Read (3/20) Storm in the Village Online

Authors: Miss Read

Tags: #Fiction, #England, #Country life, #Country Life - England, #Fairacre (England : Imaginary Place)

(3/20) Storm in the Village (2 page)

BOOK: (3/20) Storm in the Village
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'I wonder who they can be? And what are they going to do in Fairacre?'

At that moment, in Fairacre, as Miss Clare had surmised, Miss Jackson and her young charges were pretending to be galloping horses in the small, stony playground of Fairacre School.

'Higher, higher!' she urged the leaping children, prancing among them spiritedly, and her excited voice floated through the Gothic window, which was tilted open, to my own class.

As headmistress of Fairacre School I have taken the older children now for several years; while first Miss Clare, then Miss Gray (now Mrs Annett), and finally Miss Jackson, held sway in the infants' room. Miss Jackson, to be sure, could be a thorn in the side at times, for she was still much influenced by her college psychology lecturer and apt to thrust that good lady's dicta forward for my edification, much too often for my liking. But she had improved enormously, and I was inclined to think that her serene life with Miss Clare had had a lot to do with this mellowing process.

My children were busy with sums, working away in their exercise books, with much rattling of nibs in inkwells and chewing of pen holders. I walked to the window to watch the progress of Miss Jackson's galloping horses.

The sun was dazzling. The weather cock glittered, gold against the blue and white scudding sky, on the spire of St Patrick's church, which stood, a massive neighbour, to our own small, two-roomed building. The children cavorted madly about, their faces rosy and their breath puffing mistily before them in the sharp air. Their short legs worked like pistons and their hair was tossed this way and that, not only by their own exertions but also by the exhilarating wind which came from the downs. Miss Jackson blew a wavering blast on her whistle, and the galloping horses stopped, panting, in their tracks.

It was at this moment that the little car drew cautiously alongside the school wall, and one of the two men inside called to Miss Jackson.

I could not hear the conversation from my vantage point at the window, but I watched the children edge nearer the wall, as Miss Jackson, leaning well over, waved her arms authoritatively and presumably gave directions. Inquisitive little things, I thought to myself, and then was immediately struck by my own avid curiosity, which kept me staring with fascination at the scene before me. There's no doubt about it—we like to know what's going on in Fairacre, both young and old, and there's precious little that happens around us that goes unobserved.

The men smiled their thanks, appeared to confer, and Miss Jackson turned back to her class, who were now clustered tightly about her, well within earshot of her conversation. One of the men got out of the car and made his way towards the centre of Fairacre, Miss Jackson resumed her lesson, and I, with smarting conscience, set about marking sums, much refreshed by my interlude at the school window.

'They had a flat tyre,' vouchsafed Miss Jackson, over our cup of tea at playtime, 'and wanted to know if they could get some coffee anywhere while they had the wheel changed. I told them to try the "Beetle and Wedge", and to call on Mr Rogers at the forge about the wheel. They seemed very nice men,' she added, a trifle wistfully, I thought.

I felt a slight pang of pity for my young assistant, who had so little opportunity of meeting 'very nice men.' There are very few young men in Fairacre itself, and not many more at Beech Green, and buses to Caxley, the nearest town, are few and far between, even if one felt like making the effort to join the Dramatic or Musical Society there. Occasionally, I knew, Miss Jackson went home for the weekend, and there, I sincerely hoped, she met some lively young people with her own interests. Unfortunately, it appeared from her chance remarks that Miss Crabbe still held first place in her heart, and if she could ever manage to visit this paragon I knew that she did so.

When I took my own class out for their P.T. lesson, later in the morning, the little car was still there, and both men were busily engaged in changing the wheel themselves; so, presumably, no help had been forthcoming from Mr Rogers at the forge. Before the end of my lesson, the job was completed. They wiped their hands on a filthy rag, looked very satisfied with themselves, and drove back on their tracks towards Caxley.

'See them two strangers?' shouted Mrs Pringle, an hour or so later, crashing plates about in the sink. Mrs Pringle, the school cleaner, also washes up the dinner things, and keeps us in touch with anything untoward that has happened in Fairacre during the morning.

I said that I had.

'Up to a bit of no good, I'll bet!' continued Mrs Pringle sourly. 'Inspectors, or something awkward like that. One went in the butcher's first. I thought p'raps he was the weights and measures. You know, for giving short weight. They has you up pretty smartish for giving short weight.'

I said I supposed they did.

'And so they should!' said Mrs Pringle, rounding on me fiercely. 'Nothing short of plain thieving to give short weight!' She crashed the plates even more belligerently, her three chins wobbling aggressively, and her mouth turned down disapprovingly.

'
However,
' she went on heavily, 'he wasn't the weights and measures, though his suit was good enough, that I must say. But he was asking for the forge. My cousin Dolly happened to be in the shop at the time, and she couldn't help overhearing, as she was waiting for her fat to be cut off her chops. Too rich for her always—never been the same since yellow jaundice as a tot. And the butcher said as he knew Mr Rogers was gone to Caxley, to put a wreath on his old mother's grave there, it being five years to the day since she passed on. As nice a woman as I ever wish to meet, and they keep her grave beautiful. So this fellow said was there anywhere to get a cup of coffee? And the butcher said no harm in having a bash at the "Beetle", but it all depended.'

She turned to the electric copper, raised the lid, letting out a vast cloud of steam, baled out a scalding dipperful of water, and flung it nonchalantly into the flotsam in the sink.

'I passed him on my way up to the post office. Nicely turned out he was. Beautiful heather mixture tweed, and a nice blue shirt with a fine red line to it-but his tie could have done with a clean—and his shoes! Had a good polish first thing, I don't doubt, but been tramping over some old ploughed field since then! Couldn't help but notice, though I hardly give him a glance; I never was a starer, like some in this parish I could mention!'

She bridled self-righteously and dropped a handful of red-hot forks, with an earsplitting crash, on to the tin draining board.

'Was that his car?' she bellowed, above the din. I nodded.

'They'd got a new-fangled satchel thing—brief-case, ain't it?—in the back. Two strangers, poking about here with a brief-case and a lot of mud on their shoes,' she mused. 'Makes you think, don't it? Might be Ag. men, of course. But you mark my words, Miss Read, they was up to a bit of no good!'

Mr Willet, the school caretaker, verger and sexton of St Patrick's next door, and general handyman to all Fairacre, had also noted the strangers.

'Nice little car that, outside here this morning. Them two chaps from the Office?'

The Office, which is always spoken of with the greatest respect, referred in this case to the divisional education office in Caxley, from which forms, directions and our monthly cheques flutter regularly.

'No,' I said, 'I don't know who they were.'

'Oh lor'!' said Mr Willet, blowing out his moustache despairingly. 'Hope it ain't anything to do with the sanitary. They're terrors—the sanitary! Ah well! Time'll tell, I suppose—but they looked uncomfortable sort of customers to me!'

He trudged off, with resigned good humour, to sweep up the playground.

But it remained for the Reverend Gerald Partridge, vicar of Fairacre and Beech Green, to say the last word on this mysterious subject.

'Did you have visitors this morning?' he asked, after he had greeted the children. I told him that we had not seen anyone strange in school.

'I noticed two men in a little car outside here, as I drove over to see about poor old Harris's funeral at Beech Green. Now, I wonder who they could have been?'

I said that I had no idea.

'Who knows?' said the vicar happily. 'We may look forward to having some new people among us perhaps?'

As it happened, the vicar had spoken more truly than he knew.

2. Fairacre's Daily Round

B
Y NEXT
day, of course, the two strangers were forgotten. Life, particularly in a village, has so many interests that each day seems to offer more riches than the last.

Miss Clare turned her attention to a magnificent steak and kidney pudding, which simmered gently on her stove from two o'clock onwards, for her lodger's, and her own, supper together at eight o'clock. It filled the little house with its homely fragrance, and Dr Martin, who called in hopefully about half-past three for a cup of tea with his old friend and patient, noticed it at once.

'That's the stuff!' he said approvingly, rubbing his hands, and he cast a glance at Miss Clare's spare frame. 'You're putting on weight since that girl came. Good idea of yours to have a lodger!'

It had not been Miss Clare's idea at all, as they both knew very well, but Miss Clare let it pass. It was Dr Martin who had engineered Miss Jackson's removal from her headmistress's house to Miss Clare's; and he could see that young company as well as an addition to her slender housekeeping purse was doing his patient all the good in the world.

'Have a ginger nut,' said Miss Clare, pushing the massive biscuit barrel across to him.

'I'll have to dip it. My new bottom set's giving me hell!' said the doctor, with disarming frankness. 'We're getting old, Dolly, that's our trouble.'

They smiled across at each other, and sipped their tea in comfortable silence. The steak and kidney pudding sizzled deliriously on the stove. The fire warmed their thin legs, and though indeed, thought Miss Clare, we're both old and white-haired, at least we're very happy.

Mrs Pringle was busy washing out the school tea cloths at her own sink. This was done every day, but on this occasion Mrs Pringle was particularly engrossed, for it was the first time that she had used what she termed one of these new-fangled deterrents.'

A staunch upholder of yellow bar soap, Mrs Pringle had set her face against the dazzling array of washing powders which brightened the grocer's shop. On a wooden shelf, above her sink, were stacked long bars, as hard as wood, which she had stored there for many months. This soap was used for all cleaning purposes in the Pringle household. The brick floors, the stout undergarments and Mrs Pringle's dour countenance itself were all scoured with this substance, and when one piece had worn away, Mrs Pringle fetched her shovel, laid a bar on a piece of newspaper on the kitchen floor and sliced off another chunk to do its work.

But the gay coupons, all assuring her of their monetary value, which fluttered through Mrs Pringle's letter-box from time to time, gradually found a chink in her armour. The day came when, slightly truculent, she handed one across the counter, and put the dazzling packet in her basket. She was careful to cover it with other packages, in case she met neighbours who, knowing her former scorn of these products, would be only too pleased to 'take a rise out of her' if they saw that she had finally fallen.

And so, on this day, Mrs Pringle washed her tea cloths with a critical eye. The packet had been tucked away behind the innocent bars of soap, for Mrs Pringle had no doubt that her husband and grown-up son could be as equally offensive as her neighbours about this experiment, if they caught sight of the soap powder.

'Hm!' said Mrs Pringle grudgingly, as she folded the wet tea towels, and put them into her laundry basket. 'It don't do so bad after all!'

With some pride, she trudged up the garden and began to peg out the cloths on the line. When she had done this, she propped the line up with a sturdy forked hazel branch, and surveyed the fluttering collection.

'Might be something to be said for these deterrents, after all!' she told herself, returning to the cottage, 'and it do save chipping up the soap—that I will give 'em!' It was, indeed, high praise.

Miss Jackson, in the infants' room at Fairacre was embarking on the most elaborate and artistic frieze yet attempted by her class. It was to go all round the room, fixed with drawing pins to the green-painted matchboarding, and it was to represent Spring.

The children were busy snipping with their blunt-nosed little scissors—which were always much too stiff for small children to manage properly-at gummed paper, in all the colours of the rainbow.

'Make just what you like!' Miss Jackson had exhorted them. 'Flowers, leaves, lambs, birds, butterflies—anything that makes you think of Spring!'

Most of her class had flung themselves with abandon into this glorious snipping session, but there were, as always, one or two stolid and adenoidal babies who were completely without imagination, and awaited direction apathetically.

'Make grass then!' had said Miss Jackson, with some exasperation to the Coggs twins, who sat with glum, dark eyes fixed upon her. Ten minutes later, she found that a large mound of green snippings lay on the desk between them, while, with tongues protruding, and with a red ring round each hard-working thumb, the grass-makers added painfully to their pile.

BOOK: (3/20) Storm in the Village
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