(1/20) Village School (26 page)

'M
ALLETS
,' shouted Mr Willet, above the wind, looking with marked disfavour at the one in his hand, 'ain't what they used to be!'

He was standing on a school chair in Mr Roberts' field, driving chestnut stakes into the ground, so that we could rope off the track for the school sports which were to be held the next afternoon. His scanty hair was blown up into a fine cockscomb, and the rooks in the elms nearby were hurling themselves into the arms of the wind from the tossing branches.

A little knot of children, ostensibly helpers, watched his efforts. Eric had managed to get the rope into a tangle of gargantuan proportions, and the hope of ever finding an end among the intricacies on the grass at his feet, was fast waning.

'You ain't half slummered it up,' said Ernest admiringly, stirring the mess with his foot.

A despairing shout went up from John Burton who was counting sacks lent by Mr Roberts for the sack race. A malicious gust of wind had caught up half a dozen sacks and was whirling them towards the road. There was a stampede of squealing, breathless children after them.

The Vicar's tent was being erected, slowly and hazardously in the shelter of the hawthorn hedge. Here lemonade and biscuits were to be sold. John Burton had executed a bold notice saying:

LIGHT REFRESHMENTS
(IN AID OF SCHOOL FUNDS)

and this was to be pinned on the tent just before the parents and friends arrived.

Samson, the house cow, had been moved to the next field, but showed a keen interest in the evening's proceedings, with her head protruding over the hedge and her eyes rolling. There were far more helpers offering her quite unnecessary meals than those who deigned to assist Mr Willet and me in our preparations.

Mr Willet drove in the last stake and looked at his watch. He held it at arm's length about a yard away from his stomach, and scrutinized it from under his lashes, frowning hard as he did so. His second chin settled on the stud which hung in the neck-band of his collarless shirt.

'Nearly seven,' he grunted. 'Better get a move on, miss. It's choir practice tonight and I reckons Mr Annett will be along pretty soon.'

He pocketed the watch and looked about him.

'Pity them moles saw fit to make their hills just where you're running tomorrow.' He turned to Eric and Ernest who were sitting on the pile of rope playing with plantains, one trying to knock the head off the other's, with much ferocity and inaccuracy.

'Here!' he bellowed, against the wind. They looked up like startled fawns.

'You go and git spades and hit them molehills flat, else you'll be sprawling tomorrow. And let's have a hand at that 'orrible 'eap you made of that rope!'

Miraculously he found an end and handed it to me. Grumbling and grunting, puffing out his stained and ragged moustache, he slowly backed away from me; his tough old hands working and weaving among the tangle as though they had an independent life of their own, so swiftly and surely they moved.

I tied my end to the first stake, and though Mr Willet surveyed it with some contempt he said nothing, but worked down the line, leaning against the wind and brushing stray children out of his way without glancing at them, until the track was roped off from the rest of the field.

The church clock struck seven and I called the children.

'Best go and have a sluice, I suppose,' said Mr Willet, as we battled with the gate, 'I'll see you're all straight tomorrow morning, miss.' He looked up at the weathercock that shuddered in the wind above the spire.

'If you races with this wind behind you tomorrow,' he told the children, 'you'll break some records-mark my words!'

I switched on the electric copper ready for my bath-water, when I returned. In the dining-room stood large jugs of lemonade essence ready for the morrow, but from the sound of the roaring wind outside hot coffee would be more welcome. I sorted out coloured braids for the relay race, and a basket of potatoes for the potato race, and hoped that Mr Willet had looked out sound and hardy flower-pots for the heavy-footed boys who had clamoured to have a flower-pot race included in the programme. They had seen this at Beach Green's Sports Day and had been practising in the evenings for weeks, stumping laboriously along, placing one pot by hand before the other, with their crimson faces bent earthwards and their patched seats presented to the sky.

The kitchen was comfortably steamy when I put the zinc bath on the floor and poured in buckets of rainwater from the pump. As I lay in the silky brown water, too idle to do more than relax and enjoy the heat, I listened to the rose tree which Dr Martin had admired last autumn when he had come to visit Miss Clare here. It beat, in a frenzy of wind, against the window-pane. To drown the noise of its scrabbling thorns, I roused myself to switch on the portable wireless set, which was within arm's reach, on the kitchen chair.

'Strong westerly winds, reaching gale force at times, are expected in all southern areas of the British Isles,' said a brisk, cheerful voice. Snarling, I switched off, and sank back to the comforting water.

Later, on my way to bed, I looked out of the landing window. Ragged clouds were tearing across the darkening sky, and over in Mr Roberts' field a dim, pale shape napped against the hedge. Giving up the unequal struggle, the vicar's tent had sunk hopelessly to the ground.

Next morning, however, things looked brighter. The wind, though still strong, seemed less aggressive, and two of Mr Roberts' men erected the tent again. The sound of tent pegs being smitten reached us in school, where the children were much too excited to settle to any serious work.

The boys, as usual, were the more anxious about the afternoon. Fear of not doing well made them quite unbearable. They boasted of their own prowess and belittled that of their neighbours, while the girls looked on philosophically at this display of male exhibitionism.

'Look at John rubbing his legs! Thinks that'll make him run faster. Some hopes!'

'Tones up the muscles; that's what it does. All good runners does that before racing. Pity you don't try it. You was like an ol' snail last night down the rec.'

'Only 'cos I was a bit winded. Been overdoing the training, see!'

'You see ol' Eric, Saturday? Thought he was jumping high when he cleared that titchy little hedge down Bember's Corner. Coo, I've jumped twice that!'

'Me too. Easy, that hedge is. You should see me get over that electric wire Mr Roberts has put up in the heifers' field! Up I goes … and whoo … I bet it was over four foot I done!'

And so on. It seemed best to let them have their heads for a little while, but in the latter part of the morning they settled down to a history test, although I noticed a certain amount of secret muscle-flexing and leg-massage as the athletes prepared themselves for outstanding displays before the admiring gaze of parents and friends in the afternoon.

When Mrs Crossley arrived with the dinner van, the children were washing their hands at the stone sink. I heard them cross-questioning her thoroughly.

'And what vegetables, Mrs Crossley?'

'Carrots and peas.'

'They blows you out too much. I shan't have they.'

'What for pudding, Mrs Crossley?'

'Some very nice currant pudding, with custard. You'll like that.'

''Twould have been best to have something lighter like. Fruit and that, wouldn't it, Eric?'

'I dunno. I'm hungry. Reckons I shall have some pudden, races or no races.'

'You hear him? Him what was so sharp on us last night eating sweets? Said us was in training?
Pudden,
he's going to eat! Fat chance we'll have in the relay!'

'We best eat summat,' said John Burton's placid voice, 'or we won't have no strength at all.'

'Well,' said Ernest grudgingly, 'it don't sound the sort of dinner that
real
runners would have, to me, but I s' pose us'll just have to stoke up best we can.'

They reentered the schoolroom and settled themselves for grace. As far as I could see our athletes forgot their Spartan principles as soon as the food was put before them, and second, and even third, helpings of currant pudding were despatched with the usual Fairacre appetite.

There were plenty of people to watch the sports and patronize the refreshment tent. Miss Clare was in charge of the jugs of lemonade and the six biscuit tins and Mrs Finch-Edwards, looking very handsome in a classic maternity smock of polka-dot navy blue silk, with its inevitable white collar, sat beside her with an Oxo tin full of change.

'Yes, I'm keeping very well,' she responded to my inquiries, 'and I think hubby and I have got absolutely everything now. Even the pram's on order!'

There was a grunt from Mrs Pringle who had just brought in a tray full of glasses.

'Defying Providence!' she boomed. 'Never does to order the pram or cot till the little stranger's in the house. Times without number I've seen things go awry within the last three months. Seems to be the most dangerous time-particularly with the first. Why, there was a young girl over Springbourne Common——'

I broke in before Mrs Pringle could chill our blood further. Mrs Finch-Edwards' normally florid cheeks had blanched.

'That'll do, Mrs Pringle; and we shall need at least four tea-towels.'

'And lucky you'll be to get those, I may say,' said Mrs Pringle viciously, thwarted in the telling of her old-wives' tale. But she departed, nevertheless, and went back across the field to the school, limping ostentatiously to prove what a wronged woman she was.

Miss Gray was trying to keep the mob of children in order near the starting line which, being hand-painted by Ernest in yesterday's strong wind, wavered erratically across the width of the track.

A blackboard had been erected here showing the order of races, but so strong was the wind that, after it had capsized twice, nearly decapitating Eileen Burton on the second occasion, Mr Willet had lashed it to the easel. He looked very spruce this afternoon, in his best blue-serge suit as he stood with the vicar and Mr Roberts.

I had decided to be starter, and Miss Gray had the unenviable job of being judge at the other end. Mrs Roberts offered to help her and the two stood, with their hair blown over their eyes, waiting for the first race to start. It was 'Boys under 8: 50 yards.'

The young competitors crouched fiercely on Ernest's wobbly line, their teeth clenched and their lips compressed. 'On your marks, get set—go!' I shouted; and off they pounded, puny arms working like pistons and heads thrown back. The Sports had begun.

Everything went like clockwork. There were no tears, no accidents and the molehills were miraculously avoided by the children's flying feet. The parents and friends of Fairacre School, ranged on hard forms and chairs along Mr Willet's rope, applauded each event vigorously and made frequent trips, with the thirsty victors and vanquished, to the refreshment tent where trade was gratifyingly brisk. The fact that the tent was warm and peaceful after the tempest that blew outside may have helped sales, for the less warmly clad lingered in here, buying biscuits at four a penny, and filling up the Oxo tin with their offerings.

Mrs Moffat, in a becoming rose-pink suit, brought Linda in, flushed with success after winning the girls' sack race. Miss Clare noticed how much happier Mrs Moffat looked and how well she and Mrs Finch-Edwards agreed.

'If you like to go out for a bit, I'll manage the change,' offered Linda's mother, and Mrs Finch-Edwards, taking Linda by the hand, went out into the boisterous wind to see the Sports, leaving her friend in Miss Clare's company.

Perhaps the high-light of the afternoon was an unrehearsed incident. Mrs Pratt's white goat, attracted by the noise, had broken her collar and pushed through the hedge to see what was going on. Fastidiously, walking with neat, dainty steps, she approached the backs of the spectators and before anyone had noticed her, she picked up the hem of Mrs Partridge's flowered silk frock. Gradually, the goat worked it into her mouth, a sardonic smile curling her lips, tossing her head gently up and down, until at last a sudden tug caused the vicar's wife to look round and the hue and cry began.

Startled, the goat skipped away under the rope and charged down to see its friends, who were waiting, in pairs with their legs tied together, to run in the three-legged race. Squealing with excitement, and weak with laughter, they lumbered off in all directions, the goat prancing among them, bleating. Confusion reigned, some children sprawled on the grass, others attempted to capture the goat, and others rushed yelling to their parents. At last Mr Willet grabbed the animal's horns and slipped a rope noose over her head. Resigning herself to capture, the goat trotted meekly after him to the gate, accompanied by many young admirers.

By half-past four the Sports were over and the parents trickled away from the field with their children, some of them boasting of victory and some explaining volubly just how victory had evaded them.

Mrs Moffat, Mrs Finch-Edwards and Miss Gray had gone home to the new bungalow to tea, and Miss Clare, Mrs Pringle and I collected the debris together in the shelter of the tent.