(2/20) Village Diary (2 page)

One man, in Mrs Pringle's hearing, said loudly that 'it was a proper bodged-up job,' so that, of course, will inflame passions further. Mrs Pringle, who was scrubbing out the school dustbins at the rime, drew in her breath for so long, and with such violence, that I thought she would burst; but only her corsets creaked under the strain.

Tea, at Miss Clare's, was the bright spot of the day. We had a lardy cake which was wonderfully hot and indigestible, and conversation which was soothing, until I was putting on my coat when Miss Clare shattered me by asking if I had yet met a very nice man, a retired schoolmaster, who had come to live in Miss Parr's old house.

I am beginning to feel very, very sorry for this unfortunate man, and have half a mind to ring him up anonymously, advising his early removal from Fairacre if he wishes to have an undisturbed retirement.

The last day of the holidays has arrived, and, as usual, half the jobs I intended doing have been left undone. No marmalade made, no paint washed down, only the most urgent mending done, and school starts tomorrow.

It all looks unbelievably clean over there. I staggered back with the fish tank and Roman hyacinths, all of which have sheltered under my school-house roof for the past fortnight. Miss Gray—Mrs Annett, I mean—will have a smaller class this term, only sixteen on roll, while mine will be twenty-three strong.

The stoves are miracles of jetty brilliance. Mrs Pringle must have used pounds of blacklead and enough energy to move a mountain to have produced such lustre. Woe betide any careless tipper-on of coke for the next few days!

Term has begun. Everyone is back with the exception of Eileen Burton, who has, according to the note brought by a neighbouring child, 'a sore throat and a hard, tight chest.' Can only hope these afflictions are not infectious.

The workmen have found it necessary to remove the whole frame of the skylight, so that, having had a clear two weeks to do the job undisturbed, they now tell me that we must endure a flapping and smelly urpaulin over the hole in the roof, while a new window-frame is made in Caxley. Straight speaking, though giving me some relief, dints their armour not at all as blame attaches, as usual, to other members of the firm 'higher-up and back in Caxley, Miss,' so that I can see a very comfortable few days ahead.

The children appeared to have forgotten the very elements of education. Five-times table eluded them altogether, and my request to write 'January' on their own, met with tearful mystification. Having walked round the class and seen such efforts as 'Jamwy,' 'Ganeree' and 'Jennery' I wrote it on the blackboard with dreadful threats of no-play-for-a-week for those who did not master its intricacies immediately.

The vicar called, just before we went home, in his habitual winter garb of cloak, biretta and leopard-skin gloves. Surely they can't stand another winter? I only wish I had such a serene outlook as Mr Partridge's. He greeted us all as though he loved every hair of our heads, as truly I believe he does. I see that he has 'Jesu, Lover of mv Soul' on the hymn list this week, but haven't the heart to tell him that I think it painfully lugubrious and quite unsuitable for the children to learn.

I invited him over to the school-house to tea and ushered him into the dining-room, where the clothes-horse stood round the fire bearing various intimate articles of apparel and a row of dingy polishing rags which added the final touch of squalor. Not that he, dear man, would have worried, even had he noticed the things—but that clothes-horse was whisked neatly into the kitchen in record time!

I have just returned from a day out with Amy. She rang me up last night to say that there was a wonderful film on, which I must see. It would
broaden
mc. It was about Real Life. I said that I'd looked through the
Caxley Chronicle
this week, but I thought that both cinemas were showing Westerns.

'Caxley?' screamed Amy down the wire. Did I think of nothing but Caxley and Fairacre? When she thought of what promise I had shown as a girl, it quite upset her to see how I'd gone off! No, the film she had in mind was to be shown in a London suburb—the cinema specialized in revivals, and this was a quite wonderful chance to see this unique masterpiece. She would pick me up at 10.30, give me lunch, and bring me back to the wilds again.

I mentally pulled my forelock and said that that would be lovely.

Amy's car is magnificent and has a fluid fly-wheel, which as a gear^rashing learner, filled me with horrid envy. We soared up the hills, passing everything in sight, while Amy told me that life, even for a happily married woman, was not always rosy. James, although utterly devoted of course, was at a dangerous age. Not that he was inattentive; only last week he gave her these gloves—she raised a gargantuan fur^lad paw; and the week before that these ear-rings—I bent forward to admire a cluster of turquoises—and this brooch was his Christmas present, and was fantastically expensive—but she found she was beginning to suspect the
reason
for so many costly presents, especially when he had been away from home, on business, so frequently lately.

I said: 'Why don't you ask him if there is anyone else?' Amy said that was so like me—it wasn't surprising that I had stayed single when I was so—well, so
unwomanly
and
unsubtle.
No, she could handle this tiling quite skilfully, she thought, and in any case it was her duty to stick by dear James through thick and thin. Unworthy thought crossed my mind as to whether she'd stick so nobly if James suddenly became penniless.

We arrived in the West End; Amy had no difficulty in finding a car park with an obsequious attendant who directed our footsteps to the hotel where Amy had booked a table. I was much impressed by the opulence of this establishment and said so. Amy shrugged nonchalantly: 'Not a bad little dump,' then, scanning the menu, 'James brings me here when he wants to be quick. The food is
just
eatable.'

We ordered ham and tongue, with salad, which Amy insisted on having mixed at our table, supervising the rubbing of the bowl with garlic (which I detest, but could see I must endure) the exact number of drops of oil, etc. and expressing horror that the whole was not being turned with wooden implements.

I would much rather have had my salad fresh and been allowed to ask for Heinz mayonnaise, in constant use at home, but realized that Amy was enjoying every minute of this worldly-woman-taking-out-country-mouse act, and would not have spoiled it for her for worlds.

Over lunch, Amy continued to tell me about James's generosity, and disclosed the monthly allowance which he gives her. This, she said, she just manages on. As the sum exceeds easily my own modest monthly cheque as a headmistress, I felt inclined to remind her of our early days together, teaching in a large junior school not many miles from this very hotel, when we thrived cheerfully on a salary of just over thirteen pounds a month, and visited the theatre, the cinema, went skating and dancing, dressed attractively and, best of all, were as merry as grigs all the time. As Amy's guest, however, I was bound to keep these memories to myself. As I watched her picking over her salad discontentedly I remembered vividly a meal we had had together in those far-off days. It must have been towards the end of the month for I know we spent a long and hilarious time working out from the menu which would fill us up more for eightpence—baked beans and two sausages, or spaghetti on toast.

The cinema was rather hard to find, in an obscure cul-de-sac, and the film which Amy had particularly come to see had just begun. It was so old, that it seemed to be raining all the time, and even the bedroom scenes—which were far too frequent for my peace of mind—were seen through a downpour. The women's hair styles were unbelievable, and quite succeeded in distracting my grasshopper mind from the plot; either puffed-out at the sides, like the chorus in
The Mikado,
or cut in a thick fringe just across the eyebrows, giving the most brutish aspect to the ladies of the cast. Waist lines were low and busts incredibly high evidently when this film first saw the light.

The supporting film was of later vintage, but, if anything, heavier going. Played by Irish actors, in Irish countryside in Irish weather, and spoken in such a clotted hotchpotch of Irish idiom as to be barely intelligible, it dealt with the flight of a young man from the cruel English. Bogs, mist, mountains, girls with shawls over their heads and bare feet splashing through puddles, open coffins surrounded with candles and keening, wrinkled old women, all flickered before us for an hour and a half—and then the poor dear was shot in the end!

We emerged into the grey London twilight with our eyes swollen. Drawn together by our emotional afternoon we had tea in a much more relaxed mood than lunch, and drove back in a pleasantly nostalgic atmosphere of ancient memories shared.

It was good of Amy to take me out. A day away from Fairacre in the middle of January is a real tonic. But I was sorry to see her so unhappy. I hope that I am not so wrong-headed as to blame Amy's recent affluence for her present malaise. As anyone of sense knows, money is a blessing and I dearly wish I had more—a lot more. I should have flowers in the classroom, and my house, all the year round, buy a hundred or so books, which have been on my list for years, and spend every school holiday travelling abroad—just for a start. I think the truth of the matter is that Amy feels useless, and has too little to do.

She used to be a first-lass teacher and was able to draw wonderful pictures on the blackboard, that were the envy of us all, I remember.

School has now started with a vengeance, and I have heard all Mrs Annett's infants class read—that is, those that can. She has done wonders since she came a year ago. The marriage seems ideal and Mr Annett has lost his nervous, drawn look and put on quite a stone in weight. He brings her over from their school-house at Beech Green, each morning, and then returns to his duties there as headmaster. I was glad that the managers persuaded her to continue teaching. She intended to resign last September, but we had no applicants for the post, and as the Annetts had had a good deal of expense in refurnishing she decided to work for a little longer. The children adore her and her methods are more modern than Miss Clare's were. She has a nice practical grasp of infant-work problems too, as an incident this morning proved. I was sending off for more wooden beads for number work. 'Make them send square ones,' she said. I looked surprised. 'They don't roll away,' she added. Now, that's what I call intelligent! Square they shall be!

Joseph Coggs appeared yesterday morning with a brown-paper carrier bag. Inside was a tortoise, very muddy, and as cold and heavy as a stone. It was impossible to tell if it were dead or only hibernating.

'My mum told me to throw an old saucepan on the rubbish heap at the bottom of our place,' he told me, 'and this ere was buried under some old muck there.' He was very excited about his find and we have put the pathetic reptile in a box of leaves and earth out in the lobby—but I doubt if it will ever wake again. The children, I was amused to hear, were hushing each other as they undressed.

'Shut up hollering, you,' said Eric in a bellow that nearly raised our urpaulin, 'that poor snail of Joe's don't get no rest!'

The weather is bitterly cold, with a cruel east wind, which flaps our accursed urpaulin villainously. (The frame 'has been a bit held-up like, miss. Funny, really.') Scotland has had heavy snow, and I expect that Fairacre will too before long.

The vicar called in just before the children went home to check up numbers for our trip to the Caxley pantomime on Saturday. Two buses have been hired as mothers and friends will come too, as well as the school managers who generously pay the school-children's expenses. It is the high-light of dark January.

Mr Annett called to collect his wife—she won't be coming with us to the pantomime—and the vicar remarked to me on their happiness, adding that, to his mind, a marriage contracted in maturer years often turned out best, and had I met that very pleasant fellow—a retired schoolmaster, he believed—who had come to live at Miss Parr's?

An almost irresistible urge to push the dear vicar headlong over the low school wall, against which he was leaning, was controlled with difficulty, and I was surprised to hear myself replying politely that I had not had that pleasure yet. Truly, civilization is a wonderful thing.

I met Mr Bennett as I walked down to the Post Office the other evening. He is the owner of Tyler's Row, four thatched cottages at the end of our village. The Coggs live in one, the Waites next door to them, an old couple—very sweet and as deaf as posts—in the next, and a tight-lipped, taciturn woman, called Mrs Fowler lives in the last.

Mr Bennett had been to collect the rent from his property.

Each tenant pays three shillings a week and parts with it with the greatest reluctance.

'I gets to hate coming for it,' admitted poor Mr Bennett. He is beginning to look his seventy years now, but his figure is as upright and trim as it was when he was a proud soldier in the Royal Horse Artillery, and his waxed moustache ends still stand at a jaunty angle. He has his Old Age Pension and lives with a sister at Beech Green, who is ailing and as poor as he is.

'Every door's the same,' went on the old soldier. '"Can't you set our roof to rights? Can't you put us a new sink in? Come and look at the damp in our back scullery. 'Tis shameful." And what can I do with twelve bob a week coming in? That's if I'm lucky. Arthur Coggs owes me for three months now. He's got four times the money coming in that I have, but he's always got some sad story to spin.'

The old man took out a pipe and rammed the tobacco in with a trembling finger.

`I shall have to give this up, I's'pose, the way things are. I went to get an estimate from the thatcher over at Springbourne about Tyler's Row roofs. Guess how much?'

I said I imagined it would cost about a hundred pounds to put it in repair.

'A hundred?' Mr Bennett laughed sardonically. '
Two
hundred and fifty, my dear. There's nothing for it, it seems, but to sell 'era for about a hundred and fifty while I can. Mrs Fowler would probably buy 'em. She's making a tidy packet at the moment. Pays me three bob, my dear, and has a lodger in that back bedroom who pays her three pound!'