Village Affairs (21 page)

He ploughed his way to the gate through the screaming mob, and smiled kindly upon one bullet-headed urchin who butted him heavily in the stomach as he fled from a pursuing playmate.

'A thoroughly good man!' I told Tibby as I collected the coffee cups.

Amy called a few evenings later with an invitation to drinks at her house in Bent.

'And stay on to eat with us,' said Amy. 'The rest of them should have gone by eight, and we'll have a nice little cold collation ready, and a good natter.'

'Suppose they don't go?' I queried. 'I've been to lots of these dos—particularly before Sunday lunch, where the joint is getting more and more charred as the visitors all wait for other people to make a move, not realising that the luckier ones are staying on.'

'That's why it will be cold,' said Amy. 'Please allow me to run my own parties as I wish. Sometimes you are a trifle bossy.'

'Well!'
I said, flabbergasted. 'Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! You're the bossy one, as well you know!'

Amy laughed.

'I didn't come here to have a vulgar brawl, darling, but I should love a cigarette if you have such a thing in this nonsmoking Paradise.'

'Of course, of course!' I said, reminded of my duties as a hostess. 'They're donkey's years old, as I only buy them when I go abroad and get them duty free, as you know. Still they should be a good vintage by now.'

Amy puffed elegantly, and seemed quite content.

'Are you trying for Mrs Allen's job when she goes?'

Not again, I thought despairingly.

'No, I don't think I am. I've been turning it over, and I really feel I can't be bothered until I know more definitely about the plans for this school.'

'I believe Lucy Colgate is trying for it,' said Amy, naming a contemporary of ours at college, whom I always detested.

'She's welcome,' I said shortly.

'She'll be at the party, incidentally,' said Amy, tapping ash from her cigarette with a rose-tipped finger.

'Well, it's your party, as you've already pointed out. I can be as civil as the next, I hope.'

'I can't think why you dislike her.'

'I don't actively dislike her. I just find her affected and a liar to boot.'

'She's very well connected. Her uncle's the Bishop of Somewhere.'

'So what! It doesn't alter Lucy Colgate for me. However, I promise to behave beautifully when we meet.'

'She would have loved this place, you know. She always hoped you would apply for another job, so that she could come here.'

I began to feel decidedly more cheerful.

'Well, she won't have the opportunity now, will she? If Fairacre stays, then I do. If it closes, no headmistress will be necessary—not even horrible Lucy Colgate!'

Amy began to laugh, and I followed suit.

'Tell me the latest about Vanessa,' I said, changing the subject. 'How's that baby?'

'My dear, she's having another.'

'She can't be! She's only just had this one!'

'It can happen,' said Amy. 'It's not due for another seven months. She told me on the phone last night. I must say, that in my young days one waited until one was quite five months gone, as the vulgar expression is, before admitting coyly to one's hopes. But there, I gather from a doctor friend, that you have to book your nursing home bed quite twelve months in advance, so I suppose there's no encouragement to be over-modest about the proceedings.'

'I'd better look out my knitting patterns for baby clothes again,' I said. 'I suppose she wouldn't like a tea-cosy this time? I'm halfway through one.'

'Try her,' advised Amy, looking at the clock. 'I suppose there's no chance of a cup of coffee?'

'I do apologise,' I said, making for the kitchen. 'I seem to have forgotten my manners.'

'You must take a lesson from dear Lucy,' said Amy wickedly, following me. 'Her manners are quite perfect, and what's more, she makes delicious coffee.'

'So do I,' I told her, putting on the kettle. 'When I think of it.'

A few days later the Vicar appeared, waving a slip of paper in triumph.

'At last, my dear Miss Read! We have fixed a date, though at what cost of time and telephone calls I shudder to think. Here we are! It is for March the first, a Friday. That seems to be the only free day for most of the managers. Henry Mawne has a lecture on sea-birds to give in Caxley, but Mrs Mawne says she has heard it dozens of times and there will be no need for her to attend.'

I remembered how competently she looked after her dithering husband on these occasions, and asked if he would be able to manage without her support.

'Oh yes, indeed. George Annett is going and says he will see that Henry has his papers in order, and his spectacles and so on.'

As George Annett can be just as scatter-brained as Henry Mawne under pressure, I felt that it would be a case of the blind leading the blind, but forbore to comment.

'We'll copy this out today,' I assured the Vicar, securing the slip of paper under the massive brass inkstand which has adorned the head teacher's desk here since the time of Queen Victoria.

'Splendid, splendid!' said Mr Partridge, making for the door. 'It will be a good thing to see how the wind blows in the village. Nothing but good can come of airing our feelings, I feel sure.'

'Help me up with the blackboard, Ernest,' I said, as the door closed behind the Vicar. 'We'll start straightaway on these notices.'

'Good,' said Ernest with approval. 'Save us doin' them 'orrible ol' fractions.'

'They'll come later,' I told him.

SPRING came suddenly. We had grown so accustomed to the miserable dark days, and to the flecks of snow still dappling the higher ground, that to awake one morning to a blue sky and the chorus of birds seemed a miracle.

The wind had veered to the south-west at last, and moist warm air refreshed us all. The elms were beginning to show the rosy glow of early budding. The crocuses were piercing the wet ground, the birds were looking about for nesting sites and the world seemed decidedly more hopeful.

Even Mrs Pringle seemed a little less morose as she went about her duties and was heard singing 'Who Is Sylvia?' instead of 'Lead Kindly Light Amidst the Encircling Gloom.'

I complimented her, and was told that she 'learnt it up the Glee Club as a girl.'

It was good to have the schoolroom windows open, although I had to call upon Mr Willet to leave his usual coke-sweeping in the playground to give me a hand.

'They's stuck with the damp,' puffed Mr Willet, smiting the wooden frames with a horny hand. 'Needs to be planed really, but then, come the summer you'd get a proper draught. Bad as that there skylight.'

He looked at it gloomily.

'Useless to waste time and money on it. Been like that since 204
I sat here as a boy, and will be the same when I'm dead and gone, I shouldn't wonder.'

'You're down in the dumps today,' I teased. 'Not like you.'

Mr Willet sighed.

'Had bad news. My brother's gone home.'

'I'm sorry,' I said, and was doubly so —for his unhappiness and for my own misplaced levity. The old country phrase for dying 'gone home', has a melancholy charm about it, a finality, a rounding off.

'Well, he'd been bad some time, but you know how it is, you don't ever think of anyone younger than you going home, do you?'

'It's a horrible shock,' I agreed.

'That's the third death this year,' mused Mr Willet, his eyes on the rooks wheeling against the sky. The fresh air blew through the window, stirring the scant hair on his head.

'Like a stab wound, every time,' he said. 'Leaves a hole, and a little of your life-blood drains away.'

I could say nothing. I was too moved by the spontaneous poetry. Mr Willet's utterances are usually of practical matters, a broken hinge, a tree needing pruning or a vegetable plot to be dug. To hear such rich imagery, worthy of an Elizabethan poet, fall from this old countryman's lips, was intensely touching.

Mrs Pringle's entry with a bucket of coke disturbed our reverie.

'Well,' said Mr Willet, shaking himself back to reality. 'This won't do. Life's got to go on, ain't it?'

And he stumped away to meet it.

Minnie Pringle was still about her ministrations when I returned home on Friday afternoon. She was flicking a feather brush dangerously close to some Limoges china dishes which I cherish.

'Lawks!' she cried, arrested in her toil, 'I never knew it was that late! I never heard the kids come out to play, and the oil man ain't been by yet.'

'Well, it's quarter to four by the clock,' I pointed out.

Minnie gazed blearily about the room.

'On the mantel piece,' I said. 'And there's another in the kitchen.'

'Oh, the
clock
!' said Minnie wonderingly. 'I never looks at the
clock.
I don't read the time that well. It's them two hands muddles me.'

I never cease to be amazed at the unplumbed depths of Minnie's ignorance. How she has survived so long unscathed is astounding.

'How do you know what time to set out from Springbourne to get here?' I asked.

'The bus comes,' replied Minnie simply.

I should like to have asked what happened if there were a bus strike, but there is a limit to one's time.

'I'd best be going then,' announced Minnie, collecting an array of dusters from an armchair.

'Don't bother to wash them, Minnie,' I said hastily. 'I'll do them later on. I have to wash some tea towels and odds and ends.'

It would be a treat, I thought, to see the dusters hanging on a line for a change. Their last Friday's resting place had been over a once shining copper kettle which stands in the sitting-room.

Minnie shrugged herself into a fur fabric coat which pre
tended to be leopard skin, and would have deceived no one—certainly not a leopard.

'Had a bust-up down home,' said Minnie, her face radiant at the memory.

'Not Ern!'

'Ah! It was too. 'E turned up when I was abed. Gone twelve it was 'cos the telly'd finished.'

'Good heavens! I hope you didn't let him in.'

'No, I done what auntie said, and put the kitchen table up agin the door, and I 'ollered down to him from the bedroom window.'

'And he went?'

Minnie sniffed, grinning with delight.

'Well, after a bit he went. He kep' all on about 'aving no place to sleep, and I said: "What about that ol' Mrs Fowler then?" and what he says back I wouldn't repeat to a lady like you.'

'I thought he'd left her long ago.'

'He went back for the furniture, and she wouldn't let 'im in, so he chucked a milk bottle at her, and there was a real set-to until the neighbours broke it up.'

'Who told you all this?'

'Jim next door. He took Ern into Caxley when 'e went in for the night shift. Said it was either that, or 'e'd tell the police 'e was molesting me.'

'He sounds a sensible sort of neighbour.'

'Oh, Jim's all right when he's not on the beer.'

'So what happened to Ern?'

'Jim dropped 'im at the end of the town. Ern's got a sorter cousin there would give 'im a doss down probably.'

'Well, I only hope he doesn't come again,' I said. 'You seem to have managed very well.'

'It's auntie really,' said Minnie. 'She told me what to do, and I done it. Auntie nearly always wins when she has an up-and-a-downer with anybody.'

I could endorse that, I thought, seeing Minnie to the door.

I heard more about Ern's belligerence from Mrs Pringle, and later from Amy, whose window cleaner had the misfortune to live next door to Mrs Fowler in Caxley.

Town dwellers who complain of loneliness and having no one to talk to, should perhaps be thankful that they do not live in a village. Here we go to the other extreme. I never cease to be astonished at the speed with which news gets about. In this instance I heard from the three sources, Minnie, Mrs Pringle and Amy, of the Caxley and Springbourne rows, and all within three or four days. It is hopeless to try to keep anything secret in a small community, and long ago I gave up trying.

'Heard about that Ern,?' asked Mrs Pringle.

I said I had.

'I must say our Minnie settled him nicely.'

'Thanks to you, I gather.'

Mrs Pringle permitted herself a gratified smirk.

'Well, you knows Min. She's no idea how to tackle anyone, and that Ern's been a sore trial to us all. She gets in a panic for nothing.'

'I don't call midnight yelling "for nothing",' I objected.

'Well, they're married, aren't they?' said Mrs Pringle, as though that explained matters.

'Mind you,' she went on, lodging a full dust-pan on one hip, 'we ain't heard the last of him. Now Mrs Fowler's done with him, I reckon he'll badger Min to take him back.'

'Where is he now?'

'Staying with that cousin of his, but she don't want him. He's got the sofa of nights, and the springs won't stand 'is weight. She told me herself when I saw her at the bus stop market day.'

'Is he working?'

Mrs Pringle snorted in reply.

'He don't know the meaning of the word! Gets the dole, I suppose. I told our Minnie: "Don't you have him back on no account, and certainly if he's out of a job! You'll be keeping 'im all 'is days, if you don't watch out." But there, I doubt if she really took it in. She's a funny girl.'

Amy's account, at second or third hand, covered the Caxley incident. According to her window cleaner, the rumpus started sometime after nine, when Ern, a little the worse for drink, arrived at Mrs Fowler's front door and demanded admittance.

Mrs Fowler's reply was to shoot the bolts on front and back door, and to go upstairs to continue the argument from a bedroom window.

Ern called her many things, among them a 'a vinegar-faced besom' 'a common thief and 'a right swindling skinflint'. He accused her of trapping him into living there, and then of taking possession of his rightful property, to wit, chairs, a table, pots and pans and a brass bird-cage of his Aunt Florence's.

Mrs Fowler, giving as good as she got, refuted the charges. He had given her the chattels of his own free will, and a poor lot they were anyway, not worth house room, and if he continued to molest a defenceless and respectable widow, whose husband had always been a paid-up member of the
BufFalos she would have him know, she would call for help.