(3/20) Storm in the Village (16 page)

'And I propose us protests on the grounds of expense—rates and that,' put in Mr Willet.

'Voting first, please, on Mrs Bradley's proposal,' said the vicar gently. All hands were raised.

'Now, Mr Willet?' Mr Willet put his proposal, in rather better terms this time. Mrs Pringle seconded it, and it was passed unanimously.

Mrs Moffat, chic in a coral-coloured coat, rose to frame her protest against the possible alteration in status of Fairacre School and its effect on the pupils and village life in general. It was seconded, surprisingly enough, by Joseph Coggs' father. Mr Lamb scribbled busdy at the table, his tongue slightly out and writhing as he wrote.

'And tell 'em,' shouted an unknown stalwart from Beech Green, who appeared to be under the impression that Mr Lamb was taking down a letter direct to the authority involved and was hurrying to catch the post, 'tell 'em we're all right as we are and don't want the place mucked up with a lot of toffee-nosed types from town!'

'Could that be put a little more formally?' suggested the chairman.

After a certain amount of murmuring a proposal was put forward in more orthodox terms and it was seconded and carried. At that moment there was a disturbance by the door, and in stumped the figure of old Mr Miller, the owner of the land under discussion.

'Sorry to be late,' he barked. 'How far are we, chairman?'

'We are putting down our protests,' the vicar told him. Mr Miller took a deep breath, and his eyes flashed fire.

'Then here's the biggest one,' he roared. 'That's been my farm, and my family's farm, for generations. I do more than protest against good farm land being put under buddings! I'll see them damned first!'

There were one or two indrawn breaths from those ladies of refinement, including Mrs Pringle, who objected to such strong language. Mr Miller, red in the face and brandishing his arms, was about to continue his diatribe, when the vicar broke in gently.

'Perhaps you would put that in the form of a proposal?' he suggested.

Mr Miller was attacked by a paroxysm of coughing and someone helped him to a chair.

'You do it!' he gasped to Mr Roberts who approached him.

And so it was a fellow farmer who added Mr Miller's heartfelt protest to the list which lengthened under Mr Lamb's hand, while the irascible originator lay back in his chair and nodded his shaky head vehemently as he listened.

'Poor old chap!' whispered one woman to another. 'Tis too bad he's got this to put up with at his age! Right's right, after all, and he should keep what's his!'

The meeting drew briskly to its close, and I had never seen Fairacre so stirred. The people, normally so docile and monosyllabic, were unusually heated, and spoke up bravely. Slow to kindle, once their hearts were fired they blazed strongly. The vicar spoke again.

'If there are no further comments I think we will ask Mr Lamb to send our protests to the Rural District Council, and close the meeting. I do so hope that we have been guided aright, and I thank every one of you who has come here tonight to put his wisdom and experience at the disposal of his neighbours. May the hand of the Lord guide our path!'

'Amen!' said a number of people fervently, and the vicar stepped down from the platform.

Soberly the villagers made their way out into the summer twilight.

The vicar had hurried directly to Mr Miller after the meeting and was insisting that he rested at the vicarage before returning to his home. We watched the two white-haired men, one so fiery and the other so mild, make their slow progress arm-in-arm towards the haven of the vicarage drawing-room.

'I shall go home and make a nice cup of tea,' announced a woman to her neighbour. 'I feel fair twizzled up inside after all that!'

The first day of the holidays dawned bright and fair. I made up my mind to spend it alone, savouring to the full the exquisite pleasure of being free.

To those who have never had to undergo regular employment with set hours of work, the glory of not being clock-bound cannot be truly appreciated. I looked gleefully at my kitchen clock as I took a leisurely breakfast at nine o'clock, and thought to myself, 'Ah! Yesterday at this time I was marking the register!'

I wandered round the dewy garden, admiring the velvety dark phlox just coming into flower, and getting an added fillip from the thought that normally I would be setting about an arithmetic lesson at the stern behest of the timetable on the wall. It is heady stuff, freedom—this cocking-a-snook at clocks, bells, whistles, timetables, syllabuses and all the other strait-jackets curbing the gay flow of time.

I sauntered through the village, swinging my basket, as St Patrick's clock struck eleven o'clock. ('Time to bring them in from play!' warned my teacher-shadow. 'And rats to that!' chortled my exuberant holiday-self.) What bliss it was to be at large in Fairacre on a Friday morning, instead of cooped up in a dark school!

It was fun to see the difference in the village at this time of the morning. The sun slanted from a different angle, winking on the brass knocker of Mr Lamb's door, a beautiful lion's head with a ring in its mouth, which I had not noticed before when the sun had slipped further round. In a cottage window stood a cactus plant which I had noticed before, but now, with the sun shining full upon it, two vivid orange flowers gaped like young birds' beaks in its warm benison.

On the other side of the village street a topiary hedge, finely clipped into towers and battlements, cast its black shadow upon the sun-drenched road, and a young thrush with jewelled eyes sheltered in the cool shade there.

Other Fairacre folk were still about their everyday business. From the Post Office came the irregular thumping of Mr Lamb's date-stamp as he hastened to get the mad ready for the van. The clinking of brass weights came from the grocer's and the whirring of the coffee-grinder, accompanied by the most seductive of all food smells.

Dusters flapped from upstairs windows as the bedrooms received their morning toilet Here a woman bent in her vegetable garden cutting a lettuce or pulling spring onions for the midday meal. A baby lay kicking in its pram, eyes squirrel-bright as it crowed at the fluttering leaves above it.

From the bakehouse at the rear of the grocer's shop wafted the homely fragrance of new bread. In there, I knew, the great tables had been scrubbed clean and the white-overalled baker, with his shirt sleeves rolled up, would be waiting to rap the top of his loaves to see if the batch were done. And at the far end of the village, near Tyler's Row, I caught a glimpse of Mr Rogers, the blacksmith, in dusky contrast to his equally hot bakehouse neighbour, standing at the door of his forge to get a breath of fresh air.

Nothing can beat a village, I thought, for living in! A small village, a remote village, a village basking, as smug and snug as a cat, in morning sunlight! I continued my lover's progress, besotted with my village's charms. Just look at that weeping willow, plumed like a fountain, that lime tree murmurous with bees, that scarlet pimpernel blazing in a dusty verge, the curve of that hooded porch, the jasmine—in fact, look at every petal, twig, brick, beam, thatch, wall, pond, man, woman and child that make up this enchanting place! My blessing showered upon it all.

It was the first day of the holidays.

14. A Day of Catastrophe

I
WAS
to look back with longing upon that first halcyon day, in the week that followed, for the clouds gathered with alarming speed.

On that Friday evening, I had driven to see Miss Clare and was shocked by the change in her. She looked suddenly old. Her hands shook uncontrollably as she poured out a glass of her home-made parsnip wine for me, and she seemed to move more slowly about her little cottage.

'It's just a touch of rheumatism,' she said, dismissing my anxious enquiries. 'And I haven't slept well lately.'

'Is it that wretched girl?'I asked.

'Hilary? No, not ready. She hasn't mentioned that Franklyn fellow again, but I think that Utile tiff with Miss Crabbe upset her more than she'll admit. I don't know what it was all about, and didn't enquire.'

I did not enlighten Miss Clare either, but a vision of Miss Crabbe's distorted and furious countenance flashed into my mind uncomfortably.

'Anyway,' continued Miss Clare, 'the child went off very happily this afternoon to her home. And the family go off to the sea for a month on Monday. I believe it will do her good.'

I pressed her to come and stay with me for a few days and have a rest. I had a clear week at Fairacre before I went away for my own holiday, and I knew I should go more happily if Miss Clare were less frail. But she would have none of it.

'No, no, my dear, though it's sweet of you to offer to have me. Now that I'm alone, and can get up a little later and not bother with quite as much cooking and shopping, I shall soon pick up.'

She agreed to come to tea during the following week and I had to be content with this. But I drove back to Fairacre far from easy in my mind about my old friend's health and happiness.

I woke the next morning still worried about Miss Clare, and within an hour or two had yet another disturbing incident to perturb me.

Mr and Mrs Mawne were in the butcher's shop when I went there to buy my weekend joint. Amy was coming over from Bent to have lunch with me and I was out early to do my shopping.

Mrs Mawne, never particularly affable to me, was even less amiable than usual. Mr Mawne, to my surprise, was in a bantering mood, quite unlike his normal vague daze, and I could sense that the couple were on edge with each other. Mrs Mawne prodded a piece of beef with a disdainful finger as Mr Mawne greeted me with unnaturally high spirits.

'Well, well, well, Miss Read! What a morning, eh? Just right for a trip to the sea!'

Mrs Mawne sniffed and I said guardedly that it was indeed a fine morning.

'Another trip to Barrisford would be just the thing!' said Mr Mawne with one eye on his wife. I disliked this teasing very much, particularly as he was using me to annoy his wife. The butcher looked at me as though I were Jezebel.

'We had a most enjoyable trip together last year,' continued Mr Mawne, addressing his wife. 'I really believe Miss Read would come again if I asked her nicely!' Mrs Mawne grew red and her mouth tightened. I was no more pleased than she was and looked steadily at her facetious little husband.

'I fear that you flatter yourself, Mr Mawne,' I said, and then felt a brute as his face fell under this pin-prick to his self-esteem.

'I'll call later,' I said to the butcher, and left the shop and the Mawnes as quickly as I could.

Amy was in one of her what-a-pity-you-aren't-married moods, when she arrived for lunch, particularly irritating after Mr Mawne's earlier exhibition of male conceit.

'Now James,' she told me, attacking the beef with gusto, 'is absolutely devoted and seems to get fonder of me as the years go by.' With a heroic effort I desisted from reminding her of several unhappy occasions when she had endured James's lapses from strict fidelity. '
Sour grapes
' is the phrase that readily trips from the lips of married ladies when reminded by their single friends about male frailty, and behind this two-word shield many a married man or woman has evaded a spinster's straight aim.

'You see what a waste of talent all this is,' continued Amy, as I bore in a plum pie, a little later. 'You're quite a good cook, ready and a man would appreciate it.'

'I appreciate it too,' I said, cutting the crust.

'But with two of you,' persisted Amy, bent on furthering the cause of matrimony, 'you would enjoy it all far more.'

'I should have to do twice as much cooking,' I pointed out, 'and that might pall.'

'Really!' said Amy exasperatedly, 'you are the most trying, awkward, maddening,
unfeminine
woman I've met, and thoroughly deserve to be single!'

'Have some cream,' I suggested consolingly. 'It covers the nerve endings.'

'Tchah!' exclaimed Amy, and took a generous helping with a smile.

The shock came as we were washing up. Amy wandered to and fro in the kitchen drying up for me and occasionally returning a piece of china for a second wash. Amy's standards are much higher than mine and she scrutinised each article with an eagle eye.

'I know two adorable sisters,' I told her as she flung back a spoon into the washing-up bowl, 'who work on the principle that one wets the things and the other wipes. And a very nice co-operative job they make of washing-up with never a harsh word between them!'

Amy was not impressed.

'I don't wonder Mrs Pringle ticks you off. Look at this smear of mustard! Must be ages old! It's a wonder you don't pop off with typhus!'

I surveyed the plate which she held out to me with interest.

'That,' I said, with pardonable smugness, 'happens to be gilding.'

Amy had the grace to laugh, and returned it to the dresser. As she lodged it she said:

'And when is Hilary Jackson going away?'

'She's gone,' I answered, busily scouring the sink.

'Well, I saw her last night, with that dreadful Franklyn fellow. They were just going into "The Bed"!'