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

'Ted me ad the news,' I begged, pushing a deck chair towards her. She settled herself in it gingerly.

'I never quite trust them,' she confessed. 'As a child I caught my finger in one once, and the nad went quite black and had to be taken off at the hospital——'

'Please don't ted me,' I pleaded hastily, 'I'm a squeamish woman, and anything like that makes my back open and shut like Mrs Pringle's!'

Mrs Partridge smiled kindly.

'Then I won't ted you, my dear, for the sequel was perfectly horrid.' She licked her lips ghoulishly, and took a breath.

'It went septic——' she began, but I cut her short.

'DON'T!' I protested, putting my hands over my ears.

Mrs Partridge opened her eyes very wide, and I saw her lips moving. Very cautiously I took my hands away.

'So of course I won't mention it again,' she was saying. Breathing a sigh of relief I put my hands back in my lap.

'What's happened in Fairacre?' I pursued. 'Any births, deaths or marriages?'

'No. No, I don't think so,' said the vicar's wife in a slow, considering voice. Then her eyes brightened.

'But Mrs Pringle tells me that Minnie is expecting her fourth in the New Year.'

'Make a nice change to have one born in wedlock,' I said comfortably, closing my eyes against the sun's lowering rays. Mrs Partridge agreed.

'And the estate?' I ventured.

'Not a word more directly. We've heard that the Planning Committee of the County Council object to the idea. It doesn't fit in with their ideas for that area any more than it does with ours. So we're ad unanimous on that point. But that's not to say there isn't plenty of strong feeling in Caxley and elsewhere. I suppose that the County Planning people will register their objections and then we all wait to see what happens.'

'All most unsettling!'I said.

'Don't let it worry you,' said Mrs Partridge gently. She leant forward and patted my knee. 'Fairacre School will always be here, and you with it, I hope, for many, many years.'

She departed very soon after this, leaving me to relish my much-loved little house and garden, the sight of the village school awaiting the new term's activities, while her comforting words rang in my head.

17. Joseph Coggs Leaves Home

J
OSEPH COGGS
was locked out. The shabby wooden door of Number 2 Tyler's Row, from which the faded paint was flaking fast, was firmly shut against him, and the little house was empty.

Mrs Coggs and the two youngest children had gone to Caxley to buy shoes for the winter, and she had forgotten, in the last minute helter-skelter rush for the bus, to put the door key in its usual hiding place.

Joseph had pelted home from school through pouring rain, had flung open the rickety gate and heaved up the old pad which served as a dustbin by the door, to find the key. It was not there. He tried the door, found it locked, shrugged his wet shoulders philosophically, and wandered down the garden path to seek shelter in the shed.

This was not the first time that Joseph had found himself locked out. His mother, poor, feckless, overworked creature, ad too often forgot to put the key out in 'the secret hiding-place,' and Joseph prepared now to wait for almost an hour, when he knew the bus from Caxley was due back.

The shed was a flimsy construction of corrugated iron sheeting, and the rain drummed relentlessly and deafeningly upon it. Joseph upturned a bucket, usually used for mixing the chicken's mash and heavily encrusted with the remains of long-past meals, and sat himself down with his elbows on his knees and his chin cupped in his cold hands.

He wondered idly where his little sisters had got to. They had set off from school a few minutes before him, but he had run past them in the lane where they were blissfully paddling in a long, deep puddle with sticks in their hands with which they stirred the murky depths, quite oblivious of the rain which soaked their flimsy clothes.

'Come on ome!' Joseph had directed hoarsely. 'Mum won't half go on at you! Look at your shoes!'

The twins had scarcely spared a glance either for their brother or for their canvas-topped plimsods which were almost hidden by water. They had answered him boldly:

'Don't care! Ted her then! Don't care!' they had said tauntingly.

'Don't care was made to care,
Don't care was hung!
Don't care was put in a pot
And boiled till he was done!'

shouted their brother threateningly; but seeing that they took no notice he had sped away home.

Apart from the drumming of the rain above his head and the trickling of a little stream that ran in the ditch which separated the Tyler's Row gardens from the field beyond them, Joseph found the shed very peaceful. It was a dirty place, but that did not worry Joseph unduly, for he was wed acquainted with dirt. The door was of hard earth and upon it lay an assortment of objects, poor enough in themselves, but of great service to the Coggs' family. A treacle tin, with a loop of wire for a handle, stood half full of creosote. Arthur Coggs had purloined this in order to 'do the fowl house sometime,' but so far that time had not come.

Strips of boxwood, which had once housed oranges and margarine, lay in a heap ready for kindling wood, beside a heavy bar of iron which had once been part of Mr Roberts's harrow but had 'been found' by Arthur Coggs who had prudently put it by for future use. Joseph idly turned this over and watched innumerable wood lice scurry for shelter.

He picked one up, a scaly, grey, little creature, with its myriad legs thrashing wildly. Gently, he turned it over on his palm, fascinated to see it rod itself up into a tight bad no bigger than a goose grass seed. It was like a minute football, with its even lines round and round it. Joseph tipped his grimy palm this way and that, watching his treasure roll.

At last it rolled between his fingers to the ground. The legs reappeared as if by magic and away the wood louse scuttled to find its own again. It vanished beneath a sack containing dusty straw, a sack which gave forth a strong odour of dog-biscuits and stale corn which reminded Joseph of his own empty stomach.

He rose and pulled out an ear or two from the musty wheat straw, and began to rod the grains between his palms. Four hard grains rewarded his labours and he chewed them contentedly enough, his old posture with elbows on knees resumed, and his gaze fixed upon the chicken run which he could see through the open door.

The bare earth there was a slimy mass of mud, starred with the marks of chickens' claws. The unhappy birds stood hunched beside their rickety house, a converted tea chest. They were in an advanced state of moult, several without tad feathers, and most showing areas of pink pimply flesh here and there.

They were sadly bedraggled and half starved, but Joseph loved them. It grieved him to see them now, almost shelterless, without food, enduring the pitiless rain upon their bare backs with such humility and hopelessness. Tears sprang to his dark eyes as he looked upon these pathetic prisoners. It wasn't fair, thought young Joseph passionately, that some birds should be able to fly wherever they liked and have ad the food that they could eat and be warmly wrapped in thick feathers, while others had come out of the eggs only to find a naked hungry world awaiting them!

It did not occur to Joseph that he himself could be compared with his own unhappy hens, the victim of poverty, neglect and callous indifference, equally hungry, cold and without shelter.

He sat there as hunched as the hens, beneath his glistening ragged clothing, comforting himself by squelching his bare wet toes up and down inside his soaking canvas shoes, and watching the small bubbles bursting from their sides.

Four miles away the bus from Caxley crept slowly towards Fairacre through the puddles that swirled around its wheels.

Term was now several weeks old. An unusually silent and subdued Miss Jackson reigned in the infants' room and relations between us were strained, which was not surprising. I did not blame her for resenting my intrusion into her private affairs, and I had no knowledge of her father's handling of this delicate matter, after he had summarily removed her from Franklyn's cottage.

I had received a letter from Mr Jackson at the beginning of term thanking me for my care of his daughter and asking me, in effect, to keep an eye on her movements. This letter gave me some uneasy moments and I ready wished that Mr Jackson could have queiled his very natural parental anxieties and not placed me in the dubious position of policeman.'

I disliked the feeling of conspiring with her father behind Hilary's back, but, after some thought, I decided to say nothing to her about the letter, and contented myself with a brief reply to the effect that Hilary seemed more settled.

The girl vouchsafed nothing about either Franklyn or Miss Crabbe, and I began to wonder whether that lady had ever written to Hilary, as she had said she would. I told Hilary of our encounter in Devon, of the heat and the ices, but nothing, naturally, of our conversation. The girl's response was off-hand, and if indeed Miss Crabbe had proffered the olive branch I began to wonder if it had been spurned.

Altogether it was being a most uncomfortable term. The heat wave had given way to a long dreary sped of rainy weather, which meant that the children lacked fresh air and proper exercise, and were nearly as crotchety as their much-tried teachers.

The one bright spot was the return to good health of Miss Clare. The three weeks' rest by the sea in glorious weather had restored her considerably and she returned with a most becoming tan that showed off her white hair beautifully. Her lodger's low spirits had not gone unnoticed, but I gathered from her comments on them that the girl was genuinely more cheerful at Miss Clare's than she was in my damping presence at school.

'I think her father has written a pretty straight note to Franklyn,' she said to me, 'and forbidden Hilary to see him.' She paused, and shook her head sadly.

'But whether she does or not, I ready don't know. She goes into Caxley quite often, but I can't bring myself to cross-question the child about her comings and goings. It's ready not my affair at ad, and I'm sure the girl has learnt her lesson now.'

'I hope so,' I answered. 'But I can't help feeling that a teaching post wed away from this part of the world would be the best thing for everybody. She's a capable girl, but she needs young company. As one of a large mixed staff she'd get her corners rubbed off, and a lot of fun into the bargain!'

Our conversation was interrupted by some peremptory thudding at the door. On opening it I discovered Miss Clare's imperious cat, who deigned to enter only when I had held the door aside for a full two minutes. After this, rather naturally, our conversation turned to happier things.

But very soon afterwards an incident occurred which gave me food for thought. I had taken the car into Caxley to be overhauled after school one day, had stayed there for my tea and caught the six o'clock bus, in driving rain.

I sat in the front of the bus watching the raindrops course down the window in front of me. We made various stops, the driver good naturedly drawing up near roadside cottages where he knew certain of his passengers lived. The bed tinged as we approached the long, lonely track up to John Franklyn's house and the bus puded up in a sheet of water, milky with the chalk which it had collected in its journey down the side of the downs.

A man stepped off first and turned to help his companion over the puddles. It was John Franklyn and I recognised the woman whose arm he tucked so protectively under his own. She was the same person who had accompanied him to the Flower Show—the barmaid from 'The Bell' at Caxley.

It was on this same wet day that Joseph Coggs had taken shelter in the shed. His sojourn there, surveying the wretched hens before him, had been a prelude to unsuspected drama.

Mrs Coggs had returned from Caxley wet and cross. The shoes had cost far more than she had ever imagined, and she found that a mere six shillings and a few coppers remained in her shabby purse to last her until the following Saturday night when Arthur Coggs would hand over a grudging three pounds for housekeeping.

The sight of her three older children, waiting by the rickety gate and drenched to the skin, did nothing to mitigate her despair. More firing needed to dry that lot of dripping clothes by morning, she thought bitterly, as she fished at the bottom of her basket for the key.

A reek of paraffin od met her nostrils as she grated the door back over the grubby brick door. It overwhelmed the usual aroma of the Coggs' household which was compounded of stale food, damp wads and unwashed clothing. The od lamp, overturned by the cat, lay across the table, its glass chimney shattered and its precious od seeping steadily into half a loaf of bread which had been left beside it.

Another woman, facing this final blow after so many, might have sat down and wept. Not so Mrs Coggs, who gave one piercing hysterical shriek, dropped her basket to the door, and set about cuffing her cruldren out of the way to relieve her feelings.

'Git on upstairs out of it, you little 'uns,' she screamed. 'Out o' this mess till we've cleared up! Git a cloth, Jo, you great ninny standing gawping!' She gave him a resounding box on the ears which sent him reeling into the diminutive scullery where the floor cloth lay. He returned with it to the dusky room, his eyes full of tears. It wasn't that he minded the box on the ears, although it had been a particularly vicious one, but he hated to see his mother in a mood like this. His father's clusterings and heavy blows he could endure equably, for he expected him to behave in that way; but that his mother should shout, and banish the youngest ones for no fault of their own, hurt Joseph.