(5/20)Over the Gate (5 page)

A spoonful and a half of the revolting brew was doing its best to settle in Sally's affronted stomach as she approached the plum tree. Already her feet were skimming the grass and she had hardly reached the gnarled old trunk before she began to rise swiftly. For a moment Sally was torn with panic. She felt horribly vulnerable out here in the open and would have welcomed the painful crack of the kitchen rafter on her head, at that moment. She clawed frantically at a substantial branch, as she floated by, and paused to get her breath. Taking a tight grip with one hand, she groped inside the basket on her arm, found the brick and'cast it downward.

It seemed to make the most appalling shindy and also jerked Sally cruelly round the waist. Breathless, shelistened. Supposing the neighbours were disturbed and looked out of their windows? Supposing the rope broke? Sally gripped the tree even more desperately in her agitation. But the silence engulfed her, and only the distant yelping of a stoat stirred the blackness, as a failing leaf might ruffle the satin smoothness of a still pool.

Emboldened, Sally turned to her task. It was not easy, but it was wonderfully exhilarating to be at large in the tree tops and her basket was soon full. Weight returned to her in roughly half ail hour, and Sally crept back to the cottage, basket in one hand, brick in the other, and went, highly elated, to bed.

Time passed. A pot of the mixture stood permanently on Sally's larder shelf and she began to take her ability to levitate almost for granted. She was wonderfully lucky in preserving her secret, although over the years she had one or two dangerous moments. One day, for example, she was cleaning her bedroom window inside, floating about eight inches above the rush matting, when her neighbour appeared on the garden path below her and asked if she might borrow some sugar.

'I'll be down in a minute,' Sally replied, doing her best to keep her feet hidden from sight below the window sill.

'Shall I take a cupful myself?' suggested the woman. 'Save you leaving the windows, like?'

'No, no,' answered Sally, trying to sound airy, as indeed she felt. Til bring it round the minute I've finished.'

If she gets in here, thought Sally frantically, she'll be upstairs in double quick time and I'm aloft here for a good five minutes yet. The woman watched her closely, as she undulated from one pane to the next.

'What you standin' on, gal?' she asked suspiciously.

'My little old stool,' responded Sally, tightening her hold on the curtain and concentrating her attention on one pane. 'Don't you trouble to wait,' she added hastily. Til be round in two shakes.'

To her infinite relief the woman departed, but the incident left Sally severely shaken. It was several weeks before she dared to take another dose.

Under cover of darkness she often repeated her first outdoor experiment and picked fruit for pies and puddings, jamming and bottling. On one occasion the landlord of'The Beetle and Wedge' had asked her curiously how she had picked her apple tree so clean, and she had said quickly that she had 'given it a good old shake' and the wind had done the rest. He seemed to believe her.

One late October day, when Sally was almost sixty years of age, she gazed with a speculative eye upon her walnut tree. This was a lofty beauty, of great age, and heavy this year with magnificent nuts. Sally decided to lengthen her rope and to make an assault upon it.

"Tis Thursday,' said Sally aloud, 'and they all be safely at market. By teatime it'll be dark enough to try.'

She made her preparations and made her way to the tree as dusk began to fall. The neighbours' cottages were empty and would remain so for a full hour, as well she knew. What she had not reckoned with was a freshening wind and the enormous collie puppy which came from the farm.

The brick lay at the foot of the tree, half hidden in wet grass. Higher than she had ever been before Sally plucked swiftly at the green walnuts, staining her fingers brown as the basket filled. The wind made things difficult, tugging at her skirts and lifting the boughs from her reach. It grew more boisterous each minute and Sally began to feel alarmed.

'I'll be downright thankful when this lightness wears off,' she said to herself, clinging to a sturdy branch. At that moment she became conscious of a rhythmic tremor running up die rope. There, busily gnawing at it, just above the brick, was the collie puppy. Caution thrown to the winds, Sally screamed at him.

'Be off, sir! Get away, you rascal!'

The puppy wagged a delighted tail and continued his gnawing. His strong white teeth, busy at their task, seemed to grin at her. Sally began to pelt him with walnuts, but he was unperturbed. Slowly but surely the strands were severed, until a particularly fierce gust of wind caught Sally unawares, broke the rope completely, and jerked her violently from the walnut tree. Still screaming, Sally rose abruptly another twenty or thirty feet, and began to twirl this way and that as the wind blew her on an erratic course clean across the village.

Over and over Sally rolled, like an escaped balloon, and soon she felt sick as well as frightened. But her innate common sense began to assert itself, and just as she had accepted the first ridiculous position against her own kitchen ceiling so, in this present predicament, she did her best to come to terms with the situation.

First, she stopped screaming. On no account would she draw attention to herself. She'd got herself in tins pickle, and she'd get herself out of it. Luckily, dusk was falling fast and with luck her progress through the sky would pass unnoticed. The roaring of the wind would distract people's attention from unusual sounds above them. Heads down against the onslaught, they would probably be intent on getting home, Sally comforted herself.

Her own travelling arrangements next occupied her thoughts. The rope trailed behind her like an unwieldy tail. She hauled it painfully in towards her, rolling the end loosely round one arm. This steadied her a little, and by gripping it between her feet, a few inches below her billowing skirts, she was more likely to stay upright, she discovered. True, she still twirled and bobbed in a highly distracting fashion, but at least she was travelling with a little more decorum and her skirts were hanging in approximately the right direction. Her bun had come down and her locks streamed in the wind, but Sally found this remarkably refreshing. It was years since she had felt the wind blowing through her loose hair.

She floated dangerously close to the spire of St Patrick's and noticed how remarkably dirty the weather cock was at its tip. Below her she could see the new village school and the little playground, now mercifully empty. The village street wound its way beneath her, and she was thankful that it too appeared to be empty. Her pace was brisk, for the wind was now a gale and the noise from the topmost branches of the elms beyond the school almost deafened her. She looked down upon the untidy rooks' nests swaying dizzily at the top of the trees, and then swirled onwards towards the open fields between Fairacre and Springbourne.

At last, she began to lose height. Her weight began to return and she braced herself for the descent to earth. Alas, by this time she was in the great park of Springbourne Manor and heading at incredible speed towards the avenue of lime trees which bordered the drive to the house. Closing her eyes and gripping the rope tightly, Sally awaited the crash. It came with a vast rending of boughs and garments. Dazed and bruised, Sally came to rest a good thirty feet above ground, securely enmeshed in lime branches and the remains of a squirrel's drey.

She was discovered by a cowman, who was making his way home after milking. By that time she had thrown the rope off and descended carefully as low as she could. The last twelve feet, unfortunately, consisted of trunk alone and it was while she was trying to brace herself to jump that the man arrived.

To Sally's relief he was a man of few words.

"Old on,' he said. 'I'll get a ladder.'

He returned in a few minutes and helped her down. They walked part of the way to Fairacre together in silence. At length he turned in to his cottage gate.

'Goodnight,' he bade her and then added: 'How d'yer get up there?'

Sally began the tale she had already manufactured. It involved being chased by a bull, and was the best she could manage under the trying circumstances. She was aware, as she came to a faltering halt, that her rescuer was not impressed.

'Must be a good leaper,' he observed drily, and went indoors.

Sally, bruised and weary, dragged herself homeward, took the pot from the larder shelf and threw it resolutely on to the rubbish heap.

Later that evening she thrust the exercise book into her fire, and holding it resolutely down with the poker, she watched it burn to ashes.

She had flown for the last time.

'Well, there it is, Miss Read,' said Mr Willet, rising from his chair. 'Take it or leave it. That's what Sally told my mother a year or two later, just afore she died.'

'I don't disbelieve you,' I said slowly. 'It's a wonderful story. It's just that-somehow—'

'Well, what?' asked Mr Willet, blowing out his moustache fiercely. 'Proper doubting Thomases, some people be!'

'It's just that it seems extraordinary that no one ever saw her. Particularly on the last journey, I mean.'

'Ah, but they did! There was two little boys, brothers they were, as had been sent down to the "Jug and Bottle." They saw Sally, and rope and all, skidding along over "The Beetle and Wedge," and tore 'ome to tell their mum and dad.

"Course, all they got was a clump on the ear-'ole for being such a pair of bars, so they never said no more. And years later, when the poor ol' girl had gone, the landlord at the pub said he'd seen her picking plums two or three times, but never liked to say so.'

'I wonder why not?' I exclaimed. Mr Willet sighed patiently.

'You a school teacher and you don't know 'uman nature yet!' he commented. 'Why, people don't mind being thought downright evil and wicked, but they fair hates to seem fools. Ain't you learned that yet, Miss Read?'

He opened the kitchen door and looked out into the windy darkness.

'That coke'll have to wait till morning now. Good-bye, miss, and thanks for the tea. See you bright and early.'

And he vanished into the night.

3. Jingle Bells

M
R
Willet was as good as his word, and next morning, 'bright and early,' I had my breakfast to the accompaniment of the brushing up of coke in the distance. He was still at it when I crossed to the school, wielding the broom vigorously in his capable hands, his breath wreathing his head in silvery clouds.

'Nasty cold morning,' I called to him, scurrying towards shelter.

'This keeps me warm,' he replied, pausing for a moment to rest on his broom. 'But I s'pose I shan't be doing this much longer.'

'Only three days,' I agreed. 'And then it's the lovely Christmas holidays!'

'You should be ashamed!' said Mr Willet reproachfully. 'Young woman like you, wishing your life away.'

But it was too cold to argue, and I only had time to wave to him before whisking into the shelter of the lobby.

The last day of term, particularly the Christmas term, has a splendour of its own. There is an air of excitement at the thought of pleasures and freedom to come, but there is also a feeling of relaxation from daily routine made much more acute by the deliciously empty desks. Books have been collected and stacked in neat piles in the cupboard. Papers and exercise books have been tidied away. All that remains to employ young hands in this last glorious day is a pencil and loose sheets of paper which have been saved for just such an occasion.

Of course, work will be done. There will be mental arithmetic, and some writing; perhaps some spelling lists and paper games, and stories told to each other. And today, the children knew, there would be Christmas carols, and a visit to the old grey church next door to see the crib recently set up by the vicar's wife and other ladies of the village. The very thought of it all created a glow which warmed the children despite the winter's cold.

They entered more exuberantly than ever, cherry-nosed, hair curling damply from the December air and Wellingtons plastered with Fairacre mud. I began to shoo them back into the lobby before our virago of a caretaker discovered them, but I was too late.

Mrs Pringle, emerging from the infants' room where she had just deposited a scuttle of coke on an outspread sheet of
The Times Educational Supplement,
looked at them with marked dislike.

'Anyone 'ere seen fit to use the door-scraper?' she asked sourly. 'Don't look like it to me. What you kids wants is an hour or two scrubbing this 'ere floor like I 'ave to. That'd make you think twice about dirtying my clean floorboards.'

She cast a malevolent glance in my direction and stumped out to the lobby. The children retreated before her, observing her marked limp, a sure sign of trouble.

The clatter of the door scraper and the bang of the heavy Gothic door announced Mrs Pringle's departure to her cottage, until midday, when she was due to return to wash up the school dinner things. The children's spirits rose again and they sang 'Away in a Manger' with rather more gusto than perhaps was necessary at prayer time.