Village Affairs (6 page)

'Well, I'd better get on with my tidying up and then hurry back to see what damage them little varmints of Minnie's have done. When shall I tell her to come?'

'She'd better come one evening,' I said. 'There's no hurry, tell her, and if she gets a post elsewhere I shall quite understand.'

Amy suffered a sudden fit of coughing which necessitated a great deal of play with her handkerchief. At times, she can be very tiresome.

'Right!' said Mrs Pringle, shaking out a clean duster from her black oil-cloth bag. 'I'll let her know. But I wouldn't trust her with glass, if I were you, or any good china. She's a bit clumsy that way.'

She went into the infants' room and vanished from our sight.

'Come and have tea with me,' I said to Amy.

'No, I really must get back, but I couldn't possible leave before knowing the outcome of this morning's activities.'

We walked out into the sunlit playground. Overhead the swifts screamed and whirled, and the air was deliriously fresh after the classroom.

'Looks as though I'm saddled with that ghastly Minnie,' I remarked.

'You should have been firm from the outset,' replied Amy.

'I didn't get much chance,' I protested. 'She practically told me she was coming. What on earth could I do?'

'You could have said that you had offered the job to someone else, and it had been accepted.'

'What? In Fairacre? Be your age, Amy! Everyone knows I haven't a job to offer! It's as much as I can cope with having Ma Pringle bullying me about the house. I don't want more.'

'You should have thought about that earlier,' said Amy primly. 'I'm always telling you how you rush headlong into things.'

'Well, don't keep rubbing it in,' I retorted crossly. 'It's quite bad enough having to face the possibility of Minnie wrecking my home weekly, without enduring your moralising.'

Amy laughed, and patted my shoulder.

'What you need is a nice husband to protect you from yourself.'

She slid into the driving seat.

'That I don't,' I told her, through the car window. 'I've quite enough troubles already, without a husband to add to them.'

Amy shot off with an impressive turn of speed, and I waved until my maddening old friend had disappeared round the bend in the lane.

ONE Friday evening, George Annett called in on his way to St Patrick's. I could see at once that he was the bearer of bad tidings.

'There's definitely something in the wind,' he said, in answer to my queries. I've had several chaps from the office measuring the school and offering me a temporary classroom to be erected across theplayground, complete with wash-basins and lavatories.'

'When?'

'No one can say definitely. Obviously, they're just making sure I can cope with the extra numbers. It may never happen. You know how these things hang on.'

'I remember Dolly Clare telling me that poor Emily Davis, who was head at Springbourne, had this closure business hanging over her for nearly ten years.'

'There you are then! Don't get steamed up yet. But I thought I'd let you know the latest. Had any luck with applicants for the teaching post?'

'Not yet. Amy is coping for a little longer, then it will be another supply until the end of term, if I'm lucky.'

George laughed, and rose to go across to his duties.

'You will be.'

He patted my shoulder encouragingly.

'Cheer up! I'd take a bet on Fairacre School remaining as it is for another thirty years.'

'I wonder. Anyway, there's a managers' meeting soon, and perhaps we'll learn something then.'

'Ask Mrs Pringle what's going on,' shouted George, as he went down the path. 'She'd be able to tell you.'

At that moment the lady was approaching, also on her way to choir practice, and had obviously heard the remark.

I was amused to notice George's discomfiture, as he wished her 'Good evening' in a sheepish fashion.

The night was hot, and I could not sleep—a rare occurrence for me.

There was a full moon, and the room was so light that it was impossible to He still, and equally impossible to draw the curtains on such a torrid night.

The longer I stayed awake, the more I worried. What would become of me if the school closed? I had no doubt that I should be treated honourably by the education authority. Whatever teaching post I was offered would provide me with my present salary, but that was the least of my worries.

Not for the first time, I blessed my single state. I had only myself to fend for, and I thought of other teachers who were widowed with young children, or those who supported aged parents, or invalid relatives, and whose salary had to be stretched much farther than my own. Amy often told me that I led a very selfish life and perhaps it was true, but when one was faced with a situation such as that which I now contemplated, there were compensations. No one depended on me. No one offered me disturbing advice. No one would blame me for any decision I took, however disastrous it turned out to be.

I left my hot and rumpled bed, and hung out of the window.
The shining rose leaves glittered in the bright moonlight. The sky was clear, and the evening star hung low over the village, as brilliant as a jewel.

Here was the heart of my grief. To leave this—my well-loved school house, and its garden, shady with trees planted by other teachers, long dead, but remembered by me daily for their works which still endured.

I could truthfully say that I relished every day that I spent in Fairacre. It was not only a beautiful place, backed by the downs, open, airy, and dominated by St Patrick's spire thrusting high above the thatched and tiled roofs around it. It was also a friendly place, as I soon found when I had arrived as a newcomer some years earlier.

The thought of leaving Mr Willet, Mr and Mrs Partridge, the Mawnes—even Mrs Pringle—was unbearable. My life was so closely bound with theirs, in fact, so closely woven with all those living in the village, that I should feel as weak and withered as an uprooted plant, if circumstances forced me to go.

As for the children, to part with them would be the hardest blow. I loved them all, not in a sentimental fashion but because I admired and respected their sound country qualities.

I loved their patience, their docility, their efforts to please. Certainly, at times, these very virtues exasperated me. Then I would find them unduly slow, complacent and aquiescent, but when I took stock I had to admit that it was often impatience on my part which roused my wrath. How could I ever leave them?

I returned to my bed, and now it was practical matters which bedevilled me. Why on earth hadn't I bought a house for myself, instead of living in a fool's paradise in the school
one? The times I had thought about it—and the times Amy had admonished me on the same subject-were beyond counting.

But somehow, I had let matters drift. I had never seriously thought of leaving Fairacre, apart from the odd urge to make a change which sometimes hit me in the Spring. Even then, just reading the advertisements in
The Times Educational Supplement
had usually been enough to quench my brief ardours. To slide gently from middle age to retirement in Fairacre seemed such a serene and mellow way to face the future. Of course, I realised that one day, when I had left, someone else would live in my dear house and teach in the school, but it all seemed so far away, that I was lulled into a dream-like state of bliss.

Now had come the rude awakening. It was E. M. Delafield, I believe, who said that she wanted seven words on her tombstone:

'I expected this, but not so soon.'

They echoed my own thought absolutely.

All the cocks in Fairacre were crowing before I fell into an uneasy sleep.

It was the following evening, when I was making plans for an early night, that I saw, with horror, the untidy figure of Minnie Pringle coming up the path.

I think it is uncommonly sensible and prudent of Minnie to buy her clothes at local jumble sales, and I have often recognised old garments of mine among her wardrobe. But what irks me is the way she wears them without the slightest attempt to adapt them to her skinny figure.

She is particularly fond of a dilapidated fur coat which was
once Mrs Mawne's. It is a square garment, made from square pieces of moulting fur. A great many squares are parting from their neighbours, and as the whole thing swamps Minnie, it would have seemed reasonable to remove one row of squares to make it fit, or at least to mend the slits and tie a belt round it. As it is, Minnie's hands are hidden about six inches up the sleeves, the hem, which is coming undone, reaches her calves, and the rest of the tent-like object swings about round Minnie's frame like a scarecrow's coat on a broomstick.

On this occasion, as the evening was warm, I was spared Mrs Mawne's ex-coat, for Minnie was wearing a shiny mauve blouse over a wrap-around skirt whose pattern seemed vaguely familiar to me. On her bare feet were black patent evening sandals with high heels ornamented with diamanté studs.

I braced myself for the interview and invited her in.

'Auntie says as you could do with some help,' began Minnie, once settled in an armchair.

'Would two hours a week suit you?'

I had given some thought to this problem of my own making, and had decided that, with some contriving, I could find her work within her limited ability which would not conflict too obviously with Mrs Pringle's duties. It was going to be a delicate matter trying to keep her off her aunt's preserves, such as cleaning my few pieces of silver and washing the kitchen floor with as much care as one would sponge a baby's face, and I guessed that my efforts were probably doomed to failure at the outset. But surely, in two hours even Minnie could not do much harm.

Also, two hours of work were really all I could afford to pay on top of Mrs Pringle's weekly dues. I awaited Minnie's reaction with mixed feelings.

Minnie scratched her tousled red locks with a silver-varnished nail of inordinate length.

'Same pay as auntie?' she enquired at length.

'Yes.'

'O.K. What wants doin'?'

'I'll show you in a minute,' I said, feeling that we were going along rather fast. 'When can you come? I gather you have some work already.'

'You can say that again,' said Minnie, lying back and putting her sandals on the coffee table. 'I goes to Mrs Partridge Mondays—the Vicar fixed that.'

My heart bled for poor Mrs Partridge, at the mercy of her husband's Christian charity. The havoc Minnie could cause in that fragile collection of old glass, Hepplewhite chairs and china cabinets made one shudder to contemplate.

'Then I goes to Mrs Mawne on Wednesday mornings, but that's all scrubbin'. Mr Mawne don't want no one to touch his butterfly drawers and stuffed birds and that, though I offered to give 'em a good dusting. He's a funny chap, ain't he?'

I forbore to comment, but my opinion of both Mr and Mrs Mawne's good sense rose considerably.

'And Thursday evenings I does out the hall, 'cos Auntie says she's getting a bit past it, and the committee gentlemen said it was all right for me to do it, though I don't know as I shall stick it long.'

'Why not?'

'Mucky. Bits of sausage roll and jam tart squashed between the floor boards, and the sink gets stopped up with tea leaves.'

'Don't they use tea bags?'

Minnie's mouth dropped open. She looked as though she
had been coshed. I began to feel alarmed, but at last she spoke.

'Cor!' she whispered. 'You're a marvel! I'll tell 'em that! It's the cricket tea ladies as does it, I reckons, though them Scouts and Cubs isn't above mucking things up in spite of all them oaths they take. Tea bags is the answer. Of course it is.'

I said I was glad to have been of help, and wondered how soon I should be ostracised by all those who managed the village hall kitchen.

'Is that all the work you do?'

'I has to keep my own place tidy at Springbourne,' said Minnie, looking suddenly truculent.

I hastened to apologise.

'Of course, of course! I meant any more work in Fairacre.'

Minnie sat up, removed her sandals from the table top, and surveyed her grubby toe nails.

'I likes to keep Saturday free.'

'Naturally. I shouldn't want you to give up your weekends. What about Friday afternoons?'

'I shops on Fridays.'

'Wednesday then?'

'Auntie comes up here Wednesdays.'

'Oh, of course. Tuesday any good?'

'I goes to Springbourne Tuesdays, 'cos it's double green shield stamp day at the shop.'

'What's wrong with Monday?'

'The Vicar.'

I was beginning to get desperate. Did Minnie want work or did she not? Heaven alone knew I would be happy to dispense with her services, but having got so far I felt I must soldier on. I changed my tactics.

'Well, Minnie, when
could
you come?'

'Friday afternoon.'

I took a deep breath.

'But I thought you said you went shopping on Friday.'

'Not till six o'clock. It's late night Caxley.'

I controlled a sudden desire to scream the place down.

'Very well then, let's say from two until four on Friday afternoon. Or one-thirty to three-thirty, if that suits you better.'

'Is that harpast one?'

'Yes,' I said weakly. Whoever had had the teaching of Minnie Pringle deserved deep sympathy, but not congratulation.

There was silence as Minnie scratched her head again, and thought it out.

'Well, that's fine and dandy. I'll come up harpast one and do two hours, and go at—what time did you say?'

'Harpast—
half past
three,' I said faintly. 'I shall be back from school soon after that.'

'What about me money then?' She sounded alarmed.

'I shall leave it on the mantelpiece,' I assured her, 'just as I do for Mrs Pringle. Now, come and look at the work.'

I proposed that she took over window-cleaning and the upstairs brasswork, and bath and basins. This meant that she would be out of Mrs Pringle's way, and could not do too much damage.

I showed her where the dusters and cleaning things were kept, and she looked doubtfully at the window-cleaning liquid.