishment,' he said, in a low voice.

  I stared at him, too astonished to reply. My impression had been that he was, if anything, more bigoted than his wife about such things.

  'My wife feels very strongly about correction, or rather, non-correction, but there are times when I wonder if a quick slap on the arm or leg isn't a better way of dealing with disobedience or insolence than a rather lengthy discussion. Children aren't always reasonable, I find. Now and again, I must admit, I have doubts.'

  'They do you credit, Mr Johnson,' I assured him. 'They do indeed.'

  I raised my coffee-cup and looked across at him with new respect.

  Perhaps, after all, a Parent-Teacher Association had its good points.