by Miss Read
'I owe a lot to her,' he said, suddenly grave. 'Taught us all proper manners and to think for others. She used to say grace before we went home at night. It went: "Bless us this night and make us ever mindful of the wants of others." I always liked that. "Mindful of the wants of others." Good words those.'
He gazed through the window as he spoke, his eyes fixed upon the men working upon St Patrick's belfry.
'They're getting on very well. They've almost finished,' I said, intending to release the tension a little. George Lamb shook himself into the present again.
'Ah! Looks pretty tidy now. You been to the show there yet?'
I said that I had.
'I'm taking some of the chaps who flew over with me tomorrow night. All helps the funds. I owe a lot to Fairacre, and it'll give the fellows no end of a kick to see a building that's over eight hundred years old, and to hear Jean Cole too.'
He glanced at the square gold watch upon his wrist and grimaced.
'Best get back to the Post Office for my lunch, or I'll catch it,' he said. 'Goodbye, Miss Read. Goodbye children. Hope you'll look back on your days at Fairacre School with as much pleasure as I do.'
I accompanied him to the gate. Above the elm trees the rooks were circling high.
'Sign of rain, eh?' he said. '"Winding up the water," we used to say as kids. You know one thing, Miss Read? Everything seems a lot smaller in Fairacre than I remember it except St Patrick's spire and them old elm trees! Maybe they've both been growing since I left here.'
Chuckling at his own fancies, he made his way back to the village.
On Tuesday evening came the eagerly awaited visit of Jean Cole.
Halfway through the recorded story of Fairacre there was an interval. A spotlight lit the chancel arch and the vicar led in the majestic figure of Major Gunning's cousin. She was resplendent in a long glittering black gown, and her appearance alone was enough to awe her country admirers, but when that glorious voice wrapped us in its warmth and beauty we were touched as never before.
She sang the aria from Handel's Judas Maccabaeus, to Mr Annett's accompaniment on the organ. It was a felicitous choice for it celebrated the restoration of the Sanctuary of Jerusalem. We sat in wonderment as the lovely voice soared and fell, and when finally she bowed and left us, we still sat silent and spellbound, whilst through my mind ran Shelley's lines:
'Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory'—
I heard later that George Lamb was as good as his word, and that eight of his business friends had been among that evening's congregation.
After the performance was over, it appears, the vicar found them looking round the church in the company of the honorary architect, Mr Graham. He was busy pointing out the particular beauties of the building, and had a fascinated audience. The vicar joined the party and was moved to see the awed admiration with which the strangers viewed the ancient building.
'Back home,' said one, 'we reckon two hundred years as mighty old. It takes your breath away to touch a wall or a doorway this ancient.'
They wandered from vestry to belfry, from altar to side-chapel, and finally emerged from the west door and accepted the vicar's invitation to coffee at the vicarage.
'I can offer you Drambuie with it,' said the vicar with pleasure, as he handed round the steaming cups, 'or a liqueur called aurum, distilled from oranges, and brought from Italy as a present by some friends in the village.'
'Not for me,' said Jock Graham austerely, 'but I'll no refuse a good Scots liqueur like Drambuie.'
He was in a remarkably mellow mood. To have such an attentive audience was a joy to him. The villagers of Fairacre took their church very much for granted, but these strangers were perceptive and appreciative. Jock Graham's tongue wagged all the faster, as the Drambuie diminished sip by sip, and he extolled the unique attributes of the building he loved so well.
It was almost half past eleven when at last the party broke up.
'I'd no idea it was so late,' said the vicar. 'Have you far to go?'
'We're booked in at Caxley,' said one. 'Two of us have business there tomorrow. The others are off to London on the early train, rustling up some more customers we hope.'
Farewells were made, and the vicar and Mrs Partridge turned back into the hall.
'What very nice fellows!' exclaimed Mr Partridge. 'George Lamb seems to have found some good companions.'
'And a wife who's interested in cooking,' added Mrs Partridge. 'He's going to ask her to send me a recipe for almond cookies.'
'Cookies?' repeated the vicar, his brow furrowed with perplexity.
'Cookies!' said his wife firmly. 'Biscuits to us. Really, Gerald, at times you are hopelessly insular.'
'I suppose so,' agreed the vicar rather sadly. Then his face brightened.
'But we've broadened our horizons tonight, my dear, haven't we? With our American friends, and prima donnas!'
Amicably, they mounted the stairs to bed.
The day came when Fairacre School presented its contribution to the Festival. We had decided to give two performances, one in the afternoon when mothers with young children could come, and one in the evening when fathers could attend.
We chose Wednesday for the simple reason that it is early closing day in Caxley and that the people of Fairacre would not be tempted to go there to spend their money. Thursday is market day, and three buses run from our village into Caxley on that busy day. We could not hope to compete with Caxley's magnetic pull on a Thursday. Besides, as Mrs Bonny pointed out reasonably, they would have more money to put in the silver collection before market day.
Excitement had mounted steadily during the Festival week, and by the time Wednesday came it was at feverpitch. The costumes and simple properties had been stacked on desks at the side of my room and Mrs Bonny's, for want of any other place to put them, and mighty little work had been done by the children with such attractions lying nearby. Pens in hand, arithmetic exercises neglected before them, the children's bemused gaze turned constantly to the glamorous heaps of clothes. Here was a glimpse of another world. Our country children rarely go to the theatre. An annual visit to the pantomime is about all that comes their way. Here, close at hand, were all the trappings of magic, the means of slipping from the everyday world of school to one of enchanting fantasy. It was little wonder that I had very few sums to mark each day. But a wise teacher knows when she is beaten, and I forbore to scold.
As soon as school dinner was demolished we set about arranging the seating. The partition was pushed back, the desks removed either to the playground or to one end to form the basis of the stage. Mr Willet, Mr Roberts the farmer, and Jim Farrow his shepherd, arranged the long planks across the desks, tried the curtains we had rigged up, and pronounced the stage ready.
Meanwhile, the children were putting the chairs in rows for the audience. These were new stackable beauties from the village hall, and we had been threatened with all sorts of penalties if any damage were done.
The din was appalling. The metal frames of the chairs clanged like an iron foundry. The men's voices, raised above the racket, were thunderous. The thud of their mallets as they knocked the planks into place reverberated among the pitch-pine rafters above. When at last the work was done, and the men had departed, Mrs Bonny and I took an aspirin and a cup of tea apiece in the hope of curing our headaches.
At two-thirty the schoolroom was packed tight. In the front seats were the vicar and the managers and a number of illustrious friends of the school. Parents, aunts and uncles, little brothers and sisters and numerous distant relations, whom I had never seen before, kept up a cheerful hum of conversation while panic grew steadily behind the stage curtain.
The first item was a collection of folk-songs sung by the whole school. It was a tight squash to get all sixty-odd children on to the stage, and one scaremonger among the infants told everyone else that 'them planks ain't safe', thus causing widespread terror.
'Anyone who wants to get of
f the stage can do so,' I said fiercely. 'But don't forget your mothers have come to see you.'
This quelled the riot a trifle, but Mrs Bonny and I had the usual fears to calm.
'S'pose us forgets the words?'
'S'pose there's a fire. Which door does we go for?'
'I feels a bit sick.'
'I forgets how the tune goes.'
'John Todd shoved me!'
'I never then!'
'Miss, there ain't enough room for us up this end. The wall's all coming off on my sleeve, miss. My best sleeve.'
At this moment, Mrs Bonny was obliged to take three of her youngest to the lavatory—an inevitable hold-up at any school function—whilst I applied my eye to the crack of the curtain to watch the audience. It really was a wonderful house, kindly and enthusiastic, and I only hoped we should not disappoint all those present.
At last all was ready. Mrs Bonny took her seat at the piano. United in the face of their common ordeal, the children grew suddenly silent. I hauled on the curtain rope, and we were off to a flying start.
The deafening applause which greeted every item was most gratifying. The infants, naturally, won the palm, and every time the curtain rose upon them there were loving cries of: 'Oh, aren't they sweet?' 'Look at our Billy!' 'The pretty dears!' 'Don't they sing lovely?' and the like. They certainly went through their paces magnificently, after initial bashfulness, and the folk-dance nearly brought the roof—and the stage—down with energetic clapping and stamping.
This number ended the first half and we could hear the infants hard at it as my class prepared for The Princess and the Swineherd in the lobby. Ernest, usually so stolid, had become hilariously excited and was clowning about in his finery, reducing the girls to a state of helpless giggling.
The princess's skirt had been trodden on, and. given way drastically at the gathers, so that I was obliged to do last-minute repairs with safety pins, with my hand inside her waist-band.
'Oh, miss, you tickles!' giggled Elizabeth, wriggling about like an eel. 'Oh, miss, your hands is cold!' Then a squeal.
'Oh, miss, you've bin and pricked me!'
'Stand still then,' I begged, snapping the last pin home. 'There, now you'll do!'
'It's pinned to my vest, miss.'
'And that's how it will have to stay,' I assured her flatly. 'We're on in five minutes.'
These words had a dual effect. Some children were, mercifully, struck dumb. Others became panic-stricken and fussed even more vociferously. Luckily, applause and cheers broke out from the schoolroom at this stage, the infants came trooping back, flushed with success, and we were obliged to collect our senses ready for our big moment after the brief interval.
'The magic saucepan's bin and gone!' exclaimed Patrick dramatically. This was the highly necessary property round which the Princess and her ladies gathered to discover the meals being cooked all over the town. There was a frenzied scattering of costumes, searching under chairs and general confusion until one of the infants, flown with success, was discovered with it on his head from whence it was wrenched by one of his enraged elders.
'You might have had his ears off,' observed an onlooker dispassionately, but relief was so general, that no one took much notice of this true statement.
After all the excitement I was prepared to find the cast both agitated and wordless, but all went well. Ernest's courtly bows were marvels of grace, and the only slight slip was the addition of 's' now and again, in true Fairacre fashion.
'We knows who's going to have sweet soup and pancakes! We knows who's going to have porridge and chops!' chanted the ladies exultantly. At least, I told myself philosophically, they did not say: 'Us knows', as they might so easily have done.
The applause at the end of the performance was deafening, and augured well for the repeat programme in the evening.
By the time the children and their parents had gone home, Mrs Bonny and I were dog tired. We tottered across to my house, and revived our strength with tea, tomato sandwiches and shortbread.
'Mr Willet says we've taken over seven pounds this afternoon, and it should be as much again this evening,' said Mrs Bonny, surveying her stockinged feet at the other end of the sofa. 'It should help the funds quite a lot.'
'It should,' I agreed. We lapsed into exhausted silence, and I guessed that her thoughts were running on the same lines as mine. Should we ever, in this small village, even with the herculean efforts we were making, ever come anywhere near the target we had so hopefully and bravely set ourselves?
Three hours later, much refreshed, we crossed the playground for our second house. Against a ravishing blue sky, the newly-gilded weathercock flamed triumphantly on the pinnacle of St Patrick's spire. It was a heartening sight.
Resolutely we thrust our doubts from us, pushed open the heavy school door, and were engulfed once again by our teeming mob.
Chapter 8
OUR School Concert, which finally netted sixteen pounds for the funds, was one of the more modest efforts in Festival Week. It was on a par with the Mammoth Whist Drive, the Giant Draw and the Fabulous Flower Show. The Son et Lumière, with the added attraction of Jean Cole, was the backbone of the week, of course, and was so successful that it was decided to carry on for the next week as well, much to everyone's joy.
It was fortunate that it had done so well, for calamity hit Fairacre the day before the fête. Peter Martin, whose advent we had all awaited so eagerly, was involved in a car crash on Thursday evening, and was taken to hospital with two broken ribs and concussion.
We heard the news on radio and television that evening and were plunged into gloom. The vicar, good Christian that he is, forbore to express what was in most of our minds, simply saying :
'Poor young fellow! It is a mercy that his injuries are no worse!'
Jock Graham was more outspoken.
'This'll make a difference to the takings,' he observed dourly, reading the headlines in Friday's Guardian.
'He won't die, will he, miss?' asked a bevy of little girls round my desk. Peter Martin's injuries, and the cruelty of Fate in thus snatching him from us were the playground topics of the day, and in fact, of the whole neighbourhood.
Lady Sawston, who lives locally, nobly agreed to step into the breach and to open the fête, but it was quite apparent that fewer people would attend now that our star attraction had gone.
It was a sore blow indeed to our efforts.
But the final item in the Festival's programme was the Gala Dance which was held in the Village Hall on Saturday evening and at which Peter Martin was to have sung. It was the culmination of our efforts, and the ladies of the Floral Society excelled themselves with shower arrangements on every wall bracket and a bank of massed flowers, contributed from Fairacre cottage gardens, across the width of the stage.
Homemade refreshments had been billed as one of the chief attractions, my own modest contribution consisting of two dozen sausage rolls and a rather handsome set of small savouries in aspic jelly, so ravishingly pretty—at least, in my own eyes—that I hoped that Amy might drop in unexpectedly and be impressed. Needless to say, she did not, and the only comment which I heard on their appearance came from Mrs Mawne, who remarked disparagingly to one of her helpers : 'Probably sent by the vicar's wife. She dabbles in aspic.' Dabbles in aspic indeed, I thought, smarting in silence. It is hardly surprising that Mrs Mawne is so generally detested.
I looked in during the last hour of the event. Faces were flushed, skirts whirling, you could have cut the air with a knife, and 'The Dizzy Beat' from Caxley lived up to its name, with enough tympani to drown the other three instruments.
It was a huge success, and I joined with zest the great circle for 'Auld Lang Syne', and wrenched other people's arms from their sockets with enthusiasm matching my neighbours. After 'God Save The Queen', the company drifted away to the sound of car engines, roaring motor bikes and farewell cries, and I helped to wash up the debris.
Mrs Willet accompanied me home. It was lovely
to be out in the cool night air. Someone had night-scented stocks growing in his front garden, and the fragrance was delicious. A half-moon lay on its back, cradled in the tree-tops, and an owl hooted from the vicarage cedar tree.
'A beautiful night,' said Mrs Willet. 'And a successful one. Do you think the vicar will know the result of the Festival Week tomorrow? Everyone's praying we'll have made enough to save the chalice, though they don't say much.'
'We'll live in hope,' I replied, opening my gate. 'We couldn't have done more anyway. That's one comfort.'
The vicar did not make an announcement the next day, but the hand on the Appeal's board shot round to one thousand and seven hundred pounds.
'Getting along now!' said the parishioners excitedly, as they made their way past the board. 'It's coming on, isn't it?'
'But not fast enough,' was Mr Mawne's comment to the vicar, after the service.
'I agree with you there,' said Jock Graham soberly. 'I've kept a tight eye on the money all the way along the line, and give Christies their due, they've done a fine job at a reasonable price.'
'What is still outstanding?' enquired the vicar, leading the two to the vicarage for a glass of sherry.
'My estimate, a generous one, was two thousand. Christies have had two lots of four hundred so far, the rest to be paid when the job is finished. That's twelve hundred to find. With luck we'll find the total is something under two thousand, and the rest can go into the Fabric Fund. We must have something behind us in case of further disaster.'
'God forbid!' exclaimed the vicar, his mouth working piteously. He poured a sherry with a shaking hand, and they sipped in silence. Mr Mawne broke it at last.
'It's no good, Gerald. You must go into this business of the sale of the chalice. It's all very well to be sentimental—'
'Sentimental!' cried the vicar, but his friend swept on.
'But the fact is that the chalice could be our salvation. Not only now, but as a hedge against future crises. After all, we could always have a replica made.'