(3/20) Storm in the Village (19 page)

Whistling discordantly, the doctor clattered cheerfully downstairs.

His last call of the day was at Fairacre school-house where he found a most interesting operation going on.

Mrs Pringle had for many months deplored, loudly and bitterly, the condition of the spare-room feather bed.

'One heave,' she had said to me, 'and the room's thick with feathers! As soon as we gets a fine still day I'll tip the lot into a new ricking I'll run up for you.'

She had been as good as her word, and the new striped mattress cover, with its inside seams carefully sealed with a dampened piece of that yellow bar soap which was Mrs Pringle's household standby, lay spread on the lawn awaiting its contents.

Mrs Pringle and I had spread an enormous sheet on the grass and together had emptied out a mountain of feathers, white, speckled and coppery brown, upon it. Mr Willet, who had come to clip the hedges, had abandoned his job and joined us on the lawn. He greeted the doctor boisterously.

'Us only wants the tar, doctor, then us be all ready for you!'

'Not in this heat, Willet. Have pity, man,' said Dr Martin, settling himself in the shade. He looked at Mrs Pringle who was busy turning the feathers over and over, 'to get a bit of clean air into the poor things,' as she so tactfully told me.

'That leg any better?' he enquired.

'Torture!' said that lady implacably. 'Simple torture. Flaring, burning, twitching, jumping, itching, throbbing——'

'No better then, I take it,' said the doctor calmly. He lay back upon the grass and closed his eyes. Mrs Pringle cast a disgusted glance at his peaceful figure.

'What if a wind come up?' asked Mr Willet suddenly.

'Come wind, come rain, come fair, come foul,' announced Mrs Pringle majestically, 'my leg's still torture to me.'

'Wasn't speaking of your leg, gal, but the feathers,' responded Mr Willet without gallantry. 'You wants to thank the Lord you're not worse. Remember last Sunday's psalm?'

'I know as well as you do,' answered Mrs Pringle sourly, 'and I remember some pretty botched-up singing too, in that new chant.'

Mr Willet was stung.

'There wasn't one of us in that choir could sing that agrarian chant,' he said wrathfully. 'I don't say Annett don't know his job at teaching, but for a choir-master he's got pretty rum ideas. Too popish by half, if you ask me! Might just as wed go to St Peter's over the other side of Caxley!'

'And what, pray,' began Mrs Pringle loftily, 'is wrong with St Peter's? I went there a time or two when I was courting and we had some real beautiful services.'

'I been there,' said Mr Willet heavily, 'but the once. Never again, I said, never again! Pictures all round the wads, curtains hanging up, candles blazing away ad over the place, people bobbing up and down—I ted you!' Mr Willet's sturdy Calvinistic frame shook at the very remembrance of the place.

Dr Martin rolled over on to his front, giving me a slow wink on his course.

'And that minister of theirs,' continued Mr Willet warmly, 'a beardless boy, young enough to be me son, told me to call him father when I spoke to him! I tell you it's against nature-and so's that agrarian chanting, to my mind; no proper tune at all!'

'Maybe you just don't know real music when you hears it,' suggested Mrs Pringle sarcastically. She bent over the feathers, corsets creaking, and began to stuff handfuls into the new mattress cover. I knelt down beside her, and Mr Willet and Dr Martin set to with us.

The sun beat on our heads and the white sheet reflected the light blindingly. Despite the heat and energetic thrusting of feathers Mr Willet rose to the challenge.

'I heard the Messiah at the Corn Exchange last year,' puffed Mr Willet, 'and that's what I call real music. Good, plain, God-fearing, English-sounding music that you can sing out hearty! It done you good! Plenty of up and down, and soft and loud, and everyone having a rattlin' good time of it!'

'Takes some beating,' agreed the doctor, sneezing some feathers from his nose. 'Here, why don't we lift the lot up in the sheet and ram it ad in?'

This sensible suggestion was welcomed. Mrs Pringle and I folded the sheet carefudy, imprisoning the rest of the ubiquitous feathers some of which had floated far and wide in the summer garden, while the two men held open the gaping mouth of the ticking.

Coughing and spluttering we finally made the transfer. The sheet still bore a mass of fluff, and the lawn looked as though a snowstorm had passed over.

'Fiddlin' stuff!' observed Mr Willet, 'but it give us aU a nice set-down and a chat. I'll be back to my hedges.'

He stumped off, swinging the shears and humming to himself. Mrs Pringle watched him go.

'What that chap lacks,' said she slowly, 'is soul!'

***

Dr Martin refused ad refreshment, picked himself a rosebud and returned to his car.

'Nearly forgot,' he said. 'I called to tell you that Miss Clare is going to have a break with the Annetts, by the sea.'

'That's absolutely wonderful!' I cried. 'How did they manage to persuade her?'

'They didn't,' answered Dr Martin smugly. 'I did!' The car moved slowly forward.

'And what farrago of arguments did you concoct this time?' I shouted, after the departing car.

Two derisive hoots were my answer, and I returned, smiling, to my feathered garden.

16. Miss Crabbe Reappears

T
HE
heat continued. A few days after Dr Martin's visit I went to Devonshire to spend three weeks with two sisters, friends of mine since childhood, who owned a cottage by the sea. Sunshine, sea, bathing, boating, walking and the cheerful companionship of old friends dispelled my Fairacre worries about Miss Clare, the future of the school, the housing estate and the problem of Hilary Jackson's affairs of the heart.

The holiday was almost at an end and I was spending an hour doing a little leisurely shopping for gifts to take back with me, when I decided that the blazing sunshine reflected from the tiny market-square's cobbles, called for an ice.

I turned into a small cafe and on opening the door came face to face with Miss Crabbe. Our mouths dropped open in surprise.

'On holiday?' I enquired weakly. Miss Crabbe assured me that she was combining business with pleasure, attending a summer course at a nearby manor house recently taken over for this purpose.

I persuaded her to return to her table and eat another ice wlule she told me aU about it. My invitation was not completely altruistic, as I welcomed this opportunity of finding out how matters stood between this lady and my unfortunate assistant.

'The course is most imaginatively conceived,' began Miss Crabbe, and I felt that dreadful ennui overtaking me as she got into her stride. 'It deals with every possible means of self-expression, and we have tackled pottery-making, miming, finger-painting and stick printing. Some of us have attempted some ready worthwhile work in music, making our own instruments first, as a matter of course, and I have made a set of most satisfying bamboo pipes.'

The voice droned on whilst I demolished my ice. As I had noticed during Miss Crabbe's visit to my house she had the ability to eat and talk at the same time, and even quite large portions of strawberry ice seemed to glide down, whilst an endless flow of words streamed up, from the same orifice. I was fascinated.

No mention was made of Miss Jackson and I determined to broach the subject myself. There was no doubt about it, Miss Jackson might wed be influenced by the woman who now sat with me, and it was worth asking for her help. Hilary's reckless behaviour with this undesirable man had dated from her clash over him with Miss Crabbe, for before that time, as far as I knew, she had been a little more circumspect. What Miss Crabbe thought really mattered to the girl, and I suspected that their estrangement was a secret source of great grief to both of them, but that neither would give way.

Miss Crabbe's countenance flushed an unlovely pink when I spoke of Hilary Jackson.

'I have had no word from her since we met at Fairacre,' she said stiffly. 'We had made tentative plans for visiting Brittany, but as I heard nothing, I applied to come on this course at the last minute. She seems to have become a very silly girl since she left college. We ad had great hopes of her there.' The last two sentences were spoken so primly that she could only infer that Hilary's shocking state of silliness was due to the influence of those foolish people whom she had met since leaving college! I did not rise to this bait.

'To be frank,' I said, 'I think Hilary Jackson has always been a silly girl, but she has two great qualities, warmhearted affection, and loyalty to her friends. In this affair with Franklyn it is these two qualities which have led her astray.'

I paused for a moment, wondering whether I dared to go on. Miss Crabbe's mouth, now mercifully free from food, was set in a stubborn line. I decided that I might as wed hang for a sheep as a lamb and continued.

'If only she could have continued to direct this affection and loyalty to you, I think ad would have blown over between Hilary and this fellow, but when she saw that you—er—felt so strongly about it she was forced to take sides. Unfortunately, she took the wrong side, and because she was so thoroughly miserable she flung herself at this man.'

'Then she's only herself to blame,' remarked Miss Crabbe decidedly, but to my watchful eye she appeared slightly mollified.

'Loyalty to him,' I went on, 'won't allow her to get in touch with you as she knows that you don't approve; but, believe me, she has been desperately unhappy about this break, and I know she'd give the world to make things up if only you'd give her a sign.'

Miss Crabbe began drawing geometrical patterns on the tablecloth with the handle of her spoon. Her face was set and thoughtful. She too, I guessed, had suffered considerably from the withdrawal of her young friend's adulation. Jealousy of John Franklyn was merely the outcome of her own overweening pride.

'It would be so much easier for you to make the first move,' I went on. 'You are an older, wiser woman, and if you left John Franklyn's name out of it for a bit I'm positive that the whole wretched affair would die a natural death. The man does not want it, I feel convinced. Meanwhile Hilary makes herself unhappy, and Miss Clare and her parents, and ad her friends.'

'She does indeed,' said Miss Crabbe slowly and softly. She looked up from her drawing and took a deep breath.

'I'd think it over. It might be a good thing for the girl,' she said.

'It would be a great service to everyone,' I responded. Particularly to Miss Crabbe herself, I surmised privately. 'I should be very grateful indeed. She is at the start of a very promising career. A word from the right person now means such a lot.'

Miss Crabbe inclined her head graciously.

I looked at my watch.

'Would you like to come and meet my friends?' I asked. 'They have a little house in Fore Street, just round the corner.'

But Miss Crabbe excused herself, saying that she must get back to a percussion band class after tea.

We parted amicably in the hot sunshine.

'I'm glad we met,' I said truthfully, 'and do please help if you feel that you can!'

'I shad sleep on it,' Miss Crabbe assured me solemnly, 'but I think I may say, here and now, that I shad extend the olive branch to that poor misguided child.'

And so we parted, she to her percussion band class and I to my friends' cottage, where I celebrated this minor victory with scones, strawberry jam and a large dish of clotted Devonshire cream.

The countryside, as I approached Fairacre on the return drive, slept peacefully in the heat. Things were getting their shabby end-of-August look. The trees were heavy and dusty, the grassy banks parched by the prolonged sunshine, and already the farmers were busy harvesting. In the fields of one or two of the smaller farms the stooks of corn waited in neat rows for the farm carts which would take them to the ricks, but on Mr Miller's Hundred Acre Field, a combine-harvester crawled busdy along, an enormous red monster that poured the grain from its gaping mouth into a truck that drove slowly beside it collecting the rich harvest. This was the crop that Miss Clare had watched growing beside her garden, throughout the year, and the one which two strangers had studied on that Spring morning, so long, it seemed, ago.

The school-house at Beech Green was shuttered, I noticed, as I drove by, and Miss Clare's little house too. They would ad be returning at the weekend, for school began on Tuesday morning. I sincerely hoped that Miss Clare's health would have benefited from the sea air and sunshine.

My own house greeted me with a wonderful aroma of furniture polish. Mrs Pringle had been left in charge of my household matters, the cat Tibby being the most important of her duties. This disdainful animal came down the stairs as I entered and greeted my own effusive cries with a glassy stare, never pausing in his progress to the garden.

A bottle of milk stood on the kitchen table and under it lay a note in Mrs Pringle's hand. It said:

Dear Miss Read,

Hope you have had a good time. Milk here six eggs in safe lettuce and tomattos in basket and bread in the bin. Young Prince had not no holemeal but only this coberg (white).

Cat have et like a horse.

Mrs Pringle.

I boded one of the eggs for my tea, for I had made an early start and was hungry, and carried my tray into the sunny garden. How lovely it was to be back, I thought! The garden was drooping sadly in the drought, the lawn was scorched and the garden beds were baked hard, but it still smelt fragrant and lapped me in peace, and the air from the high downs blew softly upon it ad. Tibby, seeing food, approached me lovingly and gave me, at last, a belated welcome.

I was still sitting in the garden, reading back numbers of
The Times Educational Supplement
winch had piled up in my absence, when Mrs Partridge called bearing the Parish Magazine.

'Wed, wed, my dear!' she greeted me affectionately. 'It is so nice to see you back again.'