Village Centenary (9 page)

Mr Willet snorted.

'Them old wives' tales! My gran had rheumatics something terrible and 1 bet she was stung often enough. She still told them old bees all that went on, like you hear about. She told 'em about Grandad dying in Caxley Hospital of the dropsy, and about the grandchildren being born. Funny really. People says bees are wise, but the more I hear about 'em the more 1 wonder. Did you know they goes for people dressed in blue?'

'Never heard of it.'

'No, nor I bet you haven't heard as they don't like compost heaps or bonfires or mowing the grass and a lot of other things you finds in a garden. Pesky little objects! I don't envy the vicar, that I don't!'

'But think of all the lovely honey,' 1 said.

'Bet you a dollar they'll be getting rape honey. Mr Roberts usually has a good field of that - you know, that blazin' yellow stuff.'

1 said 1 knew what rape looked like. 1 had not lived in the country all these years without -

Mr Willet interrupted me.

'All right, all right! All I'm saying is that the vicar will have to take his honey off smartish if it's rape, or it'll gum up the whole works. Terrible stuff to extract, as my old gran could tell him, if she'd been spared. No, he don't know what he's letting himself in for, and I only hope he's got a blue bag for banging on the stings.'

'Can you still get a blue bag?'

'I doubt it,' said Mr Willet. He sighed and moved off. After a few steps he stopped and called across the playground:

'Hope you aren't thinkin' of startin' bees,' he shouted. 'That's one thing I'm not helping you with, I can tell you.'

During the last day or two of term, I turned over in my mind the snippets of history that I had heard from Dolly Clare. Somewhere here there was the theme for our centenary celebrations, I felt sure.

To give Miss Briggs her due, the idea of dressing the children in the costume of 1880 had some merit. Perhaps we could have just two children in costume telling Fairacre School's story in each decade? Or, more practically, a boy and girl of each of the five reigns - six, if you included Edward VIII - through which the school had passed, suitably apparelled for their particular narrations.

It would be best if we could let the whole school take part, and perhaps a song or poem typical of each period could intersperse the narration. 1 discussed my nebulous ideas with Miss Briggs, who seemed remarkably co-operative for once. Perhaps her impending holiday in France was having a stimulating effect.

'Have you fixed a date?' she enquired sensibly.

'Sometime in the first week in December,' I told her. 'And for two performances definitely, otherwise we shan't have room for everyone. I thought parents of infants one afternoon, and the others the next.'

'What a good idea! And perhaps we could combine it with the tea party the children usually give at Christmas.'

'That's a thought,' I agreed.

The Christmas party for parents, with the children acting as hosts, is a long-standing tradition in the school. Sometimes we are hopelessly overcrowded; dividing the party into a two-day event might help considerably. I looked at my assistant with new respect. At times she was quite bright, I thought.

'Of course, there's heaps of time for making arrangements,' she said.

'We'll have to start pretty early,' I assured her. 'We must know what we propose to do next term so that the mothers can think about costumes, and it looks to me as though the whole of the autumn term will be devoted to rehearsing, whatever we decide upon.'

'Let's hope the dormer window will be done by then,' said Miss Briggs, watching a steady drip dropping into a bucket by my desk.

'It had better be!' I said grimly.

Mercifully, the rough weather subsided as suddenly as it had arrived, and the last day of term ended in a clear, serene evening.

Its blissful tranquillity matched my own feelings. The empty school basked in the golden rays of the setting sun. The rooks' cawing was the only sound above the tidy playground, and Tibby and I sauntered in the garden relishing our solitude. The narcissi wafted heady draughts of fragrance towards us. The grape hyacinths were a sea of blue in the shrubbery, and some fine scarlet tulips, straight as guardsmen, towered above them. What if the groundsel and dandelions and chickweed were making steady progress? With the holidays ahead I could soon root them out.

The hooting of a car horn brought me back to earth, and I found Amy at the door.

'I've been shopping in Oxford,' she said, 'and thought I'd call on my way home. Is it convenient, or are you having a cocktail party or anything?'

'Don't be funny,' I begged her. 'Whenever have you caught me preparing for a cocktail party?'

'You never know,' replied Amy vaguely. 'How pretty your garden looks.'

We strolled happily around my small plot, enjoying the unusual calm and warmth.

'Do you want to see my new purchases?' enquired Amy, as we made our way back to the house.

She dived into the car and emerged with two exotic-looking dress boxes which she carried into the house. There seemed to be half a hundredweight of tissue paper in each one, but at last the garments were revealed. One was a set of glossy underwear, petticoat, knickers and brassiere in what was called, in my youth, oyster satin. The other was a stunning three-piece in silk jersey, cream in colour with delicate gold decorations at hem and neck.

'Well!' I exclaimed. 'They are all truly gorgeous!'

'So they should be at the ghastly price I had to pay for them. Now I'm beginning to wonder if they are a trifle young for me.'

'Rubbish!' I told her. 'You're a very good-looking woman, as well you know, and can wear anything. You always could.'

'So could you, my dear,' said Amy kindly. 'You were really quite pretty at eighteen when we first met.'

'Everyone is quite pretty at eighteen,' I retorted. 'A few decades later it is really quite enough to be clean and respectable, and I only hope I'm that. Anyway, I have no doubt that you would soon tell me if I weren't.'

Amy laughed, and began putting the clothes back among the tissue paper.

'Are you going away?' she asked.

'Not this holiday. At least, I haven't booked anything. I might slope off to Devon for a few days and hope to find bed and breakfast somewhere.'

'You'll be lucky! You really should organise yourself better. I'm always scolding you about it.'

'You are indeed,' I agreed, pouring her a glass of sherry.

'You know, even the
simplest
holiday needs to be arranged well in advance. James and 1 are having a few days in the Scillies at the end of next month, and we booked the hotel and the helicopter flight across from Penzance, way back in January.'

'Well, you're well-organised people, and I'm not.'

'With James so terribly busy we simply have to plan things, or we'd never get a break together. We propose to sleep, sunbathe, bird watch and eat.'

'Sounds heavenly,' I said. 'I'll do it myself one day, when I can get round to arranging a holiday six months ahead.'

'I hope to live to see the day,' said Amy, putting down her empty glass. 'Well, I must be off. I'm glad you approve of my purchases.'

She looked rather sadly at my cardigan. 'How long have you had that shapeless garment?'

'About six years. And don't suggest that I give it to a jumble sale. It's pure wool, and hand-knitted by dear Mrs Willet. What's more, it's got
pockets,
which mighty few garments have these days, and I shall wear it till it drops into rags.'

'That won't be long!' Amy assured me, and drove off.

This is easily my favourite month and 1 greeted its arrival by remembering to say 'White Rabbits' aloud before uttering another syllable.

This childish superstition, told me first by a fellow six-year-old, is supposed to bring you luck for the rest of the month. When discussing such matters now, I tend to pooh-pooh the whole field of folklore, astrology, horoscopes and the rest of it, but I find myself hastily throwing spilt salt over my shoulder, dodging ladders and, if not in polite company, spitting in a ladylike way if I see one magpie.

Fortified by my 'White Rabbits' incantation, I got up and hung out of the bedroom window to relish the perfection of a May morning. The copper beech was in tiny leaf, which spread a rosy gauze over the tracery of bare branches. Dew shimmered on the grass, and drops of moisture on the hawthorn hedge sparked a hundred miniature rainbows.

Out in Mr Roberts's clover field a pheasant squawked. It was probably an anxious mother warning her chicks of the dangers that lurked around. Somewhere, high above, a lark was vying with another in the distance, the song pouring down from the blue in drops of pure music.

The air was cool, and deliciously scented with hyacinths and narcissi from the garden bed below. Later, it would be hot, and with luck I should be able to take my tea tray into the garden, after my day's work, and relish the joy of growing things. I remembered, with immense pleasure, that there was nothing in the diary for the evening of May the first. What bliss!

As I dressed, I pondered the problem of loneliness. I receive a great deal of unnecessary sympathy for my single state, and am touched by kind people's concern for the fact that I live alone. If they only knew! I find it much more exhausting to share my home with friends who come to stay, much as I love them, and the places I visit I remember much more clearly, and with keener affection, when I have visited them alone. I suppose that this is because one wanders around, looking at objects which are of particular personal interest, and absorbing their aspect and history without the distraction of a friend diverting one's attention to something which she has discovered.

No doubt, it tends to make one extremely selfish, but such solitude has its compensations. For one thing, it is possible to pursue a train of thought, or to carry out a piece of work, unmolested. I heartily sympathise with widows and widowers who are used to a shared life, and suffer horribly when that is shattered. The fact that so many of them adjust relatively quickly to the situation is indicative of their bravery; the fact that others never really recover is understandable. But, as a spinster, I have never been called upon to try to mend a broken life, and I am deeply grateful for that mercy. Amy's many attempts to marry me off have failed, I like to think, largely because of my contentment with my lot. It would be insupportable, of course, to think that the men were lukewarm!

The postman arrived as my egg was boiling. He brought a six-page document from the office about the necessity for Stringent Economies in Schools, and a glossy circular exhorting me to invest in a gold pendant which could be mine for rather more than two months' salary.

The latter went into the wastepaper basket, and the former 1 resigned myself to reading when 1 felt stronger. But not this evening, I told myself, taking a refreshing look at the shimmering glory outside.

The first of May was going to be devoted to savouring its hope and beauty.

The Caxley Festival began to loom large. An enormous amount of organisation had gone into its arrangements and
The Caxley Chronicle
carried copious advance notices of the pleasures in store and the absolute necessity of sending early for tickets, not forgetting the stamped addressed envelope for their return.

Although Fairacre was only on the edge of these stirring events and was spared the feverish activity in the market town itself, yet even so we had our small part in the excitement. The gardens, which were to be open on the first Saturday and Sunday of the month, were being tended with unnatural fervour. Mr Willet, whose garden is always in a state of perfection, was somewhat scathing about these unseemly efforts.

'There's no call for panic,' he told me, 'if you keeps the hoe going regular. Some of these people is going fair demented! Why, I heard as that new couple up the other end of the street, is planting out their geraniums, pots and all, from the greenhouse! Just to make a show! It's a scandal, I reckon, and if there's a sharp frost, as can often happen in May, they've lost the lot.' He puffed out his moustache in disgust, and moved off about his business.

Mrs Pringle was equally censorious when she arrived.

'Never saw so much fuss in all me borns,' she said, chins quivering. 'Did you know as Mr Mawne borrowed Mr Hales's electric shears to tidy up his yew hedge, and nearly killed hisself by cutting through the cable?'

I expressed my concern.

'Oh, he's come to no harm,' shrugged Mrs Pringle. 'But if he hadn't got into this fever it would never have happened. And they say the vicar's now worrying about people disturbing his new bees, and wishing he hadn't offered to open the garden at all. These 'ere festivals can cause a mint of trouble it seems.'

'They sometimes raise a mint of money,' I pointed out, and waited for the expected answer.

'As my dear mother used to say: "Money isn't—'"

Linda Moffat burst in upon Mrs Pringle's mother's well-known maxim to tell us that the youngest Coggs had locked himself in the lavatory and was yelling for help.

I went to supply it.

So often was my attention drawn to the Caxley Festival that I was not in the least surprised to hear Amy's voice on the telephone, and confidently awaited the news about some festival plans.

I was surprised to find that it was something entirely different that she had in mind.

'Am I right in thinking that in these decadent days you get a whole week's holiday around what, in our youth, was known as Whitsun?'

'That's right. Spring Bank Holiday is its official name, Amy, and it starts some time at the end of the month, and I believe we go back to school on Monday the third - maybe it's the fourth. I've mislaid my diary.'

'
Mislaid your diary?
' squeaked Amy, profoundly shocked. 'What on earth will you do?'

'It'll turn up,' I said vaguely, i may have chucked it into the wastepaper basket with some other rubbish, or I may have left it in the post office. I shall have a look today some time.'

'I have never met such a wholly lackadaisical person in my life,' scolded Amy. 'Why, if I were so careless as to lose my diary, I should be absolutely
daunted
! Life would have to stop until I'd found it again.'