(16/20)Summer at Fairacre (10 page)

Miss Crabbe was much as I remembered her on the terrible weekend she had spent under my roof. She ploughed along with her lecture, in a slightly nasal monotonous drone, complimenting Mr Ellis on his acute understanding of the Child Mind, and enlarging on the need to make use of the wonders of modern psychology when any difficulties in child behaviour became apparent.

I had a pretty shrewd idea that this was one of the lectures she gave regularly to her students, watered down a little for the present audience.

Everyone was amazingly polite, and the questions, though few, were to the point. Time had run on, and we were all conscious of the chinking of wine glasses and the welcome clatter of plates at the back of the hall, where the helpers were preparing to revive us.

The applause when at last Miss Crabbe sat down was deafening. The lady flushed with pleasure, as we all clapped heartily. I felt that our enthusiasm was caused probably more by relief than rapture, but at least the evening had been successful, and the ordeal was now over.

We raised our glasses and our cheese straws to each other, four disparate individuals, bound together for one brief hour by common suffering.

7 More Worries for the Coggs Family

MAY arrived in a flurry of blustery showers. In school the windows rattled, the doors thumped, and the replaced skylight let in almost as fierce a draught as the old one.

The weather had turned chilly enough to warrant lighting the stoves, but now that officially it was summer time, and Mrs Pringle would be at her most militant if the idea were mooted, we did our best by donning winter cardigans again, and hoping for the best.

Every now and again, black clouds brought hailstones to dance in the playground, and to dash the tender spring flowers to the ground. It was sad to see the first blooms of the cherry and plum trees scattered like confetti on the ground after these periodic onslaughts. The early bees, which had been active during the halcyon holiday spell, were nowhere to be seen. It seemed as if winter had struck again.

Tibby, who had spent all his days, and nights too, as far as I could judge, curled up in a clump of catmint, was now content to find indoor haunts, preferably on my bed or on the sitting room sofa. One evening of particularly cold showers I lit my fire, and rejoiced. And so did Tibby. Luckily, Mrs Pringle was not about to chide us.

It was on one of these cold mornings that I went across about eight o'clock to unlock the school in readiness for Mrs Pringle's ministrations.

Squatting against the door, his arms wrapped round him for warmth, was Joseph Coggs.

'You're early,' I said lightly.

He nodded.

I looked at him more closely. His bare legs were cold with goose flesh, his shabby sandals were soaking wet, and I suspected that he had been weeping.

'What's happened?' I asked more gently.

He shook his head without replying.

I unlocked the door, and left things ready for the school cleaner.

Bending down, I hauled the little boy to his feet.

'Come and have some breakfast with me,' I offered. He put a cold hand in mine, and we went across to the school house.

After a cup of milky coffee and some scrambled egg on toast, he looked more cheerful. I forbore to question him. It would all come out before long, I guessed. Probably he had broken something and Mrs Coggs had cuffed him. He was devoted to his poor slatternly mother, and could not bear to have her cross with him. Sudden flight from such a situation would be his natural reaction, and the fact that he was so ravenous meant that he had not had the doorstep of bread and margarine, which I knew was his usual first meal of the day.

I went into the sitting room to collect a pile of exercise books and some new wall charts, and when I returned to the kitchen he was putting the breakfast china very carefully into the sink.

'Shall us wash it?' he enquired. They were his first words. Already he looked better.

'No, forget them, Joe. Let them soak.'

He turned on the tap, and watched the crockery being submerged.

'You'd better pop up to the bathroom and wash your hands and face,' I directed. He knew my home very well, as he often came to help in the garden, and had once or twice given me a hand in moving bits and pieces upstairs.

He vanished for five minutes while I put away the food. When he reappeared, I looked at him without speaking.

He took a deep breath.

'My mum's bad,' he said at last.

'In bed?'

'In hospital. The amb'lance come.'

'Were you alone all night?'

'No. Auntie come and took the girls. I went next door with baby.'

'To Mrs George?'

He nodded. The tears looked very near again. I decided not to question him too closely. No doubt Mrs Pringle would give me all the details, with horrific embellishments, when we met in a few minutes. But I had to know one thing.

'Does Mrs George know where you are?'

'I shouted as what I was coming up here when I left. What's more, I ain't goin' back.'

I had never seen him look so stubborn. The silence in the kitchen was suddenly broken by the sound of the school bell.

'Come on, Joe. We're going to be late,' I said, making for the door. 'You carry the charts, then I can lock up.'

We crossed the playground, dodging games of marbles, twirling skipping ropes, and flying children, and entered the lobby.

Mrs Pringle, arms akimbo, was waiting, heavy with news.

'You got 'im then,' were her first words, as she eyed Joseph with strong disapproval.

'Run along, Joe, and give out the hymn books,' I said. It was plain that there was plenty to be said, and I did not intend the boy to hear.

Mrs Pringle shuffled a little closer.

'His ma was took bad sudden. Appendix or something. Fair screeching in pain she was, so Bella George told me, until the doctor give her a shot of something. No one knows what, of course, but it's to be hoped he knows his business.'

'But what about the children? When did this happen?'

'Sometime after midnight. She banged on the bedroom wall and yelled out of the window to Bella and Jack next door. Lucky they sleeps light. It was Jack called the doctor from the phone box. Bit of luck it hadn't been verminised this week.'

'Vandalised,' I said automatically, ever the teacher. 'And has anyone heard when she will be back?'

Mrs Pringle's mouth turned down lugubriously.

'Who's to say? I mean, once you gets into a hospital there's no knowing, is there? Half the time you're thrown out as soon as you're sewn up, and the other half you lays there being observed for weeks.'

'But the children?'

'Well now,' began my cleaner, settling her bulk upon a wash basin much too frail, in my opinion, to carry such weight. She looked as though her story could continue for hours, and I began to feel anxious about my delayed school assembly. 'Ethel Tibbie, Arthur's sister as I was telling you about the other day, she and Charlie come out in the van and took the little girls back to Caxley with 'em. And Bella and Jack took in Joe and the baby for the night. But young Joe never slept a wink, so Bella said, and sheered off when her back was turned cutting Jack's sandwiches.'

'I'd better go and see her at playtime,' I said. 'She may know more about Mrs Coggs by then. But now I must get on. We're all behind this morning.'

'I wouldn't mind betting,' replied Mrs Pringle bridling, 'as Bella knows a lot less than I do.'

I would not mind betting on it either, I thought, hastening to my duties.

I left the school in Miss Briggs' charge at playtime, and drove swiftly to the other end of Fairacre where the council houses stand.

I received some interested glances as I went through the village, and guessed that my dereliction of duty would soon be common knowledge in the community. What would be the conjectures, I wondered? A sudden brainstorm? An assignation with Henry Mawne—still, unfortunately, a grass widower? A dash to the station en route for a train to my distant home, where accident or sudden death had occurred? There was no end to the dramas which could be imagined.

Bella George was a comfortable middle-aged body, whose husband was a long-distance lorry-driver.

She ushered me into her sitting room, and came at once to the point.

'You've got our Joe safe, I reckon?'

'That's true. What's the position?'

'Well, I said I'd take him and the baby, and Ethel Tibbie's got the little girls. As you know, they've got a corner shop in Caxley, mainly sweets and tobacco, and they don't have much room upstairs, so they could only manage to fit in the girls. But they'll be all right with Ethel. It's Joe's the trouble.'

'Is it any help if I have him? He's used to me.'

Her face lit up.

'Would you, Miss Read? He don't seem to settle here, though dear knows why not. He sees enough of us. The baby's no trouble. Nice to have him in the house.'

'Any news of Mrs Coggs?'

'None yet.'

'I'll ring the hospital during the day and let you know. And I'd better let Mrs Tibbie know what's happening too.'

A thought struck me.

'I suppose I'd better take Joseph's nightclothes if he's settling with me.'

Bella's jolly laugh set the ornaments on the mantelpiece ringing.

'Lord bless you, Miss Read, there's not a scrap of night clothing among the lot of 'em! Those kids sleep in their vests, if they've got 'em, and if not it's their birthday suits!'

'I should have known,' I said. 'Well, I must get back to the school, and I'll call again when I know more.'

I drove soberly back to school. Were we still the two nations that Disraeli spoke of? It looked very much like it.

Later that evening, when Joseph had been bathed and was tucked up in the spare bed wearing an old singlet of mine, I rang the hospital.

Mrs Coggs, I was told, was round from the operation, and doing nicely. It was too early to say when she would be fit to come home.

Well, I thought, at least I had been spared that irritating word 'comfortable'. I recalled W. W. Jacob's account of one Bob Pretty who was 'what the doctor called comfortable', and what the narrator of the incident said: 'He would not soil his lips by repeating.'

My other call to Ethel Tibbie, Arthur Coggs' sister, was equally satisfactory. She said she would pass on my message to Bella George as she was just setting off for Fairacre to collect some of the children's clothes, and it would save me a trip. We agreed to keep in touch, and she said if she could find anything of joe's she would drop it in.

'Not that I expect much,' she said. 'You know that household as well as I do. I can't say I'm very proud of my brother. That place is a disgrace.'

I made non-committal noises, and rang off, but I pondered on her remarks as I ate my modest supper of soup and cheese and biscuits. The place certainly was a disgrace, partly due to Mrs Coggs' inability to cope with its running and her fear of Arthur's violence, but there must surely be this other cause—the driblets of money which came so spasmodically that regular budgeting was impossible.

I was fortunate. A cheque was paid into my bank account at the end of each month. I was no financial wizard, and often hard-pressed in the week before I was paid, but my store cupboard could provide for me in lean times and, thanks to Mr Willet, my garden produced fresh fruit and vegetables. I need never go hungry.

The Caxley Building Society took care of my modest savings, and I had some sixty or seventy pounds in my cherished Post Office savings' account. Friends in the profession managed far better than I did, raising families, buying houses, taking trips abroad, and still contriving to save regularly. Compared with them, I was a poor manager. But then, I comforted myself, compared with Joseph's mother, I was a paragon of efficiency. It was all relative.

I washed up, and set the breakfast for two in the kitchen. Boiled eggs tomorrow. It would be good to have Joseph's company for a few days.

By nine o'clock, I realised how tired I was, and was about to go to bed when the front door bell rang.

It was Ethel with a carrier bag ofjoe's garments.