(1/20) Village School (5 page)

5. First Impressions

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their adjoining cottages at Tyler's Row the two new pupils at Fairacre School were safely in bed, but not yet asleep.

Jimmy Waites lay on his lumpy flock mattress in a big brass bedstead which had once been his grandmother's. It had been the pride of her heart, and she had slept in it as a bride and until her death. The brass knobs at each corner, and the little ones across the head and the foot of the bed, had been polished so often that they were loose. His grandmother had told Jimmy that when she was a young woman she had tied a fresh blue bow at each bed-post, and the sides had been decently draped in white starched valances reaching to the floor. The edges of these she had crimped with a goffering iron. With a patchwork quilt on top, the bed must have been a thing of great beauty.

These refinements had long since passed away. The remains of the patchwork quilt were still in use as an ironing cloth; but the bows and the valances had vanished. Even so, Jimmy was very proud of the brass bedstead. In one of the loose knobs he kept his treasures: a very old piece of chewing gum, a glass marble, and a number of leather discs which he had cut secretly from the flock mattress. This operation had, in part, contributed to the general lumpiness.

Cathy shared this bed with him on the landing-bedroom. The stairs came straight up from the living-room to this room of theirs, and it was inclined to be draughty. A small window gave what light it could, but an old pear tree growing close against the side of the house spread its branches too near to allow much illumination. In the summer the light filtered through its thick green foliage, gave a curiously under-water effect to the room, as the shadows wavered against the walls. In the winter the skinny branches tapped and scraped the glass, like bony questing fingers, and Jimmy buried his head under the clothes to muffle his terror.

His two older sisters slept downstairs, for they had to be up first, and were out of the house and waiting at the top of the road for the first bus to Caxley at seven each morning.

His father and mother slept in the only other bedroom that opened out from the landing and was situated over the living-room. Until recently Jimmy had slept with them in his cot in the corner, but this he had now outgrown, and so he had been promoted to the brass bedstead. When one of his sisters married, which was to be this summer, the remaining one would probably take his place with Cathy in grandmother's bed, and he instead would have to sleep downstairs on the sofa. He did not like the idea of sleeping in 3. room of his own and resolutely put this fear from him at nights, determined to enjoy his present comforts.

As he lay there, sucking his thumb, drifting between sleeping and waking, the sights and sounds and smells of his first day at school crowded thick upon him. He saw the orderly rows of desks; some of them, including his own, had a twelve-inch square carved on to the lid, and he had enjoyed rubbing his fat forefinger along the grooves.

He remembered Miss Clare's soft voice; her big handbag and the little bottle of scent which she had taken from it. The top had rolled away towards the door and he had run to pick it up for her. She had dabbed a drop of cold scent into his palm for payment, but its fragrance had soon been lost in the ball of plasticine which he pummelled and rolled into buttons and marbles and, best of all, a long sinuous snake. He remembered the feel of it in his hand, dead, but horribly writhing as he swung it to and fro. Holding his stub of chalk, when he had tried to copy his letters from the blackboard, had not been so pleasurable. His fingers had clenched so tightly that they had ached.

He remembered the clatter of the milk bottles when the children returned them to the steel crate in the corner. He had enjoyed his milk largely because he had drunk it through a straw and this was new to him. It was gratifying to see the milk sink lower and lower in the bottle and to feel the cold liquid trickling down in his stomach.

He sighed, and wriggled down more closely into the lumpy mattress. Yes, he liked school. He'd have milk tomorrow with a straw, and play with plasticine snakes, and perhaps go and see Cathy again in the next room. Cathy … he was glad Cathy was there too. School was all very nice but there was nothing quite like home, where everything was old and familiar. Still sucking his thumb, Jimmy fell asleep.

Next door Joseph Coggs lay on a decrepit camp bed and listened to his parents talking downstairs. Their voices carried clearly up the stairs to the landing-bedroom, and he knew that his father was angry.

'Ninepence a day! Lot of nonsense! Pay four bob a week, near enough, for Joe's dinners alone? Not likely! You give 'un a bit o' bread and cheese same as you gives me, my girl'

Arthur Coggs also went on the early bus to Caxley. He was employed as an unskilled labourer with a building firm, and he spent his days mixing cement, carrying buckets and wheeling barrows. At twelve o'clock he sat down with his mates to eat the bread and cheese, and sometimes a raw onion, which his wife had packed for him. Joseph knew those packed dinners by sight—thick slabs of bread smeared with margarine and an unappetizing hunk of dry cheese—and his spirits drooped at the thought of having to take such victuals to school, and, worse still, of having to eat them within sight and smell of the luscious food such as he had enjoyed that day.

Beside his own bed, so close that he could touch the grey army blanket that covered it, was an iron bedstead containing his two younger sisters. They slept soundly, their matted heads close together on the striped ticking of a dirty pillow which boasted no such effete nonsense as a pillow-slip. Their small pink mouths were half open and they snored gently.

Next door, in his parents' bedroom, he could hear the baby whimpering. He was devoted to this youngest child and suffered dreadfully in sympathy when it cried. Its small red fists and bawling mouth affected him deeply and he would do anything to appease its wants. He wished his mother would let him hold it more often, but she was impatient of his offers of help and pushed him out of her way.

'Mind now,' he heard his father shout, 'you do as I say. He can pay for what he's had, but you put him up summat same as me!'

To Joseph, listening aloft, these were sad words, for although he too had dwelt on the new experiences of the day, as had the boy next door, and though the plasticine, milk bottles, desks and children had all made their lasting impression on his young mind, it was the dinner, warm and plentiful, the plums and, most of all, those three swimming platefuls of golden custard, that had meant most to young Joseph Coggs.

Two fat tears coursed down his face as, philosophically, he turned on his creaking bed and settled down to sleep.

Mr and Mrs Moffat were making a rug together, one at each end. It was an intricate pattern of roses in a basket on a black background.

It was designed to lie before the shiny tiled fireplace of the small drawing-room, which was Mrs Moffat's new joy. When they had lived above their shop in Caxley, she had thought long and often about the furnishing of a drawing-room when she should have such a luxury, and she had cut out of the women's magazines, that she loved, many pictures and diagrams of suggested layouts for such rooms, as well as actual photographs of film stars' apartments.

If she had had her real wish she would have had a tiger skin as a hearth-rug, but she realized that her present drawing-room, which was only twelve feet by ten, would be hopelessly dwarfed by this extravagance, and that dream was put away with the others.

As their hooks flashed in and out of the canvas, Mr Moffat inquired about his daughter's debut at the village school.

'She didn't say much,' said Mrs Moffat, 'and she kept her clothes nice and clean. She's sitting by Anne Someone-or-other. Her mother works up the Atomic.'

'I know her dad. Nice chap he is; works for Heath the farmer. I met him at the pub.'

'Well, that's something! I don't want Linda picking up anything. Those ringlets take enough time without anything else.'

'She'll pick up nothing from that family she didn't ought!' replied Mr Moffat shortly. 'Won't hurt her to rough it a bit. You make a sissy of her.'

Mrs Moffat went pink. She realized the rough truth of this remark, but she resented the fact that all her striving and ambition for their only daughter should go unrecognized, and simply be dismissed as feminine vanity. It was more than that, but how to express it was beyond her powers.

She relapsed into hurt silence. If it hadn't been for her efforts they would still have been living over that poky shop, she thought to herself. She wanted Linda to have a better chance than she had had herself. She wanted her daughter to have all the things that she had wanted so dreadfully herself when she was young. A dance frock, with a full skirt and ruched bodice, a handbag to go with each change of clothes; she wanted Linda to join a tennis club, even perhaps go riding in immaculate jodhpurs and a hard hat. What Mrs Moffat's fierce maternal love ignored was the fact that Linda might be very well content without these social trappings that meant so much to her mother.

Mr Moffat sensed that he had upset his wife again. In silence they thrust the wool through the canvas and Mr Moffat thought, not for the first time, what kittle-cattle women were.

Linda, in her new pale-blue bed in the little back bedroom was thinking about her new friend Anne. It was a pity she was so untidy; her mother would mind about that if she invited her to play one Saturday, but nevertheless she would do so. She liked this new school; the children had admired her frock and red shoes and she realized that she could queen it here far more easily than at the little private school which she had attended in Caxley. There had been too many other mothers of the same calibre as Mrs Moffat there, all vying with each other in dressing up their children and exhorting them to speak in refined voices. It had been an effort, Linda realized now, all the time. At the village school, despite her mother's warnings, she knew that she would be able to relax in the other children's company.

The thing that worried Linda most, as she looked back upon her first day at school, was the lavatories. She was appalled at this primitive sanitation. Caxley had had main drainage, and her own new bathroom at the bungalow was fitted with a water-closet. She had never before come across a bucket-type lavatory and the memory of her few minutes there that morning, with her nose firmly pressed into her hands which smelt of lavender soap, made her shudder. She made a mental note that she would sprinkle toilet water on her handkerchief tomorrow against the perils of the day; and while she was debating which of her two minute bottles', lavender or carnation, she would use, she dropped suddenly into sleep.

While Miss Clare and I were enjoying our tea one morning at the school-house, the telephone rang. It was Mr Annett's high-pitched voice that assaulted my ear with a torrent of words. He is the schoolmaster at Beech Green, a quick, impatient man, a widower, living with an old Scotch housekeeper in the school-house there. He had only been married for six months when his young wife was killed in an air-raid at Bristol, near where his London school had been evacuated. Very soon afterwards he had sold most of their possessions and taken the little headship at Beech Green. He spends his life fighting a long, losing battle against the country child's slowness of wits' and leisurely tempo df progress. He is also the choirmaster of St Patrick's.

'Look here,' he gabbled, 'it's about the Harvest Festival. Mrs Pratt can't get along to play the organ tonight—one of the children's down with chicken-pox—and I wondered if you could step in. We want to practise the anthem, "The Valleys Stand so Thick with Corn." D'you know it? You must do; we've had it every Harvest Festival since the war ended and still they don't know it!'

There was the sound of a scuffle at the end of the telephone.

'Well, get out of the way, you fool!' shouted Mr Annett exasperated. 'Not you, of course, Miss Read, the cat! Well, can you? At half-past seven? Thanks, I'll see you then.' The telephone dropped with a clatter and I could imagine Mr Annett sprinting on to the next job, quivering with nervous energy.

I finished my tea reviewing the evening's work before me. One thing, I was certain of plenty of amusement.

6. Choir Practice

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heavy church door groaned open, and the chill odour, a mixture of musty hymn-books and brass polish greeted me as I tiptoed down the shining aisle for choir practice.

Mr Annett was already there, flitting about the chancel from one side to the other, putting out copies of the anthem, for aU the world like an agitated wren. His fingers flickered to his mouth, and back to his papers, as he separated them impatiently.

'Good evening, good evening! This is good of you. Anyone in sight? No sense of time, these people! Nearly half-past now! Enough to drive you mad!' His words jerked out as he darted breathlessly about. A leaflet fluttered down to the hideous lozenge-patterned carpet which covers the chancel floor.