(11/20) Farther Afield (2 page)

'Miss,' shouted Ernest, above the din, 'it's home time.'

'Two minutes to finish clearing up,' I directed, fortissimo.

Within three, they rose for prayers. The class-room was bare, ready for Mrs Pringle's ministrations during the coming week, and the wastepaper basket was overflowing.

'Hands together, eyes closed.'

I waited until the seats had stopped banging upright, and the fidgeting had stopped.

'Lord, keep us safe this night,
Secure from all our fears,
May angels guard us while we sleep,
Till morning light appears.

Amen.'

If this was taken at a more spanking pace than usual, why not? Ahead stretched freedom, fresh air, bathing and fishing in the infant Cax, wrestling and jumping, rejoicing in growing strength, and, no doubt, eating all day long – ice-cream, potato crisps, biscuits and loathsome bubble-gum, in an endless stream.

'Make sure you take
everything
home, and enjoy your holidays. When do you come back?'

'September the fifth, miss,' they chanted.

'Very well. Good afternoon, children.'

'Good afternoon, miss.'

And then began the stampede to get out into the real world which was theirs for six whole weeks.

I remained behind for a few minutes, locking drawers and cupboards, and retrieving a few stray papers to add to the load in the wastepaper basket.

I locked the Victorian piano. How much longer would it hang together, I wondered? The tortoise stove stood cold and dusty now, but Mrs Pringle's hand and plenty of blacklead would prepare it for the autumn term. There would be the familiar battle I supposed, about '
the right day
' to light it, Mrs Pringle playing for time, whilst I pleaded, cajoled, and finally ordered, the stove to be lit.

But what did that matter now? 'Seize the moments as they pass,' said the poet, I intended to follow his sound advice, and locking the school door, emerged into the sunshine.

There was a welcoming chirrup from Tibby as I entered the front door of the school house. She was at the top of the stairs, yawning widely, her claws gripping the carpet rhythmically as she stretched.

Plain Wilton carpet costs an enormous amount of money, as I discovered when I was driven to replace the threadbare stair carpet last year. Tibby has seen to it that the top and bottom stair are generously tufted, much to the horror of Mrs Pringle, and to my lesser sorrow.

It is sad, I know, to see such maltreatment of one's furnishings, but one must look realistically at life. Either one has no cat and plain Wilton, or one has a cat and tufted Wilton. I prefer the latter.

Tibby, I knew, had just arisen from her resting place on my eiderdown – another habit which Mrs Pringle deplores.

'Cats' fleas cause cholera', she told me once with such conviction that I almost believed her. She followed up the attack with a vivid account of someone she knew who had allowed their child – or maybe it was their second cousin's child – to bite the skin of a banana. The result was a rash, diagnosed on the spot by the doctor as leprosy, and the child was never seen again by the family.

Although I did not believe a word of this cautionary tale at the time, so downright was Mrs Pringle's maimer whilst telling it, that I still find myself opening a banana with careful fingers and making sure that the children do the same. The cholera I have decided to ignore. A school teacher's life is too busy to follow up every precaution suggested, and in any case, Tibby, I tell Mrs P. robustly, has no fleas.

The cat sprang down the stairs and accompanied me into the kitchen, watching the kettle being filled, the tray being set, and all the familiar routine leading to a few drops of milk in a saucer for her, as I drank my tea.

A quarter of an hour later, my second cup steaming beside me, I watched her as she lapped. Eyes half-closed in bliss, her pink tongue made short work of the milk.

'We've broken up, Tib,' I told her. 'Broken up at last.'

I leant back and thought idly about the hundred and one domestic affairs I must see to. There was Mr Willet to consult about a load of logs. And then I had promised the vicar I would play the organ whilst the regular organist, Mr Annett, had his annual holiday. I must check the dates. And the sitting room curtains were in need of attention. Ever since their return from the cleaners, the lining had hung down a good three inches, so that even I had been irritated by their slip-shod appearance.

Then I really ought to tidy all the drawers in the house. The kitchen table drawer jammed itself stubbornly on the fish-slice every time it was opened. But where could the fish-slice go? And the paper-bag drawer had so many stuffed into it that half of them had fallen over the back into the bottling jar cupboard below.

Never mind, I told myself bravely, with all this time before me the place would soon be in apple-pie order. Why, I might even get round to labelling all those holiday prints of yesteryear before I clean forgot the names of the places.

It was pleasant lying back in the armchair reviewing all the jobs waiting to be done, confident that all would be accomplished in the golden weeks that lay ahead. I should tackle them methodically and fairly soon, I told myself, stretching as luxuriously as Tibby. No need to rush. And later on I should take myself for a short holiday somewhere pleasant – Wales, perhaps, or Northumberland, or the Peak District. Or what about Dorset? Very attractive, Dorset, they said...

Near to slumber, I basked in my complacency. The teapot cooled, the cat purred and a bumble bee meandered murmurously up and down the lavender hedge outside.

Months later, looking back, I realised that that blissful hour was the high-light of the entire summer holiday.

2 Struck Down

D
AWN
breaks with particular beauty on the first day of the holidays, no matter what the weather. On this occasion, the sun fairly gilded the lily, rousing me with its beams, and dappling the dewy garden with light and shade.

I took my coffee cup outside, and sniffed the pinks in the border. This was the life! Even the thought of Mrs Pringle, due to arrive at 9.30 for a 'bottoming' session, failed to quench my spirits.

Across the empty playground stood the silent school. No bell would toll today in that little bell-tower. No jarring foot would jangle the metal door scraper. No yells, no screams, no infant wailings would make the air hideous. Fairacre School was as peaceful as the graveyard nearby – a place of hushed rest, of gathering dust, given over to the little lives of spiders and curious field mice.

Not for long, of course. Within a few days Mrs Pringle would begin her onslaught. Buckets, scrubbing brushes, sacking aprons, kneelers, and a lump of tough yellow soap prised from the long bar with a shovel, with an array of bottles containing disinfectant, linseed oil and vinegar, and other potions of cleanliness, would assault the peaceful bidding under the whirlwind direction of Mrs Pringle herself. Woe betide any stray beetle or ladybird lurking behind cupboards or skirting boards! By the time Mrs Pringle's ministrations were over, the place would be as antiseptic as a newly-scrubbed hospital ward.

In the far distance I could hear sheep bleating and a tractor chugging about its business. A car hooted, a man shouted, a dog barked. The life of the village went on as usual. The baker set out his new loaves, the butcher festooned his window with sausages, the housewife banged her mats against the wall, and the liberated children beset them all.

Only I, it seemed, was idle, glorying in my inactivity as happily as the small ruffled robin who sat sunning himself on a hawthorn twig nearby. But such pleasant detachment could not last.

St Patrick's had long ago struck nine o'clock, and the crunch of gravel under foot now told of Mrs Pringle's arrival.

I sighed and went to greet her.

Mrs Pringle's black oil-cloth bag, in which she carries her cretonne apron and any shopping she has done on the way, was topped this morning by a magnificent crisp lettuce, the size of a football.

'Thought you could do with it,' she said, presenting it to me. 'I know you don't bother to cook in the holidays, and I noticed all yourn had bolted. Willet said you was to pull 'em up unless you wanted to be over run with earrywigs.'

I thanked her sincerely for the present, and the second-hand advice.

'Tell you what,' went on the lady, struggling into her overall, 'if you pull them up just before I go, I can throw them to my chickens. They can always do with a bit of fresh green.'

I promised to do so.

'Well, now,' said Mrs Pringle, rolling up her sleeves for battle, 'what about them kitchen cupboards?'

'Very well,' I replied meekly. 'Which shall we start on?'

Mrs Pringle cast a malevolent eye upon the cupboards under the sink, those on the wall holding food, and the truly dreadful one which houses casseroles, pie-dishes, lemon-squeezers and ovenware of every shape and size, liable to cascade from their confines every time the door opens.

'We start at the top,' Mrs Pringle told me, 'and work down.' She sounded like a competent general issuing orders for the day to a remarkably inefficient lieutenant.

I watched her mount the kitchen chair, fortunately a well-built piece of furniture capable of carrying Mrs Pringle's fourteen stone.

'Get a tray,' directed the lady, 'and pack it with all this rubbish as I hand it down. We'll have to have a proper sort-out of this lot.'

Obediently, I stacked packets of gravy powder, gelatine, haricot beans, semolina and a collection of other cereals and dry goods which I had no idea I was housing.

'Now, why should I have three packets of arrowroot?' I wondered aloud.

'Bad management,' snorted Mrs P. There seemed no answer to that.

'And half this stuff,' she continued, 'should have been used months ago. It's a wonder to me you haven't got Weevils or Mice. I wouldn't care to use this curry myself. That firm went out of business just after the war.'

I threw the offending packet into the rubbish box – a sop to Cerberus.

'Ah!' said Mrs Pringle darkly, 'there'll be plenty more to add to that by the time we've done.'

It took us almost an hour to clear all three shelves. Mrs Pringle was in her element, wrestling with dirt and disorder, and glorying in the fact that she had me there, under her thumb, to crow over. I can't say that I minded very much. Mrs Pringle's slings and arrows hardly dented my armour at all, and it was pleasant to come across long lost commodities again.

'I've been looking everywhere for those vanilla pods,' I cried, snatching the long glass tube from Mrs Pringle's hand. 'And that bottle of anchovy essence.'

'It's as dry as a bone,' replied Mrs Pringle with satisfaction, 'and so's this almond essence bottle, and the capers. What a wicked waste! If my mother could see this she would turn in her grave! Every week the cupboards were turned out regular, and everything in use brought forward and the new put at the back. "Method!", she used to say. "That's all that's needed, my girl. Method!" and it's thanks to her that I'm as tidy as I am today,' said my slave-driver smugly.

'My mother,' I replied, 'died when I was in my late teens.'

But if I imagined that this body blow would affect my sparring partner, I was to be disappointed.

'It's the early years that count,' snapped Mrs Pringle, throwing a box of chocolate vermicelli at my head.

I gave up, and we continued in silence until the cupboard was bare. Then I was allowed to retreat upstairs to dust the bedrooms whilst Mrs Pringle attacked the shelves with the most efficacious detergent known to man.

A little later, over coffee, Mrs Pringle gave me up-to-date news of the village.

'You've heard about the Flower Show, I suppose?' she began.

I confessed that I had not attended this Fairacre event on the previous Saturday.

'A good thing. There's trouble brewing. Mr Willet says he's writing to the paper about it.'

'Why? What happened?'

'You may well ask. Mr Robert won first prize for the best kept garden.'