by Miss Read
Only I, it seemed, was idle, glorying in my inactivity as happily as the small ruffled robin who sat sunning himself on a hawthorn twig nearby. But such pleasant detachment could not last.
St Patrick's had long ago struck nine o'clock, and the crunch of gravel under foot now told of Mrs Pringle's arrival.
I sighed and went to greet her.
Mrs Pringle's black oil-cloth bag, in which she carries her cretonne apron and any shopping she has done on the way, was topped this morning by a magnificent crisp lettuce, the size of a football.
'Thought you could do with it,' she said, presenting it to me. 'I know you don't bother to cook in the holidays, and I noticed all yourn had bolted. Willet said you was to pull 'em up unless you wanted to be over run with earrywigs.'
I thanked her sincerely for the present, and the second-hand advice.
'Tell you what,' went on the lady, struggling into her overall, 'if you pull them up just before I go, I can throw them to my chickens. They can always do with a bit of fresh green.'
I promised to do so.
'Well, now,' said Mrs Pringle, rolling up her sleeves for battle, 'what about them kitchen cupboards?'
'Very well,' I replied meekly. 'Which shall we start on?'
Mrs Pringle cast a malevolent eye upon the cupboards under the sink, those on the wall holding food, and the truly dreadful one which houses casseroles, pie-dishes, lemon-squeezers and ovenware of every shape and size, liable to cascade from their confines every time the door opens.
'We start at the top,' Mrs Pringle told me, 'and work down.' She sounded like a competent general issuing orders for the day to a remarkably inefficient lieutenant.
I watched her mount the kitchen chair, fortunately a well-built piece of furniture capable of carrying Mrs Pringle's fourteen stone.
'Get a tray,' directed the lady, 'and pack it with all this rubbish as I hand it down. We'll have to have a proper sort-out of this lot.'
Obediently, I stacked packets of gravy powder, gelatine, haricot beans, semolina and a collection of other cereals and dry goods which I had no idea I was housing.
'Now, why should I have three packets of arrowroot?' I wondered aloud.
'Bad management,' snorted Mrs P. There seemed no answer to that.
'And half this stuff,' she continued, 'should have been used months ago. It's a wonder to me you haven't got Weevils or Mice. I wouldn't care to use this curry myself. That firm went out of business just after the war.'
I threw the offending packet into the rubbish box – a sop to Cerberus.
'Ah!' said Mrs Pringle darkly, 'there'll be plenty more to add to that by the time we've done.'
It took us almost an hour to clear all three shelves. Mrs Pringle was in her element, wrestling with dirt and disorder, and glorying in the fact that she had me there, under her thumb, to crow over. I can't say that I minded very much. Mrs Pringle's slings and arrows hardly dented my armour at all, and it was pleasant to come across long lost commodities again.
'I've been looking everywhere for those vanilla pods,' I cried, snatching the long glass tube from Mrs Pringle's hand. 'And that bottle of anchovy essence.'
'It's as dry as a bone,' replied Mrs Pringle with satisfaction, 'and so's this almond essence bottle, and the capers. What a wicked waste! If my mother could see this she would turn in her grave! Every week the cupboards were turned out regular, and everything in use brought forward and the new put at the back. "Method!", she used to say. "That's all that's needed, my girl. Method!" and it's thanks to her that I'm as tidy as I am today,' said my slave-driver smugly.
'My mother,' I replied, 'died when I was in my late teens.'
But if I imagined that this body blow would affect my sparring partner, I was to be disappointed.
'It's the early years that count,' snapped Mrs Pringle, throwing a box of chocolate vermicelli at my head.
I gave up, and we continued in silence until the cupboard was bare. Then I was allowed to retreat upstairs to dust the bedrooms whilst Mrs Pringle attacked the shelves with the most efficacious detergent known to man.
A little later, over coffee, Mrs Pringle gave me up-to-date news of the village.
'You've heard about the Flower Show, I suppose?' she began.
I confessed that I had not attended this Fairacre event on the previous Saturday.
'A good thing. There's trouble brewing. Mr Willet says he's writing to the paper about it.'
'Why? What happened?'
'You may well ask. Mr Robert won first prize for the best kept garden.'
This did not seem surprising to me. Our local farmer always keeps a fine display of flowers and vegetables.
'What about it?'
Mrs Pringle took a deep breath, so that her corsets creaked.
'Mr Roberts,' she said, with dreadful emphasis, 'has Tom Banks working in that garden three days a week – if working you can call it. And, what's more, he had all the farmyard manure at his beck and call. How can us cottagers compete with that?'
I saw her point.
'The Flower Show's never been the same,' said Mrs Pringle, 'since that fellow that worked up the Atomic got on the committee. Good thing he's been posted elsewhere, but the trouble still remains. All this Jack's-as-good-as-his-master nonsense! Don't you remember the outcry when he wiped out the cottager classes? Said it was degrading to have two types of entry. As though we bothered! If you does your own digging and planting, you're a cottager. If you gets help, you're not. I never could see why that man was allowed to question the ways of the Almighty. "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate", says the hymn. And what's wrong with that, I'd like to know? If there'd been a cottagers' class, as there always used to be, then Mr Willet would have come first, and rightly so. He's drafting a fair knock-out of a letter to the Caxley.'
I said I should look forward to reading it in next week's 'Caxley Chronicle'.
'Oh, I don't say it will be in that early,' said Mrs Pringle, stacking our cups. 'So far it's only got as far as the first draft on a page of Alice Willet's laundry book. But he's keeping at it.'
She replaced the lid of the biscuit tin.
'Mrs Partridge's niece goes back to London today. I should think she and the vicar will be downright thankful. As far as I can hear, the girl's done nothing but wash her hair and walk about with one of those horrible transistors all day.'
'She's supposed to be a very clever girl,' I said, rising to the absent one's defence.
'Being clever don't get you far,' sniffed Mrs Pringle. 'There's some, not a hundred miles from here, who's passed examinations and that, but don't know no more than that cat what's in their cupboards.'
Reminded of her duties, she rose and removed the tray from the kitchen table to the draining board.
'You'd be least bother to me,' she told me, 'if you made yourself scarce while I tackle that china cupboard. I don't trust myself to keep a civil tongue in my head while that's being bottomed, and I've never been one to speak out of place, I hope.'
She glanced at me sharply.
'I suppose you wouldn't have such a thing as some good white paper for lining the shelves when I've washed them?'
'As a matter of fact,' I told her with some pride, 'there's a roll of lining paper upstairs. I'll run up and get it.'
It was pleasant to dazzle Mrs Pringle with my efficiency for once, and I rooted about in the landing cupboard among boxes of stationery, stored Christmas tree decorations, and a mound of yellowing cuttings from magazines which I tried to deceive myself into calling 'Reference Material' although, in my honest moments, I knew full well I should never refer to them.
The roll of lining paper had managed to work its way to the very bottom of the cupboard, and right to the back behind a pile of box files dusty with age, and bearing such labels as 'Infant Handwork Ideas', 'Historical Costumes', and the like. I wouldn't mind betting that most teachers have just such a collection of junk tucked away, carefully garnered as an insurance against the future, an
d looked at only once in a blue moon, or else forgotten completely.
The cupboard was a deep one and by the time I had wriggled the slippery roll from behind the boxes, I was hot and dusty and had laddered one stocking. I struggled to my feet feeling quite giddy with my exertions.
I hoisted one of the dusty files under one arm. It contained, if I remembered rightly, some patterns for making simple lamp shades, and these might prove useful for handwork next term. I would go through the box at my leisure.
Mrs Pringle's lining paper began to behave like a telescope, the inside sliding out at remarkable speed. From being eighteen inches in length, the roll rapidly became thirty, and caught itself in the banisters as I took the first unsteady step downwards.
Everything happened at once. The heavy file slipped, the lining paper jammed, my ankle turned over with a crack, and the hall carpet rushed upwards to meet me amidst whirling darkness lit with stars. The latter moved into a circle, as though about to embark on 'Gathering Peascods'. Suddenly, they vanished altogether, and I wondered why so many bells were ringing.
When I came round I was sitting on the bottom stair with my face against Mrs Pringle's bosom.
It was enough to bring me rapidly to full consciousness.
'You bin and fell down,' said that lady reproachfully.
There seemed nothing to add.
Five minutes later, on the sofa, I found myself trying to control my chattering teeth and to assess the damage done.
Mrs Pringle, who had collected the papers strewn all over the hall, now surveyed me lugubriously.
'Well, you've made a proper job of it,' she told me, with some satisfaction. 'If you don't have a black eye by morning, I'll eat my hat. And something's not right with that ankle.'
'Sprained,' I said. 'Nothing more, but my arm feels strange.'
It hung down at approximately its usual angle, but felt queerly heavy.
'Could be broken,' Mrs Pringle suggested, about to investigate.
'Don't touch it,' I squealed. I lifted it carefully.
'I don't think it can be broken,' I said. 'I mean there aren't any bones sticking through the flesh, and it isn't a funny shape, is it?'
'Could still be broken,' replied Mrs Pringle, with conviction. 'You don't know much about it, do you?'
I admitted that I was entirely ignorant when it came to anatomy. All I knew was that I was shaking and cold and for two pins would have howled like a dog.
'I should like some brandy,' I said. 'It's in the sideboard.'
Leaning back, I closed my eyes and gave myself over to being a casualty. Hell, how that ankle hurt! It would be swollen to twice the size in an hour, that was sure, and heaven alone knew what was the matter with my right arm.
I took the proffered glass in my left hand and sipped the fire-water.
'Where's Doctor Martin this morning?' I asked. 'He'd better look me over, I suppose.'
'Wednesday,' said Mrs Pringle, seating herself heavily on the end of the sofa, far too close to my damaged ankle for my peace of mind. 'Wednesdays he's in Fairacre. He'll be at Margaret Waters sometime this morning, having a look at her bad leg. What a bit of luck!'
'Who for?' I said crossly. 'Oh, never mind, never mind, I'll ring there and leave a message.'
I struggled to my feet, screamed, and fell back on to the sofa again.
'It's The Drink,' said Mrs Pringle, in a voice of doom. I remembered that the blood of dozens of Blue-Ribboners beat in her veins, and regretted that I had allowed her to administer brandy to me, even for purely restorative reasons.
'No,' I managed to say, 'it's the ankle. Perhaps you would ring Miss Waters and ask her to see if Doctor Martin could call.'
She went into the hall, and I swallowed the rest of the brandy. It was such a solace in the midst of my increasing discomfort that, for the first time in my life, I began to understand why people took to the bottle.
I lay back and surveyed the room through half-closed eyes. A bump over my right eye was coming up at an alarming rate. Would it be the size of a pigeon's egg by the time the doctor arrived, I wondered? And why a pigeon's egg? Why not a hen's or a bantam's egg?
Objects in the room had a tendency to shift to the left when I looked at them, and the curtains swayed in a highly distracting fashion. The clock on the mantel-piece grew large and then small in a rhythmic manner, and I began to feel as though the sofa had floated out to sea and we had run into a heavy swell.
Above the rushing noise in my head, I heard Mrs Pringle's boom from the hall.
'I'll tell her, Miss Waters. We'll be glad to see him. She looks very poorly to me – very poorly indeed. Oh, no doubt it'll be hospital with these injuries! Yes, I'll let you know.'
'I'm not going to hospital!' I shouted to the open door. Something crashed inside my head and, groaning, I turned my face into the sofa, giving the bump a second wallop.
Mrs Pringle appeared in the doorway.
'It's a good thing it's the first day of the holidays,' she said smugly. 'Give you plenty of time to get over it, won't it, dear?'
I drew in my breath painfully.
'Mrs Pringle,' I said, very quietly and carefully, 'I could do with a little more brandy.'
3 Medical Matters
EXTREME pain, it seems, has a curiously numbing effect on one's normal reactions. Pre-occupied as I was with my afflictions, Mrs Pringle's deplorable remark, which ordinarily would have aroused my fury, now simply appeared to be unhappy but true.
It certainly looked as though a week at least would be needed to put me back into fighting trim. Nursing my arm I began to mourn those blissfully planned picnics, the efficient tidying-up, and the trips to distant places.
'Can't see you doing much in the next week or two,' announced Mrs Pringle, as if divining my melancholy thoughts. 'When my John sprained his ankle at football it was all of three months before he could put his weight on it – and him a young man, of course.'
Still cocooned, in my pain, from these barbs, I nodded agreement.
'Tell you what,' said the lady. 'I could come in each morning for an hour or so, seeing as it's holiday time. Get you an egg, say, or some soup to keep you going.'
This was a kind thought and I did my best to register gratitude. By now the arm was beginning to swell, and hurt badly. Would Dr Martin be able to get my sleeve roiled up? Would it have to be cut from the frock?
Alarmed now, I sat up and begged Mrs Pringle to help in my undressing.
'Before the doctor comes?' she asked scandalised.
I explained my fears.
'If that's all, I can slit it up now with the kitchen scissors,' she volunteered, making for the door.
'But I don't want it slit,' I wailed. 'I like this frock! If we can get it off now before this blasted arm gets more and more like a bolster, I can put on my dressing gown.'
'That would look decent enough,' conceded Mrs Pringle, 'and of course I'll stay in the room while he's here. It's only proper.'
She went stumping up the stairs, leaving me to wonder if Dr Martin, now somewhere around seventy, was in any great danger from a plain middle-aged school teacher temporarily one-legged and one-armed.
I could hear Mrs Pringle opening doors above. The room still pitched about, though the swell was not quite as severe as at first.
Closing my eyes, I let myself float gently out to sea upon the sofa.
'Well,' said a man's voice. 'You lost that fight, as far as I can see.'
I opened my eyes and saw Dr Martin surveying me. Mrs Pringle stood beside him.
He pulled up a chair and began to examine the bump on my temple.
'Any pain?'
'Of course there is,' I said, wincing from the pressure of his ice-cold fingers. I explained the symptoms of rocking motions and the movement of furniture in the room.
'Humph!' He felt my skull gently.
'Any pain in the ox-foot?'
'In the what?
'The ox-foot.'
I looked blankly at him.
I continued to look at him dumbly.
'The occiput, the back of the head, woman!'
'Oh, no, no! None at all,' I assured him. 'Just this bang on the forehead.'
I began to feel rather cross. Why do medical men expect people to know all the Latin terms?
Most patients, I suspect, are as ignorant of anatomy as I am.
My doctor gets a plain statement in basic English from me, and I can't think why his reply cannot be expressed in the same vein.
If I tell him that the bony bump on my wrist hurts, what sort of answer do I get?
It is usually some glib explanation about the action of the lower lobelia on the gloxinia, which may well affect the ageratum and so lead to total tormentilla. Bewildered by all this mumbo-jumbo the patient's normal reaction is to go straight home, apply witch hazel and make a cup of tea.
Dr Martin opened his black bag, moistened some cotton wool and dabbed my forehead.
'You'll survive,' he assured me, as I flinched. He looked across at the brandy bottle.
'Been drinking?'
'Purely for medicinal purposes,' I told him with dignity.
There was a sniff from Mrs Pringle.
'No need to keep you from your work,' said Dr Martin.
Mrs Pringle left the room reluctantly.
'Now, let's look at the arm.'
He felt it and I screamed.
'Can you bend it here?'
'No!' I shouted fortissimo. He nodded with evident satisfaction.
'Radial trouble, I think,' he said. 'Have to get it X-rayed.'
At that moment the telephone shrilled, and I heard Mrs Pringle lift the receiver.
By this time, the doctor had produced a calico sling from his bag and was folding it deftly. It smelt horribly of dog biscuits and was very rough when tied round my neck.
'Must keep it still and supported,' he told me. 'You're bound to have a good deal of pain with an elbow injury.'
No one could be kinder than dear Dr Martin, and normally I count him among my most respected friends at Fairacre, but the evident relish with which he imparted this information was hard to bear.