(1/20) Village School (28 page)

Meanwhile, Linda Moffat, perched up on the dining-room table, listened to her mother and Mrs Finch-Edwards gossiping, as they adjusted the hem of her bridesmaid's frock.

'Four of them, there will be. Three little nieces and Linda. Wasn't it sweet of her to ask Linda too?'

'Very kind. What's her own frock like?'

Mrs Moffat told her at some length, and Linda lost interest as the technical details of ruching, darts, cut-on-the-cross and other intricacies were bandied between them.

At last the hem was pinned up, Linda was released from her half-made frock, and allowed to play in the garden while the two friends settled in armchairs, Mrs Finch-Edwards with her feet up, in approved style, on a footstool, embroidered by Mrs Moffat in earlier days.

'How will you manage without Miss Gray?' she asked. It was a delicate subject, and she decided that a plain approach might be best. Mrs Moffat seemed eager to be forthcoming.

'As a matter of fact, I thought I'd take in dressmaking in a small way. It might make the beginnings of a little business and then in time——' She faltered and Mrs Finch-Edwards came to the rescue.

'You mean, you still think we might, one day, go into this together?'

'I know with the baby coming and so on, you'll be tied; but it won't be many years before we both have more leisure. What do you think?'

Mrs Finch-Edwards put down the bib she was embroidering, and looked soberly at her friend.

'It would be a beginning. You know it's dress-designing we've both got a flair for. If we could persuade the customers to let us design for them, and we were recommended——'

Mrs Moffat broke in excitedly. 'We could get a team of dressmakers, couldn't we, if the thing worked?'

'I've got a little money coming to me in a few years' time from an aunt of mine in Scotland. It might just about set us up.'

The two women gazed at each other, half-fearful, half-enraptured. Little did they realize, on that summer evening, that the foundations of a flourishing future firm (named after Mrs Finch-Edwards' only daughter) were well and truly laid, and that the little girl, now skipping energetically outside in the garden, would become one of the most glamorous and publicized models in the world of fashion.

***

It was very peaceful in my garden. I sat shelling some peas which John Pringle had brought me, enjoying the warm evening sun.

In the elms, at the corner of the playground, the rooks cawed intermittently, and from the quiet schoolroom came the distant clank of Mrs Pringle's scrubbing-pail.

'Might as well make a start, first as last,' she had remarked morosely to me as she stumped in, limp accentuated, after she had had her tea. Occasionally, I could hear a snatch of some lugubrious hymn in Mrs Pringle's mooing contralto.

I thought, as the shelled peas mounted higher in the basin, of all the changes that had taken place in this last school year. We had parted with Miss Clare, enjoyed Mrs Finch-Edwards' boisterous session, welcomed Miss Gray, and, a rare thing indeed, seen a wedding planned for one of the staff of Fairacre School.

The three new children, who had entered so timorously on that far September morning, were now part and parcel of Fairacre School. Each had added something to the life of our small school; that little microcosm, working busily, within the larger one of Fairacre village.

I watched the swallows, so soon to go, swoop screaming over the garden, and wondered if Mr Hope, that unhappy poet-schoolmaster, who had lived here once, had sat here, as I was doing now, looking back. He, and, for that matter, all my predecessors, whom I knew so well from the ancient log-book, although I had never seen their faces, must have joined in the hotchpotch of fetes, sales, outings, festivals, quarrels and friendships that make the stuff of life in a village.

The click of the gate roused me. There, entering, were Mrs Coggs and her two little daughters. They gazed about them with apprehension, with monkey eyes as dark and mournful as their brother's.

I put the past from me, and hurried down the path to meet my future pupils.

High above, on St Patrick's spire, the setting sun had turned the weathercock into a bird of fire. Phoenix-like, he named against the cloudless sky, looking down upon our miniature school world and all the golden fields of Fairacre.

M
ISS
R
EAD
is the pen name of Mrs. Dora Saint, who was born on April 17, 1913. A teacher by profession, she began writing for several journals after World War II and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. She is the author of many immensely popular books, but she is especially beloved for her novels of English rural life set in the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green. The first of these, Village School, was published in 1955 by Michael Joseph Ltd. in England and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Miss Read continued to write until her retirement in 1996. In 1998 she was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for her services to literature. She lives in Berkshire.