(2/20) Village Diary (23 page)

Miss Jackson was most enthusiastic. We decided that wc would discreetly make a list of all those definitely going, and then see how many were left. If the parents in the village knew of our scheme we guessed that they would cheerfully let us take the lot, and that was rather more than we could face.

'Miss Clare will give us a hand I know,' I said, 'and perhaps Mrs Partridge. It seems a pity for the children to miss it, especially as you've fired them so with your project. It's been most successful.'

Miss Jackson said that she felt it had eased many nervous tensions in the less well-coordinated members of her class, and she welcomed the idea of the visit to Caxley. She would take a note-book, she said, so that she could make up the case-histories after the event, as it would give her an excellent opportunity of observing the children's individual emotional reaction to the stimulus of strong colour, noise and movement.

`I can ted you that,' I said. 'They just shout. Or are sick.'

About six o'clock on the great day, almost the whole of Fairacre School stood outside St Patrick's. Although only twelve were coming with Mrs Partridge, Miss Jackson and me, the rest had come along to see us safely on the 6.10 bus. The din was terrific.

Our charges included Linda Moffat whose mother had a heavy cold and was unable to take her, and Joseph Coggs. They were ad unbelievably clean and neat, with faces as shiny as apples.

Joseph had on his best jersey, and Linda was most suitably dressed for the fair in a chic ensemble of dark-green tartan dungarees and a thick red sweater.

'I don't usually wear trousers to an evening outing,' she assured me, 'but mum thought they'd be better than a skirt on the roundabouts.' Her ideas on the sartorial fitness of things are already strongly advanced.

We waved good-bye to our well-wishers from the bus, and then settled down to a rousing journey to Caxley. Miss Clare was waiting outside her gate, just before the road bends to Beech Green. She looked very neat and trim in her navy-blue coat and sensible felt hat. Not one of her white hairs was out of place, and I knew that, however tousled the rest of us would look after an hour or two at the Michaelmas Fair, Miss Clare would be as tidy as when she boarded the bus.

She was greeted with the greatest affection by the children, who ad besought her to let them sit by her, and she made the journey into Caxley with one on her lap and two other lucky ones squeezed beside her on the seat.

The evening was a great success. The Fairacre party wandered enchanted among the blaze of electric lights, the pounding engines and the coils of oily cable that snaked across the market square.

Pink and white candy floss vanished like magic. One minute a child would be waving a billowing cloud of it on a stick, and the next he would be licking the stick itself with fervour.

Joseph Coggs spent most of his time at the helter-skelter plodding patiently up the narrow stairs with his mat to reappear again, feet first, at the bottom of the corkscrew chute. His hair was on end, his hands black and his face transformed with bliss.

The other children seemed to prefer the games of chance, rolling pennies down grooved slopes and trying to manoeuvre horses into loose boxes, ducks into ponds and the like. The prizes, in many cases, were goldfish, and Eileen Burton was the envy of all when she walked away with two, thrashing madly, in a jam jar.

Mrs Partridge and I enjoyed the roundabouts and switchbacks, and had quite a job to get the children to join us.

Mrs Partridge showed herself a most intrepid rider, electing to sit on the outside of the fastest roundabout, and at one stage sitting side-saddle in the most dashing and insouciant style.

Miss Clare preferred the swing-boats. From my perch on a mad-looking horse with enraged nostrils, I could see her blissfully floating up and down pulling gently on her furry caterpillar of a rope, whilst Linda Moffat hauled more energetically on the other. They were both, I noticed, as immaculate as when they started out, which could not be said about the rest of the party. My own skirt was inelegantly twisted round the ribs of my uncomfortable steed, my shoes had been stood on, and I could feel a ladder, of alarming magnitude, creeping steadily down one leg.

We caught the last bus back to Fairacre, arriving at half-past nine, gloriously dirty and tired. Even Miss Jackson looked young and happy, and had a prodigious mass of notes which she looked forward to incorporating into the case-histories.

The next morning the usual mob of admirers stood round the fair-ground model in her room, discussing the excitement of the night before.

'And that candy-floss,' said one with rapture, 'Coo! Didn't half taste good!'

'But this ere,' said another indicating the dyed and dusty cotton-wool substitute before him, '
looks
more like it!'

Could loyalty go further?

OCTOBER

'A
DJER
!'

'Adjerback!' came floating through the window from the playground this morning. These cryptic sounds, suggesting some exotic mid-European dialect, are readily construed by the initiated into 'Had you!' and 'Had you back!' and are a sure indication that autumn is really upon us and that the weather is cold enough for a brisk game of 'He' before school begins.

Mrs Pringle, austerely reserved in her conversation at the moment, is back in full force. The stoves gleam like black satin, the kitchen copper steams cheerfully and such dirgelike hymns as
Oft in danger, oft in woe,
mooed in Mrs Pringle's lugubrious contralto, once again sound among the pitch-pine rafters.

Mr Mawne's name has not passed her lips, but the vicar told me that he is in Ireland with friends, for a short holiday.

'Do you know that he is thinking of buying a small house, somewhere in the neighbourhood?' added the vicar. He has resurrected the leopard-skin gloves now that the weather is cooler, and he beat them gently together, filling the air with floating pieces of fur which Patrick and Ernest caught surreptitiously as they fluttered near the front desk.

I said that I had not heard the news.

'A good sign, I think,' went on the vicar. 'It looks as though he intends to settle here. That place of Parr's is all very wed in its way, but ready only suitable for a bachelor.' He looked at me speculatively.

I was about to ask if Mr Mawne proposed to change his status, but thought better of it.

'Not that I can see him as a family man,' mused the vicar, half to himself. 'Not a
large
family man, anyway!' He pondered for a moment, and then shook himself together.

'But a wonderful head for the church accounts,' he finished triumphantly. 'I do so hope he stays!'

Amy spent the evening with me and was unusually preoccupied.

It was a cold, blustery evening. The rose outside the window scrabbled at the pane. Every now and again a particularly fierce gust shuddered the door in its frame; and the roaring in the elm trees at the corner of the playground compelled us to raise our voices as we talked.

Amy surprised me by saying that she hoped I realized how lucky I was in being a single woman. As Amy's usual cry is: 'How much better you would be if only you were married,' I was a little taken aback by this
volte-face.
Before I could get my breath, she said that she had been thinking a lot about the married state recently, as a friend of hers was having some trouble.

It appeared, said Amy, that her husband was much attracted to a young woman in his office, that his wife knew of it, but could not make up her mind if it would be wiser to ignore the whole thing—despite her great unhappiness—or if it would be better to tax the man with it.

At this point Amy put her knitting in her lap, with such a despairing gesture, that I was glad the twilight veiled both our faces. There was nothing that I could say to help, and after a few minutes' silence, Amy continued.

It wasn't as if her friend were a young woman, she pointed out. Twenty years ago she would have been able to snap her fingers in the man's face, go out and earn her living, and have thought herself glad to be shot of such a wastrel. But now it wasn't so simple. She was older, was not so keen on, or so capable of making a good living on her own. And in any case, he was
her
husband, after all, and she was fond of him, they were accustomed to each other, and her friend could easily forgive, if not forget, these little peccaddloes.

Amy's voice faltered slightly towards the end of this narrative, and she rummaged in her sleeve for her handkerchief. For what it was worth I gave my spinsterish advice.

'If I were your friend,' I began cautiously, 'I should say nothing. It's bound to blow over, and there's no point in breaking up twenty years of comfortable married life for a week or two's nonsense. "Least said soonest mended" I should think.'

'My feelings entirely,' said Amy, blowing her nose briskly. She stuffed her handkerchief away, and talked of some new rose bushes that she had just ordered, and her plans for their arrangement.

So we passed the evening, and I was careful not to put the light on until Amy had completely regained her composure.

At half-past nine she rose to go and I accompanied her to the gorgeous car, by the hedge. The wind still roared, and the trees groaned, as they were wrenched this way and that. Round our feet the dead leaves scurried in whispering eddies.

To my surprise Amy gave me a sudden and most unexpected kiss, then entered her car.

'Lucky old maid!' she said, but I was relieved to hear the laughter in her voice. And with a final toot, she drove away.

The storm raged for hours, and to sleep right through the night was, even for me, quite impossible.

A terrific crack woke me soon after two o'clock and I lay wondering if I could be bothered to get up and investigate. By the time I had persuaded myself that it might only be the chest of drawers giving one of its occasional gun-like reports, it was almost three o'clock, and by that time I was ravenous.

I wished I were as provident as Miss Clare, who kept by her bedside a tin of biscuits, and a smaller one of peppermints, for just such an occasion as this. Downstairs I knew were such delicacies as fruit cake, apples, cream cheese, eggs and a hundred and one delights—but that would mean getting out of my warm bed. I had fought for an hour, I told myself, I could fight again. Doubling my fist, I lay on it and wooed slumber, trying to ignore the clamours of my hunger.

By a quarter to four I had mentally cooked myself scrambled eggs on toast, bacon and tomato, grilled chop and Welsh rarebit. I had also opened a tin of peaches, mandarin oranges, Bartlett pears and some particularly luscious pineapple rings, all of which floated round my bed in the most tantalizing fashion.

At ten to four I rose, cursing, thrust my feet into slippers, descended to the kitchen, frightening poor Tibby out of her wits, collected a most unladylike hunk of fruit cake and took it back to bed—furious with myself for not doing the whole thing hours before. I was asleep in ten minutes.

This morning I discovered the source of the crack which woke me. A branch of one of the elms had split from the trunk, and lay, amidst a mass of twigs, leaves and part of the roof of the boys' lavatory, across the playground. Two tiles had slipped from my own roof, and lay askew in the guttering.

The garden was wrecked. Michaelmas daisies lay flattened, and the rose had been torn from the wall. It waved long skinny arms across the doorway.

Mrs Pringle surveyed the untidy playground sourly, as if such confusion were a personal affront.

'And only swep' up two days ago!' was her comment, 'Mr Willet'll have something to say to that!'

Her reactions to the soot which had been blown down the flues and covered the stoves and the surrounding floor, were even more violent.

'As if ash wasn't bad enough, and bits of coke scattered all round by them as should know better—mentioning no names—without this filth!' Her leg, presumably, burst into flame at this point, for she hobbled, with many a sharrly-indrawn breath, to fetch the dustpan and brush.

The children were joyously garrulous about the gale's damage when they arrived.

'A great old 'ole up Mr Roberts' rick!' reported one gleefully.

'My dad says there's a tree right across the Caxley road, and half the Beech Green kids can't get to school,' said another, with the greatest satisfaction.

'My auntie's next-door neighbour's baby had a slate fall on its pram!' announced a third, 'and if it hadn't been sitting up, and a bit too far from the porch, and the wind had been stronger, it might have been in hospital!'

Altogether we had a pleasurably dramatic morning, for there is nothing like the sharing of common danger, with the added spice of others' misfortunes, to give one a sense of cosiness, and, in a village, these excitements provided by nature, give us the same stimulus as 'This Week's Sensational Programme' for our town cousins at their local cinemas.

Furthermore they stir old memories, for the countryman's recollections go back a long way. Reading little, they remember the tales passed down from father to son, tales which lose little in the telling. Mr Willet had a wonderful story to add to the general excitement today.